like water for chocolate

Africana studies has the singular history of being a field that is both personal and academic. It is a field where possibility and malleability reign supreme. For students whose vocational education purposely and systematically excluded the histories, literature, and art of Africana peoples, Africana studies could serve as a second education, a (hopefully) diasporic family history.  For students who have grown up in predominantly white spaces, Africana programs have the capacity to serve as a quest for a reimagined and realized black self. The field has transformative power as it is the reflection of self, the world, and it’s future. However it’s this mixture of the personal and academic that has proved to be both the field’s point of success and failure.

Like many of the scholars who pondered the future of Africana studies, I too feel that Africana studies, as I’ve experienced it, has focused excessively on deconstructing white supremacist and hegemonic thought and practice (Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory). For survey courses in the discipline this focus on deconstruction is not only important but also necessary.  However, the study should move past this stasis. As students plunge deeper into the field, the focus should also deepen. I suggest that courses include the radical thought that is explored in black feminism and womanism, modern articles/videos/and or movements (digital or otherwise), or rarely called upon texts that complicate or reformulate daily black life.

Furthermore Africana study both in survey and major courses need to incorporate an international narrative. Here I do not mean a simple additive course of action that tokenizes Afro-Latino, Afro-European, and African thought (Higginbotham, Designing an Inclusive Curriculum). I mean an infusing of various scholars from these regions at the inception of Africana education. Because Africana studies is the intersection of the personal and the political, American institutions often have ignored or bypassed other texts because they see them as irrelevant to their national narrative. We must not only be cognizant of this failing but also realize that our experiences are a part of a larger dialogue. If Africana studies wishes to continue being the transformative field it is, it must implement this change. This would inhibit our theories from being too Americentric and would encourage future endeavors to truly encapsulate the African diaspora. It would also even cover the aforementioned point of finding new/radical thinkers instead of regurgitation of ‘classic texts’.

And we can’t stop there. As Africana is an interdisciplinary field, its reach should even extend to quantitative data. Similar to Psychological Statistics, an Africana Studies and Statistics course would teach not only the formulation of numbers but also the ways in which statistics are manipulated in various studies in relation to Africana peoples. The class would effectively prepare students to use this quantitative practice in future research, and further integrate Africana studies in other quantitatively drive fields.

Ultimately I’m calling for a breath of new life into the field. An understanding of the passage of time and shortcomings that feeds the future of Africana studies. We need to incorporate black women, international radical thought, quantitative study, digital media, sex and sexuality, and the arts as all necessary and integral subjects to this field. I’m calling for the cessation of additive education in favor of whole-hearted inclusion. For we are not where we were when Africana Studies began. We should no longer centralize white theory and black male radicalism in our work. As we are expanding our community our study should too. We must move past deconstruction in order to build lasting education for our youth.

Word count: 589

Works Cited

Higginbotham, Elizabeth. “Designing an Inclusive Curriculum: Bringing All Women Into the Core,” Words of Fire. Print. The New Press: New York, NY. 1995.  480

When dealing with social media platforms as spaces of activism these sites can be innovative, powerful, and fast-moving at best, and at its worst chaotic and unfocused. The line between these two distinctions is actually slighter than one might realize. This understanding of cyber activism became clearer when faced with the question “What is contemporary ‘blacktivism’ according to Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram?”

Being a avid user of the popular blogging platform, Tumblr, and as such well-versed in the language and etiquette of the site, I sought my answer through my dashboard. Tumblr is composed of a endless scroll, comparable to Facebook’s newsfeed, that displays every user you ‘follow”s posts that can consist of either a link, photo, video, mp3, or text file that can be organized by ‘tags’. Like Twitter, there is a give and take between control: you cannot control what users post, but you can control who you follow. You ultimately build up the queue of information displayed on your dashboard.

This rule of thumb on Tumblr already an issue in itself, as it’s not only necessary to have an account to view such information, but it also requires stock knowledge of which users promote social activism the most. Already in this way, Tumblr blacktivism is exclusive in the broader sense of the term.  However because I am an established user of 5 years, this constraint only appeared in my thoughts after my study.

