Ask Warren G to remake They Live.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
white lies matter
Claudia Rankine thinktank!
Rankine is extremely interested in whiteness, believing that “it’s important that people begin to understand that whiteness is not inevitable, and that white dominance is not inevitable.” One reason Rankine wants such a center to exist is because she recently went into a bookstore at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art “and I asked them for books on whiteness. The man was like, ‘What?’
“I said, ‘Well, you know. Books that address the ways in which white contemporary artists deal with whiteness, interrogate it, analyze it, work in ways that push up with constructions of whiteness.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’”
Rankine had a similar conversation in three different bookstores. While she knew they would have had books on African American art, these art bookshops never had anything to deconstruct race in general or whiteness in particular.
“Conceptions and constructions of whiteness,” she explained, have been “made and then propped up with eugenics and propped up with false science and false rhetoric and maintained through the justice system in every way”. They then become invisible. As writers and artists, she said, “it’s our job to point this out, because I really believe that people don’t know” – about what makes whiteness, or about how broad the life experiences of white people are.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
The spectacle of privilege/objectification & the unrelenting white gaze (July 2015)
Note: Written 7/2015 in response to my participation in the Fremont Solstice after 6/2015
MIDDLE MELANIN WOMAN
MIDDLE MELANIN WOMAN
In sheer frustration over the Hillary Clinton (and others) phenomenon of "All lives matter" which may as well be translated as "MY life matters, bitch, stop complaining about black lives cuz I don't give a flying white fuck," and inspired by my friend who is female, black with beautiful, so-dark-it's-prismatic-melanin skin, I decided to naked-protest. It was foolhardy and asinine at best, had possibly devastating consequences for multiple close relationships, and, though I am glad I carried it through to the end ("it" being my naked yellow ass), I'm going to be marinating on, mourning, and healing from this for a good, long, time.
My aforementioned melanin-rich friend had a GENIUS idea that was right up my alley: to bring some real shit to the white middle class clutches of this pagan hippie parade (or so I thought)--i.e. call attention to THEIR inattention of the maltreatment of Black folks in our system--the school-to-prison pipeline, incarceration rates, death via vigilante, police-brutality, and racism as institutionalized thusly.
Because at heart I love body, bawdy and naked, and I thought--hey, I should do it once WHILE folding in my "radical," non-conformist vision that Black people shouldn’t be shot in the streets or otherwise fucked over with impunity, to support my friend's struggle. Taking as cues the multiracial Oakland PD shut down, naked women's war protesting, and some art protesting my husband (who is Black) did the day before my daughter decided she wanted to join us in the struggle by exiting the womb in her birth, as well as pics I'd seen on the internet of "#Asians4BlackLives," I finally decided I'd do the naked adventure at midnight, the day of the summer solstice, at Fremont’s Summer Solstice Parade/Naked Bike Ride.
TWO CHINKS IN THE IMPENETRABLE ARMOR OF WHITE PRIVILEGE DON'T DO SHIT (AT LEAST THEY'RE NAKED) FOR BLACK PEOPLE...OR ANYONE OTHER THAN WHITE MEN AND MEN LOOKING FOR TITTIES.
To my chagrin, the message was lost. If my intent was, "Remember, two days ago, a white imbred fuck took nine Black lives from this earth forever," or "Remember, your honky asses swim in a sea of privilege and you don’t even care to notice all the bodies piled up underneath you," or even: "have a heart, all the white privilegeds," it was most certainly lost in a horde of creepos, assholes, exhibitionists, hos, and thugs, all of them (nearly), a skinny white boy twerking his bare ass repeatedly on his bicycle.
Circling back on it, it was like being in one of Dante's layers of white hell. So in retrospect, I'm glad my art-message-protest (a somber declaration via abstract symbols, signs, and colors, that we SEE, HEAR, and SPEAK of the evil done to Black folks, a message of unity despite our Raced-bodies as yellow and white) wasn't given as pablum to be consumed like a bag of chips while watching the boob tube--in this case, my boobs.
