Lines, Vines and Trying Times: Melanogynophobia

In DANGER of Becoming Morally Deprived.

    In Hicks Part 2, the deviance and innate “immorality” of the black woman is described as it became a pandemic problem in the early 20^th century. Black woman were constantly the cause or worry and distress to communities and family as they were deemed deviant for being out in the streets late. Many believed that living in predominately black neighborhoods exposed young women to unsavory influences that were not so evident in white and primarily immigrant communities (187). To solve this issue, many women were placed in correctional institutions to make these women corrigible and submissive again. Over the years, the black families of these young women gradually became aware of the repercussions of their decisions, and black women from that point on were seen as deviant agents in our society.

    How do these notions play out in today’s society? In a Black Agenda Report by Dr. Edward Ryhmes, he explains how the sexual exploitation that black females have been stigmatized with have made them icons of threat, deviance and fear in our media today. He states, “While white women's sexuality is celebrated in movies and magazines, Black women acting out the same behavior are relegated to the ranks of whoredom”. To this day the stigma and label remains, Black women’s sexuality has been deprived through the media and exploited to the point where it makes black women appear uncontrollable or “wild”. Ryhmes continues, “Historically, White women, as a category, have been portrayed as examples of self-respect, self-control, and modesty -- even sexual purity -- but Black women were often (and still are) portrayed as innately promiscuous, even predatory. Such beliefs can be traced back to the New York State Reformatory at Bedford, as these precise believes were the fear of the communities during that era. Unknowingly, women were subjected and coerced into a vicious cycle of incarceration which still resonates in our prison systems today.

    So why is it that similar behaviors in a white woman today are seen as talents or arts, but when a Black woman partakes in similar things she is deemed criminal or wrong? Rhymes further states, “Black equals dangerous; Black equals savage; Black equals barbaric; Black equals forbidden, infected and inferior”, these all ideas that were created from the beginning of the negative perceptions of black women in the early 19^th century. What I find ironic is how society as a whole embraces and accepts these stereotypes of the Black woman, yet ceases to recognize the root of where they began; slavery. Still today, we live in an unfortunate society that continues to perpetualize these oppressions towards black women, not taking into consideration the origins of these ideologies.

http://www.alternet.org/story/52067/a_%27ho%27_by_any_other_color%3A_the_history_and_economics_of_black_female_sexual_exploitation

The Stranger Inside

http://www.kissingfingertips.com/strangerinside.html

When reading for this week, my mind kept going back to a film I saw on HBO like 8 years ago or so. It took me a minute on the WWW to find it (cause I couldn't get my finger on the title) but as soon as I found it I remembered the whole thing. The Stranger Inside is a film about a lifer in prison trying her mother she never knew. The film is gritty and very culturally driven. Here's where it gets contentious...exactly what culture is driving the film? The main characters of the show are predominantly Black (one boricua?), with some minor racial tensions/violence with a few White women. There are a few sex scenes that if I remember correctly were brief but made to do lots more for the story than demonstrate lesbian love.

So what culture drives this film? Perhaps it lies in what is most important to the individual viewer. I have seen this film described as a story of a lesbian woman looking for her mother in prison. I have seen it described as a Black film. I have seen it described as a prison film. I see it as a tragic story about a woman's quest to find her mother...rooted in the experiences that being in prison, being Black and being a lesbian (whatever all these things actually mean). What kind of film would it be for you?

Let me real quick tie this into our readings on sexuality in prisons. The sex scenes in this movie took place in a chapel confessional. The main character was made to appear as masculine, while receiving oral sex from a very feminine and diminutive younger woman. Two things strike me about these scenes. The first is the manner in which the film addresses the sex between women as consensual and neither significant or shocking to the story - just simply a part of the main character's life. The second thing that strikes me is the positioning of these scenes within the prison chapel. The quiet juxtaposition of homosexuality and the church/religion could be interpreted in many ways: the 'defilement' of the religious space of those that has persecuted homosexual peoples; the alignment of religion with homosexuality (they can exist in the same space); an analogy to the privacy of the confessional with the hidden nature of homosexuality in our society; etc. For me, it is all of these. What does this image conjure in your mind?  

'Sagging' and Sexuality

After reading part II of the Kunzel reading, I keep coming back to something I have seen posted on facebook several times – unfortunately as lately as last month.

