A few things for the good of the order -
PostBourgie has a new home at Huffington Post, so my stuff will be up over there. A while back, I said I’d try to post things here for archive purposes and good measure, and I’ll continue to try to do that. My first piece on HuffPo was the one on voter suppression, and as of now, there’s another on Kanye West’s and Jay-Z’s “Black Excellence”.
I’ll definitely try to keep everything running here on NOMARTYR, and otherwise you can “fan” me on HuffPo for updates or check out my lil Twitter jawn.
Still committed to turnin’ this mutha out,
VC
Since the release of their collaborative album, Watch the Throne, Jay-Z and Kanye West have received some criticism for their ostentatious display of wealth at a time when most of the country is dealing with the hardships of a recession. Their showboating rhymes have inspired a discussion about the need for the millionaires to tuck their wealth, as well as an Otis-sampling response from hip-hop great Chuck D, in which he calls on his colleagues to “reflect the people better”. Indeed, the album is laden with remarks about expensive cars, jets, vacations and the like; it’s what Kanye aptly dubs “luxury rap.” While this kind of braggadocio may seem particularly inappropriate during an epoch of economic hurt, I can accept it for what it is as far as pop music goes — well-produced, self-aggrandizing rap about things most people can only enjoy vicariously. It’s when the proponents of “luxury rap” try to posit their having and spending large amounts of money on superfluous things as something more, however, that I tap the brakes on the imaginary Maybach. What is this I hear about black excellence?
One of the tracks that gets cited as a pillar of “consciousness” on the album is “Murder to Excellence,” a two-part number that segues from a lamentation on black-on-black murder into what Jay and ‘Ye deem to be “a celebration of black excellence.” The first half of the track is peppered with mentions of Black Power Movement orator and icon, Fred Hampton (“I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died / Uh, real n*ggas just multiply”), and 20-year-old Pace University student, Danroy Henry Jr., who, like Hampton, was shot and killed by police. Throughout this part of the track, Jay-Z and Kanye successfully conjure up the energy of protest, embodied by their straightforward lyrics, the staccato drumbeat and the a cappella vocals that dance over it. “Power to the people. When you see me, see you,” Jay-Z proposes.
I was riding on a wave of pride — in the rappers’ boldness and the content of their message — when I came to a disappointing halt in my enjoyment of the track.
“It’s a celebration of black excellence. Black tie, black Maybachs,” Jay-Z announces as the track swiftly shifts into a different rhythm. He then delivers a verse about what he introduces as “black excellence, opulence, decadence,” with the inevitable line about his American Express black card. Kanye tags on some less boastful (and seemingly more thoughtful) bars, which include his customary momma-i-made-it affirmation of success by way of access: “In the past if you picture an event like a black tie / What’s the last thing you expect to see? Black guys.”
What started out as valiant social commentary has declined into a drab, somewhat sulky exaltation of “the new black elite.”
Complete with Kanye signing off at the end of his verse (“black excellence, truly yours”), the latter half of the track finds the two rappers positioning themselves as representatives of black excellence — positions they are worthy of, apparently, by virtue of their material wealth. This depiction of black excellence as a matter of entrance into the echelons of the super rich is divergent from, and discordant with, the tradition of black struggle that they reference on this track as well as elsewhere on the album: Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, Corretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr. dawn the chorus of the next song.
One of the principal themes of the black power tradition that Kanye and Jay-Z continually evoke is that of collective struggle. The figures they name, while not identical in their ideologies, did believe in international solidarity amongst oppressed communities, and in empowerment from the bottom-up. “Power to the people” was about the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the proletariat coming together to access their power. “The people” are common, and they are excellent, as individual activists, educators, intellectuals, and workers, and as an organized whole. How do the people fit into Jay’s and Kanye’s plutocratic vanguard?
With the talk of tuxes and sheepskin coats that plagues the supposedly “excellent” half of “Murder to Excellence,” the track morphs into a claim on black excellence that is decidedly elitist, and frankly, incongruous with the philosophies of the movements and the thinkers that are celebrated elsewhere on the song and album. Whereas the track begins as a memorandum of black struggle, it ends in a conundrum. “Murder to Excellence” may sound like a tribute to black struggle, power, and excellence, but it is a departure from the true meaning of the rhetorical symbols it’s couched in. By resting on the lavishness of their lifestyles to define their excellence, Kanye West and Jay-Z make it clear that it will depend on “the people,” the over 94% of us who can’t gloat over multimillion dollar assets, to “redefine black power” and name the future of black excellence.
