Detroit Brand Blackness: Race, Gender, Class, and Performances of Black Identities in Post Recession Detroit

DETROIT BRAND BLACKNESS: RACE, GENDER, CLASS, AND PERFORMANCES OF BLACK IDENTITIES IN POST RECESSION DETROIT

Michelle Cowin Gibbs

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 2019

Committee:

Lesa Lockford, Advisor

Kenneth Thompson Graduate Faculty Representative

Jonathan Chambers

Marcus Sherrell

Michelle Cowin Gibbs

ABSTRACT

Lesa Lockford, Advisor

In the years following the Great Recession (2007-2009), Detroit has seen an increase in financial investments of which have varied effects for residents across the city; so much so, that many Detroiters are claiming there are two Detroits: “Detroit” and “New Detroit.” “New

Detroit” is an small area that has experienced a huge influx of residential and commercial investment. They feature new and/or remodeled housing and commercial services like grocery stores, coffee shops, and new restaurants. These areas are populated with mostly white residents.

In “Detroit,” there is a large concentration of divested areas in the city. There is very little remodeled or new housing. There are little to no services like grocery stores or shopping areas.

These areas are populated by an overwhelming majority of Black residents.

It would appear on the surface that many Black Detroiters who reside in “Detroit” would feel outraged. Yet, in my findings, the Black Detroiters that I spoke with understood that in order to have any chance of basic necessities like safe neighborhoods and financial investment in local infrastructure and public schools, Detroit needs white people. They see more than anyone the complicated entanglements of Black Detroit performativity within racial social spaces that tie them to divested physical places in the city.

The field of performance studies offers researchers a myriad of ways to elucidate how

Black identity is co-constituted in racial social and physical spaces with varied effects on how

Black Detroiters see themselves. In the field of human and social geography, and environmental psychology, the connection among place attachment and racial social spaces offer additional iv opportunities to see the symbolic and material ways that racism is embedded in the spatiality of social life. In this study, I found that racial social space as materiality can help researchers epistemologically understand how racism permeates and affects the ways in which Black

Detroiters co-constitute performances of self. In this dissertation, I took an ethnographic look at how Black Detroit residents are performatively co-constituting their identities within racial social and physical spaces that call attention to the race and economic socio-geographical shifts that displace them.

For my Lil’ Mama.

Two Broke Girls Forever.

Windell D. Middlebrooks Jr.

1979 – 2015

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you first and foremost to my husband, Maurice Gibbs. His encouragement and support have made the difference in my life. You are my best friend, confidant, and my love in this life and the next. Thank you to my children, Evy Mensah and James Gibbs, for your patience throughout this process. You are my sun, moon, and stars. Mommy loves you always. Thank you to our OLE daughter at St. Olaf College, Shaquille Brown ‘19. Thank you so much for being there for my children while I was tucked away from home working on this project.

Thank you to aunt and uncle, Helen Johnson, Dr. James Johnson (deceased) for your continuous support and encouragement. You helped foster my interest in learning from an early age. Thank you for always being there for me. I love you both always. A special thank you to my cousin, Dr. LaToya Smith-Jones, for reading drafts and offering encouragement. Thank you so much, Mommy (Evelyn Cowin) and Marcus Cowin. You both mean so much to me. Mommy, thank you for your guidance and love. You have always fostered empathy, kindness, and my curiosity about the world. I am grateful for the scarifies you made for me. You are and have always been a Very Good Mother. Thank you.

Marcus and Marta, this project would never have been as enriched had it not been for your constant support. Marta, our discussions about Detroit and the underground club scene was so impactful and really helped to enrich this project. Marcus, you opened the door for me to create meaningful relationships with the Black Detroiters who appeared in this project. I am eternally grateful to you.

Thank you so to my committee Dr. Jonathan Chambers, Dr. Kenneth Thompson, and

Professor and Associate Dean Marcus Sherrell for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read and offer advice and feedback. vii

While every faculty member with whom I have studied at BGSU has influenced my scholarship, I am especially thankful and grateful for my advisor and mentor, Dr. Lesa Lockford.

She has extended so much grace and support for my work on this document. I am eternally appreciative for all you have done to help usher and guide me through this process, as well as providing mentorship in my career as an academic and scholar. I also want to thank, Dr.

Jonathan Chambers and Prof. Sara Chambers. It was in Dr. Chambers graduate course on

Modernism that I discovered my lifelong love for the theatrical work of Zora Neale Hurston. In

Prof. Sara Chambers, I found a mentor and friend. I will always be eternally grateful for their encouragement, inclusivity, and faith in me.

Thank you to my graduate cohort: Dr. Angie Stacer Spaulink and Dr. Matthew Nicosia for our comradery and inclusive community. To my BGSU family and Bowling Green community: Tobias Spears, Dr. Kiesha Hicks, Clitha Mason, Dr. Ray Plaza, Dr. Dafina-Lazarus

Stewart, Dr. Quincy Thomas, Dr. Becca McNeely, Seung-A Lee, Alissa McGregor, and Dr.

Kevin Calcamp, The Jerome Learning Commons, Pastor Thomas B. Mellott (St. Paul United

Methodist Church of Findlay, OH), First United Methodist Church of Bowling Green, and The

Yaniga Family. Thank you so much for providing warm hugs, friendship, intellectually stimulating conversations, and free babysitting on those days when I needed it the most.

Thank you to my students and colleagues in the Department of Theater at St. Olaf

College: Dr. Karen Peterson Wilson. Dr. William Sonnega, Prof. Brian Bjorklund, Prof. Todd

Edwards, Dr. Bryan Schmitt, Jeanne Hatle, and Ryan Cleasby for their unending care and support. Additional thanks to my colleagues at St. Olaf: Pastor Matthew Marhol, Dr. Joan

Hepburn, Dr. Jennifer Kwon-Dobbs, Dr. Hassell Morrison, Dean Marci Sortor, Associate Dean

Dan Dressen, Dr. Kent McWilliams, Prof. Irve Dell, and Professor Emerita Mary Griep. Special viii

thanks to Dr. María C. Pabón Gautier, Dr. Livi Yoshioka-Maxwell, Dr. Diane LeBlanc, Dr. Rika

Ito, Dr. Paul Briggs, Faith Briggs, Dr. Vivian Choi, Dr. Jill Watson, Prof. Sequoia Nagamatsu,

Dr. Elodie Marlier, Prof. Arneshia L. Williams, Dr. Kristina Medina-Vilariño, Dr. Lisa Moore,

Christopher Hoffman, Sara Kathleen Henry, Julie Larson, Nyagua Tut I, Pastors Rachel and

Jerad Morey and my entire Northfield United Methodist Church Family, Nathan and Michele

Knutson, and Bruce King.

Thank you to my Northfield writing group, Joan Ennis, Pastor Mary Keen, Julie Ryan,

and Heidi Chadwick, for your emotional support of this project. Thank you for letting me read

drafts to you, your helpful feedback, and for sharing space with me to bemoan when there were

so many times I wanted to give up. You all have been such a wonderful source of support and

love. Extra special thanks to my Ole writing buddy and accountability partner, Dr. Joanne

Quimby. I am so grateful for working relationship, and more importantly our friendship.

Thank you to my confidants and friends for life: Sheila Williams, Tami Williams,

Christina Yaniga, Dragomira Koleva-Zhecheva, Heidi Chadwick, Dr. Kelly Figueroa-Rey, and

Pastor Katherine Fick. I would never have finished this project without your love and encouragement. You all moved heaven and earth to see me and my family through this process. I owe you all so much and am eternally grateful for you every day.

Finally, thank you so much to my co-performers who appear in this project, Tony White,

LaKisha Trice, Marquita Holloway, Dr. James Johnson (deceased), Pastor Raynard Sims, Cheryl

Jackson, Darryl Davis, Lonnie Thomas, Jelesa R. Earby, Derrek Lee, Marcus Webb Cowin, City

Council Member-at-Large Janeé Ayers, Jennifer Harge, Haleem “Stringz” Rasul, and Pamela

Hilliard Owens. You all opened your hearts and homes to me on this journey. I will cherish the time we spent together and will carry your stories with me always. ix

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Central Research Questions and Objective ...... 4

The Motor City Is Burning: Historical Overview ...... 7

Methods and Principle Sources of Data ...... 10

Analyzing Fieldwork ...... 13

Limitations ...... 15

Specialized Terms and Concepts ...... 16

Review of Literature ...... 18

Chapter Preview ...... 24

CHAPTER 2. THE WHITE PHANTOMIC SPACE: AFFECTIVE GEOGRAPHY,

BLACK IDENTITY, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF BLACKNESS IN POST-

RECESSION DETROIT ...... 27

Phantomic Space ...... 31

Participant Background Summary ...... 33

The Preservation Detroit Walking Tour - Tony White ...... 37

Racialized Perceptions of The Other Can Inform a Social Reality ...... 46

Policing the Boundaries of Blackness...... 53

The Psychological Tax ...... 61

Neighbors in Transit ...... 65

Conclusion ...... 74

CHAPTER 3. BLACK MASCULINE SUPREMACY: THE PERFORMANCE OF

REAL NIGGAS AND BAD BITCHES AT THE 2014 ULTIMATE WHITE PARTY

MIDWEST EDITION ...... 78

Evening, Saturday, July 21, 2014 ...... 78

Black Masculine Supremacy...... 86

The White Party ...... 90

Race, Class, Gender, and Place-Making ...... 92

“No More Dicks!”: Black Female Spectatorship Redefined ...... 96

The Performance of Bad Bitch ...... 100

Nevertheless, She Persisted ...... 109

CHAPTER 4. MADE IN DETROIT: DANCE, RACE, AND BLACK CULTURAL

IDENTITIES IN POST-RECESSION DETROIT...... 112

Hustle For History, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History,

September 2015 ...... 112

The Jit...... 122

Jit Footwork ...... 125

Haleem “Stringz” Rasul ...... 127

Jennifer Harge ...... 131

Black Death and Identity ...... 136

The Use of Text in Harge Dance Stories ...... 144

Representing Community in the Dance Stories ...... 146

Conclusion ...... 152

CHAPTER 5. THE POLITICS OF REBIRTH IN POST-RECESSION DETROIT...... 156 xi

Identity, Place-Attachment, and Black Detroit Residency ...... 159

The Making of Detroit-Brand Blackness ...... 160

From Post-Recession Toward Post-Industrial Detroit ...... 162

Epilogue: The Drones of Midtown ...... 162

A White Detroit for Black Detroiters...... 166

WORKS CITED ...... 173

APPENDIX A. HSRB INFORMED CONSENT ...... 188

APPENDIX B. HSRB CONTINUING REVIEW ...... 197

APPENDIX C. HSRB SURVEYS ...... 205

APPENDIX D. HSRB INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 242 xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

2.1 Tony White’s selfie wall photographed in 2014 ...... 37

2.2 Photograph of Cass Corridor in Detroit 1999 ...... 48

2.3 Detroit's Cass Corridor makes way for new era (2015) ...... 49

2.4 Photograph of LaKisha Trice in 2014 ...... 53

2.5 Photograph of Pastor Raynard Sims in front of an abandoned house in his

neighborhood in 2014 ...... 65

4.1 Jit footwork move called “The Walk” ...... 125

4.2 Jit footwork moves called “The Strike, Jazzit, and Tone” ...... 125

4.3 Self-portrait photograph of Haleem “Stringz” Rasul ...... 127

4.4 Jennifer Harge in Cussin and Praying (2016), a movement from The

(Her)Stor(Ies) Project...... 131

4.5 Jennifer Harge in WIGS: A Book of Dance Poems (2015), a movement from The

(Her)Stor(Ies) Project...... 131

4.6 Movement from Fly | Drown (2019) ...... 132

4.7 Movement from WIGS: A Book of Dance Poems (2015) ...... 133

4.8 There Are No People Here (2013), a movement from The Here Project ...... 137

4.9 The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) a movement from The Here Project .... 138

4.10 Dancers hold themselves in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) ...... 146

4.11 A noose hangs on stage between performers in The Line Between Heaven and

Here (2014) ...... 148

4.12 Dancers gather in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) ...... 149 xiii

4.13 Synchronized movement in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) ...... 149

4.14 Dancers disperse The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) ...... 150

4.15 Opening caption from trailer of FLY | DROWN (2019) ...... 152

5.1 Canfield and Prentiss Alley in July 2008 ...... 163

5.2 Canfield and Prentiss Alley remodeled into The Green Alley in June 2014 ...... 163

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

“Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mold it, and those committed to breaking it up; those whose aim is to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow . . . and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes, encouraging us to care only for our stomachs today, without thinking about tomorrow…” - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, “Devil on the Cross”

In Charlie LeDuff's memoir, Detroit: An American Autopsy, he encounters the day-to-day

idiosyncrasies of working the beat in Detroit. As a journalist for The Detroit Newspaper and a

born and bred Detroiter, LeDuff has his pulse on the heartbeat of everyday Detroiters in the

height of the economic recession. In the book while investigating the shooting death of a young

Black girl in January 2008, LeDuff speaks candidly with the dead girl’s grandmother, Big

Martha. The dead girl (Little Martha) was shot in the head while sitting in the backseat eating

chips and sipping on a 7-Eleven Slurpee as she leisurely attends a drive-by shooting with her

friends. LeDuff adequately titles that 2, “Cheaper Than a Movie.” LeDuff describes Big Martha

as a decent church-going woman (206). He describes her small HUD1 home as a place that

chokes with the “musty smell of fear so common in Detroit” (206). Pictures of Jesus Christ, the

Obamas, and a glass menagerie filled with owls and eagles adorn her living room, but there are

no pictures of her family members (207). According to LeDuff, Big Martha sobs on and off as

she recounts her history: migrating from Mississippi to Detroit in 1977, living on social security,

and too poor to bury her granddaughter whose remains reside in a scratched-up urn next to the

toilet paper in Big Martha’s linen closet (208). LeDuff’s discomfort is revealed in how he chain

1 HUD is an acronym for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. A HUD home is a home wherein the Department of Housing and Urban Development has financially helped the owners with the purchase of the home and/or provided fiscal education to the homeowners. 2

smokes after continuously urging her not to call him “Mr. Charlie.”2 Reading this chapter, I feel the weight of LeDuff’s discomfort as he was precariously positioned under the weight of his multiple privileges in Big Martha’s house. Finally, LeDuff moves to leave, at which point Big

Martha asks for a favor. He writes,

I wanted to do something to help this woman. She was my forebear in some way, my

auntie, trapped and scared and bunking with a zombie.3 I offered to find her the money to

bury Little Martha.

“That’d be a beautiful thing, Mr. Charlie.”

“Please, just Charlie.”

“Okay then, Charlie. But you know something. Charlie? I’d much rather have a car. I

mean to get around, you know? Maybe a van. Can you help me with a van? White people

got nice cars for sale in they yards. I’m sure you know a lot of white people with a van.”

(LeDuff 210)

From LeDuff’s description of Big Martha, I can clearly picture her countenance as LeDuff would

have me read her performance of self: soft, frail, and simple. Instead, what if in Big Martha’s

performance of self, she knows exactly her effect on Charlie? I do not believe Big Martha is

ignorant of Charlie’s race, class, and gender. As Charlie’s physical discomfort is revealed

through his protestations against being continuously referred to as “Mr. Charlie,” Big Martha

2 Mr. Charlie is a pejorative term in some African American communities to refer to a white man of affluence and/or power (Green 948).

3 In LeDuff’s memoir Detroit: An American Autopsy, Big Martha lives with her daughter (Little Martha’s mother). She enters the scene from her bedroom during LeDuff’s visit. She carries a small radio and a cigarette. As she lights the cigarette, her hair catches fire. She pats the wig without alarm. She mumbles to LeDuff how she should have stayed in school and “...maybe it’s not too late to go back and learn a trade” (207). LeDuff nods. Pacified, Little Martha’s mother shuffles back into her bedroom. LeDuff describes her physical presence as lethargic, empty, and caught in a sort of mental and physical purgatory (207). She exists in a liminal space between the living and the dead. 3

seems to appeal to Charlie’s white masculinity,4 in ways that are inherently tied to assumptions

she holds about him as a white man. This response that typifies the performance of race and

class-consciousness.

People generally make assumption about other people’s behaviors and what those

behaviors might mean all the time. Such a claim is particularly felt in the United States where

social issues like race, class, and gender are often tied to representation and performativity. In

Erving Goffman’s theory of self-presentation, he notes that tension underlies social interaction as

individuals employ predictive devices such as visual cues and expressive gestures as a way of

knowing the other (Erving. Goffman). Goffman points to the dialogical methods of social

interactions that are active among people in daily discourse (21). In each interaction, there is a

co-constitution of behavior that seeks to reify our understanding of the other.

The presentation of self is not always only co-constituted in racialized social interactions between performers. The racialization of space and place also physically as well as emotionally affect the ways in which performativity is co-constituted through this making of space and place.

In their article, “Social Geographies of Race: Connecting Race,” Brooke Neely and Michelle

Samura state,

Racial interactions and processes (e.g. identities, inequalities, conflicts and so on)

are about how we collectively make and remake, over time and through ongoing

contestation, the spaces we inhabit. In turn, the making and remaking of space is

also about the making and remaking of race. (Neely and Samura)

What becomes clear in Neely and Samura’s article, is that in their theory of racial social space,

linking of race and space offers us opportunities to see the symbolic and material ways that

4 I chose to use the phrase “LeDuff’s white masculinity” to suggest that the characteristics of LeDuff’s image assume power based on his race and sex. 4

racism is embedded in the spatiality of social life (1945). For example, the term “Jim Crow” is

both a symbolic representation of white supremacy and the physical policing of space that uses

violence to keep Blacks from entering white social life. In urban spaces of the north, Jim Crow

laws are not as pronounced but the regulating of Blacks to spaces outside of white social life is a

process of making and remaking physical space. We can see this mostly clearly in red-lining

laws that displace Black residents for the purpose of creating and maintaining white social space.

I do not see Charlie LeDuff’s interaction with Big Martha as a white supremacist

remaking of physical space. Yet, I can see how Big Martha’s calling Charlie “Mr. Charlie” is an

emotional shift of power dynamics that affect the social space in her living room. This emotional

shift is material. It has the same power to affect Charlie and Big Martha as if they physically

touched each other. Once Charlie is “Mr. Charlie,” the social space in Big Martha’s house shifts

their performances of self as well. So, how does Big Martha understand herself as a Black

Detroiter in the presence of “Mr. Charlie”? How does she constitute her Black identity in the social spaces that she and “Mr. Charlie” and other “Mr. Charlies” share? In this dissertation, I explore how social space is material because it permeates and affects the ways in which Black

Detroiters constitute performances of self in racial space and place.

Central Research Questions and Objective

In this dissertation, my central research question is how do various Black Detroit identities constitute performances of self in race, social space, and places in Detroit following the recession of 2008 . The history of racial inequity in the city also contributes to how Black

Detroiters negotiate their identities in racial social spaces, and places in the city. To which, I ask, given the history of “white flight” and white gentrification and current corporate strong-holds in

Detroit, predominately in the creation of white economic spaces in the city, how are Black 5

Detroit residents performatively constituting their identities in relation to racial social space and

place in the city? How are they “showing doing” that impacts the various ways they see

themselves? Can the racial and socio-geographical shifts in Detroit provide epistemological

insights for how Black Detroiters constitute their identities in Post-Recession Detroit? In this

project, I seek to contribute to the field of performance studies by looking at the varied ways in

which Black bodies performatively interpret and respond to racial social space and place in Post-

Recession Detroit.

Detroit’s birth, numerous contentious military occupations, early vibrant cityscape, fiscal declines, racial upheavals, and urban decay has marked the city as a space for which rebirth and renewal is achievable, if not inevitable. Yet, the history of coveting Detroit’s borders by initiating aggressively segregated and homogenized practices has had a lasting impact on the ways in which some Black Detroiters see themselves and others. In Meagan Michelle Elliot’s doctoral thesis, Imagined Boundaries: Discordant Narratives of Place and Displacement in

Contemporary Detroit, she examines how current residents and non-residents with various ties to

Detroit make sense of space and place in the city. These experiences and views of Detroit, she asserts, are marked by “mnemonic remembrances”5 of Detroit’s Urban Renewal plan between

the 1940s through the 1970s. The occurrence of these memories or retellings are affective for

Elliot’s participants even though many of them did not experience life during those eras. This

difference between her project and mine is that she does not directly consider performance as a

way of constituting specific views. She does includes Derek Hyra’s theory of “cultural

displacement”. In Hyra’s article, “The Back-To-The-City Movement: Neighbourhood

5 Elliot does not specifically define her use of the term “mnemonic remembrances”; however, she does cite several sources that help her clarify how for residents and non-residents the memory or retelling of urban renewal in Detroit became solidified and unchanged in their understanding of the space (Elliott 47). 6

Redevelopment and Processes of Political and Cultural Displacement,” he defines cultural displacement as,

When the norms, behaviours and values of the new resident cohort dominate and prevail

over the tastes and preferences of long-term residents. While there can be points of

common ground between old and new residents in redeveloping neighbourhoods, often

newcomers seek to establish new norms, behaviours and amenities that align with their

desires. If this occurs long-term residents may find their community does not resemble

the place they once knew and may no longer identify with their neighbourhood. With

decreased attachment to place, low and moderate-income residents might opt to leave

economically transitioning neighbourhoods, converting them rapidly into homogenous

enclaves, instead of integrated, mixed-income neighbourhoods. (1754)

The cultural displacement of Black residents in Detroit due to gentrification is explored in

Turning the Corner, a 2018 report from Data Driven Detroit. In Turning the Corner, researchers, using ethnography, identify and attempt to map real-time patterns of “transformational change” to various neighborhoods in Detroit (Data Driven Detroit). Transformational change refers to the ways in which certain neighborhoods, in comparison to others, have the potential to generate population and economic growth. This change could, according to researchers, change the demographics of a community of which can shift the socioeconomic balance as well (Data

Driven Detroit). The change in demographics and socioeconomic balance can also affect cultural practices that help form a community’s identity. These are all practices that potentially generate the gentrification of a community.

The Turning the Corner report helps researchers, city planners, and Detroit residents anticipate gentrification, and help city planners qualitatively think about the effect of commercial 7 investment in some Detroit communities. This research also has the potential to encourage city planners and commercial investors to think holistically about the ways to invest in neighborhoods. This thinking could potentially support existing communities and generate inclusionary efforts to invite cultural exchange to take place in communities that can prevent gentrification.

The Turning the Corner report, is based on over 60 interviews and focus group sessions, and seems to support a desire for some Detroit residents to recognize the complications that exist when considering space, place, and race in Detroit. These complications are further compounded when we think contextually about the impact on identity construction and behavior when considerations of space and place are racialized and/or marginalized. Additionally, performativity can inform how a neighborhood can be transformed into a community, how it can be dismantled in Detroit, if we consider how racialization splinters identity construction, which can lead to marginalization practices within one’s community.

The Motor City Is Burning: Historical Overview

The integration and segregation of race, culture, and space in Detroit has a familiar pattern of predictable catastrophic events. From its inception in 1701, Detroit is, and has been, a contested social space. Once a French controlled military trading post in the late 17th century, it became a traffic hub to British, French, French-Canadian, Jesuits, and various North American

Indigenous tribes all seeking access to the fur trade (Boles). For the sake of profit and financial gain, the first commissioner of Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit, Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, frequently encouraged warring North American Indigenous tribes to live in the vicinity of the city so that there could be as many people as possible contributing to the fledging success of the fur trade industry. The earliest major conflict among the tribes was in 1703 (just two years into settlement) when two warring tribes burned down part of the fort. When it looked like the 8 outpost would not be as profitable as the French once thought, they abandoned the settlement and left the residents on their own. Detroit lost almost half of its population between 1701 – 1727 and more than 80 percent of its military by 1740 (Boles). However, when it looked like the British were winning the Seven-Year War against France, Detroit came back into favor with the French.

The French eventually lost the war and Detroit became a spoil for the British. As the fur trade headed west, so too were the British leaving Detroit and the French and Native Indigenous

Detroiters without a care.

The Americans, having officially acquired Detroit after the Revolutionary War, saw an opportunity to expand the sale of land to white Americans in the territory. The existing Detroiters administratively fought with city government to block the Americans or “Bostonians”6 from selling farmland that under both French and British rule belonged to all Detroiters to grow food and raise animals. Detroiters fought back and lost each battle that was meant to shift the culture of the city from a collective community to that of the individual wealthy elites. Many French,

North American Indigenous tribes, and British Detroiters moved across the river on the Canadian side, which today would be Windsor, Ontario.

In 1805, The Great Fire destroyed all of the buildings and houses in Detroit, sans the

Riverfront warehouse, of which the city moto and flag were formed, “Speramus meliora; resurgent cineribus” or “We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes” (A. Lee). After the War of 1812 and the finished construction of the Erie Canal in 1825, Detroit became an epicenter for new settlers. The once dominate French and Native Indigenous communities faded as a new crop of white Protestant New England Americans settled and transformed Detroit into

“a supply center for an agriculturally oriented state” (Boles).

6 Nickname given to the local Americans by the French settlers. 9

As the city transformed pre-1865, culture clashes turned racial around 1860. Detroit was a common stop on the Underground Railroad, which increased the Black population in the city

(Boles). Detroit’s first race riot was in 1863, when two young white women accused an African

American man of sexual assault (Kundinger). White Detroiters took to the streets and destroyed homes and businesses occupied by Black Detroiters. Much of the resentment was political unrest surrounding the Civil War, the strong influx of African Americans from the South, and the competition for jobs in the labor market. The second major race riot was 80 years later in 1943, when under the similar circumstances of political unrest surrounding ethnic whites immigrating to the U.S., they clashed with African Americans in Southern states migrating to Detroit and created housing and job market competition. For three days white and Black Detroiters skirmished on the streets. On the third day, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a state of emergency and 6,000 army troops with tanks commanded the city (Detroit Historical Society).

Fast forward, 24 years later to the infamous 1967 Detroit Riots,7 from which some parts of the city never truly recovered (McGraw).

In Detroit Divided, Farley et al. note that part of Detroit’s history includes residential isolationism as a norm. “In the two decades following World War II, a series of ‘turf wars’ broke out in Detroit neighborhoods as Blacks and Whites contested who could live where” (Farley et al. 9). Although neighborhood segregation is not isolated to only Detroit, there is a trend, as

Farley et al., note in terms of the large-scale white flight that depopulated the city (an 85 percent

7 Same circumstances as the 1863 and 1943 which contributed to the civil unrest and violence. Additionally, in 1967 almost 70 percent of the Detroit Police Dept. was white. Incidents of racist violence perpetrated against Black Detroiters were common. Of which there is no surprise that the inciting incident for the 1967 riots was when a group of white police officers raided an illegal home bar during the swelter of a summer heat wave. 10

drop since 1950). Detroit is surrounded by an overwhelmingly white suburban ring, which makes

its racial divide significant (9–10).

Methods and Principle Sources of Data

I employed ethnographic methods in interviewing and analysis for this project. To

develop my research protocol, I referred to Steinar Kvale and Svend Brinkmann’s InterView:

Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. This text provided an assessible entry

point for me in terms of how to create interview questions, surveys, as well as suggestions for

how to analyze interviews once complete. My first step in beginning ethnographic fieldwork for

this project was employing the use of electronic and paper surveys. My initial goal was to send

electronic surveys via email on social media asking for male and female Black Detroiters to

share their experiences of living and working in the city. I wanted Black Detroit residents and

former Black Detroit residents across a range of demographics including, but not limited to

income, educational background, occupation, marital status, and residential neighborhood. My

hope was the online and paper surveys would help increase the presence of my research project,

and thereby help me attract more participants who might not be interested in speaking to me in

person but felt more comfortable replying anonymously.

Yet, once the survey was posted and I began to read the feedback, I knew I had made a

mistake. The survey responses were pithy and appeared detached. I knew this mode of inquiry

would not be what I needed, if I was going to attempt to explore what Victor Turner’s has

identified as a central aspect of human being, that humans are performing beings, or as he defines it in his germinal text, The Anthropology of Performance, we are “homo performans”

(Turner, The Anthropology of Performance 81). Turner points to the ways in which humans are

self-performing beings because as we perform, we reflectively reveal ourselves to our self. I 11

needed the in-person interviews and conversations to make meaningful connections whereby I

could see how the shifting terrain was truly affecting my co-performers.

D. Soyini Madison’s second edition of Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and

Performance, became an invaluable source about methods in the field of performance studies and social theory. The book frames performance as a method of inquiry throughout the ethnographic process. Madison asks for ethnographers to consider how performance relates to everyday shared experiences:

Once an experience presses forward from the field of the mundane, it moves to

expression; it is no longer a personal reality, but a shared one. What we experience is

most often whatever needed to be expressed, whether through story, gossip, or humor on

the one end, or poetry, novel, or film on the other. (167)

Madison’s book helped me develop the potentiality for conversations to happen with my participants who eventually (over several months) became close friends. Madison muses,

Moreover, it is through dialogue and meeting with others that I am most fully myself.

The wonderful paradox in the ethnographic moment of dialogue and otherness is that

communion with another brings the self-more fully into being and, in doing so, opens you

to know others more fully. (11)

I wanted to generate meaningful conversations with participants, yet I also needed to be practical about time while in the field. I asked a series of open-ended questions early in the conversation

and saved more structured questions for toward the end, always with the hope that something I

asked would help invigorate a lull in the conversation. It almost always did.

Another method that I found useful when approaching fieldwork and interviewing is in

the discipline of social anthropology. “Affective Geography” is an ethnographic approach 12 developed by Yael Navaro-Yashin in her book The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity. It is a way of interviewing that offers ways of knowing how subjectivity is formed within fraught and conflicted political fields and in distinct cultural contexts (25). In other words, material objects only become felt and known to us as human beings when we engage with them through mediation and qualification (203). Once in the field, Yael Navaro-

Yashin asks participants to engage with several objects available in the space. They generate casual conversations with participants on how they use particular objects in the everyday. Using thick description, she notes how the participants handle certain objects and the look and feel of those objects as noted by the participants. Navaro-Yashin attempts to determine the intensity of the objects’ transmissive affects. We come to know more about her participants and about the cities in which they live simply from how they interact with the available objects. I build from

Navaro-Yashin’s work by looking at how affective geography can be interpreted outside of physical materiality. What are other ways of knowing that could inform the physical material world? In this project, I analyze how performance in everyday life does or does not elucidate

Black Detroit identities within a racialized and gendered landscape. As a result, I want to see how participants viscerally feel about the spaces and places in Detroit, of which they all had varying levels of familiarity. I also wanted to be in the same spaces and places with participants in an effort for me to, as D. Soyini Madison infers, recognize my positionality as the co- performer and negotiate ways of interpreting my belonging8 (16). So although I did not ask participants to touch, feel, or hold material objects during interviews, I did ask for all interviews to take place in their home or a living space that made them “feel the most comfortable” and

8 D. Soyini Madison defines “belonging” as the various relations and locations of where and how we find connections with others, and how negotiating those connections define how we think, feel, and see the world around us (16). 13 select a place outside of the living space that made them feel most like a resident of Detroit.

Having conversations in these various spaces and places, I think, sometimes brought about intimate conversations in the most public of places. And other times, the robust and toughest conversations occurred in the most sanctified and peaceful of spaces.

Analyzing Fieldwork

I used two methods of analysis in reviewing notes after my fieldwork was complete. (1)

Kvale and Brinkmann’s thinking about “The Qualitative Stance” (2) Della Pollack’s “Six

Excursions into Performative Writing”. Kvale and Brinkmann in Interviews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing describes “The Qualitative Stance” as a method of inquiry that “focuses on the cultural, every day, and situated aspects of human thinking, learning, knowing, acting, and ways of understanding ourselves as persons, and it [the stance] is opposed to ‘technified’ approaches to the study of human lives” (12). In the field, I attempted to engage in

Dwight Conquergood’s theory of “Dialogic Performance” wherein the participant and I (as co- performers) are committed to making meaning together that resists aesthetic distance

(Conquergood, “Performing as a Moral Act” 398). While analyzing field notes and reviewing interviews, I attempt to resist the need to find absolute truths in our conversations. In Stephen

Frosh’s article, “Disintegrating Qualitative Research,” he argues for a balance in how ethnographers explore the potential fragmentation of interview analysis and the integration of meaning on behalf of their participants:

Qualitative research lives in the tension between, on the one hand, a deconstructionist

framework in which the human subject is understood as positioned in and through

competing discourses and, on the other, a humanistic framework in which the integrity of

the subject is taken to be both a starting- and end-point of analysis. (639) 14

As a result, I do not augment any of the language regarding what my participants say. I have included some ellipses and dashes to represent how participants spoke the word rather than just transcribing what they said. For example, in the following passage, I have included ellipses to represent our pauses in the conversation and how our thoughts draw out toward new or even unknown conclusions:

LAKISHA: I'm a part of it. I was born here. I don't know. I don't have nothing to

pinpoint and say that I am . . . I just like the water. I like the water

because God walked the water, he split the sea. That's the only reason I

like the water. But not for me to jump in it, not for me to wanna swim in

it. I just like being near it, to clear my mind. I don't have nothing else to do

with Detroit.

MICHELLE: Besides the fact that you were born here...

LAKISHA: Live here.

MICHELLE: And you live here.

LAKISHA: Yeah. 'Cause I gotta abide by their law . . . their rules. It's everywhere you

go, you gotta abide. But I'm not that type of person that wrap myself into

the city. I don't... okay, that's what's going on, or let me go vote for this.

No. (Trice)

In the second method for reviewing fieldnotes specifically, I use Della Pollock’s Six

Excursions into Performative Writing. I do not engage with all of them or even performatively write at all times throughout the document, rather there are moments in this document when I want to note the points of contestation between myself and my co-performers. Pollock states, 15

Performative writing is thus both a means and an effect of conflict. It is particularly

(paradoxically) “effective.” It forms itself in the act of speaking/writing. It reflects in its

own forms, in its own fulfillment of form, in what amount to its performance of itself, a

particular, historical relation (agnostic, dialogic, erotic) between author-subjects, reading

subjects, and subjects written/read. Performative writing is thus no more and no less

formally intelligible than a road sign or a landmark: its styles may be numbered, taught,

and reproduced, but its meanings are contextual. It takes its value from the context-map

in which it is located and which it simultaneously marks, determines, transforms. (78)

At some points in the document, I use various euphemisms, personal reflections, text characters like ellipses and dashes to note the tension and/or in conflict with the arguments presented, sentiments expressed, moments of clarity, moments of confusion, etc. My goal is to hang in the balance as Frosh suggests, and stay in tension, when freeing might be a fearful place to be. These places afford me a point of reflection. According to Jürgen Habermas, “the experience of reflection induced by enlightenment is precisely the act through which the subject frees itself from a state in which it had become an object for itself. This specific activity must be accomplished by the subject itself” (247–48). The moment when performative writing feels right is when I am remembering myself as a Black Detroiter.

Limitations

I limited this project to include Black Detroit residents who are of African ancestry and who are currently living in or formerly lived in Detroit. All participants were 18 years of age or older. Therefore, I did not interview people of other races, ethnicities, or ages. 16

Specialized Terms and Concepts

Black Detroit Identity: In 2013, I met a Black gentleman from Cleveland, Ohio at a

conference. When he found out I was from Detroit, he asked me, “Why come every time I run

into a brotha from Detroit, he wearin’ crocodile shoes?” I looked at the man perplexed. I had no

idea what he was talking about. I didn’t know any Black men from Detroit who consistently

wore crocodile shoes. I said, “Uh, I don’t know, sir…” “No, no, naw…” replied the Black

gentlemen. “I’m telling you every time I meet a man from Detroit his shoes are crocodile.” He

looked at me intently. I looked at him blankly, “I’m not sure that’s a thing in the neighborhood

I’m from.”

I preface this specialized term with that story because there is no one identifier that

encompasses what it means to be Black and from Detroit. Yet, there are some shared cultural

practices that can unify Black Detroiters insomuch as it could be considered part of our ethos.

One such identifier is Motown music, and another could be our shared awareness of the history

of racialized oppression and disenfranchisement. Whereas not all Black Detroiters have

experiences that connect them to these identifiers, most Black Detroiters are familiar enough

with them to see a connection. In this project, I use the term Black Detroit Identity as a blanket term in reference to the shared cultural practices and cultural experiences that create an ethos that can be recognizable to Black Detroiters.

Black, white: Throughout this project, I have chosen to capitalize “Black” because like

Asian, Latinx, and other minoritized individuals and communities, the capitalization acknowledges a specific cultural or ethnic group. As such, “Black” refer to people of African 17

descent and their descendants born and raised in America, unless noted by the locale of origin.

