It is no coincidence that today, on the 8th anniversary of Katrina, that there is a nation-wide strike called by fast-food workers in several major cities, and that New Orleans is not one of them. Instead, workers in New Orleans resist their exploitation in more subtle ways, hoping to hold on to their jobs in a city where:
Nearly half of the African American men in the city are not working according to the GNOCDC. Since 2004, the city’s job base has declined 29 percent. Fifty three percent of African American men in the New Orleans area are employed now. African American households in the metro New Orleans area earned 50 percent less than white households, compared to the national percentage of 40 percent.
Jobs continue to shift out from New Orleans to suburbs. In 2004, New Orleans provided 42% of metro or 247,000 jobs, now that number has dropped to 173,000 and the percentage has dropped to 34%.
Low paid tourism jobs, averaging a low $32,000 a year, continue to be the largest sector of work in New Orleans. But even this low average can be misleading as the hourly average for food preparation and serving jobs in the area is just over $10.00 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Median earnings for full-time male African American New Orleans workers are going down and are now at $31,018; for white male workers they are going up and are now at $60,075. Whites have experienced an 8 percent increase in middle and upper income households while African Americans have suffered a 4 percent decline. Only 5 percent of black households were in the top income class (over $102,000) while 29 percent of white households were.
In my experience, if you don’t have anyone to vouch for you, take you under their wing, or promote and advocate for you professionally, you can forget about finding meaningful, productive, and well-paid work in New Orleans. As a freelancer who enjoys a positive relationship with many in my immediate and extended networks, I have found it difficult to break the glass ceiling as a woman, as a Black person, and as a young professional. There is still a pervasive mindset that resists any change to the present status quo of entrenched hierarchies; it has been my institutional affiliation with Duke University, my northern accent and my academic credentials which have worked most favorably for me. I shudder to think about the limited opportunities available to men and women who do not already have access to such forms of cultural capital. The restaurant and hospitality industries offer the most promising prospects with their constant need for chamber maids, fry cooks, dishwashers, and clerks. The casinos and hotel chains which comprise the majority of the hospitality industry are not friendly to union organizing, or even informal collective bargaining; needless to say, neither are the fast-food franchises and restauranteurs.
It’s time white women drop the practice of authenticating—and profiting from—the experiences of women of color.
Disclaimer: I watch Orange is the New Black.
At first I didn't want anything to do with it. "Orange will make you Black? That's racist!" I said to myself. It hadn't occurred to me that the show's title was a riff on a popular saying in fashion. Given that the criminal injustice system has become an institution which targets Black men, women and children, and reinforces through violence the whole race-making project, I simply could not see the forest for the trees. But then a (Black) friend of mine visited and recommended that I watch the show. We sat together and watched the first 2 or 3 episodes and I was not impressed. At all. Well at least not with the white lead. But it was the supporting cast of women of color, older women, and poor women whose stories fascinated me.
While I certainly agree that "it’s time white women drop the practice of authenticating—and profiting from—the experiences of women of color," I guess I'll take what I can get. For now. Perhaps one good thing that will come of this show is that it will demonstrate to the people in power that audiences will watch movies and tv about queer women of color, and they will like it! In the mean time, let's support talented women of color writers and producers so that we can tell our own stories without having to use anybody as a so-called "trojan horse." Check out the pilot presentation of TWENTIES, and circulate it widely. Perhaps we can create another success story akin to Awkward Black Girl.
As we relish in this day off from work, and search in earnest for a barbecue or cookout to enjoy, let us remember the words of the mighty Frederick Douglass. We, as "free" men and women would do well to keep in mind that although there are certain injustices and cruelties to which we are no longer subject, there are surely injustices and cruelties from which we continue to suffer and which are visited upon others in our name, as American citizens. I'll share with you my favorite passage:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Remember when BET had news? It wasn't perfect but it at least gave a Black perspective on current events. Today's Black news infrastructure is so woefully stunted and pigeon-holed that it only seems to cover "Black issues;" unfortunately, we don't have that many places to go for information that ties together historical context, political analysis and current events -- and I'm not just talking about diatribes and rants. We can, and we must do better, especially during an era in which the press is rapidly down-sizing, and dissent in all its myriad forms is being criminalized (as are our everyday lives if you're young, and/or poor, and/or an immigrant, and/or an "arab", and/or Black). These are some heady times, and now more than ever we need professional journalists and researchers who can inoculate the people with regular doses of truth.