Posted at Huffington Post.
Under the argument that states need to protect themselves against voter fraud, Republicans are making a unified push for election reform, and at the forefront is the campaign for implementing and strengthening voter ID requirements. It is one of the popular topics of legislation, as 20 states that did not have laws requiring voter ID at the polls at the beginning of 2011 are seeing legislation proposing it this year. Kansas, Wisconsin, and Tennessee have joined Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Texas on the list of states with strict photo ID laws, and the Pennsylvania House backed a photo ID bill on Thursday. On the other side, aspiring bills were recently veteod in North Carolina, Missouri, and New Hampshire. In his veto message, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch wrote, “There is no voter fraud problem in New Hampshire. We already have strong election laws that are effective in regulating our elections.”
Oddly enough, requiring a photo ID to cast a vote would only be effective in preventing individuals from impersonating other voters at the polls–an occurrence that is, according to a study released by the Brennan Center, more rare than getting struck by lightning. In fact, voter fraud (when individuals cast ballots despite knowing that they are ineligible to vote, in an attempt to defraud the election system) is hardly a realistic political concern. From the Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud,” there were only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Of those 86 convictions, only 26 were attributable to individual voters, and most of those were misunderstandings about eligibility. What is more, connection to voter fraud in a federal election carries grave punishments, including a $10,000 fine and five years in prison, in addition to any state penalties. This is a risk that very few people are willing to take, particularly for the result of one incremental vote.
Whether by intention or not, politicians and media have managed to conflate a host of election administration problems under the umbrella of “voter fraud”–a move which has fueled a Republican-backed campaign across multiple states to pass voter ID laws. Things like clerical or typhographical errors in the poll books, registration records, and underlying data are examples of occurrences that may get mistaken for voter fraud. Justin Levitt, author of The Truth About Voter Fraud, cites matching voter rolls against each other or against some other source to find alleged double voters, dead voters, or otherwise ineligible voters as the most common source of superficial claims of voter fraud, as well as the most common source of error. Thus, it is largely human error in the voting process that results in inaccurate accusations of voter fraud and feeds exaggerated concern over this “phantom problem”.
The zeal for voter photo ID legislation, particularly as the answer to the virtually non-existent threat of voter fraud, raises necessary questions of purpose and effect. In bills like the one vetoed in New Hampshire earlier this week, voters without acceptable identification at the polls would be permitted to cast a provisional ballot, and they would have to return to election officials within a fixed number of days after Election Day to provide appropriate ID. Needless to say, this puts undue stress on voters, especially senior citizens, students, people without adequate transportation, those who are differently-abled, and of course, people who don’t already have IDs. Voting can already be a strenuous process for various reasons; why should the government spend money to make it more difficult to exercise a fundamental democratic right? The supporting side argues that since people use an ID to rent a car, board a flight, or check into a hotel, voting should be no different. But isn’t voting a right everyone should have equal right and accessibility to?
Voter ID requirements are generally just one part of legislation that proposes multiple adjustments to state voting procedures. In Florida, cases are already being made for why the omnibus elections bill will have a direct retrogressive effect on the right to vote based on race and membership to a language minority group–a clear violation of Section of 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Things like the shortening of the early voting period, new restrictions on third-party voter registration efforts, and alterations to how voters may vote if they update their address at the polls, will all affect Black, Hispanic, and Spanish-speaking Floridians at a rate disproportionate to that of white and English-speaking Floridians. This supports theories of voter suppression as a conservative strategy that targets populations most likely to vote Democrat. There have also been questions of whether requiring people to pay for a government-issued ID in order to vote is akin to a poll tax, which would be a violation of the 24th amendment.
Cases like the one in Florida, in which there is an unambiguous connection between proposed changes and the disenfranchisement of race and language minority groups, demonstrate the use of election reform as a partisan political tool. In the guise of protecting elections, the integral democratic right to vote is being transformed into a privilege and a prize.
Posted at Huffington Post.