KEYWORDS
The Solstice was
A) RIDICULOUS
B) SELF INDULGENT WHITE BULLSHIT
C) VACUOUS
D) VOID OF MEANING
E) WHITE ISOLATIONISM
F) MASTURBATORY
G) GROSS
H) ALL OF THE ABOVE
SOMETIMES YOU'VE GOT TO CUT YOUR TIES (WITH WHITENESS) AND GO...
Wherever I go, the normative white gaze follows like one of those scary portrait pictures with the moving eyes. I left my job to escape it. It perniciously sticks to and follows the ones I love, chipping at their dignity as they weather the storm of working in and for a white world.
WHITE NAKED HIPPIES ARE NOT THE ANSWER.
I suppose it was my own naivete and upbringing as an asian american in this society that I thought a free-lovin' body-positive celebration of humanness thru its naked form would "save" me from the anger of continual trauma and injustice of racism (to the nation, to the world, to Black people, to my frail Asian lady body), or that I could somehow change by opening their eyes,ears, and mouths, to that favored white technique of maintaining the status quo. But I was dead. wrong. as each "WHOO HAPPY SOLSTICE" rang out by from bikers and passers by, I grew angrier by the minute. Coupled with the obliviousness of my asian sisters and brothers in the audience and my white man friend's obliviousness to not only racism but also feminism and the purpose of our being there as a message, it dawned on me that no one, no how, can these white people be saved. It’s written all over their pervy faces and naked bodies. If empathy, love, and peace are the goal, vanity, lust, and sheer callousness reign supreme here.
WERE THE NINE ALIVE
Had not the shootings in SC occurred, this would have been a different experience. I would be angry, but not so angry.
BODIES OF COLOR ON DISPLAY IN ISOLATED CASES/ISOLATION
When a culture dissects our parts and constituencies and puts us on display, we are violated, disjointed, sad, and alone. Discounted, abused.
That's how it went down.
The antiblackwomanness of so-called Seattle progress
How are we indicted in the most happy of recently-published Seattle spate of virulent anti-Black racism and misogynoir? : ("He even enjoyed being black (danced/shuffled his feet off) for a predominately white audience." "Relatives expressed skepticism about what, if anything, Lyles had armed herself with." To understand white liberal racism, read these private emails.)
Isn't Seattle a progressive, accepting, open-minded liberal and therefore not-racist place? In a word, no. It's not.
I am not going into the anti-Black anti-Native anti-POC sentiments of our beautiful region, as others have done so well before me and Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project documents. But let me as an art historian think up just a few connections between our present crises and the past. I'm going to say it again. Gentrification is the new colonization. When you whitewash a person, a people, where does their 'flavor' go? Into an exotic, liminal abyss? To Whole Foods?
Few things to consider first, though.
1. The ongoing doucheification of the city. $$$ without limit, the lack of affordability for anyone not super rich. There is an influx of $$$ without critical thought or heart. Bezosland. The predominant demographic racially in tech white and Asian, in my experience, and also some recent African immigrants--just don't get it, or are anti Black (American) in some way. This has to do with success, a desire for personal uplift, assimilation. Efficiency. Finance above all else. This is Macklemore's city.
2. The inability of whites and people of color especially Black people to be real with each other. Just join any mom's group. Just host a party with your Black and white friends and see how it goes with both present. Just read Citizen by Claudia Rankine. The schism is real, people.
3. Statistics I've said it before. 75% of white people ONLY KNOW WHITE PEOPLE. That's why when I go to white church and compliment the pastor--not just the pastor, the regional bishop, on his Beyonce references (when he says God is "Crazy in Love" with us about 1000x in the sermon), it's an inside joke for myself and myself alone. LOL.