On Mother's Day (and everyday) Violence in New Orleans
Mayor Mitch Landrieu posted this status update to his public facebook page on Monday, May 13:
On Sunday afternoon--Mother's Day, our community was subjected to another senseless act of violence. In response, we're calling the entire community to participate in a Community Response today at the corner of Frenchmen and N. Villere. It starts at 6pm. Please come out to show solidarity in protecting our culture and delivering a message to stop the shootings.
On the one hand, I am happy that the Mayor has taken an interest in raising the issue of violence to public discussion, on the other hand, I am afraid that rallies which bring people together to “stop the shootings” may, in fact, be short-sighted. Does the Mayor have any idea as to why violence is so pandemic in Black communities throughout New Orleans?
We already know the who.
As an anthropologist, I am especially interested in the why.
I can surmise that some of the reasons why young Black men act out with aggression and violence include the lack of meaningful and creative job opportunities. If you’re young and Black, it seems like the best options you have are to work in restaurants or hotels. Not only do service-sector jobs pay appallingly low wages, but also these jobs do not allow for creativity, they do not allow workers to offer meaningful contributions to society, they do not impart a sense of belonging. I can also speculate from my time living in New Orleans that there are very few recreational outlets for adolescents; sure this city is fun and games, but if you are not old enough to drink (or simply don’t want to), what is one to do?
Cathy Stanton (2005) notes that cities and towns whose main industry has either fled or atrophied often attempt to rescue an aestheticized past in order to attract would-be tourists and city consumers. This is precisely what took place in post-bellum New Orleans, and it has continued, steadily intensifying since the city hosted the last World’s Fair in 1984. Public art/history projects tend to put distance between the past and its contemporary representation through the “reciprocity of disappearance and exhibition” (31). In New Orleans this dynamic plays out in that tourists and consumers are lured to the city because of its vibrant culture (mainly music, food, architecture, and carnival) while the culture-bearers are disappeared; the products of their creative labor, however, are exalted, exhibited and commodified.
John Hannigan (1998) describes the social and class relations corresponding to the revitalized centrality of cultural production for urban economics, making reference to the tension between visibility and disappearance as well. In Fantasy City, there are stark divisions between inhabitant and visitor as officials and tourism boosters strive to brand their city as a unique destination hot spot; the role of consumers are downsized to that of passive recipients of culture, and the owners/investors/developers come to stand in for the cultural producer whose historical and material context for production has been disappeared from public view. In the Big Easy, the markers of this historical and material context are anything if disappeared, however: Monuments, museums and other institutions, school and street names serve to preserve the history of white supremacist violence which created the conditions for the accumulation of wealth for white elites.
It’s no wonder, then, that young Black men and women feel so disaffected, so alienated, and so angry. You couple these dynamics with the everyday experiences of police terror and surveillance that many Black residents in New Orleans suffer, and you have a powder keg, ready to explode. You simply cannot expect for people who survive under all sorts of structural violence not to internalize that violence.
So many young Black men have received messages saying that their lives are not valuable. They see these messages reflected in the physically dilapidated conditions of their neighborhoods; they see these messages reflected in the constant turnover of amateur and untrained teachers in their schools; they see these messages reflected in the rates of school closure in Black communities; they see these messages reflected in the lack of public transportation infrastructure in neighborhoods where so many do not own cars; they see these messages reflected in the abuse and brutality suffered at the hands of those who swore an oath “to protect and serve;” they see these messages reflected in the inaccessibility of health insurance, mental health services, or even nutritious food. These messages are received before young Black men even have a chance to see how the other half live; a ride on the St. Charles streetcar only drives home the point. Staring out the window at all the mansions and manicured lawns, it is an act of resistance not to give in to thinking that you are worthless, if you come from Hollygrove, Central City, New Orleans East, or the Lower 9th Ward.
Mayor Landrieu has spent quite a bit of his political capital investing in the cultural economy, first as Lt. Governor of Louisiana, and now as the Mayor of New Orleans. Perhaps unwittingly, he has helped to create the very conditions cited above. If Mayor Landrieu wants to move beyond ad hoc and largely symbolic responses to pandemic violence, he would do well to commission a group comprised of activists, anthropologists, educators and young people, to investigate the root causes of Black male violence. Of course, the research is just a tool, and if the Mayor is to take this issue seriously, he must then follow up on the findings, and put his money where his mouth is. Then and only then, can we expect the culture of violence to change.
I read your autobiography in High School. I saw it lying around my big sister’s room and scooped it up. It was so full of rich poetry, I loved reading and re-reading your words. Interpreting them in my own time. When it was my turn to share a passage in class from the autobigraphy of my choice, I read to the class about your choice to assume an African name. Little did I know, I’d take one of my own so many years later.
When the Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando came to Boston to show her documentary “Eyes of the Rainbow,” I was there, excited to see and hear you in your own words. I was surprised that your voice did not sound quite as forceful as I’d imagined it, having been so thoroughly absorbed by your poetry and prose. The film strengthened my resolve to someday travel to Cuba, and perhaps meet this legend of a woman.
In college, I studied for a semester at the University of Havana. I heard tell that Assata had been spotted in an art market by one of my fellow American exchange students. I would excitedly serve you at an anti-imperialist thanksgiving dinner celebration that my American study-abroad program mates organized in conjunction with Nehanda Abiodun, another legend of a woman living in exile in Havana.
You’re no terrorist. You’re a hero. It would almost be a compliment, a testament to how truly liberating it would be to follow your emancipatory example, if the well-greased wheels of the global military industrial complex weren’t geared to grind you up. I pray that we are wise enough and strong enough to prevent the state from apprehending you. I remember from my multiple visits to Cuba that the young people of the island regard you as something of a borrowed national treasure. I remember hearing that the Cuban government had asked you and Mama Nehanda to stop allowing your growing congregation of Black dissidents to read and eat and think and struggle together. They said it was for your own safety, but apparently you are even too radical for the Revolution. At least I can hear you in the voices and inflections of the Havana Hip Hop. Sadly, we see that a prophet is never revered in her own land.
What saddens me is that so many Black people in the U.S. heard your story. As, perhaps, the most willing Americans in many respects, we are happy to do others’ dirty work. Special Agent Aaron Ford, the Black man who called the press conference to denounce Joanne Chesimard, and to call for her capture, reminds me in a lot of ways of New Orleans’ own Louis COngo, an African who won his freedom during the colonial era by acting on behalf of the French crown. Louis Congo was an executioner who put many maroons to death for deigning to escape their enslavement. During the colonial era Louis Congo served as a powerful example to all other Africans about the cost of Black freedom. Today, I wonder: Why now? What is the example being set when the FBI calls for a $2 million reward for your capture?
It certainly comes as no surprise that this is happening now, in the midst of continued capitalist consolidation of global military and surveillance infrastructure. Not even three months ago a militarized LAPD sent drones in search of Christopher Dorner, where previously the Pentagon had set a policy of using drones on citizens and non-citizens outside of U.S. borders in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Now the FBI is calling for the capture of a woman who lives humbly and peacefully under the protection of asylum in Cuba. By painting our hero as a terrorist -- the most wanted terrorist -- the powers that be are warning us all not to imagine another world, not to struggle for love and justice and peace, not to imagine another way of being. Most importantly, the global military industrial complex is making it clear that we as ordinary citizens, and activists especially, should not imagine that there is any place on earth where we might be safe from acts of aggression committed in the name of the seemingly endless war on terror. What’s more, Cuba was just in the news because of the heinous acts of torture the U.S. government perpetrates on its political prisoners in their Guantánamo Bay facility.
I’m hoping that the FBI’s efforts will backfire, and that today’s young people will see in you what they saw in your godson, Tupac Shakur -- himself an outlaw. By becoming the first female most-wanted terrorist, you will forever be canonized as the patron saint of struggle for 21st century Black America. It’s up to us, however, to truly honor our saints. The candle in my window stays lit.
Another season of Project Runway has come and gone, and it strikes me as incredibly ironic that on the very same day as the much-anticipated season finale, Bangladeshi sweatshops are in the spotlight. The looks coming down last night's runway were fierce; the exploitation of the women and girls who lost their lives in the Tazreen factory collapse was equally so. Yet again, women and girls are being sacrificed to the fashion gods.
