ALLISON BOLAH

Sometimes, when I notice that – the world over – the middle class is reading and doing and buying (oh, god buying) the same things, I get the willies. Like, why should ‘everyone’ be thinking about Noam Chomsky or talking about Theaster Gates? Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with thinking or talking about them. But, the names ‘we’ hear and the things that compel ‘our’ validation… It’s creepy, no? Like, I could make a list of the things ‘we’ all have in common:

• Single family homes in ‘nice’ neighborhoods (be they urban or suburban, gated or not…)
• European automobiles – or Subarus
• We’re all so well-read
• Up-to-date electronics (iPhones, HD TVs…)
• Kefir was a ‘thing’ that was everywhere in my corner of the world last year
• College
• TRX
• Meritocratic scholarships
• Art
• Steve McQueen (both)
• Social Justice

None of these things is inherently bad – in fact, they’re mostly good (at least to me, although not kefir or iPhones). But there’s something Orwellian (is the ‘right’ word [he’s been everywhere lately, too], but really ‘Huxleyan’ which [my computer is telling me] is not a word) about the near-perfect lock-step life phasing of, you know,

natural/water childbirth, Montessori pre-school, arts and music magnate elementary school, IB/Cambridge/performing arts middle and high schools, cute (but well-regarded) liberal arts colleges or honors programs in state schools, grad school/marriage, travel! foreign languages! ‘How do we not put mom and dad in a home?’ ‘Let’s take REALLY good care of ourselves (organic food, yoga, meditation, hiking, bicycling) so we age better than they did’ (and die peacefully in our sleep surrounded by loved ones at 120 on our everlasting retirement funds)…

It’s everywhere I’ve been, it’s everyone – I mean EVERYONE – I know. And maybe it’s just a thing, like we only know people like ourselves. Ok. But every once in a while, I look up from my critical theory (!) and freak out a bit because, you know, it’s a little insidious.

Right?

I am fascinated by how both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cord Jefferson leverage their respective platforms, Coates at The Atlantic and Jefferson at Gawker, to vigorously discuss the construction/experience of race in America. Both are heirs of James Baldwin, but their expressions of that lineage diverge.  Here, Coates – ever the bookish striver – takes on the Duck Dynasty debacle:

That the enemy is us, is never easy to take. Yesterday, Confederates routinely accused Northerners of attempting to reduce them to slavery. Today, men who convene with Confederate flags at the White House, accuse the president of racism. Yesterday, the civilized man accused you of barbarism, while practicing sophisticated human sacrifice to the God Of Nations, while reducing his lordly estate to a house of the dead. Today, the homophobe accuses you of sexual immorality and damns you to hell, while preaching a gospel which would make wives of children.

Less lofty – I think he has a lot less to ‘prove’ – , but no less indignant, Jefferson looks back at the year in racism. The paradox that validates the following two paragraphs is, indeed, a marvel:

This is a specific kind of blinder worn by racists: If an abuse happens to white people also, it’s not racism, it’s just life. White people go to jail, too, so the justice system isn’t skewed against minorities. White people were indentured servants in early America, and black Africans participated in the slave trade, ergo slavery wasn’t as racist as some make it out to be. Unlike with white presidents, nobody’s even fired a gun at President Obama, and so Oprah must be speaking disingenuously when she says there is a special hatred for Obama in the nation’s air.
…
From 1980 to 2008, 84 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other whites, and 53 percent of gang-related killings involved white offenders. Last month a white 27-year-old was arrested for walking up to an elderly black man he didn’t know and punching him out. But “white leaders” are never asked to account for white criminality, because in America race isn’t a contributing factor when white people behave badly. A person’s skin color as it relates to crime only becomes pertinent when that person’s skin is dark, the implication being that a white criminal is an aberration, while a black criminal is indicative of a larger threat. A truth, that blacks and liberals of all colors will not face: A white guy runs up behind someone and sucker punches him, as has happened countless times in history? He’s an asshole. A black guy sucker punches someone? He attacked from behind; it was to be expected; and there are lots more where that came from, because the blacks are playing a dangerous game and it’s coming to a town near you.

I love this clip because of the subtext of Charlie Rose’s question; something about Toni Morrison’s response to Bill Moyers’ question in a previous interview must have seemed too… sharp or critical and put Moyers and other whites like him – including Rose – on the defensive lest they fall into the ‘bad guy’ category for being misunderstood when discussing or seeking to ‘move past’ the issue of race. Morrison’s response is fantastic! I especially like what she says from the 4:19 mark onward.

I once transcribed an interview with Noam Chomsky for Jason’s magazine. As I played-paused-played the interview, I was awed at how accessible Chomsky made his explanations of his academic field:

ASM – Your work is famously associated with the idea that there’s a universal deep grammar behind language. Would you explain the concept briefly?

