Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 138

May 21, 2021: Small Axe and America: Caribbean American Artists

[One of my favorite cultural works of the last year was Small Axe, filmmaker Steve McQueen’s anthology film series about the West Indian community in England from the 1960s through the 1980s. I’m not an EnglandStudier, but I think there are plenty of ways to apply the five wonderful films to AmericanStudying. So this week I’ll highlight a handful, leading up to a Guest Post on McQueen’s prior films!]

On a handful of the many talented Caribbean American artists who can rival the great McQueen.

1)      Claude McKay: A Jamaican American poet and key Harlem Renaissance figure whose “If We Must Die” is one of the most impassioned critical patriotic poems I know, and just the tip of the iceberg of his prolific and impressive career.  

2)      Paule Marshall: The daughter of an immigrant father (from Barbados) and an African American mother, Marshall grew up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and 40s and went on to write some of the most compelling fiction of the late 20th century, from her debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) to her award-winning Praisesong for the Widow (1983) among many others.

3)      Jean-Michel Basquiat: The son of a Haitian immigrant father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat became one of the late 20th century’s most groundbreaking and influential artists(and a compatriot of Andy Warhol) before his tragic death from a heroin overdose at the age of 27. Jeffrey Wright captures his essence perfectly in the 1996 film.

4)      Gloria Estefan: I could have highlighted any one of the three Cuban American musicians I discuss in that hyperlinked post in this spot, as all three (as I argued there) changed the game in their respective genres and eras. But what I can say, the rhythm got me.

5)      Sontenish Myers: I just learned about this young Jamaican American filmmaker through that excellent interview, so I won’t pretend to know much more yet than you all will when you read it too. But I wanted to make clear that there are so many young Caribbean American artists extending, amplifying, and building on these legacies, just like Steve McQueen is.

Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Caribbean American connections?

May 20, 2021: Small Axe and America: Police Reform

[One of my favorite cultural works of the last year was Small Axe, filmmaker Steve McQueen’s anthology film series about the West Indian community in England from the 1960s through the 1980s. I’m not an EnglandStudier, but I think there are plenty of ways to apply the five wonderful films to AmericanStudying. So this week I’ll highlight a handful, leading up to a Guest Post on McQueen’s prior films!]

On a telling question about the possibility and limits of police reform, and why we need to keep asking it.

In the last paragraph of my year in review post on race, memory, and justice, I briefly addressed the complicated and even contradictory (yet clearly coexisting) realities of the racist origins and development of yet widespread African American support for the police in the United States. While there are various ways to understand and engage those concurrent realities, I would say that they do naturally lend themselves to an emphasis on police reform (rather than, say, abolition) as a vital goal. The third Small Axe film, Red, White, and Blue, depicts precisely such a reformer, a historical figure who sought to change the institutional racism of English policing (among other problems he hoped to address) from the inside: Leroy Logan (played by John Boyega in the film), a longtime London Metropolitan Police officer who founded the Black Police Association(now the National Black Police Association) and chaired it for its first 30 years (1983-2013, when Logan retired from the force). Logan’s recent autobiography, Closing Ranks: My Life as a Cop (2020, and co-written with George Luke), describes both the frustrations and failures and the successes and progress of that reformist career.

In watching Red, White, and Blue, I couldn’t help but think about a very different recent cultural work: HBO’s Watchmen (2019), and specifically its historical storyline featuring the character of Hooded Justice. That fictional character reminds us that the US has had African American police officers for far longer than the UK (Logan is presented in the film, apparently accurately, as one of the first Black officers when he begins his career in the early 1980s), but that they have nonetheless consistently come up against the same institutional racism and prejudice, the same challenges to both their own career and any overarching progress, that Logan encountered. And just because The Wire is never far from my AmericanStudying brain, I likewise thought about a character like Bunny Colvin, an African American police lieutenant whose efforts to change both policing and the war on drugs in the show’s fictionalized Baltimore ultimately lead to his own departure from the force rather than any substantive or at least enduring changes. Reform from within makes sense as at least part of the equation, but such fictional characters (dealing with all too historical and ongoing realities) illustrate just how challenging such reforms will always be.

