on race and place

 Marpessa Dawn played Eurydice in "Black Orpheus."

Aline Helg's study on race in Colombia

In last week’s readings, we explored how the “meanings of blackness” for people of African descent can change depending on several factors including class and geography. As Aline Helg demonstrates in her study of the Caribbean rim of Colombia, many people of color identified themselves based on region rather than skin color even though they encountered some of the same stereotypes and oppression that people of African descent have generally experienced across time. The students saw how the latter idea played out in Colombia and Jamaica, but also Brazil. They watched the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” a French re-telling of the Greek myth, which is set in Rio de Janeiro.  Lauria, one student, observed how dark skinned Brazilians featured in this imagined work seemed to have “worse off living conditions.” Roosevelt, yet another student, took the idea of complexion further by drawing our attention to the experiences of lead character Eurydice, a fair-skinned women of color (His observation struck me as I would like to see this class better tackle the issue of women and gender. I feel even more strongly about this as I just attended a women’s and gender conference at my home university in Illinois). The departure point for Roosevelt’s observation was his witnessing the horrific ending to Eurydice's life. Noting that Eurydice's experiences fit the "tragic mulatto" trope, which, among other things, incorrectly blames race-mixing - rather than racism - for the troubles endured by biracial people, he said some of the challenges she faced stemmed from her not being “fully black" (i.e. her seemingly beautiful fair skin, an outcome of her being of mixed race, contributed to her fate). Tiffany, another student, brought the idea of skin complexion together with geography and racial politics. Returning to the Helg reading, she thought about the ways in which people of African descent often lacked unity in Colombia because of the "territorial fragmentation" in their country. But Tiffany was still attentive to how people of African descent also separated themselves based on race. She wrote, “People often assume that people of color are automatically unified based on the fact that we have often been identified as [the] ‘other.’ …This idea is both true and false…Whenever something ‘bad’ happens involving a ‘black person,’ some [black] people rush to lament [those] who  make… us look bad. But, …black people [still see difference even amongst themselves when they separate] themselves into categories [like] light-skin, dark skin [and] brown skin.” As we go forward, we will hopefully keep thinking about how race, place and gender intersect in discussions involving cities. We will also think about how certain bodies' association with urban spaces in this course thus far are most often related to labor needs or desires (certainly Eurydice's streetcar driving Orpheus, and the working women in urban Jamaica and Colombia, demonstrate as much). As we continue, we will also see how that narrative changes. Next week's readings take us to the experiences of postbellum washerwomen of color in Atlanta and an interracial couple residing in Gilded Age New York.

different meanings of "blackness"

Copies of the posters to be used in
an  upcoming art exhibition.

While working on their weekly readings concerning African American life in cities, the students in this course knew they would soon be analyzing posters for an upcoming art exhibition. The posters tell a story about the shared struggles of Afro Brazilians and African Americans. The exhibition along with a Brown Bag discussion and lecture by Brazilian researchers Amilcar Periera will be held at the University of Alabama on April 23. University of Alabama Assistant History Professor Teresa Cribelli is the lead organizer. One of her classes is also analyzing a select group of posters. Together, both classes will produce two separate curatorial statements, reflecting impressions of posters. University of Alabama Assistant Professor of Art History Lucy Curzon has provided insight on getting the students to see how art images can "speak." As the photo here demonstrates, the themes that "spoke" to the students enrolled in "African Americans in the City" this semester are resistance, education, community, black consciousness and oppression. Next week, as they continue working on this project, the class will use Ula Taylor's study on Jamaican-born Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey, and Aline Helg's exploration of Afro-Colombians, to explore how "blackness" has different meanings in and outside the United States. How those different meanings still permit people of African descent to share particular experiences and impressions will drive this lesson.

Afro Brazilian and African American struggle poster exhibition

This blog ends the year 2012 with an announcement and an opportunity. Students taking “African Americans in the City” next spring at the University of Alabama will have a chance to work on a project centered around a group of posters found in Charles Town, West Virginia, which unveil the shared struggles of African Americans during the era generally known as the Civil Rights movement. Brazilian researcher Amilcar Pereira and UA's History professor Teresa Cribelli will coordinate. Using information learned in the course, the class will collectively write a curatorial statement. The project will culminate in an exhibition to be held April 28 at the University. Among the tasks will be exploring how “black” means one thing in the United States, but often something entirely else in the Caribbean and Latin America. For example, C.L.R. James' study of the Haitian revolution uncovers how elite people of mixed race were pitted against African slaves during the late eighteenth century in that country. Ula Taylor's exploration of the life of Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of the famous political leader, Marcus Garvey, learned upon her entry into Harlem in 1917 that meanings about "black" differed from those in her native Jamaica where people were generally known as "black," "brown" and "white." In her investigation of  how “blacks”became invisible in Colombia, Aline Helg reveals how the costenos, or people of color on la Costa or the Atlantic coast of Colombia, shied away from racially distinguishing themselves even though anthropologists have noted racial stereotyping of this group by others. Interestingly, Helg discovered that the lack of transportation and communication between the frontier, cities and towns compelled people, including the costenos, to focus more on their immediate environment, and not the “country” as a whole for identity purposes. Her findings are striking given that Colombia at the time of her 2004 study had the largest population of people of African descent in the “Western” world outside of the United States and Brazil. What allows some countries to create racial ideologies and prohibits others from fully doing the same? How do people of color in different countries still manage to come together to address their shared oppression? These are among the questions this course will try to answer. From time to time, students will write future blog entries here. Again, happy holidays and all best in the new year!