Author Archive
The Importance of Black Professors
The first group of responses to George Yancy’s New York Times op ed piece that I want to talk about are those responses which deny that he could be an intellectual or even someone who reasons. He received comments like: “This belief that niggers even reason is blatant pseudo-intellectualism,” “The concept of there being an intellectual Negro is a joke,” “Another uppity Nigger. Calling a Nigger a professor is like calling White Black and Wet Dry,” “This coon is a philosopher in the same way Martin King was a PHD and the same way that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are ‘Reverends’,” “Just another jive assed nigger with a new way to pimp,” and “Hey Georgie boy. You’re the fucking racist, asshole. You wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for affirmative action.” The mere fact that he is a professor at a prestigious university is a threat both to their stereotypes and to them personally.
I have experienced this myself. In my third year of teaching I went to the wedding of a dear white friend of mine. As I was mingling with the other guests an inebriated white guest came over to me and asked me who I was. I introduced my self and said I was a professor at Bowdoin College. He looked at me in astonishment. “A black intellectual,” he said, “I didn’t believe there could be such a thing.” Before I could respond another guest who could see what was going on, came over and hustled him away to break up the conversation. Naive historian that I am I was about to explain that there had been black intellectuals and college professors for well over a century and a half and mention Alexander Crummell, Carter Woodson, E. Franklin Frazier and W.E.B. DuBois. Upon later reflection I realized that this response would have been woefully inadequate. Not only wouldn’t he have heard of any of these people, their existence wouldn’t have made a dent in his incredulity. He presumed that black people were incapable of intellectual thought and that was a fixed part of his worldview.
I had never given a thought to the fact that there were people like him. I had spent ten years of my life in undergraduate or graduate school learning from black academics among others and the last couple in the rarefied air of a college where my colleagues never challenged (at least to my face) my right to be there. I held power over students so their challenges directly to me were minimal, although I had no way of knowing what they said in private. I remember one morning I read an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that students reacted differently to African American professors than they did to white professors. At my first class, a class of less than 20 students, I began class by asking if it made a difference to them that I was an African American professor. They hemmed and hawed a bit before one young lady said, “you are so completely yourself that the fact that you are an African American does enter into our thinking about you.” That was one of the nicest things a student ever said to me. It was not the “I don’t see color” bs that you sometimes hear, but an acknowledgement that being an African American was so much a part of who I was that they could not single it out as a defining characteristic.
Nevertheless the incident at the wedding revealed a truth to me. Part of my role as a professor was to show that black folk could in fact be professors and that this might, I say might, influence some to change their stereotypes of black people. When Barack Obama was elected president he is supposed to have explained to his daughters that he would be the first black president. One of them is supposed to have said “Wow, you better be good.” I always felt the same way. I was usually over-prepared for class and I cared about the quality that colleagues would see me, and later the Africana Studies program that I headed, exhibit. Like most folks it took me a while to fully learn my craft, but I had learned even before this that you should always try your best because you never knew who could be watching you. A couple of years ago, seven years after I had taught my final class, my college invited me back to participate in a teach-in they were having. I gave a lecture on jazz, Motown, hip-hop and the environment. At the end one first-year student came over to me and said that was the best presentation she had ever seen. She had only been in college six weeks at that point so I took what she said with a grain of salt. I did take it as a sign that after 30 years I knew what I was doing and had learned how to do it.
I have also learned that it is important that I did so. Yes, our scholarship is important. It usually adds new perspectives to our fields and will be here after we’ve gone. All that work we put into our institutions is also important, as is the teaching of our students. However for some folks who will never read our books or hear us speak or show up in our classes, we still have a contribution to make by simply existing. Whether we realize it or not, whether we want to or not, whether we embrace it or not, we stand as a counterargument to the demeaning stereotypes of African American intelligence.
