This is a post about my growth as a person through encounters with books. I make no claims about how what understanding of American race relations translates into my activities challenging racism, and acknowledge I am still learning.
Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" became my favorite book midway through my teens, dethroning Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" with its resonant message about parenthood, precocious children, and difficult worlds. I read that book in school (it is one of the handful of great American books, with Gatsby and either Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men, but not both, that have been allowed onto British school reading lists). I read it dutifully in the right way, as a story about injustice and segregated America, but that was only part of what captivated me. I preferred the story of Scout and Jem and Dill, their growing up, growing apart. I was captivated by Lee's evocative language, her rich complex female characters (to this day Miss Maudie Atkinson tops my list of fictional characters I would like to meet). In truth, I didn't yet have the historical knowledge or the analytical tools to understand all the parts of the story of Tom Robinson, or understand the monumental nature of Calpurnia's decision to take the children to First Purchase. Even back then, when I decided (to show how smart I was) to write an essay on "racism as a theme in To Kill A Mockingbird" i quickly felt ill equipped. My arguments were weak and I knew it. I should have written about " parenting as a theme in to Kill a Mockingbird" instead.
I've revisited that book so many times I can recite it. I have come to relish its depth more and more with every reading. The intelligence of Lee's device (to have an adult Jean Louise tell the story from a child Scout's point of view) allows such flexibility, deftly used. It allows the narrator to know things Scout would not have known. It allows the future to be alluded to. And it also leads to one of the great, and perhaps most questionable ellipsis in litterature. In the key scene where Atticus goes to sit outside Maycomb jail by night to protect Robinson from the lynch mob, at no point does Lee's adult Jean Louise spell out what is happening. We are told that the child Scout doesn't realise until later. But why does the adult Jean Louise hide from stating what is at stake, plainly, and clearly? Is it perhaps because the horror of that truth would make that scene's denouement hard to stomach, and make Atticus's pronouncement the next day sound hollow?
It was my encounter with another great American book that made me see the limits in Lee's novel as a tale of Southern Racism, and that made me see how much of a fiction even that book's limited victories were. While at University I read Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". I do not know if Angelou had to Kill a Mockingbird in mind when she wrote her autobiography, but the parallels are very striking. Against fictional smart, white Scout, we have real smart, black Maya Angelou. Against fictional too good, too perfect Calpurnia, we have the Real Grandmother. So many of the scenes in Caged Bird echo scenes in Mockingbird, but tear down what little Lee left worth saving in white Maycomb.
Perhaps the key scene for me is the one where she describes how, one night, as a lynch mob is rampaging through town, the white sheriff rides up to the Grandmother's store to warn her, and tell her to hide her crippled adult son from them. The grandmother thanks him, and Angelou describes her uncle painfully squeezing himself into the space under a fruit display. Angelou concludes with a searing accusal of the sheriff that struck me forever (I am writing this from memory so forgive any error):
"If I came before God in Heaven and had to say a good word about that man I could not do it. He did nothing to oppose, and in fact supported, the system that made my uncle hide that night"
Through that book, I began to see all that was missing from To Kill a Mockingbird, that made it both a fairy story, and a flawed depiction of the Jim Crow south.
I still love to Kill a Mockingbird. But I am fiercely grateful to Maya Angelou, and all the other black writers who have helped me move past viewing as more than what it is: an exquisite piece of fiction, but no more a definitive portrait of the South than Gone With the Wind.
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Monday, 4 May 2015
Lines: on the experience of Baltimore
This is not a post about current events. I am not the voice you should be listening to for that. There are many excellent authors and social media activists of color (I suggest Sean Reed, Shaun King and DNLee as excellent places to start) who can provide a better view on the struggles that urban people of color face in the US and in academia.
This is a post about experiencing Baltimore the way most white academics will experience it: as an outsider dropping into one of the city's elite universities. It is a post about understanding how the social and geographic spaces of the city are structured to make you see only a tiny part of it, and to make you believe that part is most of the city. It is a post about how the stories about the rest of the city are controlled. It is a post about complicity in a system that wants to maintain the narrative that the salvation of Baltimore has to come in spite of the people that live there, not because of them. It is a post about the difficult feelings that those of us who came to love this most unloved of cities carry with us about that place, and about our place in it.
It is a post that does not always present me in the best light. It is a post that does not present Baltimore's elite universities in the best light. But if this week's events have shown anything, it is that we cannot, should not, accept narratives about Baltimore's institutions that paint them in a good light. Because what is left out of those paintings is odious.
I moved to Baltimore to do my PhD at Johns Hopkins Medical School in 2007. Before I have even left the UK, I was being warned about the city. "Have you seen the Wire?" was to become a refrain I would hear continuously over the next five years. When flat hunting, (as I wouldn't have a car), I limited my search to place within walking distance of the Hopkins shuttle route. But even then, there were caveats: "not North Avenue", "Don't live near the medical school". I was being taught the rudiments of the geography of Hopkins Baltimore.
When I got to my little apartment in Mount Vernon, next to a hip sushi restaurant and on the same block as the city's two main gay bars, I found I could see the medical school from my apartment. The first day I headed to work, I couldn't figure out where to get the shuttle. So I walked to campus. Down monument street. Under I 83 (through a fenced in parking lot, as there was no path). Past what I would later learn was the infamous Downtown Baltimore Supermax. Past abandoned buildings, school playing fields, housing projects, emergency clinics and bailbondsmen. Towards Hopkins medical school. I was uncomfortable. My years of living in London told me this wasn't an entirely safe neighborhood. And, to be honest, I had never encountered that level of dilapidation and poverty in London. But I made it to work. I found my department. And I was instantly told not to tell anyone I had walked to work, or they would freak out. And certainly never to do it again. You'd have thought I had walked through a mine field.
As the semester wore on, I began to notice other lines. Such as that no one at Hopkins knew how the city buses worked. We all used the Hopkins shuttles and went only were they went. Or we drove. I began to notice that the people behind the reception desks, or the people cleaning the office, pushing the carts, doing security, were black. And the people in the offices white. I began to wonder about riding a shuttle emblazoned with the Hopkins logo through deprived East Baltimore towards the Campus. I noticed that the words Kennedy and Krieger were lit up at night on the tallest building on campus, in the middle of the poorly lit streets of east Baltimore. I noticed, when I finally took a city bus to the party district of Fells Point, that everyone on the streets was black until you got to three blocks from the waterfront. Then suddenly, lily white.
The narratives that students and faculty told about Baltimore were stories of fear. There is almost a hazing of new arrivals. You're told where not to walk, where not to go. You're told where is not safe after dark. You're told of all the muggings and the murders (even if, when you finally look up the statistics, you realise that affluent whites are not at all the victims of Baltimore's crime problem). And it seeps into your skin.
When my mother came to visit, I got her a map. I drew lines on it, delineating a small area from Mount Vernon to the inner harbor. "Don't go north of here (north avenue), South of here (Federal hill), West of here (Lexington market), East of here (I 83)". I had learnt the geography of Baltimore quite well. Better, in fact, than I knew
A few months after I arrived, I missed the bus again. I tried once more to walk to work. Nothing had happened to me in all my time in the city. But as I reached I 83, my anxiety reached epic levels. I began to have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. Every inch of my being screamed for me to turn back, and head to the safety of the shuttle. I did.
That moment was a turning point. I realized that if I was going to live in the city, I had to fight the narrative I was being given. I moved closer to campus, and got to know the nice bits of East Baltimore better. But there were still lines. I never went North of Campus. I never went West of MLK.
A few years into my graduate program, I stood on the roof of one of the Hopkins parking lots and looked north. When I had gotten to Baltimore, the abandoned housing had reached up to that building. Now there were two blocks of bare ground in every direction. New lines being drawn in the cities divided geography.
I grew to love Baltimore. I met my husband and some of my best friends there. But in five years living in that city, three of which were within a bock of the Caroline Street projects, and two local schools, I never made friends with any of the city's African American residents. The bars and restaurants and cultural institutions that I love so much catered to that semi transient, mostly white, population that moved there for school or work, and left when they had kids.
And here's the thing: the city that people like us lived in is nothing like the city that most of Baltimore's population live in. Yet ours is deemed "economically important". And I know full well that that economic importance is used to justify the police activities in Baltimore. After all, how will Hopkins and UMD attract top talent to a city without a couple of craft cocktail bars?
And we can't accept that. My lifestyle in Baltimore ought not, must not be used to justify the violent oppression of those whom the city has ignored and mistreated. Fixing Baltimore must primarily fix the city for the majority of its population. Those of us who've lived there must recognise that, and put our experience of Baltimore aside. When we tell people about how hip and cool Fells Point and Canton are, when we talk about all the festivals, when we discuss the city as though the tiny portion of it we know is all the city, we are complicit in a narrative that wants to erase the reality of the city for most of its population. And that erasure, as we have seen, is more than rhetorical.
As the semester wore on, I began to notice other lines. Such as that no one at Hopkins knew how the city buses worked. We all used the Hopkins shuttles and went only were they went. Or we drove. I began to notice that the people behind the reception desks, or the people cleaning the office, pushing the carts, doing security, were black. And the people in the offices white. I began to wonder about riding a shuttle emblazoned with the Hopkins logo through deprived East Baltimore towards the Campus. I noticed that the words Kennedy and Krieger were lit up at night on the tallest building on campus, in the middle of the poorly lit streets of east Baltimore. I noticed, when I finally took a city bus to the party district of Fells Point, that everyone on the streets was black until you got to three blocks from the waterfront. Then suddenly, lily white.
The narratives that students and faculty told about Baltimore were stories of fear. There is almost a hazing of new arrivals. You're told where not to walk, where not to go. You're told where is not safe after dark. You're told of all the muggings and the murders (even if, when you finally look up the statistics, you realise that affluent whites are not at all the victims of Baltimore's crime problem). And it seeps into your skin.
When my mother came to visit, I got her a map. I drew lines on it, delineating a small area from Mount Vernon to the inner harbor. "Don't go north of here (north avenue), South of here (Federal hill), West of here (Lexington market), East of here (I 83)". I had learnt the geography of Baltimore quite well. Better, in fact, than I knew
A few months after I arrived, I missed the bus again. I tried once more to walk to work. Nothing had happened to me in all my time in the city. But as I reached I 83, my anxiety reached epic levels. I began to have difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. Every inch of my being screamed for me to turn back, and head to the safety of the shuttle. I did.
That moment was a turning point. I realized that if I was going to live in the city, I had to fight the narrative I was being given. I moved closer to campus, and got to know the nice bits of East Baltimore better. But there were still lines. I never went North of Campus. I never went West of MLK.
A few years into my graduate program, I stood on the roof of one of the Hopkins parking lots and looked north. When I had gotten to Baltimore, the abandoned housing had reached up to that building. Now there were two blocks of bare ground in every direction. New lines being drawn in the cities divided geography.
I grew to love Baltimore. I met my husband and some of my best friends there. But in five years living in that city, three of which were within a bock of the Caroline Street projects, and two local schools, I never made friends with any of the city's African American residents. The bars and restaurants and cultural institutions that I love so much catered to that semi transient, mostly white, population that moved there for school or work, and left when they had kids.
And here's the thing: the city that people like us lived in is nothing like the city that most of Baltimore's population live in. Yet ours is deemed "economically important". And I know full well that that economic importance is used to justify the police activities in Baltimore. After all, how will Hopkins and UMD attract top talent to a city without a couple of craft cocktail bars?
And we can't accept that. My lifestyle in Baltimore ought not, must not be used to justify the violent oppression of those whom the city has ignored and mistreated. Fixing Baltimore must primarily fix the city for the majority of its population. Those of us who've lived there must recognise that, and put our experience of Baltimore aside. When we tell people about how hip and cool Fells Point and Canton are, when we talk about all the festivals, when we discuss the city as though the tiny portion of it we know is all the city, we are complicit in a narrative that wants to erase the reality of the city for most of its population. And that erasure, as we have seen, is more than rhetorical.
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
The many faces of Leviathan
In his treatise on the ideal form of government, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes articulated the idea of the State as an entity with a monopoly on the use of power, in particular, violence. The right to use such violence as was necessary to maintain peace was to be vested in the Sovereign, and a social contract between subjects and Sovereign would abdicate to the Sovereign all rights of the subject to determine themselves. Most strikingly, the Sovereign (a monarch, an aristocracy or a democratic group) could never be accused of injuring his subjects. Though Hobbes argued that his Leviathan (a state vested with absolute power) was preferable to a State of Nature he described as a war of All against All, it was never particularly appealing to those outside of power. Never more so then when the State wields its monopoly on power against its own citizenry. At such a time one may justly ask if an implicit social contract that is so far reaching is truly a sensible philosophy.
Ferguson, MO, has occupied a lot of my mental energy this past week. I was glued to twitter on the night of the first heavy SWAT response. As a white European man living in a rural area of the US, I feel that it is not my place to discuss the specificities of Ferguson. I have retweeted many of the observations made by African American and other people of color from around the US. This is their story to tell, not mine.
That being said, coming from a country with a mostly unarmed police force, the shooting of Mike Brown is a particularly jarring reminder that I am not in Kansas anymore. I can only view the gunning down an 18 year old unarmed man in the street as evil, cruel, and excessive act. Having lived for five years in Baltimore, I have learned a lot about the context of oppression of inner city black populations by the state in which these shootings and subsequent riots happen. I also have friends in law enforcement who have patiently shared their perspective with me, despite my strong a priori distaste for sanctioned police violence. I have come to realise that, in the context of a racist and oppressive system of institutions, these events end up playing out as a kabuki theater where roles are pre-determined by a greater narrative. It is difficult to see a way forward sometimes. I believe shit is fucked up.
There is a tendency for transatlantic comparison to occur whenever these incidents happen in the US. The fact is always brought up (as indeed I just did) that policemen in the UK are unarmed. The resulting statistics from this are pretty striking. And yet, if you look at the UK police force's history of dealing with civil unrest, it's less lethal perhaps, but seems hardly edifying. In the 1970s and 1980s, police charged striking coal miners with batons, severely wounding many. Towards the end of the 80s, the poll tax riots and protests were challenged by policemen on horseback riding into the crowds. When a crowd panicked at Hillsborough football stadium in 1989, the police's refusal to open the stadium doors led to the death of 96 people. The subsequent attempt by the police to cover up their action and smear the dead as drunken hooligans was only uncovered in 2012 following a public enquiry. Getting that enquiry set up took 20 years of campaigning by the survivors against an uncaring establishment. Those events were marked by the clear class distinction between those being attacked (working class men and women in the North), and those in power.
More recently, the Metropolitan Police (London's police force) has come up for repeated criticism for its handling of protests and anti-terrorism measures. There was the routine containing of globalisation protestors for hours in the street without access to water or toilets. There was the shooting of Brasilian plumber Jean Charles de Menezes on the Underground at point blank range by armed anti terrorism officers, despite a complete lack of evidence that he had anything to do with any bombings. No officers were convicted or even disciplined for this, though the police commissioner eventually resigned. In 2010 following the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police, rioting erupted throughout the country. In 2009, during anti-G20 protests, Ian Tomlinson died as a result of being struck by a police officer. The Met police initially tried to claim he died of natural causes, yet video footage soon surfaced showing the police violence. Eyewitness accounts directly contradicted the police narrative, which is a recurring theme throughout all these events.
In 1999 the McPherson report came out on the wake of the murder of Black British teenager Stephen Lawrence. The Metropolitan Police had made a mockery of the investigation, convinced that the perpetrator had to be black (they were both white), that the murder was not racially motivated (it was), and that Lawrence had been involved with drugs (he wasn't). The report accused the met police of institutional racism, a term I suspect few White British people fully understood. And despite that, Stephen Lawrence's killers were only convicted in 2012, after years of campaigning by Stephen Lawrence's mother. The met police still has a difficult time with ethnic minorities, and accusations of police brutality (particularly in custody). The fact most police officers are unarmed does not reduce the level of mutual distrust between police and some communities. The Leviathan in the UK may wear a slightly different mask, but its actions are surprisingly similar, even if the targets are somewhat different.
Yet, what Ferguson really reminds me of is the police in my other home country, France. In France, the police doesn't even really pretend to deal fairly with French citizens of North African descent in the suburban projects (banlieues) around the big cities. In fact, after several years of annually escalating unrest, a minister of the interior who would later become president famously declared he would clean out the suburbs with a pressure hose. In 2005, two children died while running into an electric fence to escape the police. Rioting, looting, protesting followed. France's dedicated, quasi military riot police, the CRS, rolled out in their distinctive black vans. CRS cops are armed with water canons, batons, tear gas, black visors and the more or less complete support of the State to do whatever they want. My mother was involved in the 1968 student uprising, and from her I learnt that if you see the CRS coming, you run. For days running battles raged in the suburbs of Paris and other major cities, while life continued as normal in the city centers. The comparison with the situation in the US is all the more chilling when you remember that French Algeria essentially operated under Jim Crow-like laws until the war of independence in the '50s. Again, the detail of Leviathan's actions are shaped by a State's history, but in the broad behavior there are repeating patterns.
I can see these patterns in all these places. When Leviathan strikes, it does so with brutality, and with a disturbing precision in its targets. Knowing the specific histories of oppression in France, the UK and the US, one can predict with a fair degree of confidence who will be on the receiving end of physical violence wielded by the State. Another pattern is therefore also clear. In all three cases, I and people like me are never the target. In all three countries, I can walk mostly unaware of Leviathan. I see these patterns affect others. If these others did not have means to make me see them, I might never even notice the cost of Leviathan, I might think this arrangement was for the greater good. I might think all was well in the best of all possible worlds,
I am glad that I do not. I am thankful that enough people have raised their voices, their camera phones, their keyboards so that I can see these patterns wherever I live. I do not yet know what I can do about them, but it is good not to be blind.
Ferguson, MO, has occupied a lot of my mental energy this past week. I was glued to twitter on the night of the first heavy SWAT response. As a white European man living in a rural area of the US, I feel that it is not my place to discuss the specificities of Ferguson. I have retweeted many of the observations made by African American and other people of color from around the US. This is their story to tell, not mine.
That being said, coming from a country with a mostly unarmed police force, the shooting of Mike Brown is a particularly jarring reminder that I am not in Kansas anymore. I can only view the gunning down an 18 year old unarmed man in the street as evil, cruel, and excessive act. Having lived for five years in Baltimore, I have learned a lot about the context of oppression of inner city black populations by the state in which these shootings and subsequent riots happen. I also have friends in law enforcement who have patiently shared their perspective with me, despite my strong a priori distaste for sanctioned police violence. I have come to realise that, in the context of a racist and oppressive system of institutions, these events end up playing out as a kabuki theater where roles are pre-determined by a greater narrative. It is difficult to see a way forward sometimes. I believe shit is fucked up.
There is a tendency for transatlantic comparison to occur whenever these incidents happen in the US. The fact is always brought up (as indeed I just did) that policemen in the UK are unarmed. The resulting statistics from this are pretty striking. And yet, if you look at the UK police force's history of dealing with civil unrest, it's less lethal perhaps, but seems hardly edifying. In the 1970s and 1980s, police charged striking coal miners with batons, severely wounding many. Towards the end of the 80s, the poll tax riots and protests were challenged by policemen on horseback riding into the crowds. When a crowd panicked at Hillsborough football stadium in 1989, the police's refusal to open the stadium doors led to the death of 96 people. The subsequent attempt by the police to cover up their action and smear the dead as drunken hooligans was only uncovered in 2012 following a public enquiry. Getting that enquiry set up took 20 years of campaigning by the survivors against an uncaring establishment. Those events were marked by the clear class distinction between those being attacked (working class men and women in the North), and those in power.
More recently, the Metropolitan Police (London's police force) has come up for repeated criticism for its handling of protests and anti-terrorism measures. There was the routine containing of globalisation protestors for hours in the street without access to water or toilets. There was the shooting of Brasilian plumber Jean Charles de Menezes on the Underground at point blank range by armed anti terrorism officers, despite a complete lack of evidence that he had anything to do with any bombings. No officers were convicted or even disciplined for this, though the police commissioner eventually resigned. In 2010 following the shooting of Mark Duggan by the police, rioting erupted throughout the country. In 2009, during anti-G20 protests, Ian Tomlinson died as a result of being struck by a police officer. The Met police initially tried to claim he died of natural causes, yet video footage soon surfaced showing the police violence. Eyewitness accounts directly contradicted the police narrative, which is a recurring theme throughout all these events.
In 1999 the McPherson report came out on the wake of the murder of Black British teenager Stephen Lawrence. The Metropolitan Police had made a mockery of the investigation, convinced that the perpetrator had to be black (they were both white), that the murder was not racially motivated (it was), and that Lawrence had been involved with drugs (he wasn't). The report accused the met police of institutional racism, a term I suspect few White British people fully understood. And despite that, Stephen Lawrence's killers were only convicted in 2012, after years of campaigning by Stephen Lawrence's mother. The met police still has a difficult time with ethnic minorities, and accusations of police brutality (particularly in custody). The fact most police officers are unarmed does not reduce the level of mutual distrust between police and some communities. The Leviathan in the UK may wear a slightly different mask, but its actions are surprisingly similar, even if the targets are somewhat different.
Yet, what Ferguson really reminds me of is the police in my other home country, France. In France, the police doesn't even really pretend to deal fairly with French citizens of North African descent in the suburban projects (banlieues) around the big cities. In fact, after several years of annually escalating unrest, a minister of the interior who would later become president famously declared he would clean out the suburbs with a pressure hose. In 2005, two children died while running into an electric fence to escape the police. Rioting, looting, protesting followed. France's dedicated, quasi military riot police, the CRS, rolled out in their distinctive black vans. CRS cops are armed with water canons, batons, tear gas, black visors and the more or less complete support of the State to do whatever they want. My mother was involved in the 1968 student uprising, and from her I learnt that if you see the CRS coming, you run. For days running battles raged in the suburbs of Paris and other major cities, while life continued as normal in the city centers. The comparison with the situation in the US is all the more chilling when you remember that French Algeria essentially operated under Jim Crow-like laws until the war of independence in the '50s. Again, the detail of Leviathan's actions are shaped by a State's history, but in the broad behavior there are repeating patterns.
I can see these patterns in all these places. When Leviathan strikes, it does so with brutality, and with a disturbing precision in its targets. Knowing the specific histories of oppression in France, the UK and the US, one can predict with a fair degree of confidence who will be on the receiving end of physical violence wielded by the State. Another pattern is therefore also clear. In all three cases, I and people like me are never the target. In all three countries, I can walk mostly unaware of Leviathan. I see these patterns affect others. If these others did not have means to make me see them, I might never even notice the cost of Leviathan, I might think this arrangement was for the greater good. I might think all was well in the best of all possible worlds,
I am glad that I do not. I am thankful that enough people have raised their voices, their camera phones, their keyboards so that I can see these patterns wherever I live. I do not yet know what I can do about them, but it is good not to be blind.
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