Monday, 27 January 2014
Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny
This documentary pokes fun at the ways in which Inuit people have been treated as “exotic” documentary subjects by turning the lens onto the strange behaviours of Qallunaat (the Inuit word for white people). The term refers less to skin colour than to a certain state of mind: Qallunaat greet each other with inane salutations, repress natural bodily functions, complain about being cold, and want to dominate the world. Their odd dating habits, unsuccessful attempts at Arctic exploration, overbearing bureaucrats and police, and obsession with owning property are curious indeed.
A collaboration between filmmaker Mark Sandiford and Inuit writer and satirist Zebedee Nungak, Qallunaat! brings the documentary form to an unexpected place in which oppression, history, and comedy collide.
Which Slave Mailed Himself to Freedom? Really! Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Find out how a 200-pound man survived the trip in a coffin-like box.
What is one of the most novel ways a slave devised to escape bondage?
Here
you see a man by the name of Henry Brown, Ran away from the South to
the North, Which he would not have done but they stole all his rights,
But they'll never do like again. Chorus: Brown laid down the shovel and
the hoe, Down in the box he did go; No more slave work for Henry Box
Brown, In the box by Express he did go. --"Song Composed by Henry Box
Brown on His Escape From Slavery," Narrative of the Life of Henry Box
Brown, Written by Himself
Job ben Solomon, as we saw in an
earlier column, was the first and probably the only slave who literally
wrote his way out of American slavery. He penned a letter in Arabic to
his father, from his jail cell in Maryland, which led quite circuitously
to its translation at Oxford, England, and then to his purchase,
release and repatriation to Senegambia in 1734 -- only after a stop in
London where he was feted by British royalty and the intellectual elite,
had his portrait painted and a book about his remarkable escapades
published.
But another slave plotted his own escape from bondage in even more astonishing and harrowing way, and his name was Henry Brown.
If
Job ben Solomon expressed his desperate quest for freedom in a letter,
Henry Brown expressed his own desperate desire to be free in an even
more novel form: He actually mailed his own body from slavery to
freedom, from Richmond to Philadelphia, from the slave state of Virginia
to the free state of Pennsylvania, a distance of 250 miles.
Brown
was the ultimate "escape artist," as Daphne Brooks brilliantly labels
him in her book Bodies in Dissent. He was a precursor, she argues, to
Houdini. And as we shall see, he not only performed his amazing -- and
quite dangerous -- escape once, but reprised part of the journey during a
lecture tour in England. But I get ahead of my story.
Henry
Brown was born into slavery on a plantation called "The Hermitage" in
Louisa County, Va., around 1815, fairly close to Charlottesville, where
Thomas Jefferson was still living at Monticello. Upon his master's
death, when Brown was 15, he was sent to work for his late owner's son,
William, in his tobacco factory in Richmond. In about 1836, he married
another slave (curiously, with their owners' consent), a woman named
Nancy, who was owned by a bank clerk. Brown was able to rent a house for
his family. Together, they had three children.
Over time, Nancy
was sold twice. Her third owner, Samuel Cottrell, actually charged Brown
$50 a year to keep Nancy from being sold. But in August 1848, Cottrell
sold Nancy anyway, along with their three children, to a Methodist
minister in North Carolina. Brown raced to the jail where his family was
being held, but it was too late. As they were shuffled through the
streets of Richmond, Brown held Nancy's hand for four miles. Nancy and
the three children were marched on foot along with 350 other slaves, in
the horrendous second Middle Passage, all the way to North Carolina.
Nancy was pregnant with their fourth child. The two would never see each
other again.
Brown tells us in his slave narrative that he
begged his own master to purchase his family but his master refused: "I
went to my Christian master … but he shoved me away."
