Week 3: Selective Association: Reaping the Benefits

When analyzing the texts from this week and personal experiences, I could not help but think of privilege in terms of race/ethnicity and class and the ability the middle and upper class white folks had to leave their “designated spaces.” Not to perpetuate the idea of segregation and having separate appropriate spaces for specific identities, but a type of “safe space” is often needed for folks who are marginalized and not generally comfortable and accepted in most other areas.

Heap presented this idea within the LGBTQ and People of Color communities in both chapters five and six. However, the problematic aspect of this privilege, whites being able to enter traditionally non-white and/or non-heterosexual spaces, is that they do so solely for their benefit and at their whim. For example, Heap mentioned that white, middle/upper middle class folks went into Harlem and African-American nightclubs and venues to partake in what they thought to be perverse and sexually deviant behavior. For them, slumming was a nightlife activity that did not seem to interfere with their day lives or others perception of them during the day. Yet, at night they could be as sexual or even sexually active with men and women of color without it being a large issue. Therefore, they utilized spaces that were for people of color, “blacks and tans” as Heap states throughout. Initially white folks did not enter the spaces without some sort of judgment and usually racially loaded perceptions. For example, in chapter five someone comments that going into the cabarets, “you go sort of primitive up there,” (Heap, 196). In my opinion, this comment reflects implicit negative stereotypes about African American folks simply by the language used. “Primitive” implies less civilized, not modern, lesser, etc. However, despite having these ideas about those who participated in the nightlife scene, white folks wanted to be involved solely for their entertainment. White folks were selectively associating themselves with people of color and viewed them as spectacles to watch for pleasure or involve with for their own personal pleasure.

These observations lead me to think of issues of selective association for benefit reaping in my own communities, whether CU Boulder as an institution or in the larger boulder area. I came across and article a while back that made me draw connections between folks claiming a certain race or ethnic group for benefits and the questions of “who can claim a race, what amount qualifies a person to be a certain race, etc.”

Elise Hu wrote an article for National Public Radio (NPR) entitled Minority Rules: Who Gets to Claim Status as a Person of Color? The article itself is focused on “Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren…[and her] claim of Native American ancestry.” According to Warren, she is 1/32 Cherokee and actively claims that identity. Despite her self-identification as a Native American woman, many people question the boundaries and rules to claiming marginalized identities for seemingly personal benefits. I connected this with the idea of students who apply for scholarships, grants, and other forms of financial aid and claim “Hispanic” race identity yet would in almost any other situation identify as white. I find this very problematic because, like I mentioned above, white folks who do this are doing so solely for their own benefit and continue to marginalize those who have and always do actively claim said identify. It is similar to the theme of selective association in terms of slumming and Harlem. People of color and LGBTQ/non-heterosexual or gender conforming folks who are proud to identify in specific ways in respective space then have someone come into that space and utilize it only when they benefit yet receive none of the stigma of the marginalized identity. This can be incredibly frustrating because they are also the people who help perpetuate your marginalization.

Whether it be partaking in almost exclusively “black and tan” nightlife entertainment, claiming racial/ethnic identity for financial gain or political benefits, middle and upper middle class white people cannot freely enter spaces for gain that they would otherwise never associate with. It is problematic because it capitalizes on certain aspects of a marginalized identity without having to deal with the negative and constantly hurtful effects of being in a marginalized group. As a white person, already holding institutional and systemic power, then adding in the layer of class privilege, it is in very poor taste to so negatively and consciously use the power that other people do not have to benefit yourself and consequently further oppress others. http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/05/16/152822762/minority-rules-who-gets-to-claim-status-as-a-person-of-color

Week Three: Oh Miley Cyrus...modern day slumming made visible

Cultural Artifact:  Miley Cyrus Music Video for "We Can't Stop"

Miley Cyrus received a lot of press for her now oft-termed "transgressive" performance at the 2013 Video Music Awards. In the set, she danced suggestively, showed off her twerking “skills”, mimed burying her face in a voluptuous black woman’s rear end, ground her rear end into Robin Thicke’s crotch, and simulated sex with a foam finger. Quite the spectacle. The public and private responses varied from feminists calling for an end to "slut-shaming" they argued is employed by the conservatives determined to police the sexuality of young women, to activists of color asking folks to question Miley's appropriation of black culture in her recent shift as public performer (I would say artist...but that seems to be a stretch). It is the latter that I currently find of interest for this blog post, as it relates to Chad Heap’s discussion on the seemingly antiquated excursion of slumming. Rather than assume slumming no longer exists, perhaps an argument needs to be made that one must no longer travel anywhere in order to use the Other to justify the construction of your oppositional identity.