Women are hurt by the global fashion industry far more than they are helped by it. Some white women, however, seem to be enjoying the benefits of the wealth and beauty created by the global fashion industry. Although they are the predominating faces of the global beauty and fashion industries, not all white women models are living the good life. 2011 documentary, Girl Model, illustrates how white women act as both oppressor and oppressed, with the dividing line typically being drawn along age, class, language and national hierarchies.
But European and American women of color also play an ambivalent role in the global fashion industry, supplying cheap retail labor as well as demanding materialistic consumption. For women in the so-called First World, the global fashion industry is one which induces both pleasure and pain. But is our chic new wardrobe really worth its true social cost? Let’s weigh the pros and cons:
young models often suffer with low self-esteem, eating disorders, and addiction
young women and girls, seeing image after image of eurocentric standards of beauty develop low self-esteem, eating disorders, and addiction
fashion and beauty advertising strives to create a void which can only be filled by materialistic consumption
goods produced for export rely on burning fossil fuels to transport those goods to foreign markets
As a light-skinned, Black girl growing up in the U.S., I can remember a profound sense of confusion around my physical looks. I could tell that my skin tone was pleasurable to some and yet deeply unsettling to others; at the same time I was struggling to tame my naturally unruly hair and wishing for my mom’s green eyes. Not knowing any better, I turned to the pages of magazines like Seventeen for inspiration. At least there was fashion, right? At 15 I landed a job at The Gap. The terrible wages, the nagging managers, and the inconsiderate and inconsistent scheduling was bad enough, but then I was forced to pay my hard-earned money back into the store by purchasing the requisite articles of clothing in lieu of a uniform. I knew I’d never make it.
For people of color aspiring to so-called First World status, consumption has come to define the nature of citizenship. Income and access, key indicators of wealth and privilege, all too often track along racial, ethnic and class lines. Whether you agree with what and how Bill Cosby said it, he did have a point: Black people prioritize consumption to our peril. Ever heard of retail therapy? As consumers of fashion we often live beyond our means, over-compensating for feelings of alienation, invisibility, worthlessness, and inadequacy. I’m speaking from my own experience here, but can I get a witness?
Meanwhile, Black and Brown women the world over are coerced by the political-economic realities of post-colonial, capitalist power relations to labor for poverty wages as billion-dollar companies race to reduce production costs. Yesterday, over 200 young women and girls at the Tazreen factory were killed; only 5 months ago 117 young women and girls were killed at the same factory in a fire. Many workers suffocated because there were window bars and padlocks blocking their egress.
Eyewitnesses say, the women had originally refused to enter the factory yesterday morning, citing the large crack in the surface of the building that stretched from the ground all the way up to the 5th floor. The managers, however, “persuaded” them to enter by telling them that if the women did not work today, they would not be paid for the entire month. A mere half an hour later, the building finally collapsed, crushing hundreds. Wal-Mart issued a statement saying that they are investigating whether any of their goods were in production at the time of the collapse. A recent exposé reveals that Wal-Mart blocked improvements despite vows to improve safety after November’s deadly factory fire.
Because of the fluid and uneasy nature of class in the Black experience, many of us feel forced by harsh economic realities to shop at Wal-Mart, while aspiring to more high-status consumption patterns. I know I do. I try to limit my trips to wally-world, but sometimes I really gotta make my money stretch. And, gasp, occasionally I’ll buy an item or two from Anthropologie even though I know that their profits support right-wing politicians and political agendas, and that they totally and shamelessly appropriate their fashion stylings from peoples of color. But, to be honest, it makes absolutely no difference whether I shop at Wal-Mart, Anthropologie, or Saks for that matter. Today’s fashionista is just as implicated in the racialized and gendered systems of capitalist exploitation which characterize the global fashion industry.
I love fashion. I love dressing up and feeling fabulous just as much as the next woman -- and maybe more so, but this has got to stop. Positioned as consumers in the global system of corporate capitalism we’ve got to vote with our wallets; and as fashionistas in this case we must do so with our closets. For those of us who want to support Black businesses, I recommend a trip to your local tailor, seamstress, custom dress-maker, or designer. For those of us who want to support Black budgets, try the second-hand store -- you never know what you might find! Most importantly, let’s not let the deaths of these young women and girls in the Tazreen factory be for naught; let's not let the exploitation of our wage-working sisters go unnoticed. Fashion labels spend precious time and money trying to figure out what their customers want and how to be more responsive to their needs. Instead of shrugging at the unjust ways of the world, let’s honor the sacrifices of young women and girls as fiercely as we know how. Fashionistas of the world unite!