Snopes.com disproved this belief already in 2011.   Sagging did not start as a way to advertise for sex in male prisons.  Although it did start in prisons, sagging became a trend after inmates were supplied with clothing several sizes too big, and were not provided belts.  Belts apparently, are considered an all-too-easy way to hang one’s self.

This specific image and accompanying text plays on homophobia and racism in an attempt to invalidate a subculture in the US.   The trend is not about advertising sexuality, but perhaps surviving ‘the system,’ and projecting an association with an alpha-male or alpha identity.  By suggesting that these same men could be engaging in gay sex is an attempt to invalidate a gendered, hetero-normative form of masculinity or alpha status in an already impoverished and disempowered community. 

One could argue the appropriation of sagging by youth en masse is yet another layer to this issue.  What began as an act of appropriation for the sake of cool is now a way to humiliate and denigrate.  Both are attempts at maintaining power in our society, just in slightly different ways.  Appropriation takes away cultural authority and autonomy, while humiliating black men becomes a way for those in power to maintain and reinforce status.

Although this style seems to be falling out of favor, I am sure other styles are emerging that will soon be associated not only with criminality, but sexuality as well.  The combination of what some consider a deviant sexuality and criminality, as Kunzel points out, is interlinked.  We really have not made much progress on this front in the last 100 years, despite some recent inroads to decriminalizing homosexuality.

Week 5: The Racialization of and Societal Indifference Around Prison Rape

Male Prison Rape: A Search for Causation and Prevention
Prison Rape Indifference

The two links above paint an interesting and disturbing picture of prison rape in the United States.  One shows two photos of a male and forces viewers to question their own value judgment when regarding a perceived prisoner vs. a non-prisoner.  The first photo shows the male in apparent plain, unassuming attire, and asks the question, “Would you joke about this man being raped?”  The second shows the same man, except he is now clad in the infamous orange prison jump suit with his prison identification number stenciled across his chest.  The caption on this photo reads, “How about now?”

The implication these photos demonstrate is a phenomenon that has almost become a perceived rite-of-passage for a prison inmate, as well as the source of many jokes of poor taste in mainstream American culture – that of prison rape.  These photos challenge mainstream discourse by humanizing the horrific act of prison rape (one might wonder how this act could ever become unhumanized), which statistics demonstrate has significantly increased in the last ten years.  Why would people deem it acceptable to marginalize a rape victim because they happen to be located in a prison setting, when it’s not as socially acceptable to do so to a non-inmate?  What power-privilege dynamics might be at play to justify this incongruity in the minds of mainstream Americans?

The next link is a story that highlights perceived racial dynamics that allegedly drive most occurrences of prison rape.  The article discusses presents the hypothesis that most rape circumstances in male prisons involve a white male as the victim and a black male (predominantly) and other white and 'Hispanic' males as the perpetrators.  The author cites statistics to validate this hypothesis.  One must approach the debate from a critical lens before positioning on the conclusions for this hypothesis; especially in terms of the solutions he presents to mitigate prison rape.  Through interviewing and survey techniques of white, black, and Latino inmates and prison staff, he quotes several black inmates as implying that blacks prefer to rape whites out of revenge for oppression of blacks by whites historically and at present.  He attempts to build a case around this point but the conjecture and research he cites must be challenged before taken at face value. 

He concludes the article by stating that races should be separated to protect the white man from rape, along with separating homosexuals from the general population.  

In my opinion, I find this article particularly interesting because it’s written by a British man lecturing at the University of Hawaii and it contains undertones of the inclination to subjugate the black man.  The author uses statistics to make implications that the white inmates are victims and the black inmates are the perpetrators.  I might be more inclined to support the claims made in this article had similar tactics not been used for centuries to subjugate black people, particularly black males, in this country.  I question the author’s motives, especially when he makes it a point to state that a much larger percentage of black males in prison are there for violent crimes, as opposed to white males.  He also makes several references to ‘black racism’, again painting the picture of the black man as a perpetrator.  He seems unaware of the fact that racism implies a power dynamic; even in the prison hierarchy the black man doesn’t hold a position of privilege and, therefore, cannot be racist. 