For example, Black Detroiter(s).9

Space and Place: According to Yi-Fu Tuan, space and place have a co-dependent

relationship with each other: “The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition.

From the security and stability of place we are aware of the openness, freedom, and threat of

space, and vice versa” (6). Author John Lutterbie draws on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space and

place as not something that exists, but which is produced and therefore has a history. According

to Lutterbie in “Phenomenology and the Dramaturgy of Space and Place,” “...space comes into

being when nature is territorialized, divided and parceled out according to particular relations of

production, and certain social relations” (124). It is not a fixed form; rather it “is a product of the

interrelation of forces that comes into being only through its production” (125). Thus, Lutterbie

considers space to be a performative and place is the location in which the performative occurs.

Space and place are directly connected to the body and through our actions, as well as through

the actions of the world on our bodies (127).

In this project, I often will refer to space and place as two distinct entities. For the term

“space,” I am referring to an abstract geography that is akin to Michel de Certeau’s theory of

“space as a practiced place” in The Practice of Everyday Life. For me, space is an affective materiality. Whereas, place implies a stable location (Certeau 117). On any given day or time,

the city of Detroit can be both a space and place. As a place, Detroit is an established locale

within hundreds of thousands of established locales within it. As a space, Detroit has room to be

discovered, mapped, and re-mapped in new or reimaged ways. For example, the new River

9 See Lori L. Thraps’ New York Times op-ed, “The Case for Black With a Capital B”, as well as Merrill Perlman’s article in the Columbia Journalism Review, “Black and white: Why Capitalization Matters”. 18

Front’s remodel has turned the location into a space wherein new and old comers can experience

the city in ways that make sense for them.

Review of Literature

My interest in this study is how Black Detroiters perform their identities within Post-

Recession Detroit’s shifted racial and socio-geographical terrain. Detroit has not only shifted

because of the material decline of commercial and residential properties and city streets, but

areas of the city have also experienced a growing influx of white middle-class and affluent

residents, who (as this study will explore) have contributed to how Black Detroiters experience

the city and perhaps come to know themselves. In this dissertation, I posit that the increase in

white Detroiters and the concomitant shift in social geography has created shifts or has informed

ways of performing self. These performances are also imbued with a history of racialization and complicated gender norms in Detroit. There are various studies available in disciplines such as performance studies, human geography, philosophy, and sociology that utilize cultural performativity as an epistemological method. There are also a number of studies conducted about

Black identities, Black gender and sexuality, and Black performativity. My research focus is at the intersection of Black subjectivity, performance, and space and place and how these countervailing aspects inform cultural identity.

I decided to begin with urban sociologist and scholar, Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space and (somewhat) place because his observations are imbued with the politics of materialism, labor, and capitalism that call attention to displacement and gentrification in Post-Recession

Detroit. In the book, The Production of Space, Lefebrve argues that space is a conceptual

construct in the abstract sense of the production of time and knowledge (11). Space can also refer

to material capital, of which humans produce, commodify, and control (13). This “(social) 19 space,” which points to Marxist and Foucauldian leanings, comes with capitalist hegemonic power that has the consumptive ability to transform the social space into “(social) product”

(Lefebvre 13, 26). Lefebvre states, “…space thus produced also serve as a tool of thought and of action; that in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, or power…” (26). The late great urban theorist and critical geographer, Edward W.

Soja, in his book, Postmodern Geographies, also asserts that rather than thinking about the historical and temporal aspects of space, the "making of geography" provides a revealing tactical as well as theoretical approach to understanding subjectivity in the material world (6). "We must insistently be aware of how space can be made to hide consequences from us, how relations of power and discipline are inscribed into the apparently innocent spatiality of social life, how human geographies become filled with politics and ideology" (Soja 6). Lefebvre and subsequently his protégé, Soja, tie space to subjectivity. In this study, I am interested in how

Detroit’s social geography10 maybe informed by race, class, and the making and breaking of place.

From the perspective of place and place-making, Michel de Certeau and Luc, in The

Practice of Everyday Life Vol 2, connects space to geography by examining those modes of social behavior that hail consumerist material practices into being Certeau notes that social geography is created and maintained as individuals perform tactics or “makings” in the everyday such as reading, writing, walking, and shopping. Certeau argues that active social behavior, or performativity, is influential in creating consumptionary practices that privilege and reinforce dominance over societies, which in turn creates a symbiosis of power and reliance, “Everyday life invents itself by poaching in countless way on the property of others” (Certeau xii). I am

10 Social geography is a field of study that is located in the disciple of human geography. 20

drawn to Certeau’s discussion about the tension between “making” and “consuming”. In chapter

two, I explore the ways in which the making and breaking of place can augment social reality,

which potentially affects the constitution of identity and performances of self. Subsequently,

Eugene L. Tettey-Fio offers a clear connection to Soja’s thinking about shifting social

geographies, hegemony, and materiality. In Black American Geographies, Tettey-Fio ties social geography to Black racialization. In Tettey-Fio’s historical analysis of Black social geographies, he examines how white hegemony produced trends in Black migration, racialization, and disenfranchisement in America since Reconstruction through to the 2000 census (81, 83). In the final pages of this study, he links African American ethnicity (specifically) and our subsequent cultural practices to a racialized geography. Tettey-Fio’s view of African Americans as an ethnicity in America that has been largely shaped by our shifted cultural landscapes is thoughtful and provides some perspective on how Black identities and performances of self, therein, could also be shaped by both racialization and changes in social geography (83). Whereas, Tettey-Fio’s is an informative historical overview of how racialization shapes both Black social geographies as well as the cultural practices that ensue from them, Amy Maria Kenyon’s Dreaming

Suburbia: Detroit and the Production of Postwar Space and Culture locates these conversations

of Black identities, racialization, and social geography to specifically Detroit and Detroit’s

suburban space. She explores how race has been historically placed at the center of our

“geographical identities” (4). Kenyon argues that racial inequality in the city creates material

practices that perpetuate suburban idolatry and decentralizes Detroit Black social spaces (4-5).

Her study recognizes the ways in which racial inequalities in Detroit have contextualized an

ideology about the city and its residents that positions the suburbia as a safe space. Kenyon’s

study focuses on how white suburbia perpetuates hegemonic conditions that normalize negative 21 perceptions of Black Detroit. She does not look at specifically how Black Detroiters might performatively draw from those geographical identities in order to trouble them. Yet, George

Galster’s book, Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City remarks on the performative ways Detroiters navigate subjectivity in the city. “Detroiters are active agents. They are not typically passive victims” (42). One of the themes of Galster’s book is uncovering the identity of everyday Detroiters by looking for historical turmoil of inequality, racism, and intolerance to their cultural beginnings in the city. This text is a fascinating study on what Detroit historically produces and how these influence modern Black Detroit identity.

In the process of constituting one's identity, geography can serve as a performance space upon which those identities may be enacted. In Yael Navaro-Yashin’s The Make-Believe Space:

Affective Geography in Post-War Polity, her theory of “the phantomic” is space in the form of phantasmal bodily absence that can lingers in one’s imagination and manifests in our day-to-day experiences (14). The phantasma with materiality (geographical maps, government land offices, etc.) are performative and affect, shift, repurpose, and makes something new in the lives of her participants. Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, in their co-authored text Dispossession: The

Performative in the Political, also consider the ways in which geography and the various forms of materiality perform and inform cultural identity. They examine how the varying degrees at which loss affects one’s sense of ownership of a familiar space. They note how the act of dispossession carries a double meaning in terms of shifting power relationships and creates interdependent beings. In one point that Butler asserts, “In dispossession, we do not simply move ourselves, but are ourselves moved by what is outside us, by others, but also by whatever

“outside” resides in us” (3). Athanasiou counter’s Butler point in the book by arguing that the complexity of the act of being dispossessed should not assume the “affect” of dispossession (5). 22

According to Athanasiou, “The notion of dispossession… is a theoretical trope that might help us

begin to address the fact that dispossession carries the presumption that someone has been

deprived of something that rightfully belongs to them” (5). For me in this study, there are

varying degrees of tension among place-making, displacement, and ownership of space in

Detroit. I see the influx of white bodies and white investment in Detroit as the type of place-

making that consciously or unconsciously displace low-income Black Detroiters – turning what

is place-making for some into displacement and space for others. Given the research on

gentrification in Detroit, this thought is certainly part of the socio-geographic conversation about

who has a right to feel a sense of belonging in the city. However, if considerations about the

impact of racialization are part of the conversation, there should also be an attempt to examine

how the role of racialized perceptions, and performativity therein, can transform space in to a

place for Black Detroiters.

To examine the ways in which Black Detroiters negotiate public space, I perceive it as

an act of survival; to do so, I draw on José Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics for how Muñoz cites performance as a way to resist and reject

(mis)representations of minoritized bodies. He suggests the body is a site of struggle as minority subjects reject essentialist notions of self that are fixated in culture. In his theory of

“disidentification,” Muñoz states there are performative ways in which minoritized bodies and those outside of heteronormative culture reject pejorative dominate ideologies of what it means to be Other (24). Subsequently, ethnomusicologists, Kellie Hay and Rebekah Farrugia explore how Black women in Detroit’s hip hop culture design space to remake place in Detroit. Black females in hip hop culture in Detroit must navigate an often aggressive and hostile terrain that privileges Black male bodies. In their essay, “‘When We Gonna Quit? The 31st Of Never!’: Hip 23

Hop Sounds and Sensibilities in Post-Bankruptcy Detroit,” they explore, in part, how Black

women use hip hop music to progress issues of self-care and community care in light of the

commodification of space and neoliberal economic ideology in post-bankruptcy Detroit. The

authors point out how popular for-profit slogans like “Detroit Hustles Harder” “contributes to the

normalization of the conditions that force entrepreneurialism” (Farrugia and Hay, When We

Gonna Quit?). The woman in Detroit hip hop culture site performance in the form of music

(rhymes, lyrics, and hooks) to push back against “neoliberal revanchism” (Hay and Farrugia).

In Marlon Bailey’s Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom

Culture in Detroit, he describes Detroit as a counter-hegemonic space and the Black and Latino

LGBTQ+ communities that exist in Detroit “a marginalized and fragmented socio-geographic space,” wherein these communities feel their identity splintered among the sociopolitical lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality (13). Bailey suggests that despite the minoritarian sphere for which these communities are situated in post-recession Detroit,11 there exist communities that

engage in cultural labor that help to constitute and reify Black and Latino LGBTQ+ identities in

Detroit (27). Although, my study does not examine Black LGBTQ+ Detroiters or Detroit

communities, Bailey’s ethnography offers the multiple ways to examine the Black LGBTQ+

Detroit identities and helps me see how these identities are reified through cultural labor, and are

implicitly part of the Detroit ethos (27). Often times, according to Bailey, ballroom culture can

recreate the same hierarchical and exclusionary practices that the community seeks to combat

(27).

11 Bailey’s study was conducted between 2001 – 2007, and as such, it concludes right before the height of the Great Recession. 24

Chapter Preview

In this dissertation, my central research question is how do various Black Detroit

identities constitute performances of self in racial spaces and places in Detroit following the

recession of 2008 . The history of racial inequity in the city also contributes to how Black

Detroiters negotiate their identities in racial social spaces and places in the city. To which, I ask,

given the history of “white flight” and white gentrification and current corporate strong-holds in

Detroit, predominately in the creation of white economic spaces in the city, how are Black

Detroit residents performatively constituting their identities in relation to racial social space and

place in the city? How are they “showing doing” that impacts the various ways they see

themselves? Can the racial and socio-geographical shifts in Detroit provide epistemological

insights for how Black Detroiters constitute their identities in Post-Recession Detroit? In this

project, I seek to contribute to the field of performance studies by examining the varied ways in

which Black bodies performatively interpret and respond to racial social space and place in Post-

Recession Detroit.

In order to answer this question, each chapter focuses on how Detroit as a racial space

affect the ways in which Black Detroiters constitute their identities in various performances of

self. I explore their experiences, as well as mine as a former Black Detroit, and how their

identities and the ways they see and understand themselves as Black Detroiters shift in, out, and

between various racial social spaces and places in the city. Finally, I contextualize these

experiences to Detroit’s history of race, gender, and class dynamics in terms of how social issues

inform various performances of self among Black Detroiters.

In chapter 2, “The White Phantomic Space: Affective Geography, Black Identity, and

The Performance of Blackness in Post-Recession Detroit,” I look at how race and social space 25 viscerally affect Black identity in ways that don’t always differ from how material objects affect.

I frame race, social space, and place attachment through the lens of Yael Navaro-Yashin’s theory of Phantomic Space to understand how Detroit, and white Detroit residents, have the ability to affect Black Detroit identity. The affect is much like a haunting, in that it is not always seen but emotionally felt experiences that manifest in various racial, class and gender-based performances of self. I also examine my experiences in the field with three Black Detroit residents who have various relationships with the city of Detroit and white Detroiters in which their place- attachment varies across and in-between racial social place and place. Given the ways in which these residents navigate the city and the increase in white Detroit residents since the end of the recession, I consider what these changes might mean for Black Detroit identity.

In chapter 3, “Black Masculine Supremacy: The Performance of Real Niggas and Bad

Bitches at the 2014 White Party: Midwest Edition,” there are various ways Black Detroiters reclaim space to claim a place in Detroit. Race and the coopting of space become conditions for how Black Detroiters negotiate Detroit Black community. It is also how they police the boundaries of blackness and black woman-ness in Detroit. In the chapter, I explore how race and class disparity as well as gender normative expectations can divide Black men and women in post-recession Detroit. I also broadly engage hip hop culture in America and more locally in

Detroit for how it often renders evident race and gender dynamics among Black folks in Detroit.

In chapter 4, “Made in Detroit: Dance, Race, and Black Cultural Identities in Post-

Recession Detroit,” I focus on how creative practices such as dance can challenge and disrupt racial space into Black place. I follow two Black Detroit dance artists who are negotiating Black subjectivity and using their creative practice to foster Black cultural identities in a reclamation of

Black space and place in Detroit. 26

Finally, in the concluding chapter, I reflect on my time in the field while also summarizing and surmising my chapter research findings, with thoughts on where the research in this project can and should go next. 27

CHAPTER 2. THE WHITE PHANTOMIC SPACE: AFFECTIVE GEOGRAPHY, BLACK

IDENTITY, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF BLACKNESS IN POST-RECESSION

DETROIT

“In one's own place, it floats like a secret perfume, which speaks of a lost time, of time that will never be regained, which speaks also of an other time yet to come, one day, perhaps.” - Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard, "Practice of Everyday Life: Volume 2: Living and Cooking"

According to Ashild Lappegard Hauge, in her article “Identity and Place: A Critical

Comparison of Three Identity Theories,” many factors, such as genetic, social, cultural, and

shape identity (44). People can become physically invested in a place when they find factors

about an environment with which they can identify. As physical investment in a place grows,

people begin to identify with these environments at a larger scale (nation and city) and/or at a

smaller scale (e.g. neighborhood, home) (Hauge 44). Place becomes more than a social reference

or a marker that says where I come from or where I am; rather, place is an influential factor for

how people come to understand who they believe themselves to be (Hauge 44). Hauge asserts,

“People personalize their homes and workplaces with decorations, so that their houses and

garden reflect and communicate who they are” (44). Hauge calls this place attachment and

defines it as the feelings people develop toward built environments that are highly familiar or

toward places to which people feel they belong (45) Environmental psychologist, Monica

Lewika, states that our emotional bonds to places can “help to overcome identity crises and

[give] people the sense of stability they need in the ever changing world” (211). Place attachment can create the illusion of security, as it is often bound up in meanings that associate familiar sites with a sense of emotional authenticity (Massey 5). The relationship among identity and place, according to Proshansky et. al, the home is considered to be the place of greatest emotional 28

significance and is connected to thoughts of rootedness and settlement (60). For example,

common phrases and lyrics in songs like, “Home is where the heart is,” “I’ll be home for

Christmas,” “There’s no place like home,” “Home, home on the range.. where the skies are not cloudy all day,” approach place attachment as an unproblematic way of perceiving the identity of a place. Place attachments create boundaries around the identity of a place, which attempt to secure the meaning and messages of a place. The collective meanings that are generated from an attachment to place can be culturally and socially derived, which are imbued with power and privilege.

Gentrification, among other things, troubles the emotional relationship among residency, place, and belonging. Concentrated areas of Black Detroiters have been affected by the resurgence of financial investment in Detroit, which has attracted a lot of white Detroiters to return the city after an almost fifty-year hiatus. According to Peter M. Moskowitz, author of the book How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, in an interview with Michigan Bridge News, “the transformation [in Detroit] displaces longtime residents, especially poorer ones, and replaces them with affluent, mostly white, newcomers who drive up rents and tax assessments and turn what had been vibrant cities into, effectively, gated communities for the wealthy” (qtd. in Derringer). Often times gentrification is tied to racist narratives about Black urban life in Detroit, that support so called “renewal” efforts, while Black residents and our communities are deemed “ghettos” that are organic of the Black city (Radney

321).

So, what happens to Black Detroit residents when place attachment as an emotional and cultural identity marker is disrupted, or they experience the threat of displacement? What happens to residents when a home can no longer physically be a home? Do residents react in 29 ways that indicate their discomfort by rejecting the place and creating physical distance? Perhaps they may respond in ways that indicate the need to return to that place of origin—the place for which their identity was made apparent to them no matter their level of comfort. Social anthropologist, Yael Navaro-Yashin ethnographically explores how the violent and political disruption of geographical space in Northern Cyprus creates long lasting affects for Turkish-

Cypriots and Greek-Cypriots. As Turkish-Cypriots relocate to areas of Northern Cyprus that had been previously occupied by Greek-Cypriots in the 1970s, they encounter visceral responses to the material objects that had been left behind (Navaro-Yashin 13). Navaro-Yashin believes these material objects affected the inhabitants in terms of how they came to identify with the city, each other, themselves, and the unseen other (13-14).

The remnants of material objects and structures left behind by the 1974 forced evacuation of Greek-Cypriots living in ethnically diverse communities in Northern Cyprus exerted a phantomic presence for Turkish-Cypriot residents. Navaro-Yashin describes the phantomic presence as a bodily absence that lingered in the imaginations of its citizens and manifests in the residents’ day-to-day experiences (14–15). In other words, the phantomic is not theoretical, nor is it absent from the ways in which material objects affect. Rather, the phantomic is materiality and affect due to how the residents in Northern Cyprus constructed their social reality around the presence of the unseen other.

According to social geographer, Caroline Knowles, “Space itself potentially has social agency in the same way [material] things potentially have social agency” (83). Knowles goes on to say that space has agency, in that “its meaning, effectiveness and potential uses – is released by the activities of people. Alone, [space] is inert. It is activated, given meaning, texture and substance, by human agency” (83). While not at all on the same scale in terms of the violent 30

unrest in Northern Cyprus, Detroit, as a physical and emotional place and geographical space,

consciously or unconsciously affects identity among Black Detroiters who appeared in my study.

Navaro-Yashin posits that the phantomic is materiality12 in terms of how physical objects affect.

Detroit as a contested socio-geographical space and all that occupy that space (i.e., the

structures and objects within the structures) have the ability to affect the identity of residents

who live there in sometimes seethingly unspoken or viscerally outspoken ways. The political and

racial perspective is illuminated by the places within the city limits in which merely the presence

of white Detroiters can potentially disrupt Black Detroiters’ place attachment to the city. I spoke

with three Black Detroiters whose views about the city, and themselves as residents, varied based

on their relationship to public and private space in Detroit, which complicated the ways in which

they understood and performed place attachment as connected to Detroit. They all view their

private place (i.e., homes) as a reflection of who they are as family-centered people. However,

they each have varied perspectives in regard to their identity in public spaces in Detroit where

the needs of white people seemed to preclude them from spaces that were (before the recession)

primarily Black. Detroit, which experienced a heavy decline of white Detroiters in the 1970s,

had consistently since then been considered a Black city. However, Black residents in post-

recession Detroit have seen an increase in gentrification as wealthy white suburbanites return to

specific pockets of the city. Yet, their presence can be felt everywhere in the city. So, while there

are specific areas such as Midtown Detroit that are “marked” for white renewal, the entire city

experiences the haunting presence of white bodies. For the Black Detroiters that appear in my

12 Contextually, I am using the term “materiality” to refer to the work of Martin Heidegger in Poetry, Language, and Thought. He argues for a reconsideration of the ways we come to know and appreciate a work of art. Whereas the material assumes a physical object or corporeal, Heidegger argues that a work of art manifests an allegory that, while is not a physical object, is just as affective as the work of art. Heidegger states, “…the cloud in the sky and the thistle in the field, the leaf in the autumn breeze and the hawk over the wood, are rightly called by the name thing. All these must indeed be called things, if the name is applied even to that which does not…appear (20). 31 study, their performances of “self” reflect varied responses to social space, place attachment, and other Black Detroiters.

Phantomic Space

Navaro-Yashin proposes a methodology based on socio-anthropological13 methods as a way to explore how the phantomic is material. She contends that the phantomic space, which includes government institutions, and material objects (e.g., administrative surveys, audits, legal documents) that inhabit the space viscerally affect residents (31-32). She observes in depth the ways in which the residents of Northern Cyprus (some in government roles) interact with everyday objects that carry power and privilege (69-70). Similar to Navaro-Yashin, in this study,

I also seek to ethnographically examine how geographical space inform how Black Detroit residents understand their identity and how identity is performed. Going along with Navaro-

Yashin, I treat white bodies and the changing dynamics of the city, both in which they appear and in the areas that they many of them do not, as phantomic space that viscerally affects how various Black identities perform. This is a slight departure from Navaro-Yashin’s theory of phantomic space as physical objects that affect. Building from her theory of the phantomic as materiality, I interpret the phantomic to also include anything that has a transmissive affect. This could include language, non-verbal cues, beliefs, ideas, or even space itself. So, while white

Detroit residents certain affect the ways in which Black Detroiters survive and thrive in the city, white Detroiters are not physically present in all Detroit neighborhoods. White Detroiters make up about 10.2 percent of the population in Detroit (Aguilar and MacDonald). Yet, what does

13 According to Erwan Dianteill in the article, “Cultural Anthropology or Social Anthropology? A Transatlantic Dispute", the field of cultural anthropology limited how social scientists interrogate connections among human beings and institutional structures (4). Social anthropology engages in the same methods as that of cultural anthropology, including ethnographic fieldwork. Social anthropologists often analyze human behavior across various societies (4). 32 their mere presence (not physical bodies) mean for the future of Black Detroiters in terms of how they understand themselves as Black Detroiters.

Navaro-Yashin’s methods include examining the phantomic by sharing space with

Turkish-Cypriot residents. She has a deeply personal and often intimate connection to the residents of Northern Cyprus, as her husband and his family are residents of the area (xviii, preface). She notes that her interactions with the residents include more than interviewing, observational fieldwork, and collecting data (xviii, preface). She shares space with residents who are comprised of family, friends, and friends of friends. In other words, she makes connections with residents in such a way as to challenge some of the traditional socio-anthropological methods of objective observation that could have prevent her from earning the status of participant-observer. My methods mirror Navaro-Yashins’ methods in that I also sought to engage in meaningful conversation with my participants. In my interactions with the three Black

Detroiters who appear in this chapter, we shared relationships sometimes with two or three folks we knew in common. I certainly had a perception of these residents before our sit-downs, walking tours, and peaceful afternoons on Detroit’s Riverwalk. However, almost all of those perceptions shifted as we continued to build a relationship with each other. As my perceptions shifted, the expectations I had for the residents and myself slowly dissipated, and I was left with meaningful conversation and a propensity for the excitement of not knowing where our sit- downs, walking tours, and afternoons in the city would take us.

Additionally, engaging in meaningful conversations with the residents in this chapter helped me think through how best to theoretically nuance the ways in which they perform in the everyday, and how those performances are indicative of how they experience the phantomic and affective material space. Navaro-Yashin considers as part of her theoretical framework Kevin 33

Hetherington’s study of actor-network theory, in which he proposes how material objects have agency based on how human beings interact with them. Although, I am not as interested in weighing the value and agency of material objects, Hetherington’s study does intrigue me by how my participants interpret the value of space that affect the ways in which these various

Black identities perform in the everyday. How do Black Detroiters as racialized bodies interact with phantomic white bodies? Subsequently, how might this analysis of phantomic space inform

Black Detroit identity and performances of blackness? In this chapter, I analyze my experiences in the field with three Black Detroiters.. Then I will look deeper at how place attachment affects how they create and perform their identities at home and in public spaces in Detroit.

Participant Background Summary

LaKisha (Kisha) Trice, 28-year-old single mother of two, expresses her identity through her connection to family and motherhood in the form of photos and trinkets around her home.

She decorates her three-story colonial duplex for each of the four seasons, including the holidays that fall in between. Her most prize possession is a large glass and wooden framed cabinet filled with luxury glasses and dinnerware that was passed down to her from her mother.

Tony White, a 26-year-old Black male, lives in a small 1-bedroom apartment in downtown Detroit. Unlike Kisha’s home, entering Tony White’s home is like walking into a shrine made for him by him for his pleasure. In my interactions with Tony, it appears as if his public persona is made personal for Tony and that it is representational of his home. Framed selfies and pictures of celebrities adorn his walls, including framed photos of the Obama family,

Oprah, and a bathroom dedicated to photos of pop music celebrity and icon, Janet Jackson.

Both Tony’s and Kisha’s homes are generous and welcoming, however, in different ways. Unlike Tony, Kisha is not interested in representing public personas in her home. There 34 were no framed photos of celebrities or rooms dedicated to pop icons. Instead, she had photos of her children at different moments in their lives. Whenever I visit her home, she always offers me and my 6-year-old daughter food and drink in a “help yourself” way—meaning, if you want something to eat, like a meal, you should serve yourself. Her kitchen is her favorite room in the house because, according to Kisha, she loves to entertain her children and family with new recipes (Trice). Tony’s home is generous and welcoming but not in the same way as Kisha’s house. When I visit his home, he serves me bottled water on a beautifully designed serving tray featuring pictures of Janet Jackson that he curated. For Tony, place attachment begins in the public space and extends to inside his home. He is acutely aware of his surroundings in the public space. He loves the presence of high-profiled public figures and personalizes them in his home. I am intrigued by how Tony decorates and treats his home as if it were a shrine. He emulates and personifies aspects of public celebrity life in his home. The mass of celebrity photos in his home, although he has never met these people, are personal objects that represent his connection to family and friends.

Tony’s personification of celebrity life in his home could be because he is a single Black man with no children. Unlike Kisha Trice, Tony has no immediate family besides his sister and parents who live in close proximity to his home. He may not feel the need to post pictures of his family because they are geographically close to him. Instead, he brings representations of celebrities into his home because they are not as close in proximity to his home. Perhaps for

Tony, the public is made personal out of a necessity to reimage himself in the image of his

“celebrity family” to whom he seems to have more of a connection.

Tony’s enthusiasm for the city of Detroit is apparent by virtue of his nickname, “The

Prince of Detroit.” Tony gave himself this nickname. He began calling himself “The Prince of 35

Detroit” about the same time the city’s revitalization efforts kicked into swing in 2013. Before that, he was known by his friends as “Prince Tony”. I didn’t ask Tony why he was given the nickname but he did say that the reason for the name change from “Prince Tony” to “The Prince of Detroit” came because he wanted to show his appreciate for the city of Detroit (T. White). He wants to be part of the good things that are happening in the city despite all of the bad things.

There is optimism infused with imagination when it comes to how Tony navigates his identity, both in the city and in his home. Tony has lived in Downtown Detroit for 14 years. He decided to stay in his one-bedroom garden apartment in Downtown Detroit to help with the revitalization of the city. His job as a manager at a nearby McDonald’s is within walking distance to his apartment. He also loves to go out to various bars and hotspots in the Downtown vicinity. In his opinion, this engagement with local business is one of the many ways he supports the city (T.

White).

Yet, in contrast to Tony, Kisha’s identity is informed by her role as a mother to her children and her obligation to her family as a matriarch. Kisha does not appear comfortable outside of her home. This was apparent in our conversation during a walk at Downtown Detroit’s

Riverwalk. We decided to take our children for an outing together. We were both aware that the trip served two purposes: (1) to enjoy watching our children play together and (2) to sit back and chat about our experiences growing up in Detroit for my research. Kisha appeared cautious about her daughter, Raven, playing in the open space. She told me of a time last summer when a gun fight broke out in the same area and police were called. She had both of her children with her during that incident. Kisha often mentions during our outing her distrust of Detroiters (both white and Black). She told me about how she never speaks to white people in the grocery store, nor does she go out to various venues in the city. She says being a mother is more important to 36 her than “hanging in the streets” (Trice). Although, she is not as comfortable as Tony spending time outside the home engaging in public spaces, she does so for the sake of her children. If she goes out, it is usually to a place where she can take them, like a festival in Downtown Detroit or the Riverwalk. She has strong opinions about white people, Black people, and the City of

Detroit. She believes Detroit is a place where she lives and works out of necessity, but she does not want to spend any time in the city that does not have anything to do with her children and family. She distrusts them all.

The third person who participated in my study that I explore in this chapter is Pastor

Raynard Sims. His home is similar to both Kisha’s and Tony’s in that he too takes pride in the style and upkeep of his home. According to Sims, he alone is responsible for the style and décor of his living room and the majority of the house. His wife is not at all interested in house décor, which gave him the freedom to decorate to his taste. His living room is inspired by French classical décor with white miniature figurines and vases throughout his living and dining rooms.

Pictures of his grandchildren and children adorned the mantle above his fireplace. Pastor Sims also owns the house that is the next house down from his and the empty lot between the houses.

As a homeowner, he doesn’t hesitate in his love and respect for his homes, and he would stop at nothing to keep his property safe and protected. He also extends the same love and respect toward his neighborhood as well. Pastor Sims carries a gun on him at all times while in his neighborhood. There have been a few times when he had to flash his gun to keep his family and community safe. He also is very attached to the City of Detroit, and often, he polices the boundaries of blackness when it comes to Black folks whom he believes are not as committed to the city as he is. Unlike Kisha yet similar to Tony, Pastor Sims’s place attachment to home is 37 synonymous with neighborhood and city. Pastor Sims creates identity performances that are inspired by his understanding of the purpose of community.

The Preservation Detroit Walking Tour - Tony White

Figure 2.1 Tony White’s selfie wall photographed in 2014 (Source: Gibbs, Michelle Cowin).

Tony White is incredibly open about his love and respect for Detroit. He speaks about

Detroit in terms of how he feels he should be supporting the city. Tony decided to move into his apartment, which is near Downtown Detroit, as a way to financially support and demonstrate solidarity with the city. His love for the city seems focused on Downtown Detroit. He makes no mention of wanting to see more revitalization efforts in economically challenged neighborhoods.

According to Tony, economically challenged areas like Brightmoor are condemned to violence, drugs, and should be avoided at all costs (T. White). I asked Tony which areas in Detroit made him feel the most comfortable. He mentioned Belle Isle on the Eastside of Detroit and Campus

Martius Park located in Downtown. Tony’s reasons for feeling comfortable has to do with security improvements caused by the influx of white people in the area.

TONY: So, [Belle Isle is] free for now, which is why I go out a couple of times a

week to exercise, and I’ve never felt more safer on that Isle because the 38

state has taken over it now. You know what, and I lightly say that,

because, prior to the state taking the park over, there was a lot of riff-raff,

a lot of drinking that. . . . You could drive past or be riding a bike past a

certain group of people . . .

MICHELLE: I remember.

TONY: The smell, the reefer, or whatever. But now it's much more diverse, much

cleaner, and the state police are literally riding along with you while you're

exercising.

MICHELLE: Do you think it’s because it’s diverse, and when I mean diverse, I mean,

I'll be honest, I told my mom, “I saw a white girl ride her bike . . .”

TONY: Yes!

MICHELLE: . . . Over on Vernor and East Grand Boulevard.

TONY: Downtown, period. At any time of the night, you will see Caucasians,

Arabs, other nationalities outside of African Americans, just walking

around or riding their bike or whatever. I have never known a day for that

to be like that now. And that’s how Belle Isle is now. It’s much . . . I have

not . . . I don’t wanna say ever, but literally ever seen that many white

people on Belle Isle at all.

MICHELLE: On Belle Isle. I would have to agree with you on that one. It shocks me.

TONY: It is.

MICHELLE: I started to comment. I said, “Maybe she’s mixed? No, that's a white girl.”

And she was . . . yeah.

TONY: My first impression was, “Wait okay, if they feel comfortable here, you 39

know we're just fine.” And it’s unfortunate that it has to be that way, but I

believe that African Americans, we have somewhat allowed ourselves to

create that picture. And that’s just by ignorance.

MICHELLE: What’s the picture?

TONY: Better . . . you won’t do better. Just, I think it's inevitably drinking,

smoking, nothing better to do. Read a book. We tend to not want to take

care or focus on our issues of our life that we may be dealing with. So, our

way of dealing with it or with other people is doing it in a way that we've

probably been taught, and we haven't chosen to do anything to change that

vision of it. (T. White)

There is a connection among Tony’s view of white people in Detroit and my own view of white

Detroiters. My initial perspective at seeing a young white woman in Detroit is shock that she felt comfortable to ride her bike through a predominately Black urban neighborhood in Detroit.

Tony’s perspective appears to be that the young white woman’s body marks a transition toward

safety and security for Detroit. He follows up with regret at how African Americans have

allowed themselves to be at the mercy of white Detroiters to ensure that Detroit be a better place

to live. For Tony, white Detroiters bring security and comfort to area that Black Detroiters

seemed incapable of bringing.

Having white people or other non-Black ethnicities in spaces in Detroit that were once

occupied by predominately Black people suggests that Detroit is a better place and complicates

his understanding of his place attachment. For Tony, his attachment to Detroit as a place,

wherein he has some emotional investment, evokes feelings of guilt and sadness as well as hope

and optimism. We do not know for sure that the reason Detroit appears to be safer is because of 40 an increase of white residents; however, for Tony even one white body signals hope for his city.

In a recent article in the New York Times, the simple shift in the architecture of newly rebuilt homes in predominantly urban Black neighborhoods in Raleigh, NC are signaling for its current

Black residents the beginning of “revitalization” efforts of which will increase the cost of buying a house as well as attract more white residents (Badger et al.). For Tony, the lone white woman, unbeknownst to her, carries a haunting presence of change. All of which, affects the ways in which he perceives white and Black Detroit residents, as well as his performance of self, as I discuss below.

During our conversation, Tony spoke about wanting to learn more about the history of

Detroit. There are various museums on his to-do list. I suggested we take a walking tour offered by the Preservation Detroit14 Community Group. The group was comprised of folks who are dedicated to the history of Detroit’s buildings and the architecture of its streets. I asked Tony if he might be interested in that. Surprisingly, he shifted in his seat and did not immediately respond. I thought his lack of response could have been because of cost. So, I told him I would cover the cost of the tour. He agreed to go; however, he was still a tad bit reluctant. Tony had a nervous smile. He gave a small giggle and said, “Okay. Okay. We can do that.”

Following this interview, on the one-hour drive car ride back to my home from Detroit, I wondered what made Tony so nervous when I suggested we go together on the walking tour.

From our conversation, I knew he was excited to learn something new about Detroit. I thought his response might be connected to his description of the violence in Detroit. He might have been nervous when I said, “walking tour” of Detroit. Given his response to hypothetically visiting the

Brightmore neighborhood, maybe he assumed we would tour areas of Detroit that he thought

14 Preservation Detroit is a historical non-profit organization. Its mission is to preserve and protect Detroit’s architectural and cultural heritage (“About Us”). 41 were unsafe. I could understand Tony making that assumption. I have not been a resident of

Detroit these past 15 years. It’s easy to assume I would be naïve to the dangers of the city.

LaKisha Trice at times calls me “a white girl,” and in her opinion, “white girls do dumb shit.”

Perhaps in his opinion, I was “acting white.” Just in case, I made sure to book a walking tour in one of Detroit’s most gentrified neighborhoods: Midtown Detroit.

It was a cool 62 degrees on the morning of our walking tour. I purchased the tickets online, so the only thing to do was to pick up Tony from his home. We were scheduled to meet the tour guides and patrons at Avalon Bakery on W. Willis and Cass Street. Tony was waiting for me outside just as I pulled into his apartment complex in Downtown Detroit. He was dressed in dark blue jeans and a white button-up down jacket with fur trim around the hood. He wore sharp and clean dress shoes. They were clear of scuffmarks. His dreadlocks were clean and well organized in a ponytail pulled back from his face. His face was also clean, well-polished, and covered in what looked like a film of Vaseline. He wore a light coat of clear high-gloss lip shine.

