Category: race

#Grateful for the Life of Maya Angelou

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, art, children, Civil Rights Movement, economics, feminism, gender, history, poetry, politics, race, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, style

Last week we lost another great one: Maya Angelou. Or, rather, Dr. Angelou, as she preferred to be called. When it came to addressing her by her honorific/title, nobody got a pass — not even Oprah.

Maya Angelou was awarded an honorary doctorate from Wake Forest University where she was Professor Emeritus and resided in Winston-Salem, North Carolina from her latter years up until her final passing. As a longtime North Carolinian, it seemed I was never more than one degree of separation from the artist-activist and attended several of her lectures and guest appearances over the years.As a public figure, Angelou was a towering presence — a descriptor that goes far beyond her once elegant frame. In her role as private citizen, apart form her public persona, I had a few occasions to partake of her charm and wit, though I also gleaned how Angelou could pose a rather intimidating — and at times downright disagreeable — presence.

It didn’t take much to note that Dr. Angelou would have no truck with any type of behavior she viewed as disrespectful or inappropriate. She had no problem whatsoever with instructing those around her in the correct manner by which they should conduct themselves in her company if they ever found themselves in the unfavorable position of not living up to her exceedingly high standards. Like all of us, she was a work in progress and maintained her strong ideals as something she expected herself and those around her to be continuously striving toward. Angelou was perfectly transparent regarding her own struggles to become a good Christian and decent human being.

The rhetorician in me is the part that will miss her most. As a scholar interested in the power of public address, it is her voice and the historical moment it represents that fascinates. Hearing the sonorous tones in her speech will always recall for me memories of the elderly church mothers I grew up listening to and imitating. The first row of churchgoing women took a special liking to me because of my ability to emulate their speaking when it was my turn to read the Sunday School card-class lessons, making me the happy recipient of whatever butterscotch or peppermint hard candies their patent-leather clutch handbags held. The way these white-gloved church mothers pronounced their words with such precision sharply contrasted with the staccato short-hand of my hip-hop contemporaries. Their earnestly delivered announcements of the weekly “sick and shut-in” list and hyper-proper recitations of Sunday scripture were uttered as if each syllable was deserving of its own special pew.

Maya Angelou’s high African American rhetoric, I believe, held audiences with rapt attention in a similar way. The expressivity of Angelou’s speech embodied sonic vestiges of late-Victorian epistolary inflections no longer found in most African American communities. The radical eloquence demonstrated by Maya Angelou’s speaking style effectively operated to appropriate the “master’s language” and audibly articulate black agency in order to subvert de jure segregation and race-based educational discrimination. Her manner of speaking was meant to celebrate the tenacity of African Americans’ collective will not to merely survive, but indeed thrive — and with a flair for the erudite, to boot. With Maya Angelou’s passing this covertly political style of black speech will be missed in mainstream American media. Regretfully, for many, a pithy soundbite and a Hallmark card aphorism is all that is left.

picture of Mahogany greeting card with Maya Angelou quote: "Do not reject. Do not demand. You can have life in the palm of your hand."
Maya Angelou’s “Mahogany” line of Hallmark greeting cards.

Though in my mind — as an African American mother, and a scholar of writing and rhetoric — Maya Angelou posed much too significant a figure for the occasion of her death to be marked with nothing more than a social media hashtag or image file of her glamorous, youthful heyday, accompanied by little else beyond one of her many well-turned phrases. Whereas she was most popularly known for her short poems, I don’t think a cut-paste of “Phenomenal Woman” will do her justice. As Angelou herself often noted, she was clever with words. The subject of her attention to craft was at times a topic of great debate among other African American poets. Whether this is fair to Angelou’s literary contributions, I cannot say. Although I have studied and thought about poetry slightly more than the average American reader, I don’t fancy myself an expert on what constitutes “serious poetry,” nor do I necessarily assume expertise about assessing one poem as “good” and another as “bad.”

As a casual reader of memoirs, however, I most value Angelou’s talent as a writer of the autobiographical form. Of course, her first autobiography is also her most celebrated work.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings powerfully conveys Angelou’s gift for personal narrative. Her socio-historical account of individual capacity for greatness and resilience in spite of childhood trauma is rightfully recognized as a well-crafted memoir. It is through this genre of her writing that Angelou’s prose emerges with a special resonance. She shows herself to be a foremost chronicler of the latter part of the Jim Crow era in her story of growing up in Arkansas. Her rich anecdotes beautifully capture the turbulent times that led toward her fulfilling her unique cultural niche, and prepared her for the space she would eventually find herself occupying in the singular role of vernacular dance performer, civil rights activist, political fundraiser, and occasional agent provacatuer.

