The Crown Heights Riots: Race Vs. Religion

*For my second blog post this weekend i will write about the Crown Heights riots because i neglected to write thoroughly about it yesterday.

This past week in class we watched a 90's film entitled Raising the Heights. This movie was inspired by the Crown Heights riots but instead of showing a dramatization of the riots, it had an entirely separate plot line that focused on the social tensions between the African American and Jewish residents at that time. It was interesting to see it in this way because it effectively showed how both sides applied the common stereotypes to the each other: the same stereotypes that made them a target for oppression. The Crown Heights riots wasn't directly caused by the authority, like it sometimes was in the past, but instead indirectly. Though Jewish people aren't AS oppressed as black people are in terms of the economy, it still isn't socially easy for them. They came to this country and settled in various places, and in the case of this subject throughout Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. They were able to situate themselves and build themselves up to the point that they have their own private establishments. In this country we get Christianity shoved down our throats no matter what by the right wing, so despite all the wealth that Jews inherit they still face some hate. What I also find to be interesting is that Jewish people were slaves once too so i think its crazy to see how people with similar roots can be at war with each other. You always have to take into account the religious prejudices that plague many religious groups.You can even see this referenced in music today.

Not the best example of music
 (Say Anything-Jesus Died a Jew lyrics)
You say you hate the shade of my face for my father's share crops
My people were slaves before yours invented hip-hop
Apologize but I'm in on the joke
Another brother to scoff at the dancing patterns of white folk

I think it should be understood to many that the safest person to be when it comes to being an American citizen would be a Conservative white republican (not just any white person). A perfect example that illustrates this would be in the film Raising the Heights when one of the African American characters confronted the female Jewish news anchor (who was ashamed to identify herself as a Jew) and  basically told her something along the lines of it being easy to hide your religion but not the color of your skin. You see that this affects the Jewish community as well especially when you have Conservative political pundits on television such as Pat Buchanan (who was recently fired from MSNBC because of this) who is a Nazi sympathizer and still believes that segregation should be in effect. This spewing of hatred can easily be found on television today and you see how much it is consumed daily because statistically Fox News is the most watched news network. It's impossible to erase this bigoted mindset from America when all we have to do is turn on the television.

Wattstax and the evolution of revolutionary music

                                                              Isaac Hayes- Soulsville
                                          (closing performance from the documentary Wattstax)

I took a bit longer to put up the post but its because i spent most of the day trying to find a way to watch all of the documentary Wattstax. This was about a music festival that took place in August 1972 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. I feel kind of ashamed to have not heard of this festival prior because i think its way more substantial than Woodstock (which i find to be not as revolutionary). This documentary was well edited and included commentary from black residents of Watts, Richard Pryor and other black actors/comedians from the seventies. It starts off with an empowering speech from Jesse Jackson who tells the crowd that its no longer "burn baby burn" but "learn baby learn" which sets the tone for the rest of the documentary.Much of the subject matter discussed in between performances is about interracial relations and the liberation of African Americans. I watched this documentary with my mother,who loved it, and was able to fill me in on the names of the some of musicians. Much of the music was liberating and had a strong message while others were more upbeat (a way to tell the black community to celebrate, have fun and love themselves). The song that stood out the most and was the last one performed was Soulsville by Isaac Hayes.

 
Any kind of job is hard to find
That means an increase in the welfare line
Crime rate is rising too
If you are hungry, what would you do?

Rent is two months past due and the building that's falling apart
Little boy needs a pair of shoes and this is only a part of Soulsville

Some of the brothers' got plenty of cash
Tricks on the corner, gonna see to that
Some like to smoke and some like to blow
Some are even strung out on a fifty dollar Jones

A lot of this performance is mixed with more scenes of  Watts after the damage and even of residents lining up in welfare offices. I thought this was a strong way of ending the documentary because despite the funny and happy moments it reminded you of how serious the riot was and the social issues that caused it. It also reflects the same issues that were shown in the film Raising the Heights which was inspired by the 1991 Crown Heights riots (i intend to write an extra post on that later this weekend). I also think its great to see Hip Hop artists today like the one from the previous post and even more so Immortal Technique who try and spread these messages to enlighten us because these issues aren't getting any better (but unfortunately people are too busy listening to Drake or Lady Gaga).

