HD in tumblr-land....

Boring update

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:24:40 -0400

heeyyyyy tumblr…

Long time noting but reblogs and likes from me. That probably won’t change real fast but here’s what I’ve been up to.

Since January, I have:

taught 7 classes (1 was a weekend class, 1 was a 7 week class for non-traditional students in our accelerated program, 1 was a 3 week intensive)
moved
been in 2 plays
written some stuff (sadly, not my dissertation - see “taught 7 classes” above)
Now I’m grading like what and tomorrow I shall collapse.

What’s new?

soulbrotherv2: James Baldwin on the idealism of African...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:43:33 -0400

soulbrotherv2:

James Baldwin on the idealism of African American inclusion in American society.

Brother Baldwin laying down some truthses

Tumblr Essay Assignment

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:17:37 -0400

marchoftigers:

Name one group of oppressed people who were able to end mass genocide and institutional ans systemic oppression by being nice.

show your work

The Racist Origins of Modern Clown Makeup (or, just one more reason to hate clowns)

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:36:02 -0400

so-treu:

sourcedumal:

deliciouskaek:

ianthe:

kawaii-afro-fluff:

ianthe:

This post was asking about a potential link between the afro-style wigs and big, painted lips of the modern clown and racist caricatures, so I decided to do what any good theatre history student would do - I did some research.

SPOILER ALERT: YUP, IT’S RACIST AS FUCK

From Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top:

Some circus programs contained portraits of clowns in literal blackface, with huge red mouths and bulging eyes, strumming energetically on a banjo, but often the auguste clown’s blackface was metaphorical. He created his racial identity through the act of ‘‘whitening up’’ with thick pancake.

His greasy whiteness and exaggerated bodily zones—huge red mouth, lolling, paint-encircled eyes, big fake nose, ears, and feet—made his look strikingly similar to blackface. Showmen played upon this visual connection by arguing that African American men literally were clowns because of their supposed aﬃnity for clowning and the circus. The Ringling Bros.’ route book from 1895 and 1896 contained a section, ‘‘The Plantation Darkey at the Circus,’’ which imagined—in almost orgasmic language—black men as minstrel characters.

[…]

Proprietors further conﬂated the African American man and the clown by arguing that both were completely controlled by their emotions, not reason.

Superlative examples of white manhood—the big cat tamer, the wire walker, and so forth—demonstrated little emotion during life-threatening acts. The clown, by contrast, howled in mock fear when he saw a mouse, or shrieked in pain at a mosquito bite. Showmen characterized male African American spectators in a similar vein as giddy and superstitious.

[…]

Actual big-top acts made this rhetorical relationship between the clown and the African American complete. In 1888 Eph Thompson trained the elephant John L. Sullivan at the Adam Forepaugh circus. Wearing a boxing glove at the end of his trunk, the elephant sparred with Thompson in the ring and frequently ‘‘punched’’ him so hard that Thompson went ﬂying over the ring bank.

Unlike the white trainer who dominated powerful animals, Thompson played a clownish coward—constantly vanquished by the boxing pachyderm—and consequently remained unthreatening to Euroamerican audiences. Yet Thompson still had a diﬃcult time ﬁnding employment with American shows. As a result, he moved to Europe where his career ﬂourished.

In line with the tenets of nineteenth-century romantic racialism, show-men’s portrayals of black men and clowns reﬂected contemporary representations of white women: late-nineteenth-century scientists argued that ‘‘excessive’’ emotionalism deﬁned women, racial ‘‘savages,’’ and children of all races. The German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel and the Americans Edward Drinker Cope and G. Stanley Hall were all proponents of recapitulation theory, positing that every organism repeats the life history of its ‘‘race’’ within its own lifetime, evolving through the less developed forms of its ancestors on its path to maturity. They contended that Euroamerican women and ‘‘primitives’’ remained mentally and emotionally ﬁxed in lower ancestral stages of evolution. Accordingly, only white boys were physiologically and mentally capable of reaching the highest stages of racial and gender development as fully evolved men. This line of thought used pseudoempirical phrenological evidence to claim that African American men were perpetually emotional and juvenile, just like the clown.

