It was upon reading those words that it all came flooding back to me – so quickly, in fact, that it was dizzying. The times I was embarrassed to tell my friends at my public school how often I went on vacation. The times I felt embarrassed to go to my father’s side of the family for Christmas, for fear my appearance that day wouldn’t be up to their Jamaican standards. The times my non-black friends made derogatory black jokes. In most of these situations, my embarrassment stood firmly inside of me – I didn’t let any of my feelings of shame and self-consciousness out.

When writing about race and class-fueled embarrassment, Smith – herself half Jamaican and half English – was describing the celebratory night of the 2008 presidential elections. She was at a party in New York City, and a friend of hers invited her to hop over to a rowdy reggae bar in Harlem. She hesitated. Why? “I’ll be ludicrous, in my silly dress, with this silly posh English voice, in a crowded bar of black New Yorkers celebrating,” she thought.

Smith isn’t divulging a feeling akin to white guilt, but rather digging into the sloppiness and imperfections of commonplace race and class encounters. In addition, addressing the race issues that are closest to your heart be can uncomfortable, especially in a culture that privileges the anodyne.

I’m going to give an example that’s close to my own heart, memories, and experience. My high school, Toronto’s Oakwood Collegiate Institute, was proposed by the Toronto District School Board as becoming the city’s first Africentric secondary school. Last Tuesday night, in the auditorium where I used to watch talent shows and had my graduation ceremony, the decision was postponed. A small disclaimer: this isn’t an article about whether or not I support black-focused schools. (I do.) Nor is this an article about whether it would benefit Oakwood, a school that had – and to my knowledge, still does have – “black doors,” “white doors,” and “gino doors.” (It would.)

I use this example because I know the feelings it incites in people. Much of Oakwood’s media attention in the past few days has focused on visceral responses from students, parents and teachers. Words like “passionate,” “volatile,” “controversial,” and “angry” are thrown around to describe the affectivity of the situation. Because I’m aware of the “sensitivity” of this so-called controversial subject, I think twice about how I approach the topic. I think twice about posting it on my Twitter, on my Facebook. I hesitate. Despite my initial hesitations and my embarrassment of my “controversial” opinions, I truck on in the hope of not only overcoming my fears, but also showing to the world that despite what my apathetic Facebook profile seems to suggest, I do in fact believe in something. Most of us do. Sometimes I’m just too embarrassed to tell anyone about it.

Smith finds embarrassment in places I had never considered. In a discussion between Smith, who is currently Harper’s New Books columnist, and Gemma Sieff, Harper’s Reviews editor, earlier this year, Smith talked about the relationship between embarrassment and fiction writing. “It requires all these other embarrassing things,” she writes, “things that seem too banal to talk about, like empathy, like sympathy, like the appreciation of small details that other people leap over because they are not even worth discussing.”

While discussing embarrassment is difficult in all circumstances, it becomes even more so when it arises in the context of a confrontation between friends. Alas, this is my final post for “Mixed Like Me”. What better way to bring this column to an end than to discuss how talking about race makes me, at times, feel weird and uncomfortable? Even with my friends. Especially with my friends.

It’s sometimes easier to share opinions on things that are far removed from us, but it’s most important to give our opinions on those things we find closest, those things that matter the most. Smith’s idea that we can negotiate our own identities through emotion, and especially through embarrassment, is beautiful. Despite my own self-consciousness, the huffiness of race-related discussions is worth exploring.

Zadie Smith went to the party after all, leading me to believe that our grandest and most embarrassing barriers are flexible, fluid, and utterly fragile.

The post Goodbye to embarrassment appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Tiana Reid. I’m mixed and I’m in university. I’m a girl. I’ve never lived in the projects. I’ve never dealt drugs. I’ve seen a gun, like once, and it was registered. In the interest of full disclosure, I come from a single-parent household, but a middle-class one. As such, there’s no way for me (and probably the majority of the people that listen to, or more importantly buy, rap music) to wholly relate to and connect with most mainstream rap – lyrically at least.

Rap is still coded as black and underclass. Regardless of how many subgenres have emerged, rappers – like today’s heavyweights Lil Wayne and T.I. – are still stereotyped as having participated in violence, and many have – and still do – get in trouble with the law. After all, rap emerged from a struggle. It emerged as a distinctly black experience, one that followed in the footsteps of the civil rights movement, and in the golden age, tackled anti-oppression and black consciousness. It emerged from the black working and under-classes as an attempt to overcome distress and to nourish the black musical tradition with awareness and self-expression. It’s a voice that spits fire from the margins. For those reasons and more, rap is heavily concerned with authenticity and legitimacy. But what about its listeners? What does our connection have to be to the struggle – or any struggle? In what ways do we relate to rap?

First things first, what do I mean by relatability? To relate to something is to understand it, connect with it, identify with it, and empathize with it. Of course, there are numerous reasons, besides relatability, why someone would listen to a particular genre: technical aspects, personality, image, wordplay, etc.

Sometimes, though, I need to relate to lyrics. My case in point is Das Racist. Their 2008 “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” became an internet hit, but at the time I had dismissed them as joke rap. I didn’t – no, I couldn’t – relate. And then in 2010, Das Racist released two free mixtapes: Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man. Since then, Das Racist, whose lyrics touch on consumerism, social justice and racism, have been polarizing – sometimes described as clever, and at others, as the demise of hip hop. Personally, I’ve never related more to rap than I do to Das Racist. I’ve never found another rap group or artist to attest to my lived experience. And yet, Das Racist aren’t black.

