"This is anti autotune, death of the ringtone, this ain’t for itunes, this ain’t for sing alongs" - Jay-Z, D.O.A.

Jay-Z’s first released single from The Blueprint 3 (listen to it here) does so much more than take shots at the rise of the auto-tuned voice in hip hop.  It drops bombs on an entire sector of the music industry that has been producing music that betrays a recession of creativity.  Hopefully, H.O.V.A.’s new album will prove to be the stimulus package that averts a creative Great Depression.

Now, I think auto-tune, like all musical technologies has its place.  Kanye West used it wisely on 808s and Heartbreak, turning his voice into a series of staggering icicles that reflect both the coldness and sharpness of loneliness when a relationship hits an iceberg.  And I enjoyed the first few singles from T-Pain and Lil’ Wayne simply because of the sheer fun of hearing bright and shining auto-tuned harmonies coated like frosting over a hearty beat.  I use auto-tune myself.  As a musician and songwriter who doesn’t have the time or money to spend on perfecting my voice, I enjoy the subversiveness of auto-tune and how it allows me to be creative on my own terms.

But I agree with Jay-Z—the industry has stuffed too much of this sugary stuff down out throats.  His critique could have come from the best writers at Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, although these publications might feel comfortable with challenging the mas

So tatsy, but not very nutritious

culinity of rappers who use auto-tune (“All ya’ll lack aggression put your skirt back down, grow a set man … you boys jeans too tight”).  At the heart of his critique is the idea that the bright melodies that auto-tune are turning rappers away from one of their key duties: to use their voice and words to establish a solid beat.  Sloughing off this important duty, rappers and producers have been able to produce a slew of mediocre songs, which have moved hip hop away from its roots.  So who better to lead us forward (while looking backwards) than the Sinatra of hip hop?

Jay-Z also aligns the rise of auto-tune with the over commercialization of hip hop, using auto-tune as a symbol for the ringtones, itunes, and other “sing a longs” that have made a lot of money by jumping on the coattails of the hip hop that Jay-Z helped reform during the late 90s.  Although making money has always been an important facet of hip hop, these methods of generating income saturate the songs with an irony that all but paints over the gritty street realism that Jay-Z’s work has brought to the table.  So let’s put away the candy, say Grace, and have a moment of silence for autp-tune while we wait for the release of The Blueprint 3.

Lyrics:

“Only rapper to rewrite history without a pen,
No ID on the track let the story begin, begin, begin” (chorus)

This is anti autotune, death of the ringtone, this ain’t for itunes, this ain’t for sing alongs,
this is Sinatra at the opera, bring a blonde, preferably with a fat ass who can sing a song, wrong,
this aint politcally correct, this might offend my political connects,
my raps don’t have melodies, this should make jackers wanna go and commit felonies, ahh
get your chain tooken, I may do it myself - I’m so Brooklyn.
I know we facing a recession, but the music y’all making going make it the great depression.
All y’all lack aggression put your skirt back down, grow a set man.
Yeah this just violent, this is the death of autotune, moment of silence.

(Chorus)

This ain’t a number one record, this is practically assault with a deadly weapon,
I made it just for flex and Mister CEE I want people to feel threatened
stop your bloodclot crying, the kid, the dog everybody dying, no lying,
you boys jeans too tight, you colors too bright, your voice too light
I might wear black for a year straight, I might bring back Versace shades
this ain’t for z100, Ye told me to kill y’all to keep it 1 hundred,
this is for hot 97, for Khalid we the best’n,
yeah this is just violent, this is death of autotune, moment of silence.

(Chorus)

This might need a verse from Jeezy, I might send this to the mixtape weezy,
get somebody from BMF to talk on this, give this to a blood let a crip walk on it,
50 thou to style on this, I just don’t need nobody to smile on this,
you rappers singing too much, get back to rap you t-paining too much.
I’m a multi-millionaire so how is it I’m still the hardest here,
I don’t be in the project hallway talking about how I be in the project all day
that sound stupid to me, if you a gangsta this is how you prove it to me.
Yeah just get violent, this is death of auto-tune moment of silence.

la da da da hey hey hey, goodbye
hold up
the only rapper to re-write history without a pen
no i.d. on the track let the story begin
this is anti auto-tune death of the ring tone
this ain’t for itunes this ain’t for sing a longs
this is sinatra at the opera bring a blonde
preferably with a fat ass who could sing a song
wrong this ain’t politically correct
this might offend my political connect
my raps don’t have melodies

"The Third World deserves freedom of speech just like everyone else. We want to fight the battle to say what we want, whether to be serious or just make fun of ourselves. Thats what 'Worldtown' is about, that's what 'Paper Planes' is about. It's what people in the third world live through." - M.I.A.