The painted clown acted out childish behaviors and infantile pleasures. He reveled in dirt, cried freely, openly adored the serious ‘‘adult’’ acts, and played physical pranks on everybody, from ringmaster to the audience. If playing a hobo (popularized most fully by Emmett Kelly’s ‘‘Willie’’ tramp character during the Depression, when at times nearly one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed), the auguste clown’s persona was deﬁned by dirt. Laughing loudly at the clown’s antics perhaps transported audiences back to the unrestrained pleasures of their own collective infancy and childhood.

More than a ‘‘low Other’’ who simply represented a tantalizing version of what they were not, the unfettered clown symbolized what clock-bound, alienated adult Euroamerican men perhaps felt they had lost.

Even the red noses have their origins in racist stereotypes.

From Mikita Brottman, Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor:

While the Native American plains tribes had their own various manifestations of the Trickster figure, the main clown type of non-Native Americans was not the August, as it was in Europe, but the character clown… After the [Civil War] ended, however, one particular style of character clown came into prominence: the Hobo.

Eric Lott describes how the Hobo figure was originally based on the blackface minstrel clowns (hence the exaggerated white mouths) who portrayed the figures of African Americans made homeless by the ravages of the Civil War.

Lott explains that the Hobo character clown is a distinctly American invention, with his tattered hat, huge white mouth, three days’ growth of beard, torn clothes, and cartoon alcoholic’s big red nose. […] It seems ironic that such mawkishly appealing personalities had their roots in the miseries of poverty and oppression and the disfigurements of alcoholism and venereal disease.

Holy sht. I knew something was up when I compared the two photos! Something didn’t seem right… and i was right!

I never would have even thought to make that connection before I saw that post so thank you for giving me something to look into - I truly learn more from this website than I ever will in any class

huh. you really do learn something new every day.

Racism abound…

minstrelsy was the first form of American national popular/mass culture - it’s the foundation for everything that came after it, including vaudeville, the circus, cartoons, everything. Eric Lott’s Love and Theft lays this out really well.

God

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:10:55 -0400

"Black lesbian relationships pose little threat to ‘self-defined’ Black men and women secure in their..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:15:00 -0400

““Black lesbian relationships pose little threat to ‘self-defined’ Black men and women secure in their sexualities. But loving relationships among Black women do pose a tremendous threat to systems of intersecting oppressions. How dare these women love one another in a context that deems Black women as a collectivity so unlovable and devalued?””

- Patricia Hill Collins (via staying-true)

writeswrongs: Black Man to Lose Scholarship For Refusing Racist...

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:13:21 -0400

writeswrongs:

Black Man to Lose Scholarship For Refusing Racist Assignment

Timothy McNair is a graduate student of opera at Northwestern University’s famed Bienen School of Music. McNair is at the school on a full scholarship, but the 25-year-old is standing up to his school after his professor, Donald Nally, gave him an assignment to perform a song created by a racist American poet named Walt Whitman. McNair asked his instructor if he could be assigned to perform the work of other artists but Nally denied him the opportunity and told him if he didn’t turn in all of his completed work by Friday, May 17th he’d receive a failing grade. McNair refused.

“Certainly I do not deserve to fail this class. I have a 3.7 GPA. I’m an officer on three committees of this university. So what is deserving for me? Is to be able to perform two pieces and have the third piece removed because of the insensitivity,” McNair told Chicago’s WGN news station. Although the piece McNair is instructed to perform does not contain any blatant racism, McNair believes it is still offensive that he was asked to complete the works of a devout racist. “We know (he) was historically racist. He’s called African Americans ‘baboons’ and was for oppressing voting rights,” McNair said of Whitman.

theunseeliequeen: Favorite Little Things → Tea

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:11:21 -0400

theunseeliequeen:

Favorite Little Things → Tea

illegal plum pudding: TUMBLRS ASSEMBLE!

