[Saakib Akbany]

The picture I have attached for this week’s photo share is from J. Cole’s music video from his song “Neighbors” on the album ‘4 Your Eyez Open.’ The music video, and the lyrics in the song, recount the story of how J. Cole’s neighbors called the cops on his house in an affluent, white neighborhood North Carolina because they suspected that he was selling drugs. The picture is a still from the video of 15 police officers in full SWAT tactical gear and assault rifles bursting into his home when he was not there.

Below is one of the most poignant verses in the song.

Some things you can’t escape
Death, taxes, and a ra-
cist society that make
Every nigga feel like a candidate
For a Trayvon kinda fate
Even when your crib sit on a lake
Even when your plaques hang on a wall
Even when the president jam your tape
Took a little break just to annotate
How I feel, damn it’s late
I can’t sleep ’cause I’m paranoid
Black in a white man territory
Cops bust in with the army guns
No evidence of the harm we done
Just a couple neighbors that assume we slang
Only time they see us we be on the news in chains, damn

This is referring to the fact that regardless of how wealthy or influential a Black man can become in this country, his access to white space can and will be revoked at any time. His wealthy white neighbors were more likely to call the cops on them for selling drugs because Cole and his friends were Black. Since wealthy communities have historically been closed off to Black people, with a legacy that has continued to create segregated communities today, the likely White neighbor felt that these Black men didn’t ‘fit-in’. That, coupled with the fact that “only time they see us we be on the news in chains” as Cole raps in the song, meant that preconceived notions and biases led to the cops being called on these Black people, instead of a conversation or neighborly check-in that may have happened if J. Cole were White.

 

 

Source: J. Cole – Neighbors (Official Music Video)

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[Saakib Akbany]

The image I chose is from the story a few months ago of a white woman who called the police on a Black babysitter who was taking the White children under his care to a Walmart. This is an example of how “see something, say something” validates the racial biases of White people when they see something out of place in White space, which apparently includes the parking lot this woman confronted the man in.

People of Color, and Black people in particular, have to constantly be cognizant of how even their most mundane actions are being perceived by those around them. It’s the reason a black man can’t watch his white friends’ kids without people calling the cops on him for being “suspicious.” It’s also the reason why I, a Brown man with a beard, have to smile at white people in public so they don’t do the same.

People can call the cops because “it’s better to be safe than sorry.” And in this case, the man was stopped, questioned, and released safely. No problem. But calling the cops with no other context, has consequences. At a time when an unarmed black man is disproportionately more likely to be killed in interactions with police, every additional interaction increases those chances. The caller in this case was thinking about the potential danger for the kids, not the more likely danger she was putting that man into. People can argue this is a small misunderstanding, but repeat them enough, and those microaggressions add up in a dangerous way.

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[Saakib Akbany]

I chose this image of a vintage postcard of the iconic Yosemite Ahwanee Hotel, which was recently renamed the “Majestic Yosemite Hotel” as the National Parks System begins to reckon with its racist past. The name Ahwanee was not the original Native name. Ahwanee is a bastardization of the name for the native people that lived in the region, the Ahwahneechee, who were brutally killed by Anglo-American militiamen known as the Mariposa Battalion. Many of the landmarks in the park were given “native” names, not in honor of Native Californians but in celebration of their destruction. For example, what is known today as Tenaya Lake was once called Py-we-ack by the Ahwhneechee, but was renamed by American militiamen who killed the son of a native man Tenaya there, and dragged him to the spot to see the corpse. According to one militiaman’s writings, he renamed the spot “because it was upon the shores of the lake that we had found his people, who would never return to it to live.” The continued use of the native name for the sites today allows the parks system to benefit from the perceived “connection” to native culture, while simultaneously profiting off of their erasure from the land.

Image source: Ebay seller

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[Saakib Akbany]

I chose this picture from the AP, taken by Gerald Herbert, which shows modern prison labor in Black and White. Instead of colorizing antique pictures to allow people to more closely identify and understand previous racial transgressions, this picture is one modern prison labor made it black and white. Because most pictures of “clear-cut racism” are shown in black and white, this allows people to see the similarities between penal labor and slavery. This picture is particularly striking, with the White man on a horse watching over the mostly Black laborers, because of the clear parallels to the historical motifs prevalent in our depictions and understanding of slavery.

