The theories, realities, and vibes of Blackness
Review by Chitown Kev
Reviewed:
The Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Penguin Press, 266 pp., $30.00
I know one thing: I have gotten sick and tired of (usually) young Black Twitterati making loud, bold and uninformed pronouncements that, ultimately, narrow the scope of the Black experience. The annoying thing is that they act as if they are posing original and even revolutionary arguments but as Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out in his latest collection, The Black Box: Writing the Race, Black people have been having these discussions amongst ourselves and with others (read: white people) since before the founding of the American Republic and Black people will, undoubtedly, continue to have these discussions.
Dr. Gates “jumping off point” for this essay collection is the birth of his granddaughter, Ellie, who “will test about 87.5 percent European when she spits in the test tube” yet his son-in law accedes to Gates’ request to check the “Black” box on the required form certifying Ellie’s birth. Gates runs with the “black box” metaphor and extends it from its common usage of flight recorders that “preserve the record of truth amid disastrous circumstances” to Oxford English Dictionary usages to metaphors of how (mostly) African Americans have defined themselves to themselves and others. Over the course of these essays, which originated in Dr. Gates’s lectures in his Intro to African American Studies courses that he has taught at Harvard for many years, we run into well known literary pioneers like Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Zora Neale Hurston, unknowns (at least to me) of the Enlightenment like the German Anton Wilhelm Ano, Francis Williams and even white people like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson and the composer Antonin Dvořák.
Gates first essay, “Race, Reason, and Writing,” deals with Phillis Wheatley and the (white) reaction to the publication of her book of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. While receiving overall good reviews at that time as evidence that Black people could be every bit as intelligent as white people given the chance, the achievements and obvious intelligence of Wheatley and even older Black thinkers were dismissed by the likes of Enlightenment luminaries like philosopher David Hume, in spite of Hume knowing that “Black people could read and write” and “were intelligent, articulate, sophisticated, and aristocratic” or by Thomas Jefferson’s dismissals of Wheatley and any other abilities of African-descended peoples (other than...you guessed it, musical ability). It was from white criticisms and denial of the intellectual abilities of Black people that people like Benjamin Banneker, David Walker and Alexander Crummell saw development of a FUBU literature in response.
Gates’s finest essay in The Black Box is “Who’s Your Mama: The Politics of Disrespectability”, where notions of what it means to be “African American” (primarily in the early 20th century) run the gamut from Dr. Dubois notions of The Talented Tenth to middle class Black Victorians to cultural tensions with the old-time Black vernaculars and religious worship of the South. Gates uses this chapter as a sort of set-up to the arguments about blackness that characterized the literary rivalry between writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright which is, indeed, worthy of the entire chapter that Dr. Gates writes about the two titans of Black literature.
While understanding that Dr. Gates is writing, for the most part, about Black people in the United States, I do wish that The Black Box dealt a little more with contemporary worldwide discourses on what constitutes “Blackness”; for example, Brazil’s very different system of race categorization (where Dr. Gates granddaughter would probably be considered a “little white girl”, I suspect, but would have more freedom to self-identify, if she so chooses it) or even a more contemporary issue like the Twitter smackdowns of African Americans by quite a few Caribbean Blacks over the appropriateness of British pop singer Adele’s Bantu knots at the Notting Hill Carnival; African Americans do not have a monopoly on discourses of Blackness. Nevertheless, The Black Box is a far more comprehensive, educated, and informed historical guide on what it means to be “Black” than any sort of vibe-fabulous discourse that one my find on social media.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Being pregnant and giving birth are amongst the most memorable experiences in a woman’s life. The postpartum experience should be one of bonding between a mother and her child. However, this experience is much different for women who are in prison. Shackled until the moment they give birth—with only law enforcement and a doctor present, with no family or support person present—giving birth while incarcerated is one of the most inhumane experiences a woman can go through. The postpartum experience for incarcerated women is not one of mother to child bonding; the women are only given 24 to 48 hours with their newborn until their baby is taken away. And, they must also endure a period of lactating with no baby to breastfeed and heavy bleeding without access to proper menstrual products. Institutions don't always give mothers who are in the postpartum phase unrestricted access to hygiene products commonly used by mothers after they give birth—underwear, large sanitary napkins, and other items. Some institutions also don’t have appropriate waste disposal receptacles for said items.