But if I can quote from one more American text, Don Henley’s song “Inside Job” (from the 2000 album of the same name): “Insect politics/Indifferent universe/Bang your head against the wall/But apathy is worse.” Of course those last two aren’t the only options when it comes to policing problems in the US (or anywhere else), and I don’t want to dismiss entirely here the far more radical idea of abolition. But the truth of social reform and movements throughout American history is that they have almost always involved a series of changes, rather than massive or sweeping overhaul (with perhaps the only exception being the abolition of slavery, which did involve massive changes but also and not coincidentally the bloodiest conflict in US history)—and I would also argue that making such changes can be just as radical, if not as striking, as such overhauls might be. So frustrating as it might be, I think we need to keep banging our heads against the wall of police reform; and in the story of Leroy Logan, historically and as fictionalized so potently by Red, White, and Blue, we’ve got an excellent portrayal of both the frustrations and (eventually but unquestionably) the possibility of reform and change.

Last Axe application tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Caribbean American connections?

May 19, 2021: Small Axe and America: The Courts and Justice

[One of my favorite cultural works of the last year was Small Axe, filmmaker Steve McQueen’s anthology film series about the West Indian community in England from the 1960s through the 1980s. I’m not an EnglandStudier, but I think there are plenty of ways to apply the five wonderful films to AmericanStudying. So this week I’ll highlight a handful, leading up to a Guest Post on McQueen’s prior films!]

On the progressive potential of the court system, and how a frustratingly divisive theoretical frame helps us understand it.

The first of the five Small Axe films, both in the order they were released and in the chronology of their settings and stories, is Mangrove, which tells the compelling true story of a 1960s Caribbean restaurant (the Mangrove) in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood which became the focus of both repeated acts of police brutality and a subsequent criminal case that sought to convict the so-called Mangrove Nine (a group of West Indian activists and community leaders, including the restaurant’s owner Frank Crichlow, who had led communal pushback to the police’s misdeeds) of the serious charges of riot and affray. The majority of the nine beat the charges (and those who were convicted received reduced sentences), thanks in large part to their stirring testimony in the course of the trial (as well as to the efforts of their legal allies), and the case is considered a hugely significant legal advance for Britons of color and for the gradual, haphazard, fraught, yet vital and inspiring move toward a more inclusive and less institutionally racist English society.

The Mangrove Nine case thus represents something about which I’ve thought and writtena great deal in an American historical context: the possibility for the court system, and thus the legal and justice systems overall, to serve as a vehicle for progress and equity. Of course far, far farfar far far, too often the opposite has been true—not just with racist and discriminatory and exclusionary laws and policies, but also and to me even more frustratingly with the courts themselves supporting and reinforcing and amplifying those legal, political, and social elements. Yet at the same time, court decisions have absolutely advanced numerous social movements and causes throughout American history, from abolition and birthright citizenship as illustrated by my first hyperlinks in this paragraph to the more recent roles of the courts in (for example) opposing President Trump’s Muslim bans (although the Supreme Court unfortunately dropped that ball). At the very least, our history reveals the persistence of this potential progressive role for the courts, and remembering those histories allows for hope for that continued role in the present and future.

Interestingly, one helpful theoretical lens for both remembering and extending that hopeful legacy is something that has become a dirty word for many 21stcentury Americans (and currently numerous state legislatures): critical race theory. I believe even more thoughtful Americans sometimes see critical race theory as only advancing the more directly critical side of the equation, the one that argues, in the first of CRT’s two founding ideas, “that white supremacy exists and exhibits power maintained over time, and, in particular, that the law plays a role in this process.” But CRT likewise has a more optimistic layer, as illustrated by its second founding idea: “that transforming the relationship between law and racial power, as well as achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly, are possible.” That sums up quite nicely what I would want to argue about the progressive potential of the courts and the law, a potential exemplified by the Mangrove Nine decision and the inspiring conclusion of Mangrove alike.