Das Racist are college-educated. If you listen, it’s obvious. Their songs are packed with sometimes-obscure references and they cite academics like Slavoj Zizek and Gayatri Spivak. My ability to empathize with Das Racist stems from many things: my class, my otherness as a minority, my university education. What’s more, as someone who studies race, class and feminism, I’m aware of the discourse surrounding the arguably less oppressed (white middle-class scholars) attempting to speak on behalf of others. Author and professor Sara Suleri argues against a constructed dichotomy that pits academia against the “real world.” She disputes feminist academics’ emphasis on realism and lived experiences as a legitimization of scholarship. In her case, as in the case of rap, race allows for what Suleri calls a “claim to authenticity.”

Similarly, Das Racist engages in dialogue about their position and legitimacy in the “real world” and in the rap world. In March, Himanshu Suri, one of the members, wrote on his Twitter: “feel like I shudnt rap cuz theres somethin problematic bout middle class indian rappin but then like i’m good at it and at least not white?” By the same token, Suri said in an interview with the New York Times, “I’m an Indian-American who is participating in a historically black art form, while acknowledging that the experience of South Asians in America has been a relatively easier one than that of black Americans.” And because of a worldview like that, one that melds humour, experience, and socio-political awareness, I melt. It’s one of the many reasons I have an undying intellectual crush on the group.

In December 2010, Rawiya Kameir wrote a piece about Das Racist for Thought Catalog and quoted her friend on their problem with the group: “They have nothing to talk about. Their music doesn’t make you feel anything.” Maybe they didn’t relate. I, on the other hand, have never felt more of anything.

The post On rap, race and relatability appeared first on The McGill Daily.

But what about when black folk lighten their skin? Is that flirting with the Other in the same way? Or is it considered self-mutilation?

Tyler Perry’s promotional ads for his forthcoming neominstrel/neomammy play-turned-film Madea’s Big Happy Family, featured the “female” protagonist (Tyler Perry) as “the real Black Swan,” with white hair and caked white skin, like a reverse blackface, I suppose. Jezebel.com called it “horrifying.” Rightly so.

My aforementioned examples are more or less about performing colour in a venue outside of everyday life. In contrast, skin bleaching has always been in an alternate category for me, one with much more deeply negative connotations. I’ve read newspaper articles about it, but for the most part, the use of skin whitening creams and soaps was something that I relegated to the land of the far, far away; or at least to the less industrialized world.

A few years ago, skin whitening hit home – literally. I was visiting my dad in Jamaica, and my cousin, only a month older than me, was sleeping over. We were getting ready to go to an annual A.T.I. Negril party, where Jamaicans meet up during Independence weekend, for something akin to North America’s spring break. While she was applying purple eye makeup to match her outfit, I was looking through the cosmetics she had strewn over the dresser in my temporary bedroom. I thought I didn’t look the part for the party. My hair, dress and talk is all very, well, Western, so I thought that some of her makeup could help me out. I saw a skin whitening cream and halted my rummaging. I said nothing.

What. The. Fuck. I had to digest this. I hadn’t planned to have a “decolonize your mind” discussion, especially with my own cousin. And plus, who am I to say anything? As someone that has light skin, I’m aware of my privilege. In Jamaica, I would be more likely to get hired. And maybe even in Canada.

There are studies that back this up. In the U.S., light-skinned blacks fare significantly better than dark-skinned blacks on standardized tests, and the gap is so wide that it parallels the gap between whites and blacks. What’s more, skin whitening extends past psychological issues, and presents serious risks to physical health; hundreds of Mexican-American women got mercury poisoning as a result of skin whitening creams, according to a 2003 article by Harvard neuroscientist Allen Counter.

And so, I’ve always felt privileged because of my skin colour. It’s a brown that fashion-lite magazines might compare to coffee with cream. I’ve never particularly hated the colour of my skin, in the way that, at times, I’ve hated my hair or my thighs. In Toronto, I get called “light-skinned,” and in Jamaica, it’s “browning.” My friends and family have always complimented my skin tone. I’ve directly benefitted, in many ways, from my links to whiteness.

Despite the incident with my cousin, I wondered: is skin bleaching about self-hate? During a speech in 1962, Malcolm X said it best: “Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man?” Even with such strong views, many people tend to trivialize the issue. In January, Jamaican dancehall artist Vybz Kartel said, in an interview published on rollingout.com, “I feel comfortable with black people lightening their skin. They want a different look. It’s tantamount to white people getting a sun tan.” What’s more, Kartel’s “before and after” photographs have been spinning around the blogosphere due to his drastic change in complexion. Reactions have been similar to when Jamaican dancehall artist Lisa Hype released a song in 2009 called “Proud a mi Bleaching:” shock and disgust.

However, when thinking about skin whitening, it’s crucial to go beyond placing individual blame on people like Kartel and Hype, and instead acknowledge the larger system of white hegemony that reinforces beauty stereotypes for both men and women. Skin whitening is about more than individual choices or beauty rituals: it’s much more complicated. Particularly in Jamaica, colourism is framed by writer Edward Kamau Braithwaite’s concept of creolization, which has created a dichotomy between the lighter-skinned middle classes and the darker-skinned working classes. In Jamaica, skin bleaching could potentially be a form of resistance against traditional norms of masculinity as well as the civilizing mission of the middle class.

Rollingout.com argued that Kartel and “other uninformed blacks are victims of a senseless epidemic that destroys the progression of the black community.” Demonizing and victimizing the alleged uninformed populations, which is how the conversation around skin whitening is often framed, is hateful and unproductive, and leads to an environment that reinforces negative stereotypes of the black working class, instead of exposing the broader dynamics of power at work.