Maya Angelou as vernacular artist or self-described "shake dancer"
Maya Angelou as vernacular artist or self-described “shake dancer”

Perhaps because of my own experience as an expat and having once been a young, single mother living in Accra, Ghana, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes is by far my favorite of all her autobiographical works. In this book, she describes how she took on the role of personal host and special consort to the likes of James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, among many other literary, political, and diplomatic luminaries of the Black Power and African Independence movements — all too numerous to name in this short reflection. Through this richly textured account of Angelou’s decade of wanderlust against the backdrop of mid-twentieth century Africa’s global decolonization movements, All God’s Children proved to be an indispensable companion during my sojourn year following the 9-11 attacks leading up to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Angleou’s writing helped me better contextualize what I was encountering in the social and political turmoil I personally experienced while toggling between West African airports, local guesthouses, and gated estate communities. Fed up with stateside jingoism and hawkishness, reading Angelou’s prose provided me with meaning and gave context to the social and historical forces I saw in play. Her writing gave me the much needed explanatory power I sought for a better understanding of the cultural dynamics that I was seeing and experiencing first-hand: the coup d’etat in Ivory Coast, Liberian living conditions at UN refugee camps, and Ghana’s Truth and Reconciliation hearings, to name just a few of these life-changing events. Reading All God’s Children offers the perfect vantage point for understanding the ground that was laid by her generation of black woman cultural workers and gave me the strength to return home to North Carolina and assume my local share of the work required for bringing about a more expansive vision of global ethics as a black woman and as an American. Yes. This is what Angelou’s gift was to me, and to us all. She showed us how to strive to become better, more responsive Americans and citizens of the world.

Being Mary Janes or Being Moral Mules?

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in advertisement, African Americans, cute, gender, race, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, TV

While partaking of various items in my websurfing diet I often find myself struggling not to get sucked too deeply into the veritable smorgasbord of mind-numbing, click-through slideshows. At the same time, I value and congratulate sites like Madame Noire and the constellating blogosphere within its close orbit. I like how it provides a viable platform for young black women to cultivate their voices and share opinions. So let me borrow a quote from one of the blog’s contributors when I say there’ll be no stank face over here.

Anyway, having recently found myself in the throes of binge-watching BET’s newest dramatic series, Being Mary Jane, I came across this blog post in today’s newsfeed. And as hyperlinking would have it, I found myself clicking to one content contributor waxing blogosophical about the social import of Being Mary Jane as somehow representing a cultural leap for black women. (Of course, I’m all too aware of the debates surrounding the applicability of “social import” when speaking of popular television shows and other trending media; that’s a blog post for another time.) The assertions about the show’s dramatic realism regarding the title character’s character match the general commentary made about the Kerry Washington vehicle, Scandal. For instance:

Being Mary Jane gives black women something shows with predominantly white casts have been hip to for a while now:  Our very own Walter White.  Dare I say, our first anti-hero.  She’s the woman we hate to love because she’s the perfect validation of the fact that villains have feelings too.

I understand the sentiment behind such perceptions, but beneath the accolades lies a flawed logic. The impulse to praise any opportunity in which black women can see their lived realities portrayed on screen, projected as multi-dimensional, nuanced leading characters is a temptation to be sure. However much beyond that, claims about cultural groundbreaking are farfetched. The concept of an educated black woman emotionally supporting her parents and extended family by succeeding through hard work and tenacity all while looking fabulous breaks new ground — really?

Mary Jane’s agonizing over the health of her living and unborn nieces, reciting the Lord’s Prayer on behalf of a terrified nation on live television, and baking awesome cakes from scratch for her mother’s birthday somehow makes her a villain of the highest order. Clearly, this assessment provides further evidence that assumptions about black female malfeasance have become so pervasive in our culture that other black women are themselves actively engaged in the vilification of black femininity. The logic doesn’t hold; black women having normal human appetites and unapologetically striving toward the fulfillment of those desires does not a monster make. As a black female character looking for love, good sex, and professional status, is Mary Jane an antihero? Does the shoe actually fit?

Yeah, okay. Mary Jane is evil because naughty noogy is exactly the same as being a meth-cooking, neo-nazi affiliated child-killer à la Walter White. I’ll buy that.

No, really I am buying it… every single month through DirectTV on demand. ”She pulled up her black fishnets and called in Verizon to come and watch…” It’s possible that I may not have gotten that quote absolutely correct. Oh, Zora, you were so wise! (I don’t care one bit about Richard Wright calling you a handkerchief head opportunist.) Indeed, “de nigger woman is de mule uh de world” as far as I can see too — especially when it comes to shouldering America’s social and moral burdens. Oh well, onward and upward! Episodes 4 through 8, here I come! And please, dear mother-goddess Afro-d!te, I promise I’ll be good if you don’t let Gabrielle Union kill anybody this season.