I don’t deny that his statistics might be correct in that white males are raped more than black or Latino males in prison.  I also don’t argue that the perpetrators tend to be black.  What I do argue is the picture this article paints of the black man because he’s black, not because of any other contributing factors to the rape phenomenon.  I also challenge the author’s ‘solutions’ to this problem, because they invariable single out the white man as needing to be saved.  The evidence posed, in my opinion, is very weak and does not support the solutions the author presented.

Female Sexual Delinquency

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sex-workers-fear-new-prostitution-laws-will-compromise-safety-1.2523145

This article discusses the ways in which new legislation striking down anti-prostitution laws in Canada may actually be harmful to sex workers. This past December, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned laws prohibiting prostitution, brothels and openly communicating with clients in belief that the laws put sex workers at risk. The new legislation, modeled after sex work laws in Norway, Sweden and Iceland, will punish the clients and pimps – essentially making it illegal to buy sex but not to sell it. Sex workers fear that these laws will result in clients' unwillingness to identify themselves, thus presenting a dangerous situation for individuals who must accept clients without knowledge of their true identity. Emily Van der Muelen agrees that the laws may put workers in danger, commenting on the state's attempt to regulate the sex industry. “'It appeals to the government because it fits with their 'tough on crime' agenda...They think it's the only way they can retain some element of control over the sex industry.'” Although Canada's legislation regarding prostitution may seem lenient compared to our own laws in the United States, this article depicted the ways in which the state continues to exert control over sex worker's bodies. In United States culture, the taboo around sex work can be traced back to Puritan ideals regarding the immorality of sexual activity. In “in danger of becoming morally depraved,” Hicks discusses the state's attempt to control sexually delinquent women during the early twentieth century in New York. Ultimately, legislators stripped working class black families of their parental authority over the actions of their female kin. Similarly, this article depicts the ways that Canadian law makers remove sex worker's authority over their employment. Although the Wayward Minor Laws are a thing of the past, today, legislators continue to criminalize sexuality through anti-sex work laws, ultimately exerting control over individual bodies.

Test

Test

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-4-2012/racist-time-out

In this video clip, Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore talk about the ways in which the Travon Martin case became an argument of ideologies, which took away from looking at the actual events of the case.  The clips from the media show how this created a binary of the right versus the left and created a space where both were so stuck in their ideologies that they were unable to communicate without anything but outrage.  In doing so, the real problem gets confused.  Larry Wilmore, in talking about the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law says, “You don’t even have to go in front of a jury. You tell the cops at the scene of the crime you were standing your ground and they will give you the benefit of the doubt” (4:13).  The difference, he points out, is getting that benefit of the doubt.  Not just with the police officers on scene, but also with judges, juries, and the general public.  In The Condemnation of Blackness, Khalil Gibran Muhammad details how criminalization is racialized.  Whitmore speaks to that in pointing out the case of Plaxico Burress accidentally shooting himself and getting two years in prison, where as when Dick Cheney had his ‘hunting incident’ it was mostly made a joke.  “It was just two white guys having fun with guns!” (5:12). It is this benefit of the doubt that shows how the country looks at the link between race and crime.  The white person is generally seen as someone who did something that was a crime, whereas the black person is labeled as a criminal.  In the case of Trayvon Martin, he hadn’t done anything criminal at all, but because of the criminalization based on his race, it made sense to people that George Zimmerman had reason to call upon Stand Your Ground.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-4-2012/racist-time-out

The Great Migration of the 1920's

The Great Migration of the 1920's

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the thirteenth amendment shortly after abolished slavery, but did not abolish the discrimination and segregation against African Americans. This discrimination was particularly bad in southern states and thus, by the 1920's The Great Migration had begun. As Muhammad states in his book, "…Hoffman's initial linking of migration, urbanization, and criminality remained a salient framework within which numerous experts continued to debate and discuss race relations" (91). Thus, the Great Migration was supposed to be an opportunity for African Americans to have a better life, but in the book we can see that it turns sour as "statistics" state that African Americans in the north commit the most crimes and become targets in the North almost as much as they were in the south. Interestingly, a new culture emerged with this migration to the northern states even though the discrimination continued. Art, dance, music, and overall African American culture developed into something new with this move. In particular, jazz music really started to take on new meaning and form because just as everyone else, many jazz musicians were heading up north. Chicago in particular took on a strong and talented presence in the African American jazz industry including such musicians as Jelly Roll Morton, Lee Collins, and King Oliver. In the Chicago clubs, new forms of jazz become popular. The tempo was quicker and more intense with up-tempo playing. The new style become known as Chicago jazz style and was very popular. I think that in the darker times of despair for African Americans fighting for equality and rights during this time period, jazz was a positive and exciting part of the culture. While the Great migration didn’t necessarily accomplish everything that African Americans were hoping for, it was an outlet and something the community could take pride in.

