Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

A large part of what he does is geared towards empowering marginalised communities to tell their own stories, via public arts festivals, but that's always going to be an issue for any white South African engaged in discussion of post-colonial themes. On the one hand I can definitely appreciate why it codes as massively problematic, on the other, if major figures from the Xhosa and Zulu arts communities support him, and the performers view the work as important, I'm not in a position to second guess them.

The two hands you point to aren't on the same body. There's no reason to assume that the response of black Londoners to his work should mirror that of Xhosa or Zulu communities in South Africa.

No, there's definitely a distinction to be made between how it works in an African context and how it works in Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, etc, but the question was more around whether it should have been created by a white artist in the first place, I think, rather than a direct comment on how people should be reacting to it in different countries.

Don't really think it makes sense to view the two separately.

It's all too easy to elide different kinds of whiteness and how they function in different contexts and I don't think I truly understood this until I went to SA as an adult. Its not all that surprising that there's more room for a white artist to tell controversial black stories in South Africa, where its harder to marginalize black artistic expression, than there is in Western Europe where its easy. If the exhibit hadn't gone abroad this controversy would not exist and given the receptivity of black South Africans to his work it would seem pointless to question its validity regardless of whether or not the artist was white.

http://instagram.com/p/tVDGkALEfO/

never heard of the schmoney dance

It's all too easy to elide different kinds of whiteness and how they function in different contexts and I don't think I truly understood this until I went to SA as an adult. Its not all that surprising that there's more room for a white artist to tell controversial black stories in South Africa, where its harder to marginalize black artistic expression, than there is in Western Europe where its easy. If the exhibit hadn't gone abroad this controversy would not exist and given the receptivity of black South Africans to his work it would seem pointless to question its validity regardless of whether or not the artist was white.

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, September 24, 2014 12:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

different kinds of blackness too to be clear

schmoney dance officially over when the ryder cup guys are doing it

different kinds of blackness too to be clear

― everybody loves lana del raymond (s.clover), Wednesday, 24 September 2014 19:19 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that's kinda what I was getting at with this,

"There's no reason to assume that the response of black Londoners to his work should mirror that of Xhosa or Zulu communities in South Africa.

Excerpt from Daisy Hernandez's memoir:

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/28/latina_at_the_white_male_new_york_times_%E2%80%9Cwhy_are_people_thinking_it%E2%80%99s_ok_to_say_racist_sh_t_in_front_of_me%E2%80%9D/

(h/t DJP)

Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/sports/football/ex-brown-walter-beach-recalls-black-athletes-support-of-ali.html

that hernandez piece is a good read

That Hernandez piece shows how the real value or strength of "journalism" is sapped when we allow Eurocentric biases to prevail. I am not a Latina. -I- want to read about Colombia. Our country is up to its ASS in Colombia. Why wouldn't an American reader of any color want to read a story about Colombia?

One reason we get few narco-wars stories is because affluent white advertisers think they're a "downer" - when they are acutely relevant to all Americans.

I have been noticing the use of "black bodies" in a lot of recent pop left writing. I have been told it comes from Foucault. I don't actually know the context, but without context I kind of don't like the term -- it almost seems to achieve the effect it seeks to call attention to, i.e., dehumanization.

fancy that

idk about "black bodies" for foucault, but def bodies (and hegemonic manipulation of bodies) is a big thing for him. black bodies more evokes for me moten's in the break (i hope i'm remembering this correctly bc it has been a few years since i read it) where he talks about marx's "the commodity that speaks" and uses that as a way to discuss the black body in slavery (particularly noted in Frederick Douglass’s Aunt Hester narrative). in that sense it comes directly out of black studies in the academy.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise, just when I see it in some salon article or something I find it a little jarring and unclear what the term is supposed to be doing.

Do you have an example? I've come across the term with some frequency too but it never struck me as 'off'

Also seems to connect with discourse in feminism about women's bodies

it's definitely a term closely linked to dehumanization + specifically abjection, but intentionally so

also i think derieck scott talks a bit about this in Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

https://www.google.com/#q=%22black+bodies%22+site:salon.com

tbf salon is trash

Yeah I think maybe my problem is just with it as used in pop writing (as I said, not familiar with the original context). Lots of crit theory terms get abused when they trickle into the mass internet.

Still not seeing what you're finding objectionable

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body

I guess for example:

"Mike Brown's death forces us to confront the dehumanization of black bodies"

Why not just say "black people?" Saying "black bodies" seems to almost accept the dehumanization, and even if not it just seems like a pointless use of a theory term that doesn't actually do any work there, since the sentence already contains "dehumanization."