Ayy-Man!

Hold Paula Deen Accountable If You Care About Justice

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, civic culture, Civil Rights Movement, communication, communication, persuasion, politics, teaching, professional writing, discrimination, economics, ethos, history, information design, media, persuasion, politics, race, racism, religion, rhetorics, SCOTUS, Southeners, space, space & spatiality, spatial rhetorics, Uncategorized, White Studies
Clarence "Sunshine" Thomas
Clarence “Long-Dong” Thomas

In my last post I made an appeal to forgive Paula Deenfor her use of the word “nigger” because I was feeling a sense of charity given that my general attitude toward her was already one of low expectations. I glossed over key points also due, in part, to generate a post with brevity and levity. The mild sense of sympathy I felt, however, was countered by a generalized snark and outright cynicism that comes from living as an African American woman living in the South and being a frequent observer (and occasional target) of some individuals behaving like rude, misanthropes all up, in, and through the public sphere. Granted, Southerners are generally very polite people — profusely so, in fact. Southern hospitality is an ethos that most strive to uphold. Though let us not forget, by its very definition, hospitality is a stance that is meant for dealing with strangers or outsiders. Southern hospitality is only an outward appearance; something I call, bless your heart and watch your back. Therefore, for the most part, feelings of snark overtook charity — Christian charity — Southern style.

At any rate, it’s the thing I’ve learned to cope with, dealing with all the craziness of living and working in the South. My first instinct to blow off the gravity of Deen’s actions is the result that comes from years of battle fatigue while trying to avoid bitterness, hypertension, and the gout. For years, I’ve been teaching, learning, working, and living with folk who are oblivious to the privileges and luxuries they derive from inadvertently creating the range of minor inconveniences and insurmountable disasters in the lives of the people of color surrounding them. It happens regularly, without thought, as a simple matter of routine habit. It’s something you simply become accustomed to when you’ve been living in the Carolinas for as long as I have. But of course, as we all know, feelings are emotions. And emotions have a tendency to distort clear thinking. So I write this post to say that my last post (June 25, 2013) is wrong… or at least not entirely correct. That’s right. McFarlane was wrong.

Forgiveness is a good thing, but redress is too. The reason my earlier post missed the mark is because I, like most others, was focused on the media hype. Whereas attention to the more sensational aspects of Paula Deen being politically incorrect and quite possibly rude is one thing, the fact of the matter still remains that Deen was engaging in flat out employment discrimination, which far exceeds the problem of poor interpersonal skills or bad manners. The deposition that brought Deen’s behavior to light involves sworn testimony about Deen using the power of her corporation to place white employees in the front of her business while keeping black employees in the back. In other words, Deen practiced racially discriminatory institutional policies as a matter of workplace procedure. What this means is that Paula Deen actively assigned people to differential labor categories on the basis of race — if not soley, at least partially. In so doing, Deen actively made the decision to foreclose on people’s lives, thereby limiting individual employees’ economic and social chances in life — both long and short term — including (and by no means limited to) their ability to secure reasonable housing, attain decent educational opportunities for themselves and their children, as well as achieve dignified retirements free from poverty. This is the significant issue at hand and flaws in Deen’s individual personality are only tip of the ice burg.

To look at the case of the Paula Deen, here is racism and this is how it works. It works through the material benefits and tangible privileges received by one phenotypical group at the expense of another, wherein you work other folk to death and hurt their children and their children’s children into perpetuity . However, the claim of employment discrimination is seen as altogether different from proving it, says the U.S. Supreme Court. We can thank Clarence Thomas for this little nugget of injustice. Back before Thomas was on the Supreme Court, he headed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (through the auspices of a Ronald Reagan affirmative action appointment, no less) it became federal policy to disregard claims of racial discrimination based solely on outcome. Merely demonstrating (statistically, or otherwise) that all the employees who happen to be African American get assigned to the back kitchen is irrelevant. The burden of proof demands more than that. Recent politicization of the judicial branch has resulted in numerous close split decisions. This was the EEOC policy that was legitimized once Bush 40 appointed Clarence Thomas to the high court. From the SCOTUS bench, Thomas continues to rule with other conservatives. Thomas’ record of decisions for key racial discrimination cases tends to favor the accused/offending parties. Burden of proof  rest with victims. The plaintiff/victim must not only show damages or unfavorable outcomes, but must prove it’s being done on purpose. Paula Deen’s funny little nigger jokes show how she intentionally disqualified black employees from receiving fair labor compensation. The point is this: it does matter that Deen used the n-word, but not for the reasons the media would have us believe. The outcomes of personal and symbolic racism, such as the derogatory language used by Deen in the institutional context of a public, corporate establishment effectively translates into actual and real institutional racism and substantively proves intent to discriminate. In this particular context, Deen’s use of the word “nigger” equals the kind of racism that causes infant mortality and malnutrition, premature death from stress and overwork, destroys families, shatters dreams, perpetuates intergenerational poverty and social unrest, and fundamentally undermines what it means to live in a civil society based on democratic values. Therefore, if we really care about what we allege America to be, then we have no choice but to hold Paula Deen accountable for saying nigger— even if it was in the context of telling stupid jokes.