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-as-one-boy-lays-out-an-experience-most-white-people-will-never-have-to-worry-about

“I think people shouldn’t have to live in fear. I think the point of police is to not instill fear, but to protect and to have them not feel like fear.” (00:01) Kasiem Walters was stopped for the first time when was just 13 years old. Stop and Frisks are legal in Brooklyn and many other places in the country. Kasiem Walters tells his story and his experiences with Stop and Frisks and explains how the decisions by police on who to stop are racialized and “dehumanizing”.

            Walters tells us a story about his first time being ‘stopped & frisked’ when he was picking his friend up on their way to school. While standing outside his friends house two cops stopped and started asking him questions. Including “where you gonna end up? You wanta end up in jail?” (1:20) Both cops became aggressive. Kasiem explains that he was “Frightened & confused.” He elaborates on this deeper as he explains how he was so afraid of the police that, even after being mugged, he would not call the police for assistance. Why has Kasiem been stopped over twenty times since he was 13? I believe he already understands why. 

            “This is not a going to school problem… this is an African American Male problem” (2:52) Kasiem shows us how our society has created a profile of a criminal. This profile, among other stereotypes, usually has black skin. What Kasiem is explaining runs parallel to what Muhammad explains throughout the first few chapters of his book. While statistics in these neighborhoods may show higher numbers of African American criminals we must find it in ourselves to dig deeper than just the numbers for explanations. Why are African Americans more inclined to participate in crime? Why are African American Neighborhoods significantly less? Beyond the simple questions we can also ask why white crimes are significantly less likely to be reported? I think without even knowing it, Kasiem has provided a basis for much deeper questions without even knowing it.

Writer for Blackgirldangerous Has Something to Say about "Black Danger"

http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/01/broke-broke-crime-black-brown-living-unity/

^This article by Kitzia Esteva-Martinez, posted by an excellent blog called Blackgirldangerous, illuminated a rarely-discussed (at least in dominant culture, and the politically radical spaces dominated by white people that I have access to) and heartbreaking aspect of black criminality. 
Martinez describes herself as a "community-organizer, artist, undocumented and queer immigrant mujer for Mexico," and recounts her experience being mugged in her neighborhood in Oakland. Much of this article, although it is the story of a woman walking alone and robbed at gunpoint by three black teenagers, flies defiantly in the face of the traditional narrative mainstream media loves to prey upon about black crime. 

In this piece, Martinez tries to reconcile her need for space to deal with the trauma of being mugged with her political and moral qualms about calling the police. She carefully re-tells her story to friends and family, wanting it to sound different from the thousands of other stories about young black men and crime. 

Martinez describes the result of the careful and deliberate racialization of crime that Muhammad so expertly details in his book. She insists "Justice would be a world where boys of color don’t have to mug me to survive, to be men. This work is more nuanced than calling the police, than calling for harsher sentences, than banning weapons. What is needed to heal the alienation between our communities, the isolation from each other, looks like economic justice that we fight for in solidarity and unity." She describes some of the isolation she feels when her ex-partner urges her not to call the police so as to not contribute to the prison industrial complex and the pain of the questions the police ask when she finally does call them: "what race were they? how dark was their skin?" 

This piece adds a level of complexity to the discussion of the criminalization of Blackness, and extends the narrative beyond the specter of black on white violence (which seems to have motivated many of the early "findings" by race scientists) to the issue of what Martinez calls "broke on broke" violence; between communities of color, in an effort to rearranges the few resources allotted to them under capitalism. 

I was hesitant to post this article, as it seems like our class is majority white or white passing, and I definitely want to focus the discussion on the root causes of these anti-black racist mentalities, how they are a product of white supremacy. That is to say, I don't want to draw attention away from the meat of Muhammad's text. I just thought this was a relevant result of the history we investigated with this text.