I might get the pizza thing ft. Baldwin, Yancy, Kominas
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My Dungeon Shook is a letter in which Baldwin is writing to a nephew "James", highlighting the harsh realities he and his ancestors have had to face being black in the US. He does so in a way that both offers experienced advice, but allows his nephew to be the owner of his own experience. Baldwin says on page 22, "Take no one's word for anything, including mine--but trust your experience. Know whence you came. If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go". This quote is particularly interesting as I believe it highlights Baldwin trying to portray that while racism and oppression from white people is a systematic issue and should be remembered, the way an individual experiences it varies from person to person. He is making it clear to James that his personal experience should be his main source of truth, and the history of his people is supplementary to that.
Baldwin's objective seems to shift as the letter progresses. Much of the beginning seems to be warning James of the dangers of believing the white man. On page 22, he says "Please try to remember that what they believe…does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear". This is quite simply Baldwin saying to pay the white men no mind, however later on the same page and onwards, he goes on to encourage James to "accept {white people} and accept them with love. For those innocent people have no other hope". Baldwin referring to the white folk as "innocent people" allowed me to consider the letter from both perspectives as I think that portions of the general sentiment of the letter could be intended for the white man as well. Similar to his advice to James, a white man born into a society that views black men as inferior will inevitably think the same, unless they "Take no one's word for anything…but trust your experience". Baldwin already mentions that many white men know they are mistaken, however, their history and ancestry allow this racism to perpetuate, unless they begin to listen to Baldwin's advice about only trusting one's self and escaping a cycle of prejudice.
In Yancy's Look a White, there is a continuation of the theme of white lies becoming the accepted truth. On page 2, when recalling Fanon's experience with the little white boy, she says "The little white boy's utterance is felicitous against a backdrop of white lies and myths about the black body. Yancy goes on to analyze Fanon's work regarding the white child, saying, "the white boy's racial practices are learned effortlessly, practices that are already in process". This makes Baldwin's advice much more interesting as this white child -- one of the "innocent people" is a product of his environment and at a young age is already perpetuating racial stereotypes, so my question becomes whether love and guidance is the correct approach when dealing with something so deeply rooted and unwilling to be faced by even those who dispute it internally. My question becomes even more prevalent later in the readings when the incident of James Craig Anderson being assaulted and run over is described. Are these the types of people we are supposed to love and somehow direct to the right path?
One last part of Yancy's introduction I found interesting was her quoting George Lipsitz: "Whiteness is everywhere in US culture, but it is very hard to see. Ars the unmarked category against which difference is constructed, whiteness never has to acknowledge its rule as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations. Jumping back to last week, this is a perfect analogy of when Said mentions that Europe benefits from the Orient, using it as a "surrogate and even underground self". In this case, to sculpt an identity against the norm is to be anything but white, because white is the "unmarked category".
The entire concept and execution of the 4 White Guys by Kominas is a satirical play on how everyone perceives white guys as harmless. The introduction with the story of Maher Khalil's story is, in my opinion, to set a precedent of real-world examples where profiling was experienced, but again with a humorous twist at the end. The stereotype of harmlessness is furthered with a Friends-esque title, theme song and captions, and playing tennis - a generally upper-class sport. All of this can be related to Lipsitz quote in Yancy's introduction about how whiteness is everywhere in US culture, and these 4 brown guys are just emphasizing that they are just 4 white guys so no harm no foul.
As for the pizza representing assimilation killing us all, Baldwin wrote "I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name". The Kominas eating the pizza is again just a humorous attempt at saying that if we continue to be confined to the spaces set for us by white people, that’s where we are born and that’s where we will die.
Note: This feels like a lot but I feel like I quoted a couple of times so hopefully it is not a difficult read