The Jibaro's Indian Inheritance

Although Jose Colomban Rosario's 1935 MA thesis, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jibaro and his Present Attitude Towards Society is rather dated and relies on a problematic framework, it is actually a worthwhile read for strong legacy of the indigenous peoples of the island. Despite viewing the jibaro as a problem in need of solutions for Puerto Rico to achieve true progress, there are number of interesting observations on the historical development of the jibaro to support the theory of significant Amerindian (cultural) survivals. While the author often neglects or treats the African inheritance as an afterthought among the jibaro and he occasionally posits that the jibaro is mainly of Spanish "racial" stock, there are even allusions to indigenous phenotypical features and miscegenation that suggest the jibaro culture was very much an "Indian-Spanish" one with African influences.

First, the biological and cultural inheritance. Rosario alludes to the 1530 de Lando census's enumeration of 14 vecinos who were married to Indian women. Of course, there must have been a far higher number of Spanish males involved with Indian women as concubines due to the paucity of European and African women in those days in the colony. Evidence such as the mestiza heir of Antonio Sedeño also suggests that many mestizo children were born in the first century of the colony. These mestizos, in addition to indigenous survivors of the colonial conquest wars and encomienda system, bequeathed much of their culture (and genes) to what later emerged as the Puerto Rican people. Africans, according to the occasionally racist perspective of Rosario, who often quotes extensively from Bryan Edwards, were less influential due to their low status as slaves and their quick assimilation into this "Indian-Spanish" hybrid culture. Colonial society, with the decline and imperial neglect of the later 1500s and the remainder of the colonial period, saw the spread of the population across the island in isolated patterns with Spanish settlers (and their descendants) adopting Indian customs and practices of domestic architecture, agriculture, musical instrumentation and other aspects of material culture. Indeed, a jibaro bohio without hammocks, music without guiro and maracas and the use of the machete to serve the same function as the coa of the Taino was rather rare. 

Intriguingly, yucca was not a major staple of the jibaro diet. Instead of yucca and the old Taino casabe, the jibaro as encountered by Rosario was more likely to rely on rice, beans, green bananas, codfish, sweet potato and yams with only rare consumption of meat or eggs. In this respect, the jibaro diet was probably less nutritious than that of their indigenous forebears, despite the addition of European domesticates in the island. The high rates of disease, lack of medical care, insufficient diet, and low wages and lack of land ownership ensured the jibaro family operated at subsistence levels. In temrs of family structure and relations between the sexes, the jibaro practice of concubinage may also, in part, stem from indigenous influences. While the Spanish and African inheritance also included concubinage and polygamy, the relatively wealthy jibaro with a woman or two on the side may also be a product of their indigenous ancesetry. After all, caciques and some nitainos had multiple wives. In addition, records from the encomienda era point to Indian men at the Real Hacienda de Toa who had more than one woman as a sexual partner and marriage was not widely practiced. This same feature was noted among the jibaro by Rosario, as consensual marriages were still very common. 

In addition to the adoption of much of indigenous cultures and practices, actual biological descent from the indigenes was even remembered in oral traditions by some jibaros interviewed by Rosario. The father of one child in Utuado with conspicuous "Indian" features reported that the great-grandmother of the boy was an Indian woman from the mountains of Lares, seized by a Spaniard and having a number of "half-breed" children with him. Lares, not far from Maricao and other regions which were documented as having "Indians" as late as the early 19th century, when the boy's great-grandmother probably met the Spaniard, must have had a sizable population of "Indians" or people who considered themselves as such, to be remembered by jibaro descendants in the early decades of the 20th century. The jibaro man reporting this "Indian" ancestor was probably not alone. This means that perhaps many jibaro of that region of Puerto Rico remembered indigenous ancestry. Furthermore, Utuado was one of the regions of the island noted by Fewkes to possess a significant number of people with marked "Indian" features. This suggests that the tale of Indian ancestry reported by Rosario from one jibaro family was likely common among other jibaros of the region of Utuado, which combined with cultural survivals of the indigenous past, point to the significant "mestizo" element of jibaro origins. It is unfortunate that more oral traditions were not collected from jibaros of this region of the island to collect more family histories of Indian ancestry. Perhaps these oral traditions and folklore could have some bearing on our understanding of cultural identity, race, and popular culture in colonial Puerto Rico. 