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:14:36 -0400

illegal plum pudding: TUMBLRS ASSEMBLE!:

kelsium:

As many of you know, our friend Rosa Sparks is having a real shit time of it lately. The most recent in a long string of personal upheavals is that the house where she and her daughter live was just robbed, and many of their personal belongings were taken. Rosa is about to start…

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:45:51 -0400

theblacksophisticate: My all-time fave LIVE performance by...

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:59:17 -0400

theblacksophisticate:

My all-time fave LIVE performance by Nancy Wilson:
‘Teach Me Tonight’ in Lake Tahoe, ‘82.

There are NONE like her.

Absolutely exquisite photographs of James Baldwin in turkey...

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:54:25 -0400

Absolutely exquisite photographs of James Baldwin in turkey taken from yes magazine’s spread. inspiring, indeed. what spirited and brilliant soul wants to be my travel buddy and muse? let’s live.

Photo

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:44:43 -0400

artruby: Gordon Parks, Segregated drinking fountain, Mobile,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:38:35 -0400

artruby:

Gordon Parks, Segregated drinking fountain, Mobile, Alabama, 1956, (1956) at Adamson Gallery.

jhameia: myasphyxiatedmind: norsegays: astrolope: People...

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:12:59 -0400

jhameia:

myasphyxiatedmind:

norsegays:

astrolope:

People being angry about ~dem gays~ on Target’s Facebook.

I just want to give my two cents on this and tell you a story.

A couple weeks ago, I was hired at Target. I have a job at Target. Not a big deal right?

It is a big deal because i’m a transman.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that it’s hard for me, my brothers, and sisters to get a job. There are legal restraints regarding the job and if you don’t pass, it’s hard to be taken seriously at a job interview.

Right on the application, it asks what your preferred name is. It also asks if there is anything that target should know. I put the fact that I am a transman, expecting not to get a call because usually when you put that down, people will throw out the application. I got TWO interviews.

At the interview, they asked me about it. I told them I am on hormones and they told me that they didn’t care. Not in the sense that they don’t emotionally care, but that it didn’t matter. I was male and that’s all that mattered. They also told me that they give sex same couples benefits in states that do not recognize them as a married couple.

At my job orientation, I was not misgendered once. Even my supervisors who weren’t sure of my gender avoided pronoun use, which I found only happens when you’ve had pronoun training. They gave me a name tag with my preferred name and didn’t ask questions. I felt safe and respected, which is huge for a trans* person.

TLDR: Target is amazing not just for the LGB, but also the T. Shop there for the rest of your life.

Whelp, I’m buying everything from Target.

Wow.

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:43:38 -0400

eternallybeautifullyblack: This photo of Toni Morrison and Maya...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:20:12 -0400

eternallybeautifullyblack:

This photo of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou is so utterly epic that I can look directly at it. It would be like staring into the sun.

imjustmygodgivenname:

blackwomenunchecked:

“Black women have always been friends. I mean, if you didn’t have each other you had nothing.”
-Toni Morrison

*weeps at the perfection of this photo*

ahhhh yesss

knowledgeequalsblackpower: theatlantic: Farm-to-Table in...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:16:18 -0400

knowledgeequalsblackpower:

theatlantic:

Farm-to-Table in Communities of Color

It’s true that, for youth of color, heading back to the farm recalls a fraught history of slavery and exploitive migrant labor. She says that immigrant youth often say, “Why would I go back to the farm that my immigrant parents worked so hard to get us off of?” For young people of color, claiming direct access to food by picking up the pitchfork at a local urban farm can feel like a step backwards.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

When it comes to funding, black farmers receive about one-third or less than what other farmers receive, which has resulted, Gail Myers points out, in black farmers losing their land. In fact, this asymmetry led a group of black farmers to sue the USDA for damages, claiming discriminatory treatment. The farmers agreed to a settlement, and in 1999, over 15,000 claimants received restitutions. Soon afterward, Native American, Latino, and female farmers stepped forward with their own civil rights lawsuits against the USDA. Discriminatory lending has cost the federal government billions in settlements.

Photo

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:12:49 -0400

"You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:08:25 -0400

“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory.”

- Toni Morrison (via love-is-merely-a-dissident)