Ethics in The American Housing Markets: Space, Race, and Place
The aim of my course is to provide prospective business students and urban planners with a holistic understanding of the American housing market’s role in shaping social landscapes, and the many ethical hurdles/paradoxes that arise as a result. While the doctrines of social theory have reached the American Housing Market, millions of Americans are faced with homelessness or are unable to obtain housing for one reason or another. Students will be critically examining the way race, space and place, influence contemporary housing markets within the United States, and the ways in which discrimination and oppression are upheld despite regulatory measures in enacting fair housing policy.
Abbreviated Syllabus
Weeks 1-3: The Implications of ethics in Housing: To start off the course, students will be reading/discussing articles and personal narratives that highlight the American Housing Market’s ethical frailty.
Weeks 4-7: The Legal Paper Trail; A story of Hegemonic Resistance: Module 2 delves into the means by which the real estate and housing industries have indoctrinated theories of social justice but dually resisted positive social change throughout American History. Student’s will be reviewing case studies of codified laws and legal mandates that have only served the interests of a white, ruling class.
Weeks: 7-9: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Inventions: Students will be thinking about well-intentioned policies that have fallen short in implementation. Pupils will begin to understand the ways in which enacting housing policy is never without risk, especially when failing to give unilateral consideration to numerous factors that shape social landscapes
Weeks 10-13: The Philosophy of Home: Delineating from the legality of housing policy, students will begin to put into perspective the philosophical thinking of Gloria Anzaldua, Mariana Ortega, Marianne Frye, and Bell Hooks when discussing the hearth. Students are given the opportunity to critically think about the meaning of the domicile for marginalized members of society.
Weeks 13-16: Problem solving in the contemporary landscape: As we wrap up the semester, students will be tuning into the ethical challenges of the contemporary housing market in a variety of cities, and will begin to think about big-picture solutions.
Assignments
Paper 1: How has the Housing Market Shaped my Neighborhood? 3-5 Pages
Project 1: Investigate a Lease: Student’s will read over a 60-page rent-stabilized lease looking for areas where landlords could theoretically discriminate against prospective or current tenants. Students will then write a 2-3-page report on their findings.
Paper 2: An example of Community Based Resistance. 3-5 pages.
Paper 3: Solve a Problem within the Contemporary Housing Market. 5-7 pages
Student Assessment
Students will be graded on the below stated criteria:
Attendance and Participation – 15% Its imperative that students make a diligent effort to be active participants, and to curate meaningful engagement within my course. This will also aid in the learning process, thus increasing one’s performance on other grading criterion
Papers 1 and 2 – Each 15%
Lease Challenge – 20%
Final Paper -25%
Weekly blog posts/responses to articles – 10% Writing these posts will ONLY prepare students for formal assignments such as papers. The more you engage with the readings, the more you will watch your grade will improve in other areas of the course. Trust me…
I can distinctly remember my first time entering a court house for Jury Duty. It was a cold January morning, and while my only day off from a 6-day work week, I could hardly contain the excitement of participating in civic duty. After a long few hours of standing in lines that stretched outside the courthouse, weaving through a series of metal detectors, and being seated in a ballroom-sized courthouse, the court was finally ready to start categorizing jury groups. However, before the judge could begin, she asked that all prior felons stand up, and in a single file, walk towards an unidentified room behind the court.
While the court may have perceived this course of action as state-mandated procedure, what I saw was 10 non-white felons lined up in a single-file formation exiting the courtroom into an unknown room beyond. I was immediately flooded with images of National Geographic’s hit series Lockup, a show where Black Criminals are routinely led out of courtrooms in a similar manner, moving towards the genesis of a lengthy stay in prison that lay beyond the courtroom. On a side note, this show was produced for the sole purpose of catering to “ghetto-gawking” white audiences who desired weekly dosages of “poverty-porn”.
Whatever the implications of this “other room” was, one thing was true, in that each of the 10 felons were A) citizens and B) taxpayers. Expanding on this point, all 10 felons who now had to experience civic engagement in a “separate but equal” room, had all paid for me, a white male, to attend college on the state’s dime, as well as for the many police precincts, state-run prisons, and legislative initiatives that seek to discriminate against minority populations. The resounding truth is that the state promotes unilateral civic engagement on April 15th, but not on the days in which a Black or Brown individual is called upon to interject his/her/their voice into the kind of discourse that shapes the future of our society, and especially not on the first Tuesday of November.
