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

The Black Pacific in All Universes

Currently in an International CyberPunk Literature class, we are reading a novel called Terraplane. In it, an American duo of special agents (one a former military man named Luther) kidnap a brilliant young Russian scientist in order to find her mentor who has gone missing leaving a huge question about his mysterious work. The year is 2056 and there have been many wars since 1988 (when the novel was written). After the expedition goes wrong, Oktobriana, the young Russian scholar, has no choice but to use the mysterious device and they find themselves in 1939 New York, crashing into a swamp. Rescued by a black doctor, they learn that they did not travel back in time but rather to another alternate universe in which history seems very similar but not identical. For instance, slavery was abolished by Teddy Roosevelt in 1901.

It is through many new experiences of discrimination that we learn that Luther is black, a fact which was barely noted upon in his nearly post-racial apocalyptic 2056. Initially absent, race plays a growing role in the novel (when Luther is harassed by a group of Irish immigrants, he complains to the police who break his ribs). While WW2 has not yet occurred in this different world, the seeds of the Black Pacific have already been planted and some parallel images bring the two world closer. In one moment, Luther describes to Wanda, the doctor's wife, what will happen in the future:

" 'You know the future, Luther. What am I going to miss?'
'This September, Hitler invades Poland,' I said, deciding for folklore's sake to follow our world's chronology. 'Starts World War Two. Conquers most of Europe. Sets up death camps. Kills millions of Jews. Many know but none act-- '
'Figures,' she said. 'Haven't there been enough dead already?'
In God's plan, I doubted Hitler had ever had a cold.
'Fighting HItler's like makes us forever more like the fought.' I continued. 'We abyssgaze overlong. That's Europe. Another front opens in the Pacific. Japan attacks Hawaii in late 1941 with planes built' -- I had to laugh, remembering now-- 'with scraps of the Sixth Avenue el. A bomb--'
'Japs?' she asked. 'Good.'
'Good?'
'They're colored people,' she said. 'True?' " (Womack, 195)

Even in an alternate universe, slavery occurred and lasted much longer. Japanese propaganda seems to also have reached jaded Black Americans, former slaves on what became the state of Cuba. The struggle of white imperialism versus native and colored peoples of the world has so marked our 20th century that for Womack, it was not an option to change it. The world as we know it would be unrecognizable without it, and this near recognition is a crucial plot point in Terraplane.

Another passage brought to mind the political cartoon entitled "The Harvest in the Philippines" (page 109 of the text, 265 of the reader) and the implications that dead bodies are harvested, that war is a producer of death and assimilation and that people are commodities is referred to in Terraplane as well. Luther, a former high ranking officer of the army has flashbacks about his time in the field. In one particular touchy campaign, Luther had to kill children. A sudden fit of exhaustion brings the memory of burying all the children back to him:

"As I watched I recalled the rest, unable to contain the flood. Three [children] remained to be planted and I chose to be their farmer" (Womack 209).

The bodies of the future children of Long Island are, like the Filipinos of the cartoon, dead seeds to be planted in an orderly fashion by the US army, however unwitting they may be. Here, the near post-racial qualities of Luther's life make him feel closer to the children, not because as a member of a minority, he identifies with them, but because he mourns their lost childhoods. But the image of the farmer, plucking life from his victims is in both cases stimulated by American imperialism over an island which did not want to follow orders set by the US.

Works Cited

Womack, Jack. Terraplane: A Novel. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. Print.

Made in China

Frederick Douglass did a great job at pointing out how the coolie trade is merely an evolution of the African slave trade, "kindred in character and results". As I continued to reflect on the matter, it occurred to me that the coolie trade has evolved to take another form, where instead of shipping the laborers overseas, we ship the labor. Of course cheap labor continues to be imported into the US, but the market dynamics on a global scale changed drastically once manufacturing companies began moving overseas. This maneuver has become an important part of the ongoing modernity discourse insofar as cheap labor, feeding the "lust for gain", as put by Douglass in his editorial.

The link below further elaborates on the current trends of cheap labor in a market that has complex interdependency. As said by the narrator, "That's the basic engine of today's global economy: cheap labor. Either it migrates to where the work is, or the work migrates to where there is an abundant supply of cheap labor."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2m4ogCvOW4