A friend asked for my thoughts on a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “The Ugly Truth about being a black professor”. It is written by George Yancy, a professor at Emory University and it is here if you want to read it. In it the author recounts hate mail and death threats he received after writing an op-ed piece for the New York Times in 2015. Another version of his response to the backlash is here. The op ed piece is here if you want to read it. He is writing a book about the reaction to his New York Times essay called  Backlash: What Happens When We Honestly Talk About Racism in America, My friend presumably asked me to comment on it because I spent 30 years as a black professor at a predominantly white institution. I have been trying to get my thoughts together in some sort of coherent fashion so I can comment on the situation.
First of all I was certainly not the black public intellectual that Dr. Yancy is, and did not write op ed essays for the New York Times. We are now in the Age of Trump where some people feel it is not only permissible to smack down uppity blacks, but that it is their duty to do so. However this did not start with Trump’s election. For decades even ordinary and banal things have provoked racial incidents that lead to the mistreatment, arrest, and even death of black folks when fearful whites or police officers respond based on stereotypes. Black folks have always asked a simple question when one of these incidents take place: Would it have been handled the same if it were a white person instead of a black person involved? Such incidents have always happened be they at restaurants like Starbucks or police killing unarmed black suspects on suspicion of even minor things. As Wil Smith says racism has not increased it is just being filmed. The internet has provided a medium where people can express their racism at a distance, often anonymously, and without fear of consequences. Social media have provided “silos” in which people can find others who share their racial views, amplify their fears, embolden their vitriol, and provide a outlet for its expression. It has also provided a way for news about racial incidents to spread like wildfire, encouraged people to organize against it, and created a way to do so.
The first interesting thing to me about this incident is that it the original essay and its backlash appeared in December, 2015 before Trump started winning primaries and eventually the election. In other words it pre-dated the Trump era. In a real sense Trump didn’t create this racial anger; the racial anger created Trump. Trump was able to tap into this anger and ride its wave into the highest political office in the land without any political experience; no knowledge of law, the political process or even the Constitution; and even though he actively represented the economic interests of his class rather than the very people who elected him. This tells me that he isn’t a passing fancy but the embodiment of a racism deep within the bedrock of American society: a racism that has been there for hundreds of years. Social scientists are now putting the lie to the narrative (now popular among the Democrats and the media) that economic issues are the key to Trump support. The typical Trump supporter earned $72,000, was not being displaced by immigrants, and indeed had very little experience with them before seeing them as a threat. You can read articles about it here, here and here. This racism is now threatening the well being of whites as well as people of color. It is allowing the 1% to solidify its hold and increase the inequality in our country. I will keep saying this until the day I die: hatred against or fear of other groups, sexism and racism are tools used by those in power to stay in power. At least some whites are now realizing this.
In examining the backlash against Professor Yancy I identify at least three things. The first is a doubt that African Americans could be intellectuals at all. This confounds and threatens the stereotypes that these people hold about people of color. This claim to intellectualism must be attacked through charges that blacks succeed only through affirmative action rather than merit. Going back to Yancy’s original argument the second group of vitriolic comments concern the analysis of racism that he presents. The third category is the objection that to talk about racism is racist in itself. Yancy is accused of “hating” whites and promoting discord. I will take up each of these things in subsequent blog entries.
On this day four months ago my wife of many years, who I had been with for two thirds of my life, passed away. I have dealt with my grief many ways. I have stayed busy with chores, done those things which I avoided doing with her (like eat red meat, she couldn’t, eating shrimp, she was allergic), spent more time with my son and his family, cleaned the house, and did the things I normally do as well as those things I haven’t in a long time (e.g. cooking and going to the gym.) Many friends, colleagues and former students have reached out to console me and they have my sincere gratitude. Time and all of those things have dulled the edge of grief. As is my wont I think I’ll try thinking and writing about it too.
A long time ago I read something by C.S. Lewis to the effect that humans are the only ones who want to repeat a pleasure exactly. Not to just have another pleasure or another version of that pleasure, but to have that specific pleasure with all its feelings, smells, tastes, and sounds exactly the same. This is of course impossible, just as you can never step in the same stream twice. Time has gone on, circumstances have moved on, and that experience is now part of you thus changing you forever. I met my wife when I was 22 years old. I will never be 22 again. I am now entering the last stage of my life, older, more experienced and I hope wiser. More to the point I now have 45 years of experience living with someone else who was usually wiser than I, sometimes funnier than I, and always more practical than I. Those lessons and experiences now shape all that I do. They shape how I approach life now.