KING is a female trio made up of Minneapolis natives (and twins) Paris and Amber Strother and Los Angeles native Anita Bias. Their sound is an organic soul that is meticulously developed; reminiscent of the highest points of that thing we called neo-soul and hints of old-school nostalgia. Their debut project, THE STORY EP, consists of three songs written by all of them and produced by Paris. The single, “The Story,” is an exploration of the assurance that can come with following one’s heart, as well as an acknowledgement of the challenges that can occur along the way — a seemingly “happy” self-affirming anthem with a vaguely melancholic tone. Then there is “Supernatural,” a grand production in which the vocals seem to float weightlessly across intervals and an ever-expanding track. And lastly there’s my personal favorite, “Hey,” which is the kind of love song that seems to be rare as of late. Soaking in honeydewed vocals, intergalactic fairytale lyrics, and complete with a bare bones, breathy breakdown, it’s the kind of song you can just feel.
It’s been a while since I heard a group whose sounds seemed to fit so flawlessly together, but from the jazz chords to the percussion, there’s something that flows through the range of KING’s music that just seems meant-to-be. It will be interesting to see where they go with it.
“Hey”
“Supernatural”
“The Story”
Recently I was in a little boutiquey store with a friend (interesting how a good number of the problematic statements in my life occur while shopping) and we were browsing the glasses section. As we each try on a pair of sunglasses, we make the accompanying pointed-finger, winking-eye, teeth-clicking gesture and muse indifferently on the reason for sunglasses existing at all. One of the salespeople in the store is looking on only mildly bored and weighs in with a comment about how she doesn’t wear sunglasses in the winter but in the summer she wears them.
My friend and I move on to the good ol’ fashioned non-sunglasses and I try on a pair with brown frames. As I’m looking in the mirror, the salesperson who just shared her philosophy on sunglasses compliments me on how they look, and my friend seems to like them too. At this point, another salesperson sitting at a computer across the room makes herself known.
“Have you tried the white ones?” she asks.
“Huh? Oh, you mean the ones with the white frames?” I reply, looking up at her.
“Yeah,” she says, glancing up for a moment from the computer screen. “You should try them… I mean, if I had dark skin, those are the ones I would wear.”
…
Ummmmmmmmm………… if .. you.. had .. dark skin. Hmm… that’s a really big if. And on what principle are you basing this opinion you just formed about the compatibility of “dark skin” and white-framed glasses? How, exactly, have you come to the conclusion that this is an equation that never fails? Dark skin + white frames = ultimate attraction combo? I guess when you have an equation as dependable as that things like what my face actually looks like don’t matter. So basically you are saying that because I am darker than you (and from here you look like you *might* be “of color” ) I should try on a particular pair of glasses not because they’d look good on me (can you even see my face from there?) but because that’s what you would do????? … if you.. were some version of me …. ??
Hmmm…
And about this whole if-you-had-dark-skin thing. “Dark” skin is something you don’t have, never have had, and never will have, so you might want to hold off on making plans and/or imagining a lifestyle around the day you are dark. I don’t need you to relate to me, or be me, or observe something about my skin color in order to give me your personal arbitrary-ass opinion about how well a color goes with the range of complexions that could be described as “dark”. And please, when you get the chance, revisit rule #45 on selling a thing: don’t suggest a thing to a person based on some weird idea you have about how you’d look in that thing if you were some broad generalization of that person’s skin tone. That’s just.. like, weird. Just.. ugh, just don’t do that.
In the spirit of the ongoing conversations happening on this blog around race and music (hip-hop and the blues in particular), I bring you Seattle-based emcee Macklemore. Northwest, whattup.
Thoughts????
Posted at PostBourgie.
Reason #352 to find something “positive” or proactive to say in response to the stupid shit that happens in this country. Like, hey, let’s improve our public school system!
The mother of a black Ohio fifth grader assigned to play a slave for a social studies lesson says the school should be more sensitive.
Principal Scott Schmidt of Chapelfield Elementary in Gahanna (guh-HA’-nuh) called Aneka Burton to apologize for what happened to her son, Nikko, on Wednesday. Columbus station WBNS-TV reports Schmidt said no harm was intended.
Ten-year-old Nikko says the class was randomly divided into “masters” and “slaves” and that the only other black student got to be a master. Burton says her son refused to take part in a simulated slave auction and was sent back to his desk. (HuffPo)
This is not a matter of being “sensitive”. It is not about offending people, stepping on toes, or being politically correct. This kind of exercise is the result of serious shortcomings of educational content, as well as educational praxis. It is not wrong because it’s insensitive, it is wrong because it has no educational content or purpose and lacks what should be a very basic knowledge of race and racism in this country. This is counterproductive, ignorant pedagogy at its best. What happened to education as the practice of freedom? I guarantee you it doesn’t include simulating a slave auction.
