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The podcast discusses the autobiography of James Weldon Johnson, focusing on the concept of race. It explores how lighter-skinned black individuals are often used to represent blackness and the black aesthetic, and how the black middle class is impacted by the ideals of whiteness. The main character in the autobiography faces challenges due to his blackness and explores his own ideas about blackness and whiteness. The podcast also touches on the history of black music, the erasure of blackness in the black middle class, and the perpetuation of racial stereotypes in society. It concludes by questioning the current definition of blackness and the impact of white supremacy on black identity. Hello everyone, my name is Genoa White, I'm currently a double major in Psychology and African American Studies at Emory University, and today we'll be discussing an autobiography of an ex-clergyman by James Weldon Johnson. Let's talk about race. You know, it can be an intimidating, daunting, or seemingly irrelevant topic of discussion when it doesn't seem like it pertains to you, but what if I told you that the concept of race is just as American as the Confederate flag? Lighter skinned black individuals are often used in media, art, etc. to represent and define blackness and the black aesthetic. Throughout the podcast episode, I would like us all to interact with the idea of whether or not the black aesthetic can be defined and how it interacts with or is impacted by the idea of race, and we get into the discussion of the black middle class and how it is impacted by the ideals and standards of whiteness. The main character's father in the autobiography, who is also white, comes into this story in the part where the main character is pursuing higher education. His father, whom he had never had any prior interaction with before this moment, outside of serving him and polishing his shoes, attested that he would only pay for the character's education if he went to Harvard or Yale. Inflicting, his mother also wanted him to go to the Atlanta University. Rejecting his father's wishes, he goes to the Atlanta University. This experiences, reforms, and reshapes his own personal ideas about blackness and how it exists within himself, but it also speaks to the first-hand accounts of countless black intellectuals who, similarly to the nameless character in an autobiography, and countless other black intellectuals during the era, often were looked for their successes and talents because of their outer appearance and racial categorization. Red Tom was a form of black music, first created in the black middle class, popularized in different dance halls, and associated with the dance, the cakewalk. According to Giddens and Defoe, precursor to jazz, still reflecting the race struggle, one of the earliest forms of ragtime was an American style of music known as poon song. These late products of minstrelsy were mockeries of black music. According to Leroy Jones, it was the black middle class who believed that the best way to survive in America would be to disappear completely. This disappearance meant erasing traces of blackness, African heritage, or remnants of slavery from black culture and the black middle class. Removing these attributions and associations to blackness from the black middle class helps to refute the common narrative of blackness as being inferior. The common racialized narrative is often created by taking one type of person and prescribing that idea to the whole race. American culture is defined by developing perpetual systems of oppressing black people while stealing and appropriating key creations of black culture and attributing this success to white and western forms, and pushing the narrative that black success only exists as forms of mockery of what has already been achieved by white America. Despite all of the talent within the main character in an autobiography, as well as his intelligence and even the fact that he's lighter skinned, the fact that he is black diminishes any type of success that he is able to have throughout his life. In the story, not only do the main character's ideas about blackness change, his ideas about whiteness change, and he also realizes the bigger societal significance and the dangers of creating standards based on proximity to whiteness and white ideals. These beliefs and practices are interwoven into the governing principles and foundation of our society. The creation of whiteness as a standard still exists today. In current day psychological studies about race discussing how black people can surmount racial prejudice, the studies often address the significance of grit. It's the capacity of which one individual is able to overcome their obstacles and challenges that they may face in their life. Grit is not enough to overcome the systemic burdens that black people face. We have tried and tried for centuries to overcome racialized stereotypes. Grit involves the dismantling of racialized stereotypes within our system and principles of our society. As we come to the end of this podcast episode, I would like to end with a quote that springs to question the way we currently define blackness in our society. A quote from researcher Mary Petillo on the discussion of white supremacy and the creation of black stereotypes reads, The deficit perspective is saturated with stigma. Whether we call it condemnation, social death, laziness, or subjection, the story is the same. The tarnished, disreputable, spoiled identity of black people in the eyes of white people leads to all manner of violence, exclusion, dispossession, harassment, erasure, objectification, theft, and more. Reproducing that stigma in our research and teaching piles on the unrelenting barrage of negative information about black people that permeates U.S. and world culture and further feeds white people's need for the pathological black other.