I made some gumbo the other day. I loved both the making and the eating of it. I am making it again today and following the same recipe. I have tweaked it a little; I have added some new ingredients (Hatch green chilies which are a great delicacy here in New Mexico) and left out a few (black pepper.) The gumbo I cook today will be different from the one I cooked last week. I will try to look at it not relatively (better or worse than last week’s) but as an entire new experience (a new pleasure I hope.) So will be my new life without her. I can no longer have the blush of first love nor the deepening experience of sharing one’s life with another for over 40 years. Of course that does not mean I cannot have an enjoyable, productive, and still meaningful life, nor that I will never smile or laugh again. I must admit I feel that way sometimes, but my granddaughter will do something surprising and a smile comes unbidden to my face.
So I will reorganize some cabinets, rearrange the house, take care of the finances, and move on as she wanted me too. We always knew one of us was going to have to go on without the other. I didn’t think it would happen this soon nor that I would be the one. She would probably be better at it than me. I will do my best to build a new life, to cook a new gumbo with tweaked ingredients, but just as satisfying. I choose to believe she is somewhere saying “bon appetit.”
A scholar I know has just written an article bashing a jazz group for re-creating Miles Davis’s classic “Kind of Blue”album note for note including the solos’ of the musicians. She makes the point that this is a Western way of seeing music as property rather than the African American one of what Henry Louis Gates calls signifying. Gates defines signifying as “repetition with a difference” which is at the center of black art and culture. This Western way was fetishizing the form of the music rather than the experience of the music. A long time ago I read something by C.S. Lewis to the effect that humans are the only ones who want to repeat a pleasure exactly. Not to just have another pleasure or another version of that pleasure, but to have that specific pleasure with all its feelings, smells, tastes, and sounds exactly the same. This is of course impossible, just as you can never step in the same stream twice. My friend the scholar contrasts this with the work of pianist Jason Moran who when asked to do a recreation of Thelonius Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert did something totally different. Instead of trying to re-create the concert note for note, he produced an audio visual and live performance version which put him in conversation and connection with Monk that allowed him to “signify” to use Gates’ term. At the end, the big band musicians who had been playing the Monk tunes walked off the stage, paraded through the audience and waited in the lobby to talk to the exiting concert goers.
This reminded me of an experience I had back in the late 60’s seeing jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk at the Village Vanguard. The Vanguard is a pie wedge shaped small basement room holding maybe 120 people. I had just turned 18 (the legal drinking age in New York City at the time) so I could finally go to jazz clubs where alcohol was served. This was my first time seeing Mr. Kirk although there would be plenty to follow. Kirk was a very technically proficient musician and historian of the music. He was a blind multi-instrumentalist who often played two or three horns at the same time. His first few songs were the usual mix of originals, standards and even jazz versions of pop songs. He then started to use a laugh box, that is, a recording of someone saying exaggerated “Ha, ha ha’s” as a commentary on what he was playing. As the music changed the laughter became various things. A faint reminder of a party in the past now long gone, an ironic commentary on what was happening, or a joining into the current pleasure. As the penultimate song in the set Kirk asked whether we could go to New Orleans. My heart sank. I hated the sterile re-creations of the past that were codified as “Dixieland.” Kirk had something different in mind. He launched into a version of New Orleans music that took my breath away. I can put it no other way than he restored the life to the music. The laugh box became part of the party both of the past and of the present. As the audience was clapping along to the music, Kirk led the members of the group who had portable instruments and marched through the club. He then marched up the stairs out of the club onto the street outside to play much as a second line New Orleans band would. All the time the pianist, bassist and drummer continued playing in the club. They returned a few minutes later still playing and finished the song and the set.