Students who were the “masters” inspected the “slaves” to see if they would be able workers.
“The masters got to touch people and do all sorts of stuff,” Nikko said. “They got to look in your mouth and feel your legs and stuff and see if you’re strong and stuff.” (The Root)
Since when is reenacting slavery an educational activity? What is there to reenact? Is this something we really want to reenact? Ever? With two black students in the class at that?
Don’t do that, teacher. don’t do that.
In a 1997 interview, Sapphire, author of Push (on which the movie Precious is based), explains her thoughts when writing the novel:
What I considered was that we were going to enter into a person’s life who was being damaged, but was not intrinsically damaged. We’re going to enter into and watch the growth of someone who has been emotionally crippled. That was the focal point of the novel. I wasn’t interested in writing a dark, horrible story—a case history or a crime novel. I was interested in how, through all these impediments and all these trials, a human being could still grow. And why they could. I didn’t get an answer in writing the book or in the people I encountered, but it has to do with human nature. It’s human nature for young people to grow and learn. So we enter into Push with Precious doing a natural thing; it only seems bizarre because so many bad things have happened to her, but she just wants what any other kid wants. She wants to live. She wants a boyfriend, she wants to learn, she wants nice clothes…
The first and last sentences in particular stand out to me.
What I considered was that we were going to enter into a person’s life who was being damaged, but was not intrinsically damaged.
This challenges the essential framework upon which our understanding of U.S. political and socioeconomic life rests. Our ideal of a social mobility built on merit, which some people would argue actually exists, leans on the premises that the playing field is flat, we all encounter equal hardship, and we all receive equal reward for equal work.
What follows this vision of merit conquering all is the proof that it exists, generally embodied by a [flawed] morality argument used to justify why some people excel and others don’t. The morality argument posits that if a person is stuck in a minimum wage job, for example, it is due to fault of character. That is to say, our popular understanding of inequalities assumes that a person whose life is being damaged is intrinsically damaged. Our investment in the ahistorical pipe dream of merit-based social mobility requires us to, on some level, believe that people who live in poverty or receive poor education somehow deserve it, or more specifically, that they have earned it.
So we enter into Push with Precious doing a natural thing; it only seems bizarre because so many bad things have happened to her, but she just wants what any other kid wants. She wants to live. She wants a boyfriend, she wants to learn, she wants nice clothes…
This quote hints at what I find to be a puzzling phenomenon, and that is the common impression that people’s desires should reflect, or correlate with, their circumstances. (Precious daydreaming of a boyfriend and nice clothes is “bizarre” because she is poor and has been abused and is struggling with school and thus, we think, should be focused on how she will eat her next meal or afford her textbooks.) This impression shows itself in everything from government policy (regulating what SNAP (food stamp) recipients can and cannot buy) to popular critiques on apt behavior (“why are they worried about what car they drive when they don’t own their house?”). The case could be made that the aforementioned examples have other driving forces, such as an interest in overall health or financial stability. Yet, I would argue that they also derive from our idea that people’s dreams should always be relative. We ostensibly believe in an egalitarian and democratic society when it comes to our politics, yet we don’t support the democracy of desires.
On one hand, the American Dream is an enduring exercise in propaganda; on the other, it is a integral part of our imaginations and realities. After all, a deep-seated faith in the primary trope of the American Dream — we can all become what we want to be — is what keeps most of us functioning in, and thereby supporting, the national order. And while we have access to the same images of success and “happiness” (as embedded in material gains), we like to draw lines when it comes to who can appropriately desire those images. We want people to dream within their means — a notion which only begins to touch on the underdevelopment and superficiality of our belief in democracy and egalitarianism as principles.
Our inclination to believe in the triumph of merit (and therefore, the morality failures of the disenfranchised), along with our authoritarian tendency to police people’s desires is not necessarily rooted in a particular political leaning, ignorance, or apathy. Rather, we are compelled by the inherent need to believe in the authenticity of our reality.
The U.S. does not function solely on the triumph of merit, nor was it built to. People are faced with all kinds of circumstances in their lives which are very rarely, if ever, the direct result of their independent choices. But we cannot accept these things as true — these things which draw into question the critical tenets of our political imaginations. For if we did, we would not only have to accept that America as-we-know-it is a falsehood, but we would also have to face the fact that the majority of us will not improve our social circumstances as drastically as we like to think we will. And what’s more, that this kind of mobility is not only improbable, but also, at this historical moment, particularly difficult in a country of dreams.
