podcast_AAS261

The speaker discusses the autobiography of James Weldon Johnson and explores the concept of race. They emphasize how race is deeply ingrained in American society and how lighter-skinned black individuals are often used to represent blackness. The speaker also delves into the impact of whiteness on the black middle class and the pressure to conform to white ideals. They discuss the protagonist's journey in the autobiography and how it challenges his ideas about blackness and whiteness. The podcast episode also touches on the creation of black music and the erasure of blackness in the black middle class. The speaker concludes by questioning our current definition of blackness and the need to dismantle racial stereotypes in society. They ask listeners to reflect on their perspective of race and the factors involved in defining it. 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 X-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. 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 the 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 experience reforms and reshapes his own personal ideas about blackness and how it exists in 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 will look for their successes and talents because of their outer appearance and racial categorization. Dark Times is 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, precursors of jazz, still reflecting the race struggle, one of the earliest forms of ragtime was an American style of music known as phone songs. 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 scaling 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 the 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. It 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 brings 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, lifelessness, 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 of justification, 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. immoral culture and further feeds white people's need for the pathological black others. Following this podcast episode, how has your perspective of race changed? What are important factors to consider when defining race? How is blackness defined and shaped by the race struggle in the U.S.? I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.