Tony confidently walked toward the car and got in. We greeted each other with hugs, and I pulled off toward our meeting spot. I asked Tony if he was excited about the tour. He emphatically said, “Yes!” and gave a small laugh. Tony's demeanor seemed excited and nervous at the same time. He was dressed well for the walking tour, unlike me—I wore generic blue jeans, an orange university pullover hoodie, and an old green and orange down jacket I got from a local Goodwill.

When we arrived at the bakery, it was just as I expected. The tour was mostly comprised of young white hipsters (possibly tourists), middle-aged white parents with their small children in baby jogger strollers, and elderly white residents. There was one elderly Black couple on the tour. I greeted the tour guides and introduced my daughter and myself. When I turned to 42 introduce Tony, he was standing away from the group. Tony's demeanor had shifted somewhat from excitement and nervousness to something else altogether. He stood isolated from the tour patrons. I called him forward to meet the guides. As he approached, he smiled quietly and nodded his head in acknowledgment. Throughout the tour, Tony seemed distant from the group.

He stood in the semi-circle as we learned about the history of Cass Corridor through its architecture, but there was something distant about his demeanor. Often, his gaze would cloud over and he would be somewhere else outside of our tour. However at the conclusion of the tour, according to him, he loved it! We spoke immediately following the tour as we walked back to the car:

MICHELLE: What'd you think about the tour?

TONY: I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I'll make sure that I have better walking

shoes on next time, but I enjoyed the community, the newness of

everything, the structures, the historic structures, and I enjoyed it all. The

environment is fresh. It's promising. If I were to have children in the

future, I would be proud of my city, because of what it's doing,

specifically with this area. So, I really enjoyed it. It was very enlightening.

It's funny passing by. You drive by these areas all the time . . . so, you

drive past these areas all the time and never know really what these places

are, what's going on. All you would actually see is new developments, but

to see history being restored, that's nice.

MICHELLE: I agree with you, actually. I was really excited and . . . what are the people

like in this area?

TONY: Friendly, open-minded, mostly students. For the time that I come through, 43

everybody's friendly and sociable.

MICHELLE: How do you interact with people in this area?

TONY: When I'm here? I'm a very friendly individual, so if it's just walking down

the street or going into an establishment, common courtesy, speaking to

folks or whatever, that's the interaction that I give 'em. Because it's like,

people are gonna speak. A lot of times, the respect that I've learned

growing up, you speak whenever someone's in front of you. And that's

most of the time how interaction is . . . how it begins. Because, like I said,

going to the Traffic Jam15 or maybe to a coffee shop around here,

whatever, it's easy for me to spark up a conversation, if I so want to. But

outside of that, standing in line or whatever, it's easy just to immediately

get into a conversation with somebody. Whether it's asking about

something to drink or something to eat or whatever, because you've never

been there.

MICHELLE: Do you think that's like a trait with Black Detroiters, where they do that?

Because I've noticed all of the Black . . . most of the Black men that we

saw on our tour, when they approached us, wanted to say hi. They're like,

"Hi!" and really like connect with you.

TONY: It's . . . for this area, yes that will be common. Because you've got a lot of

students, a few business people and everything around, and mostly people

are open-minded and friendly in this area.

MICHELLE: Do you think it's because there are more white people here now? [pause]

15 Traffic Jam is a local pub located in Midtown Detroit. 44

TONY: That's kind of like a yes or no question . . . because white people are

friendly just across the board, so after a while of being around them you

tend to be like them, and I think that's with any race. Look for the good

portion of it. You can't help but be friendly because . . . and this is not to

say anything against the Black race, but if I should speak specifically

about Detroit, for the most part, they're not evil or whatever, but I know in

this specific area, it does help for white people to be around. Because it

does teach us to be more open-minded or friendly to one another. Because

white people, it could be pitch black outside, they're out here walking their

dogs, running, jogging, riding their bike, and I remember there was a time

that didn't happen. As I've seen downtown, and I say downtown from the

boulevard on down, has completely changed because of the new people,

the economics and everything that has changed the city.

MICHELLE: Do white people down here make you feel uncomfortable?

TONY: No. If anything, they're more welcoming than my own people, in some

instances.

MICHELLE: What is it about this place that makes you feel most like a Black Detroiter?

TONY: What makes me feel most like a Black Detroiter? I would probably have

to say the opportunity when we were on the tour and seeing the homeless

guy coming up asking for money. Because it's like, dude, I remember

when you had something. It bothers me every time I see him. Because I

trained you, you had a job, but you allowed something to kill what dream

you probably did have. I don't know whether it's the lack of willpower or 45

maybe support, but that's something that kind of bothered me, that kind of

would remind me of a Black Detroiter.

MICHELLE: Do you feel like his situation and your situation are the same?

TONY: Not really. Because I believe that he was afforded the same opportunities

in life that I have. Even though him doing drugs is what possibly changed

his life, you still have a choice. There's too many free programs out here

to get help. I used to, and recently, I've given money out to homeless

people with signs up and getting off the expressway and things like that.

And I'm not too worried about with what they do with that money, but I

would much rather go buy them something to eat rather than give them my

money, because I've seen times where you've given money and they've

gone right to buy drugs or alcohol. And there are times where they're

asking for money to get something to eat and you say, "Okay well I have a

sandwich here." They don't really want that. They really want the money.

MICHELLE: Do you feel happy?

TONY: I really do. This has been an awakening for me. I never knew a lot of stuff

that I had in me. And I'll say this, there are a lot of things I know how to

do. There are a lot of things I want to do in life. I love my job, I love what

I'm doing in my life, but it's so much more that I want. I've always wanted

to be a florist. Yes. I love the funeral businesses, period. And a funeral

director that I know personally, I asked her if she could teach me her

work. And she said she would love that, but then she doesn't ever have

time to teach me her work, so a friend of mine encouraged me, he said you 46

could do that yourself. (T. White)

Tony confessed that he wore the wrong shoes on the tour, so it is possible his behavior

and reaction to the group was influenced by the fact that his feet hurt throughout the two-hour

tour. I also think the tour could have brought up some emotions in regards to his future in the

city. The tour challenged the ways in which he perceives himself as a Black Detroiter. After all,

Detroit tours are not really for the residents of Detroit. In theory, they provide an opportunity to

learn about a master narrative that is largely absent from the day to day experiences of living and

working in Detroit. In other words, Detroit tours are for outsiders, and Tony is not an outsider.

However, he went on a tour with me and my daughter as an opportunity to see His city and to

represent it well to the tourist who traveled with us. The tour pointed out all of the things that are

right (or “white”) with the city – refurbished landscapes, hipster coffee shops, and white

residents enjoying family walks with children. Yet, for Tony, the tour also clashed with a past

that won’t quietly go away. For Tony, seeing his former employee was a reminder of the dead or

dying Black city. I think he felt some regret.

Racialized Perceptions of The Other Can Inform a Social Reality

Environmental psychologists, Barbara Brown, Douglas D. Perkins, and Graham Brown,

in their article, “Place Attachment in a Revitalizing Neighborhood,” assert that place attachments

can be positive bonds to physical and social settings that support individual and community

identity (259). Similar to Navaro-Yashin’s theory of phantomic space as affective materiality,

Michel de Certeau and Luce Giard in Practice of Everyday Life: Vol. 2, say that “a place

inhabited by the same person for a certain duration draws a portrait that resembles this person

based on objects (present or absent) and the habits that they imply” (145). From our time

together, it appeared to me that Tony’s identity was lived out through the positive bonds he had 47 toward his apartment and the material objects in his home that uniquely express who he claims to be as a person. The presentation of his home matters to him and it was a real treat to spend time with him at home. The same feelings Tony had about home seemed similar to how he felt about

Detroit. Although there are no rooms in his home dedicated to Detroit, Tony embodies the city as part of his performance of self. The same care and respect that he has for his home is the same care and respect that he demonstrates when he speaks about Detroit. Yet, the care and respect he has for Detroit only extends to certain areas of Detroit. For example, during our conversation that took place in his home, Tony speaks about his love for the city that seems solely focused on

Downtown Detroit. He makes no mention of wanting to see revitalization efforts in economically challenged neighborhoods like Brightmoor.

I could not help but think Tony’s response to Brightmoor in comparison to Downtown

Detroit has as much to do with race and class as it has to do with the perpetual neighborhood violence in Brightmoor and other economically challenged neighborhoods in Detroit. Tony and I spoke about the young white woman who rode her bike down East Grand Blvd. toward Belle Isle as an anomaly. My initial perspective at seeing a young white woman in Detroit is shock that she felt comfortable to ride her bike through a predominately Black urban neighborhood in Detroit.

Tony’s perspective appears to be that the young white woman’s body marks a transition toward safety and security for Black Detroiter. He follows up with regret at how African Americans have allowed themselves to be at the mercy of white Detroiters to ensure that Detroit be a better place to live. Having white people or other non-Black ethnicities in spaces in Detroit that were once occupied by predominately Black people suggests that Detroit is a better place. To this end,

Tony seems to believe that certain Black people contribute blight in Detroit. Now that there is an influx of white Detroiters, the city has a chance to be a physically as well as aesthetically nicer 48 place to live. Navaro-Yashin’s theory of the phantomic as bodily absence that lingers in the imagination plays out in Tony’s perception of Detroit as no longer a “Black city”. I think part of what has influenced Tony’s perception of Black Detroiters is the white colonization of space16 in

Detroit. Ever since whites started moving back into the city, communities in Downtown Detroit like Midtown are physically and aesthetically “nicer” than when it was called Cass Corridor. Up until five years ago, Cass Corridor was filled with abandoned homes, run-down bars (See Figure

2.3 below).

Figure 2.2 Photograph of Cass Corridor in Detroit 1999 (Source: Snow, David).

16 Colonization of space refers to the ways in which neighborhoods with predominately people of color experience gentrification. Although I do not believe that white bodies literally bring law enforcement with them as they travel in urban cities, there is research that connects urban gentrification to an increase in criminalization of cultural behaviors in these areas. According to Caitlin Cahill in "At Risk"? The Fed Up Honeys Re-Present the Gentrification of the Lower East Side”, disinvested communities of color that are undergoing urban social integration experience criminalization for cultural behaviors and practices in the form of police surveillance and infractions for activities that within the community are normalized (346). According to Paul Butler, author of “Chokehold: Policing Black Men,” one of the tools that gentrifiers use in an effort to colonize and control space is law enforcement in the form of police imposed curfews and “quality of life” crimes (qtd. in Fayyad). 49

Figure 2.3 Detroit's Cass Corridor makes way for new era (2015) (Source: Mears, Daniel).

The influx of income and real estate development in Cass Corridor seems to have brought not only white folks from the suburban perimeter to the city, but also, from my perspective, an up-close glimpse of the white middle class (See Figure 2.3). In the time I spent in Detroit and reliving my childhood growing up in the city, I would be the first to agree that the view of today’s white middle-class Detroiters as prosperous is appealing. However, there is one mitigating factor that potentially hinders that perception: White Savior Complex. The decline in socioeconomic stability during the recession affected Detroit neighborhoods with predominantly

Black populations before the large influx of white residents in Downtown Detroit. The specter of a white savior coming to the aid of our city cannot but have affected Black Detroiters’ perceptions of race and class in post-recession Detroit. White residents and investors like Mike 50

Iiltch, Mike Duggan, and Dan Gilbert, were seen as financial saviors of the city who brought business, industry, and access to Detroit. Their presence cast a shadow on Black Detroiters, some of whom had lived in the trenches of abandoned properties and with high rates of crime in their neighborhoods. According to Peter M. Moskowitz, author of the book How to Kill a City:

Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, in an online interview states, “the transformation [in Detroit] displaced longtime residents, especially poorer ones, and replaced them with affluent, mostly white, newcomers who drive up rents and tax assessments and turn what had been vibrant cities into, effectively, gated communities for the wealthy” (qtd. in

Derringer)(qtd. in Derringer). For Tony, who seems to welcome the white saviors, the white

Detroiters bring him a sense of security and comfort to the area that lower socioeconomic Black

Detroiters seem incapable of bringing.

It appears to me that Tony seeks to be in a space, either home or in Downtown Detroit, wherein he can curate the experience. In his home, he has curated an experience for himself and his guests where Black affluence is present. As I previously noted, there are various pictures of the Obamas, Oprah Winfrey, and other Black celebrities in his home. He created a bathroom table tray filled with pictures of Janet Jackson. When it comes to experiencing Detroit, Tony travels to communities wherein a greater influx of white people has occurred:

MICHELLE: When I was in high school, shoot. Well, of course, when I was in high

school, I didn't really see many white people in Detroit. Do you purposely

travel to certain communities, businesses, parks, and arenas because of

race?

TONY: Yes.

MICHELLE: Yep, yep. Which race? 51

TONY: Caucasians.

MICHELLE: Okay. Is there a reason why?

TONY: They seem to be a lot nicer. (T. White)

For Tony, there seems to be an assumption made about how performance indicates the character of a person or that certain bodies are capable of creating a sense of safety and security more so than others. Social reality, according to Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, in The Social

Construction of Reality, is “everyday life that is interpreted by [people] and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world” (19). In other words, we place value on everyday objects, activities, happenings, etc. that affect the ways in which we understand the other, the self, and structures. The knowledge we gather about each other, according to Berger and

Luckman, “originates in our own thoughts and actions and is maintained as real” (19). Our identities are formed by what we believe we know about ourselves in relation to what we think we know about the world around us. These values can help form the basis of how we physically interact with the material world. Tony’s perception of white Detroiters is based on how they create performances of self that indicate trustworthiness.

Of course, his perception of white Detroiters also has a lot to do with class, socioeconomic privileges and the power that come when people who believe they have less interact with those whom they think have more. As much as race is important to this conversation, class is also a major contributor to how Black Detroiters create their performances of identity. I asked Tony which areas in Detroit made him feel the most comfortable. He mentioned Belle Isle on the Eastside of Detroit and Campus Martius Park located in Downtown.

Tony’s reasons for feeling comfortable in these locations had to do with security improvements caused by the shifting demographics in those areas. The shifting demographics are also from the 52 influx of white middle-income to wealthy Detroiters who can afford to pay the steady increases in rent and support urban gentrified lifestyles in the city. Tony is very much aware of the ways in which race affects his view of the improvements or the ways in which Detroit has shifted in recent years. Yet, class seems to have just as much (if not more) of an effect on the ways in which he sees himself as well as how his performance of self plays out when encountering affluence. The presentation of his home, includes in his living room and bathroom framed photos and trinkets of the Obama Family, Oprah, and R&B pop singer Janet Jackson, are an extension of how he perceives himself. I think, for Tony, Detroit’s restoration is not about gentrification, it is about restoring Black affluence to prominence in Detroit. Detroit’s restoration is about seeing and feeling Detroit as it once was or could be: Black and respected. Tony’s disappointment in current Black Detroiters such as the Black man on the street and his comments about the degradation of Detroit by current African Americans is reflected in his performance of self that also seems to shape his identity as a Black Detroiter. Yet, Tony’s performance of self as well as his identity is not fixed. We know that performativity is an unstable marker for the pinning of one’s identity. In Judith Butler’s germinal essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”, performances of self are tied up in the construction of characteristics that often veer from to the beginning of its inception (520). It is the shifting material space of Detroit, not only from Black bodies to white bodies, but from low income to middle income that has shaped Tony’s identity, and how he performs self. 53

Policing the Boundaries of Blackness

Figure 2.4 Photograph of LaKisha Trice in 2014 (Source: Gibbs, Michelle Cowin).

On the surface, LaKisha (Kisha) Trice is a 32-year-old single mother of two children who lives in the East Jefferson Corridor17 of Detroit. She is a stout woman with furrowed features.

Her eyebrows are thick and sharply arched to highlight her large brown eyes. Her nose and lips

symmetrically frame her heart-shaped face. Her lips are usually pursed and turned down into a

resting frown. Her skin is soft and her body is plushy with a beautiful warm glow. She has a

permanent streak of gray hair at the front of her head that she’s had since childhood, which

makes her look more maternal. She is the youngest of three children to older parents. Her

siblings are at least 12-15 years older than she.

It is hard for Kisha to imagine Detroit as a positive place worth the investment of her

time and energy. She saves those investments for her children, family, and home. She claims to

have no connection to its history or the people that make up the city (Trice). It appears she does

17 LaKisha’s home is located three miles from Downtown Detroit’s City Center. The population is about 6500 people, 80 percent of residents are Black and 20 percent are white. The median household income is $30k in comparison to Detroit which is $25k. 54 not care about Detroit. She is indifferent about the news and information related to the city. In the following exchange, we met at Downtown Detroit’s Riverfront18 to discuss the city and what she imagines her role is as a Black Detroiter:

MICHELLE: What is it about this place that makes you feel like you are a Detroiter?

LAKISHA: Like I'm a part of Detroit?

MICHELLE: Yeah.

LAKISHA: I'm a part of it. I was born here. I don't know. I don't have nothing to

pinpoint and say that I am . . . I just like the water. I like the water because

God walked the water, he split the sea. That's the only reason I like the

water. But not for me to jump in it, not for me to wanna swim in it. I just

like being near it, to clear my mind. I don't have nothing else to do with

Detroit.

MICHELLE: Besides the fact that you were born here...

LAKISHA: Live here.

MICHELLE: And you live here.

LAKISHA: Yeah. 'Cause I gotta abide by their law . . . their rules. It's everywhere you

go, you gotta abide. But I'm not that type of person that wrap myself into

the city. I don't... okay, that's what's going on, or let me go vote for this.

No.

MICHELLE: What do you think the city expects of you?

LAKISHA: To pay my taxes. Pay my tickets, to make sure myself is updated on my

car. That's all. They don't expect nothing else I don't think. I don't hope

18 The Riverfront is a 3½-mile walk space on the edge of the Detroit River overlooking Window, Ontario in Canada. It extends from Mt. Elliott Park through Downtown Detroit. 55

not. 'Cause that's all I'm prepared for. I don't wanna go sit in on no

meetings, I don't really care. Y'all can do what they wanna do at the end of

the day. I don't wanna invest nothing. Girl, I will not invest.

MICHELLE: Why?

LAKISHA: I wouldn't invest . . . I don't know. I just wouldn't.

MICHELLE: Tell me this. If you knew that your . . . that something that you sold, like

something that you gave to the city was going to directly benefit that man

right there, he's a bicycle police officer, would you do it?

LAKISHA: 'Cause I don't believe it will go straight to him. I don't believe it will go

straight to him. (Trice)

During this exchange, Kisha veered more toward indifference in regard to investing in Detroit.

Her emotions and physical demeanor stayed calm in a matter-of-fact way. In many of our conversations, her performance of self in public never differed from her performance of self in the home. What you see is what you get: an opinionated woman who is in control of her world.

Kisha’s views toward Detroit provide context for how she understands herself as a Black

Detroiter and how she performs that understanding in her home and in Detroit public spaces.

She works hard in her home to foster a safe environment for her children to learn and develop.

One of the ways Kisha does this in the home is, as I noted earlier, by decorating the living room and dining room according to the seasons and major holidays. According to Kisha, doing so provides an opportunity for her to be creative and spend time with her children (Trice). Perhaps decorating her home also allows Kisha to establish a certain amount of ownership and control over her home that she feels she lacks when it comes to making a difference in Detroit. As a homeowner, she is free to control her space any way she wants. She can choose to decorate, 56 paint, build, and rebuild on her property because it belongs to her. Her father owns the home but has essentially given Kisha full access to the house and make changes as needed. Kisha’s sense of ownership extends to her children as well. Kisha is a divorced mother of two children (a two- year old daughter and a nine-year old son). Kisha’s ex-husband is the father to her son.

According to Kisha, he is no longer interested in parenting his son. Kisha is no longer in a relationship with her daughter’s father. They have decided to remain friends and co-parent their daughter.

Although it may not appear to those who do not know Kisha, but to me, she appears to be in control of her life. Kisha works from home as a cosmetologist. She is in control of whom she decides to take on as a client and the number of hours she wants to work doing hair in her in- home salon. On face value, Kisha seems to make the rules that others can or must follow.

Her behavior is very tempered and in control in her home. She freely speaks her mind regardless of circumstances or consequences. In many of our conversations that took place in her home, she policed the boundaries of blackness, gender, and age. On a few occasions during our interviews, if I did something or if a client who was a family member (her niece, for example) made a comment about something with which she disagreed, she would quickly say, “That’s some dumb white girl shit!” (Trice) or “Why you do that dumb white girl shit?” (Trice). In the following exchange, Kisha explains her views toward the Other:

MICHELLE: Have you ever initiated an altercation because of someone's race? Have

you ever confronted someone or had to initiate discrimination based on

somebody's race?

LAKISHA: I'll do that. Yeah. Everybody, I don't care, Black, white, I don't care.

You're gonna hear it and you feel . . . that's what I said, I don't care if you 57

don't feel the same way about me, but I'm gonna check you, and I'm gonna

say whatever your race is, you out of line.

MICHELLE: How about someone's age? Like initiated a confrontation because of

somebody's age.

LAKISHA: The stuff that they do about it? I had to tell ‘em like, “You're too old to

still . . . you're too old to still be hitting clubs.” One of my friends, she has

five, four kids, and . . . I guess I did with the finance thing because I hit

both because my thing is you can’t always find somebody to help you with

something. You don’t always have to have the money. I understand that

people don’t always have the money, but sometimes you have to think

outside your box, you have to use your excess resources. Ask somebody,

“Do you know somebody that can tutor my daughter?” Instead of going to

the mall and buying some $70 shoes. Yeah, her age. I had to tell like,

“You're too old to still be. . . .” I don't wanna say that on camera. “You too

old to be out here hanging with these young kids and not helping. You're

too old to be hanging out with these young kids. They're not helping. All

they're doing is buying everybody liquor. That's not helping pay your bills,

that's not helping with your kids, that's not helping your household wage.”

MICHELLE: Did she appreciate that advice?

LAKISHA: I don't know. ‘Cause we stopped talking for a minute, but I guess in the

long run she saw what I was saying, I hope...

MICHELLE: How about someone's gender? Have you ever had to initiate something

because of somebody's gender? 58

LAKISHA: I always do that. Like when I'm talking, I might be acting . . . yeah, I

always do that. Example, I'll tell a guy when he actin' like a nigga. I'll tell

a guy when he actin' like a three-year-old, I'll tell a guy when he actin' like

a punk, I'll tell a female when she wrong, I'll tell a female when she acting

like a guy and I'll tell a female there's a time and place for everything. I

think that's why my closest friends really love me because it's like, I want

y'all to tell me when I'm wrong, and I'm gonna tell you when you wrong,

and I'm gonna tell you when you acting like that bad word, and I'm gonna

tell you when you acting like an a-hole, but I'm also gonna be very proud

of you. Like one of my friends, I call her dingy,19 but I can give it to her.

She's about her money; she's about funding her education. She's about all

that. But she has her times when I'll be like, "That guy not worth it," but

she makes sure everything's taken care of before. (Trice)

LaKisha’s need to police the boundaries of blackness, gender, and age do not come from her

need to intentionally discriminate against others because they are different from her. I never got

the feeling from Kisha that she dislikes her friends, family, and other people because they have

different opinions from her. LaKisha is outspoken and often bombastic rhetoric comes from her

need to understand the ways in which the world operates around her from a threshold she can

recognize. She grew up in a city inhabited, if not dominated, by Black people, and has had very

little interaction with white folks except in positions where whites are in positions of authority—

for example, police officers, store managers, and teachers. Her mother told her as a child that

whites were more responsible than Blacks (Trice). As LaKisha grew up, she began to see around

19 According to UrbanDictionary.com, dingy is “a word that can be used as an [adjective] to describe someone who is forgetful and makes silly choices at times” (@AFiizii). 59

her that that was not true. When she went shopping for the first time at a high-end store, her

mother told her before she went that whites did not spend money as recklessly as Blacks did

(Trice). In the store, she saw a white woman buy her five-year old daughter a $250 pocket wallet

as a toy (Trice). That moment changed Kisha. She began to see for herself the ways in which

whites behaved in positions of class privilege that is imbued with race. She told me a story about

a white nurse who feigned ignorance as she asked LaKisha if her hair weave could be the cause of her then six-month-old son’s frequent face blemishes (Trice). Kisha called the woman out, telling her, “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Hair weave! The stuff ya’ll been putting in your hair for years so that it looks thick and full like mine!” (Trice). In the following exchange, LaKisha calls out another white woman in a position of authority for misunderstanding, according to her, the differences between what whites do and what she must do for her children. In the exchange, Kisha talks about an event that happened in a WIC20 office.

LAKISHA: Every time I'm in this [WIC] office with these two white ladies . . . it's

always, “My baby overweight,” “My baby's, she's drinking too much, but

her doctor says her growth chart is perfect.” Like I said, I don't pay her no

attention because I literally told her, "I'm not raising a Caucasian baby. I'm

not starving my baby, so you can feel like you're doing good comparing to

your child. My baby has to eat. There's no possible way I'm gonna put my

baby down to sleep when she's hungry, and then you all get to call the

CPS and try and tell me I'm not feeding my kid." I said, "So, we're not

gonna play that game with you," because they did the same thing with

20 “The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk” (United States Department of Algriculture). 60

Lance [her son], 'cause Lance was a 10-pound-baby and they tried to cut

me off, but like I told them, "My baby was 10 pounds coming into this

world, so what do you want me to do? You can cut me off, and I could do

a lawsuit, he was 10 pounds. You can't cut me off because he's 10 pounds.

He didn't come into this world weighing 6 pounds, and I just made him fat

overnight."

MICHELLE: You told that woman that?

LAKISHA: Yeah, I told her. I said, "I understand that we all have different ways of

growing, how we're supposed to feed a kid, but the things you do and the

things I do are totally different . . . two different things. I don't eat plain

cereal like that. That stuff is nasty. My baby would throw that up, so I

have to mix apple sauce so she can keep it in her system." I said, "So you

want me to give my baby a 6-ounce bottle at 8 months? Let's not play that

game," I said, "So you starve your kid over there when you want your kid

to eat, but over here, if I starve my kid because I'm a Black woman, y'all

gonna call CPS21 on me." (Trice)

Perhaps in this exchange, LaKisha felt comfortable to freely express her feelings in an effort to educate and regain some agency or equal ground with the woman. LaKisha does not trust the woman’s logic regarding how she should feed her children, and she is not afraid to tell this woman who is in a position of authority what she thinks. There is fearlessness in the way

LaKisha tells this story. This incident could have as easily happened with anyone or anywhere she felt free to speak her mind. However, the fact that the source of Kisha’s pain was a white

21 Detroit Child Protective Services 61

woman who was attempting to police the way she culturally supports her children makes Kisha’s

insensitive remarks regarding white people all the more empowering.

Erving Goffman describes the discredited stigma as a physical, character, or a

religious/ethnic attribute that is deeply rejected from heteronormative cultures (E. Goffman,

Stigma 3–4). Goffman includes race as a social stigma that encompasses attributes and

stereotypes of which the stigmatized individual can negate. Their desire to be seen as “normal”

can evoke feelings of shame, of which produce responses that attempt to combat oppression

(Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 9). LaKisha’s identity appears to be informed by being seen and treated as a spoiled identity by white hegemonic society. Her performance of self is one that appears to push back against systemic racism by calling it out and exposing it. Arguably, there is shame and hurt that accompanies LaKisha’s feelings of

(dis)empowerment. She repeatedly says to the white nurse that she will experience the unfair repercussions of playing by the same rules as the white nurse and other white mothers. For

LaKisha in that moment, there is no win-win. The only option available to her to is to break rules which are based on systemic racist and classist practices.

The Psychological Tax

Kisha’s three-story colonial house was handed down to her from her father who, like

many Black Detroiters, decided to move into a house in the suburbs during the 2008 recession.

While many Detroit Midtown and Downtown neighborhoods within a short distance to Kisha’s

house have seen an influx of financial resources and rebuilding, Kisha’s neighborhood is still in a

mild state of dilapidation. Kisha said that much of the rebuilding, which is a few miles from her

home, is mostly to attract white residents. According to Kisha, she has seen more white people

moving into her neighborhood while Blacks continue to move out (Trice). Kisha expresses a 62 somewhat feigned indifference that is laced with evident irritation toward the influx of white people in the neighborhood. She believes that government officials that run the city of Detroit don’t care about her or anyone else besides the white folks who bring money into the city.

Kisha’s response is similar to what George Galster suggests in his book, Driving Detroit:

The Quest for Respect in the Motor City, in terms of the psychological impact of living in an industrial city dominated by deep-seated fears of physical and emotional loss (197). Galster contends that Detroit is a place where residential insecurities surrounding personal property are a constant threat (197). He attributes this to a history of both Black and white politicians who have often played on their constituencies’ fears and mistrust of the other (197). Another cause of residential insecurities comes from the psychological impact of the automotive industry on

Detroiters. According to Galster, the nature of automobile production from the assembly line to management is degrading to its workers (243). “It is an engine that drives away fundamental psychological resources that workers might expect to gain from the workplace” (Galster 243).

Lastly, Galster says that neighborhoods that have undergone serious erosion and decay have levied a heavy psychological tax on Detroit residents, both for those who live amid it and those who managed to escape. Galster states,

If all around one sees dilapidated homes burned-out hulks, and vacant lots of dumped

tires, what does that do to one’s self-image? Those who escape before the decay arrived,

[they] suffer from erosion of their histories. They witness their sacred ground—homes

and stores built, owned, and occupied by their forebears—deteriorate, become

abandoned, and eventually demolished. The places of their past are erased, replaced by

feelings of never being able to go home again, a peculiar rootlessness. (250) 63

Kisha’s distrust of Detroit resonates with Galster’s analysis of the psychological impact Detroit residents may feel. In our conversations, she was certainly leery of politics, opting never to vote in Detroit or get involved in city politics.

Although Kisha may have experienced some neighborhood abandonment, I sense her love and attentiveness toward her family that I believe indirectly has an impact on how she understands her relationship with Detroit. Although she is not directly involved in Detroit city politics, she is very active at her son and niece’s school. Her niece is a senior at Cass High

School in Detroit, which is part of the Detroit Public School System. Kisha is adamant that her son would never attend a Detroit Public School, but she did not have the same choice for her niece who is very attracted to and has stayed involved in the drama program at her high school.

However, she has never stopped regularly advocating on behalf of her niece. Recently, Kisha spoke with the school’s principal and senior class faculty supervisor about the high school’s prom budget, because Kisha felt like the students were being charged too much for prom tickets.

When Kisha asked to see the senior class budget and fundraising opportunities, she felt like the administration was giving her the runaround. She vocally advocated for her niece and the senior class by letting the administration know that she thought they were up to no good and were taking advantage of the children. Kisha’s demands were not met, but it did not stop her from contacting some of the parents to let them know about her conversation with Cass school administrators and her feelings related to their nontransparent practices toward students in the senior class. The interaction with school administrators seemed to create an impression in Kisha that fueled her distaste for Detroit and Detroit city politics. At the same time, it did not stop her from getting involved with school administrators because of her vested interest in her children and family. 64

According to Maria Vittoria Giuliani in “Theory of Attachment and Place Attachment”,

“places that are normally associated with a positive affect can also stop the emergence of any

feelings of affection or even cause aversion when they threaten the individual’s identity” (151).

Giuliani goes on to say that a person’s identity of a place depends on the overall quality of the

physical environment, as well as the social features associated with the environment and the

individual’s capacity to adapt or transform it (151). On one hand, it would appear that Chrissy’s

school is not an ideal place for Kisha to create place attachment. It represents all of the social

inequalities that Kisha despises when it comes to Detroit as a political space. At the same time,

when Kisha interacts with school administrators, she has the capacity to adapt or transform the

environment into a place as comfortable as her home, a place where she voices her perspective

and expects certain responses.

In response to discredited stigma or spoiled identity (of which I would argue that all non-

white people experience), LaKisha’s refusal to play by the rules and instead apathetically performs her Black female identity in ways that reject white re-colonization in Detroit. Like

Tony, LaKisha’s performance of self is informed by the way in which white bodies economically and geographically occupy Detroit. Yet, their response to re-colonization is different. For Tony, he supports the shift. For LaKisha, she vehemently distrusts it and ultimately seems to reject it. 65

Neighbors in Transit

“The economics, the jobs, the disparity, the safety net, it fell out, and therefore, we find ourselves in a community that sometimes, if we are not careful, we're not prayed up, it looks hopeless. It looks dire. It looks like that we're on the brink of just being put off the planet, but I just refuse to believe that. I believe that as long as there are a faithful few that are willing to do the work, we'll make it, and I think we are making it.” – Pastor Raynard Sims, Personal Interview, 2014.

Figure 2.5 Photograph of Pastor Raynard Sims in front of an abandoned house in his neighborhood in 2014 (Source: Tabb Jr., Clarence).

Pastor Raynard Sims, 49 years old, is a resident of the Greensboro22 neighborhood on

Detroit’s eastside near Outer Drive and Harper Street. What once was an upper-middle-class

community of police offices, city workers, and automobile administrators is now filled with what

Sims calls “transitional people.”23 According to Sims, transitional people are folks who have no

22 Greensboro neighborhood is about 79 percent Black residents and 18 percent white residents. The median household income is $50k in comparison to Detroit which is $25k (“Race and Ethnicity in ZIP Code 48224, Michigan”).

23 Sims does not refer to transitional people as Black people. However, currently, in his residential street there are no white residents. 66

connection to their neighbors or the neighborhoods in which they live (Sims). He describes

transitional people as the antithesis of neighbors.24 Sims states,

SIMS: Well, I have a thing when we say neighbors, because when I was coming

up, we knew our neighbors, and a lot of times, when areas are going down

the drain, our neighbors tend to move to a more stabilized area. So, in the

last 17 years, ones that we have known as neighbors, mainly elderly

population, have made their transitions, or they have moved in with

children or they have went to assisted living facilities, and then we have

now what I like to call “transitional people.25 They . . . and again, because

of the economy and because everyone's plight in life is different, because

of social injustice, because of the foreclosures in this country, we just have

people that's really not trying to . . . because of hurt, they're not trying to

engage, for the most part, with other people. (Sims)

For Sims, the lack of engagement is what separates transitional people from neighbors.

Transitional people can at some point have been neighbors. However, according to Sims, for

whatever reason, they have fallen out of the community and lost a pivotal piece of their humanity

in the process. Sims states,

SIMS: See, neighbors engage. Neighbors talk. Neighbors, like my neighbors in

the day, would compete about who had the best-looking poinsettias, and

who had the nicest furniture on the porch, or we cleaned our curbs. We cut

24 According to Sims, neighbors are homeowners who are actively engaged in their community. They contribute to the community by improving their living spaces and places both aesthetically and emotionally (Sims).

25 Sims is not referring to the elderly population as transitional people; rather, he is referring to the people who now occupy the former homes of the elderly in his neighborhood. 67

our grass every Friday to have uniformity in the neighborhood. We don't

have that today. We have people that, and this is not to knock them, but

because we don't know what they have been through, and they will now

take these homes, and they'll just live in these homes with no heat. We

service those people . . . but they're not engaged because they feel as

though—and you can sense it, that they've just been cast away. So, what

you're dealing with—there's a story in the Bible after Jesus feeds the 5,000

with the loaf of bread and the fish . . . and Jesus said something very

important: “Don't forget the fragments. Put them back in the basket.” And

I think what we have today is not, per se, neighbors. We've got a lot of

fragment people that we got to make whole any way we can. (Sims)

To Sims, transitional people have lost interest in participating in ways that communicate a commitment to the Greensboro neighborhood. Sims never places blame or condemns the transitional people in his neighborhood. He sees a stark reality for what it is like for Black

Detroiters caught in transient moments in their lives. Many times, over again, he puts himself in harm’s way to bring comfort and beauty to his neighborhood, as well as to bring Black folks to church. Sims sees transitional people as fragments ripped from the whole of humanity. He is doing his part to restore one piece at a time.

At the same time, Pastor Sims states he is also willing to take a life in an effort to protect his community. In an interview with The Detroit News, Pastor Sims confessed that he opens his front door with a gun holstered to his pajamas (Kurth and MacDonald). According to Sims, he does this to protect himself and his family, but also as a way to remind folks that even though he is a Pastor, he will use violence if necessary (Sims). Sims’s ferocious personality veers slightly 68

toward adamance when it comes to protecting his neighborhood. During our interview, Sims told

me about how a former Detroit police chief was gunned down while mowing his lawn on a

Saturday morning. Sims was distraught and shared, “This man was a pillar in the community. He

was a former police chief. An elder. And these young folks just killed the man AND took his

mower. Why not just take the mower? Don’t take the man’s life too” (Sims). After a series of

break-ins at the abandoned house next door, he spray-painted DON’T GET SHOT on the front

door to ward off unwelcomed visitors. This is just one of many examples of how Pastor Sims

cares for and shepherds his community.