When all is said and done (and I think we can all agree at this point that a lot was said and even more was done), the bottom basic point is that Paula Deen ought not be allowed to use the power and wealth of corporate systems to institutionalize social caste groups—not if we are to live in an ethical, fair, and meritocratic society.

Quvenzhané Wallis and the Sad Truth

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, age, children, cute, family, feminism, film, gender, history, parenting, politics, race, racism, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, toys, TV, YouTube

If you’re like me, the way you watch tv has shifted and your consumption of movies and television is now heavily mediated through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. More and more of us are likely to be in the know about the latest infotainment buzz through trending tweets and the latest status feeds. In fact, since I haven’t been too gung-ho about pricey visits to movie theaters these days,  I hadn’t even heard of Quvenzhané Wallis until last week. I learned of the precocious child actor like most others when she became the youngest person ever to earn an Oscar nomination for her lead acting role in the critically acclaimed fantasy drama, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Image
In a ceremony on the night of November 14, 2012, Quvenzhané was acknowledged and honored with the key to her hometown, Houma in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, for her work in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Of course, though not too surprisingly, the media commentary that followed in regards to the young actor’s breakthrough film performance was heavily burdened by the usual laziness of poorly thought-out racist mainstream media tropes in the form of celebrity gossip, ignorance, and out-and-out refusal to pronounce Wallis’s first name correctly. No surprises there. This sort of thing happens like clockwork and is understood as par for the course among even the most casual African American media watchers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB8CGNbrI4c But I admit that I was taken aback and was quite unprepared for the social media firestorm that ensued on Oscar night when the satirical news organization, The Onion, issued a tweet referring to this little girl as a cu*t. Now let’s get this straight: that’s the “c” word that rhymes with “hunt” and not “hoot” and is definitely not the type of descriptive one would normally expect a decent human being to use in the labeling of a small child, not even in the most extreme circumstances. Likewise, the Onion tweet was not a hoot – wasn’t in the least bit funny. And as though on the hunt, the Onion’s slur of choice (along with the fake news organization’s snide and snarky follow up apology) was issued in the same mean spirit as the sexually predatory racial politics that black women in this country have faced for centuries. Though unlike the verbal attacks that many black women have come to expect and subsequently learn to live with, few of us were ready for this particular incident because… well… because Wallis is a child. And children, we thought (hoped?), are supposed to be off limits when it comes to show-business’ usual racism and misogynistic feeding frenzies. But then again, she is a girl…  and a black girl at that. Unfortunately, violence against women is normal in our culture and youth exploitation is ordinary. It continues to be the case that for most African Americans – whether child or adult – neither cuteness nor the genuine innocence of childhood will fully provide our folk refuge from the casual viciousness of racism. The basic ideas of merit and the routine presumption of innocence in the case of black folk hold little sway in the history of US politics and culture. Because the fact still remains, no matter how smart, how talented, or how earnest you are or strive to be, in the eyes of far too many white adults, if you are both female and black you can only ever be nothing but a c-word(even if you’re an adorable, Academy Award nominated prodigy). And that’s the sad truth.

Galvanizing Cuteness

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in babies, Barack, Barack Obama, children, cute, family, gesture, history, media, Obama, parenting, photography, political campaign, politics, psychology, race, rhetorics, sentiment, visual literacy
Facebook MLK gun control meme
Facebook MLK gun control meme

Much has been made about the president publicly shedding tears in response to the latest spate of horrific gun violence, especially since many of the victims were such small children. Because my scholarship deals with the centrality of cuteness in the shaping of public and institutional policies concerning race, I make a critique about visual culture operating at the very nexus of American public race policy. As a critical race theory, the rhetorics of cute have the power to galvanize the public. I believe the persuasive effects of cuteness are deployed for the political contexts of commerce and energize Derrick Bell’s notion of  “racial interest convergence.” Whether framing public debates about Civil Rights legislation through the outrage generated by the church bombing of four little girls, the heinous lynching of Emmett Till, and underlying the logos of Norman Rockwell’s portrayal of Ruby Bridges in “The Problem We All Live,”  cute shapes public policy.