This of course left the young me stunned. I returned to see Rahsaan whenever he and I were in New York at the same time. Each time was different, but each time was a pleasure. I never saw him do the laugh box and “march through the club” routine again, but then I didn’t have to. The point had been made. Music is best as a living breathing thing into which an artist’s joy, thoughts, and feelings are poured. No matter how technically proficient a musician is, unless they can bring something of their own to the music, particularly the music of others including the jazz masters, to quote Stevie Wonder, “you haven’t done nothing.”
If you are lucky, and I mean really lucky, you have a friend you haven’t seen in a long time with whom you pick up where you left off as if it were just yesterday. One of my friends like that just visited me for a few days and little in our friendship had changed. Oh sure we had a few more pounds between us and our hair was grayer, retreating, or both, but the core of our friendship was as strong as ever. If you have spent time in the foxhole of undergraduate college together, supporting each other from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as old Will Shakespeare once said, you form a bond that time doesn’t break. Whenever you interact you slip into those old relationships like a comfortable, well worn shoe. My wife used to say she could always tell when I was talking on the phone with him because all the diction and polish would disappear and I sounded like that naive kid from New York again rather than the worldly professor I presented to others.
Sure, we reminisced and many sentences began with “remember the time we…” or “remember so and so or such and such,” but that wasn’t the totality of our conversation. Memory being among the first casualties of old age many times we could not recall names or incidents that were seared into the memories of the other. We had progressed from the callow youths we were when we first met into grizzled old veterans of life with many experiences, places, people, and lessons along the way. We told stories of our travels, things we had done, people we had met. We talked about growing older, raising kids, (and now grand-kids,) things in hindsight we should have done differently, failures and successes and everything in between, situations we had been lucky to emerge from alive, scars we still bore. We spoke about current things too: difficulties we were facing, aches and pains, how the world is going to hell (a common topic among old folks,) losses we were facing or about to face, and plans for the future. We saw the film “Black Panther” together through the same sixties radical lens and were amazed by it as a film, but distressed a bit by its politics. In fact its director, Ryan Coogler, and my son were at the University of Southern California film school at the same time and I was reassured that at least one of them was now able to repay his student loans. We had excellent meals (2 of them prepared by my son who loves to cook and is very good at it) and at some of my favorite restaurants nearby. As I was dropping him off at the airport for his flight home I told him I was going to the gym right afterward he said “Well, you earned it.” We ate well.
What I take from the experience of this visit is that we are never truly alone. There are people in the world who just “get us” even if we are not in constant contact with them. In times of loss and when despair threatens we should never lose sight of that fact. I hope you all have such friends because they are what allows us to get through this thorny world.
Donald Trump doesn’t understand a lot of things, but right now we are concentrating on what he doesn’t understand about immigration. Historically most immigrants have come from “shithole” countries although which countries these were has changed over time. Even his beloved Norway was once a shithole and although I haven’t checked the stats I would hazard a guess that there was more Norwegian immigration then than there is now. Most of the 19th and 20 century immigration was from what were then “shithole” places. If you think about it people are more likely to leave their homes if the economy of their home countries is poor, there is political or religious oppression, or if natural disasters occur. In other words if their home country is to them a “shithole.” Why would someone leave a prosperous and comfortable life in Norway to move thousands of miles away to the United States. Sure there will be a few Norwegians (or other whites) who feel they can improve their condition by moving, but they are few and far between. Today the “shithole” countries are more likely to be non white and that is the problem.
Secondly those immigrants from “shithole” countries are probably going to be among the hardest workers in the United States. After all they were bold enough to leave their native land to come here to improve their lot in life. As the play Hamilton tells us “immigrants, they get the job done.” They are likely to take the jobs Americans don’t want to do because that may be the only thing open to them. I don’t even have to mention how they add to the cuisine, culture, and diversity of our country.