Next Axe application tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Caribbean American connections?

May 18, 2021: Small Axe and America: Remembering Reggae

[One of my favorite cultural works of the last year was Small Axe, filmmaker Steve McQueen’s anthology film series about the West Indian community in England from the 1960s through the 1980s. I’m not an EnglandStudier, but I think there are plenty of ways to apply the five wonderful films to AmericanStudying. So this week I’ll highlight a handful, leading up to a Guest Post on McQueen’s prior films!]

On the danger of cultural appropriation and how to make sure we remain more inclusive instead.

By far my favorite of the five Small Axe films, and quite possibly my favorite movie I watched over the last year, is Lovers Rock, McQueen and his co-writer Courttia Newland’s tribute to the West London reggae house party scene set over the course of one exhilarating 1980 night. While the film’s title refers in part to the blossoming romance between Franklyn (Micheal Ward) and Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) at its center, it also alludes (as I learned while researching this post, a phrase that I’m sure will apply equally to every subsequent post in the week’s series) to a popular musical genre and movement in 1970s London. Indeed, that last hyperlinked article goes so far as to call Lover’s Rock “reggae’s Motown,” an argument that this English musical moment was as profoundly influential in terms of its cultural and historical contexts as was that hugely significant Detroit musical scene in America. Yet that same article’s telling subtitle adds both that Lover’s Rock “influenced The Police” and yet that it “was sidelined in its native Britain.”

Those two phrases might seem contradictory, but I would argue that the opposite could also be true—that the appropriation of a genre by white artists can lead, and all too often has led, precisely to the sidelining of the genre’s original, foundational voices and communities. I think we’ve seen a very similar trend play out when it comes to reggae in the United States, with some of the genre’s biggest hits being covers by white artists (like Eric Clapton’s cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” and UB40’s cover of Tony Tribe’s reggae version of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine” [yes, the song was originally Diamond’s, but UB40 specifically saidthey only knew Tribe’s reggae version when they covered it]). Moreover, reggae-inspired white groups like UB40 or Sublime have been the most prominent or at least best-selling artists within the genre overall. Of course all those songs and artists are examples of the cross-cultural and creolized trends I highlighted in yesterday’s post (and that extend to the worlds of rock and pop music more broadly in American history to be sure), and aren’t in and of themselves a bad thing. But when it comes to the relative obscurity of original reggae artists in comparison, particularly artists of color, I think the word “sidelined” would still be all too apt; Bob Marley might be an exception, but if so he’s the exception that proves the rule.

So how do we push back on and reverse that unfortunate trend? The obvious answer, and not a bad one at all, would be to listen to and share widely many more of those original songs and artists, including all those in lists like this one. But one of the best things about the film Lovers Rock is the way that it highlights the multilayered cultural and social meanings of a genre like reggae, the spaces and communities—from an individual house to the neighborhood of West London to multi-generational trans-Atlantic families—that are part of every song, every artist, and most especially every communal performance and party. So better remembering reggae, in 1980 London and 2021 America alike, also means engaging much more fully with all those cultural and communal layers, with all the ways that lovers rock.

Next Axe application tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Caribbean American connections?

May 17, 2021: Small Axe and America: New Orleans and Creolization

[One of my favorite cultural works of the last year was Small Axe, filmmaker Steve McQueen’s anthology film series about the West Indian community in England from the 1960s through the 1980s. I’m not an EnglandStudier, but I think there are plenty of ways to apply the five wonderful films to AmericanStudying. So this week I’ll highlight a handful, leading up to a Guest Post on McQueen’s prior films!]

On how New Orleans helps us better engage America’s defining creolizations.