Because a form of inhumane prejudice based on the differing physical appearance of black people still ultimately finds its way back to the physical appearance of black people and it's good to remind America of that?

also america's economy is literally built on black bodies as such

Do you have similar issues with talk of women's bodies in reproductive justice?

imo it's a shocking term that confronts the read with the idea that they, or society writ large, don't see a group as having human agency

honestly, I could see the term "white bodies" and it makes no sense to me, but so much writing about black people does concentrate on physicality and objectifies without necessarily meaning to that putting it out there, if lazy writing or misappropriation of theory, seems like a reasonable tactic

龜 otm

Black bodies is the exact language of "strange fruit"

it emphasizes labor physicality ownership literally slavery because the rhetoric of equality elides all of that pesky history and there is a need to not whitewash

Also in the case of Michael Brown it is especially appropriate (without implying that its use elsewhere is less than appropriate). Racial profiling by police and police brutality against black people starts and ends with the appearance of the victims. Michael Brown's body was left in the street for four hours and directly recalls the practice of leaving lynched bodies - again, strange how this term keeps on popping up - to hang in the days of Jim Crow as a warning to other black people. It is also no mistake that one of the talking points embraced by conservative media focused on Michael Brown's height and weight, as if that should have any relevance at all in a case where an unarmed 17 year old was shot and killed by a police officer.

Do you have similar issues with talk of women's bodies in reproductive justice?

― 龜, Tuesday, September 30, 2014 11:32 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but it's usually used differently -- "Don't tell women what to do with their bodies" "Don't try to control women's bodies" etc. There's still a "women" in the sentence. It's not "Black people's bodies." Anyway, above arguments seem reasonable enough.

https://www.google.com/webhp?q=site%3Asalon.com%20%22female%20bodies%22#q=site:salon.com+%22female+bodies%22

I've been following this thread, but hadn't clicked on the links. I was siding with Hurting because I assumed someone was writing about dead black people.

I can kinda go along with the phrase now, when color is relevant and in a Don Delillo sort of context.

I don't actually know the context, but without context I kind of don't like the term

what a series of words this is

yeah that came out really garbled, what I meant was that I don't know the ORIGINAL context (i.e. how exactly it was used by foucault et al), but it rubs me slightly the wrong way in the typical salon article context.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/justice/michael-dunn-loud-music-verdict/index.html

This is a good outcome but what the hell is this:

Killing Davis was lawful, Healey told the jury, if Dunn acted in the heat of passion or if he unintentionally caused Davis' death. The jury could also find Dunn not guilty if he was in danger, acted in self-defense and exacted a justifiable use of force, the judge instructed.

So basically, if I fly off the handle and kill someone, I can argue that the killing was lawful because I was acting in the heat of passion???????????

That...can't be right

The classic example for that is the person who comes home to find their partner in bed with another person and kills in the heat of passion

It's a defense, and if the jury accepts it the murder gets downgraded to a manslaughter conviction

Jurors began deliberating on the new charges just before 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, after Judge Russell Healey dismissed two of the three alternates and provided instructions for the charges jurors were to consider.

The first charge to consider, Healey said, was first-degree murder, which would require that Dunn premeditated killing Davis.

If the jury didn't feel the state proved first-degree murder, it was instructed to move on to second-degree, which would mean Dunn killed Davis via a criminal or depraved act.

The third charge was manslaughter, which would require a finding that Dunn unlawfully caused Davis' death.

Killing Davis was lawful, Healey told the jury, if Dunn acted in the heat of passion or if he unintentionally caused Davis' death. The jury could also find Dunn not guilty if he was in danger, acted in self-defense and exacted a justifiable use of force, the judge instructed.

That doesn't seem right, I can see them downgrading the murder charge, but letting him off the hook completely for an "act of passion" sounds off

Here's a slightly more reasonable sounding summary:

http://www.news4jax.com/news/michael-dunn-jury-instructions/28356706

I think what's missing from the CNN quote is that it would have had to occur "by accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation." So it's not like walk in on your cheating spouse and shoot heat of passion.

But in any case he got first-degree murder, so good work, jury

Pretty sure there is no state that completely lets you off the hook for heat of passion alone.

That's an exception big enough to swallow the rule imo xp

maybe I'm just being dense/sensitive but I can't think of any reasonable scenario describable by "When killing occurs by accident and misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation" that wouldn't qualify as manslaughter, particularly when said incident involves firing a gun at someone

TBH I'm not exactly clear on what it means to accidentally kill someone in the heat of passion upon provocation.