The post Who is the fairest of them all? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The festival itself is big. In its eleventh year, the 2011 edition will host work from over 200 artists, running until March 19 in over 12 venues throughout Montreal. Co-producer of External Relations Stephanie Laoun wrote in an email that this year, Art Matters has “seen an overwhelming amount of both interest and responses from galleries, artist-run centres, and other important local organizations.” More than ever, this edition of the festival goes beyond Concordia’s fine arts scene and matters for the Montreal art community at large.

Sophie Edell, a fourth-year double major in studio arts and art history at Concordia, is showing for her second time at this year’s Art Matters at Alive and Kicking, a collective painting exhibition curated by Simon Larivière. When asked if there is a gap between the Concordia and the Montreal arts scene, Edell responded that they are “intertwined.” This interconnection is apparent in the way that Art Matters has developed over the past decade, expanding from simply being known as a Concordia “thing,” to a city-wide event.

According to Co-Producer of Publicity and Media Relations, Helen Adilia Arceyut-Frixione, Art Matters was initially created “as a way for student artists to share their work with a large public that is not necessarily associated to the field of fine arts.” In the midst of the undeniably elitist art world, Art Matters provides a more democratic venue, enabling student artists to network and meet other artists and curators. In an email, Arceyut-Frixione explained that the festival is about showcasing “the creative, ambitious and professional nature of Concordia’s student body.” For Edell, the festival is an opportunity for exposure and a “good way to talk to people outside of [her] classes and group of friends about [her] work, and to meet other artists.”

Past years have left Art Matters with a party rep, but it has always been more than the cliche of students drinking PBR in a gallery loft in the Plateau. Arceyut-Frixione confirmed the festival’s professionalism, stating that that “the past ten years have cemented the Art Matters Festival as part of the Montreal art scene.” Even so, attendees are bound to have a good time. The opening party features a DJ set from Andrew WK (he’s also speaking at Concordia earlier that day), as well as live performances by Pat Jordache, Grimes, Cousins, and others.

What about this year’s exhibitions? Edell is looking forward to seeing how the various shows at the Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark) – “Enter the Foam,” “The Closer We Are to Death,” “The More We Feel Alive,” “The Receptacle” and her own show, “Alive and Kicking” – interact with each other. Another one to watch out for is “PUSH-PULL,” at La Galerie ESPACE (4844 St. Laurent), an exhibition that unpacks the intricacies behind the design process in fields including fashion, furniture, industrial and graphic design. Many of the exhibits gain their appeal by taking common art themes and making them their own: “Home, Paralleled” at Ctrllab (3634 St. Laurent), upsets traditional notions of home; and “Beauty in Obsession” at Galerie Rye (1331A Ste. Catherine E.), co-presented by the 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy, examines our habitual beauty rituals.

With such diverse programming, it’s no surprise that Art Matters has garnered more and more praise since its inception. According to Laoun, the festival’s innovation has gained considerable feedback from students and universities around the world, and has even been a source of inspiration. The University of Gothenburg in Sweden, for instance, is looking to build a similar festival for its own fine arts faculties. Laoun reflected on the festival’s bright future, saying that “perhaps in 10 years from now, the Art Matters Festival ‘model’ can be shared with many other education centres and perhaps even form partnerships with other universities, both locally and internationally.”

The Art Matters opening party is March 4, 9 p.m. at Espace Reunion, 6600 Hutchison.  Tickets $10 on the door.  For more information on ievents across the city, visit artmattersfestival.com

The post Making art matter appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It’s about time someone gets down to the nitty-gritty of diversity (or lack thereof) at New York Fashion Week. Jezebel has been collecting this kind of data beginning in Fall 2008, and since then, the 2011 Fall/Winter collections, held this past February, were the whitest of them all.

The post New York fashion week a washout appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Those are the famous words of Marlon Brando and Peggy Maley in the 1953 film, The Wild One. It was shortly thereafter, in the 1960s, that counterculture as a sociological term rose to prominence.

The meaning of “counterculture” is seemingly explained in the word itself. To be countercultural is to be against mainstream culture. In the most general sense, a counterculture is a collection of attitudes, behaviours, and an overall way of life that is opposed to dominant social norms.

According to cultural studies professor Derek Nystrom, of McGill’s English department, it is first important to make the distinction between subcultures and countercultures – an idea that originated in Resistance through Rituals, a collection of essays edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson. “Both subcultures and counter cultures resist ‘dominant’ culture, but in different ways: subcultures are marked more by a partial dissent from dominant institutions and practices, and their resistance is often subterranean, rather than explicitly articulated,” Nystrom wrote in an email. Furthermore, both subcultures and countercultures are perceived to be threatening to the dominant social order. Subcultures, like countercultures, may emerge from rebellion and an opposition to the dominant social norms, but there’s less of a precise and detailed goal. Nystrom drew from cultural theorist Paul Willis to explain that subcultures “rarely do what they say, or say what they mean, but they mean what they do.”

On the other hand, countercultures have an explicit goal. It’s not simply about being against something, but rather talking about what you’re fighting for. Countercultures “articulate themselves explicitly in opposition to dominant beliefs and practices, and often seek to build counter-institutions for the securing and transmission of its alternative sets of beliefs and practices,” wrote Nystrom. Some of those “alternative sets of beliefs and practices” include looking at institutions such as family and work in an unorthodox way.

For John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts in Resistance through Rituals, counter cultural practices in the 1960s involved extensive populations of middle-class youth. They argue that “middle-class countercultures are diffuse, less group-centered, more individualized” than what they call “working-class subcultures” – fixed collectives with a group identity, like gangs.