Why do we need high-stakes standardized testing in the first place? The indictment of Dr. Beverly Hall and her 34 conspirators should have us all asking this question. I attended a private High School and never once had to take the state-administered exams, thank goodness. But for children whose parents do not have access to the cultural and economic capital that attending private school entails, this is just more evidence of the fatally-flawed, two-tiered education system in America. And because, as Andre Perry so insightfully pointed out, “closing the gap” has taken priority over actually educating our children, high-stakes standardized testing has given rise to myriad cheating scandals. According to the press release issued by the independent monitoring group FairTest, cheating has been fully documented in at least 37 states and Washington D.C. And that’s not all: FairTest has found over 50 different ways that scores can be and have been manipulated!
As usual, this whole escapade portrays Black leadership as incompetent and venal; but of course this reputation has been earned. Dr. Hall stands indicted in perfect juxtaposition to the innocence and essential goodness of white teachers and school leaders. The great white hope is reinforced through pop culture imagery as seen in movies like Dangerous Minds, and Freedom Writers.
While I am in no way attempting to lampoon individual white teachers who may, indeed, be hard workers and brilliant teachers, I am attempting to draw attention to the vacuum that was, in fact, created for them, and the ways in which young white men and women are praised, lauded and financially rewarded by programs like Teach for America and TeachNOLA. They are depicted as saviors and saints who, giving up the comforts of their middle to upper class trappings, venture forth to lands unknown to help the underprivileged. But, had 7,500 mostly Black women not been fired in the wake of Katrina, where would these young saviors be? Like the descendants of the white homesteaders out West, white public school teachers in New Orleans must acknowledge the fact that the field was violently, and intentionally cleared to make room for them to flourish. Many of these young teachers do not have children of their own, but i wonder if they did, would they send them to the schools in which they teach?
Unfortunately, many school leaders run schools that their own children do not attend. Bill Ayers interviewed the school leaders at
the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools - the school Arne Duncan attended for 12 years and the school where the Obamas, the Duncans, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his wife sent their children - and asked what role test scores played in teacher evaluations there. The answer was: none. I pressed the point and was told that in the Laboratory School leaders' view, test scores have no value in helping to understand or identify good teaching. None.
There’s definitely something to the fact that the “best” schools teach students to learn while the public schools teach children to memorize and regurgitate factoids. Paolo Freire calls this the “banking method” of pedagogy wherein you deposit to the students the information you want them to retain until it is time for withdrawl. But you have to be able to take and pass high-stakes standardized tests if you want to get any number of licenses and credentials, right? How about teaching a required course just on how to take and pass these exams? Clearly, that’s not a part of the lesson plan with so many public school students either being held back a grade or dropping out of school entirely because of failing test scores. This phenomenon simply reinforces to children many of whom have already internalized messages about their lack of worth, potential and intelligence, that they are “stupid.”
Hopefully, this cheating scandal will get people talking, and get people innovating the public education model. Remember when Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was the “Best thing that ever happened to New Orleans Schools”? I bet he wasn’t talking about the wonderful examples of educational innovation, and self-determination that homeschools like Natural Genius Homeschool Advantage, or Kamali Academy represent. I, for one, see these as the silver linings to a very heavy and menacing storm cloud. Dr. Camara, founder of Kamali Academy, answers the question of whether home-schooled students are required to participate in high-stakes standardized testing, and speaks insightfully on why you will not find them in his educational toolkit.
States can waste even more money getting companies to create new tests, or States can waste more money in surveillance techniques (I’m sure that the present Administration would prefer this option), but I’m sure the money would be better spent if the real stakeholders -- students, parents, and school leaders -- were able to make decisions about where the money should be spent. And for the overcrowded, moldy public schools in New Orleans, I’m sure that money could be used to upgrade learning technologies, renovate facilities, hire more staff, etc. At the end of the day, high-stakes standardized testing and charter-based school reform are tools to shore up the two-tiered education system in this country. Rather than high-stakes standardized testing, let’s talk about the scalable models which reward independent thinking, critical literacy and numeracy skills, artistic expression, and intellectual curiosity.
