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I just read “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates… it’s such a well-written, informative piece about what our next steps should be as Americans. It goes deep into our history and highlights specific examples of how we have neglected rights that our Constitution grants. The reading isn’t tough. It moves back and forth through time often, but it feels more like sitting on a rocking chair and being swayed.

I’ve pasted some quotes that shook me. Give the article a read, please. It’s long, but powerful. I must warn you that some images and statements are triggering. Tread thoughtfully.

Continue reading “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Reparations”

Today I read a pair of blogposts and attached articles analyzing Toni Morrison/Paradiso that I felt would go together wonderfully.

The first was by Hannah, and included this article describing in Zhizekian terms how tyrants create their oppressive regimes.  To summarize: the tyrants create an evil other, which they give responsibility for all their nation’s problems, (problems usually caused by themselves.)  they then set about violently destroying that other.  I feel that Toni Morrison’s application of this methodology within Paradiso is blatant and twofold.  first, the obvious assault on the covenant.  Second, 8rock’s ostracizing of any family or person with lighter skin, up to letting a pregnant woman die with her baby for that reason.  “Even with their wives begging they came up with excuses because they looked down on you,” (197.) Continue reading “Scapegoats, Morrison, and how a paradise can be ruined.”

www.geneseo.edu

Please take the time to read this essay, “Making America White Again,” by the author of our class’s readings, Toni Morrison. She talks about a push and pull: the whitening of America. The topic she discusses makes me think of the progress that we have made in recent years. Morrison writes “These sacrifices, made by supposedly tough white men, who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status.” It makes me question if I have taken much of what the United States has given to me and my family for granted.

 

I found the fact that Morrison includes Patricia as a kind of oral historian in Paradise to be jarring considering the fact that I worked at a museum which created a project that recorded the histories of people who are of mixed descent. I wanted to do some work addressing the parallels between Patricia and the work that Brooklyn Historical Society did using the blog post that I wrote about Lacy Shwartz, a mixed-race woman whose Jewish family never told her that she was half black.

Shwartz, whose story is documented in her short documentary, Little White Lie, talked about the sentiments she garnered as a biracial woman. She said that being mixed was a category of being black, “When you are defaulted into the black student union, even though you have black pigment in your skin, there is also a white privilege that you have to let go of. I’m aware of it and I definitely certainly embody it.” Shwartz talked about how as a light-skinned black woman, she at times had a “passing privilege,” which she had to let go of. The same idea is built upon in Morrison’s Paradise.

Continue reading “Drawing Parallels through Oral Histories”

My main question entering into this project was about discussing the effects of a lesbian character’s death on viewers, especially viewers who identify as lesbians or bisexual. In finding articles, I did not necessarily find much about the effects of lesbian character death on viewers. What I did find were numerous articles on the general topic of LGB representation in entertainment media.

Continue reading “What Scholars have to say about Lesbian People in Entertainment Media”

Here is something that should be acknowledged; we made national news. A swastika was painted on a dorm hall with the word “Trump.” Look, Time mentions us.

These kind of acts have increased since the election and they have been met with social outrage. I’ll come back to this. Continue reading “Just Make It Go Away”

For those of you who might not have seen it, I just wanted to share an article that Dr.McCoy alluded to in our class the other day and had retweeted on twitter. Jamelle Bouie’s “White Won” is both a look at some of the initial emotions following the results from Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning and is an attempt to discuss our nation’s “long cycle of progress and backlash.” I think that the article provides an interesting dialogue to the currently ongoing and expanding conversation, as well as relates to the topic of churning that we have seen throughout Morrison’s works.

In Paradise, Morrison returns us as readers to tracking and tracing. “Ruby” begins a cascade that attends to the violence of those concepts, but I urge you at the same time also to be alert to how the novel insists once again on the both/and.

As part of that, here’s a link to a searchable (yes) index of the “Lost Friends” column that ran in the New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate. The column, according to the site’s homepage, ran for decades after 1877, and was composed of “messages from individuals seeking loved ones lost in slavery.”

I woke up today disoriented, unable to think clearly about our country’s future. Yesterday, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. America has spoken. Although this means that many of our constitutional rights have taken a hit with a win by Trump’s linear and alienating rhetoric, it also means that we must come together to teach people love. I saw the following Saturday Night Live skit on my newsfeed this morning and it made me feel better. I hope that it leaves you all in the same spirits.