taking a story full circle

Paris is the month of April in my 2013 calendar.
I love these drawings.

Sometimes delays are worth having. I finally have the reflection from Aaron, a student in this course,  who also reflected on the ways in which Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Kanye West’s Grammy Award-winning hit about Paris resonates against this week’s readings on antebellum life, and above all, race relations, in Cincinnati and Buffalo. Like me, Aaron was drawn to the lyric, “we ain’t even s’posed to be here,” which  metaphorically references the success both performers have had in spite of their membership in a historically oppressed group – African Americans. Aaron noted how the wealth that permits Carter and West to travel to Paris counters the movement of the French to the Cincinnati described in  Nikki Taylor’s study. The French, he said, traveled to the land that became the United States in part to build their wealth. Sometimes they relied on the forced labor of people of African descent. Press fast forward (with the hazards of reductive anachronisms fully before us). Though their success is partly enabled by the struggle of earlier African Americans, West and Carter can travel to Paris, already wealthy. Wrote Aaron, “It is as if Jay and Ye [take the story of people of African descent] full circle…They come from two of the most violent cities in the United States – Jay from the notoriously-impoverished Marcy Projects in Brooklyn (West from Chicago)…They end up in Paris, the city of glamour…Historically [speaking], they shouldn’t be able to “ball so hard” in this city.” Next week, we continue examining African American life in cities. Using Dolen Perkins-Valdez's Wench:A Novel and Yael Sternhell, Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South, we will investigate the idea of movement in the years surrounding and during the Civil War. PS Aaron, I just found your original paper. Sorry I misplaced it. I am not yet one of the "pros from Dover."

"time isn't ticking down for them"

The Throne's "Paris," a Jay-Z and Kanye West hit, won two Grammys this year.

Kelley's look at black working class resistance.

When I first heard Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Grammy Award-winning hit about the City of Lights, “Ni***s in Paris,” I loved the beat. I googled the lyrics and discovered it contained the usual profanity and misogyny. But I also saw the sentence, “We ain’t even s'posed to be here.” In saying this, West and Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, two of the music industry’s most wealthy performers, were saying as African American men from Chicago and Brooklyn, they were not supposed to be in Paris.  Black men like them were not supposed to have had the success they had. The song made me made think deeply about race, but also about cities as a category of analysis and how that might work in a course. But how to get beyond the lyrics? I found some measure of relief when I learned more about the everyday hidden politics in the black working class during my  preliminary exam readings. Tying such a topic in with some aspects of hip hop music,  historian Robin Kelley urges us to develop “a nuanced understanding" of the "social relations among young people, in all of their diversity and complexity.” Well aware of the hazards of anachronistic discussions, the students in this course "in all of their diversity and complexity" indeed manifested a nuanced understanding of the West-Carter tune, a song hardly unknown to them. They even juxtaposed it against - of all things - this week's examination of race relations in antebellum Buffalo and Cincinnati, as told by James Oliver Horton and Hartmut Keil and Nikki Taylor respectively. These scholars  helped the students to discern the importance of being precise when discussing racial conflict  in the United States before the Civil War. For example, the students  learned it is not enough to simply say "whites oppressed blacks." "Which whites, when, where and why?" might be better ways to approach such a discussion. Among other things, they learned the degree to which German immigrants’ relations with African Americans, while far from perfect, seemed more peaceful during the antebellum period than black-Irish relations because the Germans often arrived in the States possessing many skills unlike the Irish who faced job competition with African Americans long  relegated to the lowest paying jobs. But how to tie this situation to  a rap song from the 21st century?  The students tackled that task with an in-class written reflection. Most reflected on how the social position of many antebellum blacks poses tensions with the wealth flaunted by West and Carter in modern-day Paris (and elsewhere). Wrote Kalynn, “We’ve looked at African Americans in [cities] ...oppressed by their social position. Ni***s in Paris” portrays the opposite of that struggle.” Chiming in, Tiffany noted how the African Americans in Taylor’s study believed Cincinnati had “more economic opportunity” and “social equality” than areas in the South that "were deeply entrenched in the institution of slavery…’Ye and Jay’s flow speaks to the potential for progress” beyond such a past. Lauria also discerned the progress African Americans like West and Carter have made since the antebellum era. She was drawn to their song's lyric, “Got a broke clock/Rollies that don’t tick tock,” saying it referred to these young men’s success and how “time isn’t ticking down for them.” However, not entirely convinced the struggle is over, Shariyah focused on the ways in which West and Carter “creatively” demonstrate the idea of resistance in African Americans. This is something she also observed in whites, especially the Irish. Said Shariyah, the Irish “were at one point classified…in the same category as blacks. [They even] lived in the same neighborhoods [until] they realized that the color of your skin meant “currency.” Roosevelt was attentive to the condition of whites, especially Germans in Buffalo including those who married African Americans.  He was reminded of such interracial relations when he recalled the "Paris"  lyric referencing “getting married” (Prince William ain't do it right if you ask me/Cause if I was him I would have married Kate & Ashley). Aaron, another student, had  yet another observation, which shall be shortly posted. You can blame his instructor for the delay. Cray.

