[JOHN BAN]

For this weeks focus on lyrical representation of segregation I decided to focus on Beyonce’s 2015 grammy performance. Here she performs Take My Hand, Precious Lord; a gospel song dating back to the 1800s, which was also during the the civil rights movement. In her performance, Beyonce stands at the center of all black male choir positioned in an ‘X’ formation, a nod to Malcolm X (as she has alluded to many times since). I find this performance striking because of what she aimed to portray. She said herself that she wanted “to show the strength and vulnerability in black people.” This is important when looking at the stage she’s performing on; one that has historically been white dominated and has presented themes pertaining to the concept of ‘The White Space.’ As well, this performance was amongst both the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, as well as amongst the time when the verdict for the case of Michael Brown’s murder, I don’t think it was an accident that she decided to perform it in this way amidst all of these events and I think it did a wonderful job of highlighting the importance of black bodies within the media, and how these themes of segregation within white dominated spaces intersect.

Its a really good performance, one of the best vocal performances at least of our time imo:

[JOHN BAN]

For this weeks photo share on White Space, I wanted to compare and contrast two separate images. They are similar in nature, both of children trying to raise money for causes by selling hot chocolate or cold water, but the differences are within the public reactions to both. For the little boy, he’s trying to raise money for Trump’s border wall and is unimpeded in the process. He’s societally accepted as being allowed to occupy a public space and raise money for something, even regardless of why he’s doing it. The practice itself is simply accepted. However, like with what we see in the second photo, when there are intersections between the dynamics of race, space, and power, things change. When a little black girl chooses to sell water on the street, her mere presence is criminalized. Because of this idea of white space where white people feel entitled to a space (in this case like many others a public one) people of color struggle even to exist somewhere like the side of the road in San Francisco (where she was selling water). It’s important to look at instances like these two together and see how race and power work to affect the spaces that people occupy and inevitably effect people because of the color of their skin when they’re doing something as simple as inhabiting a public space.

Image Sources: CBS Austin, ABC7 News

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[JOHN BAN]

This week, because we discussed the topic of native exclusion, I’ve decided to branch the topic from nature activities and national parks to another type of societal institution. My photo showcases the appropriation of native culture in fashion, which I think can relate to this topic very well. In the same way that natives are excluded from national parks and a lot of nature recreational activities, they are also excluded from the realm of designer fashion in all the wrong ways. Accessibility to these types of clothing are incredibly limited–especially when its runway fashion in particular. So here we see the cross-sectionality between white designers profiting off of the culture of indigenous peoples coupled with the exploitation of their cultures through exclusion as well. I think this ties into this weeks topic very well as it demonstrates how these mindsets and ideas readily exist in many aspects of our society today and can be pointed to in many different operations of our culture today.

Photo from an article here: https://medium.com/@a.deroche/appropriation-of-indigenous-culture-in-the-fashion-industry-6f02387ebd26

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[JOHN BAN]

For week 6 I’m sharing a photo that I talked about in class. This photo is from an ad where a man is in the shower washing himself with a bar of soap while some happy-toned music is playing, until it slips out of his hand onto the ground. Immediately the music stops, the tone turns dark, and a gruff voice says, “you gonna pick that up?” the next shot (where the hand grabs his shoulder) is the shot I chose to share. It pretty clearly looks to be the hand of a person of color, crudely done up with tattoos, all in an effort for the company to best signify that this is a criminal. This itself is the sort of racial undercaste that we’ve been talking about thats been created. The structural racism that exists within the 13th amendment and the prison industrial complex as a whole has disproportionately stigmatized black and brown bodies as being dangerous and criminalistic. I should also mention that this isn’t a commercial for some sort of  soap or something like that, it’s a commercial for a law firm, which to me adds a whole other layer to the dynamics at play, i.e. who the ad is targeting and how it does that, etc. These are interesting themes to keep in mind when tracing how these systems still work in the mechanisms of society today.