Chomsky – First of all, the term ‘universal grammar’ has a traditional meaning. But in the Modern period, roughly the last half century, it’s been used in a technical sense which is similar to but different from the traditional meaning.

Universal grammar traditionally meant properties that are common to all languages. But universal grammar in the Modern sense means the genetic component of the language capacity. That is whatever it is about humans that enables an infant to quickly and reflexively identify the parts of the environment that are language-related and then to proceed in a very systematic and regular way to attain very quickly, in fact, the capacity we’re now using.

We have pretty good evidence that it developed recently in the human species, roughly within the last 100,000 years, long after the separation from any other species. So there are really no analogues in other species. And we have very good evidence that the capacity has not changed for at least 50,000 to 75,000 years. There’s very strong evidence that human origins are in Africa 50, maybe a little more, thousand years ago. And there’s very strong evidence that humans everywhere have virtually or maybe identically the same language capacity. It’s kind of like an organ to humans and it’s essential. And you try to find out its properties. Any such system is determined somehow by our genetic endowment. And universal grammar in the Modern sense is just the name for that genetic basis whatever it is.

At the time, Jason reminded me that Chomsky is a life-long educator, and that made me feel good about my goal of continuing to work in education even as I maintain my art practice. Few things irritate me more than art that doesn’t in some way seek to step the viewer through the experience of the work, and teaching is a good way to ensure that I exercise the muscles that facilitate for others the experience of my work.

When Steve and I were talking about making art accessible without compromising its complexity, he mentioned Michel Gondry’s new Chomsky film, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy? That reminded me of my previous experience with Chomsky’s clarity, and I’m very curious to see the film especially after seeing this:

I’ve never had a real run in with the law, and don’t expect to – ever:

1. My Caribbean family’s ‘central planning’ saw me grow up, go to school, and habituate in/to white American middle class spaces/ways;
2. Blackness marks, but so does whiteness. Thus, even at Howard, surrounded by what was at that time the sketchiest neighborhood I’d ever been in, my classmates and I, protected by the college’s step-closer-to-whiteness aura, were generally safe from crime or unwarranted policing;
3. Now, only in my professional capacities as artist/teacher do I frequent spaces that *might* code my Blackness as a criminal threat; I teach in “urban” schools, work with “urban” youth, and drive through “urban” neighborhoods to get to art, but I live in the ‘burbs.

Some people, like my male Black/Latino/Muslim students, expect run ins with the law at all times in all places. I imagine poor people of color do, too. But, like all Blacks in the United States – regardless of class – I have a. plan in the event of a run in with the law, and b. an acute awareness of where such an encounter might take place.

Which is the problem I have with some of Occupy Our Homes’ tactics. I went to see a play, and as part of the play, a white-appearing woman demonstrated ways that activists could keep homeowners in their homes while they fight bank foreclosure/evictions. These strategies put activists’ bodies in direct contact with law enforcement. Red flag! Red flag! Dealing with the law is an entirely different reality for people of color when compared to the reality for white activists.

Over the next 24 hours, I watched as men and women came and went, many with cuts, bruises, and welts. I asked several of them how they’d been injured, and they described fierce struggles with the police. One young man cradled what he reported was a broken wrist. Another pulled up his shirt and revealed three Taser burns. Yet another removed his fitted cap and pointed to a swollen knot on his head. I exchanged uncomfortable glances with the few other white men in the cellblock.

“Did they treat you like that?” I whispered.

“No, you?”

“No.” We held out our wrists to compare.

I won’t be putting my body in front of law enforcement as a part of weekend grassroots actions anytime soon.

See the rest of the article (an interesting read in its entirety) here.

Click here for whole of the interview. Interesting excerpt below:

Do you think auction houses do these sales in France because they feel like they can get away with it there and they couldn’t here?

Going back to April, when we first started investigating and researching these types of sales, I came across numerous articles [about] people facing with the same challenge. Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, a lot of South American countries, even African nations. A lot of their items being put up for sale in the country of France. What I’ve come to recognize and realize is that they view things from a secular perspective where spiritual beliefs are oftentimes put to the side, especially if it’s not understood. Once something is transported or taken away from where it originated, it loses all sacred value. In this case if it went from one French citizen to another French citizen it’s seen merely as a transaction. We have to go back further and visit the origins of that. Were they given the authority? Was it a legal transaction? For the Hopi, it’s not. These sales are continuing to happen, some of them on a small scale, some of them on the scale of this one. The way that their courts and their laws are interpreted we have to understand that it is in another country. They have their sovereign rule, but it also has to be considered how other people around the world are viewing these things.

So would you call yourself an activist for your community?

I wouldn’t label myself as an activist. I’m a member of the tribe and I’m charged with certain cultural obligations and responsibilities and unfortunately this has become part of it, to protect what we deem valuable and culturally significant to us. In the Hopi perspective, I work for everybody. Not just for my people or my family, but for all humanity across the world. If something good can come from this and the work that we are doing for others, then it’s all the better.