Pastor Sims has a hyper connection to both public and private space in Detroit. During our conversations, his role as Pastor of a church kept him connected to public space in Detroit, more so than Tony and Kisha. Sims talked about how he supports the city of Detroit:

SIMS: How do I support the City of Detroit? In the economic downturn with the

war, with the theft of corporate America writing loans to people that we

have found out could not pay them loans, and they were hardworking

people, had a whole lot of friends in the factory, and we say, "Well, they

should have knew better." Well, if you give a bunch of money to a person

that's really not privy in the area of finances, what do you expect? They're

gonna not use it wisely. So many homes have been foreclosed in my area,

and I live in a pretty . . . well, back in the day, pretty middle-class area.

And so, what did I do? I made a statement. My house, my block, has 26

houses on it, and I live in Detroit. And I think, when it's all said and done,

the foreclosures, the evictions, I think we still had 12 homeowners left,

and a couple of people that were renting. And I took the initiative, and this 69 is so funny. I used to say, "We're poor, but we don't have to be nasty, mean, and dirty." We don't have to have the paper on the curbs. We can trim this tree, so we can allow the streetlight to illuminate. We see the house over there that needs boarding up. We don't have to wait for the

City of Detroit to do it. I took the initiative. I would go every Tuesday or

Thursday. I would sweep that curb, sweep the curb, the vacant house next to me, cut the grass; two vacant houses down from me, cut that grass. I would go in front of this dope man's house. I'll never forget it. He was selling drugs out his house. Again, not neighbors, transitional folks, setting up shop to do whatever. People were like, "Oh, that's the dope man."

People were scared of the dope man. They used to party, and they would throw all kinds of liquor bottles on the ground. It had to be Jesus

[laughter]. I just took the initiative. I went down there one day with my dumpster and my shovel, and I think I had a rake, and I started picking up all these liquor bottles. I mean, you can do your thing, but you have to, you know. A couple days later, my wife came to me, and she said, "You influenced the dope man." I said, "What do you mean?" "He's out there cutting the grass now, and raking up the grass, and cleaning his curb." And then lo and behold, some of the other young men got together. We boarded up those houses. We cleaned our street. We cut down the trees that were blocking the light from the streetlamps, so it could illuminate for the young women and the young children in our neighborhood, that was working late or their kids going to school early. I did not take the position, 70

"I'm gonna call mayor's office. I'm gonna call the counselor's office,"

because I know everyone has the same complaints. But my premise was

this, "I'm not waiting on anyone to do anything for me that I can do for

myself”. (Sims)

Sims is both compassionate in his desire to help the people in his community, especially when it seems they are not able to help themselves; however, he is also very clear about what needs to happen so the community can be whole. In the above passage, Sims is stern and maybe slightly obstinate in his expectations of the neighbors. Additionally, he is sympathetic toward folks he calls “transitional,” as well as those who got caught up in the financial downturn. It is possible his sympathy derives from a sense that the financial downturn created transitional people. At the same time, Sims interest in preserving his community by willingly putting his body in danger signifies an enthusiasm for his neighborhood that I have not seen from any of the participants in my study. It is a quality I admire about Pastor Sims.

Pastor Sims does not police blackness as strongly as LaKisha Trice. However, he polices others in terms of their commitment to Detroit in relation to their blackness. For example, during a telephone conversation, he mentioned his son had moved to St. Clair Shores (a suburb north of

Detroit along the Detroit River). He told his son that, although he loved him, he was not Black anymore. He had abandoned Detroit, so he cannot be Black anymore. I pressed further by asking him what his son’s blackness had to do with Detroit. He said that Detroit is a Black city, and we need all the Blacks we can get. However, there was a different sentiment when we spoke about race and Detroit in our first in-person interview. When I asked what race would Detroit be if it were a body, he responded:

SIMS: What race would she be? What race would she be? I'm not gonna say what 71

you think I'm gonna say. She would be a light, shiny race . . . she would be

a light that shines on everyone. I don't know. I know it's not . . . is it a

race?

MICHELLE: Sorry, Pastor Sims, I'm not sure a light shining is on the census [laughter].

SIMS: Shines on everybody!

MICHELLE: I'm sorry. The census, "What race are you?” "I'm a light, shining."

SIMS: Yes! Yes! Why can't we just be a light to shine on everyone?

MICHELLE: I'm not gonna let you get away with that [laughter].

MICHELLE: What race would she be?

SIMS: Multicolor.

MICHELLE: Okay. So, "multicolored."

SIMS: Multicolor.

MICHELLE: Okay.

SIMS: Is that a race? That's not a race.

MICHELLE: No, it's not a race but . . .

SIMS: What race? I can't . . . I don't know if I can answer that because I don't

wanna put myself in a corner and kind of say, "Oh, she would be the Black

race, or she would be the Asian race, or she would be the white race, or

she would be the Hispanic race, or she will be the Chaldean race." I want

her to be representative of every . . . okay. Well, what race would she? The

human race.

MICHELLE: Okay.

SIMS: Is humans a race? 72

MICHELLE: No, it's not.

SIMS: Okay. Well, I'm not gonna pick the . . . I'm not gonna go there. But here's

our problem now. We're Black, and we're white, and we're Chaldean, and

we're Hispanic, and we're Mexicans, and we need to start thinking as a

melting pot drawing from each other's strength versus having the

mentality because that's where we're at now in Detroit and around this

country.

MICHELLE: Okay.

SIMS: So, I can't just say . . . I'm not gonna advocate . . . Jesus died for all. What

race would . . . or you got 80% Black Indie? Well, 70% maybe. Well,

maybe 60%, maybe 50%, because we're [Blacks] getting up out of here,

by no doing of our own. We're being pushed out. (Sims)

Sims refusal to racially identify Detroit contradicts his willingness to racially identify his son.

There are possibly a couple of reasons for his seeing it this way. For example, having known

Pastor Sims before our initial interview could have affected the ways in which we communicated with each other during our first in-person interview together. Pastor Sims is my brother’s mentor and employer. My brother Marcus Cowin is the Minister of Music at Pastor Sims’ church. Sims

has been a friend to my immediate family for years. In previous conversations, though, Pastor

Sims is always outspoken about Black disenfranchisement and white racism in Detroit. At the

end of the above conversation, some of that resentment toward white re-colonization lingers in

his response. In the time I have known him, his views toward the Other have been somewhat

oppositional. His entire congregation is Black with the exception of my sister-in-law who

identifies as Latina. However, in our first interview together, he is less interested in calling out 73

white folks as perpetrators of Black disenfranchisement. Instead, he focuses his responses on

what Black Detroiters could do to lift themselves from poverty-stricken Detroit. As Sims speaks,

I can see that he is visibly uncomfortable with making any implication that whites folks in

Detroit are aggressors. To Sims, Black disenfranchisement is something that afflicts the lives of

Black folks. At the same time, for Sims, Blacks also have the power to fight by focusing on what

we can do for each other. Another reason Pastor Sims was unwilling to racially identify Detroit

could have been the circumstances of our meeting. Although I have met with Sims on previous

occasions for discussions surrounding Detroit, this was our first formal in-person interview. I

recorded the interview using a video camera and audio recording. Sims was well aware the

interview was being recorded. There were even moments when he asked for some conversations

to be “off the record.” It is possible that Sims wanted to be on his best behavior in terms of

discussing hot topic issues that could cause tension. Also, him knowing that my advisor, who is a

white woman, could possibly watch the recording could have affected how he presented his

performance of self.

Pastor Sims sees Black Detroit residents as part of the multicolor portrait that he

describes in our conversation – not absent from it. His desire to make transitional people into

residents makes me think of his work as putting together the fragments of a shattered Black

Detroit identity; it is a Black Detroit identity that could be responding to the new socio-

geographical terrain. Once transitional people are residents, all Black Detroiters can stand in

solidarity with white Detroiters to take part in the current Detroit economic renaissance. I think

in Sims mind, it can be a win-win for everyone; but everyone must come to the table, so to

speak, with something to offer. The performance of transitional people appears to be a 74

performance of place detachment. It is also a disruptive performance of self because it displaces,

for Sims, Black Detroit residents.

Conclusion

If, according to Navaro-Yashin, phantomic space is the absence of bodily presence that

haunts the imagination of the residents that once occupied a space (14–15), then I would argue

that the actions and views of a past generation of white Detroiters have an affective—almost

phantasmagoric—presence on post-recession Black Detroiters. This affective phantasmagoric

presence, or what I call “white phantomic space,” is made present by the reentry of white Anglo-

European Americans into the city of Detroit, a “reentry” because in the past, they had a physical and emotional impact on the lives of Black Detroiters. Their return to the city is like the prodigal son returning home to claim his land and wealth, while physically, mentally, and perhaps emotionally displacing current Black Detroiters who have for the last 50 years lived and thrived in the city.

As I reflect on the relationship among racialized performativity and Black Detroit identity in this chapter and throughout my research, what emerges for me is how Black Detroit identity and some performances of Detroit blackness can be seen as roadblocks to economic progress in

Detroit. These observations dislocate us from our cultural and ethnic whole Black self. When

Pastor Sims refers to transitional people, he isn’t talking about poor white people. He is referring to poor Black people. While their bodies are presents, their identity as part of the Black whole of humanity is absent. Transitional people occupy space in absentia. So, while white phantomic space physically, mentally, economically and perhaps emotionally displaces current Black

Detroiters, it also has the potential of forcing and maybe even willing them away from certain areas of Detroit. 75

There lies racial tension that I believe has contributed to the various affective responses to both white and Black Detroiters from my participants as their responses pertain to the focus in this chapter. Licensed psychologist and author, Resmaa Menakem, in My Grandmother’s Hands:

Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, examines the racial tension in terms of how white European bodies have historically responded to the Black body.

He calls the viscerally violent and assaultive response from white Europeans toward Black bodies as white-body supremacy (17). The white European physical dominance over bodies of color are triggered by fear of the same physical and emotional traumas that occurred to their ancestors more than 300 years ago during the Middle Ages. Menakem states,

White bodies traumatized each other in Europe for centuries before they encountered

Black and red bodies. This carnage and trauma profoundly affected white bodies and the

expressions of their DNA. . . . This historical trauma is closely linked to the development

of white-body supremacy in America. (11)

Menakem believes that white-body supremacy is a physical manifestation of fear that incites violence toward dark bodies. The effect of white-body supremacy on African American bodies is often an internalized and embedded trauma that can contribute to “physical and emotional ailments”, such as medical conditions and mental and emotional self-hate that is expressed in ways that dismiss, disregard, and/or denounce blackness and Black people (Menakem 15, 80).

While not all of my participants responded in ways that indicated internalized trauma, all of them displayed some form of racial trauma that seemed to affect their daily living in Detroit.

Tony White commented that Black Detroiters benefit from spending more time with white

Detroiters, and his view that white people are generally nicer suggests that Tony prefers the company of white people. Yet, Tony’s home is full of images of affluent brown bodies. Class 76

play into Tony’s perception of Black Detroiters. The Obamas are an excellent example of how

class influences (if not trumps) his perception of race. So, Tony’s understanding of Black

affluence becomes a mirror by which to see and gauge other Black people.

Place attachment among my participants is significantly associated with how my

participants interact with and negotiate white phantomic space (white bodies, black bodies in

absentia, and the city) in Detroit. Many Black Detroiters have to renegotiate the terms of their

physical, mental, and emotional selves. LaKisha Trice experiences discredited stigma of race and

gender oppression as a Black mother. In some ways, she refuses to be absent from Detroit when

it comes to protecting and supporting her family; yet, in other ways she prefers to be absent from

the whole. I would argue that LaKisha could be considered transitional because she refuses to be

involved in Detroit, except on her terms.

When I reflect on the many moments of dialogue I had with my co-performers in the

field, I am reminded of how everyday Black Detroit residents negotiate their identities in a

variety of ways as they live in a shifting landscape. These three Black Detroit residents perform

varying presentations of self in response to the white re-colonialization of space in Detroit.

Could these various performances of self be conscious acts of resistance? Michel de Certeau

points out how ways of operating in the everyday in a place can be acts of resistance. These

“ways of operating” can resist the “ways and customs” of a place – a place that contributes to the colonization of a space for the purpose of making place exclusive to those “ways and customs”

(Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life 30). Black Detroit geographies, such as the production

of spaces in Detroit neighborhoods, are where Black residents can make place and form place

attachment through common cultural ideologies and practices. The racialization of those 77 geographies also inform the cultural ideologies, practices, and in many ways disputes Black subjectivity among some Black Detroiters. 78

CHAPTER 3. BLACK MASCULINE SUPREMACY: THE PERFORMANCE OF REAL

NIGGAS AND BAD BITCHES AT THE 2014 ULTIMATE WHITE PARTY MIDWEST

EDITION

“Only as American blacks began to accept the standards for family life, as well as for manhood and womanhood embraced by American whites, did black men and women begin to resent one another. And as time went on[,] their culture, under constant attack from the enemy, became more impoverished and dependent and left with fewer self-regenerating mechanisms. The Americanized black man’s reaction to his inability to earn enough to support his family, his “impotence,” his lack of concrete power, was to vent his resentment on the person in this society who could do least about it—his woman.” - Michele Wallace, “Black Macho and The Myth of Superwoman”

Evening, Saturday, July 21, 2014

The drink I have been nursing is almost gone, and I am feeling a little tipsy. I decide that

I must eat something. I have a protein bar in my purse, but I decide free hot food is always a good thing, so I pay a visit to the buffet dinner lounge for VIP guests. According to my entrance ticket, that includes me. It is not as crowded as it once was. Earlier in the night, my brother’s fiancée and I waited at least an hour trying to get into the VIP section before we gave up. This time, I only have to wait 15 minutes to get inside. Of course, all of the food is gone, which explains why it was so easy for me to gain entrance. I get some fruit from the picked-over fruit sculpture and a small bag of popcorn.

My brother26 calls me up, but, of course, the cell phone service is wonky. There must be

at least 1,000 people at this thing. I leave the buffet and head back toward the stage. Just as I

approach, I see a group of white entertainers on the stage. They are spitting fire from their

26 My brother, Marcus Cowin a.k.a. Marc Detroit, is a hype-man in Detroit. He co-hosted the event with comedian and actor, Mike Epps. Marcus stayed onstage or in the vicinity of the stage for the duration of the party. 79 mouths into the air. The crowd is glued to the performance. I am too. I stop to watch their act. I think to myself how satisfying it is to see white entertainers performing for the approval of a mostly Black audience. This is the White Party after all. It is the one night of the year when

Black Detroiters can uniformly gather in the company of each other to enjoy opulence. The symbolism of the event is staggering. In order to participate in a white party, guests must dress to impress in all white clothes. White Parties were playgrounds for white and wealthy elites during the 1920s. They’ve had a resurgence in recent years with Black Hip Hop mogul, Sean “P.Diddy”

Combs producing White Parties for his wealthy friends in the Hip Hop community, most of whom are Black or Brown. Detroit has produced their own white party for the last several years.

It is usually held in Chene Park but this year it is at the Riverside Marina Detroit. Historically,

Black Detroiters were racially discriminated against from using the marina facilities, of which are owned by the city. So, to see Black people dressed in all white and sprawled over the same place they were once denied is satisfying.

As soon as the fire breathers end their act, I head toward the entrance to the stage. I can see my brother. He saunters to the back and disappears from view. Suddenly, a swarm of Black men swoop past me. There is a mingling of curiosity from the people around me as the men take to the stage. Comedian and movie actor Mike Epps appears on the stage and greets the crowd.

Everyone in the vicinity of the stage gathers closer, hoots and hollers back at Epps, who has just launched into a slew of derogatory racial and sexist slurs directed at the Black Detroiters in the audience. However, no one seems visibly offended. In fact, everyone laughs. I am not offended either. Perhaps I am not offended because I know he isn’t specifically talking about me. I’m not a nigga and I’m not a bad bitch—at least I’m not feelin’ bad bitchy at the moment. In fact, I’m feeling nervous. I can’t see my brother at all. 80

Mike Epps’ entourage is huge. It appears his security is on the stage in the form of a group of Black men wearing white oversized button-up baseball jerseys and even bigger white

Bermuda shorts. On the back of the shirts, in bold red letters, is typed BRICKK ENT.27 It’s like a never-ending train of BRICKK ENT shirts headed toward the stage. In a matter of minutes, the men have created a human wall along the front of the stage. Their bodies block the stage like a barricade. The man standing next to me is on the phone with his cousin. He shoots his hand up.

“Hey! Yeah cuz! It’s me. You gon’ let me up? You letting me up?!” Instantaneously, he is waved to the stage. Now, the stage is full of Black men. I do not see any women on stage.

Over on stage left, I see a female server in a tight-fitting gold mini-dress. She attempts to push past the men. Before she reaches the apron, a group of men block her way. She tries to push forward. I see a few men scuffle, and there seems to be disagreement as to whether the woman should be allowed to enter. She swings two bottles in front of the men. I can’t see the labels, but

I assume she provides bottle service. Suddenly, Epps screams over the mic, “What you doin’?!

Let these fine ladies on this stage! In fact, what is all these dicks doin’ on stage? Where the ladies at?,” says Epps. The men nod to each other, and the server disappears into the milieu of men. The women around me in the audience, who at this point have been intently watching the men, begin to stir. A woman behind me screams, “Yeah! Where the ladies at?!” The tension continues to stir. I hear a few more women around me repeat the same phrase, “Where the ladies at?!” The woman behind me screams, “GET ALL THESE DICKS OFF THE STAGE!” The music comes to a stop, but more men continue to hop up on stage. The tension continues to swell. I can’t see Mike Epps anymore. He is swallowed up among the men on the stage. Then, he comes back to the mic and pushes his way past the men to land front and center of the stage.

27 BRICKK Entertainment is the title of a full-service independent music label located in Detroit, Michigan (TandBFilms). 81

“Hey! Fuck this shit. I’m gon’ come out there.” Just as soon as he says this, the audience erupts

in cheers, hoots, and hollers. The women around me are elated. Mike then has a change of heart.

“Oh hell, I forgot where I was. This Detroit. I ain’t going out there!” Many in the audience laugh.

However, there are a few rumblings from the women around me.

As I look around, I realize I am surrounded by people on every side of me. I become

aware of myself. Yes, Mike is right: This is Detroit, and I am among a sea of strangers. Anything

can pop off. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. I want to be back on stage with my brother

and his fiancée. I look up at the stage for any sign of Marcus or Marta. It is impossible to see

through the wall of Black men. I do my best to look and feel calm. I need to look like I belong

here. I have one thing going for me: I am and look like a Black woman (and I identify as one as

well). That gives me a pass here. I decide to put on my “researcher hat” to take my mind off of

being afraid. I remind myself that I’m here to observe and interact. I pull out my phone from my

clutch. I focus my phone and my energy on the people around me. I decide to make a conscious

effort to be part of the community of Black women around me. I nod my head and engage in

what is happening in the audience and on the stage. I move slightly closer to the people in front

of me in the direction of the stage.

The music stops. A Black woman emerges from the back and addresses the crowd. She is

one of the event promoters and urges the audience to calm down. She says no one else was

permitted onstage due to weight restrictions. Mike Epps clips in, “No more ratchet bitches28 to

the stage.” Everyone laughs. The Black woman next to me lets out a high-pitched scream that

ends in a riotous cackle. I don’t understand why Mike would say that. From where I am standing

28 According to Dictionary.com, rachet refers to someone who is “1. flashy, unrefined, etc.; low class: ratchet girls wearing too much makeup. 2. exhibiting or affirming low-class traits in a way that is considered authentic: Better to stay a ratchet bitch than become a bougie poser like her” (Rachet). 82 in the audience, I can’t see any women on stage. Maybe they are entering around to the back of the stage? There must be more people entering from the back because, at this moment, the men in BRICKK ENT jackets have been pushed to the back of the stage to make way for a wall of

Detroit police officers. The officers have replaced the Brickk men and are now lined up around the perimeter of the stage. There is one Black woman officer among them. She is petite next to the large men around her. All of the officers are Black. A clump of Brickk jacketed men are huddled front and center of the stage in the audience. The Brickk jacketed men on stage are trying to negotiate with the officers to let the men in the audience on stage. The officers do not move. Just like all of us in the crowd, the Brickk jacketed men are confined to the audience space. They are not happy about it, at all. Their arms swing up toward the stage as their bodies attempt to advance. However, the police officers stand at their post like stone pillars rooted to the ground. They will not be moved.

The music comes on again. Mike Epps shouts, “Where the real niggas at?! Where the real niggas at?! Bad bitches, real niggas.” He repeats this mantra several times before the music stops again. Obviously, it is a call and response. I remember these types of call and responses from my club days as a high school student. The calls are meant to rally the audience. They help establish community among the crowd. Most DJs and Hype-men know what to say to attract attention in the form of hoots and hollers from the crowd. The most common I’ve heard are, “Everyone with a birthday in (month) say, Yeahhhhh!” or “If you’ve got ($$) in the bank, say Yeahhhhh!!!”

However, “bad bitches and real niggas” is new for me. I have never heard these terms used as a call and response.

Is Mike trying to play to the audiences’ desire to be bad bitches or real niggas? After all, this is the White Party. The event promoters have marketed this party to be different than a 83 typical club party. Guests are required to dress to impress in all white. The performance of affluence is all around me. The Detroit Marina, $5,000 cabana rentals, and VIP Buffet are some examples of how event promoters attempt to remind folks they are the crème de la crème of

Detroit Black society. Perhaps addressing the audience as “bad bitches and real niggas” serves as a reminder of just that—they are special. They are forced to interact with white folks outside of their communities; yet, when they are called to come together with shared common interests, they are made to feel special.

This brings to mind how the term “real” assumes a desire for “racial authenticity.”29 By adding “nigga,” it genders the phrase. Any person regardless of gender or sexual orientation can

“keep it real.” However, to be a “real nigga,” means that, as a Black man, you have acquired success in the form of money, luxury goods, a formal education, etc. but, as a Black man, you have also not forgotten where you come from: a culturally masculine community with shared common masculine traits. Miles White in Real Niggas: Black Men, Hard Men, and the Rise of

Gangsta Culture says to be a “nigga” is a reflexive performance that calls attention to centuries long oppression of Black masculinity. Black men embody the alienation and dispossession in modern society, becoming what white America fears (M. White 73).

The music stops again. The event promoter appears again. This time she directs her attention to Mike Epps: “Mike, I’m going to let you get back to your party in a second. Ladies and gentlemen, please. Right now, the DJ booth is too heavy. I have a weight restriction.” A few

29 Philosophy scholar, Joel Rudinow, offers a way of understanding racial authenticity by thinking about the ways in which value and credibility become intertwined with race and ethnicity. “…authenticity is applicable to the artifacts and rituals which are a culture’s ‘currency’ conferring value on those ‘acceptably derived’ from original sources” (129). According to Patricia Hill Collins in Black Sexual Politics, Black men and Hegemonic Masculinity are manifested in the popular colloquial phrase, “Keeping it Real”. Collins states, “ ‘real’ men are primarily defined as not being like women… male dominance occurs within racial/ethnic categories and is one marker of male power. If “real” men are those who can control women, then these representations suggest that Black men can shake the stigma of weakness by dominating unnaturally strong Black women” (180). 84

more Black male Detroit police officers saunter on stage. They move as if anything could happen

at any second. Their guns are not drawn; however, their hands are certainly where you can see

them. “I need you to calm down,” says the event promoter. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a

major issue.” At that moment, the group of Brickk men at the front of the stage attempt to force

their way past the officers. The moment is tense, and the officers block the men. Angrily, the

Brickk men yell at the officers. I can’t make out what they are saying, but from their body

language, it doesn’t look friendly. Two Brickk men who are already on stage speak intently into

the ear of the officers who are blocking the three Brickk men from the stage. The women around

me are still screaming “NO MORE DICKS!” and “WHERE DA’ LADIES AT?” The event

promoter gives up. She disappears into the sea of Black male bodies, and I don’t see her for the

rest of the event.

Amidst the officers, I see Mike Epps in the middle of the stage. He is talking to an older

Black man (late 60s to early 70s) who is dapperly dressed in a white formal suit and tie. My first

impression of the man is that he seems out of place and too refined for an event like this. Then I

see Epps and the man pose for a series of pictures. I ask a group of women next to me who the

older man is. They aren’t sure but think he is a local judge or politician. It shouldn’t surprise me

that a politician is here. Everyone wants to be here when there are so much affluence.

I can see large bottles of liquor being passed from man to man behind the wall of police officers. There are also Brickk men with white takeaway containers of food in the upper-level

VIP section that was reserved for Epps and his entourage. The women around me continue to complain about the men on stage to each other, while some yell out for the men to get off the stage. Screams like, “What the fuck?,” “Fuck these dicks!,” “Get off the fuckin’ stage!,” and

“Get yo’ ass off the fuckin’ stage” fill the air from the swarm of audience members. The fire 85 marshal appears. He is an older Black man (late 50s to early 60s) in a dark blue uniform. He says, “Anyone else gets on this stage, and I will shut this party the fuck down!” Whoa! At first I am stunned that a city official would use that type of language. As soon as the thought comes into my head, I immediately remember that this is Detroit. He knows this community and is familiar with the people. He has permission (somewhat) to talk to Black folks like that because he is a familiar with the ways and mores of the culture.

I can feel the confusion, resentment, and anger as screaming voices sweep through the crowd like an active volcano brewing, sputtering, and finally spilling over, “Get Off the Stage!”

This message appears on the video monitors that flank the front sides of the stage, “Oh my God, get the fuck off the stage! It’s too much dick on the stage!” scream the women around me.

Suddenly Mike Epps’ voice cranks in, “Let's get this mutha-fuckin’ party started DETROIT!” As if on autopilot, the women in the crowd scream and cheer. The sound of Epps’ voice suddenly and simultaneously quells their anger and excites them. However, seconds later he disappears.

He is swallowed up in the sea of Brickk men, police officers, and everyone else privileged to be in Epps’ space. Two men wearing Brickk gear push past me as they head toward the stage. Their push causes me to bump into the woman in front of me. She shoots me an angry glare as I unavoidably invaded her space because Brickk invaded mine. I quickly apologize. I point to the men who came past me. We share a knowing look. No sooner did the men pass me than we see them gather at the front center of the stage. They join the other Brickk men who have been trying to negotiate with the police officers to let them on stage. It looks like the answer is still no.

However, at stage left, a police officer moves slightly in toward the stage, and a Brickk man is helped up on stage by another Brickk man. The women around me are strangely silent. This makes me think about the power dynamics on stage and off. 86

Mike Epps chants, “All the Bad Bitches out here . . . ”

Two more men jump up on stage near the same area.

The tension in their bodies betray them: They wanted to be up on stage too. They wanted to be included. One more man hurls himself up onto the stage. Strangely, I feel this too. I want to be onstage as well. Yes, fear is part of that but mostly it is because I feel excluded.

Mike Epps chants, All the Bad Bitches, all the Real Niggas . . .”

Despite Mike Epps’ calls for response during pauses in the music to quiet the crowd, the women around me are not responding to being “Bad Bitches” as they once were…

I can see my brother and his fiancée on stage. My brother and I make eye contact. I move slightly toward the stage to indicate to him that I want to be up there. He looks around tentatively. Hopelessly, he shakes his head…

… I am confined to the crowd.

Black Masculine Supremacy

In order to understand what appears to be chaos and disorder in what I experienced and the physical and emotional division between men and women that occurred, a history of certain race and class disparities as well as gender normative expectations within that history needs to be explored. Many of the groups of people whom I observed and with whom I interacted at The

White Party created a common community and cultural space for hip-hop and rap music that has been celebrated and revered as a free creative expression in Detroit since the mid-1980s.30 Yet, some hip-hop music and rap music have been accused of ignoring the contributions of Black female voices to rap. Black men in hip hop and rap have been accused of promoting misogyny,

30 In March 2016, Detroit Metro Times hip-hop expert Kahn Santori Davison published an overview of the history of hip-hop music, the artists, and the trials and tribulations of making and cultivating a space for free cultural expression in Detroit. 87

gender, and sexuality biases that uphold Black masculinity and denigrate and subjugate Black

femininity. The role of sexual violence and misogynistic views toward Black women has been a

conversation in academia since the mid-90s. Marilyn Lashley states that “[Rap Music] is

explicitly and gratuitously sexual, occasionally bestial and frequently violent. These images, in

the guise of ‘art and music,’ exploit and denigrate African American women…” (Bad Rap).

Former chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women, the late C. DeLores Tucker,

famously stated at a stockholders meeting for (then) Warner Bros. Records in 1996, that rap star

Lil’ Kim’s Hardcore album was “gansta porno rap” (Hur 663). Detroit rapper, Eminen, who is

not Black but plays to a hardcore gansta rap ethos that has largely been promoted by Black men,

has been accused for years of promoting capitalistic misogyny31. I call the misogynistic and

oppressive practices enacted toward Black women in hip hop and rap music, Black Masculine

Supremacy. My deployment of this term is cultivated in part from Patricia Hill Collins’ theory of

“Hegemonic Masculinity,” wherein the dynamic among white men and whiteness are held as the

“natural laws of man” to control others. Collins states,

… because this group [white men] so dominates positions of power and authority, the

view of masculinity patterned on Tarzan, U.S. senators, corporate executives, and

cowboys is well known and is often taken as normal, natural, and ideal. It becomes

hegemonic in that the vast majority of the population accepts ideas about gender

complementarity that privilege the masculinity of propertied, heterosexual White men as

natural, normal, and beyond reproach (Black Sexual Politics 185–86).

31 Terrence McCoy of The Washington Post accuses Eminem of “calling out – and then threating or insulting prominent women is a way for the rapper to drive up record sales. McCoy states, “though he has rapped of machine-gunning women and murdering his ex-wife, the violent lyrics, rather than derail his career, have in fact burnished it” (McCoy). 88

In terms of the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and Black men, Collins states that

Black men hold a position at the bottom of the hegemonic tier that often puts them in a volatile

relationship with Black women (Black Sexual Politics 188). According to Collins, this is because

Black women occupy the category of devalued Other that gives meaning to hegemonic masculinity. Collins states,

Black femininity is constructed in relation to the tenets of hegemonic masculinity that

subordinates all femininities to masculinity. At the same time, the social power granted to

race and class in the United States means that sexism is not a with/or endeavor in which

all men dominate all women. Rather, gender norms that privilege men typically play out

within racial/ethnic… groups. (Black Sexual Politics 188)

Thinking about “hegemonic masculinity” as an act of power and privilege over all

femininities, requires a more robust and active term that focuses on the complicated relationship

among Black men and women. Black Masculine Supremacy involves an attempt to objectify,

sexualize, and silence Black women. I selected the word “supremacy” rather than superiority or

another similar term because the first assumes hierarchy and a willful imbalance of power and

control of Black female agency. According to Janice Faye Hutchinson in her article, “The Hip

Hop Generation: African American Male-Female Relationships in a Nightclub Setting,”

“Objectification of subordinate groups [Black women] is part of domination [Black men] and is central to female oppression (82). Subsequently, Patricia Hill Collins states, “if ‘real’ men are those who can control women, then these representations suggest that Black men can shake the stigma of weakness by dominating unnaturally strong Black women. Being strong enough to

‘bring a bitch to her knees’” (Black Sexual Politics 189) is a marker of superiority above Black female identity. 89

The 2014 White Party is a reclamation of Black space in the midst of a racially, culturally, and economically shifted Post Recession Detroit. Yet, how does the whole of the 2014

White Party, as a space of Black affluence, factor into how Black masculine supremacy becomes present? How could racialization factor into how Black Detroiters at The 2014 White Party perform self? In Chapter 2, I explored how some Black Detroiters’ social reality is shaped by space. In Detroit, which has been conceptualized as a “Black space” since the 1970s, the change in socioeconomic and race dynamics in the city has perpetuated a shift in the ways in which

Black Detroiters perform self. As white Detroiters continue to move back into the city, and the city continues to shift around the new influx of money that has displaced many Black Detroiters, how does the 2014 White Party become (albeit contested) a “safe haven” for all Black Detroiters to collectively don on the clothing of the oppressor and enjoy Black opulence for one night in the same place (Riverside Marina) that was once denied to them years before based on race, and that could continue to be denied to them based on socio-economic status today.

In this chapter, I discuss how Black masculine supremacy enacts gender biases toward

Black women in hip-hop culture, which instigates the troubled relationship between Black men and women and further upholds Black masculine supremacy. This can be seen at the White Party in which Black women were forced to occupy spaces in the crowd and be present for the Black men onstage. At the same time, Black women oppose these masculine acts of oppression through various resistant acts. I also look at how Black female Detroiters use the off-stage space as a location for resistance to and against Black masculine supremacist acts at The White Party.

Finally, I will examine the ways in which Black women survive and attempt to thrive in Detroit hip hop culture. 90

The White Party

The White Party is a community supported circuit party wherein guests are required to

dress in all white formal attire. According to Huffington Post, the event is synonymous with

mainstream gay culture. Jeffrey Sanker began hosting White Parties in his Palm Springs home

back in the early 1970s as a way of celebrating the rite of spring. The parties initially began with

300 of Sanker’s friends and neighbors. As of 2016, the celebration has expanded to 30,000

people over a 3-day celebration. Yet, the concept of a “White Party” has been around for a lot

longer than the 1970s. According to Daniel James Cole in an interview, “the earliest documented

evidence of a White Party in Western European society might lie in a 15th century painting,

unattributed, titled The Garden of Love at the Court of Philip the Good, in the Gardens of the

Chateau de Hesdin in 143” (qtd. in Shechet). Historically, the ability to wear white is a sign of

wealth, status, and affluence. Cole states,

White clothing, because of the maintenance it requires and the high likelihood that it will

become ruined, has often, throughout Western history, been associated with status (and,

of course, brides, ever since Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in a white silk-satin

dress in 1840). During the Victorian era, the popularity of “summer whites” became more

widespread amongst the who’s who of American, British, and French society. (qtd. in

Shechet)

In Black communities, White Parties are associated with rapper and hip hop mogul, Sean “P.

Diddy” Combs. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Combs hosted his first White Party at his

East Hampton home over Labor Day in 1998. The event was a star-studded affair that attracted

1,000 plus guests (Gardner and Weinberg). The authors refer to Diddy’s White Parties as “a modern day Gatsby” to highlight F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. The story 91 is a rags to riches story about Jay Gatsby, a mysterious and newly rich millionaire who throws elaborately parties on his Long Island, New York estate to impress his long-lost lover, Daisy

Buchanan, who can see the parties from her estate on the other side of the island. Jay Gatsby, who is part of a caste system of new money vs. old money, never quite feels secure in Daisy’s life of established wealth and privilege. Although Black Detroiters are nowhere near experiencing the white privilege in terms of access that Gatsby’s race and wealth allows him to experience, it is apt to consider how White Parties could be seen as a way for Black Detroiters to, for at least one night of the year, feel accepted among the influx of white wealth and privilege the city has experienced in post-recession Detroit. For Black Detroiters who attend local White

Parties, perhaps the desire to be seen as wealthy is to wear the same elitist all-white fashion as our oppressors do. This may create feelings of acceptance, dignity, and pride, of which helps inform their performance of self.

The median household income for Black Detroiters and income outlook may be telling in terms of why and how Black Detroiters see themselves at annual White Parties. According to a

2018 study in The Detroit Free Press, Detroiters felt rich if they made in the upwards of $55k, of which is about $100k less than Seattle, Washington (Manzullo). The median household income is $24k, which is over 50 percent less than the national average. In 2017, the median household income grew significantly more for white and Hispanic Detroiters than for Black Detroiters who make up 79 percent of the population in Detroit (MacDonald and Terry). Overall, just the sensation of being rich in Detroit may provide enough impetus for Black Detroiters’ to perform their Black identities at the party. 92

Race, Class, Gender, and Place-Making

Race and class invariably play a strong role for how Black folks come to understand themselves as minoritized bodies. The tension between Black subjectivity and Black agency, and how that tension is constituted and performed, is closely tied to the contested melding of southern and urban Black geographies during large-scale migrations of Black people from southern rural communities to the urban north. J. Martin Favor, in Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance, asserts that much of the tension between what Black people do and who they believe themselves to be is closely tied to historical mass migrations. “To maintain a stable identity, migrants turned toward the geography and demography of a racial past” (16).