While the indigenous legacy is most evident in the material culture of the jibaro, Rosario's study hints at possible legacies in religion and spirituality. The jibaro, for example, frequently consulted the spirits through mediums for cures or solutions to their problems. Of course, some of these practices also have European and African influences, but the Taino traditions of behiques, cemis and ritual healing likely influenced this. Similarly, Salvador Brau's report that the jibaro believed that spirits of the dead roamed the Earth at night could also be, in part, a remnant of Taino belief (despite obvious parallels with African and European beliefs and superstitions). Due to the promotion of Roman Catholicism by the colonial government for centuries, the official religion of most jibaros was Catholic. However, they rarely went to mass, lived isolation from churches, and seemed to associate religious celebrations of the saints with less pious festivities. Indeed, jibaros loved the celebrations on the feast days of particular saints, often providing time for dances, banquets, racing, "sinful profanities" and and celebrations. However, the celebration of the saints was possibly also a survival of Taino and Spanish religious practices. Instead of God, the jibaro prays to the saints for intercession and assistance. These saints may have replaced the cemi just as the Spanish traditions of venerating the saints undoubtedly influenced Puerto Rican Catholicism. In the Puerto Rican context, Rosario cites an interesting example from the colonial era that may reflect Indian-Spanish fusion of belief. In this case, festivities and masses for Saint Patrick were believed to protect yucca from worm infestations. The process in which this saint was chosen to protect the cassava from infestation was believed to be a miracle or result of divine intervention and was actually decided upon by the episcopate of the island. Nonetheless, in 1641, worms attacked the cassava crop after less than enthusiastic festivities for Saint Patrick, so a grand festival was held in his honor to protect the cassava. This anecdote from the 17th century possibly hints at a spiritual blending of ancient Taino and Spanish Catholic customs. We know from Hispaniola in the 1490s that some Taino used wooden images of Catholic saints to promote the growth of crops, an earlier instance of Taino adoption of the Catholic saints in their own framework. Perhaps the jibaro also believed that Saint Patrick required faithful veneration and tribute in order to earn his protection or assistance, a legacy of the indigenous past.

Last, but certainly not least, music and dance among the jibaro suggest indigenous survivals. Rosario quotes Manuel Alonso on the "Indian" features in the garabato dances. We already know that the guiro and maraca were of Indian origin. While the Spanish guitar, decima, and "African" cuatro and bailes de bomba were very much a part of musical culture, the Indian areito or areyto may have survived in the long dances of the jibaro. The Indian dances of the pre-Hispanic past were known to persist for several hours and to be associated with recording history of caciques and for major festivities. The jibaro dance similarly could last all night and could be associated with religious celebrations or secular purposes. The jibaro dance used some of the same instrumentation as those of the areyto and, according to Agustin Stahl, probably represents a remnant of the areito. Naturally, the jibaro dance lost some of the grandeur of the areito, but their length, mixture of secular and religious motivations, maintenance of indigenous instruments, and function as a major pole for bringing people together could also represent indigenous legacies. In addition, the function of decimas and oral poetry that described events and people, while a Spanish legacy, could also have adopted aspects of indigenous areitos and oral history. Perhaps the early campesinos, as Spanish became the dominant language, found it more expedient to adopt Spanish forms like the decima as the lavish areitos of the indigenous past were less common and harder to organize as campesinos lived further apart and lost the village life of the yucayeque. The batey, too, once associated with the ballgame and areito, became just the area cleared of weeds in front of one's house, no longer the center of a community in which community-wide events took place. 

In summation, Rosario's study presents evidence from historical and ethnographic observations that support a significant Indian influence on the jibaro. Some of this evidence points to biological inheritance, which is further supported by genetics and genealogical research. Cultural continuity from the indigenous past to the present can be seen in material culture, music, spirituality and family structure. Of course, to properly address this question of Taino influences upon the jibaro, modern scholars would have to collect more oral traditions. In addition, a serious consideration of African influences is also necessary to avoid the racial bias and omissions of past scholarship. The African influences in this work are usually an afterthought, and this in spite of the author pointing to African survivals in the funeral practices, music, and regard for parents and elders among the jibaro. In order to properly ascertain, to the extent possible, our indigenous legacy, one must not reject the African root. Furthermore, a detailed study of spirit mediums, healing, and popular Catholicism must also be undertaken to fully investigate the matter.

Orlando Patterson

I've been reading more authors across the ideological spectrum lately, and I find myself more and more intrigued by the works of Glenn Loury, Orlando Patterson, and even Thomas Sowell. While there's much to disagree with here and there with all of these scholars and commentators, I find Patterson's work interesting in terms of the culturalist and structuralist arguments about race, class, and inequality. Patterson, unlike conservatives, acknowledges the role of structure but argues for studying culture so as to prevent the right from dominating the discussion of culture's role in inequality and social stratification. I still have much to learn and read of Patterson, but this lecture is a good start for getting an idea of where he's coming from.

Said on The Clash of Civilizations

Edward Said articulates the many, many problems of Huntington's famous (or infamous?) book. I was just perusing Huntington's work and shocked by some of the appalling lack of nuance and detail or just vast generalizations he made. For instance, the brief mentions of Haiti emphasize it as some aberration that is a lone civilization or culture, one that is not perceived by Latin Americans as part of the region and seen as bizarre or different from the lens of Anglophone Caribbean peoples. When making these statements, Huntington relies on the words of a Panamanian politician and one quoted Afro-Caribbean. One would think more nuance and evidence would be buttressed by Huntington, akin to his more careful attention to modern Japan, but I guess Haiti does not merit the additional scrutiny. With people like Huntington as an intellectual influence in the Bush administration, one can see why the 2004 coup took the shape it did.