For the most part, the 1960s have been considered the hotbed of countercultures. “The 1960s in the U.S. offers, of course, a host of these kinds of countercultural institutions – from the various New Left groups and their organizational structures to the wide range of communes and other alternative living organizations, as well as the identity-politics based institutions created by the black, gay, and women’s liberation movements,” wrote Nystrom. The Vietnam War, North America’s first televised war, bombarded people with more graphic images than ever before, which had an obvious impact on how U.S. citizens perceived their own state.

Nystrom insisted that Vietnam was simply one part of this increase in cultural opposition. “It’s also important to note that countercultural youth movements sprung up all over the globe during the 1960s, and those other places weren’t fighting in Vietnam, which suggests that the causes for them may have been more demographic (the post WWII baby booms) and/or structural (as part of the shift from monopoly capitalism to late or multinational capitalism),” he explained.
Like most social movements, countercultures eventually lose their fire and enter the mainstream. Even the cultural legacies of those moments don’t have the same poignancy in our generation’s eyes as they did to the fresh eyes of their era. Easy Rider, for instance, is considered an iconic countercultural text, but today, its message pales in comparison to the impact it had when it was released in 1969.

Speaking broadly, Nystrom wrote that countercultures are mainstreamed “when the explicit political challenge of the counterculture fails, and some of their beliefs and practices prove to be assimilable into dominant practices.” Nystrom noted that author and journalist Thomas Frank argued that many of the principles of the countercultures in the 1960s were focused heavily on pleasure, easily translatable to consumer capitalism. Although this seems like an oxymoron, Frank wrote in The Conquest of Cool that “faith in the revolutionary potential of ‘authentic’ counterculture combine[s] with the notion that business mimics and mass-produces fake counterculture in order to cash in on a particular demographic and to subvert the great threat that “real” counterculture represents” – something he calls the “co-optation theory.”  For every genuine counterculture, corporate response is to integrate the counterculture into consumer products, commercializing its original values.

While we may be nostalgic for the sixties conception of counterculture, the idea of a contemporary counter-culture is more difficult to assess. Do counter cultures even exist today? When asked what constitutes counter culture today, Nystrom expressed the opinion that it, in the context of the U.S., counter culture is located on the Christian right. He argued that the Christian right has a distinct worldview relying on a network of institutions, including universities and churches, that are against mainstream culture – such as scientific method in schools, political secularism, and to some extent, consumer capitalism.

This argument at first appears striking, because what we usually think of as counterculture – queer movements, civil rights, anti-war movements, the “summer of love” – are more commonly rooted in leftist ideologies.  But Nystrom wrote that “someone who has been home-schooled by born-again Christian parents, attends Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia, and goes on to work as a lawyer for the Pat Robertson affiliated American Center for Law and Justice lives a fully saturated countercultural existence as profound as someone who resisted the draft and lived in a commune in Vermont in the 1960s and ’70s.”

If contemporary counterculture is defined by groups such as Christian right, does this mean the end of the radical activism that defined movements of the sixties and seventies?  Or can it be reinvented? Counterculture gave birth to cyber culture, argues Fred Turner in the 2006 book From Counterculture to Cyberculture.  The two are inseparable, and this has revolutionized the way cultures interact and develop. Communications technologies – especially social media like YouTube, blogging, Twitter, and Facebook – are routinely lauded for their effects on social change, and more importantly, for human possibility. Nystrom thinks that social media can influence the creation of countercultures because they “allow people to have access to and participate in alternative beliefs and practices without being geographically linked to each other.”

With communication technologies as a resource for change, cultural critic Greil Marcus has argued that the very notion of a counter-culture may be unnecessary. In a 2003 New York Times article, he wrote, “It doesn’t matter that there is no counterculture, because counterculture of the past gives people a sense that their own difference matters.” While the idea of counter-culture today is embedded with romantic and nostalgic implications of past rebellion, to be in defense of the possibility of counter cultural change is to be in defense of freedom.

The post Rebelling with a cause appeared first on The McGill Daily.

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This is the introduction to Tiana Reid’s blog. Find further posts every Wednesday at mcgilldaily.com/blogs

The post Powering up discussion appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Canadian blackness doesn’t have a face: it doesn’t have a publicly acknowledged history, colour, body, culture, politics, sound, or texture. To be black in Canada is almost always challenged by what it means to be black in the United States. Surely, Canadians know more about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the poster children for not only the Civil Rights Movement, but in many ways, contemporary black consciousness in its entirety – than the Canadian black experience.

The contributions of African-Americans to not only black heritage, but overall human history, are undeniable. But what about Africville – the community outside of Halifax composed almost entirely of black families, evicted in the 1960s to make way for a suspension bridge – and the park that it has now become? What about Canada’s history of slavery? And the Coloured Hockey League in the Maritimes? These are the untold and untaught stories of Canadian black history.

Neil Donaldson, aka Logikal Ethix, is a hip-hop artist and founder of Stolen From Africa, a global Toronto-based movement with a Montreal chapter that promotes historical awareness and cultural empowerment through programs that include community outreach and alternative media. In an interview, Donaldson expressed his appreciation of how Black History Month recognizes the contributions of black Canadians, but pointed out that “often times, it’s done on the surface level.”

“We like to have this image that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but it’s not even like that,” he explained. On the contrary, Canada has downplayed a great number of its injustices towards its black citizens. “If you look at Africville, it was a human rights violation. They were bulldozed off their land.” According to Donaldson, these types of things are ignored because of their negative connotations.

The Coloured Hockey League and the black roots of hockey, which predate the NHL, are further examples of something that has been frozen out of Canada’s shared memories; the CHL has still yet to be acknowledged by Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame. Donaldson explained the effects of this on his conception of the sport as a young child: “When I was younger I loved playing hockey but it was known as a white sport and I felt discouraged.” He affirmed that “if information like this was more documented in history textbooks, that would help with self-esteem and a sense of belonging.”