Cute is a longstanding strategy for winning over the dominant interests in public debates and motivates white economic investments to push for substantive political changes. Interestingly enough, the decades-apart public anger precipitated by the killings of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin was not necessarily amplified by the visuality of cuteness, but was more about the gestures of cuteness as a performative act reflecting childish (and legal) innocence. Till and Martin, after all, were both going about the normal business of adolescence and visiting the candy store. The sheer cuteness of behaving as any child is expected to, at least in the cases of Till and Martin, provides a posthumous racial pass of sorts. Dominant perceptions of African American masculinity in the white public sphere are not so readily second-guessed, especially by the ordinary television media.

"The Problem We All Live With," Norman Rockwell, 1963. Oil on canvas, 36” x 58”. Illustration for "Look," January 14, 1964. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©NRELC, Niles, IL.
“The Problem We All Live With,” Norman Rockwell, 1963. Oil on canvas, 36” x 58”. Illustration for “Look,” January 14, 1964. Norman Rockwell Museum Collections. ©NRELC, Niles, IL.

Or consider the groundswell of public sentiment in support of stricter gun control laws (as in the case of the Trayvon Martin killing).  And, as alluded to at the beginning of this post, the heartbreak surrounding the tiny victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school is sobering. The media tributes honoring the mostly white classroom of innocent first-graders and educators in the small Connecticut town has been relentless. All this is to say, that I’m just as moved by this recent gun massacre as anyone else and wish that  color were not a part of this discussion. Though unfortunately, the rhetorical power wielded by the ongoing tributes to this group of slain youngsters does speak to dominant sentiments and racial perceptions regarding cuteness.

I’ve even heard some people personally criticize Obama for supposedly not demonstrating enough grief over the epidemic of gun violence prematurely snatching the lives of hundreds of Chicago’s mostly brown and black children. But how would we even know this to be true? It could be that Obama has publicly demonstrated pain over the deaths of this particular group of kids, but it simply eludes coverage. And what about in his private moments with Michelle and his daughters? From all accounts, the loved ones of many of these children were personally known to the first family. Some of the more extreme online memes claim that Obama actually delights in the drone attacks by  Afghan children have been killed as opposed to American kids tragically cut down by gunfire. This latter idea is utterly ridiculous as it commits the logical fallacy of moral equivalency in a most reprehensible fashion. On the other hand, the issue of Chicago gun violence is valid. Not because of Obama’s supposed lack of personal grief, but for how it calls attention to the lopsided racial narratives of commercial “news” coverage.

This racial rhetoric of cuteness continues to operate in surprising ways and draws focus to matters of racial discrimination and privilege. This is why I believe the materiality of cuteness is racially determinative of people’s life chances and helps us better understand the technological and ethical interplay of aesthetic judgements of human worth.

Obama Roasts Trump

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in Barack Obama, cute, play, politics, race, rhetorics, time, time & temporality, TV, YouTube

I made this video-audio mash-up during my dissertation defense back in March 2012 to serve as an example of Obama’s “cute” rhetoric in his roasting of Donald Trump at the White House Press Correspondents Dinner.

This video of Obama’s roast with the overlay of his bin Laden announcement demonstrates his uncanny sense of aptum. Obama’s expert use of zingers appropriately encompasses the ridiculousness of Trump’s demands that he produce a long-form birth certificate to prove the merit of a Black presidency. Because of Obama’s easy command of popular slang, central features of his communicative style, Obama’s political success is well documented. Yet his virtuosity with African American speech performances proves not only insufficient for solving America’s racial problems but paradoxically provides Obama with all the right moves of sounding as though he’s speaking candidly to Black folk, while in actuality communicating a whole lot of nothin’ to the political mainstream about the mainstream problem of white supremacy that results in anti-Black discrimination. Beyond Obama’s AAE as LWC fluency, the double move of using hip-hop to conservative ends is made possible by what Alim and Smitherman refer to as “white audiences’ ineptitude” at registering the nuances of AAE . This is especially true when AAE rhetorical tactics of circumlocution are deployed to disarm white and, at times hostile, listeners. I take issue with unequivocal compliments for Barack Obama’s political savvy and excuses made for his tendency to give “a little to both sides” when discussing racially sensitive issues (Alim 129). Admiration for the ethics of Obama’s rhetoric should be held back when questionably applied as in certain cases.