Devastated
and overcome with the most acute sense of his own sheer powerlessness,
Brown sought solace and guidance through prayer. "An idea," he reported,
"suddenly flashed across my mind." And what an idea it was! Perhaps
only God -- or an official at the expanding express delivery service in
America -- could have fashioned such a bizarre plan: "Brown's
revelation," Paul Finkelman and Richard Newman write in their entry on
him in The African American National Biography, "was that he have
himself nailed into a wooden box and 'conveyed as dry goods' via the
Adams Express Company from slavery in Richmond to freedom in
Philadelphia."
How was he to realize such a bold, and wild, idea?
How would he avoid suffocation in this coffin-like encasement? What
about claustrophobia? How long could a human being live in a box without
dehydration? Not to mention deal with his body functions? As Brown's
biographer, Jeffrey Ruggles, explains in The Unboxing of Henry Brown,
Adams Express advertised the one-day trip from Richmond to Philadelphia,
a distance of 250 miles -- but only if the package encountered no
glitches, no delays. If so, the trip could take much longer. Could a
human being survive such a trip? Or would his crate turn into his
casket?
How He Did It
Though only 5 feet, 8 inches tall,
Brown at the time weighed 200 pounds, so this was not going to be an
easy thing to accomplish, and impossible, of course, without a lot of
assistance. Two friends, both named Smith, decided to help Henry with
this crazy scheme: James Caesar Anthony Smith, a free black man who sang
with Brown in the choir of First African Baptist Church, introduced
Brown to Samuel Alexander Smith, a white shoemaker and gambler. Brown
paid Samuel Smith $86 to help him.
Through James Smith's
intervention, a black carpenter named John Mattaner built the wooden box
-- "complete with baize lining, air holes, a container of water and
hickory straps" -- to fit Brown's rotund frame. Samuel Smith
corresponded with James Miller McKim, the Philadelphia abolitionist (and
the father of future famed architect, Charles McKim) for guidance.
McKim asked Smith to address the package to James Johnson, 131 Arch
Street.
As Henry Brown scholar Hollis Robbins writes in a 2009
American Studies article, "Smith's correspondence with McKim about the
timing of the trip, particularly his attention to the breakup of the ice
on the Susquehanna [River], indicates his -- and perhaps Brown's --
practical understanding of the conditions necessary for the box to
arrive swiftly enough for Brown to survive the journey." The entire box
measured only 3 feet 1 inch long, 2 feet wide and 2 feet 6 inches high.
Brown burned his hand with sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) so he could
justify taking the day off without raising suspicion. He took along a
few biscuits, or crackers, and a small bladder of water to sustain him.
With
"This Side Up With Care" painted on the container, at 4:00 a.m. on
March 23, 1849, Brown's friends loaded his boxed self onto a wagon, and
delivered it to the depot. In his slave narrative, Brown describes his
harrowing journey, including the sickening effect of traveling much of
the journey upside-down, head-first, in spite of the label on the box.
One wrong move, one unguarded sound or smell, would lead to his
detection, capture, imprisonment and return to slavery, and perhaps to
the Deep South.
Brown nearly died on the 27-hour trip: At one
point, he was turned upside-down for several hours. His sole relief came
when two passengers, wanting to talk, tipped the box flat to sit on it.
The box was flipped again when it was boarded on a train in Washington,
D.C. Brown had no choice but to remain silent and not move, no matter
how the box was positioned.
Some 24 hours later, as Robbins
describes, traveling by wagon to the depot, hefted by express workers
from wagon to railcar, to steamboat, to another wagon, to another
railcar, to a ferry and the once again by railcar, Brown finally arrived
at the depot in Philadelphia. Three hours later, Brown's box was taken
by wagon to the Anti-Slavery Committee's offices on North Fifth Street
in Philadelphia. No one could know if their cargo was alive or dead. The
four waiting abolitionists, including McKim, tapped on the lip of the
crate four times, the signal that all was clear.