The Dominican Republic Reader

Reading The Dominican Republic Reader has been an incredibly useful and informative experience. Aimed at beginners to the study of the DR, it includes a plethora of primary source material, excerpts from writings of scholars, and interviews with musicians on Dominican culture and the diaspora. While it was certainly interesting to read the interviews with Milly Quezada or Johnny Ventura, the weight and strongest parts of the text are to be found in historical analysis from 1492 to the present. Many aspects of Dominican history, such as the 'comegente' fear of the revolutionary period, or the differing perceptions of Haiti from Haitian occupation to the 20th century, and even the rise of a peasantry and Cibao elite with tobacco as the principal export, were new or relatively nuanced facets of the Dominican story. The turbulent year of 1965, the Trujillato, as well as the Dominican diaspora experience were well treated in this collection, too. In addition, literary, intellectual, popular culture, migration abroad, and social history are adequately covered.

As someone who seeks to understand the Dominican Republic and how it relates to Haiti, this is a valuable introductory source, but somewhat weak on Haitian-Dominican relations. There are a few essays and primary source excerpts focusing on Haiti, and a few on Dominican racial consciousness (or lack thereof), but the bulk of the text is solely the Dominican Republic. Those seeking a balanced and thought-provoking read on Haiti and the DR should read Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint. 

Afro-Asian Studies: An Important Understudied Field

A new area of interdisciplinary study I must learn more about is African-Asian encounters and exchange, both historically and in the present. Perhaps growing up with a half-Chinese brother was an influence on my interest in the subject, but taking a course with professor Michael Thornton at UW about mutual perceptions and intergroup relations of people of color in the United States, which focused on African-American relations with Latinos and Asian/Americans, was an even larger influence. Prior to that course, I had already developed a keen interest in African diasporic studies in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States, as well as a special interest to Africa, particularly pre-colonial Africa. Moreover, the field of African-Asian Studies is particularly relevant to our post-colonial (even if neocolonialism obviously perpetuates the older set of relations between the Global South and the North) world as diasporic communities of Africa and Asia mingle in the metropolitan centers of the former hegemonic powers as well as increasing trade, collaboration, and cultural encounters among African, Asian, and Latin American states increases. In addition, within the centers of former (and current) empire, such as the U.S., interactions between and among people of color may alter the white-black binary in upcoming decades (unless you adhere to black exceptionalism in U.S. racism), as one can see in the case of certain cities in the U.S. in California or New York, as well as London (I am thinking of the collective 'blackness' of South Asians and Africans/Afro-Caribbeans in the UK, who at times are both referred to as 'black,' as well as evidence of Japanese-Americans and African-Americans engaging in anti-racist organizing and radical political coalitions through organizations such as the Black Panthers, etc.). 

Besides social, political, and economic ramifications of increased global exchange between and among people of African and Asian descent both at home and in the diaspora from North to South, Afro-Asian studies is useful for academic inquiry into the presence, history, cultural creolization, and bidirectional influence Africa and Asia exchanged before, during, and after formal European colonial rule. These relations, of course, increased exponentially during and after the rise of European hegemony, against the will of some Africans and Asians while, in some cases, with direct participation of others, but, for me, the pre-colonial relationships are more interesting since so little is known or understood. As the above map indicates, Chinese porcelain and other products found their way well into the interior of Eastern Africa, stretching from the Sudan to what is now South Africa. The map also indicates possible locations along the East African coast that Chinese records occasionally alluded to, some dating back as far as the 8th or 9th centuries. To me, this is particularly interesting as it, well, for instance, indicates African agency, long-distance trade, and cultural and material interactions of local communities from the East African coast to the hinterland and deep into the interior or southeastern Africa, several centuries before the establishment of Portuguese and other European traders along the eastern coast of Africa. Furthermore, it contributes to the dismantling of white supremacist, Eurocentric historical narratives which, unfortunately, persist to this day. Evidence of Asian/African encounters also includes the presence of African slaves, pilgrims, traders, and travelers in Asia, such as potential Aksumite-affiliated traders in Sri Lanka and South Asia, enslaved African-descendants in India and Iran, cultural mixing in some Swahili architecture along the East African coast, and, in the case of Christian Ethiopia, influences from Indian Hindu art and religious symbolism in the Churches of Lalibela and triptychs of a religious nature. Naturally, Chinese and Asian silks, innovations, and artistic and religious symbolism likely impacted many parts of North Africa, too.