Unlike your humble author, M.I.A. has been busy lately.  After having a baby and gracefully getting through an interview with the man-child known as Bill Maher, the British-via-Ceylon hip hopper officially endorsed a British Euro Parliamentary candidate.  While the independent Jan Jananayagam promises to help get aid to the war torn Tamil people, M.I.A. offers all of Jananayagam’s supporters a free song to get them pumped for the election.

First, lets talk about Bill.  One would think that Mr. Maher would try to explore more deeply the topics that M.I.A. succinctly dished out to the ever-intelligent and ever-eloquent Tavis Smiley.  However, Bill did what he is best at and proved, once again, that he is one of the worst liberal talk show hosts out there.  After complaining about the general ignorance of the American public (although he made an exception for his viewers, his viewers were the exact same people that he was belittling), Bill revealed his own egotistical unawareness.  First, he made some vast generalizations about minority issues around the globe, clumping all minorities into the same boat and claiming that they all have similar problems.  This is the exact myth that scholars like Mohanty hope to rectify.  Bill hasn’t been keeping up with his reading.  Then he betrayed his lack of preparation for the interview by making the assumption that the Tamils have been the majority in Sri Lanka, and who are now being walked over by the minority Singhalese—a false statement that M.I.A. graciously corrected.  But enough about Bill…  The only redeeming aspect of the otherwise dumbfounding interview was the emotion that M.I.A. revealed as she discussed her family’s (as well as other families’) attempts to escape the long standing violence on the island.  But M.I.A. is not someone who simply gets emotional about the suffering of thousands—she gets political.

Following in the footsteps of other hip hoppers, most obviously the ubiquitous Will.i.am, M.I.A. voiced her support for a minority candidate who promises many changes.  Unlike Will.i.am, M.I.A. didn’t settle for re-using her candidates slogans or simply gathering Britain’s youngest and hottest celebrities to make a bland and stupefying music video (I do have to admit that Will.i.am’s video was at least pragmatic in that it got a lot of people pumped up for Obama, and it was a little bit touching).  Instead, M.I.A. has penned and recorded a completely new song, and if a rough draft of one of the song’s verses is reflective of the quality of the rest of the song, this new tune should fit in perfectly with her catalog.  Here’s the lyrics, which appeared within a poster for Jananayagam that was published on M.I.A.’s blog:

“so u wanna hear about my politics?
well i can show u things that can make u sick
theres a saterlite above me thats takin picks
the people from the east hav started sendin migs
and im sat in America doin twitts
and the armys lookin at me like im a bitch
but im thinking bout the babies lyin in the ditch
thinking if they had a kite fone u ll see the shit”

"This woman is a G" - M.I.A.

As usual, M.I.A. manages to dish out a variety of issues as she simultaneously manages to reveal the connections between these issues.  Instead of simply informing us of the political candidate she is in favor of, she decides to build a lyrical bridge between her current life and the life of her homeland.  She is disgusted by the amount of media attention that is focused on her (and other celebrities), and she is even more sickened by the lack of media attention that has been focused on the fatal violence that has rocked Sri Lanka.  Knowing that powerful nations and their media outlets are not going to challenge the Sri Lankan Army’s convenient ban on journalism, she hopes to become that “kite fone” in the sky, looking down on “babies lyin in the ditch.”  She also hopes to get a candidate elected who promises to send aid to those ditches.

Hip hop has always been a political force, but M.I.A.’s move is one of the “harder” (to use foreign policy lingo) demonstrations of hip hop’s power in recent memory—“harder” in the sense that it is being directed at one candidate and one specific issues.  This hard power mixed with the soft power, which is constituted in the many communities that hip hop helps to form and to connect all over the world, suggests that the music genre may become more of a political force than rock ‘n’ roll was in the post World War II era.  This is a pretty grand claim, which will take decades to judge.  Luckily, we can all watch the results of the European parliamentary elections tomorrow.  Even if Jananayagam loses, the song should leak sometime soon.  More to come…

Unlike teaching English in Thailand, I will most likely see some of myself in the people who show up on that first day of class.  I’ll remember the joys and frustrations of my required composition class, which I took at the University of Kentucky, and my teaching will probably be shaped by these memories.  Some students will bring concerns that resemble the ones that I had four years ago, concerns regarding the purpose of the class, how the class will benefit me, and how I can succeed in the class.  Unlike most college classes, the media doesn’t give students many images of what the first year comp class is all about.  Maybe this course doesn’t make for good television drama.  Instead of coming to class with a strong idea (for better or worse) of what this class is all about—an idea that can be worked against or worked with—students like myself often come to class with an immensely complex and personal understanding of what writers do or an immensely complex and personal lack of understanding of what writers do.

This benevolent confusion is reflective of the academic study of composition, which has continually undergone changes.  Most scholars who I’ve read or talked to agree that writing is almost any sort of thoughtful expression of ideas, from webpages and blogs to graffiti and textbooks.  Although I might not be able to answer students’ questions of what is good writing, I hope to give them a loose model, or metaphor, for how we as a class are going to go about discussing what good writing is and how people do good writing.

Educators have always tried to articulate metaphors for their classes—metaphors that attempt to govern the way the class runs, the way the class’s participants interact, and the way knowledge is created in the classroom.  Some educators rely on the Burkean Parlor metaphor, some use models that come from the business world, some attempt to establish some sort of parliamentary system.  I’m thinking about using hip hop as a model/metaphor for my classroom.  Here are some of the untested reasons why:

1. Hip Hop creates more inclusive discussions — Some students feel forced out of classroom conversations when they come to the conclusion that the way they speak, the body movements they make, or the emotion with which they get their points across are all “inappropriate” in a college classroom.  Hip Hop not only accepts a variety of communicative behavoirs but more importantly sees them as integral to expression.  Instead of secretly banning what may be perceived as impolite discourse, we need to bring all forms of communicating ideas into the discussion.
2. The Cipher is a powerful sub-metaphor for classroom discussion:  When hip hoppers form a cipher, they not only encourage and expect everyone to join and participate in the cipher, but they also encourage everyone in the cipher to connect their personal experiences with the society that surrounds them, sometimes called “the street.”  The cipher is a community in which participants express themselves by building on the ideas (or raps) of others while they inject their own opinoins, perspectives, and style.  The Cihper promotes a collage rather than a linear development of the day’s topic or idea; topics or big ideas emerge rather than prescribed
3. The Instructor as DJ undercuts traditional notions of the teacher/student power relationship — As a DJ, the instructor may speed up the beat or flow of a discussion and sample from conversations, books, and ideas that he brings with her, she is not a lecturer and cannot operate without the many MCs in the cipher.
4. Hip Hop is multimodal and nonlinear — Hip Hop involves visual art, cut and paste asthetics, juxtaposition, and performative art, all of which are important to comtemporary forms of rhetoric and composition
5. The presence of Hip Hop in universities immediately challenges ideas of what belongs and doesn’t belong in college curriculums, and encourages students to generate challenges of their own

There are more reasons, but I think that’s enough for today.  What do you think?  Is this just a novel and unproductive spin on contemporary pedagogical theories?  Do students what to be involved in a class that operates on the principles of hip hop?  These are questions that I’ll be thinking about.

My dog hates paper trails

Like many Americans, T.I. seems to have embraced the multifaceted capitalist fantasy individualism.  The myth goes something like this: personal effort creates personal wealth, money grants one deserved power, and this power should be used to support the capitalist ideology that supposedly enabled this entire narrative of individual success.  The song “Whatever You Like” celebrates T.I’s ability to give his “chick whatever she wants,” as it simultaneously commands those “other broke n*ggas” to be quiet.  If we take this song literally, we would have to conclude that it indeed endorses the ideology that I outlined above.

However, the music video for “Whatever You Like” challenges this literal understanding of the song and encourages us to question our own understandings of socioeconomic ideologies (how money and society shape each other).

The video starts with a mashup of the capitalist fantasy and the sociological understanding of capitalism’s sturdy class structure.  After walking through the kitchen of a fast food chicken restaurant (complete with audible laments of a tiring, busy day), the camera reveals T.I. and his entourage asking a shocked female cashier for some hot wings.  Then the fantasy kicks in, as if it is meant to silence an exploration of the stark contrasts between the two characters’ sociological situation.  T.I. claims that the woman is too cute to be working at a chicken joint then drops his phone number, launching the woman and the audience into a “behind the scenes” look at–and participation in–T.I.’s extravagant lifestyle.  The images speak for themselves, but in a nutshell, T.I. takes pleasure in using his material wealth to lavish her with luxuries, erase her boyfriend, and revel in his own economic power.  This seems like a logical representation of the song.

However, the end of the video suggests otherwise.

The fantasy is revealed to indeed be purely fantasy when the woman’s boyfriend wakes her from a daydream just as T.I. is pulling out of the parking lot.  Instead of leaving his phone number, T.I. actually left a crumpled one hundred dollar bill.  A bit hung over from her daydream, the woman agrees to help her boyfriend braid his hair again, although we’re not sure if she’s going to do it for free or charge him.

T.I.P.'s tip

The video leaves it ambiguous as to whether T.I.’s fleeting presence encourages her to do it for free (and pass on T.I.’s generosity) or charge him (and play the role of the individual capitalist).  Like the citizens of America, the woman must decide between unselfishly contributing to the common wealth or embarking on an individualistic fantasy.

Or maybe the video suggests something in between… something more pragmatic… something, perhaps, more similar to Obama’s plans. (I’m not say’n that Obama’s plans are perfect.  They have many flaws, but they’re a step in the right direction)

T.I.’s presence in the video suggests a middle ground upon which individual success goes hand in hand with contributions to the general welfare of a community.  Although T.I. used fantasy to entertain the cashier, he also gave her something very real: a Benjamin, or should I say, a piece of paper worth one hundred dollars.  If this is representative of how T.I. tips all of his servers, we should be encouraged to see his actions as a form of community development rather than a moment of personal boasting or a simple “hand out.”  With the hope of a better life (one closer to T.I.’s) combined with a material investment in a life outside of a fast food joint (the C-note), the woman might now have both the psychological and material impetus to start her own hair saloon.  Maybe she will still charge her boyfriend, but maybe not as much as last time, and maybe one day she will be able to walk into a chicken joint and do for another what T.I. did for her.  This is the type of balance that Obama’s economic rhetoric and policy initiatives have been striking when they are at their best, and we would all do well to explore and support this balance in order to get out of the current crisis.

With some thoughtful participation in our political and economic institutions (both local and global), maybe more of us will be able to sort out our paper trails by the time T.I. is released from prison.

“I work for myself and no one else cause I’m too smart too,

Put one of my partners right through culinary art school,

Now he my personal chef so that bread he get it,

Put them all in houses, cleaned up all of my friends credit.

And now they witness all the glitz and the glamor,

Catch us eating at straits Atlanta with women with table manners,

Order in Singapore and lobster,

Celebrating coming from nothing to winning Grammys and rappers winning Oscars.

And they say rappers shouldn’t act, naw suckers,

We see Samuel L. Jackson like: ‘What’s up mother fucker!’”

–Ludacris in “On Top of the World,” Paper Trail

...and everyone else

The Battle of the Budget Begins

A few weeks ago, President Obama discussed and answered questions about his budget proposal, arguing that it will move the economy towards recovery and growth.  The goals make sense: get people back to work and get the banks lending again.  Although most people understand that you have to spend a little money in order to make a little money, there are some politicians who want to play the “debt card.”  They claim that spending billions of tax dollars on things like public works and, yes, bank “bailouts” are unfair to both the taxpayer and the taxpayer’s children.  But who is this taxpayer?  Who in America doesn’t need banks, healthcare, and schools?  Generating a large national debt is most likely a sacrifice that we must make at this time, more so than at any other in recent history.  It will certainly anger our imaginary taxpayer—an individual so disconnected from the political and social fabric of American society that he or she seems to be living “offshore,” perhaps running a corrupt investment bank and hoping to avoid the end of Bush’s tax cuts—but it’s a sacrifice that we all make for the good of everyone.

We know the creators of this imaginary taxpayer will be theatrically angered by such progressive policies, but will President Obama’s economic plan anger hip hop too?  Mainstream hip hoppers definitely seem to live a life apart from mainstream society, in their private jets and yachts.  They might not enjoy handing over more of their hard-earned scrilla anymore than Dick Cheney would…

"(Ay, who I be?) Rubber band man, Wild as the Taliban, 9 in my right 45 in my other hand. (who I'm is?) Call me trouble man, always in trouble man, worth a couple hundred grand, Chevys all colors man"

Indeed, mainstream hip hop seems to be obsessed with the private accumulation of wealth.  50 Cent claims that he’s not investing any of his money in public companies, but instead going “straight to the bank” with his cheese (hopefully to an FDIC insured bank).  Lil’ Wayne needs a Win-Dixey grocery bag to carry around his pocket Benjamins.  Jay-Z loves to remind us of how he came from the bottom of the block to the top of the charts, accumulating as much lettuce as he could along the way.  Scrilla, cheddar, gouda, any type of cheese, Benjamins, lettuce, dough, stacks, cake.  For a music genre that is obsessed with being “real,” it is odd to see how much hip hop likes to see money in the abstract.  But maybe seeing money in the abstract (using mostly metaphors of food, oddly enough) is more reflective of recent financial reality than seeing it as some concrete material.  Most of the people who got us into our current financial crisis have had a similar conception of money.  Derivatives, speculation, loan swaps.  Somehow the people holding most of the money in the world, the policy makers who aided their disastrous financial “recipes,” and most of the uninformed public embraced abstract conceptions of money—readily edible representations of money that suggested that dollars were indeed like seeds and trees, like so many ingredients to be used to magically bake up a financially sound future.

Break that bread, chop that lettuce, bake that cake, cut that cheese

However, most of us are now changing our conceptions of money.  Instead of enjoying the careless comfort of edible metaphors, we are now seeing money as the most inedible of substances: paper.  Maybe it’s the paper that shows how much money is in your bank account or mutual fund.  Maybe it’s the electronic and tree-made paper that held information regarding ill-advised loan-swaps and uncontrolled speculative gambling.  Maybe it’s just the paper that we try to keep in our wallets in order to pay rent and buy food.  Regardless, we’re all confronting the paper trail that has been piling up around us over the past decade of deregulation, accelerating global trade, and two expensive wars.

"Stacks on deck," better get some "Petron on ice"

The confusion of the paper trail might have helped cause the problem, but unraveling the paper trail will inevitably be a part of the solution.  In order to get out of this economic crisis, we’re gonna have to read through the paper, understand it, and write policies that prevent us from authoring another crisis.  Although T.I.’s latest album Paper Trail most obviously is a self-reflective work that showcases T.I. pondering the motivations, causes, and effects of his illegal gun purchases, it also has some lessons for how America can remedy the consequences of its own paper trail.

In the context of T.I.’s album, the metaphor “paper trail” has many meanings.  It refers to the stacks of paper upon which he penned his lyrics while under house-arrest.  It refers to the consequences of all the paper, or money, that he gained and spent under the eyes of the public.  It refers to the lack of paper documents that made T.I.’s weapons purchase illegal.  It refers to the court documents that coldly silenced the context that surrounded T.I.’s crime, arrest, and trial.  It refers to the document that proclaimed T.I. should be put in jail for a year and a day.  It refers to how all these forms of “paper,” or lack thereof, have constituted T.I.’s identity, as suggested by the album’s cover art.  When these metaphors converge, we see “paper trail” as being a juxtaposition of money, fame, personal reflection, conflicting narratives, and consequences.  T.I.’s paper trail shares all the meanings of America’s paper trail.  Let’s continue along this thread tomorrow. (Part 3.2 Here)

Image From www.globalgraphica.com

A Parade Through Downtown Phayao; Yes We Can

So, I’m back in the unusually stressed states of America.  Au Revior “mai pen rai” (translation: “it doesn’t matter”; the national motto of tourists in Thailand and of some Thais (not including those who are protesting in Pattaya and Bangkok).  Hello/Hola “back on the grind”  (translation: I’m just being dramatic).

It’s good to be back.  I kinda feel like I never left.  There’s still an Ed over in Thailand.  I’ll have to go visit him some time.  Or write about him.  I can’t say I’ll miss the Thai maxim, but I can definitely say I’ll be missing Mr. Brian, Nam Waan, Phii Noi, Zhilan, Tawat Chumchob, and the students of The Princess Mother School, Phayao.

Here’s some things that are coming your way:

• A new post in the continuing series on the economic crisis
• A discussion of hip hop as metaphor and model for my first-year comp class, which I haven’t taught yet :>
• More much-deserved coverage of M.I.A. and the violence in Sri Lanka
• Definitely gotta change the banner pic at the top of the pages
• Maybe a memoir post of my time in Thailand should be in order.  Hip hop definitely made some appearances…

Her landmark essay, “Under Western Eyes,” takes its title from Joseph Conrad’s 1911 eponymous novel, which articulated the shortcomings and downright failures of revolutionary social movements.  Both similar and different than Conrad’s novel, Mohanty criticizes the eurocentrism of revolutionary Western feminist discourse but also offers new strategies toward the recognition and re-representation of global, historically-specific feminisms.  Her article, like M.I.A.’s music, attempts to articulate multiple and divergent feminisms from across the “third world,” eventually proving that it is both futile and counterproductive to impose any sense of unity on the experiences and actions of women across the globe.

Mohanty argues that Western feminist discourse tends to suggest that there is one “monolithic ‘third world woman’,” and that this “third world woman” exists in a binary relationship with the “First World Woman.”  The use of this Cold War era discursive binary not only essentializes women and feminist movements around the globe, but also erroneously supports the notion that there is one unified Western feminist movement.  While scholars like Hazel Carby and bell hooks deconstructed this notion of a monolithic Western feminism from the perspectives of people of color in American and British contexts, Mohanty deconstructed the notion of a monolithic Third World Woman from the perspectives of women and cultures throughout the globe, constituting her representation of each from within their own particular social, historic, and political contexts.  She foreshadowed and perhaps shaped the work of global hip hop artists who, like M.I.A., would create albums that hit similar notes.

Mohanty’s article also points toward the future of global feminisms, insisting that a fresh look at the specific contexts of women from across the globe will not only eliminate both sides of the debilitating First World/Third World binary, but also allow for much needed global coalitions to grow—coalitions that take into consideration the disparate situations of women on every continent.  Perhaps similar themes will emerge on M.I.A.’s next record.  So what exactly are these notes and themes that can be heard both in textbooks and on stereos?  I’ll give it a go…

First, Mohanty explains the sticky aspects of recent Western feminist discourse, drawing attention to its participation in the construction of “the cultural discourse of what is called the ‘third world’.”  She argues that Western feminists participated in the structural domination of the third world through their “suppression … of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question,” or through their ignorance of the specific contexts of supposedly third world women.  Instead of investigating these specific contexts, Western scholars and feminists tended to impose their own concerns and contexts upon women of the third world, doing exactly the kind of thing that got M.I.A. angry in her interview with Pitchfork Media.  However, whereas Western feminists were careful to describe their grievances and agency (or power to change their situations), they often imposed similar grievances on third world women but failed to ascribe any agency to these women.  In other words, Western feminists used third world women as back-up singers who quietly echoed the lead singers.  Mohanty argues that this process of essentialization was tantamount to colonization, in that it participated in the silencing and oppression of women throughout the globe and simultaneously bolstered the power of Western men and women.  This “ethnocentric universalism,” according to Mohanty, was the product of the analytic assumptions and methodologies of Western feminism.

The first assumption is the belief that all women have similar concerns, regardless of their class, race, culture, age, and gender ideology system in which they live.  In other words, all women share a similar oppressor and oppression.  Thus, when Western feminists talked about third world women, they were quick to see them as exploited, powerless, and victimized.  Third world women were held up as evidence of the assertion that women were indeed universally oppressed by men, and that they needed to be liberated by the revolutionary ideas of Western feminism.  Although the apparent oppressor might have had many different names in Western feminist discourse (colonialists, the Arab family structure, Islamic codes), these oppressors were represented as being fairly homogeneous and reflective of the white upper-class Anglo-American men who were considered to be the central oppressors of white middle/upper-class Anglo-American women.  Most western feminists and scholars looked into the faces of women across the globe and only saw images of themselves.  Mohanty argues that the solution to this misrepresentation of third world women is a re-theorizing and re-interpretation, from within the specific context of each situation, of the oppression and resistance of women.  Only after Westerm feminists and scholars understand the specific oppressors, oppressions, and power that shapes the specific situation of a group of women can they offer assistance or form coalitions for global change.

Secondly, Mohanty takes issue with the methodology of Western feminist scholarship, criticizing the tools that Western feminists used to establish and prove their erroneous generalizations about third world women.  First, Western feminists tended to find one symbol, such as the veil, and quickly interpret it to be a sign of oppression.  Without paying attention to the specific historical and cultural values attributed to the veil within diverse communities (often separated by thousands of miles), they simply used the large number of veil-wearers to prove the “fact” that millions of women were oppressed my Muslim men.  Similar to this misleading “arithmetic method,” concepts such as labor, family, marriage, and patriarchy were often seen through a Western lens.  Although some descriptions of third world situations might have been accurate, the analysis was often eurocentric.  Once again, they were seeing themselves in the eyes of millions of women across the globe.  Because these throngs of women were seen as having little power over their situations, they were discursively excluded by Western feminists from their own attempts at “liberation” and deemed incapable of writing their own counter-histories.  Obviously, women like M.I.A. were and are doing just the opposite, talking back to Western generalizations and ideologies with a sense of purpose and power.

But members of the media and music industry would not easily let go of their preconceived notions of M.I.A.  As she was being nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar for “Paper Planes,” M.I.A. started to be labeled a terrorist due to her Tamil ethnicity.  This brings up the other stereotype of third world women.  If they’re not being shown as completely powerless and victimized, then they’re probably being falsely exposed as being full of irrational hatred and violence—in other words, a “terrorist.”  Speaking back to those who called her a terrorist, M.I.A. has been using her fame not only to challenge representations of Tamils and call attention to the possibility of genocide in Sri Lanka, but also to challenge the discourse on terrorism.  She touches on these issue with great intelligence and clarity in a recent interview with Tavis Smiley.  Check it out, and in a few days we’ll turn our discussion back to M.I.A., the situation in Sri Lanka, and terrorism.

“London
Quiet down I need to make a sound
New York
Quiet down I need to make a sound
Kingston
Quiet down I need to make a sound
Brazil
Quiet down I need to make sound” – M.I.A., “Bucky Done Gun”

Although I knew that M.I.A.’s creative beats and abrasive yet flowing rhymes would be enthusiastically received by a mainstream audience if she ever got any radio play, a year ago I never would have bet that I would be hearing one of her songs on national radio stations incessantly.  “Paper Planes,” featuring a sample from the Clash’s 1982 song “Straight to Hell,” revolves around a cartoonish chorus filled with gun shots and cash-register rings, wrapped with verses that boast of manufacturing fake visas, selling drugs, and “making that fame.”  Ironically, the one M.I.A. song that has hit the “big-time” is also her first major attempt at mocking mainstream music’s dearth of political discourse. “Paper Planes” reveals just how ridiculous—and

"Paper Planes: Homeland Security Remixes"

ridiculously popular—guns, drugs, and money can be when they are not understood within a specific context, or when these things are used to stereotype immigrants and people of the “third world.”  Unlike “Paper Planes,” most of M.I.A.’s songs derive their political message from her capacity to place apparently “criminal behavior” within a global context, which inevitably belies the idea that the “crimes” that she rhymes about are indeed criminal acts.  But even as “Paper Planes” reached number one on “T.R.L.” and “MuchOnDemand Top Ten” and indie hipsters gleefully mimicked M.I.A.’s satirical dance moves (see her performance on the David Letterman Show), the corporate music giants judged that the song still needed to be “cleansed,” despite repeated objections from the artist herself.  UPDATE: “Paper Planes” has been nominated for both a Grammy and an Oscar.

And this gets to the heart of one of M.I.A.’s grand themes: representation, or who gets to portray who you are and how you can go about exerting influence on portrayals of yourself.  In a small yet telling example of her attitude towards representation, M.I.A.’s second album opens with a song that forcefully reminds her audience that she is not “Maya” (a girl’s name), but rather “M.I.A.”  She is not a name, or a signifier of a stable identity, but rather the absence of a stable identity—an identity that is apparently and continually missing in action.  She knows that she is not literally “missing in action,” but, instead, understands that hip hop artists who represent the “3rd world,” such as herself, are often underrepresented and/or misrepresented in Western cultural, political, and intellectual discourse.  She and many artists like her are often the presence of an absence in today’s hip-hop scene.

Born in the London suburb of Hounslow and raised in Sri Lanka, Mathangi Arulpragasam returned to London as the civil war between the Sri Lankan Army and the Tamil Tigers escalated.  Although images of the Tamil rebellion were pervasive in her early artwork, her early musical and visual compositions also revolved around an inner-conflict: a search for personal identity, which would be both English and Sri Lankan, both colonizer and colonized.

“I was sipping on a Rubicon
Thinking ’bout where I come
It’s all this for revolution
Cuttin’ up the coupon
Savin for a telephone
Can I call home
Please Can I go Home” – M.I.A., “Amazon,” Arular

As her music spread through the globe’s independent music scenes as rapidly as Tandoori chicken, she had to deal with male-dominated major record labels, which would soon profit immensely off of her self-cultivated underground popularity.  They would also attempt to control representations of Arulpragasm.  However, her albums, both of which are named after her parents, not only resisted the image-control of record producers and the music media, but also attempted to shed light on the lives of other women and men who continually find themselves being misrepresented by Western men and women.

In an interview with online-music-journalism giant Pitchfork Media, M.I.A. forced the interviewer to scrap his pre-made questions and proceeded to direct his attention to more pressing matters.  She immediately rejected the oft-touted notion that Diplo, a Philly-based DJ/Producer and self-described “white guy from Florida,” made Arular, her first full-length album.  Indeed, contrary to rumors of Diplo’s involvement in the making of both the music and politics of Arular, M.I.A. constructed the album on her own, in her basement, using relatively inexpensive equipment and—certainly—her own intellect and experiences.

Although she managed to clear up the rumors about Diplo, these rumors were only the tip of a far greater iceberg, which would continually rise to the surface throughout Arulpragasm’s career:

M.I.A.: So the whole time I’ve had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can’t have any ideas on my own because I’m a female or that people from undeveloped countries can’t have ideas of their own unless it’s backed up by someone who’s blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it’s cool, the second time it’s cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it’s an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that’s something important, you know.

I admire M.I.A.’s patience, and I agree with her when she says that this is “an issue we need to talk about.”  So let’s connect M.I.A.’s experience, as a Sri Lankan/English female hip hop artist, to the larger story of (mis)representations of “3rd world” women.  But let’s do this on Friday.  In the meantime, please, if you haven’t yet, check out M.I.A.’s life story, music, and artwork.

M.I.A.'s album covers reflect her fascination with textiles, the woven products of learning and labor

Meanwhile, check out the series on the financial crisis.  Some intelligent people have made some smart remarks about the topic.  Also, many new links have been added to the blogroll.  Please check those out too, especially “The Living Consequences.”

Thanks,

Ed

We all know about Wall Street and Main Street, but what about the Street?

Although many Americans are able to gain a piece—however small—of “the pie,” their ability to do so largely rests on the historical, racial economic exploitation of others, predominantly “minority” populations, who, no matter how hard they try, cannot find solid financial ground beneath their feet.

However, as Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro point out in “Getting Along,” this solid financial footing that many Americans enjoy does not consist of typical signifiers of economic status, such as one’s salary or wage.  Instead, it consists of “wealth.” Wealth can mean a number of things, including money that has been passed down through generations, which can be used to pay for a home, to start up a business, or to provide a quality education for one’s children. Although middle-class White communities are typically able to pass on some form of this wealth to their children, the accumulation of wealth in Black communities has been impeded by historic barriers, which have been constructed by both centuries of slavery, slavery’s aftermath, and the inherently–and persistently–racist structure of American society.

Of course, simply solving the wealth crisis in African American communities would not automatically catalyze a decline in the racist structure of American society.  Middle/upper class, predominantly white, communities will still attempt to hold on to their monopoly of “high” social status, and lower income white communities might maintain the notion that their whiteness constitutes a “psychological wage.” However, a solid economic footing, complete with access to wealth and assets, would certainly help the African American community confront—both psychologically and materially—the daily challenges of racism and, perhaps, in the long term, weaken America’s racial structure.

