[Xmca-l] Re: Blackface and Gayface

[Greg Mcverry]

I meant prepared in traditional sense with hamhock or gizzards.

Recovering Vegan here myself.

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 12:47 PM Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <pmocombe@mocombeian.com>
wrote:

> Jacob,
>
> I hear what you are saying.  What about the so-called black police officers
> that participated in the cover-up of many of these deaths?  This work of
> non-fiction for black folks seem to be the product of two social class
> language games of black America, the black bourgeoisie and black underclass
> who want to speak for all black people.  In Haiti Obama is a white man
> because we do not define ourselves in relationship to skin-color but
> vis-à-vis a worldview/ethos.  Just the same, the vodou community in Haiti
> has been discriminated against for years by the churches of the West
> because
> of our acceptance of transgender, homosexuals, etc.  In Vodou metaphysics
> human beings are reincarnated sixteen times, 8 times as a female and 8
> times
> as male.  Homosexuality, transgender, etc. is either the product of
> residual
> psychic memories or the embodiment of a particular lwa (spirit), Erzulie
> Freda.  Hence the killing or discrimination of homosexuals, queers, etc.
> was
> not allowed until the Protestants emerged as a force on the island.  I say
> all of that to say, I am in agreement with you that the definition of black
> folks by blacks in the West, especially English-speaking world, is not
> accepted universally.
>
>
>
> Dr. Paul C. Mocombe
> President
> The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc.
> www.mocombeian.com
> www.readingroomcurriculum.com
> www.paulcmocombe.info
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jacob McWilliams
> Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 11:40 AM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Blackface and Gayface
>
> Your depiction of "the black community in America" presents a monolithic
> picture that I think isn't fair or true to the intricacies of racial/ethnic
> identity, community, and community affiliation that many on this listserv
> have investigated at length, on this listserv and in their own scholarship.
>
> Sure, the notion of "black identity" is constructed--as constructed,
> although to very different effect, as "white identity" is. And yet it's
> dangerous to be Black in America, regardless of whether a person "buys" the
> notion of black identity. A person who is perceived by others as Black
> might not identify as such, but that doesn't enable them to avoid the very
> real physical and systemic dangers that Black people face. None of the
> people responsible for the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and
> Freddie Gray and Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland cared whether they identified
> as Black, nor whether they were affiliated with a Black church or listened
> to rap music.
>
> My research focuses on queer and transgender issues in education, and when
> I describe gender as a social construct I commonly also include this quote
> from Julia Serano:
>
> "Instead of trying to fictionalize gender, let’s talk about the moments in
> life when gender feels all too real. Because gender doesn’t feel like drag
> when you’re a young trans child begging your parents not to cut your hair
> or not to force you to wear that dress. And gender doesn’t feel like a
> performance when, for the first time in your life, you feel safe and
> empowered enough to express yourself in ways that resonate with you, rather
> than remaining closeted for the benefit of others. And gender doesn’t feel
> like a construct when you finally find that special person whose body,
> personality, identity, and energy feels like a perfect fit with yours.
> Let’s stop trying to deconstruct gender into nonexistence, and instead
> start celebrating it as inexplicable, varied, profound, and intricate.
>
> So don’t you dare dismiss my gender as construct, drag, or performance. My
> gender is a work of non-fiction."
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Jacob McWilliams
> Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences Program
> University of Colorado Boulder
> j.mcwilliams@colorado.edu
> http://www.jennamcwilliams.com
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Dr. Paul C. Mocombe <
> pmocombe@mocombeian.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Jacob
> > Now we have to get into the definition of what is black identity?  I am
> > native haitian who grew up in the provinces where my grandparents
> > practiced
> > vodou and raised me to think as an african.  My world was constituted via
> > the universe and vodou.  I simply do not believe in defining myself by my
> > skin-color.  By white man, yes I do privilege white experiences of the
> > earth and the ideologies and apparatuses they have constituted as a
> result
> > of the experience; blackness in the west was defined in relation to that
> > experience. So in order for me to be black in america and join the black
> > community what should I do:
> > Join a so-called black church (they discriminate against my vodou
> religion
> > as in vodou we discriminate against them for they practice the white
> man's
> > faith)Eat collard greens, chicken, and macaroni and cheeseSpeak AAEVwear
> > skinny jeansListen to rap music and rb
> > OR is Barack Obama a paragon for e. Franklin frazier's the black
> > bourgeoisie?
> > I am haitian and My wife is black american and we have two sons... I do
> > not let my sons do the black church thing.  My wife attends her
> protestant
> > church every sunday.  But my sons are not allowed to attend;  No AAEV in
> > the house; we are vegans so we do not do many of the foods...
> >
> >
> >
> > Sent via the Samsung Galaxy Note® 4, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
> >
> > -------- Original message --------
> > From: Jacob McWilliams <jennamcjenna@gmail.com>
> > Date: 4/25/2016  9:46 AM  (GMT-05:00)