A new class of poverty

 

Jacob Riis photograph from How the other half live

 

Watts Riot 1965

I didn't get to write last week due to issues with my computer monitor so now I will write twice as much despite the fact that I won't get that credit. Last week in class we started discussing Little Scarlet, a detective novel by Walter Mosley,in which the protagonist Easy Rawlins is assigned to solve the murder of an African American female. The story takes place in the 1960s when the Watts riots occurred. We also were able to watch Heat Wave, a 1990 film that is also inspired by the Watts riots. The first thing I wanted to discuss was an excerpt from Little Scarlet on page 218. This scene is crucial because Easy isn't engaged in conversation with another character but explaining to the reader how manipulative the ghettos of Los Angeles were (much like the idea of Hollywood being a manipulative society in The Day of the Locust). This idea of a hopeful place to live out the American dream is also brought up in the film Heat Wave. Easy brings up this idea of a "new class of poverty" because of how aesthetically deceitful the slums were. He mentions that the African Americans have cars,houses,lawns and electricity: factors that weren't prevalent in poverty 100 years prior. This wasn't the poverty that Irish immigrants faced in five points that was visually blatant in Jacob Riis' photography, this was/is a silent and systemic form of poverty. This was a way for the oppressors to brainwash the indifferent masses who were already becoming dumbed down by the media (another Day of the Locust correlation?)into believing that African Americans were getting along fine. This of course is still happening today on the same scale as it were back in the sixties. This is where I take what I got from the novels and film and bring it to a personal level. I am from Williamsburg,probably the second most expensive city to live in, which is now facing a massive amount of gentrification. I have experienced tons of situations with intolerant people in my own neighborhood as well as hearing about it from friends of mine. As a frequent visitor to my boyfriend's apartment in Williamsburg Houses (projects), I constantly have to face unecessary police cars parked in front of the children's playground that is located at the center of the buildings. This could be solely because of the socially demonized residents of the projects but it is also because of the four to five condominiums in a one block radius(I can't say I've only dealt with xenophobic behavior but It doesn't change my emotion toward the outcome of this change) .Many people and business owners have had to face evictions and local schools have had to be annexed or closed. There has been no help for our community and there is an awkward divide here. Things like this and the Occupy movement (which a friend from the projects was actively involved with) has made me see a great correlation between my neighborhood and Occupy and to what we have been studying in class. Things like this only come around in cycles and I do believe that we have been seeing on screen might come to life.


 I'm going to leave a music video this time named Hiipower by conscious Hip-Hop artist Kendrick Lamar. This video is chock full of footage from the civil rights movement and even has clips of riots and such. To me there is a correlation between the class work and the message/content of the song.

 Pull your guns and play me, let's set it off

Cause a riot, throw a Molotov

Somebody told me them pirates had got lost

cause we been off them slave ships

Got our own pyramids, write our own hieroglyphs

 

 Every day we fight the system

just to make our way, we been down for too long
But that's alright, we was built to be strong
cause it's our life
Every day we fight the system

The Day of the Locust

                                              The riot scene from The Day of the Locust

These past two classes covered various interesting topics and stories such as Nathanael West's tragic depiction of Hollywood in The Day of the Locust and we backtracked a bit with Jack Thorne's Hanover, or the Persecution of the Lowly , a story about the 1898 race riot in Wilmington NC. I was planning on discussing a little bit more on the racial violence until we were shown the final scene from the 1975 film adaptation of The Day of the Locust. I felt that I actually experienced a big difference in what it is to watch a violent scene that is adapted from text. This part is about ten minutes long and the emotional build up is quite erratic. The scene starts off quite loud and chaotic since we see the streets filled with hundreds of excited people gathering for the big movie premiere. It gives off a claustrophobic feeling to the viewer right from the start even when the crowd isn’t yet a violent angry mob. You already sense the uneasiness from the start especially when you see Homer Simpson approaching the scene in a zombie like trance ready to “spread” the anger and violence he has within like an infectious disease. After being taunted and hit with a coin purse by a little boy (or girl? a bit androgynous but true to the time period) he then takes to chasing the child and stomping him to death. This scene is quite graphic since the viewer usually isn’t used to seeing such violence toward children in movies. This is arguably the catalyst for the riot which carries out quite rapidly after the crowd witnesses Homer's actions. A man (reminiscent of Hitler) who is in charge of hosting the premiere is unaware of the violence and amps up the crowd as if nothing criminal is taking place. The scene gets more and more intense and you notice it through Tod who is injured and unable to move or escape. This causes him to realize that his project The Burning of L.A is coming to life through the form of this angry mob. This is probably one of the movies that does a good job of recreating a scene that is meant to cause the reader/viewer discomfort. It was as emotional and tragic as West had wrote it out to be.

