everyone's favorite: identity politics

view of question bridge: black males, a work in progress by hank willis thomas, chris johnson, bayeté ross smith, and kamal sinclair at jack shainman gallery.

i saw an exhibition yesterday at jack shainman gallery, of work by hank willis thomas and question bridge: black males, a collaboration with thomas, chris johnson, bayeté ross smith, and kamal sinclair. the show displayed one of the most explicit engagements with racial and "identity politics" i have seen as of late. this is probably because, well, after the multiculturalist fad of the 90s passed over, the topic is no longer "trendy." still following a 2000-year-plus tradition, the art world still believes in "universality." "good" art will appeal to "all" on a "fundamental" level. since the internet, digital realm, and ecological concerns dominate our current era (i'm thinking of the u.s. and other globally "first world" countries), those topics have become "our shared" experience. addressing the problems of a black and white dichotomy, the experience of "being a black man" (and gay), evoking w.e.b. dubois and ralph ellison's invisible man are so passé in this post-racial world. just like artists avoid the label "feminist" like the plague.

addressing racism is difficult today because it operates under the table: official laws and politically correct american culture forbids discrimination according to race, gender, sexuality, but it still happens, masked by a myriad of seemingly rational and racially (sexually, etc) irrelevant excuses. 

here is an excerpt from my thesis on the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and imagery in comedy:

This act of self-affirmation through negation has been a necessary tactic for the Eurocentric paradigm in American mass culture, a legacy that has been thoroughly demonstrated by the history of 19th Century minstrels shows, performed in both black- and yellowface. The demand for racially reductive and sub-human images of the non-normative (non-white) population displays itself more subtly in contemporary times. Acceptable instances of such demeaning laughter are now restricted, as when comedians give overtly exaggerated indications of their intention to make politically incorrect jokes. 

Margaret Cho and Bobby Lee—both popular entertainers among Asians and non-Asians alike—exaggerate “Asianness” in their acts to draw the audience’s attention to the absurdity of American racist assumptions. Cho is famous for the mimicry of her mother’s broken English; Lee plays an array of stereotypical Asian characters—whether they be Korean, Japanese, Chinese, or their confused hybrid. These grotesquely exaggerated performances give direct signals to the audience that racial stereotypes are precisely the point of their acts. The performers’ Asianness grants especially the non-Asian audiences further permission to laugh. 

Yet the source of laughter is at times ambiguous. Should non-Asian viewers doubt the appropriateness of their laughter, they need only seek laughing Asian audience members. The legitimatizing function of the Asian audience’s laughter is especially apparent in recordings of the comics’ live performances; the edited footage intersperses images of Asian audience members laughing at the racially offensive jokes. But do we not laugh at that in which we perceive a degree of truth? Does the non-Asian audience laugh at what it believes to be a truthfulness of the enacted stereotypes themselves or at false societal beliefs of perceiving them as truthful? As scholar Howard Winant has written, “Today racism must be identified by its consequences." Cho and Lee, at times, reproduce the very stereotypes they attempt to skewer.

for the purposes of my thesis on psy's "gangnam style," i focused on asian (american) entertainers, but of course, comedians like chris rock have made their careers out of racist and homosexual jokes, many of which are self-deprecatory.

and as stated above, the very existence of even the most overtly and consciously absurd racist jokes indicate the fact that these sentiments exist. our laughter is twofold. we laugh because 1. we recognize the absurdity of those jokes (ex. "hey, jackie chan!") but also because 2. we recognize a "truth" in them, whether we actually believe them ourselves or know of others who do.

cedrick smith at dillon gallery

i have a guest over from korea, hk. he is 17 years old and is exploring nyc mostly on his own while crashing at my place. he arrived last sunday. i was free and i decided to take him to central park to begin an introductory tour of the city.

the weather was unbelievably beautiful--it was the warmest welcome for someone who had just come from a country going through the most humid and sticky season of the year. but halfway through our getting lost in the park (after living in nyc for 15 years i still get lost consistently there), we encountered something i did not want to be part of hk's intro to nyc: racism.

to conceal racism from a tour of nyc is, of course, to deceive. but perhaps i was trying to do unto him what i wished others had done for me when i first arrived from korea. no one had warned me that i could be the target of hatred and mockery just because i looked a certain way to some people. although i'm not sure any warning would have helped at all, maybe it would have better prepared me for the actual experience. but i maybe i hoped, stupidly and naively, that someone had protected me from unexpected blows.

i did not want hk to have this unpleasant experience, not while i was with him. but we ended up running into a street acrobatics show--the kind that goes through a dance and tumbling routine. i had seen the same group perform in union square once. they follow a fairly lengthy script which relies heavily on racist jokes: black men freezing and ducking at the sound of police sirens, pretending to run away with the volunteers' bags, etc. besides self-deprecatory "black jokes," they also like unsophisticated asian jokes (i have also seen them crack a mexican joke, something about being poor).

the time i saw them in union square, they picked me as a volunteer, one of maybe five people over whom one performer jumps. he cracked a horrible joke at me, the kind i imagine only a 10 year old living in a suburban white town (connecticut? midwest? south?) saying to the only asian kid in school. or pre-pubescent white boys in a riverdale prep school saying to me, the only asian person "from" asia.

the joke? emitting a series of incomprehensible sounds that the speaker believes is some faithful mimicry of chinese or a generic "asian" language. when one of the performers did this to me in union square, i called him out on it and gave him a fuck you, interrupting their carefully planned routine. (i was then kicked out and replaced by a quieter asian woman). when i was with my guest at central park, i remembered this about the troupe too late. after a few minutes of watching, hk got dragged in as a volunteer because they "have to have at least one asian guy" in a mix of female volunteers. i saw links to the feminization of asian men by this gesture. maybe i was reading more into it than the guy meant, so i let this pass.

but the jokes got worse and worse. hk got called "jackie chan" and "jet li" at different times. when the main performer stacked his volunteers close together to prepare for the jump, he told hk (who was standing behind a young italian woman), "get closer, get closer. you can thank me. when else would you have a chance like this?!"

fortunately, i don't think my guest got the joke--that asian men can only "dream" of getting with a white woman because 1. asian men are undesirable 2. white women are the pinnacle of attractiveness and 3. since undesirable asian men cannot get with the extremely desirable white women, they must resort to dating the less desirable women "of their own kind."

leaving aside the fact that the "joke" is not funny at all.. i find it notable that these kinds of jokes are very american. the "joke" is only understood by americans--when tourists like hk come across racist jokes, often it takes a bit of time for them to register as "racist." the notion of race is an invention, and although racial discrimination does exist in fairly homogenous countries such as korea, american construction of race is very elaborate. the racial stereotypes, myths, "characters" are much more detailed so that they pose as widely understood "truths." 

i have also noticed that foreigners "from" abroad don't care so much about racism but the hyphenated americans (asian american, african american, latin american..) do. this is probably because foreigners find this an inevitable part of living/staying in the u.s. and well, if it becomes unbearable, they can go back to their own "homes" where they will be the racial majority. for second, third, fourth generations, the u.s. is their home. they have more at stake, and constantly being differentiated from the "norm" based on a ridiculous fiction called "race" (ambiguously tied to appearance and "origin") on one's own turf will trigger stronger reactions.

as outmoded as the shainman show seems, identity politics are still very much relevant. in fact, it may be even more now, because stereotypes are so deeply seated in our conscious/unconscious that they come off as invisible and non-existent.

i will leave you with a link to a slightly controversial and interesting blog: http://blackgirldangerous.org/new-blog/2012/11/27/how-to-know-if-you-are-white

only in nyc