I’ve written a good bit about New Orleans in this space: from this early city-centric post inspired by Mardi Gras and my first visit to the city; to this one from the same blog era on one of my favorite American novels and a book that’s as much about New Orleans as it is about its huge, multi-generational cast of characters, George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes (1881). Those posts illustrate a few of the many reasons why I believe New Orleans is so distinctly and powerfully American, as I hope have this week’s posts in their own ways, despite the specific focus on Katrina. And indeed, the responses to and aftermaths of that horrific storm likewise reveal some of the worst as well as the best of American history, society, culture, and art; on that final note, I should highlight one more time a text I could definitely have featured in the week’s series and one of my favorite 21st century American novels, Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011).

To say much more eloquently than I ever could a bit more about why I’d define New Orleans as so deeply American, here’s one of the central characters from Treme that I didn’t get to analyze in this post, Steve Zahn’s DJ Davis McAlary. As a radio DJ, and a highly opinionated person to boot, Davis is often ranting, much of it about the best and worst of his beloved New Orleans (and all of it a combination of communal and self-aggrandizing, convincing and frustrating). But my favorite Davis monologue, in the opening scene of the Season 4 episode “Dippermouth Blues,” is far quieter and more thoughtful. Coming out of playing a hugely cross-cultural song, Davis calls it, “A stellar example of McAlary’s theory of creolization. Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, the Great American Songbook meet African American musical genius. And that’s what America’s all about…‘Basin Street, is the street, where all the dark and light folks meet.’ That’s how culture gets made in this country. That’s how we do. We’re a Creole nation, whether you like it or not. And in three weeks, America inaugurates its first Creole president. Get used to it.”

Those of us who loved that aspect of Obama and even called him “the first American president” as a result didn’t have to “get used to” anything, of course. And as for those whom Davis is addressing more directly in those closing lines, well to say that they seem not to have gotten used to it is to significantly understate the case (which of course David Simon and his co-creators knew all too well, as that final-season episode of Treme may have been set around New Year’s 2008 but was made and aired in late 2013). Indeed, when I was asked by audiences during my book talks for We the People about why we’ve seen such an upsurge in exclusionary rhetoric and violence over the last decade, I’ve frequently argued that backlash to Obama—as a representation of so many perceived national “changes”—has been a central cause. Which is to say, it’s not just that we need to “get over” the reality of our creolized history, culture, and identity—first the we who love those elements need to do a better job making the case for them, both as valuable and as foundationally American. There’s no place and no community through which we can do so more potently than New Orleans.

Next Axe application tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other takes on Caribbean American connections?

May 15-16, 2021: Crowd-sourced Spring 2021 Moments and Reflections

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ve highlighted a handful of those, leading up to this crowd-sourced post with other moments and reflections from you all—add yours in comments, please!]

First, a number of my colleagues and friends have shared this bracing and important Academe Blog Guest Post from Nate Holdren.

Responding to Tuesday’s post, Lauren Kerr-Heralytweets, “Nice post. I think videos are a great way to model writing. I showed this and we had a great conversation after (in chat then digital breakout rooms) about the misrepresentation of Cherokees by the U.S. government as a way to justify removal.”

And finally, Guest Poster and all-around friend of the blog Robin Field shares these extended reflections:

“One of my important take-aways from the third semester of pandemic teaching is my decision to abolish late penalties and accept all work whenever it is submitted. Previously in my freshman seminar, I had one-page response papers due by 7:00 a.m. for my 10:10 a.m. class. I usually was able to grade all of these response papers before teaching that day, so these papers gave me a good sense of the questions students had about the day’s reading and how to direct the conversation. In previous semesters, I did not accept late response papers, because they did not help me prepare for class. As the students turned in 25 of these assignments, missing a few did not impact that percentage of their course grade significantly.