Image from a post by Eccentric Yoruba, possible depiction of an African "kunlun" slave in China

As I have blogged about here, East Asian regions such as the archipelago of Japan acquired substantial direct contact with Africans, through Portuguese, Dutch, and, eventually, American racist lens. Thus, the colonial period illustrates the spread of Western European racial theories, perceptions of Africa and African-descendants, and a "West is best" outlook of world cultures and civilizations (despite waves of Sinophilia or Japanophilia in places like France, for instance, other other parts of western Europe) spread to parts of Asia where some cultures in East and Southeast Asia had very little to no conception of experience with Africa, the ramifications of which persist through the recycling of Western European and North American-derived stereotypes, racist films and marketing, and old-fashioned, outdated racial pseudoscience. My aforementioned blog post endeavors to illustrate this rather nasty development through images of dark-skinned and African peoples in Japan from the 16th century to the 20th century, which undoubtedly adopt more Western sambo and racist depictions of Africa, Africans, and the African diaspora, which survives in Japanese popular culture's anime and manga, advertizing, and Japanese ethnocentrism. I am confident a similar analysis could be made in the case of China, or other parts of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and other Southeast Asian nations (particularly during and after WWII, where Black soldiers from Africa and the US served). So, one can analyze relations and mutual perceptions between the two regions under the aegis of white supremacist world empire within Africa and Asia, as well as the relationships that existed between the two continents and their peoples in terms of the colonized Americas.

The Caribbean's post-emancipation societies in Trinidad, Guyana, and other parts of the Americas sought to exploit "coolie" labor to ensure the survival of the plantation system and/or cheap labor (the U.S. and the exploitation of Chinese workers for the continental railroad expansion, for instance, stands out, especially since the history of relations between the Chinese and African-Americans in the 19th century is mostly ignored and understudied (except for a great essay on the Chinese-American community in Mississippi that worked so hard to assimilate itself into the White, Anglo-Southern identity of the state). Interactions between Afro-Caribbean and Indian indentured labor in the Caribbean are also of interest for Afro-Asian studies, particularly regarding politics, anti-colonial movements in Trinidad and Guyana, race, and music, such as Trinidadian soca, which blends Indian and Afro-Caribbean influences such as calypso. Or perhaps in Peru and Brazil, where some small Japanese groups settled, provide another case study in Afro-Peruvian and Afro-Brazilian interactions with Japanese and other Asian-descended communities, another area of Afro-Asian exchange understudied. Of course, their movements around solidarity, racial justice, and cultural métissage
in other 'former' imperial centers, such as Desi hip-hop in Chicago or New York, or Trinidadian and Guyanese dougla and other "Blasian" peoples of the world, such as Malagasy, some South African coloureds (at least half of all slaves from the Cape were from Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka, the other half mostly from Mozambique, East Africa, Madagascar, the latter a zone of Afro-Austronesia/Asian interactions throughout it's human history).

As for the present, China's increasing economic exchanges with Africa is of note, as well as relations between various African regions and India, or the current experiences and struggles of India's Siddis and Sri Lanka's "Kaffirs," minority populations descended from Africans over the last several centuries, mostly slaves. One can also look at the influence of Bollywood in Africa, such as the Senegalese groups of Indophiles or the depiction of Africa and African-descended peoples in Indian film and popular culture. Alternatively, one could focus on youth culture and identities, particularly in the case of "Blasians" in prominent positions or well-known (Tiger Woods, that's you!) or Asian rappers from India, Japan, or anywhere across the globe. Indeed, one could focus on a multitude of various cultural, musical, political, economic, religious, social, and linguistic encounters and mixing that have impacted Afro-Asian relations from ancient history to the unequally 'globalized' 21st century. That's why I love Afro-Asian studies as an academic field, because it challenges the Eurocentric mainstream narratives of world history and race, as well as troubling the narrowly focused lens of African Studies, Chinese Studies, etc. It reveals the intersectional framework's suitability for integrating area studies while illustrating the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and revision of established schools of thought on intergroup relations, race and critical race theory and studies, sociology, ethnomusicology, hip-hop and jazz, slavery studies, and economic and political theory.