Taking into account the formatting and style of the website (and the advantage of 5 years of knowledge), I began my study of 30 minutes scrolling down my dashboard sure that out of my selected 500 some users one would surely post something under the activism tree. After about a minute of scrolling I saw a linked post that described the new case of Ebola in Liberia as an STD. The random post was one centered on awareness, not truly giving a solution to a possible rebirth of the Ebola crisis. And for a while this was the only post I saw. Because Tumblr is composed as a live feed, the minutes I scrolled down the dashboard before I encountered another post for social justice felt like eons.

It wasn’t until I encountered a post by a rather prominent Tumblr user in both the black and activist circles that my research progressed. This individual posted a series of inforgraphics that described the various levels of Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory, the fraught Palestinian citizenship across Israel and Palestine, and general problematic restriction of Palestinian people. The post was significantly informative as most portrayals of Palestine capitalize on the destruction of the Gaza Strip rather than the conditions that provide for this kind of environment, and the surrounding oppressions widespread through out the country. I then opened up another tab in my web browser to later peruse the user’s account, sure of the rich content in store, simultaneously still looking for another possible user to study. Right underneath their post Micdotcom, an active news source, posted GIFs of Porsha Olayiwola’s  poem that criticizes the misogynoir latent in police brutality discourse and the general dismissal of the pain black women face at the hands of black men.

Having at least two users under my belt and just ten minutes left of study, I decided to quickly delve deeper into each site. The first user’s activism centered mostly on the personal: crowdfunding for a poor black transwoman, a black family nearing homelessness, and written text posts that criticize various tangents of their multiple jeopardies as a queer transman of color. The text posts all had a least a thousand ‘notes’, which consisted of either likes or ‘reblogs’ (when users repost the content to their blogs). Furthermore you could see a constant rapport developing on these text posts that pursued discourse or fermented friendships. On this given users page the queer community of color was strong and accounted for. Switching tabs to Micdotcom, the website served as a curated collection of black internet activism across platforms. Screenshots of tweets raising awareness against recent police brutalities (#JusticeforJason, #SayHerName to name a couple), gifs of award shows and videos, news clips, and original Tumblr user posts decorated the page. Micdotcom served as a hub of generalized activism rather than specific black communal activist space.

It is in this way that Tumblr both triumphs and fails as a platform for social change. On one hand the site is a space for endless possibilities that allow for news sources and user-created online ‘zines to provide a constant stream of information crucial for social justice. These carefully curated hubs of information are a great start for both users and visitors of Tumblr. One does not need membership to view or message the copious amount of blogs present on the site. However their existence does not necessitate the existence of black community on Tumblr, individual users do. One would need to follow both prominent and random bloggers in the black community on Tumblr. These bloggers, your chosen informants, brothers, and sisters dictate your involvement with blacktivism. They raise causes for “Black Tumblr” to rally against, to raise money for, or even formally petition against on “Change.org”. These bloggers can help you through your journey of understanding matrices of oppression in your daily life, as well as navigate questions of gender/sexual/racial identity through direct messages, text posts, photos and videos open for commentary…..provided that you follow them. In addition to this slight oversight black users cannot be streamlined in the fighting of antiblackness. Some users are a part of “Queer Tumblr” or “Transgender Tumblr”or the dreaded “Barbershop Tumblr” (a part of Tumblr which is characterized by pro-black homophobic misogynoiristic users). Various pockets of Tumblr wholesale ignore some oppressions, such as colorism, to maintain their privilege and membership to the black community simultaneously. Tumblr can be a place rife with the schisms that plague physical activist spaces.

Ethical issues aside, in this sort of research Tumblr even fails in organization. Like Twitter it employs the hashtag system to organize posts, in order to make searches easier for users and non-users, however unlike Twitter, these tags are hardly agreed upon and are used liberally. Users sometimes use the tag system to input their commentary to protect the aesthetic integrity of a post. This so-called ‘talking in the tags’ makes for a chaotic black hole of information that can only be retrieved if you search that particular blogger’s archive. Tumblr has the potential to be a mess of epic proportion.

Ultimately Tumblr as a space for cyber black activism continuously toes the line of innovation and chaos. The ample opportunity for commentary and grassroot movement give Tumblr the chance to make virtual spaces of social justice bleed into the real world. However this is constantly mired by the disorganization, petty squabbles between users, and randomization of posts that is present on the site.