Given just hours prior to the announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden, we can retrospectively realize Obama’s roasting was concurrently orchestrated at the time of bin Laden’s killing. At a time when his approval ratings were low, the drop in public opinion was incurred at least partially through the relentless allegations made by the distinctly reactionary “birther” contingent within the Tea Party activist wing of the Republican party.  Regarding the integrity of the president’s citizenship, Obama’s signifying snaps were in response to the bombastic demands made by Donald Trump. Obama disses “The Don” because of his proximity to hip-hop and successfully lumps Trump with the lunatic fringe of conspiracy theorists, some of whom insist the government faked the moon landing and believe there’s a space alien cover-up in Roswell. To draw that link would have been funny enough, but the real punch-line is when Obama aligns Trump with conspiracists who believe iconic rappers, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls are still alive. Obama’s LWC dialect meshes with certain paralinguistic markers through non-speech signals associated with AAE, lip-biting and eye-cutting, even a little teeth-sucking (Rickford 170). These gestures, familiar to almost all African Americans, is an unknown communicative behavior for the predominantly white audience. In so doing, Obama paints the hotel proprietor as a buffoon still further w Obama feigns praise for Trump’s supposed magnanimity and leadership for sparing Atlanta-based hip-hopper, Lil John after the men’s team failed a celebrity cooking challenge by refusing to fire the rap music producer/hype-man during an episode of Celebrity Apprentice. Even though the president had madd jokes for Trump (At one point Obama mock confesses at one point how the gravity of possibly having to fire Lil John would reasonably cause sleep deprivation), all the while actually staying up all night sleep as he plotted bin Laden’s assassination. In this instance, Obama looks in Trump’s direction while biting his lower lip and diagonally sweeping his gaze away from Trump in mock admiration and wisecracks, “But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf.” For good measure, with just the slightest hint of the suck-teeth Obama adds that Trump instead, “fired Gary Busey.”

Not more than 24 hours later after announcing bin Laden’s death, Obama delivers the news in a tone that is somber yet resolved. When viewed in conjunction, these two oratorical performances demonstrate unequivocally Obama’s ability to rhetorically balance pop-cultural frivolity with the ceremonial tones of a wartime speech, in which he must gauge his language when speaking to Americans about matters of urgent import or fleeting absurdity.

The linguistic assertions made by Obama reveal a two-pronged effect of his rhetoric that impact how he is received as a national leader insofar as he accepts the hegemony of white privilege and its resultant patterns of discrimination aimed at people of color. From this perspective, Obama’s AAE merely co-articulates white supremacist thinking, including post-racial conceits held by the “color-blind” constituency of white swing voters to create ambivalent ethical effects. Using the rhythms and commonplaces of AAE in response to highly racialized communication contexts has been Obama’s major strategy for handling voters. More specifically (and even more pointedly), Obama comforts white trepidations about his favoritism toward African Americans and other racial minorities through AAE.

Legacy: Alligator Bait, Civil Rights, and Art

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, art, babies, Carl Owens, children, civic culture, civics, Civil Rights Movement, design, Disney, education, history, play, politics, race, racism, rhetorics, sculpture, slavery, space, space & spatiality, temporality, time & temporality

For most African Americans – whether child or adult – not even the cuteness of a cherubic face and genuine innocence could provide refuge from the legal persecution or casual viciousness of white racism. The Florida Tourism Board’s practice of distributing these “alligator bait” postcards (well into the 20th century) speaks to this issue most profoundly. It is probably fair to argue that these images would have never been interrogated up until this point if it had not been for the intervention of African American visual rhetors who sought to reverse the inhumane effects of American US racism.

By the time the United States was founded, Africans enslaved in America were forced by physical and legal sanction to watch their every word and action for fear of punishment or death. This is important to contrast this with the fact that whites, on the other hand, had complete freedom – were actually encouraged – to reveal their vilest racial feelings. The need to express the slightest decorum for the expression of racist opinions was non-existent – least of all in the public square. During slavery and Jim Crow it was a commonplace assumption made by many whites that no black could be trusted – not even with the knowledge of the alphabet. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that anyone who was considered black, no matter what, was subject to being demonized and treated accordingly. As a matter of basic everyday existence, blacks were to be denied the fundamental virtue of innocence from the cradle to the grave. Any public injunction by American courts for the forthright expressions of racist behaviors and practices was not to occur for many decades. This issue continues to haunt black existence.

