Wealth Gap in the US

In class yesterday, Dustin mentioned a video that explained the wealth inequality in "America" (I'm not very fond of that term when used solely to refer to the US).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTj9AcwkaKM

I highly recommend watching this video because it offers an eye opening perspective on the perceived reality vs. ideal reality vs. actual reality. In short, we as a nation have a basic understanding that the wealth distribution is skewed. But what we don't know is how enormously skewed it really is. It is actually skewed to the point where the wealth of the wealthiest cannot even fit on our graph.

As I continued to look through the results that appeared in my search, I came across a video that offered a look on wealth distribution in the US based on race.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5BvZllI9-U

What stood out to me in this video above all else, and how it is very relevant to what we've been discussing in class lately, are the racial groups incorporated in this study: White, Black, and Hispanic. No mention of Asian-Americans whatsoever. This reminds me of what Delphin brought up in class: if you're not black and you're not white, what are you? Moreover, within this study, were Asians counted as white? Or were they not included in the study at all? Insofar as the races included in this study, similarly to the Petersen article "Success Story, Japanese-American Style", the video seems to give off a vibe where these races are put up against each other as if they are competing, creating a sort of "oppression Olympics". What's even more unsettling about this video is how, after being given a lot of upsetting data, the narrator concludes the video by briefly suggesting potential wealth building tools, which in a way propagates the upward mobility myth.

Overall, these two videos put in contrast with each other illustrate how difficult it can be to analyze wealth distribution according to race.

"How sweet and just it is, to die for your country."

      This poem has been haunting my subconscious for some time now, its construction of the realities of war is paralleled by America's obsession with the glory of dying for one's country. While written during World War I, the horrifying truth carries over into the disillusionment that black soldiers later faced while risking their life for a government which refused to acknowledge the value of that very life. There is also a strong connection between the chemical warfare described in this soldiers account of WWI, and America's highly developed use of chemicals and technology during the Vietnam War.

Dulce Et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Advertising to a Black audience, encouraging alliance between non-whites

During the past week we have been exploring the relationship between the Blacks and the Japanese during WWII and the Korean War. We talked about the situations regarding how some of the Black population encouraged Blacks to stay on the same side of the "color-line," and how one subhuman communicates/sympathizes with another subhuman. To further explore this relationship, I decided to examine an advertising image brought to my attention by a friend who posted it on her Instagram a few days ago (what a weirdly convenient coincidence!).
To start I want to make note of the date this advertisement was published: November 12, 1953. This occurs during the armistice of the Korean war, after Black soldiers have already been sent to fight in integrated armies, and after Black soldiers have begun developing an alliance with Japan. Although it is not exclusively so, the advertisement appears directed at a Black male audience, by picturing one here. And, my favorite aspect of the advertisement: the text, which first asks "Do Japanese women make better wives?" and following that headline with a smaller caption that takes the form of a statement, "James and Teruko Miller: Indianapolis couple has found happy marriage life since wedding three years ago in Japan." The advertisement implies a safe alliance, one that involves a situation where a Black man can feel like he is in a position of some sort of dominance. In a time where Black men were still being publicly  mistreated and made to feel lesser, this sort of advertisement allowed thoughts of a better life and a happier living situation.

There is also the discussion of the communication between two "sub-humans" or two people not in privileged positions in their society. The Japanese woman in American society in the 50's is still a foreigner, an 'other,' and a lesser being by default since she is a woman, and can be viewed for this purpose as a sub-human. The advertisement is not only directing the idea of a happy living situation at Black males, but also to Japanese women who, like we see in Memories of My Ghost Brother, may be trying to find support from a relationship with an American man. The image states that the couple has experienced "happy marriage life since wedding three years ago" which also implies stability in addition to happiness. So, according to the image, between the two sub-humans they can create a better, happier living situation for themselves.

This image reflects common desires shared by these two groups, Black men and Japanese women, in this time period. For Black men, it reflects the desire to live the respectable home life of an American man in society. For Japanese women, it reflects the desire to seek a committed American man who will support her and her family. By targeting these two groups with these specific questions, it encourages them to stay on the same side of the "color-line" and that by doing so, they will have happier lives.