Despite this truth, the greater implications lie within the insecurity of our courts, laws, and social infrastructures as a whole. Insecurity has a long history of facilitating segregation in our post-enslavement society. When slavery was abolished, white elites had a problem on their hands, in how they would be best able to stay in power, while rationalizing marginalized populations, who suddenly had a plethora of rights not recognized beforehand. While black society became increasingly politically collective during the era of reconstruction, and increasingly intellectually collective during periods such as The Harlem Renaissance, white society looked to counteract an emergence of this collective thinking, with cunning techniques to subdue voices of color. Many of these techniques are rebranded as institutionalization tactics, that equate criminality with race, seeking to utilize our prison’s and courtrooms as markers of race, in an age where we are no longer permitted to openly discuss race. As Michelle Alexander States in The New Jim Crow, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” What was once black bodies endlessly toiling on white owned plantations, was reframed as white and black water fountains, and is now reframed as white and black spaces for civic engagement.
Backtracking to the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the same insecurity that white-society once had with the impending emancipation of 1865, and with the civil rights movement to follow only a 100 years later, is the same insecurity that separated and silenced the voices of the 10 felons on that cold January morning only 10 months ago. My last thought is this: Our neoliberal, white-washed society treats Black and Brown citizens in a similar manner to children, where they are to be seen, in our state budgets via tax payments, and in our state-run prisons through aggressive criminalization, but are never to be heard, especially when it comes to census-taking, voting, and serving on jury.
Author’s Comments
While this particular blog post might seem like a run of the mill, mid-semester endeavor, there’s an additional element that propelled my piece, an element that deserves mention due to its relevancy in the sphere of writing. Unlike other posts, where we are consistently floating around with ideas that are either foreign or have not been translated into action, this piece is specifically derived from personal experience. My 11th grade English Teacher once theorized that it’s in doing rather than in thinking that we elevate ourselves to new heights as prospective writers. He also theorized that the best writers understood some sort of sub-culture that would be of interest to a given audience. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a bond trader before he published The Great Gatsby, a novel that deals with the implications of wealth and class. Herman Melville worked on the docks before he wrote Moby Dick, a book that highlights both the culture of the sea and the seafarer. Other examples include the myriad of poets who were sent to the trenches of France in World War 1, or Primo Levi, who experienced and subsequently channeled the horrors of the holocaust into his integral work, The Periodic Table.
While attending Jury Duty is a civic duty that many of us will (hopefully) experience, the implications are no different when in comparison to Walt Whitman sitting beside the deathbed of a wounded Union soldier during the Civil War. The greatest thinkers known to society are the ones who meticulously keep mental journal while negotiating the requirements of their respective communities. This could include war, personal strife, labor, ceremony, liminality, and yes, civic duty. For me personally, Jury Duty was more than a duty, but rather a setting in which I could garner new thoughts, and put placeholders on them for later usage. Real Estate is much the same for me, and I would have used an example, had I not tried to diversify my blog posts, and deviate from the professional ecosystems that I am most credible to speak on.
Had I never gone to Jury Duty, I never would have witnessed the felons being carted away into a separate room, and I never would have been able to write this post. Furthermore, had I gone to jury duty, and simply focused on collecting my 40 bucks (while simultaneously avoiding being selected for a trial), I would have missed out on the larger themes at play, and thus a change to dispense a catharsis via the written word. In this sense, every societal function has two purposes, which are the purpose of the function itself, and the chance to make inferences about the overall framework of a given structure. So while this post might look mundane, every word and thought employed was made possible by my choosing to pay close attention to the world around me.
Thinking about the course
In terms of the course, this post directly ties to the epistemic violence committed against minorities, a common theme discussed throughout the semester. The testimonial silencing of felons is the understanding that felon’s are “not knowers” when it comes to matters of politics, the economy, and governance. The unfortunate reality is that many felons are overqualified to speak on such matters, as many are often brutally victimized by the various power structures that are influenced by the outcomes of pivotal elections. We are not simply silencing individuals, but rather we are silencing experiences, as well as experience itself. Furthermore, this is the product of a purposefully colorblind society, that employs racial unity and surface-level egalitarianism as a means to quell dissenting voices, when overt racism is no longer socially permissible.
*Trigger Warning: Content mentions R*** and Sexual Assault*
The painstaking decision of enacting cancel culture upon our idols, while a morally just choice in honoring the testimonies of those who experience injustice, can nonetheless feel like the disappointment of a lifetime. However, after the #MeToo Movement in the Fall of 2017, we quickly replaced a litany of Hollywood actors, directors, newscasters, and media figureheads, with entertainers and presenters of the same caliber. When I see “we” I am solely referring to the collective experience of White America, a country with a deep roster when it comes to the potential for individual heroism. However, for non-white Americans, heroism is a constrained and tightly regulated phenomena where Idols are far and few, and are required to reign supreme in their respective discipline or profession for decades at a time. In this sense, non-white idols are irreplaceable because they cannot simply be substituted in the same manner.
