Two essential articles about race relations and Black Studies today–hope you’ll read!

I know we’re winding down the semester and that you probably have even more papers to write and/or exams to take, but I hope you’ll take time to read these two short pieces about where race relations are at the present.

This one is more general and remarks upon the supposed greater tolerance for difference among “millenians,” the current generation coming of age:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167590/race-millennials-and-reverse-discrimination

This one really got my blood boiling. It’s a reaction to a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed disparaging Black Studies as a discipline. The title ought to give you a clue:

http://tressiemc.com/2012/05/02/the-inferiority-of-blackness-as-a-subject/

I have thoroughly enjoyed this semester with all of you. I’m happy to be g0ing out on a very high note, having taught my favorite class ever Best of luck to all of you! I hope to hear great things from you.

Angela Green

Baldwin… he blows my mind.

I found a really cool interview that Francois Bondy did with James Baldwin. Here’s a portion that didn’t fit into my paper, but I thought was really great.

FB: … You have written that the Americans are not behind Europeans but rather in advance, because they had to face the real problem, while we Europeans often feel that we have solutions just because we don’t have that problem. Do you still think Americans are more advaced in this regard?

JB: I think that it is a great opportunity that America has right now–the trouble is our oppourtunity. What I was trying to suggest in that piece was that Americans, becausde they have lived with it for so long, know more abou tthe color problem than any European nation, because Europe never had its slaves on the mainland. But the price for waht one l might hope to call the American advantage would be an investigation of its own history, which America has never been willing to do. If we could tell the truth about what happened to Indians, what happened to the black man in America, and get rid of all those terifying myths which are all over TV, and books and textbooks; if we could tell the truth about what our real realationship was to the Mexiacans, for example, then we could begin to use this tremendous potential, and it might begin to save the world.

Wowza. Baldwin pretty much tells it like it is. I love it. I completely agree. Until we are able to face our history for what it was and stop covering the icky parts that we don’t like to admit to, growth won’t really be able to happen. I remember reading this same kind of idea in Malcolm X, too. He had thoughts about the origin of our country and how we started out as pillagers. We took this land by force, and force is what we based our existence on. This isn’t the pretty side of the U.S., however we can’t refuse to see the facts.

Great Job

I have thoroughly enjoy being apart of this class. I am glad that I was able to take an African American Lit class. Though I am African American, or black, there are still aspect of history that I did not know about and this class brought them to light. I love how discussion was encouraged alot and we were free to voice our opinions and thoughts as we wished. We definitely had the right professor teaching this particular class. You new students, as well as your new school will be lucky to have you on their campus.

So Long and Thanks For All the Discussions

In closing, I would like to say that this was one of the most enjoyable classes I have had the pleasure of taking. It seemed that most everyone in the class had something to contribute to the discussion, and it was hardly ever just a few people leading the discussion during the class period. It was also a great relief to not just hear the literary analysis of the novels, poetry, short stories, and speeches that we read in class. Yes, the literary analysis and close readings are greatly important in writing papers and being an English major, but it was a relief to be able to have the casual discussions permitted in this class. It sparked ideas in my mind for later discussion and taught me a bit more about the personalities of those who spoke.

It was also a relief to study works that were not either white Americans or Europeans. There are more types of literature than this in the world and, unfortunately, most students will not have the chance in high school to read writers that are not white or European. Even in college, some of these students may never be exposed to the kind of literature we read in class. This whole experience opened my mind up to a wider variety of literature that I had no knowledge of, for the most part, beforehand. Now, I look to a future where writers do not have to be labeled based upon their race or ethnicity. It will be acceptable for writers to write about characters outside of their race and have their novels read in all types of classrooms. They will not have to be considered just African American writers; they can be placed alongside the greatest writers of the known world and have their works read outside of a class entitled African American Literature II.

Above all, I wish good luck to those of us who are sticking around for a semester or more and hope that those of you who are graduating have a wonderful and joyous life ahead of you. I hope that each of you was left with the positive memories of an experience and a class just as I was.

Further reading suggestions?

While taking this class, there is another novel that I have often compared many of the works in our class to. It is a novel that, if you are interested in furthering pursuing this topic, I feel would be beneficial to further study.

In high school, our class read Barbara Kingsolver’s 1998 novel The Poisonwood Bible.  Although it is written by a white author and set in Africa rather than America, it is an interesting story that could be used to compare with other African American literary works.

The basic story behind the novel revolves around the Price family on a mission trip to the Belgian Congo. The father, Nathan Price, is in charge of preaching the word of God to the natives in the village while also helping them out with needs such as food and clothing. Nathan also brings his entire family which includes his wife Orleanna, his oldest daughter Rachel, twin daughters Leah and Adah, and youngest daughter Ruth May. The novel is broken into various narrations, by chapter, and switches back and forth between the five lead female characters. The situation in the novel is the reverse of much of what we have read in this class. Instead of the whites being the dominant group in society, the Price family is in the minority and often black at the mercy of the Africans of the Congo. I think it would be interesting to compare say, the scene from The Invisible Man where he was boxing and at the mercy of the whites to the situation of the Prices who are, many times, a show for the people of the Congo and are often at the mercy of those people.

I would love to hear from my fellow classmates to see if anyone else has further suggestions for reading around the types of subjects we studied in class.

The Change of Language

As we’ve read through several of the novels in this class, I have noticed the interesting use of language. Particularly, colloquial or “slang” language. The best examples of these have come from the novels The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Coming of Age in Mississippi. Since both novels were written around the same time, the language used is similar. However, it is how the language compares to that of today that intrigues me the most.

First, both novels make use of the word “cool.” Of all the words such as “groovy” and “hip,” it is interesting to see that this word is still used today. As seen through popular culture, as soon as people outside of the “in” community, usually adults or “the man,” use these words, they are considered “un cool” and drop from common use. The word “cool” has remained in popular use, however, and was considered both then and now to be an acceptable term for all.

The word “hipster,” however, has changed the most since it was used in the 1960s and 1970s. When Malcolm X used this term to refer to himself and those he associated with. It meant people who were cool and “with the times.” Here, it was the people who wore the sharp zoot suit and attended the dances held at various clubs. The meaning of this word has vastly changed in the 21^st century. If you did a quick search of the internet, you would see the term “hipster” pop up in various places, and it is never usually used in a positive manner. Today, “hipsters” are people who wear the thick glasses, t-shirts with old cartoon characters on them, and listen to music that no one has ever heard of. They typically hate anything that is considered “main stream” which includes music, movies, and television. Due to their tendency to criticize the main stream media, they have generated much hate throughout the internet and out in the “real world.”

No, I did not feel that this would provide a good topic for discussion in class, but I felt it was an interesting point nonetheless. By reading through these books, we, as readers, are provided with a glimpse into a past most of us were not alive to witness. As English majors, we are able to point out small details like this and examine their uses through time. While both of these words remain in popular use, “cool” has retained its original use while “hipster” has taken on a completely different, and now negative, meaning.