Trump’s comments are not about how immigration actually works but about some white supremacist fears. White supremacists and even some other whites have stereotyped those who come from “shithole” countries (by which Trump means non white majority countries) as less than whites. In this fantasy world these immigrants are criminals even rapists or murderers, and lay-abouts who sponge off hardworking (again in the fantasy mostly white) Americans through our safety net of entitlement programs. One of the characteristics social scientists have noted about Trump supporters is that they actually have little experience with those who they denigrate. This leaves them free to project their fears upon immigrants with impunity. Anyone who has actually met someone from these so-called “shithole” countries can tell you that they are likely to be friendly, well educated, and to be willing to work several jobs at low pay.
To impose these fears upon immigration reform measures is to set us up for failure. Any new laws based upon these white supremacy fears is bound to negatively affect immigrants and eventually our country. The people who have received special dispensation to come here after natural disasters or political oppression like the Haitians or the Salvadorans; those who have been carefully vetted in the immigration lottery, and the “dreamers” who came here illegally as children, are much more likely to be hardworking, law abiding citizens than not. There is no reason to fear that these people are detrimental to America. White supremacists however see an America in which they are inevitably becoming a minority not through immigration but through natural growth which sees more non white births and a higher percentage of white deaths through things like the opioid epidemic.
We can hope that Trump and his administration are the last hurrah of these people and that a coalition of anti-racist whites, people of color, and forward thinking voters can turn back this movement.
From time to time there are things on the news that make me yell at my television because they are so outrageous or because the media have so spun the wrong narrative that it is brainwashing the public. Cases in point:
In a photo op I watched on CBS news Trump was  handing out sandwiches or something to hurricane victims when a middle aged white man contrasted Trump’s behavior in coming out to help with Obama’s who was golfing during the last hurricane. This of course is keeping with the internet memes which show a picture of Trump helping compared with a picture of Obama playing golf. The news commentators allowed this to stand without correcting this mistaken view. There are plenty of media photos of Obama comforting victims in the aftermath of natural disasters so it would have been easy to show that this is untrue. They let this man’s untrue statement stand. I also have not heard them correcting Trump supporters who say that as president he did not visit the victims of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation when he was years away from being president at the time. I know the media cannot go around correcting every ignorant thing uttered by Trump supporters, but at least they can combat the worst of them especially when they occur during their broadcasts. When they do not, they become complicit in the spread of misinformation that it is their duty to correct.
I also yelled at my TV when an open microphone caught Sen, Chuck Schumer (D- N.Y.) saying he thought Trump liked Democrats and specifically liked him. He sounded like the unpopular person at the school dance who is so grateful that someone has paid attention to him or her that he or she mistakes that for affection. Time again again Trump has shown that he cares only for himself and those who fawn around him. He will say anything to get what he wants from you by lying to your face and then stabbing you in the back. Just ask Jeff Sessions. Sen. Schumer he is only trying to metaphorically get in your pants and get what he wants from you. He no more “likes” you than a rabid dog can. I do not recommend snuggling with one. “Dealing” in politics is common but you must have two “partners” who are honest and trustworthy to do it. You do not.
I also yelled at my TV at the news just this morning about a cop in St. Louis literally getting away with the murder of a black man. I guess there is such a thing as outrage overload. This has become so commonplace that it is difficult to muster anger about it. It is the norm and what I now expect to happen in these cases all the time. Until whites muster enough concern about police over-reach as about Colin Kapernick, this will just go on and on. As Ella Baker told us “Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.†Job security.
Finally I yell at my TV whenever some pundit or another points to a Trump weakness which they feel might lead to the end of his presidency before 2020. This may be disillusionment among his base, rebellion from moderates in the Republican Congress, Mueller’s obstruction and Russian election influence investigations, or Democratic victories in state elections in areas where Trump drew support. This is just wishful thinking by progressives or liberals. Nowhere are clear enough signs that we can expect one of these deus ex machina (intervention from on high) solutions to end his presidency in the light of the massive outpouring of support by his voters. Unless Democrats can field appealing candidates for national offices none of that is going to matter. With only a few exceptions that does not appear to be happening. Democrats including Hillary Clinton show no understanding of why they lost. They cannot just continue business as usual or just try to win back the white working class in order to win elections. Trump’s victory is a watershed showing that drinking from the same trough as the Republicans, playing identity politics, and giving us the same old retreads will not generate the support needed to win. Even pointing out the lies and telling the truth does not seem to work.