Take Barack Obama for example. If I were to ask you who your favorite black president was, you would only be able to come up with one truthful answer. This is obviously because there has been only one black president. Now let’s theorize that Obama was to do something so horrible that he would have to resign from the presidency, giving up his public image and near-immortal status. In catering to the needs of non-white America, would we be able to replace Obama with a black man of similar status? Looking at Obama’s presidency, his legal replacement would be Joe Biden, who’s replacement would be Nancy Pelosi. Diving further down this rabbit hole, another black man would not be considered unless all (presidentially eligible) members of congress and the supreme court were to pass away save Clarence Thomas. Even so, Thomas himself has been accused of gross sexual misconduct, and has historically served as the antithesis of black society, so this would not be a viable solution.
We can now begin to understand that black idols are scare, and that cancel culture carries a double burden for those non-white members of American Society. Reverting back to Kobe Bryant and Davis’s article, I want to speak to a resounding truth about athletics in America. Athletics has historically served as a first step in desegregating society. In many southern states where district officials were weary over the newly enforced mandates of Brown V. Board of Ed., it wasn’t the empathetic sentiment of the South that sought to integrate black students into white schools, but rather the fact that a given school’s football team would greatly improve with integration. Further down the road, when the education system atrociously began to kill of art departments, theatre programs, and afterschool activities in inner city schools, there was always a basketball team waiting to take on socio-economically disadvantaged kids who had been denied access to all other viable alternatives.
As we can clearly see, the perceived potential of non-white children in America is restricted to realm of athletics. In this sense, Kobe Bryant is not just situated at the crux of the NBA, but at the crux of black potential within America. It is also in this sense, that his loss, both physically and reputation-wise, is a double blind for black citizens who once looked to basketball phenom for inspiration.
In terms of wrong doing and restorative justice, there is no harm mentioned in this piece of writing that is greater than the act of r**e, as was committed by Bryant. R**e is never ok. Non-Consensual sex is r**e. Making scripted responses to the charge of r**e that reads more like an athlete making a routine media appearance after losing a regular season game…is also not ok.
However, there is also harm done when a black icon is deemed “irreplaceable”. Let’s look at why. Had there been more black men, in a variety of professions and disciplines, to take the place of Kobe Bryant, non-white America would not have to struggle as much with cancelling out bad apples. Furthermore, we wouldn’t have to pit an icon of black resistance against the impending tide of new-age feminism, both of which are great in tandem and by themselves. Because of a lack of replacement, people hold onto their beloved #10 for dear life, and even fight against the feminist doctrines that say non-consensual sex is not ok. In this sense, the lack of a replacement creates infighting, pitting two positive lines of thinking against one another.
So, while my answer is clearly to cancel out Bryant for his gross misconduct, we should also have ready and viable sources of inspiration available at all times. Furthermore, and despite my long history with athletics (I wanted to be a professional baseball player), we need the kinds of reinforcements who will both inspire and fire on all cylinders. We need black artists, authors, architects, executives and other members of society who reframe what possibility looks like to the underprivileged. We need to deviate from leaving in the majority of black icons within the realm of athletics, a realm that breeds toxic masculinity, and other societal cancers that kids should not be exposed too. We don’t need the next Kobe Bryant, we need a Black Einstein, a Black Hemmingway, a Black Babe Ruth, and Black George Washington, ready to become the object of a disadvantaged youth’s desires when called upon to do so.
In the terminal chapters of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ A Case for Reparations, and in tandem with Coate’s speech on reparations before the U.S House, Coate’s moves away from the turmoil of a narrative embedded in strife, and turns towards what reparations might look like in a present-day context. Despite the fact that reparations have in fact been enacted in West Germany, who paid a sum of 7 Billion Dollars to the newly formed state of Israel, who in turn used the money to spur economic growth, the preliminary negotiations did not evade opposition, nor did they evade episodes of rioting, violence, and terrorism. Given that both German’s and newly patronized Israeli’s, most of whom bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust, displayed opposition towards an act of moral repair, we can begin to understand that making the case for reparations in America will be no small fleet.