Those Southern folk who migrated to Northern cities like Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis became urban working class but still maintained strong connections to their folk roots. Their encounters with urban racism and southern racial traumas inform how Black migrants negotiated place- making, place attachment, and the formation of Black geographies that support the Black production of space in the urban north. In my opinion, to maintain stable identities, Black urbanites formed cultural ideologies surrounding Black geographies, that in order to be maintained, needed to police the boundaries of Black racialized and gendered identities. The manifestation of that policing can be seen in class-based formed cultural performances. Favor writes,

If race, class, gender, and geography mark racial authenticity, we can see quite easily

how these signifiers of blackness are also exclusive; the middle class- or at least the non-

folk are excluded from what is “fundamentally or distinctly” African American, as are

blacks from geographies other than the rural South and women excluded from specific

cultural practices. (16) 93

The need to constitute blackness is a socially legitimizing cultural practice for how Black folk and non-folk communities communicate.

Today, we can still see how the policing of Black gendered identities is class-based in some Black communities and informs place-making and place attachments among Black geographies. For example, at The 2014 White Party, there were some expectations of the ways in which Black women were asked to participate in the festivities that lacked gender fluidity but were infused by class-based performances of blackness. For example, Mike Epps’ call and response was fueled with gendered performance expectations that delineated “real niggas” from

“bad bitches,” or Black men from Black women. “Real niggas” must perform Black masculine identity that is different than how “bad bitches” perform Black femininity. Another example was when my brother, hype-man Marc D, took the mic from Epps’ in an effort to soothe the crowd after the Brickk fiasco. His call and response encouraged an equally gendered as well as classed based performances that, in my opinion, are closer aligned with the class-based aesthetics of

White Parties. As Marc D takes the mic, there is a clear shift in music from a hip hop rap song to a Motown remix of Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and “ABC”. Marc D pelts out,

Men! If you got more than $1k in your 401k and you riding hard, put your hands in the

air! Ladies! If you got a job, you taking care of yo’ kids, you got an education, then put

yo’ hands in the air!

As I stood in the crowd, the people around me were with Marc D. They could see themselves in his depiction of Black folks as successful, rich, taking care of business in their lives, being respectable, etc. There was also a clear point to Black Detroit geographies that he chooses to play classic Motown remixes that would be recognizable to everyone in the crowd, and that could 94

inspire a brand of black performance that is connected and affected by Black Detroit culture and

cultural practices.

In other areas of Detroit hip hop culture, though, some Black women are seen as sexual

objects to Black supremacist males. Detroit based rapper, Danny Brown, has been accused of

misogyny in his music.32 In “Black Brad Pitt,” Brown is ferocious in his want of sexually

conquering Black women. The character in the music video hunts through a jungle forest for,

what appears to be, elegant, graceful, and (seemingly) elusive dark chocolate woman, as we

never see her face but only parts of her body. In addition to the potential physical trauma of

sexual exploitation, Black women can also experience identity trauma. According to Aimee Cox

in “Thugs, Black Divas, and Gendered Aspirations”, young Black women are absent from their

image in mainstream society through pervasive stereotypes (the Jezebel, the hyper-aggressive

woman, or the faceless video vixen), which are exploited in hip hop culture that disconnect

Black women from their racial and gender identity (89). Cox states,

As the aesthetics and cultural references of hip hop become increasingly ubiquitous,

young black woman, whether they relate to these black female images in commercialized

hip hop or not, must contend with what these particular constructions of race, gender, and

sexuality allow, sanction, and validate in terms of young black women’s assessment and

treatment in larger society. (89)

Patricia Hill Collins similarly contends that sexuality is a strong social location where

multiple oppressions against Black women intersect (Black Sexual Politics 135). The images and stereotypes of women reinforced by hip hop culture fuel oppressions such as sexual violence and

32 Brown is listed as #15 in Elite Daily’s “The 15 Most Misogynist Lines In Rap History.” The line is, “LOVE A FEMINIST B*TCH, OH, IT GET MY DICK HARD / SO NO APOLOGIES FOR ALL THE MISOGYNY” (Miller-Rosenberg). Artist: Danny Brown, Song: Outer Space, Album: XXX, Release Date: 2011. 95

abuse and regulate Black female bodies justified by the need to maintain the Black Male

Supremacy social and hierarchical order (135). It is important to note that at The 2014 White

Party, I did not see anyone directly sexually abuse anyone else. I bring in Collins’ discussion

about the contentious gender dynamics among Black men and Black women to offer ways of

seeing and understanding the race and gender at The 2014 White Party.

In some Detroit hip hop and rap videos, Black masculine supremacy uses visual media as

a way of maintaining social and hierarchical order above Black women. Black women, while

visually and audibly present, are not encouraged to be emotionally present. For example, Detroit

rapper YCG, in his 2013 music video airing on YouTube titled Racks,33 the artist and his

entourage effortlessly slap several scantily clad Black women’s buttocks with stacks of green

bills. During this action, the Black women are twerking34 in the background. In the opening shot,

the Black women are dehumanized. They face away from the camera as they dance. They are

dressed in revealing thongs and bikini tops. The camera quickly pans to automobile tire rims of

all styles and variety. The images throughout the video continue to cut between scantily clad

Black women, Black female characters as sexual deviants, and other markers of material wealth

(TandBFilms). In the video, we see how there is a social expectation that Black women should

want to serve and submit to Black masculine desire by virtue of Black males’ status as “real

men” – just like when the bottle service server attempts to pass by the Black men at The White

Party. She attempts to pass on her own terms.

33 Racks is produced by BRICKK ENT.

34 Twerking is a sensual dance form usually performed by women. The dance involves a woman standing in a low squat while isolating the hips and thrusting the buttock in a sexually provocative manner (“Twerking”). The dance results in the woman’s buttock moving in a controlled sequence at the behest of the dancer. Twerking varies in style depending on the dancer and the circumstances for the performance. The purpose of the dance is almost always to showcase the dancer’s buttocks to attract sexual attention. 96

“No More Dicks!”: Black Female Spectatorship Redefined

It is difficult to know for sure why the Black women in the audience responded antagonistically toward Brickk Ent. during The White Party. From my view in the audience, much of the unrest was stirred up when the Black men of Brickk followed Mike Epps on stage. I can imagine the logistical or contractual reasons that these men were once stage. Mike Epps probably had some kind of relationship with the production company. I do not remember if he did a shout out to the group while on stage; however, on Twitter, Epps has made comments in the past about Brickk Ent that were not related to The White Party such as, “OLD MONEY

STILL SPENDING BRICK ENT DETROIT MICHAGAN [sic]!!” (@TheRealMikeEpps). I believe the majority of the unrest was stemmed from the way the Black men entered the stage and the perceive reasons why they continued to hop up on the stage. Mike Epps spent the majority of his time out of view of the audience. It was as if he had been swallowed up in the sea of Black men onstage. Once the men of Brickk Ent appeared, they made The White Party about them. They took the party from their cabanas to Epps onstage for another party more visible than the first.

I don’t believe this moment is out of the norm. Black men who engage in adversarial relationships with Black women are in many ways attempting to make it appear that their performance of masculinity cannot be called into question. According to Patricia Hill Collins, no matter how Black men perform their masculinity, they will never have the full entitlements of respect and access afforded to white men (Collins, “A Telling Difference: Dominance, Strength, and Black Masculinities” 84). Collins states, “African American men find themselves between a rock and a hard place of being unable to achieve masculinity within the standards reserved for white men and of resisting the forms of black masculinity offered to them by those same white 97

men” (85). The double standard fosters the conditions upon which Black masculine supremacy

and Black female objectification endured at The White Party. The Black women in the audience,

myself included, did not like it one bit that we were excluded from the staged event. The Black

men from Brickk Ent. commandeered the stage at The White Party because they wanted

everyone, including the Black women in the audience, to see them as everyone saw Mike Epps,

and for the women as well as the whole crowd to affirm them as men. Which is to say, to see

them as in charge, fully in control; in short, to see them as masculine.

Brickk’s decision to take over the stage, their refusal to leave, and their apprehension

about letting women share the stage with them reflect Black masculine supremacist attitudes

toward Black women at The White Party. These attitudes or expectations force passive

spectatorship, where Black women, like in Detroit rap videos, are expected to be present but only

in service to and support of the needs of Brickk Ent. Here, I think a broadening of the ubiquitous

psychoanalytical term, female spectatorship, in film theory would help explain what I was

witnessing. Discussing this concept requires a rethinking of how female spectatorship as an act

of witnessing could play a part in how Black women refuted Brickk Ent. in their struggle for

agency at The White Party.

In 1975, feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey popularized the term female spectatorship

and male gaze to talk about how filmmaking voyeuristically objectifies women. She attributes this to patriarchal dominant cultures at large who are unable psychological inability to identify with women. According to Mulvey, sexual imbalance in the world creates the conditions upon which men derive pleasure, and the imbalance between the two then socially accepted sexes sets

up the male/active/dominate and woman/passive/subordinate binary (11). She states, 98

The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form, which is styled

accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at

and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that

they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness. Woman displayed as sexual object is

the leit-motif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to striptease, from Ziegfeld to Busby

Berkeley, she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire. (11)

Mulvey’s theory does not take into consideration culturally and socially oppressed people.

However, if we consider Mulvey’s theory of how the narrative in dominant cinema objectifies white female bodies, Black women are doubly dislocated in dominant cinema. Complicating

Mulvey’s theory by accounting for Black women, bell hooks, in book, Black Looks: Race and

Representation, theorizes that Black women critically interrupts Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze in two ways: (1) to look35 and (2) to oppose (116). According to hooks, Black women’s resistance to imagery that subjugates them is oppositional. “[The] phallocentric gaze of desire and possession [create] a critical space where the binary opposition Mulvey posits of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look’ [is] continually deconstructed” (123–123). bell hooks states that Black women often refuse to accept the terms of their misrepresentations (123). Instead, they choose to distance themselves from the images, or find to pleasure in outright repudiating them

(123). Part of Black women’s outright repudiation of misrepresentation is through identifying

35 bell hooks describes the look as a type of knowing that some Black women engage in when watching representations of Black women on film. She describes how Black female spectators shut out the image, or dismiss cinema from their lives (120). There are also women who in order to enjoy cinema must forget racism and “submit to cinema’s capacity to seduce and betray” (120). The ability to shut out racism is a survivor mechanism, and infers that some Black women also can temporarily separate their bodies from their realities to reimagine themselves as invisible to oppression. hooks describes the hurt that accompanies “looking too deep”: “...this tension made moviegoing (sic) I don’t think “moviegoing” deserves a [sic]; it is a word. less than pleasurable; at times it causes pain. As one black woman put, ‘“I could always get pleasure from the movies as long as I did not look too deep.’ For black female spectators who have ‘looked too deep’ the encounter with the screen hurt” (121). 99

misrepresentation as a way to promote their agency. For example, at the start of the commotion

over Mike Epps’ appearance, Black women in the audience acknowledged their frustrations at

the steady stream of Black men who attempted to block them from Mike Epps. A Black woman

near me yelled in protest, “Get the fuck off the stage!” Another Black woman pivoted, clicked

her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth, and reeled her body forward as if to throw her

body at the stage. She screamed, “GET THE FUCK OFF THE STAAAAAAGE!” Another

Black woman began chanting, “NO MORE DICKS!” The Black women in the audience found

ways to vocally and physically enact their agency by “talking back” to the Black men onstage.

These movements and vocal expressions articulate performances of self, wherein the Black

women in the audience were not passive watchers confined to the audience. It is the 2014 White

Party, after all. At the White Party, everyone (regardless of gender identity) is free to walk about

the space as they all want to be seen as: successful, affluent, respectable. The production of

gendered space at the 2014 White Party, by this point, is familiar to everyone in terms of where

women are expected to enjoy themselves the most, as well as men. The stage and the audience

area are not supposed to be marked for gendered identities.

Generally, in Detroit hip hop culture, audiences are often encouraged to all be active co-

performers at performance events. The act of call and response from performer to audience is

culturally part of the historical legacy of Detroit music culture.36 According to Performance

Studies theorist, Ronald J. Pelias and James VanOosting, a theatre audiences’ response to events

on stage exist on a continuum from inactive to proactive participation (226). Within the

36 In an interview with Womens’ News Network, author Suzanne Smith, Dancing In The Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit, Detroit call and response came out the local churches in the mid-20th century. This style of audience-performer dynamic became part of the Civil Rights movement but transitioned to popular music like Detroit’s own Aretha Franklin, “Respect” and other R&B pop favorites (Smith qtd. in “Civil Rights Music Began with ‘Call & Response’ African-American Church Hymns”). 100 continuum can reside the murky layers of politics and power based on who are the players and what are the social and cultural norms that contextual the event (226-227).

Just because the Black women at The White Party are in the crowd does not guarantee that they are passive audience members to Brickk Ent’s active performers. The Black women refused to accept the terms of subjugation, viscerally challenging spectatorship. These behaviors symbolize, what I call, the performance of “Bad Bitch”.

The Performance of Bad Bitch

The performance of bad bitch is subversive and oppositional. In hip hop culture, bad bitches may perform sexual desire to subvert and resist gender oppression. For example, there is a video on YouTube taken at the same White Party I attended in 2014. In the video, there is an encounter between a local entertainment host and a popular porn star. She is a Black female and known to all as “The Body XXX.” In the video, The Body is walking around the marina with a

Black woman at her side. The Body is wearing a white Charmeuse romper. The suit has a dropped V-neck down the center of the outfit. On the backside, the suit barely covers her buttock. The Body is eating a piece of fried chicken as she walks. A young Black man with a camera crew approaches her. He claims to be from a Detroit reality TV show. The Body glances in his direction, makes a face, and continues to walk with her companion. It is clear from the video that The Body is not interested in being interviewed or even speaking to the man. The man calls after her. She does not respond. He follows her with the cameraman not far behind him. It is unclear from the video what he is saying to her to attract her attention. The Body continues eating the fried chicken. It appears she is attempting to ignore the man. The man dashes in front of her. He blocks her path. She immediately attempts to toss the chicken at the camera. The man says, “Whoa! What you doing?” The two dance around each other as The Body attempts to get 101

away from the man. The man moves away from her and blocks the camera from the incoming

chicken. The Body is silent. She continues to walk away. Her companion is silent as well. The

man continues to pursue The Body. This time the camera pans down to a shot of her buttocks.

The man approaches and rubs her buttocks. The Body eats her chicken and continues to walk

away. The man says, “Hey look, this is 2014 White Party. Show ‘em how we doing it. Look!

Look! This how we doing it.” The man attempts to touch her buttocks again. The Body takes the

piece of half eaten chicken and dangles the meat near her buttocks. The man says, “Yo! Put yo’

name on it!” The camera lingers on the The Body’s buttocks as she walks away (“The

ULTIMATE White Party 2014 (the Fight)”).

Stephane Dunn in her book, Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action

Films notes that, in hip hop culture, there is a perception that Black female sexuality is liberated

and free (26). “In rap music culture, ‘bitch’ has also been revised as ‘Bitch’ to signify a hardcore

woman who makes money and proudly flaunts her sexual libido and sexuality. She is the ‘around

the way sista37 who can hold her own with the gansta thugs of rap music” (26). Although the

term Bitch revalorizes the term, today’s “bad bitch,” according to Dunn, is a label and persona

(27). Dunn states,

[Bad Bitch] offers the allure of transgression, a seductive construction for women and

especially for historically devalued women in U.S. celebrity culture... The “Bad Bitch”

suggests a black woman from working-class roots who goes beyond the boundaries of

gender in a patriarchal domain and plays the game as successfully as the boys by being in

37 The term was popularized by hip hop and rap artist, LL Cool J from his 1990 album “Mama Said Knock You Out” of which is his, “Around the Way Girl” appears on the album. According to Urban Dictionary.com, [an "Around the Way Girl” is] a girl who lives in a neighborhood, usually urban, and who all of the fellas wanna get with, whether it’s for a relationship, or they just wanna chill. A girl who is confident, independent, intelligent, and street smart. This kind of girl usually has a sharp attitude, and knows how to have a good time” (@MiNNi3). 102

charge of her own sexual representation and manipulating it for celebrity and material

gain. (27)

I agree with Dunn’s theory of bad bitch; however, I question how much measure of control bad

bitches have when attempting to negotiate the heteropatriarchal terrain in hip hop culture. Hip

hop culture is arguably aggressive and prone to Black masculine supremacist acts. I believe

Dunn would consider The Body to be a “bad bitch.” There is no question that The Body

attempted to “be in charge of her own sexual representation” (27). She objectifies her body by

dangling the chicken near her buttock. She sauntered way from the young man with full

knowledge that he would follow her. I believe The Body was “in control”38 of her sexual image

but the young man was “in charge.”39 His supervisory status and power came from his position as

the narrator and his ability to control The Body’s narrative. The Body’s movements and

expressions toward the young man suggest she had control over her sexual image. That is to say,

at some points during the video, she was able to redirect the young man’s behavior by refusing

objectification. She essentially is giving him what he wants: the show.

According to Lesa Lockford in her article, “Performing the Abject Body: A Feminist

Refusal of Disempowerment,” describes how women performance artists may engage in

performances that are intentionally meant to unnerve the spectator. “The abject body in

performance destabilizes audience comfort and passive consumption, and potentially the taken-

for-granted assumptions that perpetuate onerous hegemonic conditions” (57). According to

Patricia Hill Collins in her book Black Sexual Politics, Black women often objectify their own

38 According to Dictionary.com, to be “in control” conveys “the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events” (“Control”). 39 According to Dictionary.com, “to be in charge” conveys supervisory or power over something or someone (“In Charge”). 103 bodies to be accepted within Black male-controlled universe (129). Nowhere is this more apparent than when The Body dangles the piece of chicken meat over her buttocks.

In another segment of the same YouTube video taken at the 2014 White Party, the same two young Black men are standing behind a Black woman. This woman is not The Body XXX.

The young man has both arms wrapped around her shoulders and is tightly holding on to her. As she moves forward, he moves with her. They are both looking directly at the camera. The woman is signifying with her right hand the location of her hometown of East Warren, Michigan. She rotates her head and rolls her upper body. Her vocal pitch and rhythm are in sync with the young man who is still has his arms wrapped around her shoulders. “East Warren... Oh yeah! All day, every day! (“The Ultimate White Party 2014”) There is a very hard and imperious look in the woman’s eyes that seems to match the young man behind her. As the young man is rocking to the music with the woman in his arms, he lifts his left arm. The woman’s stance shifts, and she eases herself out of the young man’s grasp. Once free, she immediately relaxes her tough posture and a huge smile crosses over her face. The two celebrate and bounce to the music. “Hey! Oh!”

(“The ULTIMATE White Party 2014 (the Fight)”). In this segment, the young woman appears to be performing “bad bitch.” Her hand signs, vocal pitch, and body rhythm have masculine undertones that are familiar to me among Black women in hip hop culture. She appears to be holding her own with the young man, even as he tightly holds her shoulders in place. What makes their exchange interesting is the woman’s dramatic shift from the performance of “bad bitch” to a more light-hearted and relaxed performance of self. But why the sudden personality shift? I believe the shift is in response to the young man’s physical presence and his proximity to the woman. The woman does not shift until the young man releases his hold of her shoulders.

However, why would the woman feel the need to shift personas? Similarly, I question the 104 exchange between the young man and The Body XXX. Why would The Body feel the need to give the young man “the show” when she dangled the piece of chicken? Understanding The

Body’s motivations has a lot to do with how Black Detroit women attempt to negotiate their agency as “bad bitches” in Post-Recession Detroit . The women were very much aware of how their bodies physically and emotionally affect the young man. The Body’s actions indicate that she knows the young man is physically attracted to her. I think the woman in the video also knows that her physical presence in some way affects the young man. However, the young woman’s performance of “bad bitch” seems closer to the young man’s performance of Black masculine supremacy. She “talks back” to the camera using highly Black masculine movements and gestures found in Detroit hip hop culture, the likes of Brickk Ent.’s music video, “Racks.”

Metaphorically, the woman’s voice punches and slices at the camera. The young man holds her and locks his gaze on the camera, as if he approves of her performance. She is doing everything he seems to condone. The woman is the young man’s pupil or muse, and he approves of her performance.

The Body XXX and the woman in the video engage in different performances of female agency; however, the reasons why the women felt compelled to perform the role of “bad bitch” are complicated and tied up in the politics of Black masculine supremacy. Let’s go back to The

Body XXX and the woman in the video. On one hand, both women performed “bad bitch” in an attempt to be in charge of their representation. On the other hand, the young man controls the way the women are represented in terms of his purview as a Black man in a heteropatriarchal

Detroit hip hop culture. So, can and how do bad bitches retain ownership of their representation when Detroit hip hop audiences view their performance through a Black masculine supremacist lens? I think the answer depends on the performer’s level of awareness of self and the cultural 105

politics in hip hop that attempt to misrepresent them. Gwendolyn Pough’s book Check in Before

I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere points to how Black female hip hop artists essentially use “the master’s tools”40 to disrupt and dismantle misogynist

and sexist misrepresentation of Black women in hip hop culture. As evidence of this kind of

disruption and dismantling, Pough describes how spoken word artist, Sarah Jones, reframed

popular rap lyrics and Black Power movement songs made popular by Black male artists to resist

objectification:

Sarah Jones seeks to disrupt the images of Black women as sexually promiscuous and the

limiting of Black women’s worth to their vaginas. Her poem “Our Revolution” has the

mantra-life refrain “Your revolution will not happen between these thighs,” signifying on

Black Power movement ideas about “pussy power” through its remix of Gil Scott

Heron’s classic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and also signifies on hip-hop’s

constant references to sex that end up objectifying Black women. Jones flips the script

and uses the rappers’ own words to disrupt their objectifying narratives. (99)

Sarah Jones’ ability to use Heron’s words to resist misogynist and sexist misrepresentations of

Black women functions similarly to the masculine actions taken by The Body XXX and the

woman in the White Party YouTube video. There is evidence to suggest that these women use

common tropes about Black women in hip hop culture as hyper-sexualized or hyper-masculine to

mock or “talk back” to the young man. Lockford posits that by performing abjection, or willfully

40 The late Black Lesbian Feminist scholar, Audre Lorde, coined the term, “the master’s tool” in a conference talk in 1984. The full quote is "the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Pough reframes Lorde’s theory of white academic feminism as patriarchal, racist, and oppressive to rethink how Black woman navigate objectification in hip hop culture. 106 performing in ways that are hypersexualized and sexually self-degrading as a performance strategy, females potentially resist abjectification. Lockford states,

Performing abjection defiantly embraces the disempowered position and thus, rather than

simply reinscribing women's disempowerment, it challenges the elitism inherent in the

valuation that sets the one above the other. Thus, by performing abjection, by making

themselves obviously dirty, even dirtier than dirt and more defiled than others could

make them, the abject bodies of women performance artists refuse the social and cultural

abjection accorded to women. (59–60)

When The Body XXX dangles the chicken close to her backside, she does this to wrestle and take back the power from the hypermasculine gaze. Coupled with the actions taken by Black women during the standoff between the audience and Brickk Entertainment, we can also see a pattern or trend at the White Party wherein the Black women attempt to resist Black masculine supremacist acts by doing their performances of self or performance of bad bitch as way to mock or talk back to the Black men who have assumed a Black male supremacist stance.

However, as some Black women find ways within the system of hip hop culture to assert themselves in opposition to Black masculine supremacist acts, do these women experience a sort of race and gender battle fatigue? Does the performance of bad bitch become a way for them to situate as Black women within a racialized heteropatriarchal culture? Do they constitute their identities as Black women by performing bad bitch? These questions beg for answers, but there is not a simple or straightforward answer. Black women experience multiple intersectional oppressions that could have some bearing on how they come to understand themselves as Black women. 107

As I further consider the implications of Black women performing bad bitch, I am

reminded of a young Black woman I met at The White Party. Selena Jordon is a 19-year-old

rising star on Detroit’s hip hop scene. Jordon, who adopts a bad bitch persona in her music, and

whose music videos and appearances are available on YouTube to thousands of her fans, was a

featured performer at The White Party in 2014. Flanked by three Black scantily clad female

backup dancers, Jordon wore a short mid-thigh mini-dress with a low front. She clipped snappy

lyrics about her magic-like abilities to attract men and dismiss women. In the song, she

proclaimed that she was a “bad bitch” and dared anyone to challenge her powers. Dripping with

long straight black hair down her back, she strutted to the front of the stage and back. She rolled

her hips and bounced into a frog-like Beyoncé crouch.41 In a smooth motion, she lifted her

buttocks from the crouch and gracefully transitioned into a twerk.42 Watching Jordan dance was

like watching a contortionist-stripper perform. Each moment of her dance was simultaneously

enthralling, sensual, and repulsive before I finally settled on guilt for having spent so much time

looking at her.

In an effort not to look at Selena, I turned my attention to the audience. I noticed the

audience reactions to her performance. The crowd was a mix of Black males and females. Many

of them were actively engaged in the performance. They watched Selena with intense stares.

Their eyes were glued and seemed to stay fixed on her movements on stage. Many of them held

up smartphones to capture the experience, while watching her live performance on stage. At the

end of the performance, the crowd did not cheer with hoots and hollers, but calmly applauded her

efforts and went back to meandering around the marina until the next performance was set.

41 Beyoncé crouch is a style of dance popularized by American R&B-Pop crossover singer and producer, Beyoncé Knowles.

42 See footnote 24. 108

Given the extent to which the audience captured Selena’s performance, I assumed they would give her an uproarious applause followed by folks clamoring toward the stage all seeking her autograph. Instead, the audience did the opposite. I have no idea why. Perhaps this moment is unique to Detroit hip-hop culture. Maybe the audience is desensititized to watching performers like Jordon. Her work seemed similar to some of the more popular hip-hop artists today that hold nothing back. I caught Jordan as she exited the stage for a quick response to her performance. I applauded her skills as a performer and asked her if she was from Detroit.

She warmly smiled and graciously said, “Thank you, and yes, I’m from here.”

“Did you write that song yourself?” I asked.

“Oh yes. I write all my songs.”

“Does your life as a Detroiter reflect the kind of stuff you write?”

“Yes, some of it does.” (Jordan)

I got her information with the intent to formally interview her about her performance. I tried reaching her via phone and email, but I never got a response back from her.

One observation I made from my interaction with Jordan after her performance was the immediate change in her demeanor. Her smile was warm, and her presence made me feel welcomed to chat with her about the performance. She was gracious and open with wide eyes during our short interaction. There was none of the bad bitch persona that she performed on stage. She wasn’t condescending to me nor did she appear to be pretentious, which are behaviors that typically can be applied to the bad bitch. Jordan’s performance of bad bitch reflects what

Stephane Dunn calls the problematic and masculine-centered aesthetic of “keeping it real” (24-

26). Black women as rap artists in hip hop culture are made to feel responsible for upholding an image that compliments Black masculinity. Detroit is no different. According to 109

ethnomusicologists Kellie Hay and Rebekah Farrugia, current Detroit female rappers face a

dramatically shifted landscape than Detroit rap culture in the 1990s. With acts like Da Brat, Lil’

Kim, Foxy Brown, and Eve (while they are not from Detroit) were influential. Farrugia and Hay

state, “Their song content and stylistic approach paralleled that of the male gansta’ rappers who

were gaining popularity through emphasis on financial wealth, survival in the ’hood, and fighting

ability” (Farrugia and Hay, “The Politics and Place”). For example, according to Stephanie

Dunn, rap star Lil’ Kim performs a representation of Black femininity as the bad bitch and uses

her sexuality to appear loyal to a thug life (29). Dunn states, “An intrinsic part of that identity

remains the idea of a woman who will ‘trick’ for her main man and destroy anyone—other

‘bitches’ or male enemies—who attempt to bring that man down figuratively or literally” (29).

Lil’ Kim’s loyalty to her male base is contingent on her willingness to submit to Black masculine

supremacy.

Nevertheless, She Persisted

The 2014 White Party is cultural landscape, in that, it is an object of study that provides

an epistemic way of understanding how social phenomena, geography, and performance

intersect. Hundreds of metropolitan Detroiters gathered for a one night only experience of

Detroit hip hop affluence at the Riverside Marina. The Marina before 1970 had been considered off limits to Black Detroiters and many of them were denied membership based on race.

Although, membership is no longer denied based on race, it is still limited to all Detroiters based on class. The marina welcomes Detroiters that can afford utilize their resources. The same was true for the 2014 White Party. Anyone who can afford the ticket and can dress for the occasion is welcome to attend. For one night only at the marina, Black Detroiters enjoyed affluence with

$500 bottle service and $1k cabanas. From my perspective as an attendee at the event, the 110 performances of Black gendered inequality were an effect of a dislocated place attachment. The marina is a contested and racist site that privileges an affluent class. As a result, Black male

Detroiters at The White Party “acted out” toward Black female Detroiters.

The experiences of Black women differed dramatically from Black men throughout the evening. One of the most intense moments came when Black women in the crowd attempted to navigate the gender-oppressive and masculine supremacist acts at The White Party. The Black men from Brickk Entertainment treated the Black women in the crowd as if they were invisible spectators – spectators that were co-performers to help validate their unstable constituted identities as “real niggas”. As Black women rejected the presence of Brickk Ent on stage, the

Brickk men looked over them and continued to build a community of Black men on stage— effectively keeping the women isolated to the crowd. The ways in which Black women survive and attempt to thrive in Detroit hip hop culture are by pledging fealty (of sorts) to Black men.

Yet, Black women in the crowd did no such thing, nor did they suffer in passivity. The women in the audience were active participants who pushed back against Black masculine supremacy. An argument can also be made for how Black masculine supremacy and the performance of bad bitch in hip hop culture are interdependent of each other. At The White Party, Brickk needed the women to resist them; the men needed an active audience. The Brickk men in many ways constructed their Black masculine identity around the Black feminine power at the event.

Today in Detroit hip-hop culture, we can see the same sort of establishment of Detroit female agency in contemporary rap artists like ’Nique Love Rhodes and Mahogany Jones. In a music video collaboration with scholars Kellie Hay and Rebekah Farrugia, Foundation artists for the Ecomusicology Listening Room, and 5e Gallery, we can see images of Detroit as a site of

Black female activism with instrumental tracks that, according to Jones, has a “pulse in it that 111

feels hopeful” ( Farrugia and Hay, “The Politics and Place”) . According to Farrugia and Hall,

“the beats and larger messages within [the music video] hearken back to a time in hip-hop when

the vocal command of women was more socially conscious and openly political” (Farrugia and

Hay, “The Politics and Place”). Using the performance of “bad bitch” as a way of articulating

their positionalities, Black women at The White Party attempted to negotiate the murky gender

politics in Detroit hip hop culture that came to full fruition at the White Party. The effects were racialized and sexist practices that attempt to strengthen and stabilize Black Detroit male identity and attachment to place. 112

CHAPTER 4. MADE IN DETROIT: DANCE, RACE, AND BLACK CULTURAL

IDENTITIES IN POST-RECESSION DETROIT

“The circle of the dance is a permissive circle: it protects and permits. At certain times on certain days, men and women come together at a given place, and there, under the solemn eyes of the tribe, fling themselves into a seemingly unorganized pantomime, which is in reality extremely systematic, in which by various means—shakes of the head, bending of the spinal column, throwing the whole body backwards—may be deciphered as in an open book the huge effort of a community to exorcise itself, to liberate itself, to explain itself. There are no limits—inside the circle.” - Frantz Fanon, “The Wretched of the Earth”

Hustle For History, The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History,

September 201543

LADY INSTRUCTOR: Some of my students

have been with me eight to ten years. And they

just kept gettin' up. A lot of stuff I didn't teach

them. They might have went through another

class or . . . They just kept gettin' on the floor.

[Music Starts]

LADY INSTRUCTOR: All right. "I Blame

You." I like this . . . It's nice because what

they're saying in this record is a good lesson to

learn from someone that you love. LEDISI, “I BLAME YOU,”

43 Meeting the women of Hustle for History was a vibrant and dynamic experience. It triggered memories of time spent with the women in my life. In this section, I utilize a variety of text sizes that visually help me to think about the encounters. The variety of text sizes also help me to covey the sentiment of these experiences. 113

LADY INSTRUCTOR: Two, three, and walk People keep asking about this glow I

up . . . Walk, walk, cha, cha, cha. have

Left, right, left, right, back, left, right, cha, cha, 'Cause I'm just not the same

cha! They say I'm walking different, talking

Right, left, slide up, and one, two, three, four, different

kick! Looks like all of me has changed

Walk back, walk right, up left, up right, step

back, and turnnn! Magic is in my eyes, I can no longer

Back up this way. And turnnn! Back right. hide

And turnnn! Cha, cha, cha and, When they look at me

back right, and turnn! Cha, cha, cha. What they fail to see

That's left, right, left, right, and left, turn it. Is the love you got me feeling

One, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, cha, Like I'm dancing on the ceiling

cha, cha. I can hardly breathe

Back, two, three, four, five, six, cha, cha, cha. 'Cause you're all I need

Start over. (Johnson) So when they ask me why I'm smiling

like a fool. I blame you Oh, baby, I

blame you, oh yeah. (Ledisi)

For six weeks, between late September and early November 2014, I attended the “Hustle for History Dance Lessons” at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in downtown Detroit. Ms. Thomasenia Johnson led a group of mostly elderly Black women in the latest well-known Hustle dance steps. Many of the participants who attended were local residents of the city and had been students of Ms. Thomasenia for many years. Ms. Thomasenia was a 114 striking woman of sixty-two years. She was very tall woman with fair skin and angular facial features (cut nose, high cheekbones, sharp chin). Her body shape was narrowly flat from top to bottom. Her only soft feature was her hair, which was styled in a silver and black “Heidi” braid that rested on top of her head. When she smiled, she looked like a precocious toddler who’d just gotten caught with her hands in the cookie jar. She only smiled when she spoke to the class about her boyfriend whom she affectionately called Her Boo. However, when she talked about work matters like teaching the dance steps or giving announcements and reminders about local dance events in the city, Ms. Thomasenia’s mouth was chiseled like stone into a scowl.

As a newcomer, it would have been only natural for me to assume that Ms. Thomasenia was angry a lot of the time. But her scowl didn’t communicate anger towards me at all. It wasn’t a scowl that said: I AM ANGRY WITH YOU! OR YOU’RE SO STUPID!

Her scowl was a familiar expression for me. It was the same scowl my paternal grandmother and maternal aunt used while I was growing up in Detroit. It was a scowl that communicated:

“I am here for you. I am protecting you. You are with me.”

So, watching Ms. Thomasenia and spending time with her was like being with family—and like family, I was very nervous when Ms. Thomasenia called me to participate on stage with the group. Ms. Thomasenia had a very strict rule at “Hustle for History”: Everybody must participate. My first day was streessssfulllll! I didn’t feel comfortable coming to the stage as I would if this were an ordinary dance class or Zumba lesson. For me, there is a certain protocol in those types of classes where the instructor uses positive reinforcement to empower the students.

Ms. Thomasenia’s ways weren’t positive—they were all reENFORCEment:

Left, right, left, right, back, left, right, cha, cha, cha! Right, Left, slide up, and one, two, three, four, kick! Walk back, walk right, up left, up right, step back, and turnnnnnnn!(Johnson) 115

Yet, the reENFORCEment was positive. She cared for me. She cared for all of us. She wanted us

to learn the steps, to do something with them. After all, We Black! This is how WE do for each

other. This was part of my cultural upbringing growing up.

The camaraderie between Ms. Thomasenia and her students was endearing but clearly

defined. Ms. Thomasenia was, The Lady Instructor. The dance students who came out for exercise and just plain fun understood that notion completely and without prejudice. To clarify,

Ms. Thomasenia and the Hustle students mutually agreed that she was in charge, and she loved every minute of it! I surmised this because newcomers who were not familiar with Ms.

Thomasenia’s policy that everybody must participate—NO WATCHING were visibly agitated when Ms. Thomasenia gave them THE LOOK before she ushered them to the makeshift44 dance

floor. One newcomer completely refused to participate, stating that her knees hurt too bad to do

that. She said it was her first time and she just wanted to watch. The woman looked as though

she had been convinced to attend the lessons by her daughter, who smiled politely at her

mother’s resistance. The daughter asked her mother to at least try. She said that dancing would

help her high blood pressure and exercise her knees. Despite her daughter’s pleadings and Ms.

Thomasenia’s LOOK, the woman still refused. Ms. Thomasenia would not back down. Although

the music was still playing, most of the participants were observing the situation with

amusement. I stopped dancing completely. After all, I didn’t know any of the moves. Like

almost everyone who attended “Hustle for History,” I relied on Ms. Thomasenia to call out the

steps, as she always did. Ms. Thomasenia told the woman that if she wasn’t going to dance then

it was no point in her being there and that she had to leave. The daughter pleaded with her

44 The room where we practice is not ideal for dancing. It is a large open space with a cold linoleum floor in the basement of the museum. The room is where large lectures and public presentations are given. 116 mother again. The woman didn’t get upset or mad, she simply got up and walked towards the exit. Ms. Thomasenia waited until she got to the door and called out “Hey” to the woman. The woman turned around and Ms. Thomasenia pointed back to where the woman had been sitting, as if to say, “Sit down.” With that Ms. Thomasenia turned on her heels and went back to calling out the dance steps and moving in time with the music. The woman sat down in her seat with an

“I don’t care” look that communicated a mixture of embarrassment and guilt. Everyone continued to dance, including the woman’s daughter.