Addition to my last post "Without Sanctuary"

I forgot to touch upon some of the mandatory prompts for blog #2 and instead i went on to talk about the photos of the lynchings and how it made me feel about the stagnant social views that this country still predominantly holds(hopefully this blog still counts). When it comes to Zizek's terms on violence, such as "subjective" and "objective" and which one pertains to white supremacy and lynchings it would have to be objective violence since it was/is ingrained into the social structure of generations of white American bigoted families.

*Subjective violence is violence that is actively done, which can be attributed to a certain subject; the event of one person perpetrating harm on another

*Objective violence is the violence that always-already exists and maintains the social fabric that subjective violence interrupts.

*Systemic Violence (which branches off of objective violence) is the catastrophic effects of economic and political systems

Without Sanctuary

MLK-Paul's Letter to American Christians 

Mondays class was a very insightful yet deeply disturbing class. We were shown photographs and postcards from a book entitled Without Sanctuary depicting gruesome lynchings from the early 1900's. These images brought up a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas especially the idea of modernity. These images or specifically these acts of violence were committed without consequence not so long ago and continued until the 1960's. I feel like times haven't changed that much despite the fact that this cannot be publicly committed any longer. The reasons for such change can only be attributed to things other than respect and equality. The united states needed to redeem their image as a world power due to acts that were severely contradicting, such as being an allied power in WWII (White supremacists fighting against white supremacists?) as well as the Cold War. Another reason for such change is religion. This country boasted their christian beliefs so heavily and so much that they misconstrued "the word of god" (a god who is supposed to be good and accepting of all) by interpreting the story The Curse of Ham from Genesis. Ham,Noah's son who is  apparently mentioned to be "black" was cursed and his descendants were condemned to forever be servants. Christian slave owners would try and Christianize their slaves by having them attend sermons in which the uneducated slaves were made to believe that they were inferior. This was flawed and sure to backfire especially when these slaves were becoming more learned. Once emancipated their was obvious fear and the only way to control the fear of the white man was to cause even greater fear to the freed black man who was seeking independence and education. Religion and its use to justify slavery and white supremacy was spoken about in a great speech by Martin Luther King Jr. entitled Paul's Letter to American Christians. I have supplied a link to the whole thing above but have decided to quote a specific part

"I understand that there are Christians among you who try to justify segregation on the basis of the Bible. They argue that the Negro is inferior by nature because of Noah's curse upon the children of Ham. Oh my friends, this is blasphemy. This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for. I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus." Moreover, I must reiterate the words that I uttered on Mars Hill: "God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."

I feel that if it weren't for the self liberation of the African Americans (and other racial minorities) we would still be dealing with lynchings today. White supremacy and oppression is still strong in this country but not as physically violent or blatant as before (Well, not blatant if you haven't been following politics and the possible Republican presidential candidates recently).

The Huffington Post (Recommendation to my fellow classmates)

Free Write/Reflection

I was quite excited when registering for ENN:195 Violence in American Art and Culture to fulfill my urban study requirement. I am a Fine Arts major who hopes to get into the Illustration/Graphic novel field so I thought that this would be an enlightening course for me since violence is a prevalent theme in comics and graphic novels. I initially thought we'd have projects or assignments that would be more personal to us and our individual surroundings considering we live in a city that has been known for acts of brutality and bloodshed on multiple scales. I also expected there to be a trip of some sort considering it is an urban study and I was required to go on many trips for my Art and Society urban study/humanities class. I was pleasantly surprised after receiving the syllabus and seeing what we'd actually be covering and how the assignments correlated with the work. Some of the coursework in this ENN class is in relation to much of the information that I just covered last semester in my Themes in American History 2 course. We didn't get into much detail with the violent and psychological aspects of the draft riots or the civil rights movement rather than an overview of these events so I feel a bit more prepared for this class than I primarily thought I would. What I'm most elated about is that we are also studying violence in film rather than only in short stories and novels because it gives us a chance to analyze how  differently violence can be portrayed in both film and writing since one relies on visuals while the other is solely words.