The effects of omitting black history from textbooks thus go much deeper than just distorting the historical record. What these books tell those of us that aren’t included in their narratives is that our history doesn’t matter, and consequently, that we don’t matter either.

This year’s Black History Month, now marking its twentieth anniversary in Quebec, is themed “Reclaim Our History, Reclaim Our Values,” and will feature activities ranging from discussion to plays, live music, film screenings, photography and more.

Michael Farkas, president of the Round Table on Black History Month, and a community activist who works at Little Burgundy’s Youth in Motion, stressed that the theme of this year’s month is important especially because of the artificiality and distraction that pervades our society. “It’s to remind us that we’re made by our history, we’re molded by our history and that within this history, we’ve grown as human beings with solid values that have helped us grow over the years,” Farkas said. His unapologetic use of “we,” “us,” and “our” isn’t meant to exclude. “It’s very universal,” says Farkas, “meaning, our history is your history. Your values are our values.’

How, then, do we, and how should we, acknowledge our shared histories and values each and every February? Does the designation of a single month to commemorate black Canadians further marginalize Canadian black heritage?

According to Donaldson, Black History Month is an opportunity to mobilize, connect with others and maintain those relationships for the rest of the year – not necessarily something that ends  on March 1. “For me, Black History Month is every month. This is my life. This is not a trend. This is what I do.”

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For more information on Black History Month, visit montrealblackhistorymonth.com

The post In search of heritage appeared first on The McGill Daily.

After reading BSN’s commentary, I cried – not only because it affects me personally, but because the whole ordeal is fucking disgusting, and it literally makes my stomach churn. I had no words after I saw the poster, but I managed to string these together because I can’t be silent.

I too believe that those behind this propaganda should be reprimanded. And I too will not stand for this.

Tiana Reid

U3 International Development and Communications

The post Appropriation is disgusting appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Canadian blackness doesn’t have a face: it doesn’t have a publicly acknowledged history, colour, body, culture, politics, sound, or texture. To be black in Canada is almost always challenged by what it means to be black in the United States. Surely, Canadians know more about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the poster children for not only the Civil Rights Movement, but in many ways, contemporary black consciousness in its entirety – than the Canadian black experience.

The contributions of African-Americans to not only black heritage, but overall human history, are undeniable. But what about Africville – the community outside of Halifax composed almost entirely of black families, evicted in the 1960s to make way for a suspension bridge – and the park that it has now become? What about Canada’s history of slavery? And the Coloured Hockey League in the Maritimes? These are the untold and untaught stories of Canadian black history.

Neil Donaldson, aka Logikal Ethix, is a hip-hop artist and founder of Stolen From Africa, a global Toronto-based movement with a Montreal chapter that promotes historical awareness and cultural empowerment through programs that include community outreach and alternative media. In an interview, Donaldson expressed his appreciation of how Black History Month recognizes the contributions of black Canadians, but pointed out that “often times, it’s done on the surface level.”

“We like to have this image that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya,’ but it’s not even like that,” he explained. On the contrary, Canada has downplayed a great number of its injustices towards its black citizens. “If you look at Africville, it was a human rights violation. They were bulldozed off their land.” According to Donaldson, these types of things are ignored because of their negative connotations.

The Coloured Hockey League and the black roots of hockey, which predate the NHL, are further examples of something that has been frozen out of Canada’s shared memories; the CHL has still yet to be acknowledged by Toronto’s Hockey Hall of Fame. Donaldson explained the effects of this on his conception of the sport as a young child: “When I was younger I loved playing hockey but it was known as a white sport and I felt discouraged.” He affirmed that “if information like this was more documented in history textbooks, that would help with self-esteem and a sense of belonging.”

The effects of omitting black history from textbooks thus go much deeper than just distorting the historical record. What these books tell those of us that aren’t included in their narratives is that our history doesn’t matter, and consequently, that we don’t matter either.

This year’s Black History Month, now marking its twentieth anniversary in Quebec, is themed “Reclaim Our History, Reclaim Our Values,” and will feature activities ranging from discussion to plays, live music, film screenings, photography and more.

Michael Farkas, president of the Round Table on Black History Month, and a community activist who works at Little Burgundy’s Youth in Motion, stressed that the theme of this year’s month is important especially because of the artificiality and distraction that pervades our society. “It’s to remind us that we’re made by our history, we’re molded by our history and that within this history, we’ve grown as human beings with solid values that have helped us grow over the years,” Farkas said. His unapologetic use of “we,” “us,” and “our” isn’t meant to exclude. “It’s very universal,” says Farkas, “meaning, our history is your history. Your values are our values.’

How, then, do we, and how should we, acknowledge our shared histories and values each and every February? Does the designation of a single month to commemorate black Canadians further marginalize Canadian black heritage?

According to Donaldson, Black History Month is an opportunity to mobilize, connect with others and maintain those relationships for the rest of the year – not necessarily something that ends  on March 1. “For me, Black History Month is every month. This is my life. This is not a trend. This is what I do.”

The post In search of heritage appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Aloe Blacc, born Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III, is a musical artist signed to indie record label Stones Throw Records, whose music is wholly in conversation with the past. It’s not surprising that his sophomore album, Good Things, has been compared to the work of game-changers like Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.