on being from "the 305"

I saw a friend this past Sunday. I had not seen her in more than twenty years.  We are members of an organization we joined as undergraduates. In her characteristically loving and funny way, she announced how we were both from “the 305” (i.e. area code 305, which is to say, Miami, the city; not 205, Tuscaloosa, a place that is not entirely the country, but certainly not Miami). She took it one step further and said we were from the Baa Haas, a particular neighborhood in the county in which Miami sits. As I said in an earlier blog entry, to live in the Baa Haas (pronounced BAH-hahs) once upon a time was to live amid sand dunes and with an increasingly African American middle class population. It is the kind of population about which many, even African Americans, make assumptions, some warranted, some not. I wonder now if the assumptions have something to do with a fundamental human need to organize ourselves and others. In other words, we feel compelled to decide where we fit into the big scheme of things, but to do so, we must decide where others fit in.  I am sure there are theories out there on this. For now, the words from one Gullah young woman in the 1991 “Daughters of the Dust,” the motion picture used in class this week, suffice. “Who they out there,” she said, making clear the degree to which place defines people, but also how people define place.

"flowers on the distant frontier"

Beyonce reunited with her old cohort on Superbowl Sunday.  Years ago while walking the streets of Stockholm during a research trip, I was so happy to see Destiny's Child "brown" faces on this poster.

This past Monday, a day on which many of us found ourselves exhausted from Super Bowl-watching, I was impressed by the degree to which the students recognized how space, or location, has meaning for everyone, not just African Americans. The class, among other things, discussed the impressions many have of people from Alabama. Beyond that, the students also had a range of responses to “Daughters of the Dust,” the motion picture unveiling the anxieties felt by one family of African descent in 1902 as they prepared to leave their out island home for the “mainland.” In migrating, this family was leaving not only kinfolk, but old traditions. Lauria noted how one worldly relative named “Yellow Mary” demonstrated the ways in which skin complexion has had an impact on the status of people of African descent across time. Lighter-skinned African Americans, according to Lauria, are perceived as having more privileges, an idea that she also gathered from the Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’ reading. Alexis honed in on how Myers’ book and “Daughters” both demonstrate how the city is believed to be a place “where fortunes can be made.” To this point, Raven took note of the idea of migration and its role in how people look for a “new and better life.” Roosevelt saw how the family’s decision to move from their island home posed tensions with the desire of slaves who, too, desired to be “free.”  Tiffany noticed small, but important details in the movie, including “flowers on a distant frontier.” She also recognized the “deep [-] rooted community” depicted in the film, something she also sensed in Myers’ work. Finally, Shanece understood how migrating was not easy. She noted “the girl [who] wanted to stay with the guy she was seeing.” Shanece also grasped how the family was moving from the “periphery” (this idea appeared in a Ronald Lewis essay, the second assigned reading) to the mainland. We will continue learning about how space and place figures into the life of African Americans during the antebellum period next week when we turn to the cities of Cincinnati and Buffalo.

so, how do certain bodies become associated with cities?

Still photo from Julie Dash's "Daughters of the Dust."

So, how do certain bodies become associated with cities? The initial answer (so far in the context of the United States): labor needs. Last week, the students looked at black labor in New York during the colonial era. In the coming week, they will continue exploring this issue by looking, among other places, at Charleston, South Carolina during the antebellum period.  Founded by English settlers from Barbados in the seventeenth century, Charleston had an amazingly large concentration of people of African descent, some free and some enslaved. As Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, the author of the book pictured to the right, tells us, urban slavery in Charles Town, later renamed Charleston was, “first and foremost, about labor.” People of African descent were employed in many professions. Some worked in rice mills and other industries, sometimes beside poor whites. Others had jobs related to sea life. Women of color worked as domestic servants and in a variety of trades. Some women were also the "leading purveyors" of needed food, raising prices and picking customers at will. The experiences of these bondsmen and working class blacks contrasted sharply with those around them including free black Eliza Lee, a pastry chef and co-owner of a hotel. Using a chapter from Myers’ recently published book, an essay from Ronald L. Lewis, and a clip from Julie Dash's 1991 motion picture "Daughters of the Dust," the students will learn more about how “industrial” slavery posed tensions with agricultural slavery. Along the way, they will keep thinking about how focusing  on location, specifically, the city, may deepen what we know about African American life across time.