Finkelman and
Newman describe what happened next: "A small, nervous group, including
William Still, the African-American conductor of Philadelphia's
Underground Railroad, pried open the lid to reveal … the disheveled and
battered Henry Brown, who arose and promptly fainted," but not before
exclaiming, "How do you do, gentlemen!" Revived with a glass of water,
Brown sang Psalm 40: "Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!" McKim noted
that the trip "nearly killed him," and that "Nothing saved him from
suffocation but the free use of water … with which he bathed his face,
and the constant fanning of himself" with his hat. He managed to breathe
through the three small holes that he bore in the box with a gimlet.
Brown called his trip "my resurrection from the grave of slavery."
Henceforth,
the word "Box" would become Henry's self-chosen legal middle name, with
no quotation marks around it. His friend, James Smith, however, did
gain a nickname from the adventure: He became known as James "Boxer"
Smith.
How His Fame Grew
Henry Box Brown had done what no
slave anywhere had ever done before: He had mailed himself to freedom.
Overnight, Brown became quite the celebrity on the abolitionist lecture
circuit, much to Frederick Douglass' annoyance. He and his friend James
Smith became a standard feature at abolitionist rallies, reciting the
incredible saga of his escape, singing songs he wrote, as well as his
psalm of deliverance, and selling his book, which was published just a
few months after his escape. Woodcuts of his head popping out of the
wooden crate were widely circulated. Even a children's book contained a
chapter about his incredible escape.
Brown was not only an
effective speaker; you might say that he was also the entrepreneur of
entrepreneurs on the fugitive-slave circuit. In an email, his biographer
Jeffrey Ruggles said that "Brown's imagination and creativity were akin
to his entrepreneurial contemporary," P.T. Barnum, though on a much
smaller scale, of course. With a loan of $150 from the wealthy white
abolitionist, Gerritt Smith, and in collaboration with the artist Josiah
Wolcott, Brown created a "large, didactic panorama, 'The Mirror of
Slavery,' which consisted of thousands of feet of canvas, divided into
scores of panels painted with scenes depicting the history of slavery."
Brown
debuted his routine in Boston, along with James Smith. The panorama was
a hit: As Christine Crater reports, "The Boston Daily Evening Traveller
hailed it as 'one of the finest panoramas now on exhibition … Many
people would walk a long way to see this curious specimen of American
freedom … We wish all the slaveholders would go and view their system on
canvas.' "
Accompanied onstage by Benjamin F. Roberts, a black
abolitionist, who would lecture on "The Condition of the Colored People
in the United States," Brown toured the North testifying about the evils
of slavery and repeating the details of his imaginative mode of escape.
Brown -- a great storyteller with a gifted voice for song -- was for a
short time the darling of the abolitionist circuit.
Douglass'
irritation with Brown stemmed not so much from a sense of rivalry (since
Douglass had dominated the fugitive-slave category on the abolition
lecture circuit since 1845) as it did from Douglass' worry that
disclosure of Brown's novel method of escape might keep other slaves
from employing a similar strategy, alerting authorities to the
possibility that crates could contain a fleeing slave.
But as
Ruggles explains, revelation of Brown's method of escape wasn't really
his fault: "Douglass wasn't entirely correct in blaming the Garrisonians
[abolitionists] for revealing the box method. They had tried to keep
quiet about Brown's escape, but word leaked out in a Vermont newspaper
and soon an article appeared in the New York Tribune. That article
alerted the Adams Express Company and a second box escape from Richmond,
attempted by both Smiths in May, 1849, was intercepted. It was only
after articles about that failure had appeared in many newspapers that
the Boston abolitionists went public about Brown's escape at the New
England Anti-Slavery Convention in late May 1849."
Regardless of
how it happened, Douglass proved to be right about the effects of
disclosure: Upon discovery of the rescue attempt of a second slave on
May 8, 1849, Samuel Smith, the white shopkeeper who had helped Brown,
was arrested, and served six and a half years in the Virginia state
penitentiary for doing so. A few months later, on Sept. 25, James Smith
would also be arrested for an attempt to help still another slave to
escape in the same way, though he would be acquitted in a trial, after
which he joined Brown in Boston. (Another slave, a woman named Rose
Jackson, was willingly smuggled by her owners from Oklahoma in a box
over the Oregon Trail in the same year that Brown escaped, but she was
allowed to emerge each night.)