This semester I accepted late response papers. First, the students did not take advantage of this flexibility—most students turned in their work on time. For the students who turned in their response papers late, I learned that my flexibility was incredibly helpful. One student (whom I will call D) took a full course load and worked nights to pay tuition and family expenses. D returned to the dorm after midnight and needed to decide which work to turn in before going to bed for his few hours of sleep. Many of his response papers were late, but he also wrote more than the one required page—at times he wrote 3-4 pages, single-spaced! Despite turning in late work, he was extremely engaged with the course. He will pass the class because of my flexibility. If I had not allowed the work to be turned in late, D would have failed the class—an outcome that would not reflect his understanding of the material but would reflect my course policies instead.

In the fall, I may add this option to my courses: The Late Work Explanation Form. Dr. Lindsay Masland of Appalachia State U writes: ‘Remember my Late Work Explanation Form? Where students can submit ANYTHING let as long as they tell me? Some profs were concerned it would be overwhelming to manage. Results are in! I had 500 assignments to grade. 8.4% came in late but at some point during the semester, so I was able to grade those as they came in. Many were submitted before I even started grading. 2.6% came in on the last possible day. That's only 13 extra things to grade right now.’”

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Other Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

May 14, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Talking Of Thee I Sing

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

As I draft this post in early April, I’ve had the chance to give one virtual book talk for Of Thee I Sing, for the great local bookstore Toadstool Books in late March. In the next couple weeks, I’ll give a couple more: for the Boston Athenaeum on May 18th from 12-1pm; and for the Massachusetts Historical Society on May 26th from 5:30-6:30pm. I’m still interested in any and all additional opportunities to share the book and the contested history of American patriotism: in virtual talks for bookstores or libraries or historic sites; in conversations with students/classes or reading/book groups; in online pieces for any and all spaces and sites; and in any other format you can think of! Such talks and conversations are the best part of writing, to me, and will always offer favorite moments.

Crowd-sourced post this weekend,

Ben

PS. So one more time: what do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

May 13, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Adult Learning Emails

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

I had the chance to teach two adult learning classes this Spring, for the two programs with which I work most consistently (Fitchburg State’s ALFA and Assumption College’s WISE), and they were as consistently inspiring as they always are. But while that was true of the classes and conversations themselves, what was even better this Spring were the emails I got from students in between class meetings (and after the final one as well), sharing additional thoughts and ideas, highlighting texts and resources, making connections to aspects of our contemporary moment, and more. I’ve tried in all sorts of ways, in this space and elsewhere, to make the case for why everyone should teach in programs like these if they get the chance, and I’d say that how responsive and knowledgeable the students are, how much I always learn from them, is one of the best arguments I could make. And those elements, and just the emails themselves, were never more meaningful than they were in Spring 2021.

Last moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

May 12, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Gast’s American Progress

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

Even my grad class (on American Art & Literature 1800-1860) wasn’t immune to the challenges that faced us all in Spring 2021—in no small measure because the same thing that makes our English MA grad students so awesome, their work as educators, also made them extra exhausted all Spring. But we still had some great discussions, and one of my favorites was their extended close reading conversation about John Gast’s American Progress (1872, but very much depicting pre-1860 histories of the westward expansion of the United States). I’ve spent a long time looking at that multi-layered painting, but these five awesome students and educators still added a great deal to the mix, and for those few minutes, as with every one of the moments I’m highlighting in this series, all the baggage of Spring 2021 dropped away.

Next moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

May 11, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Fruitvale and Blackish

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

Yesterday’s post focused on an unexpected discussion that became a favorite moment; unfortunately, I have to admit that most of my planned discussions were more challenging and less fruitful than that. But not all, and one of the best planned discussions was when my First-year Writing II class watched Fruitvale Station and an episode of Blackishto model multimedia comparative analysis ahead of a paper on two such texts of their choice. Their great thoughts both engaged with these two texts, their respective genres, and their vital #BlackLivesMatter stories and themes and modeled comparative analytical lenses, exemplifying the combination of practicality and philosophy, form and content that can define first-year writing classes at their best.

Next moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?