Unlike Germany, our atrocities have been both visible and invisible, racialized and colorblind, overt and systemic. Furthermore, we live in a society where roughly half our citizens see racism solely as a phenomenon that existed between 1492 and 1865, failing to rationalize the ongoing struggle for equality. This failure to understand the totality of racism’s elongated narrative is not solely reserved for our conservative contemporaries, but also for our neoliberal and progressive peers. These are the individuals, who despite posting black squares on their Instagram feeds and wearing Biden-Harris buttons on their jackets, pose the most danger when making the case for reparations.
While progressives are generally happy to entertain the ideas of social egalitarianism and attend protests aimed at curating a culture of social justice, many are just as happy to attend institutions of higher learning such as NYU or Columbia, paying for their courses, housing, and books with money that once rightfully belonged to black society. In this sense, the issue is not that of social justice, but rather of heritage, and remembrance. We are just as quick to remember the names of wrongfully murdered African Americans, as we are quick to forget that it was our ancestors who held the gun to their heads in the first place. We are just as bothered by student loans as we are unbothered by the fact that Black citizens could never obtain them to begin with. Coates understands this problem all too well.
This brings us to the question of culpability. While it’s obvious that most members of society would agree that the whips and shackles of slavery are highly immoral, we falter when connecting our present selves with those who committed the very practice we now chastise. It’s the cognitive dissonance with rationalizing our history that puts progressively minded individuals in a state of such discomfort, that as a society we cannot properly move ahead in enacting positive changes such as committing to the cause of reparations. In this sense, the most outspoken and seemingly progressive members of society, who strive to never do wrong, fall silent when confronted with even the slightest possibility of guilt.
Unfortunately, white guilt does little to address the problems of the past, and does even less to prevent the inevitability of racism’s future. White guilt is a special kind of self-centeredness that appropriates the victimization of marginalized cultures, and puts us, privileged white thinkers, at the forefront of the conversation. However, whether or not we like it, we’ve inherited stolen wealth, benefited from federal programs that held black citizens in a constant state of inferiority, and taken advantage of opportunities that communities of color could only dream of. It’s for these reasons that myself, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, believe in the necessity of reparations. However, I can also say that until white progressives (myself included) can make peace with their historic role as oppressors, even when family becomes involved, forward is a direction that we will dare to move towards.
Coates makes his case regarding a need for reparations towards African American’s on an account of the dehumanizing acts of economic agency, institutionalized racism, and overt mistreatment towards African Americans stemming from a superiority/inferiority complex. However, while Coates uses this space to convey abbreviated narratives that touch on all 3-criterion mentioned above, each component seamlessly bridges together to speak an ominous truth. Racism isn’t simply a “one or another” but rather a multidimensional, and highly layered experience within the United States. While writers such as Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow, looks to implications of a rebranded, institutionalized racism, Coates speaks to the old, the new, and everything that’s between.
Going into further detail, let’s discuss the implications of economic agency and how it couples with the other monstrosities of racism. Looking objectively at Coate’s argument, economic agency is alone a detriment to African Americans, but it takes more than just the understanding of a race as an economic asset to unearth the full picture of racism. For example, we have many “economic assets” that we treat well in everyday life. We clean our commercial spaces, routinely update the software on our electronic devices, take our vehicles for inspection once every few months, and tend to the soil that grows our crops. In this sense, economic agency does not explain racism alone. However, unlike the inanimate objects or crops that we tend to in order to keep our personal operations afloat, as a society we did not exhibit the same care towards the human beings that served as a greater asset than all of our economic production during the Civil-War era.
Of course, it may seem trivial to compare a car to a human being, but when we understand that as a society, we treated organic assets worse than inorganic assets, red flags should immediately be thrown. Using the example of the Church stealing black assets, John C. Calhoun’s proclamation of Black inferiority, and the origins of rights for white colonists (but not their equally oppressed black counterparts), we can begin to see racism as a process of stacking harmful doctrines upon one another.
The peak of racism’s mountain is the institutionalized racism that ever presently exists in modern society (though geometrically speaking one might state that institutional racism serves as the base). Real estate practices that permanently segregate communities on an account of race, coupled with voter suppression, a high degree of disproportional criminalization, and even the “discolored” language that implies without saying, are the new chains and shackles employed by the white ruling class.