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[Saakib Akbany]

The picture I chose is a graphic describing the recent event at East Middle School, a public school in New York, in which four, 12-year-old Black students were strip-searched by administrators of the Binghamton City School District. This story, and the related image, reminded me of the discussion we had in class regarding the disproportionate punishment inflicted on Black students in schools. In this case, these underage girls were stripped to varying degrees of clothing, with one young girl searched in her bra and underwear. The only girl that was searched in full clothing was GIVEN A SUSPENSION for refusing to take off her clothes. Not only is this disgusting behavior by the administrators, but sends a clear message to young girls that their control over their own bodies is limited. This girl did not provide consent to having her clothes taken off of her and was punished for it, which is a dangerous precedent to set.

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[Saakib Akbany]

I chose this picture because relates to gentrification, which is a modern symptom of segregation and housing discrimination towards PoC’s throughout US history. Because Black folks were refused access to homeownership. which we discussed to be one of the hallmarks of American life, many of their descendants today are forced to stay as renters. This inherently makes them more susceptible to rising rent, and culpable to be pushed out of the neighborhoods that they have lived in. This creates a revolving door in which disenfranchised PoC’s, and more specifically Black Americans are forced into segregated ghettos and then later out of those same neighborhoods to create White sanctuaries.

The art in this picture is created in the same aesthetic as a “moving-out sale,” which reflects to the fact that once the people who live in their neighborhoods are pushed out of their businesses by larger corporations, the community becomes homogenous and segregated, often losing the culture that added beauty and value to that neighborhood in the first place.

Source: We Lose Space, Installation by Megan Wilson and Gordon Winiemko, San Francisco Art Commission Grove Street Gallery (across from SF City Hall), San Francisco, CA, 2000, photo by Megan Wilson

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[Saakib Akbany]

For this week’s topic of segregation, I chose an image of the 1939<span class=”scayt-misspell-word” data-scayt-lang=”en_US” data-scayt-word=”HOLC”>  “r</span>edlining” map of Los Angeles developed by the<span class=”scayt-misspell-word” data-scayt-lang=”en_US” data-scayt-word=”HOLC”>Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which was sanctioned by the Federal Housing Administration</span>. The map delineates the different regions of Los Angeles with houses that were considered to be good investments and worthy of home loans by insurance companies and others as having “unsavory elements” and high mortgage risks. The HOLC used downright racist criteria to make these distinctions, which is represented in the language they used. One area assessor explained his reasoning for giving the San Gabriel Valley Wash neighborhood a low rating because they had a high population “goats, rabbits, and dark-skinned babies.” The implications of these housing policies have continued in ways that I have witnessed myself as an LA native. Not only is there continued segregation by communities that lay claim to Whiteness and power but also the historical restrictions reduced Black and Latino homeownership which has kept many vulnerable to rising costs of rent and increased gentrification.

Photo courtesy of <span class=”scayt-misspell-word” data-scayt-lang=”en_US” data-scayt-word=”LaDale”>LaDale</span> <span class=”scayt-misspell-word” data-scayt-lang=”en_US” data-scayt-word=”Winling”>Winling, KCET,</span> and urbanoasis.org

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[Saakib Akbany]

This picture was taken at the Phildelphia Starbucks after an employee called the cops on two African American men, both of whom were arrested while waiting for a friend to arrive. This imagery is reminiscent of the Greensboro Sit-Ins, in which young Black men and women were arrested for sitting at the counter of a Woolworths. However, these sit-ins occurred during the height of de jure segregation and Jim Crow laws and the space these Black bodies were occupying was in conscious protest against the laws at the time. Alternatively, the Black men who were sitting in that Starbucks in 2018 were simply occupying space innocuously like the other non-Black patrons, but under the de-facto segregation prevalent in our current society, their bodies were still seen to not belong in the space they were occupying.

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