My personal position as a non-Black person of color is to recognize my own brainwashing. How do I stand against anti-Black racism in my own communities? Do you know *HOW* rampant this problem is in POC communites (See: My wedding. My family. My family's church). It's everywhere.
4. Classic (that is, standard) uncritical and/or selfish, selfish self-promotion based on the degrading and devaluing of Black women. Iggy Azalea. Norbit. Tyler Perry. Black girls at the pool. --
>Black girls at school. R Kelly. Bill Cosby. Clarence Thomas. Need I say more? I wish America had a reality check moment, sometime, like, ever, and instead of seeing our nation as built on some idealistic eagles and white ladies sewing, we just bore actual motherfucking witness to the tearing asunder of women's bodies through rape and slavery and Black families. (American as apple pie). Have you seen the statistics of an African-American genetic history? It's always a white man ancestor and an African woman ancestor. Nuff said.
I admire the Netflix series Master of None's ability (written by Indian-American Aziz Ansari and Taiwanese-American Alan Yang) to explore race politics from a non-black POC perspective--the telling scene displays the complicity of non-Black POC in anti-Black racism. Main character Dev grabs a condom from a white woman' cookie jar, but get this--it's a MAMMY cookie jar. This is hella fucked up, but he *knows* it. Then he acknowledges the racism of the jar, after having sex with the white woman, who obviously has no Black friends to check her on her cookie jar racism.
Recommended art-viewing/aesthetics in response to your own deep-seated anti-Black anti-Black woman psychoses and racial isolation:
1) Beyonce Lemonade
Beyonce Self-titled
Solange Knowles A Seat at the Table
2) bell hooks (who dislikes Bey) anything.
-see Killing Rage, 'reading against he grain.'
-if you're in a stifling white environment reading teaching hope and teaching love
-if you're a woman of color recently navigating intersectionality, or someone trying to understand how a woman can also be Black, or a person can be Black and also a woman, ain't i a woman.
3) always read Anthem by Claudia Rankine. Always.
4) Sankofa
5) Being Mary Jane-center Black female experience. also so sexy.
6) Junebaby: eat there it's so good!
7) Dear white People
8) Janelle Monae music videos
9) I love my Hair (Sesame Street): Don't take white beauty norms for granted, people.
10) Empire
11) Maybe, Orange is the new black (it is about white women but has many other ethnicities of women including LGBTQ, which is rare in television, and asian anti blackness is addressed awkwardly in the poussey-soso relationship)
12) Black women i hear love Scandal, but I don't do political dramas.
13) Always Octavia Butler, Always.
14) the bell hooks and Melissa Harris Perry talk linked to above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmgqXao1ng
15) Issa Rae! Insecure, so sexy and timely.
16) Chewing Gum: esp the episode with the white guy with a Black woman fetish
17) Paul Mooney on Hattie McDaniels
18) this all reminds me of a certain Mammy Sphinx in gentrified NYC and the white public art audiences' responses to it. :(
My heart is pained because my sisters are suffering. We are all to blame. If yours isn't, I ask, what's wrong with you?
Isn't Seattle a progressive, accepting, open-minded liberal and therefore not-racist place? In a word, no. It's not.
I am not going into the anti-Black anti-Native anti-POC sentiments of our beautiful region, as others have done so well before me and Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project documents. But let me as an art historian think up just a few connections between our present crises and the past. I'm going to say it again. Gentrification is the new colonization. When you whitewash a person, a people, where does their 'flavor' go? Into an exotic, liminal abyss? To Whole Foods?
Few things to consider first, though.
1. The ongoing doucheification of the city. $$$ without limit, the lack of affordability for anyone not super rich. There is an influx of $$$ without critical thought or heart. Bezosland. The predominant demographic racially in tech white and Asian, in my experience, and also some recent African immigrants--just don't get it, or are anti Black (American) in some way. This has to do with success, a desire for personal uplift, assimilation. Efficiency. Finance above all else. This is Macklemore's city.