Yelling at my TV as the indignities mount up does not seem to help anyone but me. Thank you for letting me rant at you. Perhaps you can do something to change where we are.
“You are who your record says you are,” is a famous quote from football coach Bill Parcells. It should be applied to all aspects of your life. This is not to say that people cannot change and they are bound by or should be judged by past behavior. It is to say that you should judge someone on their deeds not their words or what they want you to think about them. If you want to change your behavior from your past behavior then your current deeds will reflect that. We can apply it to relationships for example and it squares with Maya Angelou’s famous dictum “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Too often however the change, if there is one, is only temporary and one reverts back to one’s earlier behavior. Your current record will reflect that too. Parcells was talking of course about football, but the principal remains the same in other aspects of life too.
This brings us to Donald Trump. A 70 year old man who has a long track record and has shown us who he is on numerous occasions. During the campaign he promised to drain the swamp, provide a breath of fresh air instead of politics as usual, promised to be different from the others, said he would run the country like a business e.g. trim the dead weight. What did his record show? In a long business career he has been a shrewd operator who has parlayed other people’s money, backstabbing, ripping off the common man, skirting the law, and lying about who he is, into wealth and celebrity. He has demonstrated time and again that he truly believes the stereotypes of non-whites floating around in the minds of misguided and supremacist whites. He believes in police brutality, presumption of guilt, and violence to keep people “safe.” He wants to pay as little as possible to support this country and has resorted to legal, quasi-legal and questonable tactics to do so. His record shows he has demonstrated arrogance, infidelity, disrespect for women, narcissism, looking out for only himself, and demanding loyalty and deference from those around him. What in his record even suggested that he would look out for someone else, place the interests of the country before his own, or be an advocate for anyone other than himself? I can’t see anything. Yet millions accepted that he would and voted for him. Conservatives believed that he would enable them to advance the conservative agenda of smaller government. The evangelists argued that God was just using an admittedly flawed individual to do his work. There were actually some who believed that he would support the rights of LBGT people (e.g. Clay Aiken, Caitlin Jenner), non whites (Ben Carson, Kanye West) or other minorities for whom the Democrats had provided lip service but not enough change. Others argued that he would change once he got into office. Some wanted the exact Trump that they got and are pleased.
So what does his record in office show? With a hat tip to Jimmy Kimmel: He lies about the size of the crowd at his inauguration as well as many other things, he hires his daughter and son in law, he alienates his foreign allies by hanging up on the Australian prime minister and refusing to shake Angela Merkel’s hand, he refuses to release his tax returns even after the election, he demonstrates his ignorance by not knowing that Frederick Douglass is not alive, he issues a ban on Muslims that he claims is not a ban on Muslims, he compliments the president of the Philippines for murdering drug addicts, after criticizing Obama for playing golf he plays golf every weekend, he shares classified intelligence with the Russians, one of his midnight tweets contains a typo which the next day he claims was a secret message, he fires the director of the FBI who was at least partly responsible for getting him elected, he criticizes his attorney general for recusing himself form the Russian election interference investigation when it was the only honorable thing to do, he bans the transgender in the military without consulting with the military beforehand, he plays brinkmanship with North Korea, he removes Obama era checks on business instituted to protect our environment, consumers and lives, and he says there were nice people among the the white supremacists, anti Semites and fascist in Charlottesville. Â This is only part of his record as president, but what does it tell us?
On the left there is ample room for outrage but not surprise. To paraphrase another NFL coach, the late Dennis Green, “they are who we thought the were.” For his supporters it shows that he has not changed and is consistent with the man who we have seen for years. He has not supported LBGT rights, civil rights for non-whites, a conservative belief in smaller government, loyalty to country over self interest, advocacy to improve the lives of the people who elected him, a Christian doing God’s work, or a yardstick for competency in his subordinates other than blind loyalty to him. Trump has not changed; we can only hope that the perception of him by at least a few of his supporters has.
