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In light of our discussions about signifyin’, Black digitalities, and mass incarceration, I thought folks would find this episode interesting. It’s about black children being charged with crimes based on their social media personas.

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Historical artifact. OK, it’s a contemporarily produced piece about the historical significance of African American spirituals and literacy. But still history, right?

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Pedagogical artifact. An article, with syllabus, of a writing class using an Afrocentric approach taught at Michigan State.

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Popular artifact. Ok, Harriot’s annoying discussion of booties aside, I appreciated his description of the sermon and how well it matched up to Moss’s.

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African-American worship services are characterized by intertextual relationships that illuminate the complexity of the relations between speaking and listening, writing and reading, writing and speaking, as well as the relations between literacy events and cultural norms governing those events. Although African-American worship services appear to be dominated by oral events (sermons, prayers, songs), there is, in fact, an interdependence between oral and written events, and therefore oral and written texts.

Beverly J. Moss, Introduction, A Community Text Arises, p. 8

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Cy Knoblauch argues that critical consciousness is the ability to identify oppression and counter it by speaking to power and contesting it. He writes that 'definitions (of what literacy is) only tell what some people or group -- motivated by political commitments -- wants or needs literacy to be' (Knoblauch 1990: 79). This realization is critical for all students, but even more so for students from oppressed cultures. We learned from Freire that "A pedagogy will be that much more critical and radical, the more investigative and less certain of 'certainties' it is. The more 'unquiet' a pedagogy, the more critical it will become. A pedagogy preoccupied with the uncertainties rooted in the issues [of the politics of race, class, gender, culture, history] is by its nature, a pedagogy that requires investigation' (Freire, 1994: 102).

Elaine Richardson, “Literacy, Language, Composition, Rhetoric...”, from African American Literacies, p. 25

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To put it most bluntly and simply: working poor/Black and Latino students have seen inexperienced and un/der-trained teachers most of their (schooling) lives as part of the structuring of the colour line. To provide these students with yet another batch of inexperienced and un/der-trained teachers is/as freshman English (the gatekeeping course that allows entrance into all other, upper-level humanities and social science courses) dooms them to fail.

Carmen Kynard, “Writing While Black...”, p. 6

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It is this character [Zip Coon] that called ridiculous the hope that a Black man could one day be President, and in so doing helped inscribe limits to common sense perceptions of the sentience and competence of Black people. Zip Coon helps us to identify the sarcastic rhetoric that labeled Obama as elite, elitist, uppity, finicky, fancy, effeminate, inexperienced and exotic as fueled with deep reservoirs of racial resonance in an effort to lend hidden but potent political power to those common words and terms.

Anthony Sparks, “Minstrel Politics or ‘He Speaks Too Well:’ Rhetoric, Race, and Resistance in the 2008 Presidential Campaign,” p. 27

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Since the 1980s and the advent of the Reagan revolution, the majority of Americans tend to see racial inequality, if they acknowledge it exists at all, as the fault of black people. Too many black folk have failed to take advantage of the successes of the civil rights movement, the argument goes. They have relied on government handouts that deepened their dependency, and they have failed ot hold themselves accountable and responsible for their own circumstances and actions. Bill O'Reilly and many other Republicans argue repeatedly that what's really wrong with the black community isn't racism. It's the breakdown of the family, the absence of fathers, and the failure to embrace education.

Eddie Glaude Jr. The Great Black Depression, pp. 41-42

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Writing about the connections between transgender politics and other forms of identity-based activism that respond to structural inequalities, legal scholar Dean Spade shows how the focus on inclusion, recognition, and equality based on a narrow legal framework (especially as it pertains to antidiscrimination and hate crime laws) not only hinders the eradication of violence against trans people and other vulnerable populations but actually creates the condition of possibility for the continued unequal 'distribution of life chances.' If demanding recognition and inclusion remains at the center of minority politics, it will lead only to a delimited notion of personhood as property that zeroes in comparatively on only one form of subjugation at the expense of others, thus allowing for the continued existence of hierarchical differences between full  humans, not-quite-humans, and nonhumans.