2. The inability of whites and people of color especially Black people to be real with each other. Just join any mom's group. Just host a party with your Black and white friends and see how it goes with both present. Just read Citizen by Claudia Rankine. The schism is real, people.
3. Statistics I've said it before. 75% of white people ONLY KNOW WHITE PEOPLE. That's why when I go to white church and compliment the pastor--not just the pastor, the regional bishop, on his Beyonce references (when he says God is "Crazy in Love" with us about 1000x in the sermon), it's an inside joke for myself and myself alone. LOL.
My personal position as a non-Black person of color is to recognize my own brainwashing. How do I stand against anti-Black racism in my own communities? Do you know *HOW* rampant this problem is in POC communites (See: My wedding. My family. My family's church). It's everywhere.
4. Classic (that is, standard) uncritical and/or selfish, selfish self-promotion based on the degrading and devaluing of Black women. Iggy Azalea. Norbit. Tyler Perry. Black girls at the pool. --
>Black girls at school. R Kelly. Bill Cosby. Clarence Thomas. Need I say more? I wish America had a reality check moment, sometime, like, ever, and instead of seeing our nation as built on some idealistic eagles and white ladies sewing, we just bore actual motherfucking witness to the tearing asunder of women's bodies through rape and slavery and Black families. (American as apple pie). Have you seen the statistics of an African-American genetic history? It's always a white man ancestor and an African woman ancestor. Nuff said.
I admire the Netflix series Master of None's ability (written by Indian-American Aziz Ansari and Taiwanese-American Alan Yang) to explore race politics from a non-black POC perspective--the telling scene displays the complicity of non-Black POC in anti-Black racism. Main character Dev grabs a condom from a white woman' cookie jar, but get this--it's a MAMMY cookie jar. This is hella fucked up, but he *knows* it. Then he acknowledges the racism of the jar, after having sex with the white woman, who obviously has no Black friends to check her on her cookie jar racism.
Recommended art-viewing/aesthetics in response to your own deep-seated anti-Black anti-Black woman psychoses and racial isolation:
1) Beyonce Lemonade
Beyonce Self-titled
Solange Knowles A Seat at the Table
2) bell hooks (who dislikes Bey) anything.
-see Killing Rage, 'reading against he grain.'
-if you're in a stifling white environment reading teaching hope and teaching love
-if you're a woman of color recently navigating intersectionality, or someone trying to understand how a woman can also be Black, or a person can be Black and also a woman, ain't i a woman.
3) always read Anthem by Claudia Rankine. Always.
4) Sankofa
5) Being Mary Jane-center Black female experience. also so sexy.
6) Junebaby: eat there it's so good!
7) Dear white People
8) Janelle Monae music videos
9) I love my Hair (Sesame Street): Don't take white beauty norms for granted, people.
10) Empire
11) Maybe, Orange is the new black (it is about white women but has many other ethnicities of women including LGBTQ, which is rare in television, and asian anti blackness is addressed awkwardly in the poussey-soso relationship)
12) Black women i hear love Scandal, but I don't do political dramas.
13) Always Octavia Butler, Always.
14) the bell hooks and Melissa Harris Perry talk linked to above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OmgqXao1ng
15) Issa Rae! Insecure, so sexy and timely.
16) Chewing Gum: esp the episode with the white guy with a Black woman fetish
17) Paul Mooney on Hattie McDaniels
18) this all reminds me of a certain Mammy Sphinx in gentrified NYC and the white public art audiences' responses to it. :(
My heart is pained because my sisters are suffering. We are all to blame. If yours isn't, I ask, what's wrong with you?
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| Mammy Sambo float at June 17th Fremont Solstice Parade. 2017 |
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| Coon Chicken Inn, Lake City Way (North end of Seattle) menu |
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| Racist condom-holding cookie jar in Master of None, 2017. |
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| Protest at Coon Chicken Inn, Lake City Way built 1929. |
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