Ms. Thomasenia and the women who regularly attend made the rules of engagement at

“Hustle for History.” Ms. Thomasenia is the enforcer. Even though the woman was a newcomer and unaware of her obligation to participate, Ms. Thomasenia and the other women made sure that the woman understood the group dynamic using both verbal and non-verbal modes of communication. Ms. Thomasenia instructed the woman to participate and even threatened the woman with expulsion if she did not participate. Yet, none of the participants defended the woman when she chose not to participate. They were silent and continued to dance, watching with humorous glances in the woman’s direction. It was like they were saying to themselves,

“GURRRRRRRRL, YOU ASKIN’ FOR TROUBLE WITH THAT

LADY INSTRUCTOR!”

The woman’s daughter understood the rules, and at the same time she also did not defend her mother. In the end, Ms. Thomasenia had the floor by ushering the woman down the walk of shame toward the door before ordering her back to her seat. In the end, the woman understood. I think she also cared, despite that she tried to look like she didn’t care. Sadly, I never again saw the woman or her daughter at “Hustle for History” during the time that I was involved with the group. 117

These tough-love rituals, tactics, and practices were part of my history growing up in

Detroit and they function as cultural ideologies and practices that helped to form my Black

community. When I was fourteen, my paternal grandmother said to my mother, “Chelle’s

spending too much time with white folks. She sound just like them.” I heard my

mother say, “Oh . . . she’s fine…” I didn’t say anything to my grandmother in my defense.

Everyone knew you were not allowed to respond to an elder without directly being spoken to.

My mother didn’t earn her stripes in my father’s family until she cursed at another family

member in front of the clan for disrespecting my father to his face. My mother’s tongue threw

open a door that announced her presence as a matriarch—someone deserving of respect. I would

venture to say that as newcomers at “Hustle for History,” the woman and her daughter, had not

yet earned their stripes to challenge The Lady Instructor, and they knew it. My experiences

meeting Ms. Thomasenia and the women at “Hustle for History” brought me closer to my

childhood growing up as a Black Detroiter than I thought it would. Learning the dance steps was

more like learning humility. Under the watchful eye of Ms. Thomasenia and the mostly elderly

ladies who participated, I was a young gal . . . spending time with Grown Folks!

-- --

During my time in the field, I witnessed and experienced how local dance practices can serve as a way for Black Detroiters to negotiate subjectivity and foster their cultural identities. In

Victor Turner’s germinal reflection from his work with performance studies theorist Richard

Schechner, he reflects on the ways in which performance moves from mimesis to poiesis,

“making not faking” (From Ritual to Theatre 93). For Turner the act of performance requires

some self-reflexivity for performers to “recreate behavior from within,” which has the potential

to be rooted in a deeply personal experience (93). According to Dwight Conquergood, Turner’s 118

move from mimesis to poiesis creates the foundation for us to examine the power of performance

in the everyday (“Caravans” 27). Local dance practices such as those practiced by Thomasenia

and the Hustle for History group as well as the Jit,45 illustrate Turner’s theory of an act of

performance as deeply rooted in personal experience that constitutes a person’s identity and for

how they use art to move through the world. Spending time with the Hustle for History group

took me back to when my identity as a Black girl was first formed. It was at parties with family

and friends. We danced and laughed and ate good food. In a racialized and oppressive space as

Detroit, we crafted Black geographies in our neighborhoods based on shared cultural ideologies

informed by our collective traumas. Our cultural practices emerged such as the dance practices

like the Jit. The Jit emerged in the 1970s as a way for young Black men to distinguish

themselves on the streets of Detroit. The athleticism of the footwork, body postures, and

transitions from one position to the next were conceived and fostered in Black urban

communities listening and grooving to the sounds of Motown music at family parties. Jit, as an

act of performance, is also a cultural performance and therefore constitutes culture. According to

Conquergood, “cultural performances… [as] expressive traditions, are culturally reflexive events that focus, interpret, punctuate, and endow meaningfulness to experience” (“Performing

Cultures” 19). Cynthia Novack, author of Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and

American Culture, suggests that dance reinforces the ways we know ourselves and the world around us:

45 According to VICE TV’s online music news website, “Noisey”, Serena Maria Daniels and Maximilian de la Garza state that, “Jit dancing and the electronic music genre ghetto tech that often accompany it are to Detroit what popping and funk were to the West Coast, what breaking was to East Coast hip-hop, and what footworking was to Chicago juke in the 1970s, ’80s and mid-2000s, respectively. Dating back to the 1970s, Jit, at its core, relies on a combination of fancy footwork, accompanied by dramatic drops to the floor, spinning and popping in one fluid motion, all moving to music set at 150 BPM” (Daniels and de la Garza). I discuss the birth of Jit dance and footwork later in this chapter. 119

We perform movement, invent it, interpret it, and reinterpret it, on conscious and

unconscious levels. In these actions, we participate in and reinforce culture, and we also

create [culture] . . . we learn more about who we are and about the possibilities for

knowingly shaping our lives. (8)

Dance can also reinforce Black agency, as well promote Black subjectivity. Social dances born out of urban communities of color have often been viewed through white European dance practices. In the foreword to EmBodying Liberation: The Black Body in American Dance,

Thomas DeFrantz introduces the term “white spaces” to describe how, in dance, Black bodies are consumptively racialized. DeFrantz argues,

I contend that a public space—at least in terms of concert dance—is a white space, a

space of production and consumption, a modernist space, a fetishized space, a

Europeanist space. A display of the black body in any of these spaces confers a

responsibility onto the artist, who assumes “custodianship” of the racial group’s most

intimate self-identity. (13)

Although DeFrantz is referring to concert dance as opposed to social dance, his thinking about

Black bodies in non-speaking artistic physical expression warrants consideration for how “the white gaze” interrogates Black bodies. The white gaze is a racialized hegemonic power over the essence of how Black bodies perform. As such, it is worth considering how the white gaze phantomically affects Black bodies as well. For example, when I participated in Hustle for

History, there were no white people in the room for which to feed their curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, confusion. There wasn’t the opportunity to simply feel their presence in the room.

Yet, I could feel it. The white gaze was a voice inside my head, as I clumsily tried to learn the dance moves. This is never to say that white people always interrogate Black people. I mean to 120

say that the ideology of the white gaze is a singular power that emboldens and privileges white

voices, and has the power to writher and displace Black creativity.

Classic Detroit dance styles fit with how Black Detroit performance artists negotiate the

murky layers of identity politics, race, and spatiality in the city. For some contexts, space,

according to Michel de Certeau, is a practiced place (Practice of Everyday Life 117). It is

composed of intersections of mobile elements, which are activated by the ensemble of

movements happening within it (Certeau 117). At any given time, the city of Detroit is an active

space which people are walking, moving, and living in. In Postmodern Geographies, Edward

Soja writes that "the organization, and meaning of space is a product of social translations, transformations, and experience"(80). The social relationships and power dynamics help conform the city as a space; yet, social relationships are not required to coalesce. White and

Black Detroiters, wealthy and poor Detroiters, and young and elderly Detroiters have no legal obligation to interact with each other for the city to be a space. Additionally, place, according to

Certeau, is the order of an implied stability for any given location (117). Places are perceived concrete locations that, Certeau writes, “observe the law of proper rules for its function” (117).

The Riverwalk located in downtown Detroit is a place for which the proper rule of its function is to allow all Detroiters to relax. This does not mean that the average Detroiter uses the Riverwalk for these recreations; however, it does mean that the Riverwalk has been designated by the governing factions as a place for positive recreation.

Space and place, within the context of embodied performative practices such as dance, are sites of transformation within a socio-cultural context. In 1995, Dwight Conquergood conceptualize the move from Victor Turners’ theory of poiesis (performance as making, not mimesis or faking) to kinesis or breaking and remaking (“Caravans” 27). Performance as kinesis, 121

as movement, motion, fluidity, fluctuation, [and] all of those restless energies… transgress

boundaries and trouble closure” (Conquergood, “Caravans” 27). In its ability to transgress,

performance as kinesis is also performative. Postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha uses the term

“performative” to refer the ways in which cultural performance can be a way of “writing the

nation” (27) or using cultural performance to interrogate and disrupt master discourses that

minoritize subjects (Conquergood, “Caravans” 27). According to Judith Hamera in Dancing

Communities: Performance, Difference, and Connection in the Global City, kinesis in dance is produced by iterations of bodily doings (66). These bodily techniques in terms of choreography and movement have an effect on the utility, function, and reception of space and place.

According to Hamera, at any given moment, space can be transformed to place and vice versa.

Hamera writes,

…there are also other possibilities: changes to undo place, to enact erasures of

technique’s protocols containing “doings,” to challenge sedimented meanings in

performance and disrupt the readability offered by the thing done, or even feign that

readability to insinuate something else. (66)

Detroit, that has for at least fifty-plus years been known as a “Black city,” now, due to white

gentrification which has led to the white re-colonization of space, functions as a Black city for

the comfort of its white residents. There are specific areas within the white space of Detroit, such

as Midtown, that operate as a “white place”. In post-recession Detroit, some local performance

artists are acknowledging the drawbacks to white space, and in their own creative way are

pushing back against it.

Mikhail Bakhtin defines the cultural event of Carnival to be a place of working out a new

mode of interrelationship between individuals (123). Individuals who know the inner workings 122

of the event participate in ways that are always familiar to the group. At the same time, those

behaviors and practices that are foundational to the purpose of Carnival are negotiated based on

the group and not the hierarchical barriers that define them in everyday life (Bakhtin 123). In

Black social dances, Black social dance practitioners make up the ways and mores of the dance.

They do not seek the approval of the white space to validate their creative practice. Some Black

local dance artists engage kinesis by performatively breaking and attempting to dismantle white

space to remake “a Black place” in Detroit.

In this chapter, I examine how local dance practices and performances serve as a way for

Black dance artists to articulate themselves in relationship to the white gaze. I examine the 2014 documentary, Jitterbugs: Pioneers of the Jit, which tells the story of the Brothers McGhee or

The Jitterbugs who created the unique style of footwork and dance form called the Jit. This work was born out of their Detroit neighborhood for and by Black bodies. Next, I introduce resident choreographer, company owner, and documentary filmmaker Haleem “Stringz” Rasul and explore his approach to teaching white and non-Black students Jit dance footwork opening this work to a large mass of people. Lastly, I look at resident dancer, choreographer, and company owner Jennifer Harge and her work creating dance stories. Harge’s work hangs on the edges of dance as an act of resistance to the white gaze, and dance as an act of salvation and Black community expressive uplift. She attempts to develop a somatic language that expresses the angst of white re-colonization of Detroit, and their encroached into Black creative spaces.

The Jit

In the documentary Jitterbugs: Pioneers of the Jit (2014), Stringz looks at the history of

Jit footwork as a Detroit urban dance story about three brothers. James McGhee, Tracey

McGhee, and Johnny McGhee channeled their energies and life circumstances into a pattern of 123 footwork that eventually became Jit. Growing up, Tracey McGhee admits that the brothers were heavily influenced by their neighborhood and Black culture when they first began to develop Jit footwork. In the film, Tracey states,

The Motown era was the world; the world was listening to Midtown at the time. My

father would come home and put on one of the jams. There was music playing in the

house all the time. Monday through Thursday there was music, but Friday, it went up

another notch. Friends were coming over and then food, and drinks, and of course, in my

era you didn’t stay around grown folks, y’all go outside and that’s where we were at,

outside all the time. It really helped my imagination also. Always playing, always trying

to find something to get into. The older we started getting more dare devil type things, we

started getting into. (H. Ar-Rasheed)

In the next clip, the brother’s family friend Rick states that the brothers were most certainly daredevils in the neighborhood and much of their footwork came from acrobatic jumps off of vacant houses for entertainment. Rick states,

Man, we used to go to vacant houses, right? Jump from roof to roof. This the kind of

entertainment we did, while they was dancing and stuff, right? And that’s what got some

of they most entertainment, because they was like, one cat said, “Man I could flip off the

top of this house.” “Stop lying, man!” So we went and found some mattresses, right?

Drug those suckers around, stacked them up. This brother walked up there, right? And

alls it take is for one, right? My man, he got up on the peak, my house is high, but he got

up on the peak, and that brother did a backwards yo’ off of it. We all screamed,

“Alright!” Now you know how it go? Now who next, because the oldest brother used to

always go. He used to always run up there and boom. (H. Ar-Rasheed) 124

For the McGhee brothers, Jit footwork emerged as an expression of their experiences growing up in Detroit. At first the brothers were nervous that their footwork was a copy of what the Nicholas

Brothers had done in the 1940s and ’50s. This was mostly because their footwork involved precision dancing. Soon though, they learned that their footwork had what Tracey McGhee calls

“street edge.” Tracey states,

I remember Clifford Fierce, the choreographer, did the Dunham Technique and when he

seen us, he was telling us about precision dancing, “Y’all just precision dancing, y’all

ain’t—that’s not street dancing.” And he was like, “Here, take a clip of this,” and he gave

us a clip of the Nicholas Brothers. Blew my mind! Those guys was doing stuff that

inspired me to do even other more creative stuff, but to see them doing stuff so similar to

what we were doing, it blew my mind. It made me feel as if I had stole some stuff from

them. But, we were different, because we had more of a street edge, and they were more

like classy, jazz type of performance, if you’ve ever seen the Nicholas Brothers perform,

but some of their stunts, we did those naturally. (H. Ar-Rasheed)

Tracey McGhee infers that the differences between how the Nicholas Brothers performed and how the McGhee brothers performed Jit was their connection to the Detroit community from which they came. At the same time, it is difficult to claim which dance form is more “street” than the other. The Nicholas Brothers’ performances are documented on film, considering they were

Hollywood stars, and many of these from the 1930s and ’40s show the brothers performing in front of white audiences. In 1987, the brothers performed at the Kennedy Center in honor of

Sammy Davis, Jr. At the performance, we see them, now in their mid-60s, dancing with a group of Black entertainers from their era. As they dance, the group yell out traditional call and response to each other as they take turns dancing. The moment is superbly compelling. The 125

Black men on stage enjoy each other, and the moment has the vibe of a Black family gathering.

It also feels like a very personal moment. The audience of almost all white people are invited to watch but truly the performance is for Davis. The predominately white space is full of Black culture if only for a moment.

Jit Footwork

Figure 4.1 Jit footwork move called “The Walk” (Source: H. Ar-Rasheed).

Figure 4.2 Jit footwork moves called “The Strike, Jazzit, and Tone” (Source: H. Ar-Rasheed).

The brothers’ Jit footwork was conceived from uniquely personal experiences from their lives of growing up in Detroit. The brothers based many of their moves on certain members of 126

their community, as well as cultural styles in fashion. Each move had a specific name and

purpose. Tracey McGhee states,

Stanley Bowman. He was a real big guy, and when he would do it, he would make this

expression on his face, pump his shoulders, and move his arms and just incredible when

you see him doing it. Jazz, I would give that one to my little brother, Jay.

Something about the way he would twist his arms and jazz his feet at the same time. It

was just, the way he flowed was just jazzy . . . I can’t forget Tony Carasagy. My man,

Tony Carasagy, he was the pretty boy of the group, and he . . . I don’t know what we . . .

we called it The Tone. It was a certain move, we used to go back, go down and then skip

up like this going towards the crowd, throwing our hand out and he used to like to wear

all red, with his red hat, and he used to look just the coolest person you ever seen doing

the Jit. (H. Ar-Rasheed)

Jit footwork performatively communicates the performance of self and the performance of place because the footwork is dependent on the style and swagger of the performer. Tracey and Johnny infer that each move is designed with a specific performance of self in mind. For example, Tony

Carasagy was extremely handsome and his style was smooth. Tony’s suave personality is embodied through The Tone. As each new person is invited to perform Jit footwork, they are also invited to add their own performance of self to the movement that always seems to carry a bit of the former performer with the move. For example, we know The Walk was based on

Stanley Bowman and his style of movement across the dancefloor but The Walk is also based on, according to Johnny, anyone showing off their own unique style and swagger. As the brothers’ community is allowed to grow, so is the footwork. Everyone has an opportunity to be included in 127 how the community is represented.

Haleem “Stringz” Rasul

Figure 4.3 Self-portrait photograph of Haleem “Stringz” Rasul (Source: Rasul, Haleem).

Haleem “Stringz” Rasul is owner and lead choreographer of Hardcore Detroit, a dance company that provides entertainment for parties and events in Detroit and around the world. He is also a professional Jit dancer. Stringz has made it his mission to bring Jit to the world. From art instillations featuring Jit dancers to his 2014 documentary about the origins of Jit in Detroit,

Stringz has been working with local media and dance groups to create an archive of Jit history.

In May 2015, Stringz worked on a “Jit exchange” with the Jitters of Zimbabwe, which has its own style of Jit, as well as participating in a Jit Festival (Rupersburg).

Stringz’s cousin, who turned him on to dance at a young age, influenced Stringz’s passion for Jit and other urban dances. Stringz would watch Detroit-based dance shows on television, as well as learn basic moves from his cousin. After his cousin passed away, Stringz 128

moved to Mount Clemens,46 Michigan with his father’s family and became heavily involved in

art and graphic design. He graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in graphic

design (Rupersburg). When he was seventeen years old, his older brother had begun to make a

name for himself on the urban hip-hop scene in Detroit clubs. The itch to dance took root and his

began his career as a B-boy47 and popper48 in Detroit clubs such as St. Andrew’s Hall. Currently,

Stringz lives in midtown Detroit where he teaches workshops and holds dance practice with his crew once a week at the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Community Development Center. The crew practices many urban dances, including Jit. My daughter and I had the pleasure of taking a class with Stringz on basic Jit footwork, as well as discussing with him the appeal of Jit as an iconic Detroit dance performance. According to Stringz, a lot of what made the Jit a unique urban street dance was its connection to Detroit cultural influences including hip-hop, techno music, fashion, style, etc.:

MICHELLE: What is it about, particularly the Jit, that makes it about Detroit? Because I

don't know if the Jit can exist . . . or maybe it has existed in other

iterations in Chicago, right? ‘Cause of how the birth of house music came

out of Chicago, and in New York, too. And they all have their own sorts of

dances. So, what makes jitting Detroit?

STRINGZ: Well, I would say, definitely, when you see the moves and combinations

and the way we do our movement is different, like you don't wanna see it

46 Mount Clemens is located in Southeast Michigan and is approximately thirty minutes from Detroit.

47 According to hiphoparea.com, a B-Boy is someone who is true to hip-hop culture in terms of dancing and other dance aspects of hip-hop culture including breakdancing (“Breakdance: What Does It Mean to Be a B-Boy”).

48 According to Urban Dictionary, a popper is someone who practices popping dance movements that originated in California in the 1970s. “The quick tensing and releasing of muscles, often the arms, legs, back, chest and neck which creates a POP effect, designed initially to be done on beat to Funk” (@Silkk) 129

anywhere. You might see bits and pieces, but you would not see the core

of the dance anywhere else. You know what I'm saying? But the fact . . .

we've been doing this dance a long time. The music also, has something

like that. Huge part of being that techno is from Detroit and that dance is

heavily associated with it. And that sound. So that has a lot to do with it. It

is also unique into . . . there's a lot of stuff that makes it unique. How we

dressed at the time. It was a time where you would be . . . that you had to

look fly, you had the nice suit, dress shoes, hats. And now it's more like

just it seems like it inter-weaved in a lot of different . . . and spreaded. So,

people . . . now, you see people in regular street clothes doing it, females.

(H. “Stringz” Rasul)

As Jit became mainstream in Detroit, many urban street dancers from outside the city were interested in the style of footwork. Stringz has formal workshops dedicated to teaching Jit footwork to non-dance audiences. However, in his day-to-day, Stringz mostly exchanges moves and shares choreography with folks who attend his weekly crew practice sessions. His attendees are mostly, if not all, white. He does this because according to Stringz, Jit footwork is so well known in the city that many Jitters don’t need to take a workshop on it. Their workshop is usually practiced in the club or at special events. Instead his Jit workshops are used as a way to share Detroit dance history with non-black audiences. Stringz states that part of Jit is a sense of community exchange,

Because, truthfully man, it’s weird, because I like . . . if I teach a class . . . I don’t teach a

normal class. Here, I just don’t have, “Oh, I’m teaching Jit.” I might show some people

some moves, like, “Hey, can you teach me, show me something?” So, it might be 130

informal, but most of my formal stuff is workshop-based, and it’s geared to create

awareness in people’s interest outside of the dance. ‘Cause . . . yeah. ‘Cause people in

Detroit feel like . . . and this is cool, it’s part of a culture like, “I’m from Detroit, I don’t

need to be taught how to Jit; everybody Jit.” You know what I’m saying? That’s how I

look at it. Or just being in the culture and around people and that’s all you really need.

When I was around Debonair,49 per se, it wasn’t like he’s teaching me a class, he was just

like, no, it’s just like being around him, picking up moves, sharing and eating together,

talking. You know what I’m saying? So, it was more like that. But now when I teach

workshops, I rarely get attendance from Jitters, per se. (H. “Stringz” Rasul)

Being from Detroit and part of those Black communities that are familiar with Jit footwork,

Stringz seeks to create a physical repertoire through performative repetition. Diana Taylor, in

The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, states that performance can serve as vital acts of transfer that submit social knowledge, identity, and memory about cultures (2). The Jit transmits social knowledge, identity, and memory about various Black cultures in Detroit through repetitious performances or acts of transfer from person to person and community to community.

Jit’s repertoire carries memories and histories that are affectively felt on Black Detroit bodies; however, who are the recipients? In post-recession Detroit, Stringz’s clientele are young, white, Detroit hipsters, New Yorkers, and international audiences in countries like Sweden and

China. As the Jit transmits social knowledge, identity, and memory about various Black cultures, it is young, mostly white people who are consumers of this cultural practice.

49 Stringz’s cousin who heavily influenced him as a dancer. 131

Jennifer Harge

Figure 4.4 Jennifer Harge in Cussin and Praying (2016), a movement from The (Her)Stor(Ies) Project (Source: Thomas, Michael).

Figure 4.5 Jennifer Harge in WIGS: A Book of Dance Poems (2015), a movement from The (Her)Stor(Ies) Project (Source: Demeffe, Olivier). 132

Jennifer Harge is a local dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Harge Dance

Stories, which is located in downtown Detroit. Her work is a moving collection of movement pieces that are thematically unified based on Black cultural identities. She interrogates the sociopolitical politicking that endangers and misrepresents Black lives in the United States. Trained in modern dance, Jennifer has created a method of dance that attempts to subvert what she calls

“[white] traditional postmodern [dance] aesthetics”, or a dance vocabulary that has been rooted and framed within white Eurocentric frameworks. Her approach includes a set of movements that include African-American and Afrocentric ritualistic movements, and gestures.

Figure 4.6 Movement from Fly | Drown (2019) (Source: Gant, Bree). 133

Figure 4.7 Movement from WIGS: A Book of Dance Poems (2015) (Source: Demeffe, Olivier).

Jennifer grew up between Saginaw50 and Highland Park,51 Michigan. She spent seven years of dance training surrounded by white bodies, first at the University of Michigan, Ann

Arbor (BFA, Dance), followed by the University of Iowa (MFA, Dance). Jennifer moved back to the Detroit area a couple of years after her dance training was complete. She decided to relocate to her family’s hometown of Highland Park, which is a predominately Black community. Living and experiencing Highland Park as a resident opened the door for Jennifer to what her craft as a dancer and choreographer could and should do for the city of Detroit. She wanted to be surrounded by Black bodies, which helped open the door for her to conceptualize the goals for her company, Harge Dance Stories. Jennifer states,

Yeah, I think one thing I've learned about myself is that I'm really interested in first,

being around people who I think support me. And it's not always professionally or

50 Saginaw is located in central Michigan. It is approximately one hour and forty-five minutes from Detroit.

51 Highland Park is a city located in Detroit. 134

artistically, like my family. I know for a fact that is people who are gonna have my back

if something goes haywire . . . And then, working with my friend's company and being in

this rehearsal with all these Black women and I was just like, “Alright, that can be a

thing. And it could be a thing where I'm down the street from my aunt's house, or, living

in my grandmother's house,” because I had never really been in such close proximity to

my family because I was living in Saginaw with my parents . . . I had never had an

opportunity really, even when I was at [the University of] Michigan. You get into a

campus and you stay there, you get secluded. And so, I was like, “Oh I could be this close

to my family and I can make dances!” It usually has been me living in what I consider to

be kind of odd places, like Normal, Illinois or Iowa even can come across as being kinda

odd place to live. And so, I think being here and seeing Black people every day, cause I

hadn't in my last eight years when I first was like, “This is what I do, I make dances”.

(Harge)

For Jennifer, proximity to close family and friends mattered in that it gave her a space to feel

comfortable to make dance happen. Yet, it mattered insofar as figuring out the logistics of

building a career. Being around Black bodies seemed to cement her desire to live and work in

Detroit. Jennifer used the phrase “odd places” to describe the places in which she lived away

from home. These “odd places” would be places predominately populated with white people. It

is difficult to know for sure the extent to which spending time outside of more diverse areas,

such as Ann Arbor, Michigan,52 affected the way she conceptualized dance as well as her

52 Ann Arbor, Michigan is home to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. According to the most recent census results, Ann Arbor, Michigan is home to 72 percent of people who identify as White (as well as those who identify as Hispanic or Latino as their ethnicity), 16 percent Asian alone, and 7 percent Black or African American (U.S. Census Bureau). 135

identity as a Black woman. Numerous studies have been conducted about the effect of whiteness

on Black identities.53 In considering Jennifer’s decision to spend time in community with Black

Detroiters rather than make community in a predominantly white space, I refer to Deborah

Thomas’s thinking about cultural plurality and blackness in her book, Modern Blackness:

Nationalism, Globalization, and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica, Jamaican migrants and

African Americans who have both situated themselves within multiple cultures in America (or

more specifically Brooklyn, New York) are in many ways influenced by each other’s cultures in

terms of their identity construction (260). Although their relationships are often complex in terms

of the perceived oppositional structuralism that keeps their culture separate, according to

Thomas, “these relationships are often fluid and present opportunities for both cultures to emerge

as new identities: “modern blackness54 is a part of and embodies the cultural plurality that frames

the range of ideological and political possibilities for contemporary Jamaicans” (261). Although

Thomas is referring to contemporary Jamaican culture, her thoughts on the fluidity of

relationships between African diasporic cultures are interesting to consider in terms of why

Jennifer moved from self-described “odd place” to home. The pull toward cultural homogeneity

is easy to acknowledge; after all, most of us do want to be around family and friends after having

been away for so long. The more intriguing thought is, who did Jennifer become after coming

53 These studies include a 2003 finding in Race and Society Journal, which measured the racial identity saliency among white and Black students at three PWIs and one HBCU. Researchers found that “racial identity salience for white students at the predominantly white universities (PWUs) was significantly lower than racial identity salience among black students in these university settings” (Steck et al. 57).

54 Deborah A. Thomas defines modern blackness to be a term that describes contemporary Jamaican identity that evokes a sense of historical consciousness and a sense of promise. This identity seeks to “abandon the binaries of hegemony and resistance, global and local, and instead try to understand the range of contemporary cultural formations among Black Jamaicans—indeed among African descended people throughout the diaspora—vis-à-vis an ongoing negotiation of dynamic systems of power and domination at historically specific junctures” (15). 136 home? How did her move from odd places to Black place impact her creative art? Are there any correlations among odd place, white space, and white place?

Black Death and Identity

Jennifer Harge created a series of movement pieces that delves into themes surrounding space, death, and loss in the African American community. The location and target audience are

Black Detroiters, but the topics discussed in the work extend to outside the city and into America at large. At the time of this interview, Jennifer had two pieces as part of this work. As of 2018, the series expanded to four. The series is titled The Here Project. The first piece is There Are No

People Here (2013). Harge’s website states,

“Please don’t come here! But if you do, you gotta bring a little laughter, a couple tears,

your favorite shirt, and your mother’s necklace. But please don’t come here! Not yet.”

This text is sprinkled throughout a metaphoric heaven. The spirit character onstage is

speaking to young black males in inner city neighborhoods, specifically, asking them not

to die prematurely. Pulled from data in 2012 showing the staggering number of black

males lost to street violence in Detroit, Flint, and Saginaw, MI, the piece draws our

attention to the collection of black male bodies disappearing from the American

landscape. (“The Here Project”) 137

Figure 4.8 There Are No People Here (2013), a movement from The Here Project (Source: Harge Dance Stories). In the early stages of this piece, she created an amateur video of herself dancing in a vacant lot in

Highland Park, Michigan. She added her grandmother’s hands to the video as a visual element to represent time. The next piece for The Here Project is The Line Between Heaven and Here

(2014). Jennifer’s website states,

This piece explores the cultural and historical ramifications of death and dying in black

communities. Struck by the ways in which death repeated itself throughout American

enslavement, Jim Crow, Civil Rights era, and the contemporary gang culture, the dance

examines how blacks have been dying in large numbers, dying as a community. The

piece tries to encompass these historic periods by calling them “here”. If black bodies

have experienced death so frequently (and often violently) what must living look like?

How have these bodies been trained, and how has that training mastered, cultivated, or

facilitated their impulses? (“The Here Project”) 138

Figure 4.9 The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) a movement from The Here Project (Source: Harge Dance Stories).

For Jennifer, the violent death of a Black community member is affective among all the members

of the Black community. The visual elements and spatial relationships in both pieces that

indicate space and time are metaphors for how we (Black people) do mourning, feel sorrow, and

experience the absence of Black lives.

Jennifer began The Here Project in her last year of graduate school while in Iowa. A

portion of the project served as her graduate thesis project. In the graduate school performance,

the majority of Jennifer’s dancers were white. In our interview, she dismissed the piece and said

that wasn’t a problem at the time but that since, choreography-wise, “we've done it a different way,” it is difficult for her to watch that version of the piece (Harge). I am not making the assumption that since Jennifer originally cast white dancers in a piece about Black Death55 that

now the piece lacks impact. Jennifer did not say that in the interview either. Changing the

55 Black Death is a term I coined to describe the epidemic of Black lives lost to violent crimes. I mean it to resonate with similar terms, such as “Black Death” or “Black Plague,” the illness that swept through Europe and Russia from 1346-1353. According to Emeritus Professor of History Ole Benedictow from the University of Oslo Norway, the Black Plague killed 50–60 percent of Europe’s population (Benedictow). 139 choreography, as well as recasting the piece from a predominantly white cast to a predominantly black cast, necessarily shifted the aesthetics and meanings of the piece. I would also say that these changes could have (at the time) also affected Jennifer’s understanding of the piece, and perhaps shifted the way she sees herself as a creative artist. It certainly did during our conversation in February 2016. Jennifer mentioned how difficult it was to have a conversation with her cast about whiteness.

MICHELLE: I'm curious as to any thoughts that you might have in regards to the

changing demographics of Detroit, and how that works, or if it does work

in your dance, in the work that you do?

JENNIFER: It hasn't worked its way in at all yet. And I've taught this actually in our

last rehearsal. I'm like so . . . I just wanna give us like a proper

introduction that in the coming weeks. Like we need to have some pretty

difficult conversations about race in these rehearsals 'cause like I've been

avoiding it. Well, not avoiding race but like I've been avoiding whiteness .

. . and I think that we do the piece a disservice. And I think we do this

dance community a disservice. (Harge)

There are several reasons for this that I infer could be what made the conversation difficult. A few of Jennifer’s dancers are white. The very first piece I saw in early 2016 included two white female dancers. The piece was also about Black Death but this time from the context of Black motherhood. The white women in the piece performed the same repetitive movements that, for me, signified fear, sorrow, comfort, and support.56 It was one of the moments for which I

56 The Training Field for Protection (2016) as part of the (Her)stor(ies) project. 140 complimented Jennifer (for not mocking womanism) after the concert when I introduced myself and my project.

Jennifer mentioned during our conversation that watching the former piece choreographed with white dancers was difficult, as well as having the tough conversation about whiteness with her dance company, which included white women. While Jennifer may or may not have recognized it, the presence of the white female dancers, when engaging topics, moments, and events that viscerally and directly affect Black communities, may have or could have had the capacity to shut down Jennifer’s creative voice. Jennifer’s desire to not only talk about racism but to also begin a conversation about whiteness, points to her need to open herself up to the ways in which Black people process the pain of intentional and non-intentional racism.

That is very hard to do with white people in the room. In Patricia Hill-Collins’s 1986 groundbreaking work on Black feminist thought, “Learning from the Outsider Within: The

Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought”, she posits that one of the most important aspects of fostering self-definition, self-valuation, and “seeing the circumstances shaping race, class, and gender oppression” among Black women is helping foster Black women’s culture by investing in “. . . the interpersonal relationships that Black women share with each other”

(“Learning from the Outsider Within” S23). Collins states,

Black women's experiences suggest that Black women may overtly conform to the

societal roles laid out for them, yet covertly oppose these roles in numerous spheres . . .

Black women’s activities in families, churches, community institutions, and creative

expression may represent more than an effort to mitigate pressures stemming from

oppression. Rather, the Black female ideological frame of reference that Black women

acquire through sisterhood, motherhood, and creative expression may serve the added 141

purpose of shaping a Black female consciousness about the workings of oppression.

(“Learning from the Outsider Within” S23)

Alice Walker, in her essay, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: The Creativity of Black Women in the South, she also supports the role of collective creativity as a mode for standing up to oppression. Walker states,

To be an artist, and a Black woman, even today, lowers our status in many respects,

rather than raises it: and yet, artists we will be. Therefore we must fearlessly pull out of

ourselves and look at and identify with our lives the living creativity some of our great-

grandmothers knew, even without "knowing" it, the reality of their spirituality, even if

they didn't recognize it beyond what happened in the singing at church-and they never

had any intention of giving it up. (Walker 237)

I witnessed how Jennifer’s rehearsal studio at the Carr Center became a white place as the women performatively supported the emotional needs of the one lone white woman in the room among four brown women. Jennifer invited me to attend a rehearsal at her studio following our conversation in February 2016. She wanted to begin the conversation about race and felt that my presence might offer some clarity to the members of the company as they began their work on a new piece about intersectionality, Black femme identity, and Black womanism. I arrived at the studio on a late Sunday afternoon. Three Black female dancers and a tall white female dancer were there, and also Jennifer. Jennifer began rehearsal by asking us to listen to a recording of

Audre Lorde’s The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. After the recording, Jennifer attempted to engage the dancers in a conversation about the recording. Everyone was hesitant to speak. I remember the Black women in the room shifting uncomfortably. They darted looks at each other and occasionally at Jennifer. The white woman in the room appeared distant. I don’t 142

remember ever hearing her speaking. Yet some of the Black women did eventually say a few

words. Next, Jennifer handed everyone wigs and they all played around with some movements. I

cannot say for sure if it was the presence of the one lone white woman that caused the room to

grow uncomfortable on the day that I attended rehearsal. I can remember thinking about the one

lone white woman in the room, “This rehearsal isn’t for you.” Although Audre never directly

says, “ATTENTION! ALL BLACK WOMEN!” there is something very Black womanist about

her prose, which for me, speaks to Black women only. Lorde states,

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once

recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered.

The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress

any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond

whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and

obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as

women. (57–58)

Hearing Lorde’s words may have struck a chord with the Black women in the room. We knew

what the conversation was in regard to exploring Black femme identity. Jennifer and the other

Black dancers’ attempt to navigate the white space and white place at her rehearsal points to some common aspects of Black Detroit identity in terms of how we as Black people negotiate the pain of racialization—all of which Jennifer (either consciously or unconsciously) navigates in her movement work.

Jennifer’s creative work is tied to her identity as a Black woman, despite her reservations about wanting to explore how her identity as a Black person and as a Black woman are intertwined. Jennifer states, 143

I have been just thinking about that [Black feminism] for like my own way of living and my own

understanding of myself. It was why I first started this [dance company] whole conversation, and

then that's . . . maybe not physically but, from my point . . . I mean I think it is my point of view,

but I think that it's like opened up a little bit and I have a really, actually, a bad habit of talking

about all of this around me. And I never . . . stopping like, "What is Jennifer? How are you

experiencing that?" And I think a lot of my things come from observing. I think I'm a little bit

afraid of myself, like, "What are you gonna find in there when you actually start digging?"