Frank's Lack of Self in Home

For this blogpost I want to expand on the idea of what "home" is outside of the material and the impact that it has on Frank as a youth to lack a strong house hold. Skimming through the novela this weekend, I realized that in addition to not having a physical home Frank lacks a spiritual home that contributes to his lack of self. Beginning in his childhood, the Money's live in a climate that is hostile towards African Americans and forces them out of the neighborhood that they claim as their "home." The family makes the migration to Lotus, “the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield,” according to Frank. There his parents worked days in an days out picking cotton and planting crops, leaving Frank to protect his younger sister Cee as best he could. In this experience Morrison is able to expand beyond the African American identity and connect with readers that have had similar struggles in regards to working class people and the responsibilities that rest on lower class/lower middles class families. Not only were Franks parents not present in his up brining, but his strict grandparents contribute to the lack of presence in their being a strong sense of "home" or where one is from. In Lotus his parents died young, one of lung disease, and the other of a stroke.

In thinking about child development and acknowleding these factors it becomes easier to understand why Frank has such a hard time defining what home is and where he actually comes from. He has a strong distaste for Lotus and all of the negativity that comes from it. To him his real "home" is an undesirable setting that is full of racism, death, and sibling obligations. But perhaps obligations is not the best word in the context of the novela as it is his commitment to his sister that brings him back to Lotus. The next place that Frank travels to is Korea where he sees his narrative being told again in a different setting. Except the context is a war and a lot more intense. The Korean War contributes to Frank's sense of self in that he experiences similar feelings abroad that he did here. Frank feels a sense of duty, loses friends that are like family, and witnesses and is a victim of American imperialism. 

Zoot Suit Riots

Within Toni Morrison's Home and America's social dynamics of the 30's and 40's, the amount of factors tied to racial tension extend far beyond the emancipation of slavery in the South. With a war forming on the horizon, segregated militaries and the upkeep of industry by women and people of color created new opportunities to explore racial and gender boundaries. However, these conditions also allowed the authority of white privilege to redefine means of social control. I was interested in looking at other factors of social, political, and economic unrest during this era and decidedly focused on the emergence of jazz, which included its own version of cultural protest.


On the PBS website I found information on a movie regarding the involvement of a group of young Mexicans in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. Combining the racial tension between privileged white males and a confident generation of colored musicians, this moment of social conflict appeared to having more similarities than differences to the struggles of the black population across the country. "The tension continued to escalate until a street fight between sailors and Mexican American boys sparked more than a week of fighting in June of 1943 known as the Zoot Suit Riots."


This website defines 'the zoot-suit' as "one part of the jazz world that visually defied the norms of segregation. Unwritten rules demanded that people of color remain unseen and unheard in public spaces, but the zoot suit, with broad shoulders, narrow waist, and ballooned pants, was loud and bold. Zoot-suited young men (and some young women) held themselves upright and walked with a confident swagger that seemed to flow from the very fashion itself."


Within the novel Home, our main character Frank Money encounters a man wearing zoot suit on the train returning to his hometown Lotus, Georgia. This passage includes Frank's commentary on the lasting impression he received of this character, and more useful to our class, the opportunity to read Toni Morrison's interpretation of manhood, the silent protest of a fashion statement, and its political effect around the nation.


On page 33, Frank wakes from his sleep and sees "the outline of the small-man, the one from the train, his wide-brimmed hat unmistakable in the frame of light at the window... Frank went back to bed, thinking that particular living dream was not all that bad compared to others he'd has... This one was comic, in a way. He had heard about those suits, but never saw anybody wearing one. If they were the signals of manhood, he would have preferred a loincloth and some white paint artfully smeared on forehead and cheeks. Holding a spear, of course.  But the zoot-suitors chose another costume: wide shoulders, wide-brimmed hats, watch chains, pants ballooned up from narrow cuffs beyond the waits to the chest. It had been enough of a fashion statement to interest riot cops on each coast."