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> > Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Blackface and Gayface
> >
> > I do not, and never will, agree with the arguments that reject Obama's
> > black identity. I find those arguments deeply problematic at minimum, and
> > usually much worse than problematic. However, I do wish that those who
> > argue that Obama is not black would not describe him as a white man. By
> > the
> > terms of this argument, whiteness is no more a "real" category than is
> > blackness, and referring to Obama as a "white man," even if done to shock
> > people, serves to feed into the very real, and not at all fictitious,
> > hegemony of whiteness in America and around the world.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > Jacob McWilliams
> > Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences Program
> > University of Colorado Boulder
> > j.mcwilliams@colorado.edu
> > http://www.jennamcwilliams.com
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 4:29 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Paul:
> > >
> > > Like you, I have always been puzzled and even a little troubled that we
> > > think of Obama as a half-black president rather than a half-white one.
> > As I
> > > said, I think he's a conservative politician, well to the right of
> > > Eisenhower and pretty much in the mold of the first George Bush;
> > therefore
> > > I think that the adamantine loathing of Obama by the "Republicans" is
> > > entirely racial. (Let us remember that the Republicans are historically
> > the
> > > party of black liberation and revolutionary reconstruction in the USA,
> > and
> > > let us, that is, you and me, consider the present day Republicans a
> > > complete non sequitur, a zombie usurpation, something like the present
> > > ruling party of Haiti.) But for that very reason, it really will not do
> > to
> > > consider Obama a white politician: first of all, it confuses
> > conservativism
> > > with whiteness, the error of which Condoleeza Rice, Alan Keyes, Herman
> > > Cain, and Ben Carson on the one hand and Marx, Engels, Lenin on the
> > > other
> > > have amply demonstrated. Secondly, it doesn't explain the phenomenon
> > > that
> > > needs to be explained, namely the bilious hatred of the right for a
> > > politician who is politically so very much one of their own number.
> > >
> > > So in what sense is Obama black? I think, actually, he is black in the
> > very
> > > best sense: in an entirely voluntary and chosen one. He did not coyly
> > flirt
> > > with being black, the way that David Bowie and Prince flirted with
> being
> > bi
> > > for commercial purposes. Bowie then complained that he was a "closet
> > > heterosexual" and that he was forced to have sex with gay men just in
> > order
> > > to inhabit the persona he had created, and Prince joined the Jehovah's
> > > Witnesses and justified the deadly Biblical persecution of gay people
> as
> > > God's revenge on them for "stickin' it here and there and everywhere".
> > > If
> > > these gentlemen find it difficult to have sex with other gentlemen,
> > > there
> > > is an extremely simple solution, one that has historically been made
> > > compulsory for men who are actually rather than simply sartorially gay.
> > > They can have sex with women. No one says that the white extras in D.W.
> > > Griffith's films were really trying to stand up for black liberation
> and
> > > revolutionary reconstruction, and no one confuses minstrelsy and
> > blackface
> > > with black culture: why, then, do we tolerate "gayface" in people like
> > > David Bowie and Prince, people who have no loyalty whatsoever to the
> gay
> > > community beyond the cash nexus?
> > >
> > > Obama doesn't do blackface. He learned black English (which, remember,
> > was
> > > a foreign language to him, growing up in Hawail and Indonesia). He
> > married
> > > black, and self-identified as black when it was not at all a commercial
> > or
> > > an electoral advantage, quite the contrary. He went to a black church
> > > and
> > > he didn't leave it even under overwhelming white pressure, but only
> when
> > it
> > > really did offend his heartfelt (conservative) principles. Obama is
> > > black
> > > in the sense that Helena was talking about, in the sense that he has
> > joined
> > > and been accepted by and really belongs to a black community, namely
> > South
> > > Chicago. It is true that he has given some Cosby-esque speeches about
> > > and
> > > even to the black lumpenproletariat. But this too is from his
> community:
> > in
> > > South Shore some of the most bitter opponents of petty crime and
> > > gangbangin' and humbuggin' were precisely the black workers at US Steel
> > > South Works, General Motors EMD, and Ford: they'd worked bloody hard
> for
> > > that stereo tape deck and those chrome hub caps and if you tried to
> > > swipe
> > > them it really didn't matter what color you were, they were going to
> > > show
> > > the world the color of your blood.
> > >
> > > I also vote in Korean elections, because I too have a community which I
> > > voluntarily adopted and which accepted me and where I am a legal
> > permanent
> > > resident with electoral rights. In the last Korean election, I voted
> for
> > > the third largest party in parliament, the United Progressive Party.
> > > Immediately after the election, the party was legally dissolved, the
> > > leaders I had voted for were expelled from parliament, arrested and
> > > sentenced to 24 years in prison (later, after the intercession of Pope
> > > Francis, reduced to "only" twelve years). All candidates in the US
> > > elections have insisted on continuing US support for what is
> essentially
> > an
> > > old fashioned Cold War regime, the "free world" counterpart of the
> North
> > > Korean nepotism-despotism. Even Donald Trump's main complaint is that
> > Korea
> > > doesn't pay enough money for the privilege of being occupied by US
> > troops.
> > > So from that point of view as well, a vote for Sanders makes no sense.
> > >
> > > David Kellogg
> > > Macquarie University
> > >
> > > dk
> > >
> >
>
>