My read: Everything But the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture

[sohj]

Have been reading this for a week, in snippets of time I have on the bus/subway to/fro work.

It is a collection of essays, edited by Greg Tate.

My current favorite essays have been: (this list may change after I finish the book)

Pimp Notes on Autonomy by Beth Coleman

A Pryor Love: The Life and Times of America's Comic Prophet of Race by Hilton Als

Skinned by Cassandra Lane

Ali, Foreman, Mailer and Me by Tony Green

and

Afro-Kinky Human Hair by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah

Anyone else out there read this?

[hotmamacita]

NO BUT I WANT TO. THANKS FOR POSTING THIS. I know I am going to love it.

I HAVE SOME PAYPAL FROM A RECENT SALE. I WANT TO GO BUY IT. I WONDER IF AMAZON TAKES PAYPAL.

i am reading 'Open My Eyes, Open my Soul: Celebrating our Common Humanity' FANTASTIC! Created by Yolanda King and Elodia Tate with contributions from Maya Angelou, Muhammed Ali, Andrew Dan-Jumbo, Stevie Wonder, MArgaret Cho et al...

[sohj]

gotta warn you, this isn't a feel good book.

One of my favorite essays, the one by Cassandra Lane, has a lot of serious rage in it. Rage against "the other" -- and not just the white other--, rage against oneself.

It is raw.

In nightclubs I've been to, everybody's competing. With each turn of his head, I have feared my husband's eyes might follow a woman who's more attractive and naturally voluptuous. It's the same fear I've carried into each of my relationships. Mama always implied that men leav women for more beautiful women, and I've looked for signs before they begin. My insecurities drive Ric crazy. "You make me feel like I'm on trial for a crime I don't know anything about," he said once, and I felt guilty.

[hotmamacita]

i can deal with raw. i didn't think it was a feel good book, btw. i tend not to like feel good books.

raw is honest.

[hotmamacita]

oh, and i ordered it early this morning. thanks again.

[sohj]

cool!

[yoga]

Love that title.

[sohj]

ChakaFalls: If you like that title, you ought to check out his (Greg Tate's) Flyboy in the Buttermilk . It was a good read, too.

And I finished the book today. The last essay was called "My Black Death", by Arthur Jafa. The death here is (I think) a death of identity and, therefore, a death of separation. The essay explored various 'deaths' as related to race identification.

Late in the essay, he explains his fascination with 2001: A Space Oddessy and how it relates to the topic. And he ends that section with:

The film ends, I get up in a daze and walk out into the lobby. And even now, thirty years later, I remember exactly, in crystalline detail, what the lobby looked like, the angle the sun shafted through the space, the lint hovering overhead, the drag of the carpet. I looked over and saw the manager, white and older, quietly reading his paper in the otherwise empty lobby. And the thing is, at this point in my life I didn't have unchaperoned interactions with white people [he was 10] , young or old. He was sitting in the ticket booth with the door open so I walked over to him and said, "Excuse me, sir, I've just come out of the movie, could you tell me what it was about?" He looked down at me over his paper, paused a moment, and said, "Son, I've been looking at it all week and haven't got a clue." And that's the last thing I remember. I don't remember how I got home, what other conversations I might have had, nothing. But that brief interaction I've never forgotten. The film had completely leveled our differences, race, class, age. So that for that moment, in the presence of this monumental work, we were equal.

Jafa was also a director of photography for Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut.

[yoga]

Thanks, sohj. I'm going to try to get those on inter-library loan.

[Arduinna]

not reading the book but I'd love to know what things are included in the list that whites are taking from black culture?

[sohj]

There's not exactly a list. Each essay is about some aspect of either blackness or something that is normally associated with black people or a particular person.

Such as, one of the essays is titled "Eminem: the New White Negro".

Perhaps a bit of Greg Tate's intro, "Nigs R Us, or How Blackfolk Became Fetish Objects" might help here:

Readers of Black music history are often struck by the egregious turns of public relations puffery that saw Paul Whiteman crowned the King of Swing in the 1920s, Benny Goodman anointed the King of Jazz in the 1930s, Elvis Presley propped up as the King of Rock and Roll inthe 1950s and Eric Clapton awarded the title of the world's greatest guitar player (ostensibly of the blues) in the 1960s. Whatever Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Chuck Berry, B.B. King ... thought about these coronations, they seem to have wisely kept between pursed lips -- at least until Little Richard declared himself "the architect of rock and roll" rather than announce the winner at a late 80s Grammy Awards ceremony.

and:

.... much of what America sold to the world as uniquely American in character -- music, dance, fashion, humor, spirituality, grassroots politics, slang, literature, and sports -- was uniquely African-American ...

and later:

This book, then, is about Black resentment and discontent to no small extent, but be reminded that Black irony and contrariness are never far away. Because while Everything But the Burden is largely devoted to scrutinizing the need by white Americans to aquire Blackness by any means necessary, it is also about the fascination that desire has provoked in a contemporary generation of African-American artists and intellectuals who hold complicated ideas about "Whose Black culture is it anyway?"