This redefining of masculinity directly contradicts the limitations placed on men of color by white male authority, from indirect feminization to the history of slavery. Frank Money appears to play into the Western ideology of manhood by rejecting any possibility of his participation in the fashion statement. However, he continues to state that he would rather dress as a savage native, "Holding a spear, of course." This insinuates that the zoot suit stands underneath the most simplified and primal aspect of masculinity, which corresponds more to those wearing the clothes than the actual clothes themselves.


(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/index.html)

WE CHARGE GENOCIDE AGAIN!

In the years since it was published and handed to the UN, Paul Robeson's and William L. Patterson's  1951 We Charge Genocide have inspired many millions of people world-wide to talk about the next step.

Written in 2012, this curriculum entitled WE CHARGE GENOCIDE AGAIN! refers back to the original but uses the Socratic method to make students question the United States power structure which includes violence committed against people of color in the US. With 323 black lives gone in 2012, the charges are heavy. The curriculum asks questions which range from "What relationship to the government do a people who suffer genocide have"" (10) to "If the [9 randomly killed people who] were not violating the law what were they violating?" (12). The curriculum even claims that "it is deliberate that there is no centralized database that documents killings by police, extrajudicial or otherwise" (13).

You can find the curriculum here and think about the prompts http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/we-charge-genocide-FINAL.pdf.

Millions for Reparations is another very interesting group fighting for the restoration of the lost wages of slaves. They seek to punish the United States for never acknowledging the privileges incurred by theft of wages from slavery. Originating in the promised, received and then taken-away again 40 acres and a mule (most of the land was returned to former white slave owners and these were compensated for their economic loss), the movements for reparations are numerous around the world but, as the website shows in a graph, 74% of all interviewed 1,001 people believe that corporations which profited from slavery and still exist SHOULD NOT have to pay retribution. 55% of the general public thought these companies SHOULD NOT even have to apologize to the descendants of slaves.

Because the main site does not seem to have been updated in over 8 years, the Social Justice Wiki created by Columbia University has a lot of decent information: http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Millions_for_Reparations

Women in Richmond Ca and the Double V Campaign

This weekend I was in Richmond, California where I discovered a history that has a strong relationship to the second World War. I had the privilege of going to the Rosie the Riveter museum where park rangers exposed that a great deal of women that participated in the labor at the home front were Black women of color. A majority of the women migrated from the South when America publicly got involved in WW2. While I knew that black men were soldiers during the war I had failed to acknowledge (or even think about) the role that black women had during the war. In part it is because the picture that we see, along with the propaganda for recruitment, tends to be very white centric. It was emotionally overwhelming to discover the crucial role that women of color played during the second world war particularly in Richmond, California. I say Richmond CA because the modern day Richmond that is strongly associated with gang violence and police oppression was not always like that. It was full of industry, diversity, and played a crucial role in WW2 creating ships, as well as other objects, to support the troops abroad.










During our tour we briefly discussed the "Double V" campaign that sought to "intertwined the idea of victory into a symbol and a national campaign that urged black people to give their all for the war effort, while at the same time calling on the government to do all it could to make the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence and the equal rights amendments to the Constitution real for every citizen, regardless of race." During the duration of this class I have looked at the material that we have read through a hetero normative male of color lens to better understand the conditions of slavery, cheap labor, and exploitation forgetting to acknowledge other identities that were present during the periods that we are examining. Going to the Rosie the Riveter Museum I felt a sense of shame because I did not know the history of the strong, courageous women of color that had done to so much to ensure the U.S. was victorious. At the same time I had to acknowledge that it was not entirely my fault. The history that I had gained in k-12 education, as well as in higher education, had consciously and unconsciously erased their identities. While acknowledging the contributions of male soldiers of color in the war, women of color are almost non existent. This was most evident when I discovered that the Rosie the Riveter poster stating "We Can Do It" was originally a Black woman who was meant to be a source of motivation for all of the Black women who were doing different forms of labor. But when the image was dispersed to the rest of the country, the strong Black woman was painted white. In moving forward I want to use this post to thank all of the forgotten women for their contributions in the war and want to hold myself accountable for using other lenses when reading our stories.






http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=black+women+welders+richmond+ca&FORM=HDRSC2#a


http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/05/double_v_campaign_during_world_war_ii_what_was_it.html