Kwame Anthony Appiah

Kwame Anthony Appiah is one of those interesting scholars and philosophers I have heard much of and has definitely shaped the works of others I have read. I finally perused In My Father's House and listened to some of his interviews and lectures online, which are fascinating but also occasionally problematic. Nonetheless, Appiah has an interesting personal story and makes some thought-provoking points here. 

The Stuart Hall Project

A highly recommendable overview of the life and times of Stuart Hall, a pioneer in Cultural Studies of Jamaican origins who studied at Oxford. Hall discusses racism against people of Caribbean and African descent in England, how he came to reject the class/color restrictions of colonial Jamaica, his work as an editor of leftist journals, and broader processes of identity and cultural formation. I have recently rediscovered his other work, documentary series, and his status as a public intellectual, so this film is an excellent introduction. Another worthwhile video is Hall's interview of Trinidadian intellectual, leftist, and avid cricket fan, CLR James, a towering figure of Black thought who influenced Hall.

No Soy Africana

Check out this interesting interview with scholars by Marc Lamont Hill on 'blackness' in the Dominican Republic. Although Hill begins the show with a scene from the problematic series by Henry Louis Gates, there is more nuance and inclusion of Dominican-American attitudes. The voices of Dominican-Americans add much needed clarity on how blackness is always experiential and shaped by personal experience and how others perceive one, such that Biany Perez and Silvio Torres-Saillant 'learned they were black' from their experience in the United States (which was also based on how others perceived them). Indeed, one of the highlights of the show was hearing Biany Perez challenge the assumptions of the other Dominican-American based on how she is consistently seen as an 'Other' by other Dominican-Americans for being black (which reflects how Dominican-American identity within their own spaces may still exclude Afro-Dominicans in the diaspora).There is also recognition of how Afro-Dominican identity and cultural organizations are increasing in number in the island and in Afro-Latino activism in the US.

Ishmael Reed's Japanese By Spring

Finally read Reed's Japanese by Spring, a powerful example of satire matched only by Reed's own Reckless Eyeballing. Some of the themes are the same, too, such as a critique of feminism, racism, the media, and a comparison of the experiences of one ethnic minority with that of blacks (Jews and Blacks in Reckless, blacks and Japanese in Japanese By Spring). Indeed, the novel is also a fun read for self-insertion. Reed becomes a character in the novel commenting on the media, stereotypes, university politics, the importance of multiculturalism, and the global world we all live in.

Though the main character, Chappie Puttbutt, plays the role of a black lackey for whatever force will empower him on his self-interested path to tenure and moving to the Oakland Hills, he eventually becomes a 'man' and no longer slavishly serves for white or Japanese masters who take over Jack London College. In many ways the novel is an amusing parody of the 'yellow peril' fears common through Europe after Japan's industrialization and imperialism in Asia in the first half of the 20th century, renewed by Japanese economic power in the 1980s and 1990s. The novel is also quite successful for seamlessly fusing parody, satire, and a political tract in defense of multiculturalism, integration, anti-imperialism, while celebrating Japanese (and Yoruba!) culture, history, and civilization. What dragged the novel down at times was Reed's occasional tendency to veer into rants and present data as if the novel was one of his essays, but that was not common enough to change the format of the work. Indeed, sometimes the moments where one really learns from the book is the more academic and pedantic wandering of Reed's pen, such as moments where we learn that the Japanese wanted peace with the US in 1941, somethign already known to the US government via spying on telegrams between Japan and Soviet Russia, thereby proving that the US never had to use the atomic bomb.

What stuck with me the most was how similar the 'culture wars' and fight to defend affirmative action and multiculturalism was in the 1990s to the present, even in the world where commodification and cooptation of 'diversity' have seemingly won out over the white right's academic backlash. To paraphrase the former white supremacist professor Crabtree on the white academic backlash to multicultural pedagogy, white academics on the right became worse than the rednecks they thought themselves superior to by rejecting others. Folks like literary critic Harold Bloom could learn a lot from Japanese By Spring.

Myriam Chancy on Haiti and Latin America

Chancy is on point in describing the general approach in Latin American Studies to Haiti, which is one of exclusion or neglect (despite a shared history with the Dominican Republic). Based on my engagement of Latin American Studies in university, Haiti was almost always ignored or superficially included in "Latin America." Like Chancy says, in the realm of political science, Haiti could be lumped with "Latin America," often focusing on its negritude as a cause for its extreme poverty. Intriguingly, Chancy is part Dominican herself and interested in the DR's literature and history. She actually believes Dominican identity is weakened (yet economically stronger) than Haitian identity ideologically, something perhaps a little too much. What I find interesting is a pattern she observes in Dominican-American letters of increasing curiosity and acceptance of Haiti versus that of older generations of Dominican writers and their virulent anti-Haitian sentiment. Indeed, one can find evidence of that in Junot Diaz, for instance, but I wish Chancy gave some examples of other writers who are more willing to accept Dominican blackness (besides Silvio Torres-Saillant). 

Losing My Roots

Cardinal Rex Lawson, Nigerian highlife legend. Check out "Sawale" here.

I've been turning my back to a lot of hip-hop, R&B and Haitian popular music...I've invested most of my music exploration and research into Brazilian, West African, and Congolese music instead. I don't regret doing it, especially because I discovered so much amazing music that, though different, sounds familiar...(Thank you, slave trade and colonialism? The only good thing to come out of it was the propagation of African music that has revolutionized the world). Thanks to devoting the last several months to West Africa, Brazil, and the Congo, I discovered Franco, OK Jazz, Fela Kuti (well, rediscovered), Cardinal Rex Lawson, and E.T. Mensah, African Jazz, Cesaria Evora, Jorge Ben, various samba and bossa nova groups, and Miriam Makeba, from South Africa. Moreover, the African artists are playing music profoundly shaped by the African diaspora across the Atlantic, thereby furthering the Black Atlantic world forged by the slave trade, colonialism, immigration, pan-Africanism, and the vicissitudes of being a member of a marginalized group across the Americas. Black solidarity and nationalism, though limited, are in effect when Congolese artists play music based on Cuban son and beguine of Martinique. Likewise, Nigerian and Ghanaian highlife of the 1930s-1960s, influenced by American jazz, Cuban music, and Caribbean calypso, strengthens the pre-existing bonds between the Caribbean and West Africa. Of course, one could never forget James Brown and American funk's essential role in the formation of afrobeat and Fela Kuti's sound.

However, I must make some attempt to return to the music of my African-American and Haitian peoples, especially jazz, R&B, and hip-hop. Shockingly, I still need to listen to the entirety of Frank Ocean's Voodoo, and I'm woefully behind on current trends in hip-hop. Likewise, my jazz exploration has been suspended during my foray into West and Central Africa. I henceforth dedicate myself to continue discovering great jazz, reconnecting with Haitian music, and catching up with R&B. Wish me luck...If I'm lucky, I can make additional youtube playlists for your enjoyment!