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My photo for this weeks topic, segregation and education, is from a 2013 protest in Portland (where I’m from). The protests were in response to the Portland Public Schools superintendent’s proposals for school closures in a specific area due to “enrollment balancing.” This area, known as the Jefferson cluster, is a grouping of schools which has historically fed into Portland’s only black majority high school. This, as well as these schools serving mostly “high-minority, low-income students.” A pattern displays itself here, as Portland has had a history of gentrification, which plays into an interesting relation to another of our courses topics. It can be seen that many white families moved into these areas in north Portland (what has become now known as one of the more trendy parts of town, you can wonder why) but the schools in the Jefferson cluster noticed a stark lack of white students in their schools, despite the large presence of white families in the area. This happens because the districting allows more affluent, which happen to be most of the time white students to use the PPS systems “school choice” initiative to attend more highly funded schools outside of their district. This continues the long strain of what can really be seen as educational racism through the lack of funding and general ignoring of these underfunded high-minority schools. Its an incredibly complex system taking place in what most of the country tends to view as an incredibly liberal and forward thinking city, which goes to show how these practices of institutionalized racism, and the concept of segregation as a whole are still present in our society, even in places where a lot of people might not expect to see them.

For more context, a teacher from one of these schools wrote about this situation a bit in The Oregonian back in 2013: https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2013/01/another_look_at_balancing_port.html

Photo found via <span class=”sw-author”>Christopher Zimmerly-Beck</span> and <span class=”sw-author”>Madelynn Kay, who used this photo in their report on this issue in a publication titled the Socialist Worker.</span>

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My week 4 photo share focuses on the institution of food deserts. This is an incredibly interesting topic when looking at how the racialization of space and continued systems of segregation play into the health effects of citizens in areas affected by food deserts. If you don’t know, haven’t been exposed to this concept, a food desert is defined as “urban neighborhoods or rural towns without easy access to fresh, healthy and affordable food” (U.S.D.A). When looking at this phenomenon closer, it becomes apparent how the concepts we’ve been learning about in class, such as the construction of the ghetto, and other racist housing policies like redlining, etc. have played into the institutionalization of food deserts where the only food that communities in these areas can access is low cost, unhealthy food.

Photo: Shannon Wright

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For week 3, I decided to use a photo of an excerpt of lyrics from Solange’s song “F.U.B.U.” I think the story she’s telling in this song, and with these lyrics specifically are important to the conversations we’re having in class and directly relate to the current subject of segregation and space being consistently racialized. Solange elaborates on these lyrics in an interview where she recants an incident after a Mardi Gras celebration one night where they were headed home and were trying to enter their neighborhood, which required a residence pass, and even though they had one the police stopped their car (and only their car), made them park blocks away, and walk into the neighborhood. She elaborates on how one of her heels ended up breaking and about the humiliation she felt because of the incident. Its scenarios such as these which give context to how space is still racialized and thus segregation is acted on in the contemporary.

The rest of the song is full of great messages having to do with topics surrounding race/racism, so I definitely suggest that if you haven’t heard it, you listen to it, and the rest of the album.

Source: Solange Knowles, “F.U.B.U.” Genius Lyrics

https://genius.com/Solange-fubu-lyrics

A Seat With Us: A Conversation Between Solange Knowles, Mrs. Tina Lawson, & Judnick Mayard

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Topically, this weeks content on the radicalization of space reminds me of discourse surrounding a superbowl halftime performance a few years ago. Beyonce performed her then new single ‘formation’ evoking images of the black panthers and Malcolm X, and afterwards was criticized heavily by conservative news outlets. Particularly I recall Rudy Giuliani on Fox News saying that this is a performance going to “middle America” and that it should be “wholesome.” Theres obviously a plethora of things wrong with this statement whereas he’s describing the superbowl as a place where this imagery and conversation of even just black history (let alone the conversation on racism that Beyonce was trying to call upon) shouldn’t exist in this space. It’s a blatant attempt at a radicalization of the space of the superbowl in particular, but also american football itself, as if black folks don’t belong, or even don’t exist within these realms. These attacks make sense as a prerogative for conservatives like those who appear on Fox News because of their desire to discredit any political and racially charged activism having to do with football because of the controversy surrounding Colin Kaepernick.

Source: Fox News, 2016

 

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