Alexander Weheliye, “Law” from Habeas Viscus..., p. 81

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Pedagogical artifact. I was looking for a syllabus about systemic racism when I happened upon this from President Obama. I was interested in the ways he organized the course and his suggestions for final projects.

#pedagogy #obama #systemicracism

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Popular artifact. This Reveal story on racial disparities in lending is fascinating and maddening.

#systemicracism

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Historic artifact. The Sparks piece about minstrelsy made me think of Stepin Fetchit, sort of the opposite of Zip Coon. Real name Lincoln Perry, Stepin Fetchit was the first black Hollywood actor millionaire, making his career playing the same lazy, dimwitted character. Some critics have recently argued that he was more of a trickster figure and shouldn’t be read as a straight stereotype. I personally find it hard to watch.

#stepinfetchit #Hollywood

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To suggest that rap is a black idiom that prioritizes black culture and that articulates the problems of black urban life does not deny the pleasure and participation of others. In fact, many black musics before rap (e.g. the blues, jazz, early rock 'n' roll) have also become American popular musics precisely because of extensive white participation; white America has always had an intense interest in black culture. Consequently, the fact that a significant number of white teenagers have become rap fans is quite consistent with the history of black music in America and should not be equated with a shift in rap's discursive or stylistic focus away from black pleasure and black fans. However, extensive white participation in black culture has also always involved white appropriation and attempts at ideological recuperation of black cultural resistance.

Tricia Rose, “Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America”

#cultural appropriation #rapmusic

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The issues of representation and objectification in hip-hop offer many variables that all must be considered if we are going to have a meaningful conversation about the topic. The ways in which the men artists and male and female video directors objectify the women in their lyrics and videos is one aspect. The ways in which the women video models and hip-hop artists choose to objectify themselves in a quest to make money is another. And the way these images straddle the very thin line between validation of black women bodies and objectification is yet another aspect. The truth of the matter is that we are now in a historical moment where the bodies of women of color flood popular culture in ways that they never have before. As hip-hop culture expands and dominates mainstream popular culture, the hip-hop video becomes more than just a music video. They impact of these videos on women of color is vast. Hip-hop music videos are spreading representations of U.S. women of color around the globe.

Gwendolyn D. Pough, “What It do, Shorty?: Women, Hip-Hop, and a Feminist Agenda,” p. 83

#hiphop #representation #blackfeminism

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Many Black Christian women continue to see restricting sexual activity as an important litmus test to determine their devotion to God. If one is able to contain herself sexually, she will be rewarded with 'the desires of her heart.' As sexual repression remains conflated with Christian integrity, Black churched women are unable to seek and create spaces in relationships that are mutually beneficial. In this regard, Black Christian women are always subject to their partner’s direction and superiority. In this worldview, their inferiority is sanctioned by God, and anything that seeks to reject this is sinful. "While Beyoncé may have embodied this position at the beginning of 'Lemonade,' she walks completely away from it when she learns to love herself. As she journeys toward wholeness, she puts herself first—something many churched women are taught not to do. Black Christian women are to be selfless in ways that can make them susceptible to further violence. Church leaders constantly force upon Black women messages of forgiveness that work to hold them accountable for the pain they’ve endured by suggesting that if they do not immediately forgive, they are responsible for the pain’s consequences. Rarely, if ever, do Black churches speak directly to the gendered violence Black women experience in every context of their lives.

Candice Benbow, “Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ and Black Christian Women’s Spirituality”

#beyonce #lemonade

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Popular artifact. Interview with Rhiannon Giddens, who has used the banjo in her music:

“Giddens notes that the modern banjo draws from the African instrument known as the akonting, which is made from a gourd. ‘In the first 100 years of its existence, the [American] banjo was known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument,’ she says.”

#rhiannongiddens #banjo