Good suggestions for reading are the following:
1. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms
2. Vijay Prashad has written extensively on the subject
3. A book entitled Bengali Harlem tells the unknown story of South Asian immigrants in early 20th century urban American communities who married African-American and Puerto Rican women.
4. This link is quite useful and includes images on Africans in the Indian Ocean world
5. Julie Wilensky wrote a brilliant essay on the subject, "The Magical Kunlun and “Devil Slaves”:
Chinese Perceptions of Dark-skinned People and Africa before 1500."
6. Various articles by sociologists, Asian-American studies academics and researchers, Africanists, African-American Studies specialists, and historians focusing on Africans and African-Americans in the imperial wars of Europe and the US, particularly those who analyze the mixed-race children of African-American soldiers and local Asian women in Korea, Vietnam, or Japan, for instance.
7. John Russell has written a lot on Japanese perceptions of blackness, I highly recommend him!
8. Wagatsuma, a Japanese sociologist, has written about Japanese perceptions of blackness, too, as well as Michael Thornton.
9. Learn more about the Swahili coast of East Africa, perhaps starting with my post on it, here!
10. A potentially useful starter for South Asian/American relations with people of African descent in the US can be found here, in a collaborative effort I wrote with an Indian-American colleague.
11. Literature also offers several interesting directions for Afro-Asian studies. Zadie Smith's White Teeth fuses the families of Bengali-Londoners with those of a mixed-race, Jamaican and white English family, with some useful insights on race relations between and among people of color and whites in the UK. Likewise, V.S. Naipaul, an Indo-Trinidadian-Briton, has written extensively on the Caribbean, Africa, and India, and some reviews of two of his novels by me may be of interest, particularly A Bend in the River. Check out A House for Mr. Biswas, too, if you want to read an epic about an Indian-Trinidadian male in the colonial British West Indies.
12. Keep looking for more, I have come across various academic articles on depictions of Asian/Americans and African-Americans in 'mainstream' (you know, white) films, including Rush Hour, and various blogs, such as "The Blasian Narrative."

Comments on The Souls of Black Folk

Du Bois's great work, The Souls of Black Folk, is quite an interesting read. Like most books written by blacks in the 19th-early 20th century, it uses the language of that era and shares the Western world's general dismissals of African and 'uncultured' African-Americans. Since DuBois was far more progressive than Booker T. Washington and advocated a more radical approach to combating Jim Crow and American racism instead of accommodation, and because Du Bois adroitly pointed out the triple paradox of Booker T. Washington's philosophy of submission, I still love and respect this Haitian brotha (his father was a Haitian mulatto). The triple paradox is posted below. How could blacks do anything that Booker T. Washington claims without the political rights, higher education, and overt resistance to entrenched institutionalized and personal racism?

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans, businessmen and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

DuBois would later redeem himself and learn to appreciate more of African history and cultures later on in the 1940s when he published his Africa and the World. In addition to his constant references to the 'savagery' of African negroes and the re-enslaved blacks of the post-Reconstruction South, he also seems to fail to appreciate the importance and revolutionary impact of the Haitian Revolution. In Souls of Black Folk, he refers to one of the most revolutionary periods in history as a 'Terror' and, inadvertently or not, undermines its importance and legitimacy.

Moreover, there are periods in which he appears to support the institution of slavery by arguing for it's civilizing effect on Africans and the belilef that American slavery, immoral and destructive, was still relatively benign compared to other forms of slavery in the Americas and the rest of the world. What difference does that make? American slavery may have taken fewer lives than slavery in, say, 19th century Cuba, Brazil, and the Caribbean, but that obviously doesn't justify slavery in the United States. There are other occasions where Du Bois continually refers to the 'savagery' of African-Americans, inherited from their African ancestors, demonstrating that Du Bois, like Booker T. Washington and most African-American leaders and intellectuals of that era, were at least ambivalent if not supportive of European imperialism in Africa.

On the other hand, Du Bois uses most of the chapters to analyze reasons for African-American poverty in the Black Belt (region of the South where the majority of the population is black), focusing on the county of Dougherty, GA. He goes out of his way to explain the vices of Black Americans and the problem of the color line (he refers to it many times as "The Veil") as a product of both color prejudice and Jim Crow from the white majority and faults of African-Americans themselves, so as to avoid completely "blaming the white man" for all of the problems facing black folks. Of course, in reality almost all the problems facing blacks in the South are due to the white man. In the beginning of the book (really, all of it) Du Bois explains how Reconstruction failed to give the Negro his 40 acres and a mule and provide education. He examines the Freedmen's Bureau and the positive aspects of Reconstruction in terms of building common schools and sending teachers, etc.

Du Bois goes on to elucidate how the Compromise of 1877, government mismanagement prior to that, and the South's institutionalization of sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, and relinquishing blacks of suffrage and political rights created the terrible living conditions for blacks immediately after the departure of federal armies. Although Reconstruction was a step in the right direction in terms of providing some African-Americans with land and education, establishing schools and whatnot, but the federal government's willingness to abandon the freed population while it was still vulnerable to white reversals of the Reconstruction constitutional amendments left blacks between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Soon they couldn't vote, it was nearly impossible for them to purchase their own land, they were exploiting by the landowners and Northern merchants and carpetbaggers who migrated South after the Civil War, and blacks were forced into patronage relationships with 'respectable, upper-class whites who would provide them employment as tenant farmers and vouch for them in cases involving other whites.

This period also included the beginning of mass incarceration for blacks (regardless of their innocence, their labor was exploited in chain gangs as another source of cheap labor for Southern states) who fought these customs and laws. Exemplified by vagrancy laws and the stereotypes of lazy black slaves, any African-American who didn't work or appear to have employment (usually employment from a white landowner or businessman) they could be arrested and forced to work on public works or agriculture for the state (like the pre-French Revolutionary practice of corvee, which required French peasants to dedicate some period every year to working on public projects, etc. for the 1st estate.

