i had wanted to post this yesterday, but i was experiencing tech difficulties.

yesterday, i was watching good morning america (i always watch good morning america) and chris cuomo (i love chris cuomo's presence on my tv in the morning) did a segment interviewing mr. devon sherwood.

mr. sherwood is the lone black member of the duke university lacrosse team. the interview centered, of course, around the infamous rape scandal. chris cuomo asked him questions, and mr. sherwood, did his best to give his personal slant on how hard and trying the situation was, how conflicted he felt, how he received threats and whatnot, and i thought, ha: he's the token negro. he's the public token. don't i know how that feels?

token, not just because he's the lone black person on the team. but because he now got his opportunity to represent the black voice on the scandal. apparently, in the early days, mr. sherwood declined to comment or be interviewed about the case. i can understand that. in my contemporary civilization class, i skipped the day we discussed w.e.b. dubois's souls of black folks. i remembered how i felt when we discussed bartolome de las casas, and everyone praised his analysis of the injustice and immorality of the attempt to enslave the native americans of latin america. and i remember how i felt about the fact that neither the reading or the class discussion touched on the fact that he, after this brilliant analysis, went on to advocate for the slavery of the african.

i remembered further back. i remembered a music class in 8th grade. my elementary school was big on interdisciplinary learning, and in 8th grade, along with writing our theses, we studied the civil war in every class. and my music teacher decided to teach some civil war era songs, and in the middle of class he singled me out (courtenay) and asked me if i knew what a mammy was. cuz one of the songs we were gonna sing talked about mammy.

i was a token. i remember malcolm x wrote about tokens in his autobiography, and he was not complimentary. but i can say, at least the tokens of malcolm's era got to be first. he called them, negro firsts. the first negro nurse at such and such hospital, the first negro executive at such and such company. i don't get to be first, i get to be: "affirmative action candidate number 927346, how does the black community feel about this? today? do you identify with this? is the color line still the problem?" that's why i skipped w.e.b. dubois day in class. (and mr. dubois gets to be a token in life and in legacy, since his book is the only book by a black author that is required in the core curriculum at my esteemed university.)

well, i feel like the color line is still a problem, but it's not the only problem. it's not the only way that we get to be tokens. when we have to talk about being a woman in the workplace, we are tokens. or about being asian. or about this or that or blah blah blah, and while, of course, cross cultural dialogue (no matter how you define culture or cultural identity) is important, the line between genuine dialogue and succombing to the ease and convenience of tokenism is blurry.

the problem with tokenism: it holds hands with complaceny. yes, we have a woman, a black person, and asian, a latino, a muslim, a jew, etc. we've done our part. this person tells us what we need to know, and we don't need to know anything else. if this person agrees with us, then we are good people. if this person disagrees, this person tells us what we need to do to fix the problem, and then we are good people. but, it's all such gloss. for instance: mr. sherwood talked about receiving threats. yeah, ok, he received threats. the whole team received threats. are his threats different because he is black? or are they the same, cuz he's a member of a team?

to put it another way. i identify myself as black and a woman. i can speak for my pov as a black woman, but i cannot speak for black women. i dunno if mr. sherwood felt as though he were being singled out as a token. maybe he didn't. but proust had his madeleines (which triggered a string of memories for him) and i had this interview on gma.

who wants to bear the burden of being the voice of an entire group? and how dangerous is it if we get used to thinking one voice speaks for a people? how bout if we shift the paradigm? i propose we just be voices, voices you can agree with or disagree with for many many reasons.

i can only say what i would have done if a national news program came to me and asked me to speak on a subject that teeters uncomfortably on the edge pandering to tokenism. i would have gone on playing lacrosse and i would have gone on declining interviews. just like i skipped that class.

Labels: current events, so opinionated, voices

Posted by call me aja at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments

it looks very much like the face of the legal citizenry,
though perhaps sometimes more hopeful
sometimes more frightened.
i remember my grandmother was always deathly afraid
of any document requiring a signature,
school report cards, etc,
because she didn't want to get picked up immigration.

still if she had ever been detected by immigration, she wouldn't have faced anything as severe as the girl faces, should she be deported (found this in today's new york times):

Young Woman Fears Deportation, and Mutilation

"Adama Bah’s schoolmates were jubilant when she returned to 10th grade at Heritage High School in Manhattan in May 2005 after six weeks in a distant juvenile detention center. Her release put to rest the federal government’s unexplained assertion that Adama, a popular 16-year-old who wore jeans under her Islamic garb, was a potential suicide bomber.

"But a year and a half later, with many of her friends planning proms and applying to college, Ms. Bah, now 18, was still wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and tethered to a 10 p.m. government curfew, restrictions that were conditions of her release. And she was still facing deportation to Guinea, where she has not lived since she was 2.

"Today, at a closed hearing in Manhattan’s federal building, she will plead for political asylum from Guinea’s entrenched practice of female genital mutilation, which has marked all the women in her extended family, including her mother. An immigration judge could decide her fate on the spot.

“I’m worried about being sent back,” Ms. Bah said on Tuesday in her first extended interview about the lasting consequences of a case that briefly became a cause célèbre in the debate over government vigilance and the protection of individual liberties. “I’m worried about being separated from my family. This is all I have left now — what hasn’t been taken.”

"Officially, she and a 16-year-old Bangladeshi girl arrested in Queens the same day were detained solely because their childhood visas were no longer valid. That remains the only reason Ms. Bah is in deportation proceedings, and the sole legal basis for an order last year that released the other girl, Tashnuba Hayder, on the condition that she leave the country immediately."

