Astroland

I’m coming down from an amazing week. Life is always good. But sometimes it’s damn good and that’s how this week’s been. Last night I went with my bf to see Bruce Springsteen for my first time ever. I’m not (or wasn’t) a huge fan but my bf is. Suffice it to say, after only the first five songs I was completely blown away and humming a new tune. Jersey represent!

Earlier in the week my bf and I went to Martha’s Vineyard for a few days. While we waited for the Steamship Authority in Falmouth, my bf recognized Jamie Hector who played Marlo Stanfield on The Wire waiting too. My bf uses The Wire in his classes (he’s a prep school English teacher) so he said hello to Jamie and shared how much he loved the show.

Then my bf and I spent four amazing days on the Vineyard that culminated in attending the Hutchins Forum at the Old Whaling Church (OWC) in Edgartown hosted by Skip Gates and moderated by Charlayne Hunter Gault. This year’s topic: When Work Disappears, Equality and Opportunity in the African American Community. Panelists included Harvard Professor of Economics Roland G. Fryer, Jr; Civil Rights Attorney and founder of the Advancement Project Constance L. Rice; creator of The Wire and Treme David Simon; and President Emeritus of Harvard and former member of the Obama administration Larry Summers.

As we awaited the doors of the OWC to open we, once again, ran into Jamie Hector who was attending the forum with his very beautiful and very sleepy three year old daughter. We shared a bench with Jamie and immediately launched into conversation about our time on the Vineyard. It was Jamie’s first time out and he was taken, as my bf and I are each year, with the number of African American families out and about, living it up, doing our thing there. Jamie’s reason for being there was to attend an Obama fundraiser with the cast of The Wire. Jamie stayed with a prominent African American family* who shared with him our folks history with the Vineyard. My bf who is also very familiar with the history, expanded on it and also shared information about the role that elite prep schools play in that world by being feeder schools to the Ivy’s. We also chatted a bit about films.

My bf and I are huge movie addicts and for the last two years we were on the Vineyard for the Run & Shoot Filmworks African-American Film Festival and attended a few screenings. This year we went out a week later due to schedule conflicts but thank goodness for that because it meant we were there to attend the Hutchins forum.

Just before the Old Whaling Church doors opened, a few additional cast members of The Wire, including the creator, David Simon, rolled up and Jamie introduced us to them. One The Wire cast member in attendance, Andre Royo, is also in the film G which my bf also uses in his classes.  That lead to more interesting conversation.

When the doors to the church opened we went our separate way from Jamie and The Wire cast and found seats with a wonderful older gentleman who is a professor of African American Studies at a SUNY school. As the panelists settled on stage, Skip Gates made his way down the aisle greeting folks, giving hugs, and shaking hands including those of my bf and myself.

I’ll write more about the forum in another post or perhaps in a full paper - it absolutely deserves its own space. For now I’ll leave you with a few intriguing paraphrased comments made by forum panelists:

From his introductory comments: Poverty is disheartening but loss of work is destructive to communities. -Skip Gates

The Wire is the best portrayal of underclass life that I’ve ever seen. -Constance L. Rice

On the past and present state of the underclass: The Underclass are living as they are because there is no economic incentive to stop it from happening. -David Simon

Reiterating a comment from Roland G. Fryer, Jr: What Roland meant is that barriers breaking down do not come from the top. Rather they come from communities, from the people, like the people at this forum. -Larry Summers

*Unless until I find that Jamie has shared that families identity publicly, they’ll remain anonymous in Astroland.

Formerly titled: “The Day Two of My Worlds Collided”
 
I’m a huge fan of NPR’s weekly podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour (PCHH). Finding that podcast for the first time was like finding a missing limb. I can’t really tell you why or for what purpose, but on occasion, I’ve been known to take notes on an episode as if a followup for-credit quiz is on the other end. Thank goodness for Evernote.
 
Last week’s episode reviewed the film that seemingly drove the world into a frenzy of anticipation, The Hunger Games. I think it important I disclose upfront that, while the series is likely very much to my taste and I am very much so one to get caught up in Harry Potteresque hype, I’ve yet to read the books and I’ve yet to see the film. Yet.
 
The primary reason I’ve yet to read is that when the series began to grow in hype, I made a very conscious decision to take a break from series. This was primarily because I was burned out on series and I felt them so engrossing that I was not reading much else. I had to break free! =D And I’ve yet to see the film because my boyfriend has been crazy busy and then sick as of late and I do not want to see it without him.
 
I digress. (What else is new?!)
 
The point of today’s musings, as alluded to in the title, is that my twoness collided when on the same day I both read the New Yorker article White Until Proven Black  and listened to the day’s episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour (3/30/12).
 
Please read the article. It is crazy compelling. Kudos to the blogger who cleverly created a forum for eye opening discussion.
 
Please also listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour because it’s fun and I love it and can’t imagine who wouldn’t.
 
Q: So where the collision? A: Sometime just before the 16 minute mark of the 3/30/12 PCHH discussion that went a little something like this:

HOST A: “there was this bizarre dustup over Rue being Black.”
HOST B: “yes there was [laughter] when she is in the book. ..it’s very, I don’t, i don’t know where that came from either. to me what was weird about it was the hostility that came from it that was like ‘now i don’t care as much.’”
HOST A: “i’d really like to think that an isolated group of nitwits but woof.”
HOST B: “i agree. i agree…” 

Now I completely believe them well intentioned. And at the end of the day I’m not asking that PCHH be a forum for deep conversations about race relations in America. That’s not their gig. I completely get that. 

But I KNOW they are not that naive either. They just can’t be. They read a ton, see a ton, interview a ton and care a ton. But what I’d hope is that their last comment on the matter not reduce what is an evil disgusting insidious problem to the silliness of a few misguided individuals.

The blogger highlighted in the New Yorker article, and all of the press surrounding the comments about Rue, convey very clearly that this was not just one or two, or even 100 misguided, individuals. Rather this was a widespread perfect example of aversive racism. Provocatively, through the shared lens of pop culture, these instances so clearly illustrate how microagressions work in society, their covert subversiveness and the resultant harm they may cause.
 
My beef with PCHH is that I think the hosts are capable intelligent competent individuals who likely completely get what I’m saying. Furthermore they have a platform where they reach a lot of folks. Many of those folks have not read or, similarly, completely dismissed the racist Hunger Games’ comments.
 
While I thank PCHH for even mentioning the comments (because they did not have to mention them at all), would it not have been better to end the conversation with a nod to the reality of the pervasiveness of these issues? To wrap it up as they did, perpetuates the broken system because it allows listeners to compartmentalize, or flatly dismiss, it themselves. And I think that is pretty damaging, or at the very least a missed educational opportunity.

“So what have I tried to do in this massive moment in American history? I have sought to use my soapbox to help the effort to see that America does the right thing.” ~Touré in Time Ideas’ article, Why I Speak Out About Trayvon Martin.