The Prison Policy Initiative predicted that 55,000 women in the United States will be arrested while pregnant this year. In a single year, women in prison had 753 live births, 46 miscarriages, four stillbirths and 11 abortions. Of the 753 live births, there were three newborn deaths and no maternal deaths, and nearly a third of the live births were delivered via Cesarean sections. As laws are being passed to ban abortions and place those who have experienced miscarriages or stillbirths under suspicion for criminal acts, incarcerated women are dying and losing their babies inside of prison walls. The question at hand is: are the health rights of women being violated while pregnant in prison?
“Many women give birth in prisons and jails every year, but many more give birth in hospitals because most prison medical units aren't equipped to handle deliveries,” said Wanda Bertram, Communications Strategist of the Prison Policy Initiative.
Though incarcerated women may give birth inside of hospital walls, these women are often shackled. Restraining a woman by the ankles, wrists, or waist during pregnancy and delivery is medically hazardous, emotionally traumatizing and unnecessary. According to the AMA Journal of Ethics, pregnant women who are shackled are at an increased risk of falling and sustaining injury to themselves and their fetuses. Most correctional facilities do not have on-site obstetric care. Because of this, pregnant women are typically transported to community-based providers for prenatal care and women in labor are transferred to medical facilities for delivery.
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Drug and medical testing supply company American Screening, LLC, has agreed to pay $50,000 and provide other relief to settle a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
According to the lawsuit, a Black employee interviewed and was selected for a sales position with American Screening while wearing a wig with long, straight hair. After she stopped wearing the wig and started wearing her hair in its naturally curly texture, the company’s owner instructed a human resources manager to counsel the employee about her hair and “looking more professional,” complaining that the worker “came in with beautiful hair.” The employee’s hair—considered type “4-A” on the Andre Walker Hair Typing System—is commonly associated with people who, like the employee, are Black.
The owner then directed the employee to begin wearing her wig with straight hair again. When the employee continued to wear her natural hair, the company fired her. The company later hired a white worker in her place, according to the EEOC’s lawsuit.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits firing employees or subjecting them to different terms and conditions of employment because of their race. The EEOC filed suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process. The suit (EEOC v. American Screening Case No. 22-01674) had been pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and was resolved by a consent decree, which was entered by the court on April 4, 2024.
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A $475 million light-rail system serving Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa shows how some China-funded infrastructure investments across the continent are now suffering from neglect. Bloomberg: A Crumbling Metro Reveals Failed Promise of China’s Billions in Africa
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Almost a decade ago, the light-rail system in Ethiopia’s bustling capital of Addis Ababa was hailed as a revolutionary solution to the city’s transportation woes. Envisioned as a project that would redefine urban transport, the system promised to sweep up to 60,000 passengers per hour along its tracks.
Today it sits as a daily reminder of the broken promises of China-funded infrastructure investments that swept Africa in recent years. Frequent breakdowns, inadequate maintenance funding and operational constraints mean barely one-third of its 41 trains are operational, ferrying 55,000 passengers a day, a fraction of initial projections.
Once bustling and vibrant train stations now exude an air of desolation and neglect, contrasting sharply with the city’s urgent transportation needs for its almost 4 million residents. Inoperable trains are regularly parked at the railway’s garage, awaiting maintenance.
Overcrowding on those trains that do run has forced many commuters to seek new ways to get around. Yared Mekuanint, 36, who has been using the train since its launch, has largely abandoned the system.
Waiting times for a train can now stretch to 20 to 25 minutes, he said, four times the six minutes between services in the early days.
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On a clear night a year ago, a dozen heavily armed fighters broke into Omaima Farouq’s house in an upscale neighborhood in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. At gunpoint, they whipped and slapped the woman, and terrorized her children. Then they expelled them from the fenced two-story house.
“Since then, our life has been ruined,” said the 45-year-old schoolteacher. “Everything has changed in this year.”
Farouq, who is a widow, and her four children now live in a small village outside the central city of Wad Madani, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southeast of Khartoum. They depend on aid from villagers and philanthropists since international aid groups can’t reach the village.
Sudan has been torn by war for a year now, ever since simmering tensions between its military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into street clashes in the capital Khartoum in mid-April 2023. The fighting rapidly spread across the country.
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