In his description of the appeal of the Negro Vogue craze phase of urban slumming, Heap states, “For these [white] men and women, a slumming excursion to Harlem or Bronzeville was ‘like taking a trip from their white world into another mysterious dark world,’ a trip that offered numerous occasions to take advantage of the supposed freedoms of black nightlife while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of white superiority,” going on to assert, and this is of special interest in relation to Miley Cyrus’ seeming wanton appropriation of urban black cultural markers, “slumming created a space where middle-class whites could normalize their own increasingly public sexual behavior by contrasting it with the spectacle of cross-racial and black sexuality presented in local black and tans.” (Heap 2009:191)

Rather than join in the chorus of responding to Miley’s VMA performance, I chose to watch, for the first time, the video of the song “We Don’t Stop” which was performed at the awards show. I was, to be honest, horrified. The video begins with Miley symbolically cutting off an ankle monitor (linking her to the perceived delinquency of blacks? I am not sure of most of the choices made in the filming of this video…), shifting quickly into an image of her placing a highly stylized gold “grill” into her mouth and “mean mugging” for the camera. Really? Oh honey, just stop. From there it just goes downhill as Miley and her seemingly diverse group of friends (although predominantly white), party in a variety of settings. Multiple times Miley engages in various forms of appropriating black culture, most notably twerking in a circle of all black women while giving sung shout: “To my home girls here with the big butt/Shaking it like we at a strip club”. 

In addition to these images of a white female body acting in seemingly “black” ways, we also see Miley writhing, dressed in all white, on an all white bed, in a varying assortment of sexually explicit poses. Legs open, crotch exposed, back arched, aggressive/assertive sexuality shamelessly on display. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing…but reconsider the quote from Heap and how slumming enables elite whites to express their blossoming sexuality as normative in contrast to the primitive, threatening and perverted sexuality of black citizens and suddenly the bad taste in my mouth makes sense. “We Can’t Stop” is a celebration of black cultural appropriation and may even be read as a contemporary version of slumming which no longer requires actually going to a specified geographic location. This makes her final chorus oddly fitting: “And we can't stop/And we won't stop/We run things, things don't run we/Don't take nothing from nobody.”

Well then Miss Miley, I’ll take this to mean you’re not interested in having a conversation about your revival of slumming ideologies.... sigh. 

Week 3- After the sweep where do you throw the dirt????

SWEAPING THE SLUMS, in today’s society is not so hidden. One might drive through a slum neighborhood and one month later drive through again and all the affordable living buildings would leveled. White people going to the slums for entertainment in the early 1900’s desired to consume the black/tan life. However, when both white men and women started promoting scare tactics into their communities, the desire for the nightlife of the slums shifted into fear of the nightlife. The slums are/were areas where people who live in poverty can afford to live, and the people in that community depend/ed on the capital brought in by the white middle/upperclass consumers. It’s similar to supply and demand, if the demand is high society keeps producing, if it is low they stop production and move in a new product. What is happening to slums, is contractors are coming in buying the land for 400,000 because the buildings are not worth anything and then they are building 20 urban lofts and selling each one for 500,000. Only people with economic capital can afford to live in the newly “highland” area. However if this was the only area affordable to live in for most people,…where do those people end up?

  I grew up in central Denver, down the street from Sports Authority Stadium, a block away from Colfax. The description of a slum that was presented in the reading, when I read it the picture of my old neighborhood appeared in my head. I grew up knowing what drugs, prostitution and strip clubs were, before I knew how to read. My grandparents live on the corner of 16th and king and across the street from affordable living apartments. This area used to be where many people would come to purchase drugs and look for people to pick up. However over the years the violence rose to an extreme level and over time less consumers would be seen. In the year 2015 the old slum looking apartments are going to be newly built million dollar lofts. Those people that lived in those apartments were bought out and pushed into the industrial area of Colorado. How many times can society push communities out before there is nowhere else to go? Freakonomics