Word Count: 1138

Being an English major with a passionate (and at times questionable) love of young adult novels, I thought I should center my final project on teen readership. Aside from the obvious issues of lack of black representation in the genre, I had questions about how black teens are reading these texts, and what they’re reading.

When I reflect on my teenage years, most of the stories I remembered reading and loving were supernatural, sci-fi, and… well, white. This wasn’t to say I didn’t read any Morrison and the like, but in the young adult section all the black authors had stories of tragedy. In my time as a teen I maybe came across 2 books that had main characters of color doing “normal” teen things or were in fantasy worlds. Too much of our stories centered on gang violence, slavery, or some tragedy stationed in an ambiguous Africa (shade to publishers, not the authors). I recognized that these stories being told were necessary to our literary canon, but I hungered for stories of black teens being black teens. So with no solution in site I continued to read fantastical novels.

But when I look back I wonder to myself was that really it? Was it because I couldn’t find black fantasy or was it because my environment was predominately white? I wanted to be able to relate with my friends in school and read what they read, and they weren’t reading Octavia Butler, Jamaica Kincaid, or even Sista Souljah. My mom was the one who introduced The Coldest Winter Ever, the novel that spawned street lit as we know it and rocked almost every black girls’ world but mine, to me. My church friends and Del-teens group* (read: my black girl friends) loved the novel, yet I couldn’t even finish it. I hated it and I felt defective for it. I wondered why I could relate or at least sympathize with characters who time traveled, started revolutions, or saw ghosts, but couldn’t find it in myself to even like Winter Santiaga. So this served as a driving force for my project. “How do predominately white environments (in academia) effect black female readership?”

Together with Prof. Manigault-Bryant, we formulated the idea of a book club with primarily underclassmen at Williams to read The Coldest Winter Ever and The Hunger Games to see how black women are reading blackness and alternatively whiteness (in THG) in these novels. So far I expect questions of desiring a mirror vs. window out in literature/reality vs. fantasy, urban vs. suburban environments, and school vs. home in dealing with books to crop up, but I never know what this will bring. I’m hoping for 5 sessions (two with THG, two with TCWE, and 1 wrap-up) to take place in November, but we’ll see.

This is where I’m at now.

*Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Albany chapter had a female youth group I was a part of until my senior year in high school.

Interpreting Performance

Last night, urged by the promise of an academic grade and a chance to practice real-time ethnographic research, I attended the Williams’ Campaign Ultra Lounge event. Held in the hub of student life, there in Paresky Center a mixture of students, professors, alumni and their children gathered for free food, gifts, and a host of other side attractions with the main one being the Williams College Jazz Band… or at least that was my perception.

I arrived at the event around 7:40 PM, wanting to get a chance to set up, take in my surroundings, and to eat since the event was slated to start at 8:30. I walked into Paresky Center entering Baxter Hall expecting the dimmed lights, hors-d’oeuvres, and décor suitable for an evening event, as the poster advertised.

Instead I walked into a perfunctory mish-mash of haphazard signs, some misspelled, luxurious appetizer tables, scantily decorated standing tables, and a solitary stage dotted with instruments and three purple columns too add some sense of flair (that admittedly it didn’t do much) to the setup. As the outdoor activities drew to a close, numerous bodies poured inside the center searching for warmth. The confused and excited crowd seemed more concerned with the heady spread of fall themed ‘deserts’ than the impending performance.

Anxious to begin our observation and participate in the night’s festivities that included a photo booth and caricature drawings, my classmates and I decided to staunch the pain of the wait with apple crumble in a cup, hot cider, chicken wings, and random note taking. This bought us maybe 15 minutes until we noticed it was 8:36 and not a movement was made toward the stage. The lights were on at full power and errant conversations about celebrities and people exchanging pleasantries surrounded me. Hurried students tried to hunt down the source of the ‘free gift’ (a portable phone charger adorned with the Campaign motto: “Teach It Forward”) a lucky 250 people would get for attending the event. The occasional parent-child duo milled around unsure of the ‘next big surprise’ the Campaign had in store for them.