Due somewhat in part to the proliferation of micro-genres on music blogs, artists are rarely assigned one genre these days, nor is it necessary that they should. How do artists like Blacc, then, negotiate the newness of an old sound? In many ways, the emergence of the term “neo-soul” in the late nineties marked a striking commercialization of soul music. Coined by former Motown Records president Kedar Messenburg, neo-soul didn’t present anything particularly new in terms of music, but rather, reflected new marketing strategies for artists like Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, and Macy Gray. Simultaneously, however, neo-soul offered an “example of black self-determination in an industry that is still defiantly wedded to narrow definitions and images of black folks,” said writer Tyler Lewis in a PopMatters review of Bilal’s latest album Airtight’s Revenge. Interestingly, the USC-educated Blacc has coined a term of his own to describe his music: “brand-new-old-soul.”

Brand-new-old-soul calls attention to soul’s never-ending dialectic between past and present. Citing heroes like Mayfield, Bill Withers, and Al Green, Blacc’s music is, in every respect, in dialogue with the past, but he insists that he still wants to “create something unique that has a quality of its own.” Blacc discussed his relationship with classic soul in an email to The Daily: “I am a disciple of great and classic soul artists and my goal with this new album is to carry on an important tradition in soul music of making songs with social and political commentary.”

Aloe Blacc’s music videos, like “Femme Fatale” and “I Need a Dollar,” make musical references and aesthetic allusions to nostalgic black music, while simultaneously exploring a very current urban life. This is not to say that Blacc’s music is overtly militant or radical; instead his lyrics aim to prolong the tradition of slave music, as testament to its power in early Civil Rights movements.

However, Blacc’s political angle extends beyond a necessity to stay true to the idea that the “soul is political.” For Blacc, the responsibility to address social and political issues isn’t restricted to his music. “I think every adult with a conscience has a responsibility to address political and social issues. Whether you are a day labourer or a filmmaker, it’s important to be aware of the issues that affect your life,” said Blacc
While the genre of modern soul, or neo-soul, or whatever you want to call it, may lack the politicization of days past, it could be argued that this was a natural consequence of having entered the mainstream. Even in its infancy, soul was entrenched in debates surrounding the effects of commercialization. Alongside the politicization of soul music for the Black Power Movement, soul was often considered to have made the commercialization of black music (and black culture) possible, due to its “cross-over appeal.” The very song that has been hailed as the recession anthem, Blacc’s “I Need a Dollar,” was picked up by the HBO series How to Make It in America, bringing his music a far wider audience. “The soul artist is an archetype that exists and is well understood. Fortunately, a new music lover is born everyday and the tastes of music fans are broadening, so I imagine artists will not have to be so strict with genre-centrality,” said Blacc.

Aloe Blacc’s music doesn’t simply resist classification, it exemplifies his self-determination in creating a space of brand-new-old-soul to call his own.

Aloe Blacc will be playing live with his band The Grand Scheme at Le Belmont, 4483 Saint Laurent Boulevard, on November 16. Visit lookoutpresents.com for more information.

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From having grown up in Toronto public schools, it’s safe to say that McGill – one of the most expensive and hardest Canadian universities to get into – is not in any way a community that should be praised for its diversity. Black people are the largest visible minority group in Montreal – something you would hardly believe judging by the McGill student body.

While McGill certainly does have a large international student body, it’s hardly as racially and culturally diverse as it should (or could) be. Just take a look around your next class, at your peers, professors and TAs, and you’ll see what I mean.

Tiana Reid
U3 International Development and Communications

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LOOKOUT is not alone in its mission, but Walden aims to set his company above the sea of competitors. “For our club nights, we pride ourselves on working with the best DJs. And for our shows it’s always about the right act that’ll bring some element of surprise or impressiveness to the table,” Walden says. LOOKOUT has also made a conscious decision to react against the suffocation of the McGill bubble; it aims to appeal to a variety of audiences by offering distinct events. “We try not to be too in your face,” Walden says.

This weekend, LOOKOUT is putting on two shows for the no-bullshit music fiends of the Montreal hub, hosting “modern funk” royalty Dâm-Funk and the ever-evolving band YACHT.

Dâm-Funk
L.A. native Dâm-Funk (né Damon Riddick) is stopping at Montreal on his current North American tour. Dâm, (pronounced Dame), who sports killer hair à la Super Fly, is a DJ/producer/musician signed to Stones Throw Records, and has worked as a session musician for Ice Cube and Mack 10. West Coasters may know him for one of the liveliest weekly L.A. parties, Funkmosphere. His 2009 debut album, Toeachizown, is a two-hour, five-volume tour de force of “modern funk”.

Dâm goes by the maxim “Funk is not a fad…. It’s a way of life” so it’s no doubt that for Dâm, funk is more than just music – it’s an ideology. “The funk way of life,” says Dâm, “is about staying true, staying classic, and staying dependable. Sometimes a pair of 501 jeans from Levi’s is really all you need.” Essentially, he’s not into the trend-of-the-moment music or the temporariness of emerging fad genres of music, both of which permeate our contemporary A.D.D. culture.

“Funk has a rich history, and I want to try to continue that,” Dâm says. Indeed he has – he is currently working on an album with legendary Steve Arrington from the seventies Ohio funk group Slave. “He was already aware of what I was doing, which is what made me really excited about working on the project. I wasn’t chasing him down. We both hooked up because the funk allowed it to happen. He’s a friend, like a big brother I never had. That’s what makes the project so special,” Dâm gushes about his dream-come-true collaboration.

Funk is not a fad, and neither is Dâm-Funk. He’s here to stay.

YACHT
Claire L. Evans and Jona Bechtolt’s inspiration for their latest album, See Mystery Lights, came from the paranormal phenomenon of the Marfa Lights in Texas. The bandmates are fascinated by the tendency of our generation to expect explanations: “When we couldn’t Google or Wikipedia the Marfa Lights and we couldn’t have a solid answer, that was really inspiring and strange for us. We take a lot of information for granted and its nice to be humbled by something frighteningly mysterious,” Evans says.