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 put
an end, for a time, to Brown's celebrity, at least on this side of the
Atlantic. After being assaulted twice on the streets of Providence,
R.I., Brown -- like many other prominent fugitive slaves -- fled to
England in October 1850, to avoid arrest by a slave-catcher.
There,
he published a second edition of his slave narrative in Manchester in
1851, this one "written by himself." (The first edition had been
dictated to, and heavily edited by, a white abolitionist named Charles
Stearns. John Ernest's edition, published in 2009, is the authoritative
text.) Ever the showman, Brown soon became a most colorful feature on
the British lecture circuit, traveling with his moving panorama from
Liverpool to Manchester. He even re-enacted his escape, at least
partially.
Jeffrey Ruggles writes that "Ads for Henry Box Brown
stated that he would get into the original box as a part of his
exhibition, but the only instance known of him actually being conveyed
in his box was from Bradford to Leeds in May 1851." The Leeds Mercury
reported that on May 22, 1851, as Ruggles discovered, " 'He was packed
up in the box at Bradford' and 'forwarded to Leeds' on the 6 P.M. train.
'On arriving at the Wellington station, the box was placed in a coach
and, preceded by a band of music and banners, representing the stars and
stripes of America, paraded through the principal streets of the town.'
"
Ruggles explained that this didn't amount to a replication of
Brown's original trip, however: "The distance was much less than
Richmond to Philadelphia. For this event, Brown was in the box for
two-and-three-quarter hours, and James Smith accompanied him outside the
box the whole way, so it was neither as long nor as harrowing as his
journey to escape. The box was taken to a theater where Brown emerged
onstage."
How He Changed With the Times
Brown was a
complicated figure. There is some evidence that he could have purchased
the freedom of his wife, Nancy, and their children, but chose not to. He
married an Englishwoman and returned to the stage, performing for the
remainder of the decade throughout Great Britain, in a traveling one-man
version of Black History Month. The consummate multiplatform performer,
Brown created a number of personas to match his skills as a narrator,
singer, magician, hypnotist, electro-biologist and "boxing" champion,
among them "The African Prince," "The King of All Mesmerizers" and
"Professor H. Box Brown."
Finkelman and Newman report that
Brown's British act featured "a large moving panorama to depict the
history of black people in Africa and America, as he lectured on
'African and American Slavery.' He often appeared as an 'African Prince'
as he melded antislavery sentiments and propaganda, popular history and
entertaining theatrical production." Not one to miss a marketing
opportunity, Brown took advantage of the raging Civil War, introducing
to his act in 1862 "a new lecture and panorama called the 'Grand Moving
Mirror of the American War.' " Near the end of the war, in 1864, Brown
transformed himself once again, this time into a magician, billing
himself as "Mr. H. Box Brown, the King of All Mesmerisers."
Monday, 20 January 2014
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Challenging Racism and the Problem with White “Allies”: A Conversation with David Leonard by Suey Park
I met Dr. David Leonard, Associate Professor in the Department of
Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State
University, on Twitter shortly after my initial critique of Tim Wise.
I was pleased to discover that there existed another white man who was
not marketing himself as an anti-racist, but instead doing the work with
people of color, while learning from them and taking after their
direction.
Dr. Leonard was gracious enough to collaborate with me on this piece
when I was just starting to freelance and has been generous in his
teaching. I was most moved by Leonard’s work to spread awareness on Marissa Alexander’s case, which was ignored by both white feminism and so-called anti-racists.
SP: As you know, the concept of the white anti-racist or
white ally has been put into question. Why do you think this is? Are
these words oxymorons? What is a better word?
DL: I don’t like either of these terms for a variety of reasons. (I am indebted to @Prisonculture, and Mia McKenzie for their important and challenging discussions of allies; @FeministGriote has also offered an important discussion in this context.)