Out of the blue my friend asked me “What do you think of faith and epistemology?” He was an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years and we were having a pleasant lunch together. In his youth he had earned a master’s degree in philosophy before turning to a 35 year career as a middle and high school teacher. We were both seeking to exercise our intellectual chops as we hadn’t done so for a while. By faith he meant belief system and by epistemology he meant an investigation of our knowledge of what is true or false. A few months back I had written in this blog about the connection between belief systems and ethics or morality. I had said at that time that our belief system corresponds with our sense of right and wrong. We either choose a belief system based on our sense of right and wrong or a sense of right or wrong based on our belief system. He was asking a different question. How does our belief system relate to our sense of true and false not right and wrong?
I recently read a science fiction novel called The Three Body Problem which is very good and the beginning of a trilogy. The first couple of chapters are set during China’s cultural revolution in which ideology was used to determine whether one accepted the laws of physics or not. The effect is terrifying. Uneducated people were deciding that this or that law of physics should be rejected because it had been discovered by a capitalist or that physics teachers should be disbelieved, rejected, humiliated or literally killed because they were “too bourgeois.” In this instance the ideology was communism but it could have been any ideology. It could have been a religion like Christianity or Islam or a different political ideology like liberalism, conservatism, or libertarianism. Some of the characters in the novel and some of the events in the novel are set in motion by this beginning. Even as the novel careens in a very different direction it is that early picture of ideology (faith) determining what you believe to be true or false (epistemology) that haunts me.
There has been much talk lately about how facts and science are only accepted if they support our ideology. Political positions have become more dogged and harder to change if they can be changed at all. People are talking past each other so that no real “discussion” takes place. All of these are symptoms of faith (belief system) determining what we accept as true knowledge (epistemology.) Some have attributed this human nature, to a primitive tribalism, and how humans have always interacted with the world around them. That is nonsense. I have spent most of my adult life either lessening the hold that my belief systems have on my evaluation of knowledge or teaching others to do so. Â I have seen others do so albeit in the specialized environment of the classroom and the college setting, but they have been able to do it nonetheless. Such hardening of the brain paths is not an inherent human trait. It is a choice.
Not to get all Marxian on your ass, but it is the current economic position of people, the growing inequality of late stage capitalism, and the power relationships that result from them that has led to what seems like a tighter relationship between faith and epistemology. As the survival stakes have gotten higher the relationship between what people believe and what they accept as “fact” has gotten stronger. This obscures the relationships between economics, politics, and real life. It is only by realizing that what is true is not only what our belief systems tell us is true, that there is any hope of getting to this underlying relationship.
Take for example the Republican faith that tax cuts for the wealthy are the key to unleashing funds that business will use to expand. Nowhere in our history has this proven to be the case. By any measure you want to use, number of jobs, income of the middle class, total funds invested, this tactic has proven untrue time and time again. Yet it is such an article of faith in their belief system that they are willing to deprive 22 million people of health insurance to achieve it. It is true that many of them have a vested interest in these cuts (e.g. campaign contributions, personal investments, etc.) but they rationalize it to themselves with their belief system. That belief system enables them to ignore inconvenient facts like it doesn’t work and find “facts” that say it does.
Let me be clear about what I am saying here. Having faith is not the problem. The problem is allowing that faith to blind you to facts. Open your mind to a realistic view of what’s around you. You might be surprised at what you find.
Back in the 1960’s I remember seeing a cartoon by Jules Feiffer in which a black hipster said “I dug jazz then whitey picked up on it…” then repeated it in the next few panels with some other thing that whites had appropriated (to use contemporary language.) The cartoon’s last panel said “Then I dug freedom…and finally lost him.” This comes to mind whenever I read about some black folk complaining that this white person has adopted a black style or black music or hairdo.