Du Bois gained first-hand experience of the lives of southern blacks through his travels and work as a teacher at Negro schools in Georgia. Born in Massachusetts and highly educated, Bu Bois occasionally takes time to show off his classical education (use of Latin, references to Greek mythology and erudite literary allusions and metaphors) and uses this to measure the level of 'civilization' he saw whilst in the South. Though I agree with Du Bois about the importance of college-educated blacks and some aspects of the Talented Tenth theory, his definition of education is very Eurocentric and patriarchal (women are not worthy of higher education, it would appear). Nevertheless, as he astutely observes, Booker T. Washington is wrong (Washington is right about blacks not needing to know Greek and Latin, though) about blacks not pursuing higher education if they're capable and have the option since these talented blacks (the so-called Talented Tenth of ministers, doctors, lawyers, businessman and teachers, especially teachers) will become the teachers at Negro common schools and colleges such as Tuskeegee, Washington's famous school established to teach African-Americans agricultural and mechanical labor. However, Du Bois, due to his incredibly high education (he studied at Harvard and abroad in Europe) is unrealistic and his classical education does seem out of touch of reality for most Americans in general in the early 20th century (who could afford to study at Harvard, learn Latin and Greek, and multiple other languages in that era?)

However, I must point out some flaws with Du Bois's Talented Tenth theory. Although middle class and professional African-Americans undoubtedly play a vital role in black communities and help uplift the remaining 9/10ths because of their skills, services, and influence in the community, but to believe that all 'talented' blacks would do such a thing is naive. Many will ignore or distance themselves from poor and lower-class blacks and live in their own neighborhood aristocracies, which Du Bois observed himself in Northern cities and some Southern cities. Indeed, while describing Southern urban blacks, Du Bois points out how the Talented Tenth often lived apart from other blacks. For example, a lower-class white neighborhood may divide the prosperous and poor black communities or the Talented Tenth tend to live in cities while the majority of the black population at the time (1903, before the Great Migration in the 20s and 30s) resided in rural areas and would only come into contact with Talented Tenth only through the substandard Negro common schools in the country. Furthermore, the idea of the Talented Tenth saving the black majority is elitist and denies the importance of subaltern leadership developing from the bottom. Lower class and upper class blacks should obviously cooperate as they did during the Civil Rights Movement but to argue that everything should occur under the Talented Tenth's 'civilizing' effects and influences seems undemocratic and very dangerous.

As for other interesting things in the book? I was touched by the death of Du Bois' infant son, vividly described in one of the later chapters of the text. I also appreciated his praise for Negro spirituals as the foundation of American music and the importance of the Negro in American folk music. His chapter on Negro religion and African influences on the African-American Christianity also emphasize the significance of the Church in Black America, which essentially provides moral education, a community center, and religious salvation. Like an expert sociologist, Du Bois' time in Dougherty County and the various inhabitants he encountered are flawlessly analyzed.

He explains how the sharecropping system forced most of the black inhabitants into debt because they were required to grow cotton and would often get their supplies and food for exorbitant amounts from the whites and Russian Jews who immigrated to the South (they purchased land and operated stores where blacks were sold seed, food, etc. at high prices and would only accept cotton as payment after the harvest. Of course this prevented most African-American farmers from growing their own food and diversifying their crops, which meant the fall in the price of cotton in 1898 and other fluctuations in the price of cotton sent many a black family spiraling into debt. And of course there were many instances of whites cheating blacks out of pay, using the threat of lynching and the police to intimidate blacks, and the white government's underfunding of black schools and exploitation of black workers usually required their children to also toil in the field instead of staying in school.

So the combination of the aforementioned factors explain the low living standards of blacks, not intellecual inferiority or laziness, as many whites of the time believed. The few that could purchase land or pursue a profession in the cities, did as soon as possible. But the system was designed to limit success for African-Americans in every conceivable way, which according to Du Bois inculcated feelings of doubt, humiliation, and despair among African Americans which contribute to criminality, laziness (why would poor black farmers in debt work harder when they'll still be in debt slavery?) and in some cases, radicalism. Interestingly, Du Bois argues that the Negro in the North was more radical than those of the South due to their anger from being forced to leave their homes and relatives due to white prejudice and the fact that they had greater access to education and political rights. Southern blacks, on the other hand, tended to choose hypocritical compromise, best exemplified by Booker T. Washington and devotees of his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech. Northern blacks, such as Ida B. Wells and Du Bois worked on anti-lynching campaigns, helped establish the NAACP, etc. Now I don't entirely agree with Du Bois's assertion though.