Everything about this atmosphere read as if people could care less about the band and it’s apparent tardiness except for my classmates and I. So what did we do? Took more notes. The ferocity of our note taking interested many the passer by. “What are you guys writing? Is that, like, homework?” “What’s this little writing circle you guys have going on?” And the plain, almost aggressive “What is that?” were the questions our peers and alumni had for us. At first I responded saying that this “was a part of our Africana studies senior seminar class, and [that] we’re currently studying performance ethnography. We’re supposed to be taking notes on the jazz performance.” And with that people either joked about their apparent absence or left us alone, satisfied with the answer; but as the night wore on I got lazier and lazier and wound up saying, “Yeah this is homework for class” with a what-can-you-do face. In hindsight stationing ourselves in the back of the hall at standing table in the center wasn’t the brightest idea. We made a quasi-spectacle of ourselves in the absence of the band.

After these visits we realized this on some level and stopped taking notes. Partially tired of writing and tired of waiting, we took a break. My two classmates and I turned to the childhood game of *M*A*S*H*, to pass the time. It would be an understatement to say that this wait hardly put us in the mood to watch a performance. Even the crowd grew weary of waiting and petered out to a mere 70 some odd people still floating around. Fast-forward a whopping 30 minutes later, members of the band saunter onto stage and eek out a couple notes. I shook my head in disbelief at my cellphone screen that read 9:50 PM. The band seemed just as tired as I felt. Their movements oozed nonchalance as they slowly tested out the sound of their instruments. A blare of a horn here, a lazy sax note there, and timid keying of a piano made up the first sounds of the Williams Jazz Ensemble. Eventually they found it in themselves to play “Play That Funky Music”.

Being the first number of the show, the performance was still getting its legs. The musicians peered over at each other trying to match nonverbal cues with the rise and falls of the song. After a time the band seemed to ‘gel’ with one another. The base and the drums created an infallible foundation on which the horns, the saxophone, and the piano keys not only stood but also weaved in and out of one another. The band seemed to actually like what they were playing. For a moment it didn’t seem obvious to the meager audience that they were contractually obligated to be here.

However the true magic happened when another student provided vocals to the instrumental. At first it was unclear as to if he was a part of the ensemble. He sat down on the edge of the stage for about 20 minutes of the performance, and all the sudden he started vocalizing. Low and timid at first the voice seemed lost in the muddle of music, but as the song progressed so did the voice. With a bowed head and singular concentration the vocalist made his words stronger, clearer, filled with intent. It seemed as though the others felt this intention; the saxophone player especially. He not only swayed fervently to the singer’s words but he replied to them. The rest of the band lived within the pocket of music the two created. Though the crowd had dwindled to nil, the band played their best number. Two spectators even got up to dance to the smooth sound. In that juicy moment what happened could be described by Dwight Conquergood’s principal of dialogical performance:

This performative stance struggles to bring together different voices, world

views, value systems, and beliefs so that hey can have a conversation with

one another. The aim of dialogical performance is to bring the self and the

other so that they can question, debate, and challenge one another (Conquergood, 9).

The musicians heard each other’s ideas and expounded on them, responded. The people in the crowd saw this exchange of ideas and internalized them into their bodies. Though these ideas I am speaking of are purely abstract it doesn’t change the act of dialogue. Live music and dance is always a conversation, whether it is one-sided is up to the performers themselves. In this moment such an exchange was present. In this moment this was a good performance. However that crumbled quickly.

After becoming hyper aware of the fact they were playing to a mostly empty room, the musicians let the atmosphere die. They let this dialogue “dissolve [back] into the performer”, killing the beauty they had just created. They once again sounded as if they were in someone’s garage practicing for the hell of it, but not in a good way. The band seemed detached from the room, enveloped in themselves no longer reaching out for some sort of interaction with their intimate audience.

All this is to say that this was a lukewarm performance with little shining moments. Aside from two numbers, the jazz band seemed uninterested in their material and the space. The novelty of a heartfelt vocalist gave the performance the wings it needed, but just as quickly they came they left. The Williams Jazz Ensemble lacked connection, which made this event a venture I kind of regretted attending.