First and foremost, they presume that struggles against
injustice are the responsibility of someone else – those who are
subjected to the violence of racism, sexism, homophobia – and that the
“allies” are helping or joining forces with those who are naturally on
the frontlines. The idea of white allies also reinscribes the idea that
whites have a choice as to whether to fight racism, to fight white
supremacy. And while this may be true, it turns any agitation into a
choice worthy of celebration. At the same time, it turns struggles
against racial violence and injustice to a discussion of “what people
are” rather than one focused on what people are doing in opposition to
white supremacy.
Secondly, the mere fact that we don’t talk about Black, Latino,
Indigenous or Asian American anti-racists, at least with the same
public resonance, reflects this idea: people may see anti-racist
struggle as organic and natural within communities of color, which not
only embodies this logic but erases the risks, sacrifices and hard work
necessary to battle racism. The idea of allies reinscribes this binary,
whereupon white allies are seen as doing something different, special, and necessary, furthering the privileging of white action.
Thirdly, I also have a problem with the entire focus on
defining white people in these exceptional terms. White, yet
anti-racist – these are the ideas that emanate from the labeling. As if
participation in struggle or consciousness cancels out whiteness,
privilege, and position within America’s white supremacist hierarchy. No
amount of work cancels out my whiteness, my masculinity, my class
status, or my heterosexuality; no amount of activism erases the power
and privilege generated because of white supremacy.
Fourth, the whole white ally or white anti-racist concept works
against two fundamental values that serve as my foundation:
accountability (indebted to Jlove Calderon for her work), and the work.
Labels are about fixed identities as opposed to the work. Labels are
about differentiation from others and work to position one as above
accountability – “I am ally don’t question me.” The notion of being an
ally supersedes the necessary space of accountability. As whites engaged
in political work, justice work, and work that challenges white
supremacy, we must be accountable to the struggles for justice, to
communities of color, to organizations on frontlines, and to the work
being done. Whenever I hear someone talking about being a white ally
because of their involvement in this action or this published piece, I
find myself asking: could they do something to have that revoked? We
become determined to prove our exceptionality as opposed to being
accountable. When we become focused on showing and being rather
than listening and doing, we are not moving the fight forward. It’s
not about choosing the right word, it’s about making the commitment to
racial justice.
Lastly, the focus on individual allies furthers the
identification and imagination of whiteness as individualized bodies.
Whites being allies with people of color not only reinforces the idea of
white folks representing a diverse community of individuals while
people of color are all the same but also presumes that whites can
engage in work as individuals, as lone freedom fighters, rather than as
members of communities.
I often hear that “people of color should not have to educate
white folks” and “white folks need to take their cues from people of
color” simultaneously. Is this a contradiction?
I don’t think this is a contradiction. The push back against
the expectation that “people of color educate white folks” is a
rejection of centering white desire and need. The presumption here is
that white people need/want to be educated about issues of racism, about
inequality, or about differences in experience, and that this desire
should compel people of color to act. This is all about white desire; it
is about white agency and the expectation of Others helping white folk
grow, learn, and be better people.
To me, that is very different from asking that white people
don’t dominate, co-opt, and control movements, organizations, or
communities. Each is about asking whites to put aside their own needs,
desires, and privileged position. Asking whites engaged in social
justice or anti-racist work to “take their cues from people of color” is
about accountability and decentering white desire and white needs. It
is no longer about what white people need and want but the agency,
action, and politics of organizations of color. It is about being
accountable and listening as opposed to demanding recognition, ownership
or power.
Many white folks, including Tim Wise,
say that racism needs to be fought not to “help” people of color, but
because all people are hurt by it, including white people. Do you agree
that racism hurts white folks?
While I understand the importance of this work – and clearly as
an educator I see the power of teaching about racism, white supremacy,
white privilege, and injustice at a predominantly white campus – I think
our focus cannot focus on white desire or happiness. Whether or not it
hurts whites is the wrong place to start. The centering of whiteness, of
white humanity, desire, and history, is a core element of white
supremacy so our conversations and actions should not and cannot focus on “how racism hurts” white America.