See Mystery Lights is a bouncy and feel-good album that delivers finger taps, foot jiggles, head nods, and suddenly whole body engagement. Engagement is indeed YACHT’S master plan. “There is a ritualistic aspect to indie culture. Everyone acts a certain way and people feel like they need to be an audience member as opposed to part of a secret society or whatever else. We do everything we can to break down those divisions between audience and performer because it’s really alienating and it’s hard to overcome,” she explains. YACHT throws itself wholeheartedly into this objective, incorporating tools like video, PowerPoint, and audience participation. Evans elaborates, “We do a lot of physical contact and try to get them out of their comfort zone and shake them up.” Their often surprising choices of venue complement this – YACHT is known to perform in unconventional spaces like underwater and in museums.

Their current North American tour, YACHT & The Straight Gaze, is once again going to break preconceptions. They’ve rearranged the form of YACHT by adding The Straight Gaze, which is made up of Rob “Bobby Birdman” Kieswetter, Jeffrey “Jerusalem” Brodsky, and D. Reuben Shynder of Rob Walmart, to their live performances. “Around every six months, we get a revelation that we have to make a dramatic change to YACHTmai in some way,” Bechtolt explains. By challenging the audience through content and surroundings of shows, YACHT creates “a special zone that is independent of what people’s expectations are.”

Dâm-Funk performs on March 5 at Club Lambi (4465 St. Laurent). YACHT performs on March 6 at Le Belmont (4483 St. Laurent). For more information, please visit lookoutpresents.com.

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But no, blackface is the new black in contemporary media. From fashion editorials to television shows, images of white people with painted-on black faces and/or bodies create new images of and resurrect the old minstrel blackface from racist history. In August, the television series Mad Men, which is known for playing with historically racist and sexist depictions, featured character Roger Sterling in blackface serenading his wife. And back in 2006, a blackened Kate Moss was featured on the cover of the Independent for an initiative to draw attention to HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Nonetheless, this past month of October may have been the blackest of them all. First came model Lara Stone whose entire body was painted black in the October issue of French Vogue. Then, on the Australian variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday a group of blackfaced contestants frolicked around in the “Jackson Jive,” a parody of the Jackson Five. Finally, supermodel and talk show host Tyra Banks transformed her America’s Next Top Model contestants into different ethnicities during a “biracial” photo shoot.

Don’t be mistaken that these are simply elusive publicity stunts in the far-off world that is entertainment. Post-Halloween, it’s not hard to come across blackface right here at home in your friends-of-friends’ Facebook photos. Whether or not these Halloween costumes are innocent fun or racist appropriation has also been all over the media. Namely, white University of Toronto students dressed up as the Jamaican bobsled team, and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Whitney Isleib showed up at a party as Lil Wayne.

When did this become fair game? When did it become okay to trivialize race and identity by flirting with skin colour? McGill Ph.D.candidate in Communications Studies Cheryl Thompson says that “There is a perception of racial equilibrium.” With post-race as the current buzzword in race relations and a black man in the White House, it may seem that it’s not a big stretch to create the fantastical idea that we live in a colour-blind society.

The response to white-as-black representations has been far from outrage. In French Vogue, the white Dutch model, Lara Stone, was painted black for a fashion editorial. The reactions that whirled around the media and blogosphere were mostly raised eyebrows, not outright offense. Not too long after, the November issue of V Magazine also featured Russian model Sasha Pivovarova in blackface. White models in blackface are racist depictions that go beyond cultural insensitivity. These so-called fashion-forward magazines are heading back to the pre-Civil Rights era – and hardly anyone is complaining.

Painting white models black for the entertainment of a majority white audience is more than distasteful. McGill Communications Studies professor Carrie Rentschler affirms that “These are racist forms of representations because of the pasts they draw on.” By depicting blackface in fashion, the media is drudging up historical racist imagery of buffoonery that dates back to a time when political inequalities were standard.

There’s a disconnect in the fashion industry when white models’ bodies are painted black as the latest trend and, at the same time, black models have a hard time getting hired. It’s no secret that the fashion industry lacks diversity and representations of different ethnicities. A crucial question arises: why not hire a black model instead? Interestingly, the same issue that featured a faux-black Lara Stone had not one black model, despite the fact that this was French Vogue’s “supermodel” issue.

The consumption of blackness by white people perpetuates the appropriation of black culture. “When you look at racial identification as purely style, what does that say about experience and difference? It erases it,” says Rentschler. Sporting black like it’s the latest fashion statement adds fuel to the fire of an already fragile media environment that has a documented lack of black representations.

Blackface in fashion magazines is often dismissed as neither racist nor offensive, but rather as a case of art for art’s sake. For some, it’s difficult to dismiss that white people painted black is a controlling image that shadows minstrelsy. “These are harmful representations because they are part of a social order that punishes blackness and values whiteness as supreme,” says Rentschler. Blackface in magazines “decontextualizes race and difference and turns it into something to play with and to consume. It’s using blackness as a signifier of playfulness and exoticism.”

Whereas the reaction to blackface in fashion editorials was minimal, the “Jackson Jive” skit immediately received flack for its obvious racist representations, and mostly because guest judge Harry Connick Jr. spoke on air of his disapproval. “We’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that, we take it really to heart,” said Connick Jr. The “Jackson Jive” skit could have fit into a 19th-century Deep South minstrel show – and in this case, that was recognized.

