Book DUK Defrantz 13610.Indb

1 PROOF 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 PART I / Transporting Black 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 S39 N40 Book DUK DeFrantz 13610.indb 17 12/10/13 11:18 AM 1 2 PROOF 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39S 40N Book DUK DeFrantz 13610.indb 18 12/10/13 11:18 AM 1 PROOF 2 1 / Anita Gonzalez 3 4 NAVIGATIONS 5 Diasporic Transports and Landings 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 An aerial grid of cultural migrations in 1840 might show a satellite 14 hovering over the Atlantic Ocean, recording data as boatloads of Af- 15 ricans land on various shores of a circum- Atlantic landscape. Once 16 grounded, African migrants would begin to enact performances 17 of social disenfranchisement. Both historically and in contempo- 18 rary contexts, these transatlantic voyages, and their corresponding 19 landing points—New York, Jamestown, Hispaniola, Cuba, Rio de 20 Janeiro, Amsterdam, Liverpool—have become sites for negotiat- 21 ing new identities with other ethnic and social groups. Histori- 22 cal maps depict transatlantic slave migrations as triangle voyages. 23 Ships laden with textiles travel to Africa where they buy and sell. 24 Ships of enslaved workers travel to the Americas and empty their 25 loads. Finally, ships of sugar and / or cotton travel back to Europe. 26 Economy, transport, and territory are part and parcel of this inter- 27 national exchange of blackness. In the colonial worlds of the six- 28 teenth through the twentieth centuries Africans were just one of 29 many economies of goods and services that moved across the seas. 30 Each destination was a new beginning—a new origin point—for a 31 diaspora experience. 32 Now imagine the aerial grid realigned so that the destinations— 33 points outside of mainland Africa—are origin points for negotiat- 34 ing new social and political experiences. As conversations about 35 the African diaspora broaden, it is impossible to ignore the com- 36 plex interactions and transformations that constitute the fi eld. 37 “Recognizing that diasporic connections are made and remade, 38 undermined and transformed means that they are neither univer- S39 sally constituted nor static” (Clarke and Th omas, 19). Too oft en, N40 Book DUK DeFrantz 13610.indb 19 12/10/13 11:18 AM 1 2 PROOF 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 FIGURE 1.1. