Funk the Clock: Transgressing Time While Young, Prescient and Black A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Rahsaan Mahadeo IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisers: David Pellow and Joyce Bell August 2019 © 2019 Rahsaan Mahadeo Acknowledgements Pursuing a PhD has at times felt like the most selfish endeavor I have ever undertaken. For I knew that every book I read and every paper I wrote was largely for personal gain. Not coming from academic lineage or economic privilege, I could not escape the profound sense of guilt of leaving so many behind in the everyday struggle to live, labor and learn in a school that is less of a land-grant institution and more of a land-grab institution; an educational system that is more private than public; a corporation that presents students with more educational opportunists than educational opportunities; a sea of scholarship that looks more like colonizer ships; and a tower that is as anti ebony as it is ivory. Most know it as the “U of M,” when it is really the U of empire. Here, I would like to take the opportunity to counter the university’s individualistic and neoliberal logic to thank several people who have helped me cope with the challenges of living, learning and laboring in a space designed without me (and many others) in mind. Thank you to my advisers David Pellow and Joyce Bell for supporting me along my graduate school journey. Though illegible to the university, I recognize and appreciate the inordinate amount of labor you perform inside and outside the classroom. I am grateful to my other two committee members, Jeylan Mortimer and Rose Brewer. Taking both your courses in my first year as a graduate student strengthened my belief that earning a PhD was possible. I am grateful for my connections to fellow graduate students: Aisha Upton, Alex Manning, Amber Hamilton, Amber Joy Powell, Corey Culver, Courtney Gildersleeve, Annie Jollymore, Anthony Jimenez, Anuradha Sajjanhar, De Andre Beadle, Devika Narayan, Edgar Campos, Emily Springer, Erin Hoekstra, Gunercindo Espinoza, Jennifer Etienne, jim saliba, Joe Svec, Kriti Budhiraja, Lisa Gulya, Madison Van Oort, Matthew Aguilar-Champeau, Meg Krausch, Miray Philips, Siddharth Iyengar, Snigdha Kumar, Tanja Andic, Victoria Piehowski, Wahutu Siguru, and Yagmur Karakaya. Many thanks to past and present members of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies interdisciplinary writing group at the University of Minnesota. This amazing collective includes AK Wright, Ana Cláudia dos Santos São Bernardo, Beaudelaine Pierre, Bodunrin Banwo, Brian Lozenski, Brittany Lewis, Chip Chang, Colin Wingate, Diana Chandara, Tia-Simone Gardner, Elena Hristova, Emily Mitamura, Joanna Núñez, Kong Pha, Kidiocus Carroll, Meño Santillana, Naimah Petigny, Rashad Williams, René Esparza, and Sayan Bhattacharya. I’m grateful to you all for creating a meaningful space for study and fostering the type of fellowship that requires no competition. So many of you have read drafts of nearly every chapter of my dissertation and helped sharpen my analyses in ways that exceed the conceptual boundaries of a single discipline, including sociology. To avoid privileging the university as a gatekeeper of knowledge, I would like to recognize the many knowledge producers without extra letters behind their name. I am forever grateful to my mother, father, and all my siblings. You reminded me that pursuing a PhD was never “it” or “the it.” You helped me remain committed to an “it” i that centered those disproportionately harmed. You taught me how to give thanks, that “social living is the best” and that “life is a mission, not no competition.” Thank you to my partner, Ana Cláudia dos Santos São Bernardo, for reminding me to keep my head up and stay hopeful. You continuously set the bar for how to live in a more just and kind way extraordinarily high. Striving to reach such heights is a challenge, but you remain a “positive motivating force in my life.” I’m a product of a lot of love and support. Just as I believe that another time is possible, I also recognize oppressive nature of the present and the need to destroy that which seeks to destroy racialized persons. It is for this reason I organize. The allotted spacetime for this section cannot contain the immense contributions of the many activists and organizers for whom I hold such deep and abiding admiration. I will do my best though to give credit to all of those who recognize the exigent need to imagine a more just future through anti-oppressive work in the present. So much love, respect and gratitude to Aaron, Abby, Adriana, Alaina, Alexandra, Alisha, Ana, Anna, Aria, Brad, Cassandra, Courtney, Danna, David B., David M., Duaba, Eden A., Eden T., Eli, Emilia, Frank, Hoda, Horace, Idalia, Irina, Isuru, Javaris, Joanna, José, Ka, Kaaha, Kathryn, Katie, Ken, Khin, Ladan, Leah, Lee, Leilah, Lena, Lisa, Madeleine, Majo, Mary, Matt, Max H., Max F., Melinda, Meron, Natalie, Natasha, Nazir, Nick, Peter, Rahhel, Ricardo, Ro, Robin, Ryan, Sadie, Samantha, Sarah, Siddharth, Stef, Steph, Teri, TK, Tori, Yuich, Zack, and