Thinking back to the prompt of this blog post, all criterion for racism in the U.S can in fact serve as grounds for reparations. However, its Coate’s argument, the argument that bridges the criterion together and highlights the multidimensional nature of racism, that hits all the marks, thus facilitating one of the most substantial claims for reparations. By illuminating the multiplicity of mistreatment, one can begin to understand that for every opportunity that a black or BIPOC individual misses out on, there’s a member of the white ruling class pulling the lever to make it so. For every black individual who’s labeled as a Communist, there’s a white mortgage lender that prevented that individuals’ dream of homeownership, which dually seeks to prevent the patriotism that comes with homeownership, excluding African American’s from national sentiments. It’s through understanding this negative and consistent relationship, that we unearth the greatest argument for reparations.
The history of Bedford Avenue: What does Brooklyn’s East/West bisector say about the history of the diverse borough?
Believe it or not this is not the first instance in which a road or avenue has been highlighted in popular culture, film, media, and research. We see examples such as Eminem speaking to the strife found on 8-mile road in Detroit, Kendrick Lamar illuminating on the challenges of growing up on Compton’s Rosecrans Avenue in his famed album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. We also have more research-based examples such as Alex Dibney’s 2012 Documentary, Park Avenue: Money, Power and The American Dream, which looks at the social implications of NYC’s romanticized avenue in both the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and in the Bronx, just a few miles north.
While the respective avenues in California, Detroit, and Manhattan all get their 15 minutes of fame, I would also assume that Brooklyn’s elongated roads also have a story to tell. Furthermore, road’s such as Bedford Avenue have already told a partial story, as my lived experiences serve as proof. I can distinctly remember growing up on a block that straddled the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights. I can also remember my mother telling me to be exhibit caution when crossing Bedford Avenue from west to east, as the eastern side of Brooklyn’s bisecting avenue was at the time, ridden with poverty, crime, and episodes of violence. In this sense, Brooklyn’s longest continuing avenue, seemed to manifest as the tracks that one grows up on either side of based on their socio-economic position in society.
Furthermore, Crown Heights is not the sole example of Bedford Avenue’s perceived ability to enforce segregation. By venturing a mile north and we see Bedford Avenue, again working to separate a gentrified, and relatively “safe” (although I hate using this word) Clinton Hill, with the predominately black, and historically crime-ridden, Bedford Stuyvesant. By moving out of focus, we can also see that the White/Black divide between Clinton Hill and Bedford Stuyvesant extends much further on an east/west scale. Heading westward, Clinton Hill gradually turns into Fort Green, which thus turns into Downtown Brooklyn, before terminating at Brooklyn Heights, increasing in wealth each step of the way. Heading eastward however, Bedford Stuyvessant turns into Stuyvessant Heights, which turns into Bushwick/Ocean Hill, which eventually turns into East New York, decreasing in wealth each step of the way.
Thinking like an anthropologist, accidents don’t really happen, and especially when it comes to the political geography of a given area. By further researching the implications of Bedford Avenue, we can begin to unearth some deep insights regarding the history of the diverse borough as a whole.
Interestingly enough, Bedford avenue is now the epicenter of gentrification, where white newcomers seek to spatially appropriate neighborhoods that once represented the pride of Black society, Black homeownership, and Black enterprise. Unlike 10-15 years ago, people would die to live within the vicinity of Brooklyn’s bisector, especially in North Brooklyn. Marginally lower rents, cultured neighborhoods, and a stunning array of architectural achievements, invite newcomers to venture east, much like the California Gold Rush invited newcomers to venture west. In this sense, Bedford Avenue, seems to represent more than just a segregated border between White and Black society, as it dually represents the social ailments that come with an increasingly colorblind society.
Some Doubts to consider
While my real estate inclined brain is almost certain that Bedford Avenue is in fact relevant to the large social issues previously mentioned, I am a bit skeptical as to the extent of the relevancy. While Bed Stuy and Crown Heights are great examples of this east/west socio-economic divide, Bedford Avenue needs to dually tell a story in its southern half. Given that from a real estate perspective, my area of expertise is really North Brooklyn (Think Anywhere above the Southern Border of Prospect Park), I have a lot of research to do in thinking about the implications of neighborhoods such as Sheepshead Bay, Home-crest, and so forth. Further adding to my anguish is the fact that African American populations do not have a large presence in Brooklyn’s southern half. While this might be a unique history within itself, it has no bearing on the implications of Bedford Avenue, thus dampening my argument for a borough wide black/white divide.
Despite my reservations around the Bedford avenue’s southern half, I am optimistic that even if I have to restrict my research to the bisector’s northern reaches, I can still facilitate a meaningful dialogue. Despite the potential for omitting half the borough from my argument, given that the sum-total of the population for all neighborhoods (in North Brooklyn) discussed will probably amount to at least 200,000-300,000 residents, I’m still working with a population that’s 3 times the size of cities like Green Bay Wisconsin. If Bedford Avenue has some sort of impact on all neighborhoods discussed, and on all residents within those neighborhoods, we have a story to tell.