However, the fashion editorials in French Vogue and V were considered ambiguous images and thus not publicly viewed as explicitly racist. Rentschler explains: “It’s hard to critique these images because the response is turned around. It’s you that’s the racist because you see racism in these images. Racism becomes a problem of one’s consciousness.”

Why then are these representations of blackface in fashion not being challenged more vigorously? When it comes to outrage over the “Jackson Jive” skit and relative indifference toward models in blackface, Thompson thinks gender has something to do with it. “It makes a difference that these were white males. White women can get away with a lot,” says Thompson.

These representations of blackness are hardly being criticized as much as they should. In Spike Lee’s 2000 satirical film Bamboozled, which explores the impact of a modern minstrel blackface television show, Lee comments on our present-day apathetic culture.

White performers used blackface in minstrel acts to ridicule black culture and blackness, and to humiliate and demoralize black people as a whole. The main aim was to entertain by emphasizing black inferiority and perpetuating negative black stereotypes. From the Tom, to the tragic mulatto, to the mammy, to the coon, onscreen representations of black people have been downright disgusting. A quick Google Image search will reveal the traditional and mortifying blackface caricatures with exaggeratedly plump fire-engine red lips, bright white teeth, black paint, and wide googly-eyes.

What may be more revealing as an explanation for insouciant responses to contemporary blackface is the lack of historical reference points for many people. Thompson sees a generational divide as one reason for the lack of awareness. Youth today, not having grown up experiencing the overt racism that she did, have “no sense of history, no sense of that struggle.”

Not enough critical attention is directed at popular entertainment, including what is produced, written, and directed by and for blacks, for example Tyler Perry’s work. Lee sees a hair-raising similarity between the black television shows of today and the racist ones of the past. “I think there’s a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery. I see ads for Meet the Browns and House of Payne and I’m scratching my head. We’ve got a black president and we’re going back. The image is troubling and harkens back to Amos ‘n’ Andy,” says Lee. What’s troubling is that Perry’s success, as a black film producer, is unparalleled, yet his regressive images of plump mammy characters and stammering black men have striking comparisons to minstrelsy.

In conjunction with the reemergence of blackface in the media, there has also been renewed interest in the commercial recognition and representation of blackness in mainstream media. Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair attempts to address issues concerning black hair practices. At first glance, it seems promising that the dialogue is even taking place at all. But Rock’s infotainment skims the surface and misses the opportunity to discuss, among others, issues of economic oppression, racial identity, and the cultural, social, familial, and community-based importance of grooming.

Similarly, Disney is set to release the animated film The Princess and The Frog, featuring the first black princess in its 86-year history. While it seems like a long overdue and positive event, the film is already receiving criticism due in part to Disney’s record of racist and sexist stereotyping.

In the New York Times article by Brookes Barnes, “Her Prince Has Come. Critics, Too,” the princess’s prince is denounced for not being black, because for some, this is Disney’s way of saying that a black man is not worthy of princedom. William Blackburn, a former columnist at the Charlotte Observer said, “Disney should be ashamed. This princess story is set in New Orleans, the setting of one of the most devastating tragedies to beset a black community.” Barnes also notes a key drawback: “We finally get a black princess and she spends the majority of her time on screen as a frog?”

Like Disney, Mattel has also found a way to capitalize on black identity. The recently released black Barbies from Mattel have curlier hair, fuller lips, different skin colours, and wider noses, which to some, is an improvement from the first black Barbie, Christie, who was introduced in the sixties and was basically a white Barbie painted black.

Representations like Mattel’s new black Barbies and the black Disney princess are important because “commercial culture is the place at which we look to find ourselves,” says Rentschler. But do these representations challenge stereotypes or simply reinforce them? “Is this recognition of black femininity or is it the same hypercommodified and hypersexualized representations?” asks Rentschler. Because of the magnitude of control and power at play in media representations, Thompson takes a stance that is very anti-representation. “The more something is commodified, the more it doesn’t mean anything,” says Thompson.

The struggle to find an authentic racial identity is exacerbated when corporations and media conglomerations are the ones constructing blackness and commercializing race. Why are corporations shaping the black narrative and experience? Thompson laments that “[The black community is] not defining black. You have to tell your own stories. We’re allowing someone else to give us a representation instead of us trying to form our own.”

How then are we to understand black identity in the media? In the past, when black people struggled to find any representations of themselves in the media, they had to make a grassroots, community-based definition of blackness. In the present-day, however, even representations coming from the black community itself, such as Rock’s documentary, can limit other dialogue. Because racism is so pervasive, and exists within a dominating power structure, it can become a way of thought that black people themselves can perpetuate through their own narratives.

Beware of seeing the potential progress in increased black representations because they tend to mask the truth. The fundamental issues are those that deal with the racialized class politics of our society. The real indication is systemic and deals with over-incarceration, violence, criminalization, unemployment, and poverty, all factors of daily life for the black and disenfranchised. A 2008 New York Times article affirmed that more than one in 100 American adults and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are behind bars. Concordantly, incarceration rates for black women overwhelmingly surpass the rates for white women. “There is a history of public discourse of deviance in the black family,” says Rentschler.

W hat you choose to consume sends a message to the producers of these black representations. Corporations won’t produce what isn’t being sold. Although capitalism can lead to the commodification of black identity, it also gives the consumer the power to influence what’s being produced. Our intertwined histories, realities, and lived experiences cannot be ignored. Acknowledging racism in our lives, and being critical of mass culture, rather than turning a blind eye to racist representations, is one part of the larger struggle for equality.

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Off the Wall is up at the Ellen Art Gallery (1400 Maisonneuve O.) through December 12. For more information, visit ellengallery.concordia.ca.

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