The discussions about appropriation I read about today usually revolve around three issues. First, white artists are making money, sometimes a lot of money, by adapting black music which then becomes popular to white and black audiences. Black artists usually don’t have this reach and don’t make as much money. Sometimes there are blatant ripoff’s like Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” stealing of Marvin Gaye’s music. Other times it is just perhaps well meaning people like Justin Timberlake for example. The second argument is about inauthenticity. The white person born and bred in the suburbs is claiming to express the same feelings of those born in lesser circumstances. They are claiming the benefits of black artistry born in oppression without experiencing the conditions which brought it about. They have not earned the right to use black culture and they are not entitled to it. The third argument I hear boils down to they are stealing something from me, something which is very important to me: my identity. Their use of language, hairstyles, music is taking something which was marking me as a member of a unique ethnicity. Even when they have stolen my humanity there was something I could cling to, something esoteric that was uniquely mine. Now they are taking that too.
I must admit that at first I felt this way too. Back in the sixties I wouldn’t buy music (particularly jazz) by a white artist. I reasoned that the whites in the music market would provide enough financial support for that artist. I was going to put my few dollars to support black artists. For so many white artists their music lacked creativity, soul, true emotion, or cutting edge innovation. Years later I offered a history class on jazz. It was a class of about fifty and there was an elderly white gentleman auditor who didn’t talk but avidly listened to what was going down. One day I played a song by Paul Whiteman (a more appropriately named person I have never known) who was a white bandleader popular in the 1930’s and 40’s. I played the cut and then asked a general question of the class, “What do you think of that?” There was awkward silence that stretched on into several minutes. Finally from the back of the room the elderly auditor said, “Sounded pretty good at the time.” With the ice broken we could talk about how Whiteman’s music differed from say Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington or Count Basie.
Nowadays I don’t think of appropriation the same way. White musical artists have been covering and adapting black music for generations so getting upset about it serves no purpose. One could argue that there would be no white American popular music without it. Downbeat magazine ( a jazz magazine) had an annual critics poll that had a category “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition.” Wags used to argue that they should also have a category “Recognition deserving Wider Talent.” Regardless of who makes it there is good music and bad music, period.
I don’t care that Rachel Dolezal wears braids or has adopted an African name. To be truthful I don’t care about Ms. Dolezal at all. Â What others claim takes nothing from me. As long as I go on presenting the identity I have honestly, doing the things I do openly, and saying the things I believe, let the chips fall where they may. At this point in my life I don’t have the time or inclination to do otherwise. Some folks will accept it and some won’t. Life goes on. Just as I have the right to project what I think of as my identity, so do other people. I am free to accept or reject their claims. I reject Ms. Dolezal’s claim of transraciality. I reject the claim that a Trump supporter is not racist. I reject that Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is good music. I accept Dave Brubeck’s claim that he is a jazz artist. I accept Eminem’s claims that he is a rap artist, I accept Bruno Mars as a winner of BET awards because all make some good music.
So what then is appropriate appropriation? First, the appropriator has to acknowledge the source of the appropriation and try to share the financial success that comes with it. With the English blues wave of the sixties blues artists like Eric Clapton also brought legendary blues performers like Muddy Waters on tour with him so Muddy could get a little taste of Clapton’s financial success. Second, the appropriation must not denigrate, belittle or stereotype the culture from which it is taken. Whites in blackface or wearing sombreros I’m talking about you. I have seen such “celebrations” in South Africa and the Netherlands too. Such appropriations are an abuse of power and a naked display of white privilege. Just don’t do it. If you really thought about it you would ask how does it make people of that culture or ethnicity feel? Finally, does the appropriation exalt the culture or simply copy it?  Having just returned from Mexico I have tasted the difference between a street taco made fresh and expensive restaurants offering  “fancified” versions of Mexican cuisine. Some street tacos were cheap, simple, delicious, and way better than some restaurants that offered expensive “copies.” A few restaurants however offered interesting twists on the taco formula that raised the bar for my appreciation of Mexican food. Here I offer the same critique I do of artists covering songs. If you can’t add something of your own that makes it different and your own, brings out something we didn’t know was there, or makes it good in a new way, then you shouldn’t do it unless it is an homage to the original.