(Harge)

According to Paul Gilroy in The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Black identity is a lived experiential sense of self that is dependent on practical activities such as

“language, gesture, bodily significance” (102). In other words, Black identity is defined through the use of practiced performances in the everyday that reify ideological beliefs of who and what we are and what we are not. According to Jennifer, she is negotiating her Black identity through the creative movement and emotional embodiment in her work. She is not purposefully staying away from including herself in the work. Rather, there are stories about Black life and death that, for Jennifer, need to be told. The social needs of the community come first. Jennifer states,

When I was telling someone about There Are No People Here and then doing it based off

of the loss and Highland Park. And not just the bodies, but the spirit of people in

Highland Park is also . . . it's like zombies walking around sometimes. Well, not

sometimes. And so, loss in that way too. And so, I think that's just from literally what I'm

seeing or like when I talk to people who are living across the street or whatever, and just

literally from being in that place every day and not as a drive through. I think what I'm

trying to do is tell it from a perspective like being rooted in that place and seeing it all the 144

time and hearing it all the time. And I remember, this was maybe over the summer, and

our neighbor across the street . . . the police had followed him home or was pulling him

over. And then they took him, handcuffed him and put his hands on the front of the police

car. So, my sister and I, this is the age of . . . not the age, but another age of police

brutality. So, we're turning the lights off in the windows. And like, "Where's my phone?

Where's my camera?" 'Cause I literally don't know what's about to happen to him . . . in

that moment, how vulnerable he looked. I'm just like, "Something is happening, and I just

feel like [it’s] my responsibility right now, as a way of taking care of him, is just to

record this, just in case something . . .." (Harge)

According to Jennifer, it is necessary to tell stories from the standpoint of being in the

community as opposed to being outside it. There is a shared perspective with these communities

when she can live and work there. Dance serves as a framework with which to explore these

concepts.

The Use of Text in Harge Dance Stories

According to Jennifer, there is a lack of stories about Black lives in modern dance today

(Harge). She has been working on finding a language with which to tell these dance stories. In

her article, “Is Dance a Language? Movement, Meaning and Communication”, Henrietta

Bannerman asserts “that from the point of view of structure, dance shares commonalities with

language and that like language it communicates according to cultural codes” (66) . For example,

Jennifer uses text in her work as a way to bring meaning and efficacy to the topical issues

presented in the performance. She doesn’t arbitrarily use text in her work for fear of the piece

becoming trite or that people will not understand the context of the piece. In Training Field,

Jennifer had her dancers recite the names of those people killed by police brutality. In our 145 interview, Jennifer states that not only do the names carry meaning but how the dancers perform the text also communicates how these dead loved ones are important, especially in death. For

Jennifer, it is not just that the victim’s names are read out loud, but how the names are read give meaning to the work as a whole. Even though Jennifer does not have a theatre background, she confesses that the ways in which the text is read matter to the performance moments that are created (Harge). Jennifer states,

But these names though, that text I thought had to stay there. I've been

thinking lately, what will happen if the words were gone? And I'm not

interested in that 'cause then we like lose sight of what this is about.

People are like, "I think I was thinking this, and I was thinking—" I'm

like, "No, no, no, I want you to really know this thing." So, I think that's

why or how I use text, I really need you to know something or locate you

somewhere, then I think it's important to add text that I think lately it's

been like a way to begin the story or end the story. Not that dance kind of

like fills in all the gaps. Like thinking about it, this is in retrospect,

thinking about the version you saw, so Miriam begins like giving and

reading these names and the dates. And she used to read it more full first

name and last name, the day it happened, where it happened like almost

like a news anchor.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

JENNIFER: And I was like, if that was one of your children you wouldn't read it like

“Akai Gurley, age this.” You'd be like “Akai,” you will say like it was in

May, like “Tamir,” that happened in October. Like so if you was reading 146

off your children, so how will she say it if she would have to tell someone

what happened to her kids. So, we played with that a lot too 'cause the first

version definitely was more like—

MICHELLE: Rote.

JENNIFER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. More like a documentary, kind of. I'm

like, “Now, I think we wanna like be someone's mother, like we're telling

you from this perspective.” (Harge)

The dancers are not simply repeating choreographed movements, but they are playing mothers, brothers, sisters, and families affected and afflicted by Black Death. For Harge, the use of text creates context and is meant to give the audience and dancer a fuller understanding of the story.

It is meant to bring efficacy and poignancy to the work.

Representing Community in the Dance Stories

Figure 4.10 Dancers hold themselves in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) (Source: Harge, Jennifer). In Jennifer’s work, there are many instances where performers are individually processing as a group. For example, in a piece in The Line Between Heaven and Here, the performers are standing in a line at the front of the stage. Each performer has a set of gestures that communicate loss. The first performer (left) cradles her hand and bends her body forward. 147

The second and third performers grasp their chests. The fourth performer clasps and unclasps her hands together. The fifth performer folds and unfolds her hands, and the sixth performer has one hand on her hip while the other hand opens and closes (see Figure 4.10). Although each person is individually processing loss, Jennifer places him or her in a straight line as if to suggest they are processing as a group. I asked Jennifer about how community as a gathering of Black bodies is represented in her work. Jennifer states,

This last piece, this Training Field for Protection . . . I've been thinking

about it in different ways since we started making it. The impact of many

people tackling these things versus just one person, just my voice being

the one but trying to say if we all, you know what I mean, more of us, I

think has been like my premise sometimes. In the last dance I made, at the

dance we premiered, when I first started Harge Dance Stories, was called

the . . . is called The Line Between Heaven and Here. And that has been

like, something in that has, in talking about the way in which black bodies

have died, and how or why that's different than the way other Americans

die. And so, something about that has shown . . . because my argument

was we've always . . . historically have died in these really large numbers,

and died as communities. I've been calling them communal deaths. So,

think about enslavement, it was this thousands of people over this number

of years, or you think about civil rights era, and the hundreds . . . the

numbers are just staggering and then you move several decades later and

the deaths and murders, and things like Chicago or Flint. Every year

hundreds and hundreds dying as a whole community. And then you can 148

look at Flint now, and just like it's always like a—it's never, because it's

like huge mass numbers . . . So, the line between heaven and here which is

talking about like, so the whole piece operated as like, these ten people

operate as one body to show that this is happening to many people. You

might be able to see like one person's story every now and then, but this

thing is happening to this large number and we kind of experience it kind

of similarly. Even though this might be happening in Chicago and this

might be happening in LA, I think we're experiencing that as brown

bodies. The feeling of it for me feels very much the same. Even though

like geographically—

MICHELLE: It's all—

JENNIFER: Or even like in chronologically it's a different time period, I think it's still .

. . like for me it felt . . . those deaths felt the same. (Harge)

Figure 4.11 A noose hangs on stage between performers in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) (Source: Harge, Jennifer).

For Jennifer, Black Death is communal, and she represents this in her work as individual selves processing as a community. In this piece, Jennifer tells the story of a community individually 149 processing communal Black Death. In another example from excerpts of The Line Between

Heaven and Here, a male performer dances as three performers watch with heads bowed. The performers who are watching slowly shift their center of gravity forward and backward (see

Figure 4.11).

Figure 4.12 Dancers gather in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) (Source: Harge, Jennifer).

Figure 4.13 Synchronized movement in The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) (Source: Harge, Jennifer). 150

Figure 4.14 Dancers disperse The Line Between Heaven and Here (2014) (Source: Harge, Jennifer).

Additionally, in Figure 4.12, the performers are separately using fast tempo hand gestures to jazz music. In Figure 4.13, they come together in synchronized movements as a community. In Figure

4.14, they break away again. Exhausted and tired, they saunter away. In pieces such as The Line

Between Heaven and Here Jennifer uses dance to create unique storytelling experiences that

performatively communicate self, community, and place. Jennifer is deeply rooted in a Black

community in Highland Park in which negative realities such as loss and death are affective,

which is explored in her work. Even though Jennifer has a hard time placing herself within the

work, her Dance Stories explore what it means for a person to be part of a community. As a

Black Detroiter who lives and works in Highland Park, Jennifer’s Dance Stories serve as a way

for her to express place and humanize the suffering she observes in Black Detroit communities.

In terms of the style of movement, in another part of Training Field, there are specific

movements that also help Jennifer create a language with which to tell her Dance Stories. For example, there are moments when the performers are wildly running in place on stage as if they are running for their lives. There are also moments of weight sharing, as if the performers are holding each other up as a unified whole. One performer would sink back into the arms of the whole and members of the group would hold each part of the group members’ bodies. The 151 performers would take turns at different intervals throughout the piece. Jennifer describes how she creates movements while thinking about how the movements convey meaning about the subject(s) of the piece,

If a partner, and your partner like moves, you have to respond to that touch. And so, like

the head, you have to respond to that, and so forth and so forth and so forth. And so, I'll

start with that. And then, lately, I've been trying to think about different energies that I

see, thinking about Detroit or whatever the topic is. It's like, "What if you move them

really aggressively? Or what if you move them as if you don't really wanna touch them or

what if—" You know what I mean? . . . So, let the tools stay the same but the way you

manipulate it or approach it, I think those kind of things are reflection of trying to tell a

particular kind of story. So, we're trying to tell a story about, this is like a compassion

moment and so what if you like really, like your whole body has to then touch her that

way, you know what I mean? You have to like really see her as you touch her all the

time. So, I think I've been trying to separate the content. I think when we're making the

dances, and just use . . . that motivation becomes based on energy or based on time. So,

what if it's really, really hyper and fast and like kind of out of your control? You know

what I mean? And so, it's not like I don't think . . . I try not to start off like, "So we're

gonna do a dance about these names, and the running comes from this." I was just like,

"What happens if you get really exhausted? And what does that feel like?" And so, trying

to use that energy or something to deliver the same tools. (Harge)

Jennifer talks about transfers of energy from one dancer to the next and how dancers are asked to manipulate each other’s movements to communicate thoughts and ideas. This style of communicating and telling a story through modern dance on stage does not sound out of the 152

ordinary for any other choreographer creating a movement piece. What makes Jennifer’s work

intriguing and thoughtful is how she attempts to negotiate pain and Black Death in her work. She

asks the dancers to disregard telling a story and embody time and space. For example, in

Training Day, Jennifer asks her dancers to run until they are exhausted and still continue to read

the names. The dancers are asked to put more of themselves into the dance rather than

performing the choreography to represent the choreographer. There is a personal element to the

work that comes from the dancers and not specifically Jennifer. It truly is a community-based

collaboration, of which Jennifer carves out a Black space for creative affective healing to happen

in Detroit.

Conclusion

Figure 4.15 Opening caption from trailer of FLY | DROWN (2019) (Source: Harge Dance Stories).

I interviewed Jennifer Harge in February 2016. Since then, Jennifer has effectively

carved out a space in her work to process the pain of racial trauma without white bodies.

Presently, all of Jennifer’s dancers are Black females. Time and spatial relationships on stage

have always been part of Jennifer Harge’s performance aesthetic as it is probably with most choreographers (regardless of race), yet, for me seeing the performance for a second time – this 153 time without white bodies on stage, feels endless and space feels infinite. In the most current performance of (Her)stor(ies) (2016), she is using a style of storytelling called

“biomythography,” a term coined by Audre Lorde, which is a way of biographically recounting history that also engages mythic and epic narrative form (Daniell). I had the pleasure of watching a full performance of (Her)stor(ies) at The Carr Center in downtown Detroit in May 2016. In the program the show was described as follows,

The (her)stor(ies) project is informed by writers Lucille Clifton and Audre Lorde and

their approaches in processing grief, anger, pleasure, and agency. The work references

Clifton’s “for de Lawd,” by working through some of the queries presented in the poem.

For example: how does one choose to live after “murdered sons” and what does life look

like after a violent loss carried out by figures who are supposed to protect? Throughout

the work, the cast performs rituals grounded in Black American fellowship to help

process these questions. Like Lorde, the (her)stor(ies) project [sic] engages

biomythography to dispel misconceptions of Black women’s proximity to jouissance.

The characters grapple with grief but make clear the possibilities of pleasure.

((Her)Stor(Ies) at The Carr Center, Detroit, Michigan).

The audience was about 95 percent Black people. There were moments of process that happened on stage that felt endless. The women took care of each other in ways that felt familiar to me as a

Black woman. For example, the movement project ends with the women assisting Jennifer as she washes her hair on stage using a tin basin. This moment, for me, was a shout out to Black mother-daughter relationships. As the lights faded to black, you could hear the trickle of water against the basin. It was one of the most moving experiences I have ever witnessed. 154

An additional contributor to time and space in Jennifer’s work is her commitment to a style of movement that she calls, “black vernacular gestures, codes, and rituals as a way of subverting traditional postmodern aesthetics.” The notion of, according to the Harge Dance

Stories, “subverting traditional postmodern aesthetics” rejects the idea that postmodern dance narratives are purposefully without meaning (or an obvious central premise) for the sake of subverting norms (“Harge Dance Stories: About”). Jennifer seeks to honor Black culture by creating and recreating gestures and movement patterns that signify her personal understanding of blackness. This Detroit brand of blackness is derived of Black Southern Folk culture and is a feature in her work, because she desires to make connections among blackness, Black Southern

Folk culture, and Detroit. Jennifer is intentional about whom the work is for and for whom the work is not. I do not think Jennifer is purposefully excluding white audiences from admiring her work. Yet, I do think she is clear about to whom the work is meant to affect: Black audiences.

This is no different than what Thomasenia and Hustle for History group is doing to address

Black audiences. Yet, the intentionality to address Black audience is more so for Jennifer than for Thomasenia. This is mainly because for Jennifer the encroachment

Harge Dance Stories, Hustle for History, and The Brothers McGee’s creation of Jit

Footwork are performances that express deeper understandings of their localized Black Detroit cultural identities and experiences. They are each uniquely responding to the white gaze in ways that uplift Black Detroit cultural identities. Each performance style carries its own cultural identity, wherein Detroit, as a Black social geography informs each style. For the Brothers

McGee, Jit Footwork is a street edge act of survival that uses space to performatively listen and performatively respond to other Black Detroit identities. The Jit is a non-verbal language and practice that makes, breaks, and remakes Black Detroit identities in the moment of their 155

enactment. Hustle for History is also a co-constituted performance of self that reinforces Black

Detroit agency. It is also performance that is a negotiated practice. The steps are metaphorical as well as practical. They are the building blocks of a strong Black Detroit constitution of self that says, Black Detroit cultures and communities matters.

Jennifer’s work is also informed by Detroit as a Black social geography. I think

Jennifer’s work is more intentional about addressing the white racialization in ways that attempt to tear down Black Detroit identities than The Jit or Hustle for History. Her work invites Black audiences to reflect on their own process of healing racial trauma. The Jit and Hustle for History toss performers into the fray to negotiate Black Detroit identities on their feet and in real time. In

Hustle for History, the moves are The Jit also negotiates white space to make Black place. The footwork is constantly attempting to one-up itself as each performer contributes a move to the space. These dance forms and practices invite Black Detroiters to experience an inclusive Black community.

The artistic dance practices and reemergence of classic Detroit dance styles fit with how

Jennifer Harge and Stringz negotiate the murky layers of identity politics, race, and spatiality in the city. Stringz teaches white and other non-Black people quintessentially Black social dance forms, so that the world knows and remembers that Jit is and was from Detroit. Yet, Jennifer creates Dance Stories as a way for Black Detroit audiences to recognize themselves in the work and process their racial trauma. These are two different ways of approaching creative art and both are attempting to speak to Black Detroiters in ways that speak back to the white re- colonization of space in the city. 156

CHAPTER 5. THE POLITICS OF REBIRTH IN POST-RECESSION DETROIT

At the beginning of this project among Black Detroiters who appeared in this project, I thought shared experiences would be more of an indicator of behavioral norms. I also expected that these shared experiences and behaviors would reflect similar social backgrounds (i.e., demographics, housing locations, income, etc.). In other words, I assumed that once a group of

Black Detroiters who shared similar social backgrounds was identified and their behaviors observed, it would be straightforward to identify a range of similar attitudes and performances of self within and outside their communities that shape their collective identities. However, upon reflection of my fieldwork, Black Detroiters revealed a complexity that went beyond identifying similar social backgrounds and how participants related to spaces and places in Detroit.

Once in the field, a wide variety of experiences were revealed that individually reflected how the participants expressed self. These experiences are based in part on their living conditions, class, race, and their personal interpretations of Detroit as a place. In my conversations with Pastor

Sims in chapter two, for example, it was obvious that his experiences serving the people of Detroit and his outwardly expressed devotion to his neighborhood influenced who he thought himself to be and conditioned how he emphatically expressed it. His experiences deeply (i.e., spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc.) have an impact on him. These experiences affect how he perceives and interprets the city around him and influences the ways he operates daily in the city. The new influx of white Detroiters has made Pastor Sims reflect on what he thinks the city of Detroit looks like as well as needs.

In chapter two, LaKisha Trice had very little positive experiences in the city but spoke positively about her past and present life at home with her family. When asked how she saw herself contributing to Detroit, her response was one of obligation (i.e., she pays taxes and home 157 insurance). However, Tony White described Detroit as a positive place where he saw his obligation as both financial and physical. It was important for him to live, work, and socialize in a specific area of Detroit (i.e., Downtown) as his way of contributing to the city. I took notes on how they each expressed their thoughts when I asked these questions (i.e., physical and vocal gestures); however, what I found to be the most illuminating was not the behavioral aspects of their responses to these questions. Rather, it was how their responses were indicative of their experiences as racialized bodies in the city – and how they felt like what their obligations were to the city in light of their racialized bodies.

For example, Tony White explained to me that having white Detroiters in areas of

Downtown Detroit helped other races (specifically Blacks) to be more open-minded. For Tony, white Detroiters brought an opportunity for everyone to feel comfortable in Detroit. In his opinion, white Detroiters smile more and are friendlier, and as a result that friendliness has influenced other

Black Detroiters to be more welcoming. For his part, he felt it his duty as a Black Detroiter to be part of the revitalization of the city in terms of being more outgoing and less distrustful of difference. In the case of LaKisha Trice, there was an automatic distrust of white people because she feels they do not understand nor do they care about what it means to be Black. As a result, her obligation is to do only as much for the city as is required and no more. What their experiences and thoughts about living and socializing in Detroit tell me is that the constitution of Black identities in post-recession Detroit is indicative of how Black Detroiters see themselves as racialized bodies in a space that had (before the recession) been mostly populated by Blacks and is now clearly influenced by the presence of white bodies and the money and power those white bodies impart. 158

What, then, does the white colonization of Detroit really mean for Black Detroiters in terms of how they performatively constitute their identities? The post-recession white colonization of space is bringing about socio-geographical shifts that has an impact on the lives of Black Detroiters; yet, the majority white Detroiters are not currently living in tightly-knitted

Black neighborhoods. To this end, in chapter two, I posit that white Detroiters need not be physically present in order for them to shift the ways in which Black Detroiters perform various understandings of self. The presence of white Detroiters is an affective – almost phantasmagoric- like reality that haunts the imagination of Black Detroiters, thus making their experiences material. This affective and racialized space appears to frame Black identity through very class conscious ways of doing and being Black in Detroit.

Class consciousness gets played out as a type of performance of Black opulence in chapter three at the 2014 Ultimate White Party. The performance of Black opulence is expressed through shared cultural practices and aesthetics that are derived from Black Detroiters seeing each other, and Detroit, as a Black space. This way of knowing Detroit as a Black space, for me, is expressed as a performance of a “Detroit-brand” blackness. It is expressed at the 2014 White

Party in the sounds of Motown and Detroit hip hop music. At the same time, these performances are also fraught with racial tension and gender biases. I contend that white phantomic space appears to aggravate Black Detroit male and female identity constitution at the party shaping and shifting the relationship among Black men and women, as well as the various ways they perform self.

Detroit-brand blackness, as part of our shared cultural practices and ways of seeing and knowing ourselves as Black Detroiters, is indicative of space and place attachment. In some ways, these performances relies on a shared understanding of the socio-geographical 159 positionality of Black folks. In chapter four, dance becomes a way to make strong the constitution of Black Detroit identity. However, in order for these dances to be constituted, they rely on the racial tension that helps to inform Black space.

Identity, Place-Attachment, and Black Detroit Residency

At the beginning of my research, I thought of residency as place where people desired to be. After all, I thought of residency as a place where people choose to build a comfortable life.

However, once I began cultivating relationships among my co-performers, I saw residency as an identity marker. There were two types of thinking about residency in post-recession Detroit related to space and place. One was Their Homes as a familiar space. The other was The Detroit as a place. Their Homes and The Detroit are both forms of residency. Their Homes are personalized spaces. Many of my participants regard their homes as an extension of themselves and their beliefs. They made decisions about how their spaces represented their values and beliefs. This is not a unique occurrence. People often decorate or “make a home” based on their values, morals, beliefs, etc. The 2014 White Party is a great example of this idea of making home.

I imagine that this distinction of Detroit residency would not be different than other perception of residency is outside of the city. For me, what makes this concept significant to post-recession Detroit is how the changed landscape (i.e., depopulation and increased empty lots) in the city appears to have had an effect on the participants and their relationship to their homes and the city. Perhaps the same reasons why many Black Detroiters fled the city or were forced out because of rising rents and cost of living in certain sections of the city undergird what I consider the participants’ interpretation of Detroit residency. In other words, some participants 160 may be more apt to cleave to their homes and to personify their homes because of the shifting landscape outside their doors that has become post-recession Detroit.

In Chapter three, at the 2014 White Party, race, gender, and class were starting points that led me to further my exploration of the constitution of Black identities in post-recession Detroit.

When considering identity, place attachment, and residency, I am interested in exploring the idea of belonging as indicative of being in the place. If The White Party serves as a case study for how race, gender and, class inform the ways in which Black Detroiters constitute their identities in post-recession Detroit, then how does The White Party in a traditionally wealthy white space

(Riverside Marina) inform how Black Detroiters constitute their identities? The day after The

White Party, the marina will go back to being a white place that is only available for use by those that have the financial means to use those spaces. So, for one night only, the Black men and women get to play dress up in white. The contested terrain of public space amidst an encroaching white resurgence created some heated consternation between the men and women as they enact their Black identities.

The Making of Detroit-Brand Blackness

In the last several years, “ruin pornography” had become a staple in Detroit. Hipster photographers snap cameras in abandoned lots, houses, factories, and all over the city. They use these images to display Detroit’s decline for the world to see. According to The Guardian, “‘ruin porn’ [in Detroit] only serve[s] to obscure the humanity and the complexity behind the city’s long struggle and reduce Detroit to its ruins” (Doucet and Philp). Detroit based creative photography website, Detroiturbex.com, is a ruin photography website or what most refer to as 161

“ruin porn”57 website challenging the narrative that people are missing from Detroit, and in one

installation, they challenge the narrative that Black people are missing from Detroit. In the

images, Cass Technical High School sits in ruins. However, the photographer presents a

counternarrative through images taken from several found yearbooks. In these newly created

images, Black and white students, teachers, and staff from decades before are active and present

in the photos. They have agency and seem to have power over the empty space that has been

“left” for them. In these images, the Black and small number of white faculty and staff are

vibrant and alive among what looks like a dead cityscape. The photos and all who are in them

seem to be suspended in absentia.

In chapter four, the white re-colonization of space in Detroit gives impetus to

considerations of the ways Detroit creative artists respond to Black bodies that are forced into

absentia. Hustle for History, The Jit, and Harge Dance Stories are culturally affective, somatic,

visceral. These performances demand that Black audiences to reflect and respond to Black

Detroit uplift as the antidote to racialization and Black subjectivity. The dance forms and

practices explored in the chapter demand that Black Detroiters to not only experience it real time

but make the dance as a practice part of collective community voices that are situated in Detroit

Black neighborhoods. The artistic dance practices and reemergence of classic Detroit dance

styles fit with how Jennifer Harge and Stringz negotiate the murky layers of identity politics,

race, and spatiality in the city. Stringz teaches white and other non-Black people quintessentially

57 Ruin porn is a sub-genre of photography, wherein artist capture decaying buildings and landmarks in most recently in “rust best” or deindustrialized cities in the U.S. Some have accused these photographers of exploiting and debasing the cultural and artistic value of a city by attempting to show off a city’s blight. Supporters of ruin porn say that their work helps improve tourism and interest in a city, and promoting tourist movements like “intellectual disaster tourism” (De Silva). 162

Black social dance forms, so that the world knows and remembers that Jit is and was from

Detroit. The enactment of Jit and Hustle for History reimage white space to create Black place for the co-constitution of Black Detroit identities.

From Post-Recession Toward Post-Industrial Detroit

There are several places to continue this project further. Post-industrial Detroit is less of a social theory and more of a present reality for all Detroiters. Rather than the manufacturing industry that helped make Detroit one of the richest cities in America during the early 20th century, it is the service industry that has helped usher Detroit into its current cycle of “rebirth.”

There are several studies about post-industrial Detroit in the field of performance studies that query the boundaries of performativity, racialization, and social space in Detroit. In addition to these studies, some interesting points of inquiry that could build from this study. For example, how could Afrofuturist as a cultural practice, and posthuman theatrical and hyper-theatrical performances respond to the ways in which white bodies operate in absentia in Black geographies in post-industrial Detroit. Black geographies are, according to Edward Tettey-Fio, contested racialized social spaces wherein Black people are negotiating agency (Tettey-Fio).

Studies surrounding Afrofuturism could provide a space for Black Detroiters to image a collective future among African diasporic ethnic traditions.

Epilogue: The Drones of Midtown

In August 2013, I sat down for tea with Darryl Davis at his home to talk about his experiences living and working in Detroit. Darryl is a Black actor, director, playwright, and theatre educator living in Downtown Detroit. He is the founder and executive artistic director of

SideBar Black Art Theatre Company, located in Detroit. Our conversation was hopeful, as

Darryl expressed his affection and support for Detroit. He felt it was his duty as a creative artist 163 to use art as a way of helping the city to progress (Davis). At the end of our conversation, after I had put away my audio recorder, Darryl and I were still talking about the transformations happening in Detroit. He talked about an alley way between Canfield and Prentiss off Second in

Midtown Detroit that had been repurposed to function as a garden walkway with a sustainable rainwater reservoir to water the plants and flowers that line the walkway.

Figure 5.1 Canfield and Prentiss Alley in July 2008 (Source: The Green Garage).

Figure 5.2 Canfield and Prentiss Alley remodeled into The Green Alley in June 2014 (Source: The Green Garage).

He spoke enthusiastically about the alley way and how local businesses were thriving due to the increase in traffic in the area. Additionally, he noted that the bees and other insects were also thriving in the area. He encouraged me to visit the Green Alley. “It might help provide some perspective about the transformation that’s happening in the city,” he said. I winced. “I’m not a 164 huge fan of bees, Darryl,” I said. At that moment, something that I can’t explain happened.

Darryl stopped moving. He was like a stone. His eyes fixed on me in a deep stare. I giggled uncomfortably and continued to pack my stray notes into my backpack. Darryl didn’t move for what felt like at least two minutes, although I am sure it wasn’t that long. Finally, he blinked and took in a deep breath. “We need the bees…” was all that he said. I looked at his face and smiled politely. “Yup, you’re right. I’ll head down there and check it out. You said there was a restaurant near there…” Reanimated, Darryl nodded, “Yes. There’s a beer garden there. They harvest the vegetables and greens in the alley.” Not impressed, but determined not be rude

(again), I nodded, “Ah… Cool.”

I left Darryl’s apartment and once in my car, I headed toward the Green Alley. It wasn’t far from Darryl’s apartment, which was convenient. I found a parking spot in a nearby lot and walked along the perimeter of a nearby building until I was standing facing the alley. I gazed down the path. Sure enough, there were honeybees. I wasn’t sure which annoyed me more, the bees, the pretentiousness of putting a vegetable garden in an alley, or the use of the term

“repurposing” to "describe” the pretentiousness of putting a vegetable garden in an alley way. It was a combination of all three. I quickly walked down the alley until I found the backdoor to the beer garden. The backdoor was open, so I slipped in waving my hands the entire way to avoid the honeybees.

Safely inside, I sat down at the counter. I looked around. Everyone in the restaurant was white. There was a honeybee jar to my right hanging from the bar. I winced again. The bartender was a large and burly white man with a gruffy beard. His smile was warm and welcoming. “Hey!

What can I get for you?” “I’ll have an unsweetened ice tea… and” “You need a minute to look at the menu?” he said. “Yeah, that would be great,” I said. I looked at the menu. The items on the 165 menu sounded good. But, being Paleo at the time, I decided to go with a salad. Darryl said that they harvest the fresh greens for their restaurant. So, I ordered the “Edible Flower and Greens

Salad w/ Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing”.

As I waited for my salad, I looked around again. Most of the folks in the bar looked like middle management workers on their lunch break. Some looked engaged in business chatter over beers. No one in the garden looked “out of place”. Everyone looked the same. They all seemed to be wearing the same shade of business suit jacket and the same collared white/blue/grey shirt.

Everyone wore knee-length skirts and straight-leg dress pants. There were blouses, accessories, and made up faces with hair pulled back into messy hair buns, hair at shoulder length framing soft pink faces, or hair cut close with a little more left on top for flair and charm. The people in the garden where pristine.

My salad arrived. The bartender smiled that warm and welcoming smile again. He asked me if I needed anything. I smiled back. “Nope. I’m good. Thank you.” I looked down at my salad. It was so pretty! The flowers were colorful hues of blue, purple, yellow, and magenta. The salad looked too pretty to eat. I looked up at the honeybee jar. A couple of bees gathered near the jar. I sighed, smiled, dipped a few leaves into my salad dressing, and took a bite. As I bit down, the bright taste of bitter filled my mouth. I continued to chew. The bitterness melded into a sharp burnt taste with a slight gravel and dirty crunch. I dumped my entire container of dressing on the salad and went in again. The bright and sharp subsided but the bitter and burnt taste was still there with now a touch of sweet and oiliness from the balsamic and oil. The bees continued to gather. Now there were three or four hanging out. One swooped down toward me. I gave a light yelp and waved it away. The bartender smiled at me. Gosh, he was really good looking. I sheepishly smiled back. I dug back in my salad. I can’t explain why I kept eating that inedible 166

salad. There was nothing edible there. I got down to the last few bites and gave up. A Black guy

appeared from the back of the bar. He was wearing a cook’s white and stripped black jumpsuit.

He stopped at the soda nook and poured himself a Coke or Pepsi. We caught each other’s eyes. I

nodded hello and he nodded back. Then he exited the same way he came. Another bee swooped

in. “Excuse me?” I said to the handsome bartender. “I’ll take the check.”

A White Detroit for Black Detroiters

In their 2014 study about the intersections of white masculinity and technology, Philip

Olson and Christine Labuski, posit that white technomasculinity58 and the white technomasculine

perspective consumes the civilian and military drone design market in terms of how the United

States Federal Aviation Administration approves future design and crafts recommendations

surrounding drones used as surveillance. The authors believe that because the majority of users

in the industry tend to be white men, their perspective is considered before the perspective of

those often subjected to racialization and gendered surveillance (Olson and Labuski). The authors advocate for a cultivation of a critical technological consciousness that can attune to more diverse needs.

Like white technomasculinity, the politics of space in Detroit have sparked continued debates about the presence of “new developments” in Detroit in regard to commercial and residential properties, potential rezoning practices, and beautification and city marketing projects that help support this. I specifically add emphasis to new developments because I believe it is code for another type surveillant: namely the new white Detroiters of Midtown. Although, I do not believe that new white Detroiters mean harm to the city or that their intent is unscrupulous, I do believe their presence systematically marginalizes Black Detroiters. The reality is that

58 White technomasculinity refers to a socially constructed way of being that privileges white hegemonic male perspectives in the technology sector and corresponding disciplines. 167 minoritized Black Detroit residents can’t matter when the needs of the new white wealthy residents become priority.59

For example, in July 2017, Detroit real estate company, Bedrock, which is owned by

Quicken Loans Founder, Dan Gilbert, came under fired for posting racially insensitive storefront photo advertisings. In the photo, large groups of white people are gathered laughing, taking pictures, and chatting with each other for a public event. In the far right hand corner is a slogan that says, “See Detroit Like We Do.” Gilbert and Bedrock apologized for the storefront images; yet, the images are indicative of truly how they and other folks “see” Detroit. In 2014, Wayne

State University partnered with a local developer to market apartments to faculty and staff. In the advertising, young white professionals are laughing, hanging out at the famous “Union Street

Grill” in Downtown Detroit, and spending time in a coffee shop. There are no Black people in the advertising. Journalist and Activist, Peter Moskowitz, tells the story in his book, How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, about Larry Mongo who owns a popular bar and grill in Downtown Detroit. Moskowitz states,

He calls white people the pollinators. For better or worse, the government only shows up,

the cops only show up, the street lights only show up, when they [white people]

‘pollinate’ a neighborhood. So, when you look at this idea of recovery, it’s not a neutral

term. Recovery for who? The people who’ve been living in these neighborhoods for

decade after decade, keeping their house the only nice one on the block? They’ve been

waiting for the government to help them out for a long time. When you see this

59 Historically, we can see there is viability in this argument. In an NPR Michigan Radio report titled, “Historian: Divide between ‘White Detroit’ and ‘Black Detroit’ led to city’s 1967 Rebellion, Thomas Sugrue posits that “the social inequality that privileged the white Detroit experience” led to the 1967 riots (“Divide between ‘White Detroit’ and ‘Black Detroit’”). Additionally, Heather Thomas in a Washington Post article titled, “The New Detroit’s Fatal Flaw,” posits a similar argument that reflects today’s growing commercial and residential investment at the advantage of white Detroiters (Thompson). 168

“revitalization,” what you’re seeing is new, mostly white people moving in, and that is

followed by government intervention. The people who’ve been there all along are not

exactly happy, because they’ve been asking for help for decades and feel they’ve been

ignored, in favor of these [white] newcomers. (Moskowitz qtd. in Derringer)

Yet, while it would seem to me that the presence of white Detroit residents is the catalyst for the lack of economic investment into predominantly Black low-income neighborhoods, I know that the situation is not that simple in terms of how white Detroiters impact the constitution of Black

Detroit identity.

Many of the Black Detroiters that participated in this project see the complicated entanglement of Black Detroit identities with the white re-colonization of space in areas of

Detroit. Some of my co-performers were viscerally outspoken about the influx of white people in more of the economically invested areas of Detroit. Other Black Detroiters were outspoken in ways that convinced me that they understood the politics of “rebirth” in Detroit, which is namely this:

We need the bees.

Many of the Black Detroiters that I spoke with understood that in order to have basic necessities and a safe environment and economic investment in places such as local infrastructure, public schools, building grocery stores and local shopping areas, Detroit needs white people. The disparity in wealth along race lines is clear: whites have more money. In 2014, the national median household income for whites was $71k and Blacks was $43k (Pew Research Center). In

2017, white Detroiters averaged about $5k more than Black residents despite whites Detroiters being less than 10 percent of the residential population in Detroit (New Detroit). The economic investment in Detroit since 2004 has been funded by very rich white businessmen. The impact of 169

their investment has disproportionately helped aid white homeownership,60 increase in value of

white-owned businesses61, and contribute to white migration in the city. At the same, Black

Detroiters cannot ignore the impact of these investments that displace them. Marquita Holloway

is a Black Detroit resident who agrees that the return of white people to Detroit was good for

everyone. She states,

Before when Kwame took us through all that stuff, we couldn't even get our trash picked

up. But now, they're starting to pick back up and I hate to say it, but I do believe it's

because the white people are moving back in the city. I mean, now, you can get your

trash picked up. I see people cutting the... In these vacant fields over here, as I go up and

down the streets, I see people cutting the grass, stuff like that, a team of... I don't know if

they're getting paid to do it or volunteers, but they're picking up paper and stuff like that.

(Owens)

Pamela Hillard Owens is a Black Detroiter from the Boston-Edison Neighborhood. She recently

began leasing office space at The Green Garage in Midtown Detroit. She loves the recent

economic investment into Detroit areas because it brings different people from all over the world

to Detroit. Owens states,

All kind of people live here. All kind of people are comfortable here…That's what I like

about it. It's international. Everybody's here. Every Friday here at the Green Garage, we

have what's called a community lunch and people come from all over the world to see

60 According to a June 2019 report in Bridge Magazine, the majority of home loan dollars go to whites who comprise a little over 10 percent of Detroit’s population (Wilkinson).