When we talk about white supremacy, we need to focus on the
structural violence directed at communities of color – we are talking
about issues of life and death, from healthcare to food insecurity, from
labor exploitation to systems of mass incarceration. Segregation,
state-sanctioned violence, war, poverty, racism – white supremacy
operates through and within global injustice. White people are not
suffering in any of these contexts. As it relates to the criminal
justice system, health, economic security, wealth, or education, white
people are not hurt by racism. Recognizing intersectionality and varied
levels of privilege, racism empowers, privileges, and protects white
America. To claim otherwise is factually inaccurate and troubling.
I do think it is important to talk about racism, how ideologies
of white supremacy invariably lead to injustice and violence within
particular white communities. For example, throughout history, whites
have mobilized around racist law and order narratives that imagine Black
men as a perpetual threat against the safety and security of white
women. The dominant white imagination of the Black male rapist thereby
erases the root issues of sexual violence – patriarchy, rape culture,
misogyny. This is an example of how white supremacy, how stereotypes,
white racial framing, the scapegoating and criminalization of Black
bodies, hurts white women and society as a whole. White supremacy and
rape culture hold a dialectical relationship. Yet, our focus should be
on the challenging the violence of racism, the perpetual daily and
structural consequences of white supremacy.
Do you think that being a white man gives you more agency to
do anti-racist work with folks who might not be ready to hear it from
people of color?
I always find this discussion to be fascinating because white
supremacy codifies power and privilege in whiteness within every aspect
of society. Why would anti-racist work be any different? When I walk
into a classroom, I am often seen as more objective, as embodying what
many view as an “expert” and a “professor.” When I walk on campus,
whether wearing a hoodie or argyle sweater, I am seen as
non-threatening, as belonging, and as being desirable. White supremacy
codifies agency, choice, and freedom, so it would be ridiculous to deny
its existence within the spaces I occupy as a teacher, a writer, a
commentator, and an activist.
We all have agency. The constraints and limitations of these
choices are one of piece of this puzzle. Whether or not we are
celebrated or criticized for exercising that agency is yet another piece
of the puzzle.
I have a role, to teach. I have a role to challenge racism, to
educate those who believe there is equal justice under the law, those
who think that racism is a thing of a past, who perpetuate rape culture
through jokes and media culture, who think that sports are innocuous
rather than a site of racial pedagogy.
Do you feel it is important that there be spaces solely for people of color, even if it means that you are not allowed to enter?
Whether or not I think they are important should not be the
issue. Rather, when I am told directly or indirectly that this is a
space for organizing, community-building, or conversations that because
of my social location I am not “allowed to enter” (or that my presence
would change the dynamic) I should respect that. I should listen and be
accountable to these desires. So, yes, I think there are clearly spaces
where, despite my passion and knowledge, I should not enter.
Do you have any tips for white folks who are trying to engage in anti-racist work?
As mentioned above, it’s crucial to focus on action, and on the work,
rather than naming ourselves as “good” white folks. This necessitates
whites thinking themselves as white, not as white anti
-racist or allies.
It is important to think about one’s whiteness and what it means to be
white within contemporary society.
It’s crucial to push back the urge to make every conversation about
“self.” It is crucial to move beyond “I am an anti-racist individual” to
see oneself as part of an anti-racist community. It is crucial to move
beyond just talking, and listen. It is crucial to push beyond the desire
to be seen, to be praised, and to be celebrated, to consider instead
the ways that we can facilitate justice and equality in ways not seen.
In
many ways, white anti-racists often fall into the trap of viewing
change through activist work rather than as organizers, as teachers, and
as members of communities of “ceaseless agitation” and change. For
myself, I focus on words like those articulated @prisonculture, “JUST DO
THE WORK. Don’t talk about, “reflect” on it, pontificate, Just ACT.
That’s it.” And while doing the work, be accountable.
Follow Suey (@Suey_Park) on Twitter!
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