His theory of double consciousness for Black Americans is excellent though. Blacks have to live as Negroes and Americans. They're incessantly perceived as inferior and facing closed doors of opportunity for being black, and always looking at themselves through the eyes of others. Blacks internalize the contempt and perceptions of others for them through this double consciousness. As Du Bois explains, "The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self...He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and and American without being spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face." I agree one hundred percent with this as one of the main themes of African-American identity and history, this struggle to be accepted without losing one's African heritage. Indeed, African-Americans best exemplify the American 'spirit' of liberty since they have experienced the worst in the process of pursuing life, liberty and happiness throughout American history.

I must also add his chapter on Alexander Crummell to the list of interesting and positive parts of the book. I had never heard of this important figure in African-American religious history and his encounter with the racist Episcopalian bishop of Philadelphia in the antebellum period is priceless. Sent to Philadelphia to start another church among that city's black population, Bishop Onderdonk tells him, "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there." Crummell refuses to accept those conditions and starts works at a chapel in New York instead. This is truly an admirable move on the part of Crummell, who refused to accommodate racism from his own denomination.

In conclusion, Du Bois's oft-cited 'masterpiece' is a nuanced affair and contains many of the intellectual flaws associated with academic racism and the age of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. His skills as a sociologist and historian are displayed in every chapter as he writes on the economic, social, religious, and historical obstacles to black achievement in the United States   in the early 20th century. However, as I stated before, I found him too Eurocentric, elitist, and too willing to place blame on African-Americans for the terrible social conditions in which they live. Resistance has always been a cornerstone of African-Americans and I don't particularly agree with his characterization of Southern blacks as submissive and compromising, although many were. All in all, Du Bois wrote a fascinating collection of essays on African Americans that correctly predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the color line. The Negro problem played an undeniable role in nearly every circumstance imaginable in US foreign policy with Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, domestic social and economic policies, the Civil Rights Movement, and defining the supposed essence of American nationhood, freedom.

Interesting Quotes I found in an essay about Basquiat

Taken from "Royalty, Heroism, and the Streets: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat

"Some say New York was founded as a way station to the West Indies. Nothing has changed. In the fifties the city rocked to an Afro-Cuban mambo beat. Around 1970 a new New York-West Indian dance music emerged. It was built on mambo, with jazz trombones blended in. The latinos called it salsa, tremors of which registered, as if upon a seismograph, in 1972:
Already large chunks of Manhattan have a...tropical feel. Ecuadorians are in the streets of Sunnyside; Argentinians read La Prensa on the Flushing IRT. Congas are played on the Concourse.

Afro-latinization of New York in the seventies was not only visible. It was an augury:
those who kept close to the streets...preserved the seeds of something authentic within themselves. In their refusal to act European, in their struggle to wrest some tropical essence from the stiff and aging baffles of this city, they built the foundation for what seems destined to become the next great subculture of New York.

In 1977-1980 that "next great culture" pulled into station, "hip-hop": break dancing, electric boogie, graffiti, rap. The women and men of hip-hop were Anglophonic Caribbean and mainland black as well as New York Puerto Rican. The reflected new immigration patterns since 1966. In addition, the Haitian presence burgeoned to the point where by 1985 major dance bands from Port-au-Prince routinely worked the ballrooms of Queens and Brooklyn.

A crisscross of island-mediated African influences now illuminated New York: Afro-Cuban, Afro-Haitian, Afro-Jamaican, Afro-Dominican, and Afro-Puerto Rican. Creole Africa, to the power of five, intensifying the earlier gifts of Garvey, Parker, Coltrane, and Malcolm X.

This was the New York into which Jean-Michel Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960. With a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, he was part of the process.

Manhattan remains, of course, forever the island of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Wall Street, and Rockefeller Center. Above and beyond these bastions of white power, however, new foci have emerged. In Brooklyn, Queens, the Lower East Side, and Morningside Heights, multiple streams of sub-Saharan and Western influence converge at every minute of every day.

Some critics extrapolate from Jean-Michel's Haitian name knowledge of Haiti and the religion of the Haitian masses, vodun, or "voodoo" as they put it. It isn't true. Jean-Michel never traveled to Haiti. Jean-Michel never spoke Kreyol (Creole), the language of the Haitian people. He was closer to his Puerto Rican mother, Matilde.

Parker (Charlie Parker) reinstructed the whole of jazz in the Africanizing trait of suspended accentuation, "letting a couple of beats go by to make the beat stand out." Similarly, the painter staggers the phrasings of gold and blue to make his writings ride in on change and become more visible.