I can distinctly remember my first time entering a court house for Jury Duty. It was a cold January morning, and while my only day off from a 6-day work week, I could hardly contain the excitement of participating in civic duty. After a long few hours of standing in lines that stretched outside the courthouse, weaving through a series of metal detectors, and being seated in a ballroom-sized courthouse, the court was finally ready to starting categorizing jury groups. However, before the judge could begin, she asked that all prior felons stand up, and in a single file, walk towards an unidentified room behind the court.
While the court may have perceived this course of action as state-mandated procedure, what I saw was 10 non-white felons lined up in a single-file formation exiting the courtroom into an unknown room beyond. I was immediately flooded with images of National Geographic’s hit series Lockup, a show where Black Criminals are routinely led out of courtrooms in a similar manner, moving towards the genesis of a lengthy stay in prison, that lay beyond the courtroom. On a side note, this show was produced for the sole purpose of catering to “ghetto-gawking” white audiences who desired weekly dosages of “poverty-porn”.
Whatever the implications of this “other room” was, one thing was true, in that each of the 10 felons were A) citizens and B) taxpayers. Expanding on this point, all 10 felons who now had to experience civic engagement in a “separate but equal” room, had all paid for me, a white male, to attend college on the state’s dime, as well as for the many police precincts, state-run prisons, and legislative initiatives that seek to discriminate against minority populations. The resounding truth is that the state promotes unilateral civic engagement on April 15th, but not on the days in which a Black or Brown individual is called upon to interject his/her/their voice into the kind of discourse that shapes the future of our society, and especially not on the first Tuesday of November.
Despite this truth, the greater implications lie within the insecurity of our courts, laws, and social infrastructures as a whole. Insecurity has a long history of facilitating segregation in our post-enslavement society. When slavery was abolished, white elites had a problem on their hands, in how they would be best able to stay in power, while rationalizing marginalized populations, who suddenly had a plethora of rights not recognized beforehand. While black society became increasingly politically collective during the era of reconstruction, and increasingly intellectually collective during periods such as The Harlem Renaissance, white society looked to counteract an emergence of this collective thinking, with cunning techniques to subdue voices of color. Many of these techniques are rebranded as institutionalization tactics, that equate criminality with race, seeking to utilize our prison’s and courtrooms as markers of race, in an age where we are no longer permitted to openly discuss race. As Michelle Alexander States in The New Jim Crow, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” What was once black bodies endlessly toiling on white owned plantations, was reframed as white and black water fountains, and is now reframed as white and black spaces for civic engagement.
Backtracking to the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the same insecurity that white-society once had with the impending emancipation of 1865, and with the civil rights movement to follow only a 100 years later, is the same insecurity that separated and silenced the voices of the 10 felons on that cold January morning only 10 months ago. My last thought is this: Our neoliberal, white-washed society treats Black and Brown citizens in a similar manner to children, where they are to be seen, in our state budgets via tax payments, and in our state-run prisons through aggressive criminalization, but are never to be heard, especially when it comes to census-taking, voting, and serving on jury.
Michael Morris’s Dust Bowl Ballads and Okie Culture, while originally intended as a partial fulfilment for a master’s requirement at California State University, Long Beach, speaks resounding truths in regards to the formulation of a culture so dear to songwriters such as Woodie Guthrie. By better understanding the cultural make-up of Southwestern “Okies”, or blue-collar laborers of the Southwest around the time of the Great Depression, we facilitate further insights into Guthrie, himself an “Okie”, and the culture/community that he speaks of.
Unfortunately, while I would normally utilize this space to touch on the life of Woodie Guthrie, scholarship on the famed folklorist is currently limited, contained to a few JSTOR articles and interviews for The Library of Congress with famous ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax. This lack of information was validated by Richard Reuss in a separate article I read, detailing the life of the impassioned American folk artist. This reason for his omission in scholarly works has yet to be answered, however I can certainly make a few inferences. Given Guthrie’s relative ease in floating between left wing communities and folk circles, traditionally occupied by poor, blue-collar members of society, historic waves of conservatism in American academia might have rendered the songwriter as a threat to Neoliberal ideals, thus omitting him from the realm of scholarship.