Zenzele. Thank all my friends from Whose Diversity?, Differences organized! (Do!), Urban 4-H, the Social Justice Education Movement (SJEM), my many antifascist friends, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Higher Ed Worker Center. Organizing with you all has helped me ease a lot of guilt that comes from being an academic. Thank you to all my university colleagues, especially those who served as allies and accomplices in our effort to be in but not of the university. I remain in communion with those freedom fighters who have made the transition to another spacetime, including Ms. Anna Stanley, Rose Freeman Massey, Jesús Estrada Pérez, and Tor. Finally, I am immensely grateful to the numerous youth who contributed to this project. They consistently reminded me of how important youth are to affecting radical change. If change is going to start at the radix or the “root,” then it only makes sense to center the sprouts. Their ability to imagine a not-yet-here beyond and outside the current spacetime remains a source of eternal hope. ii Abstract In this dissertation, I explore how racialized youth in urbanized space reckon with time. I specifically study how race, racialization and racism condition the time perspectives of black youth in urbanized space. I draw on data from thirty in-person interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted over the course of one year with youth at Run-a-Way – a shelter and outreach center for youth in the Twin Cities. I make the case that whiteness and white life prefigure time, thus denying the coevalness of racialized youth, particularly black youth. Thus, “time use” among racialized youth is a misnomer. Racialized youth are more likely to owe time than own it. In using time that does not belong to them, several black youth in this project detailed the way their “time use” is read as “time theft” and thus criminalized. Youth’s accounts suggest that racialized violence is responsible for significant time theft. In other words, racialized violence takes time. Racialized violence proved to be less of a life course transition and more of a life course constant. Despite the overrepresentation of white time as time itself, I show how racialized youth at Run-a-Way turn the tables on time, ensuring their temporalities were most culturally relevant and “up to date,” while casting whiteness into a “played- out” past. I make the case that urban ethnographic representations of racialized youth in poor urbanized space as “present oriented” elide their prescience. Because they choose not to entertain liberal futurities directed towards “freedoms” associated with whiteness and a “post racial era” did not make them present oriented. It made them prepared. In sum, my research forges new directions in the study of race and time by examining how time is racialized, how race is temporalized, and how racialization and racism condition youth’s perspectives on time. iii Table of Contents Introduction………...…………………………………………………………………1-31 Chapter I: Once Upon a White Time…………………………………………..……33-75 Chapter II: To Own or Owe Time? ……………………………..…………………77-108 Chapter III: The Makings of a “Maybe Environment” ……………………….….110-133 Chapter IV: The Life Course Less Traveled………………………………...…....135-178 Chapter V: Why is the Time Always Right for White and Wrong for Us?............180-210 Chapter VI: Prescience within Present Orientations………………...……………212-243 Conclusion: Another Spacetime is Possible…………………………....…………245-257 References………………………………………………………...………………259-275 iv Introduction To ask “What time is it?” is to orient one to time and space. The banality of this question should not excuse what are arguably serious sociological limitations. Rather than using an adjective (i.e. “what”), it may be more sociologically productive to use a determiner (e.g. “whose”). Asking “Whose time is it?” exposes the possibility that some may own time, while others can only owe it. Not only does the question help distinguish between time’s owners and borrowers, but it demands explanations for temporal exploitation and violence. What if time was not as communal as we may think? To what extent does possession of time require dispossession? Posing such a question taints time’s reputation as a universally and indivisibly shared concept. Fissures eventually emerge from time’s taint, revealing the possessors and dispossessed within existing temporal orders. “Whose time is it?” is not only grammatically correct, but also empirically accurate. Reframing the question engenders possibilities to problematize what Michael Flaherty (1999) describes as temporal experience.1 The singularity and indivisibility of “temporal experience” precludes analysis of the divisible – those rendered illegible and/or nonexistent within time. As an application of ethnographic and sociological insights, this dissertation aims to make what is most mundane about time matter by revealing what is hidden in plain sight.