The drummer Max Roach is one of the giants of twentieth century music. He studied Rada (Creolized Dahomean-Yoruba) and Petro (creolized Kongo) rhythmic phrasings in Haiti and brought back these gifts to jazz. Basquiat's Max Roach of 1984 honors his vision and his style.
Only the eys of Roach appear. His body disappears in a shimmering mist of silver, absorbed in metal signatures of sound. In the history of black music the jazz battery- partially illustrated by Roach's high hat, bass drum, and snare-represents a creative regathering, as John Szwed suggests, of Western instruments within African principles of overlapping choral sounding. African-born percussionists, performing in Kongo Square, New Orleans, in the early nineteenth century achieved this crucial synthesis of time and circumstance and bequeathed it to the world.
Pink, white, and red revolve around the drums. There is underpainting, left within the red. Laura Watt, a young New York painter, remarks: "Basquiat leaves these traces to make you move, following the red around." The drums themselves bear glints of gold, as part of their importance. By this time, the lessons of Kline and the lessons of Twombly had long since done their duty. Accordingly, the abstract allusions are non-specific.

Emphasizing continuity of black aesthetic spirit as poetic virtue in American civilization, like Diego Rivera sounding Mexico's Mesoamerican roots, these works mark a climax of Basquiat's jazz historicism.

From another essay, World Crown: Bodhisattva with Clenched Mudra

Jean had always been aware that black history is written on the Sports page, its encyclopedia is the radio; it's only logical that its museum would be in the subway. He would have to create an entire body of imagery, an iconography if you will, to people this legend slipped in when History turned her back. He would draw countless black men in crowns, with titles like Famous Negro Athlete #47. With luck the crown would land on his head if he did it fast enough.

In Santeria the outlawed Yoruba pantheon was concealed in the iconography of Catholic saints to evade detection. Under the guise of Santa Barbara, the great Chango was again able to conduct the heavenly fire through his devotees. In Basquiat's paintings, the gods have been housed nearer to their proper imagery but with an important substitution: the ordeals of Charlie Parker and Joe Louis represent Basquiat himself.  

Amy Winehouse: Bringing down the house or just a wino?

British pop singer Amy Winehouse is somethin' else! I've listened to her studio albums and watched a live show that included a cover of Lauryn Hill's classic Doo Wop (That Thing). However, I find myself asking the following question again and again despite several listens to her music: Is Amy any good? What is there about her that brought world-wide acclaim? Her music or the persona? Either way, I was initially drawn to her because of her attempts to recreate the sound of black music from a previous era, mainly soul/R&B. More surprisingly I discovered her love for vocal jazz and pop. Suddenly Amy became more than a white soul-pop singer and I found myself preferring her jazz-influenced first album Frank more than the successful subsequent release, Back to Black, which as you can probably guess, refers to the rebirth of 1960s soul.

So let's begin with her first album, Frank. First of all, the title likely refers to the legendary Frank Sinatra, whose music, along with other pop and vocal jazz artists, provided the musical backdrop of her childhood. Amy's father raised her on this type of music and the album shows it. Following in the footsteps of 90s American R&B and neo-soul, the album features Salaam Remi on production and hip-hop-influenced beats and some sampling. For example, October Song, a tribute to bebop/pop vocalist Sarah Vaughan, includes a moment where Vaughan sings the melody of the jazz standard "Lullaby of Birdland" and hip-hop styled beats. Another piece, "Cherry," samples the jazz standard "Girl from Ipanema."
My biggest problem with this album the way in which it was marketed as a jazz album though it features very little improvisation. Amy sings in the style of Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington with a contralto range that demands the listener's attention, but cannot retain. I found myself getting bored with this album after the first three songs...
Perhaps even more annoying is when Amy referred to herself as a jazz singer in an interview though there is very ltitle jazz on this album and she apes the styles of famous vocalists instead of creating something new. However, in her defense, her rendition of "There is No Greater Love" was decent despite the cheasy nighttime effects. I suppose I could also recommend "Fuck Me Pumps," "Cherry," and "In My Bed" as well...

Back to Black, her next album that brought mainstream success, shifts away from vocal jazz to retro soul. It retains modern styles of R&B production like Frank but samples soul songs. My favorites from this album are the obvious "Rehab," "You Know I'm No Good," and "Tears Dry On Their Own," which samples my brotha Marvin Gaye's "Aint no Mountain High Enough." The rest is just a downhill trip that, despite Amy's interesting voice, fails to hold my attention. Of course the stylistic changes that accompany Back to Black are significant to me.
Once again, a white musician takes "black" music and makes herself wealthy and earns fame and fortune while everyone ignores the true innovators and originators of the style. Neo-soul singers don't have to be black in order to be legitimate neo-soulsters but it is interesting that a Jewish woman from London would become so successful singing in that style...
Naturally Amy Winehouse's persona and drug problems also fueled album sales and gave her broader recognition because of the attention the press gave her at the time. Thus despite the dearth of good music on the album, the fact that Amy's personal life is ineffably troubled imbues songs like "Rehab" with startling realism. Like Billie Holiday, Amy lived through a lot of the ordeals described in her music, thereby authenticating it. ]
Ultimately, she is mostly a wino, but has the potential to bring the house down. She channels the spirit and sound of black music within her own unique vocals on Back to Black but fails to deliver a solid studio recording. I impatiently wait for her comeback album with production help from Mark Ronson and Questlove...