Fast forward to June 1964, when a group of black and white protesters sought to integrate a public recreational space by jumping into the swimming pool at the Monson Motel in St. Augustine, Florida. As difficult as it may be to imagine today, the owner responded by pouring muriatic acid into the pool, endangering the lives of peacefully frolicking demonstrators. Luckily, a photograph of this heinous incident was captured and broadcasted around the world.This photo has since become among the most famous images from the Civil Rights Movement.

A few years ago Brian Owens, an Orlando based sculptor, was commissioned to commemorate the historic event and pay homage to the brave citizens who risked their lives for equality and a refreshing swim on a hot Florida day. Entitled, “St. Augustine Foot Soldiers,” here is a picture of the memorial sculpture, which rests today in the heart of the town square.

Carrying on a proud legacy is something Owens knows a lot about, as he is the son of the late African American graphic illustrator and portraitist, Carl Owens.  Here is a link to Brian Owens’s flicker stream showing the process behind his painstaking craft.

South Carolina Politics and Racial Decorum by Anastasia of Beverly Hills

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, civic culture, civics, Civil Rights Movement, conventions, cute, design, dolls, fashion, gender, gesture, hair, history, political campaign, politics, race, racism, rhetorics, sex & sexuality, space & spatiality, style

GOOD GRIEF! I will NEVER stop being absolutely flabbergasted by the power of EYE SHADOW in the New South. In case you haven’t noticed (in SC), a woman who goes out without her mascara is about as bad as a woman who leaves home without her bloomers!

Because of the exaggerated gender-norming etiquette down here people will assume you’re lazy, no-count, and simply write you off if you dare attend some public spaces bare-faced. True story. It’s jacked up, but I know how it is. I try to resist this conservative politics by playing with these ethics of “pretty-southern-lady” conformity.

In order to experiment with this concept and as a demonstration of my civic duty, today I chose to vote in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary. I did so wearing full make-up face and dressed to the nines (like any *decent* Southern lady would, of course). I made an effort to dress stylishly, yet conservatively.

When I got inside there was less than a dozen other people. All white men (save one woman) and not a single person under 60 years old! The woman standing beside the door immediately greeted me with a huge smile and, for some reason, introduced herself to me as the wife of one of the men and that she was only there because of him. Seriously!! Of course, I responded with equal warmth, a huge smile, and nodded how I “completely understand” (whatever that was supposed to mean).

Now! anybody who knows me knows I *like* to play with make-up, clothes, and cute hair-do’s (so sue me!) —  I wore my favorite wellies, Karen Millen cape, and carried my Kate Spade handbag. I decided to accessorize with a pair of bronze/silver tone Akwaba doll earrings, plus an assortment of colorful, big bangle bracelets. It was raining hard when I pulled up to the polls, so when I got out of my car I decided to use my scarf to cover my head — as though it was an hijab. Once I walked in the door, for dramatic effect, I slowly unwrapped my scarf to reveal PURE AFRICAN CORNROW HAIR TWIST SPLENDOR! LOL! You would’ve thought a talking Panda had just entered the polling place.

It was hilarious. Every single one of those old white folk went out of their way to show EXTREME cordiality. I promise you, each and every one of them individually welcomed and greeted me! The whole room became chatty and smiley. And I was glad to oblige their hospitality! So I entered the booth, voted for the “Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” super PAC candidate, Herman Cain.

AND HERE’S THE KICKER: When I exited the booth, one of the greyest, biggest of all the white men actually stopped me, SHOOK MY HAND, HUGGED ME, leaned in, and stage whispered, “So, who’d you vote for?” Then he slyly added, “Only joking.” The place broke into raucous laughter and everyone applauded as I left the polls!

Where else in America does this happen? South Carolina: too small to be a country, too big to be an insane asylum! Now here’s the question, folks. Has the South changed? You tell me.

The Cute Accused

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, children, civics, cute, education, gender, race, sex & sexuality
Emanyea Lockett -- 9 year accused of sexually harrassing his teacher after he was overheard telling another student he thought his teacher was "cute."

There are loads of empirical studies on how quickly and inequitably many public school districts are willing to label black children as delinquent or pathologize them as sexually deviant. This is especially true when it comes to black boys. Here’s just one example that has recently made headlines. The following story is by Dedrick Russell:

GASTONIA, NC (WBTV) – Gaston County School district investigated an allegation of sexual harassment and declares the principal got it wrong.

It was reported a fourth grader at Brookside Elementary in Gastonia allegedly called his teacher “cute”, but the school principal reported the student used another word to describe the teacher.   The principal thought that was inappropriate and said it was sexual harassment.

The principal suspended the student for two days. Parents say the punishment didn’t fit the crime.

“Any teacher that would take that seriously,” Brookside Elementary School grandparent Irene Irvin said.  “I think she should have just shrugged it off and taken it as a compliment.”