Regardless of the reasons for Guthrie’s lack of presence within our academic peripherals, we can still obtain crucial insights into the lyrical ambitions of the folk icon via Morris’s understanding of his native “Okie” culture. Morris points out that “Okie” culture was not a singular entity born out of hardship during the Dust Bowl, but rather the sum-total of present hardship, generic conservatism found in rural America, and the Anglo-Irish folk traditions that western settlers brought with them. However other settlers, generally from the Southeast, brought a mix of Anglo-Irish and Black folk traditions, slightly dispensing race into the conversation. With this in mind, “Okies” were not to innovative nor too embedded in traditional values. In fact, they were a highly adaptable culture, living in an age where American Values had not yet fully developed, and were simply fragmented cultural artifacts from various immigrant traditions.
While this particular insight does not directly touch upon Guthrie as an individual, it certainly seeks to illuminate the folk singer as a member of a culture that derived its traditions from a variety of sources. Furthermore, this insight has allowed me to reframe my upcoming essay from a narrative of white, blue-collar strife, to a more encompassing analysis, that seeks to connect both the past and present struggles of “Okies” through my artifact, Dust Bowl Ballads. I originally believed Guthrie to be writing simply for the present, however, with this insight, I now understand him to be writing both for the present and from the past, thus bridging together instances of hardships in American History via the medium of “Okie” culture.
Claire Kim’s essay on Racial Triangulation highlights the fringe experience of non-black minorities in relation to an ever present, yet highly malleable framework of white-superiority. Triangulation is a method of racial categorization, where non-black cultures in the U.S, primarily of foreign origin, are used as intermediaries and actors between white supremacy and black inferiority, with the indented consequence of ostracizing both African Americans and non-white agents from civic engagement. However, these examples of agency work on both ends of the “y” axis in Kim’s triangle, where Asian Americans move in the negative direction during the genesis of their immigration, and move towards the positive direction as they emerge as “model minorities”. With this in mind I would like to reimagine the fixed position of Asian Americans on Kim’s triangle, as a point on a sliding scale along the y axis, thus distorting the geometric shape. I personally find that this would be a better, and more accurate representation of Asian-American agency in relation to white society.
Personally, Kim’s essay struck a nerve, as figuring out the relative positioning of Asian-Americans and other non-black minority groups in America has been a constant source of mental anguish for me. Kim’s piece has been highly insightful in quelling such an anguish, and has helped me mentally connect with times in which I experienced confusion over the agency she now describes. I can distinctly remember when the city was concerned over the lack of minorities in specialized high schools. Conservative news outlets and republican politicians alike, made the case that specialized high schools were already diverse enough as is due to the high success of Asian American students. But what are the implied intentions? Using Kim’s method of understanding agency, we can immediately infer that Asian Americans, now positioned as “model citizens”, are utilized as the deafening chants in a cry of reverse racism. Kim herself states that “Valorizing Asian-Americans helps to deflect Black demands for racial reform”, proving that by reframing Asian-American’s as “model minorities”, white power structures can subdue the need for reform within other marginalized cultures, thus killing off two problems with a single bullet.
This was a VERY interesting read and I hope we get assigned similar material in the future!
While Jay Z and Beyonce’s “APES**t” used to be what I considered one of my “hype” songs, pumping me up for a long work day or an important presentation, I failed to grasp, if not fully honor the racial themes wondrously dispensed into the piece by the famed duo. By selecting APES**T for my week 5 module blog post, I seek to finally honor the true context of the piece, highlighting the resounding message embedded within.
APESH**T
0:00-0:15
A black individual with angel wings squats outside a dimly lit Louvre in the middle of Paris. The pose of the individual most resembles that of a gargoyle, who in antiquity would generally guard the façade of important buildings, most commonly found in London and Paris. Are Jay Z and Beyonce trying to highlight the fact that black individuals, much like the stagnant gargoyles, are historically significant in upholding the artistic world? Could this individual also represent the fact that the black community are still on the outside of the artistic world, much like the gargoyle stands outside the gates of a museum?
0:15-0:30
The video now enters the famed Louvre, and runs through a gamut of artistic pieces that portray white bodies. Jay Z and Beyonce might be making an initial statement about the racial (white) makeup of high-end artwork.
0:30-1:00
The music video now turns to the room of the Louvre that houses the Mona Lisa. Standing strategically in front of the painting are Jay Z and Beyonce, dressed to the nines in vibrant/elegant attire. Given that the famed individuals are standing in front of the Mona Lisa, the statement is clear. In order to fully appreciate the Mona Lisa, you must first learn to appreciate the black artists who also stand in full view, ready for their much-deserved appreciation. The vibrancy of the attire worn by Jay Z and Beyonce also seeks to show an appreciation for African American fashion, which utilizes vibrant colors to create an elegant juxtaposition between darker skin. Jay Z and Beyonce, themselves famed black artists, seek to embody all that black artistry has to offer, while standing in front of a contrastingly pale and bland looking Mona Lisa.