But, really, you might want to grab the book off the shelf and read the whole intro. Tate writes so well and it is so lively. His intro was the reason I bought the book.

And another item discussed in one of the essays was the HUGE influence of African art on Picasso....and therefore on European Modernism especially sculpture, painting and dance. Cubism never could have happened the way it did if Picasso hadn't tried to imagine West African Art into european sensibility. He was busy playing the (spanish) primitive in Paris and really needed something even more "exotic" to make it work.

What kind of art do you like?

[TigerTail]

waiting list. sounds interesting & thought provoking.

suse

[Arduinna]

I thought the white rappers would be included in the book. I really don't like rap or hip hop or dance music in general so really can't say why the facination is there. Seems like some of them might be rebelling from their middle class WASP roots???

[XM]

Hotmamacita, I would love to borrow these books when you are done reading them... LMK...

[simonee]

....

running off to bigger town now to get this book.... thanks ladies....

sohj, love that last part you wrote about white america appropriating everything black and then labeling it "american." I once read an article (pretty long ago) which said that all those stereotypes about america (like "naive, optimistic, childlike, simple, joyful, energetic") can be traced to the white view of black people as primitive and childlike ~ simplistic, but also closer to nature. I found that a very interesting premise, and have often felt it being confirmed by observation.

That's where a lot of racism resides nowadays, esp among "liberals" : being afraid of black people is considered not-done and racist ("the fear of the jungle") as we could see in the thread in tao, but the "admiration" for black "straightforward talk" and "swinging culture" and all that still comes from the same source: the white belief that black people are all similar in one respect (other than a broad collection of skin shades), namely that they are a bit simpler and more "natural" than white people.

ok going to find this book now. thanks again.

xm and hotmamacita, don't tell me you know each other irl!!! WOOOWWWW!!!! I'm envious of both of you!

[XM]

Yeah, and Hotmamacita has even touched my boobs!* As if you were'nt already jealous enough!



*DS was 2 days old and we were having hellish latch issues so April came over and saved the day. And she brought food.

[simonee]

: : : :

I wouldn't have gone that far in directing my envy, but wow again. (I like the excuse. You really don't need one )

[XM]

What can I say? She's one Hot Mamacita!

[yoga]

:LOL

There are some other good books out there on this issue, as well. I must admit, sometimes I prefer the times when I was all ignorant and unobservant about the "white/black" relationship.

[sohj]

OK, I wasn't going to log on this weekend...

'cause I can get stuff done here so much more eficiently if I post during breaks at work due to its totally fat pipe. And on top of it, I just wrote a really cogent reply and it got lost....I can't stand how quickly this site times you out sometimes.

But, I like the way this conversation is going (one where breasts are mentioned can't be all bad...) and wanted to hop back in a bit.

simonee: your comments about ways the american character is regarded is interesting. It seems like those are also attributes assigned to any "primitive", no matter where. I have another really interesting book called Internal Colonialism about the wars within the UK in the 17th - early 19th c. against the welsh, scots, and irish. They didn't have to fight the Cornish as they were already absorbed, and the Manx were providing the navy with some of their best sailors -- like Fletcher Cristian. (Can't quote from it as I loaned it to someone who still has it...a guy I work with who is from Glasgow and with whom I have lots of interesting conversations.) The words used to describe the scots were very similar. They were frequently compared to the Indians in the New World -- savages, innocent, childlike, etc., etc.

Of course, as all these people became absorbed into the "mainstream", they were not seen as so different anymore. There were few physical clues to remind anyone of their "primitive" origins. There seems to be a social class level identification of "white", sometimes. I think that is how Eminem can claim to be part of the hiphocracy and get some respect. (Vanilla Ice didn't.)

On the other hand, a black rapper just wears his/her class identification and doesn't need to provide nearly as much "proof" of belonging. I know few people who are aware that Tupac is the son of an intellecual (although she certainly has no post at a university): Afeni Shakur, poet and Black Panther. A white person with those "creds" would still (although they are revolutionary credentials) be open to attack as a fake.