The mother complained to the district about the suspension and that’s when the district launched an investigation. It found no sexual harassment happened. Now the district is regretting this happened.

“We will be sending an official letter of apology to the parents,” Gaston County Schools Spokesperson Bonnie Reidy said.  “Also the suspension will not count against the child and the child will receive additional instructional assistance to make up for the time out of the classroom.”

The incident has prompted the principal to retire. Parents are saddened he is leaving under these conditions.

“I’ve always agreed with the decisions he’s made,” PTA Leader Mandy Ballentine said. Reporter asked “Even with this case? “I would say yes,” Ballentine answered.  “It’s behind closed doors, don’t know the whole case, but I do know his integrity.”

No word when the principal’s retirement will go into effect.

The Political Camp/Pain of Herman Cain

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, civics, economics, gender, political campaign, politics, race, rhetorics

This Stanley Crouch op-ed on Herman Cain deserves to be widely circulated. And I hope it gives us all something to ponder. Here are some key excerpts:

Though everyone talks about money, few know how powerful it can be. One of the largest private corporations in the nation, Koch Industries, is run by Charles and David Koch, who inherited a small company from their father, Fred, when he died in 1967.

Fred Koch was a founder of the John Birch Society, a coven of anti-Communists and intellectual louts. The Koch brothers success allows them to further their father’s work: They know well what money is, how to make it and what it can do when focused on ruthless ideology.

The annual revenue of their business is about $100 billion, but all anyone outside of those at the top of the company know about its workings is next to nothing.

Though disguising themselves as philanthropists, lovers and supporters of the arts and underwriters of sustained cancer research, the Koch brothers also live in a delusional billionaire boys club built for two and devoted to misinformation and factoids. It is decidedly in keeping with the John Birch Society’s record of lies shouted until they start to seem like truth.

But the Koch brothers may well have overstepped themselves at this point by reportedly aiding and abetting the energetic and essentially empty Herman Cain in his run for the GOP presidential nomination through a group called Americans for Prosperity. I m very proud of the relationship I have with the Koch brothers, Cain has said.

Cain, filled with the kind of down-home black Southern charm that is irresistible to some, is running a campaign that has no boots on the ground. A shadow candidacy is one thing, a shadow staff is another. The most serious Cain watcher, Rachel Maddow, revealed that reporters seeking to talk with his staff have discovered about four people.

Herman Cain is “Winsome” and “Cute”

by Nicole Ashanti McFarlane, posted in African Americans, civic culture, civics, cute, gender, gesture, masculinity, politics, psychology, race, racism, rhetorics, space, space & spatiality

Mike Huckabee says Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain,  is “winsome” and George Will considers Cain’s run for office “cute and fun” but nothing to be taken at all seriously. Maybe so — maybe not, who really knows? To be sure, Cain is definitely a long-shot.

I would be interested to see if Herman Cain was included among the cohorts of Fortune 500 black CEOs whose physiognomy was determined as having a “baby face.” If  he was not included in the study, I’d be surprised.

Though, of course, everyone may not agree that Cain is cute per se —  regardless of partisan persuasion — you’d be hard pressed to find someone who will dispute whether or not Cain has shown himself to have been competent as a food service industry executive. And I think, regardless of one’s political views, most everyone would have to agree that Cain seems to have developed an unusually high skill set in terms of attenuating dominant perceptions of black male threat and really does possess an extraordinary ability to disarm others — even potential rivals. According to the study:

disarming mechanisms are beneficial to powerful Blacks because they reduce the perception of ‘threat’—whether threat is experienced as fear or intimidation due to an out-group individual possessing high levels of power (i.e., realistic threat), or as anger, resentment, or discomfort due to the perceived illegitimacy of a low-diffuse-status individual holding a hegemonic position (i.e., symbolic or ‘worldview’ threat)… [and that] there are numerous traits and behaviors that might function as disarming mechanisms, such as modifying style of speech or dress, adopting assimilationist ideologies, having a goofy appearance (e.g., big ears), smiling, or even ‘whistling Vivaldi’ (Livingston 1234).

Well, I think Barack’s got the whole “big ears” thing covered and the reference to Brent Staples‘s “Black Men and Public Space” essay about negotiating public space in Chicago as a large black man. Staples  Staples admits at the very end of his essay how “warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is [his] equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.”

Teddy bears in bear country.

Cuteness as a quirky racial construction in American politics and civic life as related to Cain’s Republican presidential candidacy is a fascinating little political story to follow. Oh yeah, and as for the political catch-phrase fail of the moment:

9-9-9!