1:00-1:25
The video now moves to one of the staircases featured in the Louvre, where African American performing artists lie dormant on the steps, before synchronously rising and initiating their non-vocalized performance. Artistically speaking, the performers are representing the death, or omission of, Black art while lying on the steps. As they slowly rise, they bring their artistry to life in the form of performance.
1:25-1:40
Beyonce kneels in front of a headless Greco-Roman statue. However, while the head of the statue is missing, Beyonce cunningly only reveals her head, shrouding the rest of her body in a cloak that matches the color of the statue’s marble. Here we can see Beyonce attempting to portray herself as the missing headpiece to the statue. As a black woman, Beyonce is not only stealing the glory of what we presume to be “white-art”, but even going as far to suggest that the marble statues once represented individuals of color living in the Mediterranean Region, and that marble should not be seen as indicative of Caucasian status or ethnicity.
1:45-1:50
Performing artists are dancing in front of an elongated painting depicting an important gathering of white individuals, most plausibly linked to Christianity. A key feature to Jay Z and Beyonce’s piece is the utilization of performing art, which contradicts and seeks to contrast with the stagnant paintings that serve as a backdrop in the video. In this sense, black performance artists are literally “stealing the show” from the white painters featured throughout the Louvre.
1:55-2:15
Beyonce and Jay Z are now dressed up as Egyptians while standing in front of a Sphynx. Interestingly enough, Ancient Egypt, along with other Mediterranean/Mesopotamian cultures, were made up of dark-skinned individuals, though history often likes to hide the fact. Beyonce and Jay Z remind the viewer that much of the art and culture featured in high end museums and galleries were in fact, crafted by the hands of black or bi-racial artists.
2:15-2:50
The music momentarily fades as do the black performing artists, who silently pose in front of the museum’s artwork. Maybe this is to say that if one component of black culture fades away (like the music in this momentary pause), so will the other components of black culture/artistry. During this pause, we are shown various close up images of some of the art displayed at the museum. This pause could also be a directive to reflect upon some of the earlier scenes of the music video.
2:50-3:05
The video once again incorporates music after the earlier pause, with the performers now up and moving using similar motions from earlier in the piece.
3:05-4:15
Jay Z is now front and center, initiating his verses outside The Louvre, before the audience is shown images of more artwork. However, unlike in previous frames, the artwork depicted while Jay Z raps, is full of darker colors, and the lighting itself is dimmed for this part. This almost seems to shift the video from a theme of “omitting color in high end art” to “the presence of color in high end art”. Many of the works of art may in fact depict black individuals. Very interesting shift here.
4:15-5:00
Beyonce chimes in for her solo, and while many of the scenes are analogous to those found during Jay Z’s solo, there are a few key differences. Beyonce’s part include black individuals giving black power solutes in a “gritty” setting that contrasts the museum. I get a sense that the video is turning away from emphasizing “black creations” and turning towards “black contributions”. These contributions are made in a variety of settings, but as the music video seems to portray, not in a museum, interestingly enough.
5:00-5:50
As the music video fades, the audience is once more taken through an array of black performing artists, paintings and general scenes found within The Louvre.
5:50-6:05
Like a well written conclusion in an essay, the video also seeks to wrap up with a crescendo ending. Beyonce and Jay Z are once more staring outwardly in front of The Mona Lisa. However, unlike at minute 0:30, Beyonce and Jay Z turn to one another, before acquiescing to the idea of turning around and viewing The Mona Lisa. The music video is almost crying out here, as it leaves us with one powerful, residual message. We cannot fully appreciate the works of white artists, until we elevate black artists onto the same plane of existence, and into high end museums/galleries. On a deeper level, Jay Z and Beyonce ARE in fact representative of these black artists. In order for me to even think about The Mona Lisa at the 6-minute mark, I must first watch and comprehend an entire piece of black artwork beforehand. It’s a beautiful message, and all too true.
Conclusion
While “APES**T” is certainly a great track to enjoy for Its music alone, much like the message embedded in the video, I cannot fully appreciate the track without keeping in mind the context of its message. With this in mind, I plan to be more mindful regarding the relative ease in misappropriating powerful work. Going forward, I plan to fully appreciate this track in its correct context, as opposed to dampening an important message out of misguided appreciation.
