Date post: | 01-Jul-2015 |
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“When They Reminisce Over You, My God!”:
Reminiscing Racial Violence, In and Out of School
Carmen Kynard, Ph.D.John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Associate Professor of English
“They Reminisce Over You”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKJ9fRa2MTc
(Pete Rock and CL Smooth on Arsenio Hall)
End of first verse and C.L. Smooth’s last two bars:Déjà vu, Tell You What I’m Gonna Do
When They Reminisce Over You, My God!The weight and impact of such re-remembering is exactly what schools quite actively and deliberately keep us from doing.
Zeus Leonardo’s work asks us to understand:
•Problems of research and action theorized solely from the location of white privilege •“White privilege” is a passive description of white racial domination•Racial domination never happens without active agents• Whiteness is not a state of being dominant•Whiteness is a calculated and calculating series of racist processes.
“Backwater Blues” by Bessie SmithI woke up this mornin', can't even get out of
my doorI woke up this mornin', can't even get out of my doorThere's been enough trouble to
make a poor girl wonder where she want to go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRTHHkeQ8sE
In 1927, the Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000
square miles
Structural and institutional racism are NOT subtle or
invisible.
Oppression could never work if it were invisible or
unfelt.
“I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others
on fire.” ~Cornel West, Brother West
“Being oppressed means the absence of
choices.” ~bell hooks
“The blues women did not passively reflect the vast social
changes of their time; they provided new ways of thinking
about these changes, alternative conceptions of the physical and
social world for their audience of migrating and urban women and
men, and social models for women who aspired to escape from and now improve their
conditions of existence.” ~Hazel Carby
Excerpt from my syllabus:
Writing about texts is perhaps the singlemost, common trademark
for the kind of writing and thinking that is expected of you in the academy. However, this does NOT mean: that you write
about things you don’t care about, that you write as if you sound like an encyclopedia/
wikipedia, that you omit your own voice and perspective, that you
cannot be creative and energetic….
… that you must sound like the type of person who might wear wool/plaid jackets with suede
patches on the elbows in order to be taken seriously, that you
cannot be everything that makes up your multiple selves, that you
cannot be Hip Hop, Soul, Bachata, Bomba, Metal, or Rock-
N-Roll, that you cannot have some fun with it. You do not give up who you are to be an academic writer; on the contrary, you take who are even MORE seriously.
From the Feminist Wire…Monica Casper makes a
compelling case: that we need to talk about “specifically the
historical, systemic racism of white women.” And Heather Laine
Talley makes it clear that expressions like “well, not all
white women/white feminists are like that” is a form of white
denial and bad allying.
From Fannie Lou Hamer…
“I’m just up here to rap and tell you
what it is and to tell it like it is.”
“Until I Am Free, You Are Not Free Either” (1971 speech ay UW-Madison)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZYinmLyOxI
“When They Reminisce Over You, My God!”: Reminiscing Racial Violence, In & Out of School
Carmen Kynard, [email protected]