"Even now, Ms. Bah says she has no idea whether her slight acquaintance with Ms. Hayder was what caused agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to hold her for questioning. Though a document provided by a federal agent at the time said the F.B.I. considered the girls “an imminent threat” to national security, it provided no evidence, and officials refused to discuss the matter.

“Why me?” she asked, before her volunteer lawyers warned that a judicial order limits what she can say about the experience. “Nobody answers, why me?”

She has had little time to dwell on the question, however, because she has been struggling to replace her father as the family’s primary breadwinner. Her father, a cabdriver who was arrested along with her and held on immigration violations, stayed in detention until his deportation last month. Her mother, illiterate and speaking little English, soon lost the family business, a trinket stand."

more here.

Labels: it takes a village, voices

Posted by call me aja at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

the title of this post is taken from the bible at john 1:1. but this is not so much a post about religion.

during some down time at work today (what an exhausting week it has been!) i was reading a blog that a coworker once brought to my attention because of a particularly amusing post about snowglobes. i hadn't looked at this blog in probably 2 weeks or so, and it looks like the blogger hasn't posted anything since last thursday.

one of last thursday's blog posts was about mahmoud ahmadinejad, president of iran, addressing the un. and the blogger apparently disagrees with mr. ahmadinejad's politics, and morals, and probably a lot of other things about him, as many people do. and obviously disagrees strongly, given the vehemence of the post. i didn't necessarily agree (or disagree) with all of what the blogger had to say, i couldn't help but mentally stumble, then scratch my head, then ask, "seriously?" over the next-to-last paragraph:

"All I'm saying is, every other so-called oppressed people have at least managed to get some good novels out of it. Bring me the Palestinian 'Invisible Man', and maybe I'll warm up to the notion."

warm up to what notion? that palestinians are oppressed people? but mr. ahmadinejad is president of iran, and as far as i know, iranians are not considered palestinian...unless they are people of iranian descent who reside(d) in palestine. then again, this is nitpicky, geographical argument is actually beside my point.

my point is that, in one's haste to condemn someone else's politics, one should not trivialize the experiences of millions of "oppressed people." i mean really...to reduce someone's experience to "at least you got a good novel out of it"...i'm sure that that comment is in jest, but sometimes even jesting goes a bit too far.

since invisible man is the example given, i suppose i will run with the example of the experience of the african diaspora. which, of course, is not a topic i am un-fond of expounding upon. invisible man is a good novel to read, of course, but more than that, it's a triumph, given the fact that for hundreds of years black people in this country were forbidden to learn to read, let alone write, for fear this would turn them against their "masters." it's a triumph, given that phillis wheatley was not allowed to publish her own brilliant work with a writer letter of approval from a group of white men. it's a triumph, given that the invisible man in the novel was able to write a novel that depicted a black man attending college, a triumph given that ralph ellison was able to attend college...these, i believe, are some of the things that maya angelou was refering to when she wrote of "the dream and the hope of the slave."

and the passage from the bible from which i take my title? writing a good novel is serious thing. for an oppressed people to write a novel which even people from non-oppressed classes and groups praise is nigh unto a miracle. folks put so much faith in words, that even in religious texts the word is a god. the ability to stand up and make people pay attention to words? that's power. what power the literate/voiced people have! oppressed people have died to get to the point where they could read simple sentences. oppressed people are not afforded freedom of speech, so when they get to the point where they are making you pay attention their words, please understand that they are working hard at throwing off their oppression. rastas understand this. that's why they don't ever use the term oppression. they say downpression, cuz that's what downpressors do...they keep someone down...but when you hear someone, they are getting out from under that downpression.

i picked the title because its the phrase that came to mind that most actively and stridently rejects and resists the reduction of an oppressed people's struggle to just a good novel. a few good words.

it's not ok to say or imply that the litmus test for oppression is whether or not that people rises to the point of writing a good novel. to make that the rule is to deny the oppression of say...i dunno, millions and millions of american people who are no longer around to write a novel about their oppression. i mean, in the caribbean native american people pretty much completely exterminated...if genocide isn't oppression, then i'm not sure what is. and the arawaks didn't write no great novels between the time columbus arrived and they died en masse of smallpox, bullets, and forced labor.

of course, the claim of oppression is a contentious claim, cuz people don't want to be oppressed, to admit to being oppressed, to admit to being oppressors, or to admit to abetting oppressors. and i'm not writing this to call any specific person or group of people oppressors. what i'm saying is: don't dishonor folks' struggles. don't reduce folks' accomplishments to an "at-least-a-token-i-hear you-blah-blah." writing a good novel didn't make up for the oppression that people went through for generations.

and honestly...if the one is unaware of palestinian literature, does that speak to a dearth of palestinian literature, or to ignorance on the part of the one who claims unawareness? i really cannot say why the novel is the test in this instance...but in terms of palestinian literature...the work of edward said might be a good place to start...and if we are going to conflate geography (yeah, i had to go back to the geography)...perhaps gibran....or rumi...or if we prefer our highly acclaimed literature to be definitely palestinian and more modern, how about tony-award winning suheir hammad? it's there...if one cares to look for it.

and one final note: another nitpick. the blogger asks how mr. ahmadinejad is being "allowed into this country." he's addressing the un. the un is not in this country. the un is the un is the un. the us is international territory, not american territory. for all anyone knows, a military helicopter could be landing him fair and square on un ground. that is all.

Labels: current events, so opinionated, voices

Posted by call me aja at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments