This Silver Works photo brings to mind W.E.B. Du Bois’s important concept of “double consciousness,” though it may not be an exact pictorial representation. Symbolically, it might be worth it to ponder the “whiteness” of the clouds in this particular image.
In his 2009 JAC article, “‘Nah, We Straight”: An Argument Against Code Switching,” Vershawn Ashanti Young makes the case for what he terms “code meshing.” Using both Spanglish and AAE (African American English) in his definition, Young writes that code meshing is “blending dos idiomas or copping enough standard English to really make yo’ AAE be Da Bomb” (p. 50). In other words, code meshing is the “blending and concurrent use of American English dialects in formal, discursive products, such as political speeches, student papers, and media interviews” (p. 51). Code switching, represented in such works as Wheeler and Swords’s Code Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classrooms (2006), advocates the separation of the way African American students communicate at home and the way they communicate at school or at work. Young likens this approach to language instruction to segregation and Jim Crow legislation, mentioning Justice Billings Brown’s “phony logic” in the 1954 Brown v. The Board of Education decision regarding the “separate but equal” notion (p. 53). He then quotes Gerald Graff to bring his point home: “Linguistic integration is better than segregation” (p. 53). In contrast to the Wheeler and Swords volume, Young offers Catherine Prendergast’s Literacy and Racial Justice: The Politics of Learning after Brown v. The Board of Education (2003) as a sort of pedagogical antidote. This book “uncovers the segregationist practices that still inform the instruction of black students” and points out that literacy teachers who adhere to code switching are “accomplices, often unwittingly, in the continuation of racial inequality” (p. 53). Throughout the article, Young deploys W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” suggesting that code switching is an unfortunate continuation of a “racial schizophrenia” that comes about due to (1) looking always at oneself through the eyes of Caucasians and having to (2) reconcile psychologically one’s state of what might be called Schrödinger’s citizenship (being a citizen and a non-citizen at the same time) (p. 52). Young also peppers his essay with anecdotes of confrontational encounters with white and African American teachers who advocate code switching to what he very much sees as the detriment of students. (Interestingly, bell hooks starts Chapter Eight of Black Looks (1992) with an anecdote blending personal experience with theoretical insight.) The “nah, we straight” in the title of his article comes from President Barak Obama’s reply to a waitress concerning change at Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C. While acknowledging that Obama is an excellent role model, he faults the 44th President’s use of code switching, arguing that his “hyper-performed standard language mastery,” “professorial” style of vocal delivery, and “polysyllabic” word choice may very well “(over) compensate for the stigma of [his] race” (p. 65).
In Chapter Six of her book Women, Race, & Class (1981), “Education and Liberation: Black Women’s Perspective,” Angela Davis discusses the drive and passion of enslaved Africans in America for education. (Please note: page numbers here correspond to the ebook PDF.) As the subtitle of her chapter implies, she focuses on Black women, although she brings up Black male perspectives (W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass) as well as the admirable and impressive efforts of of white women. One of the most interesting facts Davis mentions in her chapter is that a Black woman, Lucy Terry Prince, was the first woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. One of the most interesting observations Davis makes is that the racist view that Black people have no interest in learning (or ability to learn) is very much belied by the enthusiasm and great thirst for knowledge exhibited by African Americans both during slavery and after emancipation. White women like Myrtilla Miner and Black women like Susie King Taylor fought for education for themselves and others at great personal risk. Despite the name of her chapter, Davis’s key message seems to be strength through togetherness. She writes that “[t]he history of women’s struggle for education in the United States reached a true peak when Black and white women together led the post-Civil War battle against illiteracy in the South. Their unity and solidarity preserved and confirmed one of our history’s most fruitful promises” (p. 65/166). In Chapter Thirteen of her book, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” Davis makes the case for the socialization of housework and for increasing job opportunities (particularly interesting and meaningful work) for women. Why hasn’t the socialization of housework happened yet? She writes that “[s]ocialized housework implies large government subsidies in order to guarantee accessibility to the working-class families whose need for such services is most obvious. Since little in the way of profits would result, industrialized housework—like all unprofitable enterprises—is anathema to the capitalist economy” (p. 128/166). So where does the title of her chapter come from? Davis argues that “the rapid expansion of the female labor force means that more and more women are finding it increasingly difficult to excel as housewives according to the traditional standards. In other words, the industrialization of housework, along with the socialization of housework, is becoming an objective social need” (p. 128/166). For this reason, “[h]ousework as individual women’s private responsibility and as female labor performed under primitive technical conditions, may finally be approaching historical obsolescence” (p. 129/166). She points out that prior to the Industrial Revolution, women’s domestic roles were quite varied and far more creative than housework after the capitalist factory system. Black women since the time of slavery have had to perform labor that white women traditionally have not had to perform. Davis writes that Black women “toiled alongside their men in the cotton and tobacco fields, and when industry moved into the South, they could be seen in tobacco factories, sugar refineries and even in lumber mills and on crews pounding steel for the railroads. In labor, slave women were the equals of their men” (p. 132/166). Davis makes the case for socialism in this chapter, particularly as this system relates to women and work. She writes that “t]he only significant steps toward ending domestic slavery have in fact been taken in the existing socialist countries” (p. 139/166). Women of working-class backgrounds, therefore, have every reason in the world, for Davis, to support socialism and to push for a political change in that direction. Capitalism’s desire for an expanding work force combined with the growing understanding that women who have children cannot care for those children and work in non-domestic environments at the same time suggest a paradox (or is it something ironic?): “Moreover, under capitalism, campaigns for jobs on an equal basis with men, combined with movements for institutions such as subsidized public child care, contain an explosive revolutionary potential” (p. 136/166).
Chapter Eight of bell hooks‘s book, Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), deals with portrayals of Black female sexuality in music, music videos, fashion magazines, and cinema. She discusses Sarah Bartmann (the first name is sometimes spelled Sara and the surname is sometimes spelled Baartman)—best known by the racist moniker “the Hottentot Venus”—who was relentlessly objectified in life and death. She also discusses Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Iman, Naomi Campbell, and Rae Dawn Chong. Her chief concern is the manipulation and commodification of Black women’s bodies for the erotic pleasure and excitement of Black and white male consumers of media. She suggests that women celebrities of color who have long struggled with abusive male presence in their lives have a very difficult time centering their lives around feminist, anti-racist self-empowerment. For example, she writes that “[l]eaving Ike, after many years . . . because his violence is uncontrollable, [Tina] Turner takes with her the “image” he created” (p. 126). “Despite her experience of abuse,” hooks continues, “rooted in sexist and racist objectification, Turner appropriated the “wild woman” image, using it for career advancement” (p. 126). Moreover, after viewing a PBS special on Aretha Franklin (part of the American Masters series, I am guessing) and commenting on an ill-advised sartorial choice, hooks tells us that “it undermined the insistence in the film that she had overcome sexual victimization and remained a powerful singer; the latter seemed more likely than the former” (p. 128). She urges the creation of “oppositional space,” implying both a freedom (or freeing) from and an active resistance to patriarchy (p. 132). She writes that “[w]hen black women relate to our bodies, our sexuality, in ways that place erotic recognition, desire, pleasure, and fulfillment at the center of our efforts to create radical black female subjectivity, we can make new and different representations of ourselves as sexual subjects” (p. 131).
Digital WRTC 