61 According to local online magazine, “the average value (in terms of sales, receipts or revenue) of male-owned businesses in the city is 12 times higher than those owned by women. The disparity is worse for minorities: white- owned businesses on average have 25 times the value of businesses owned by people of color. Other cities have similar trends, but the gaps are much wider in Detroit, and our disparity is particularly staggering considering the majority-black population” (Abbey-Lambert). 170

this place. There are a lot of people who come here right when they move back to Detroit.

They introduce themselves, "Oh, I just moved to here to Detroit from Los Angeles." You

did? [chuckle] Why? No, but it's amazing the number of people who are now moving to

Detroit from other places. There are people moving to Detroit from Paris. When this guy

introduced himself at the community lunch and said he was moving here from Paris,

everybody said, "Huh?" I think he was from Paris or one of those really pretty cities in

Europe. Vienna or one of those cities…Prague. I'm glad you like Detroit, but Prague,

please [chuckle]. Prague any [chuckle].. So the fact that people are rediscovering it and

making it great again, but in another way, and that's really consolidated right here.

(Owens)

City Council Member At Large, Janeé Ayers had a similar view of the influx of white Detroiters, while at the same time holding white Detroit residents accountable to how their presence affects long time Black Detroiters. Ayers states,

It is something that is occurring, and I don’t think it's a bad thing. What I do think

is that it's different, and so we have to, and when I say “we” I mean just stereotypical

[Black] Detroiters, we have to be willing to embrace it. But then at the same time, those

folks that are moving into Detroit should not have such a sense of entitlement, because

it's offensive to those that have stayed in Detroit… And now they come in and they sayin'

"Well, it's my Detroit." It's all of our Detroit, and what are we gonna put to it? (Ayers)

Some Detroiters said race had less to do with gentrification but more about the allocation of resources. When I asked Black Detroiter, Derrick Lee, about the relationship between race and gentrification in Detroit. He said, 171

I wouldn't say race. I would say it's [a] color, and the color is green. If you have the

money to stay here, Detroit never shied anybody away from their money, but

unfortunately we're at a disproportionate rate of how many of Blacks have money and

compared to non-blacks. And we kind of did it to ourselves where we put ourselves in

our own box. (D. Lee)

These Detroiters saw white people as a large factor in Detroit’s economic growth. Their lives

have been impacted by the influx of white Detroiters in positive ways. Although, the majority of

Black Detroiters that I spoke with had yet to feel for themselves the economic growth in their

personal lives, they were hopeful.

During the moments when I was the most frustrated and outspoken about the

disadvantages of how the white re-colonization space displaces Black Detroit identities, the

Black Detroiters I spoke with were the most intuitive. They prompted me to rethink my

positionality as a former Black Detroiter in ways that kept their everyday realities of living in the

city present for me. Their confidence in a Detroit that can benefit all residents, and thereby

inspire the world to re-evaluate Detroit as more than the face of deindustrialization, ruin porn,

and abandonment in many of its concentrated Black communities to the vibrant and

economically stable place that currently belong to a selected few.

-- --

I hope for a Black Detroit renaissance…

…In 2013, after 150 years of extinction, beavers returned to Detroit.62

…Everything is possible.

62 According to Michigan Public Radio NPR, “Beavers played a major role in Detroit's early history. The beaver and the coureur des bois [French-Canadian traders] who traded their pelts and helped the Great Lakes region grow”("The Beaver Is Back in Southeast Michigan"). However, after years of being hunted for their pelts to make fur hats for French aristocracy, they disappeared from the Detroit area (Boles). 172

Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus We hope for better things; it shall arise from the ashes. - Father Gabriel Richard 173

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APPENDIX A. HSRB INFORMED CONSENT

Informed Consent: In-Person Interview Current Black Residents of Detroit

Introduction: My name is Michelle Cowin-Mensah. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. My advisor is Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. In order to complete my degree, I am required to conduct an original study. My research topic is on how Black male and female residents in Detroit actively create their identities in response to the city. You are being asked to participate in this research because (1) you are a Black resident of Detroit (2) and you actively participate (shopping, dining, etc.) in Detroit.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to look at the ways Black Detroiters live in daily life. I am interested in how living in the city of Detroit affects your life. There is very little information out there on how the city of Detroit affects how you understand yourself as a Black person. This study will contribute to my field of study by helping us understand how place affects everyday life interactions.

This is not a paid study and you will not receive any compensation when you share your stories with me. I want to hear your stories about living in Detroit, and I hope that you will receive the benefit in knowing that your experiences may help direct some much-needed positive attention to our people. Procedure: As a participant in this research study, you and I will meet in your residential home for a conversation about your everyday life living in Detroit. I will ask you some questions about your income range, age, gender, neighborhood location, occupation and educational level at the beginning of the study. Then I will ask you some of questions about your history in Detroit, your favorite places to visit in the city, and your opinion on a range of social issues that may or may not affect your daily life living in Detroit. We will also travel together to a few locations in the city and you will have an opportunity to talk to me about how these places impact your life. We will decide on these locations together and transportation can be provided.

I will audio and video record all of the interviews. I will not record inside or on the property of any private business establishments. BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 189

Voluntary nature: Your participation in this research study is completely voluntary. You are free to withdraw at any time. You may decide to skip questions or discontinue participation at any time without penalty. Deciding not to participate will not impact your relationship with Bowling Green State University or myself.

Confidentiality: Your participation in this interview is confidential. This means that I will know your name, but this information will not be shared with anyone else. I will replace your name with a pseudonym. This means that I will use a fake name in place of your real name in my study.

However, you do not have to be confidential if you want your real name to appear in my study. By choosing to include your name in my study, you are giving me permission to link your real name to the information that you have provided.

All research information you share with me will be kept on a password-protected computer that only I have access. Only that information you have agreed to share will appear in my study. If I decided not to use your information, I will still keep your information private and confidential. After 5 years, I will destroy the collected surveys and any information with your name attached.

Risks: Participation in this study poses minimal risk to participants. The nature of questions asked in this survey may explore personal matters and choices; however, any risks you experience will be no more than what you experience in daily life. As a participant, you have the right to limit or end your participation at any time. Participants must be at least 18 years old to participate in this study.

Contact information: If you have any questions regarding this study, please feel free to contact me at anytime at Michelle Cowin-Mensah (917) 231-6035 or via email at [email protected]. You can also contact my advisor, Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. at (419) 372-9381 and [email protected]. If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this research, you may also contact the Chair of the Human Subjects Review Board at 419-372-7716 or [email protected]. Thank you so much for your time.

Michelle Cowin-Mensah

Bowling Green State University BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 190

I agree that I have been informed of the purposes, procedures, risks and benefits of this survey. I have been informed that my participation is completely voluntary and that I may decide not to participate at any time. I am also over 18 years of age. I agree to participate in this research.

______Participant Signature

______Participant’s Printed Name

______Date

____ I agree to be audio/video recorded in this research study.

____ I would like my name to appear in this research study.

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 191

Informed Consent: Paper Survey Black Residents and Former Residents of Detroit

Introduction: My name is Michelle Cowin-Mensah. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. My advisor is Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. In order to complete my degree, I am required to conduct an original study. My research topic is on how Black male and female residents in Detroit actively create their identities in response to the city. You are being asked to participate in this research because (1) you are a Black resident of Detroit (2) or you are a former Black resident of Detroit (3) and you actively participate (shopping, dining, etc.) in Detroit.

Procedure: As a participant in this study, you are being asked to complete the attached paper survey. It includes questions regarding your interaction with locations inside and outside your home. If you would like to participate in the next phase of my research, which will include an in-person interview, please include your name and contact information at the end of the survey. You must be a current resident of Detroit to participate in the interview phase of my study.

Voluntary nature: Your participation in this research study is completely voluntary. You may decide to skip questions or discontinue participation at any time without penalty. Deciding not to participate will not impact your relationship with Bowling Green State University or myself.

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 192

Confidentiality: This paper survey is confidential. This means that I will know your name, but this information will not be shared with anyone else.

Contact information: If you have any questions regarding this study, please feel free to contact me at any time at Michelle Cowin-Mensah (917) 231-6035 or via email at [email protected]. You can also contact my advisor, Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. at (419) 372-9381 and [email protected]. If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this research, you may also contact the Chair of the Human Subjects Review Board at 419-372-7716 or [email protected]. Thank you so much for your time.

Michelle Cowin-Mensah Bowling Green State University

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 193

______Participant Signature

______Participant’s Printed Name

______Date

____ I am a current resident of Detroit and would like to be interviewed for this study. I know that by providing my name I am agreeing that my information will not be anonymous. I understand my name may appear in this study.

______Participant contact phone number

______Participant email address (optional)

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 194

Informed Consent: Electronic Survey Black Residents and Former Residents of Detroit

Introduction: My name is Michelle Cowin-Mensah. I am a doctoral student in the Department of Theatre and Film at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. My advisor is Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. In order to complete my degree, I am required to conduct an original study. My research topic is on how Black male and female residents in Detroit actively create their identities in response to the city. You are being asked to participate in this research because (1) you are a Black resident of Detroit (2) or you are a former Black resident of Detroit (3) and you actively participate (shopping, dining, etc.) in Detroit.

Procedure: As a participant in this study, you are being asked to complete the attached electronic survey. It includes questions regarding your interaction with locations inside and outside your home. If you would like to participate in the next phase of my research, which will include an in-person interview, please include your name and contact information at the end of the survey. You must be a current resident of Detroit to participant in the interview phase of my study.

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 195

Anonymity Protection: This electronic survey is anonymous. This means that you will not be asked for your name in this survey, nor will your name be included in this study.

However, you do not have to be anonymous if you want your name to appear in my study. Essentially by choosing to include your name in my study, you are giving me permission to link your real name to the information that you have provided.

All research information you share with me will be kept on a password-protected computer to which only I have access. Only that information you have agreed to share will appear in my study. If I decided not to use your information, I will still keep your information private and confidential. After 5 years, I will destroy the collected surveys and any information with your name attached.

Contact information: If you have any questions regarding this study, please feel free to contact me at any time at Michelle Cowin-Mensah (917) 231-6035 or via email at [email protected]. You can also contact my advisor, Lesa Lockford, Ph.D. at (419) 372-9381 and [email protected]. If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this research, you may also contact the Chair of the Human Subjects Review Board at 419-372-7716 or [email protected]. Thank you so much for your time.

Michelle Cowin-Mensah Bowling Green State University

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 196

☐ By checking this box, I agree that I have been informed of the purposes, procedures, risks and benefits of this survey. I have been informed that my participation is completely voluntary and that I may decide not to participate at any time. I am also over 18 years of age. I agree to participate in this research.

____ I would like my name to appear in this research study.

______Participant Full Name Print

______Participant contact phone number

______Participant email address (optional)

BGSU HSRB - APPROVED FOR USE IRBNet ID # _590160 EFFECTIVE __06/11/2014 EXPIRES __04/19/2015 197

APPENDIX B. HSRB CONTINUING REVIEW

Bowling Green State University

DATE: June 11, 2014

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-3] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Revision

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: June 11, 2014 EXPIRATION DATE: April 19, 2015 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category # 7 Thank you for your submission of Revision materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board has APPROVED your submission. This approval is based on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio and a project design wherein the risks have been minimized. All research must be conducted in accordance with this approved submission.

The final approved version of the consent document(s) is available as a published Board Document in the Review Details page. You must use the approved version of the consent document when obtaining consent from participants. Informed consent must continue throughout the project via a dialogue between the researcher and research participant. Federal regulations require that each participant receives a copy of the consent document.

Please add the text equivalent of the HSRB IRBNet approval/expiration date stamp to the "footer" area of the electronic consent document.

Please note that you are responsible to conduct the study as approved by the HSRB. If you seek to make any changes in your project activities or procedures, those modifications must be approved by this committee prior to initiation. Please use the modification request form for this procedure.

You have been approved to enroll 200 participants. If you wish to enroll additional participants you must seek approval from the HSRB.

All UNANTICIPATED PROBLEMS involving risks to subjects or others and SERIOUS and UNEXPECTED adverse events must be reported promptly to this office. All NON-COMPLIANCE issues or COMPLAINTS regarding this project must also be reported promptly to this office.

This approval expires on April 19, 2015. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

Good luck with your work. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Research Compliance at 419-372-7716 or [email protected]. Please include your project title and reference number in all correspondence regarding this project.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 198

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board's records.

- 2 - Generated on IRBNet 199

Bowling Green State University

DATE: March 12, 2015

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-5] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Revision

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: March 12, 2015 EXPIRATION DATE: March 11, 2016 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category #7

Thank you for your submission of Revision materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board has APPROVED your submission. This approval is based on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio and a project design wherein the risks have been minimized. All research must be conducted in accordance with this approved submission.

Please add the text equivalent to the HSRB IRBNet approval/expiration date stamp to the "footer" area of the electronic consent document.

Please note that you must use the approved versions of the consent documents when obtaining consent from participants.

You have been approved to enroll 200 participants. If you wish to enroll additional participants you must seek approval from the HSRB.

This approval expires on March 11, 2016. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 200

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board's records.

- 2 - Generated on IRBNet 201

Bowling Green State University

DATE: March 24, 2016

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-6] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Continuing Review/Progress Report

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: March 22, 2016 EXPIRATION DATE: March 21, 2017 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category # 7

Thank you for your submission of Continuing Review/Progress Report materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board has APPROVED your submission. This approval is based on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio and a project design wherein the risks have been minimized. All research must be conducted in accordance with this approved submission.

This approval expires on March 21, 2017. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Human Subjects Review Board's records.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 202

Bowling Green State University

DATE: March 27, 2017

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-7] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Continuing Review/Progress Report

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: March 24, 2017 EXPIRATION DATE: March 23, 2018 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category # 7

Thank you for your submission of Continuing Review/Progress Report materials for this project. The Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board has APPROVED your submission. This approval is based on an appropriate risk/benefit ratio and a project design wherein the risks have been minimized. All research must be conducted in accordance with this approved submission.

Please note that you are responsible to conduct the study as approved by the IRB. If you seek to make any changes in your project activities or procedures, those modifications must be approved by this committee prior to initiation. Please use the modification request form for this procedure.

This approval expires on March 23, 2018. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board's records.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 203

Bowling Green State University

DATE: February 15, 2018

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-8] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Continuing Review/Progress Report

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: March 24, 2018 EXPIRATION DATE: March 23, 2019 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category # 7

This approval expires on March 23, 2019. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board's records.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 204

Bowling Green State University

DATE: February 1, 2019

TO: Michelle Cowin-Mensah, M.F.A. FROM: Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board

PROJECT TITLE: [590160-9] City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post- Recession Detroit SUBMISSION TYPE: Continuing Review/Progress Report

ACTION: APPROVED APPROVAL DATE: January 31, 2019 EXPIRATION DATE: January 30, 2020 REVIEW TYPE: Expedited Review

REVIEW CATEGORY: Expedited review category #7

This approval expires on January 30, 2020. You will receive a continuing review notice before your project expires. If you wish to continue your work after the expiration date, your documentation for continuing review must be received with sufficient time for review and continued approval before the expiration date.

This letter has been electronically signed in accordance with all applicable regulations, and a copy is retained within Bowling Green State University Institutional Review Board's records.

- 1 - Generated on IRBNet 205

APPENDIX C. HSRB SURVEYS PAPER SURVEY

What is your resident status?

I am a current resident of Detroit, Michigan – Complete QA – QE. I am a former resident of Detroit, Michigan – Complete QF – QI. I was under 18 years of age when I moved away from Detroit Michigan, answer questions – Skip to QF – QI. I have never been a resident of Detroit, Michigan – Skip to QJ.

Q A. Current Detroit Residents Survey, Part I: Demographics 1. What is your gender? Male Female 2. What is your sexual orientation? Heterosexual/Straight Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Other: 3. What is your age range? 18 – 33 years of age 34 – 49 years of age 50 – 68 years of age 69 and older 4. What is your income range? Less than $15,000 $15,000 – $24,999 $25,000 - $49,999 $50,000 - $74,999 $75,000 - $99,999 $100K or more 5. What is your highest level of education? High school, no diploma GED or equivalent High school graduate Some college, no degree Associate’s degree, occupational Associate’s degree, academic 206

Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Professional degree Doctoral degree 6. What is your marital status? Married Separated Divorced Single 7. What is your job industry? Accommodation and food services Agriculture Construction Education and health services Information and Technology Leisure and hospitality Manufacturing Mining Professional management and business Real estate Retail Transportation Utilities N/A: Unemployed Other:

8. What is your birthplace?

9. Which neighborhood in Detroit do you currently live in?

10. Please list your last three neighborhoods (including year) you resided in the city.

11. I received: Unemployment benefits Social Security Disability benefits 207

12. Select all social services that you receive (select all that apply): SNAP/Food Stamps MEDICARE MEDICAID WIC OTHER: 13. Do you rent or own your place of residency?

14. Do you receive any low-income housing subsidies?

15. How many dependents (under 18 and over 65) live with you?

16. How many people (including yourself) in total live with you?

Q B. Current Detroit Residents Survey, Part II: Home 1. Describe a typical daily routine that occurs in your home?

2. Describe some of the first happy memories that you have had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age)

3. Describe some of the first troubling or negative memories that you have had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age).

4. Describe some of the objects and/or fixtures (walls, floorboards, furniture, or personal affects) in your home that make you feel most like a Detroiter? 208

5. What impression did you have your home while living there?

6. What impression do you have of your home now that you are no longer living there?

7. In your opinion, what are the qualities that the average Detroiter possesses?

Q C. Current Detroit Residents Survey, Part III: Travel 1. Do you travel in a car or any other form of transportation in the city?

a. If yes, which form of transportation do you most commonly use?

2. What are the three primary destinations you travel to outside your home? If known, please include business name and industry.

a. What activities do you normally engage in at each of these locations? 209

3. As a Black Detroiter, describe the places (neighborhoods, businesses, parks, arenas) that you feel the most comfortable in the city that is outside your home?

a. What is it about these places that make you feel the most comfortable?

4. As a Black Detroiter, describe the places (neighborhoods, businesses, parks, arenas) that you feel the most uncomfortable in the city that is outside your home?

a. What is it about these places that make you feel the most uncomfortable?

5. Describe one of your earliest memories of traveling in the city.

6. Have you had the opportunity to return to this location as an adult?

a. If yes, please describe your experience (please include month/year if known). 210

b. Please describe some of the difference between the place you remembered as a child and its current condition when you returned as an adult.

Q D. Current Detroit Residents Survey, Part IV: Social Inequality 1. Have you ever any experienced discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home? a. if yes, please list the names of the neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas.

b. Describe your earliest memory in which you experienced discrimination in the city.

c. Describe an experience as an adult in which you experienced discrimination in the city.

2. Have you ever witnessed discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home? a. if yes, please list the names of the neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. 211

b. Describe your earliest memory in which you witnessed discrimination in the city.

c. Describe an experience as an adult in which you witnessed discrimination in the city.

3. Have you ever discriminated (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) against anyone within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home? a. if yes, please list the names of those locations (neighborhoods ((street and intersection)), businesses, parks, and/or arenas).

b. Describe your earliest memory in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city.

c. Describe an experience as an adult in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city.

4. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly White female Detroiters in the city populate? a. Have you ever travel to these locations? b. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. 212

c. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

5. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly White male Detroiters in the city populate? a. Have you ever travel to these locations? b. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

c. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

6. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly Black female Detroiters in the city populate? a. Have you ever travel to these locations? b. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

c. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

7. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly Black male Detroiters in the city populate? a. Have you ever travel to these locations? b. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. 213

c. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

8. Have you ever avoided a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age inequality? a. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you avoid?

9. Have you ever purposefully traveled to a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age? a. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you purposefully travel to based on race, class, and/or age?

Q E. Current Detroit Residents Survey: Skip to ______.

Q F. Former Detroit Residents Survey, Part I: Demographics

1. What is your gender? Male Female 2. What is your sexual orientation? Heterosexual/Straight Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Other: 3. What is your age range? 18 – 33 years of age 34 – 49 years of age 50 – 68 years of age 214

69 and older 4. What is your income range? Less than $15,000 $15,000 – $24,999 $25,000 - $49,999 $50,000 - $74,999 $75,000 - $99,999 $100K or more 5. What is your highest level of education? High school, no diploma GED or equivalent High school graduate Some college, no degree Associate’s degree, occupational Associate’s degree, academic Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree Professional degree Doctoral degree 6. What is your marital status? Married Separated Divorced Single 7. What is your current job industry? Accommodation and food services Agriculture Construction Education and health services Information and Technology Leisure and hospitality Manufacturing Mining Professional management and business Real estate Retail Transportation Utilities N/A: Unemployed Other: 215

10. Which neighborhood in Detroit did you formerly reside in? (If you lived in multiple neighborhoods, which neighborhood did you live in the longest)?

11. What years did you live in Detroit?

a. If you have lived in Detroit multiple times, what was the most recent year when you moved permanently away from Detroit?

8. I received: Unemployment benefits Social Security Disability benefits 9. Select all social services that you received as a former resident of Detroit (select all that apply): SNAP/Food Stamps MEDICARE MEDICAID WIC OTHER: 12. Did you rent or own your place of residency?

13. Did you receive any low-income housing subsidies while you were a resident of Detroit?

14. How many dependents (under 18 and over 65) lived with you while you were a resident of Detroit?

15. How many people (including yourself) in total lived with you while you were a resident of Detroit?

16. Which city and state do you currently reside?

17. Select the purpose of your leaving Detroit: Job relocation Family needs 216

Educational opportunities Financial issues Other: ______

Q G. Former Detroit Residents Survey, Part II: Home 1. Describe a typical daily routine that occurred in your home?

2. Describe some of the first happy memories that you had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age)

3. Describe some of the first troubling or negative memories that you had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age).

4. Describe some of the objects and/or fixtures (walls, floorboards, furniture, or personal affects) in your home that made you feel most like a Detroiter?

5. What impression did you have your home while living there?

6. What impression do you have of your home now that you are no longer living there? 217

7. When you lived in Detroit, what were some of the qualities that the average Detroiter possessed?

Q H. Former Detroit Residents Survey, Part III: Travel 1. While a resident of Detroit, did you travel in a car or any other form of transportation in the city?

a. If yes, which form of transportation did you most commonly use?

2. What were the three primary destinations you traveled to outside your home? If known, please include business name and industry.

a. What activities did you normally engage in at each of these locations?

3. As a Black Detroiter, describe those places (neighborhoods, businesses, parks, arenas) that you felt the most comfortable in the city that was outside your home?

a. What is it about these places that made you feel the most comfortable? 218

4. As a Black Detroiter, describe those places (neighborhoods, businesses, parks, arenas) that you felt the most uncomfortable in the city that was outside your home?

a. What is it about these places that made you feel the most uncomfortable?

5. Describe one of your earliest memories of traveling in the city.

6. Have you had the opportunity to return to this location as an adult?

a. If yes, please describe your experience (please include month/year if known).

b. Please describe some of the difference between the place you remembered as a child and its current condition when you returned as an adult

Q I. Former Detroit Residents Survey, Part IV: Social Inequality 219

1. Have you ever any experienced discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home? c. if yes, please list the names of those neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas.

2. Describe your earliest memory in which you experienced discrimination in the city.

3. Describe an experience as an adult in which you experienced discrimination in the city.

4. Have you ever witnessed discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home?

a. if yes, please list the names of those neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas.

5. Describe your earliest memory in which you witnessed discrimination in the city. 220

6. Describe an experience as an adult in which you witnessed discrimination in the city.

7. Have you ever discriminated (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) against anyone within the city limits of Detroit that was outside your home?

a. if yes, please list the names of those locations, neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas.

8. Describe your earliest memory in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city.

9. Describe an experience as an adult in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city.

10. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods, and/or businesses did White female Detroiters in the city mostly populate?

11. Did you ever travel to these locations? 221

a. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

b. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

12. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did White male Detroiters in the city mostly populate?

13. Did you ever travel to these locations?

a. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

b. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

14. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did Black female Detroiters in the city mostly populate? 222

15. Did you ever travel to these locations?

a. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

b. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations?

16. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did Black male Detroiters in the city mostly populate?

17. Did you ever travel to these locations?

a. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations.

b. If no, why had you never traveled to these locations? 223

18. When you lived in Detroit, had you ever avoided a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age inequality?

a. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you avoid based on race, gender, class, and/or age?

19. When you lived in Detroit, had you ever purposefully traveled to a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age?

a. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you purposefully travel to based on race, gender, class, and/or age? 224

Q J. End of Survey:

Thank you for your time. Please add any additional information below that you believe is relevant to this study. Stories, sources, and other resources are welcomed.

CURRENT RESIDENTS OF DETROIT ONLY b. Thank you for your time. If you would like to participate in my full research study, please include your name, email address, and phone number on the informed consent form attached to this survey.

Electronic Survey

City of the (Un)Dead: The Performance of Black Identity in Post-Recession Detroit Electronic Survey => click next1 Informed Consent Form Informed Consent Signature Page => click next2 A. What is your resident status? a. I am a current resident of Detroit, Michigan. => go to pg. 4 b. I am a former resident of Detroit, Michigan. => go to pg. 6 c. I was under 18 years of age when I moved away from Detroit, Michigan => go to pg. 11

1 Browser will go to page 2. 2 Browser will go to page 3. 225

d. I have never been a resident of Detroit, Michigan. => go to pg. 5 B. a. There are no further questions. Thank you for your time. C. a. What is your gender? 1. Male 2. Female b. What is your sexual orientation? 1. Heterosexual/Straight 2. Lesbian 3. Gay 4. Bisexual 5. Transgender 6. Other: ______c. What is your age? 1. 18 – 33 years of age 2. 34 – 49 years of age 3. 50 – 68 years of age 4. 69 and older d. What is your annual income? 1. Less than $15,000 2. $15,000 – $24,999 3. $25,000 - $49,999 4. $50,000 - $74,999 5. $75,000 - $99,999 6. $100K or more e. What is your highest level of education? 1. High school, no diploma 2. GED or equivalent 3. High school graduate 4. Some college, no degree 5. Associate’s degree, occupational 6. Associate’s degree, academic 7. Bachelor’s degree 8. Master’s degree 9. Professional degree 10. Doctoral degree f. What is your marital status? 1. Married 2. Separated 3. Divorced 4. Single g. What is your job industry? 1. Accommodation and food services 2. Agriculture 226

3. Construction 4. Education and health services 5. Information and Technology 6. Leisure and hospitality 7. Manufacturing 8. Mining 9. Professional management and business 10. Real estate 11. Retail 12. Transportation 13. Utilities h. => click next3

3 Browser will go to page 12. 227

D. a. What is your gender? 1. Male 2. Female b. What is your sexual orientation? 1. Heterosexual/Straight 2. Lesbian 3. Gay 4. Bisexual 5. Transgender 6. Other: ______c. What is your age range? 1. 18 – 33 years of age 2. 34 – 49 years of age 3. 50 – 68 years of age 4. 69 and older d. What is your income range? 1. Less than $15,000 2. $15,000 – $24,999 3. $25,000 - $49,999 4. $50,000 - $74,999 5. $75,000 - $99,999 6. $100K or more e. What is your highest level of education? 1. High school, no diploma 2. GED or equivalent 3. High school graduate 4. Some college, no degree 5. Associate’s degree, occupational 6. Associate’s degree, academic 7. Bachelor’s degree 8. Master’s degree 9. Professional degree 10. Doctoral degree f. What is your marital status? 1. Married 2. Separated 3. Divorced 4. Single g. What is your current job industry? 1. Accommodation and food services 2. Agriculture 3. Construction 4. Education and health services 5. Information and Technology 228

6. Leisure and hospitality 7. Manufacturing 8. Mining 9. Professional management and business 10. Real estate 11. Retail 12. Transportation 13. Utilities 14. N/A: Unemployed 15. OTHER: h. => click next4

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E. a. What is your birthplace? b. Which neighborhood in Detroit did you formerly reside in? (If you lived in multiple neighborhoods, which neighborhood did you live in the longest)? c. What years did you live in Detroit? i. If you have lived in Detroit multiple times, what was the most recent year that you moved permanently away from Detroit? d. What was your job industry when you lived in Detroit? 1. Accommodation and food services 2. Agriculture 3. Construction 4. Education and health services 5. Information and Technology 6. Leisure and hospitality 7. Manufacturing 8. Mining 9. Professional management and business 10. Real estate 11. Retail 12. Transportation 13. Utilities 14. N/A: Unemployed 15. Other: ______e. When I was a resident of Detroit, I received: 1. Unemployment benefits 2. Social Security 3. Disability benefits f. Select any social services that you received while a resident of Detroit (select all that apply): 1. SNAP/Food Stamps 2. MEDICARE 3. MEDICAID 4. WIC g. Did you rent or own your place of residency? h. Did you receive any low-income housing subsidies while you were a resident of Detroit? i. How many dependents (under 18 and over 65) lived with you while you were a resident of Detroit? j. How many people (including yourself) in total lived with you while you were a resident of Detroit? k. Which city and state do you currently reside? l. Select the purpose of your leaving Detroit: i. Job relocation ii. Family needs iii. Educational opportunities iv. Financial issues 230

v. Other: ______m. => click next5

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F. a. Describe a typical daily routine that occurred in your home when you lived in Detroit? b. Describe some of the first happy memories that you had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age) c. Describe some of the first troubling or negative memories that took place in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age). d. Describe some of the objects and/or fixtures (walls, floorboards, furniture, or personal affects) in your home that made you feel most like a Detroiter? e. What impression did you have your home while living there? f. What impression do you have of your home now that you are no longer living there? g. When you lived in Detroit, what were some of the qualities that the average Detroiter possessed? h. => click next6

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G. a. While a resident of Detroit, did you travel in a car or any other form of transportation in the city? i. If yes, which form of transportation did you most commonly use? b. What were the three primary destinations you traveled to outside your home? If known, please include business name and industry. i. What activities did you normally engage in at each of these locations? c. As a Black Detroiter, describe those places, neighborhoods, businesses, parks, and arenas that you felt the most comfortable in the city that was outside your home? i. What is it about these places that made you feel the most comfortable? d. As a Black Detroiter, describe those places, neighborhoods, businesses, parks, and arenas that you felt the most uncomfortable in the city that was outside your home? i. What is it about these places that made you feel the most uncomfortable? e. Describe one of your earliest memories of traveling in the city. f. Have you had the opportunity to return to this location as an adult? i. If yes, please describe your experience (please include month/year if known). ii. Please describe some of the difference between the place you remembered as a child and its condition when you returned as an adult. g. => click next7

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H. a. Have you ever any experienced discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of those neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you experienced discrimination in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you experienced discrimination in the city. b. Have you ever witnessed discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of those neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you witnessed discrimination in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you witnessed discrimination in the city. c. Have you ever discriminated (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) against anyone within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of those locations (neighborhoods ((street and intersection)), businesses, parks, and/or arenas). ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city. d. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did White female Detroiters in the city mostly populate? i. Did you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? e. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did White male Detroiters in the city mostly populate? i. Did you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? f. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did Black female Detroiters in the city mostly populate? i. Did you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? g. When you lived in Detroit, which neighborhoods and/or businesses did Black male Detroiters in the city mostly populate? i. Did you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? 234

h. When you lived in Detroit, had you ever avoided a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age inequality? i. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business did you avoid? i. When you lived in Detroit, had you ever purposefully traveled to a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age? i. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business did purposefully travel to based on race, class, gender, and/or age? j. => click next8

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I. a. Thank you for your time. Please use the box below to add any information that you believe is relevant to this study. Stories, sources, and other resources are welcomed. b. c. 236

J. Pg. 11, Former Residents of Detroit Under 18: a. Complete pgs. 8 - 11

K. Pg. 12, Current Detroit Residents, Part I: Demographics cont.: a. What is your birthplace? b. Which neighborhood in Detroit do you currently live in? c. Please list your last three neighborhoods (including year) you resided in the city. d. I receive: 1. Unemployment benefits 2. Social Security 3. Disability benefits e. Select any social services that you receive (select all that apply): 1. SNAP/Food Stamps 2. MEDICARE 3. MEDICAID 4. WIC 5. OTHER: f. Do you rent or own your place of residency? g. Do you receive any low-income housing subsidies? h. How many dependents (under 18 and over 65) live with you? i. How many people (including yourself) in total live with you? j. => click next9

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L. a. Describe a typical daily routine that occurs in your home? b. Describe some of the first happy memories that you had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age) c. Describe some of the first troubling or negative memories that you had in your home in Detroit? (Please include your age). d. Describe some of the objects and/or fixtures (walls, floorboards, furniture, or personal affects) in your home that make you feel most like a Detroiter? e. What impression do you have your home? f. What impression do you have of your home given the location and neighborhood in which you currently live? g. In your opinion, what qualities do the average Detroiter possesses? h. => click next10

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M. a. Do you travel in a car or any other form of transportation in the city? i. If yes, which form of transportation do you most commonly use? b. What are the three primary destinations you travel to outside your home? If known, please include business name and industry. i. What activities do you normally engage in at each of these locations? c. As a Black Detroiter, describe the places, neighborhoods, businesses, parks, and arenas that you feel the most comfortable in the city that is outside your home? i. What is it about these places that make you feel the most comfortable? d. As a Black Detroiter, describe the places, neighborhoods, businesses, parks, and arenas that you feel the most uncomfortable in the city that is outside your home? i. What is it about these places that make you feel the most uncomfortable? e. Describe one of your earliest memories of traveling to a place, neighborhood, business, park, and/or arena in the city. f. Have you had the opportunity to return to this location as an adult? i. If yes, please describe your experience (please include month/year if known). ii. Please describe some of the difference between the place you remembered as a child and its current condition when you returned as an adult. g. => click next11

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N. a. Have you ever any experienced discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of the neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you experienced discrimination in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you experienced discrimination in the city. b. Have you ever witnessed discrimination (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of the neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you witnessed discrimination in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you witnessed discrimination in the city. c. Have you ever discriminated (race, class, age, and/or gender inequality) against anyone within the city that was outside your home? i. if yes, please list the names of those locations, neighborhoods (street and intersection), businesses, parks, and/or arenas. ii. Describe your earliest memory in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city. iii. Describe an experience as an adult in which you discriminated against someone or a group in the city. d. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly White female Detroiters in the city populate? i. Have you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? e. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly White male Detroiters in the city populate? i. Have you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? f. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly Black female Detroiters in the city populate? i. Have you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? g. Which neighborhoods and/or businesses do mostly Black male Detroiters in the city populate? i. Have you ever travel to these locations? ii. If yes, describe your first encounter in one of these locations. iii. If no, why? 240

h. Have you ever avoided a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age inequality? i. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you avoid? i. Have you ever purposefully traveled to a location, neighborhood, and/or business based on race, gender, class, and/or age? ii. If yes, which location, neighborhood, and/or business do you purposefully travel to based on race, class, and/or age? j. => click next12

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O. a. Thank you for your time. If you would like to participate in my full research study, please include your name, email address, phone number below. Please note, you must be a current resident of Detroit in order to participate. i. Participant Name: ii. Phone Number: iii. Email Address: iv. Best time to contact: b. Please use the box below to add any information that you believe is relevant to this study. Stories, sources, and other resources are welcomed. c. d. 242

APPENDIX D. HSRB INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

I. At the beginning of the interview, I will ask general demographic questions regarding age, marital status, residency, dependents, income range, neighborhood location, occupation/industry, and educational level.

II. In the first interview, I will ask open-ended questions about the participant’s home including: 1. What is your daily routine in this home? 2. What is your personal history in this home? 3. Describe your first happy memories in this home. a. How would these memories differ if you lived in another city outside of Detroit? 4. Describe your first unhappy memories in this home. a. How would these memories differ if you lived in another city outside of Detroit? 5. Describe the various events that have occurred in your home. a. How would these events differ if you lived in another city outside of Detroit? 6. Describe some important milestones that have occurred in your home. a. How would these milestones differ if you lived in another city outside of Detroit? 7. How would this home differ if you lived in another city outside of Detroit? After each structured question, I will follow-up with questions to clarify what the participant is saying and to seek more information about his or her experience.

III. In the second interview, I will ask open-ended questions about the participant’s experience in a particular location outside of their home. 1. What is your utility of this place? 2. Why do you like/dislike this place? 3. What is your personal history with this place? a. Describe your first happy memories in this place. b. Describe your first unhappy memories in this place. c. How would these happy and unhappy memories differ if they took place in a location outside of Detroit? 4. What is your interaction with other people and/or objects in this place? a. Do you frequently meet people you know in this place? b. How do you interact with strangers in this place? c. How do you interact with people outside your race in this place? d. How do you interact with people outside your gender in this place? e. How do you interact with younger/older people in this place? 5. What would be the noticeable differences of this place if it were located in another city outside of Detroit?

After each structured question, I will follow-up with questions to clarify what the participant is saying and to seek more information about his or her experience.