The racial wealth gap between Whites and African-Americans exists and persists for many different reasons. Through both subtle and obvious methods of discrimination, American society has provided, and is providing, more opportunities for the accumulation of wealth to Whites than Blacks, and this disparity of opportunities between Whites and Blacks is compounded by each generation, creating a cycle that keeps Blacks far from an ever-growing reservoir of White wealth. Even when whites and blacks are similar with regards to “identifiably important” economic factors, Blacks still confront a “$43,000 net worth handicap” (Oliver and Shapiro 525).

One reason for this disparity is U.S. government policies. During slavery, African Americans could not maintain any property, and even after the Civil War, Jim Crow laws and racist housing policies favored white home-buyers at the cost of severely limiting the possibility of home ownership among the Black population. And the U.S. tax code has continually favored those with assets—predominantly Whites—over those who are lacking in assets— predominantly Blacks. Even if an African-American family is approved for a mortgage, it is usually forced into paying outrageous interest rates due to the “riskiness” of the loan. And even if African Americans are able to pay off an expensive mortgage and keep their home, the value of homes in Black communities tend to decrease over time.  This almost always due to the placement of waste treatment facilities, highways, and garbage dumps near–and through–Black communities, as well as a lack of attention from city services such as police, fire departments, and utility companies.

Jim Crow wasn't just about public segregation

Whereas White parents are sometimes able to leave mortgage-free, high-value homes to their children, Black parents are often forced to pass on expensive mortgages to their children, once again limiting the ability of future generations to accumulate assets. Oliver and Shapiro argue, and I strongly agree, that these racist policies were not simply the consequences of capitalism and the free market, nor were they the mistakes of ignorant policy makers, but, instead, were—and are—the products of a predominantly wealthy White elite political class who were—and are—protecting their own political and economic interests at the cost of further driving down the wedge between Black’s and White’s access to wealth.

The dawn of the information age and the rise of advanced technology only makes this wealth disparity more dangerous to the Black population. While white families are often able to provide their children with the means of building an electronic literacy, or a familiarity with computers and the new media (websites, e-business, digital design, online advertising, computer programming, advanced communication technology, etc.), Black families, without appropriate assets, are often unable to provide their children with necessary learning tools. And this problem goes much extends beyond the family. I’ve recently read a book about electronic literacy by Gail Hawisher, an English professor the University of Illinois, which argues that white neighborhoods are more likely than black neighborhoods to have libraries and schools that not only provide free access to computers and technological resources, but also–and more importantly–provide teachers and tutors who can train young students in the use of new technologies.

Money Maker

Growing up in a nation that will rely more and more on an electronically literate workforce, young Black students who do not have access to training opportunities will be significantly at a loss when they attempt to obtain new technology-based jobs, which can provide access to new sources of wealth. Of course, this is just one sector of the economy that bolsters the argument that current welfare, housing, and minimum wage policies are not significantly improving Blacks’ present or future access to wealth.

The historical limitations placed on Blacks’ ability to gain wealth represent challenges that Black leaders and sympathetic, knowledgeable White leaders will need to address as soon as possible. Both Blacks and Whites need to work at not only helping black business men and women establish thriving businesses amidst the jungle of white-controlled American/global corporations, but also providing young African Americans with the tools that they will need to succeed in the future.

I might be a bit optimistic, but I believe that the new media, and the new technologies that produce the new media, can be excellent avenues of success for the next generations of African Americans–but this hinges on whether or not appropriate training and resources are provided.

This seems to be the crux of the issue: more resources—and a large variety of resources—need to be allocated to lower class and Black communities in order to confront the structural exclusion of the poor and Blacks from the mainstream economy. Although the rhetoric of reparations might be too discomforting for some White Americans to swallow, I tend to believe that once White Americans are convinced that the economic well-being of the nation is reliant on the inclusion of everyone, including those who have been historically exploited, in the new economy, they will be more willing to support initiatives that allow the lower classes and the Black community—as well as other minority communities—to accumulate wealth. Indeed, the consequences of the historical exclusion of Blacks from wealth will continue to affect the majority of Americans (i.e., the current financial crisis), except, perhaps, those elites who have enough wealth to support the next five generations of their families (and obtain golden lifeboats in the event of a collapse of the stockmarket).

In order to avoid the devastating consequences of a “Swiss cheese” economy, in which growing pockets of poverty exist alongside the growing wealth of the dominant class, Blacks of all economic and social classes will need to work together to present their struggles to a white community that will be, hopefully, ready not only to listen to the concerns of the Black community, but also willing to enact radical solutions.

Cheese is better without the holes

Works Cited

Oliver, M.L., Shapiro, T.M. “Getting Along: Renewing America’s Commitment to Racial Justic”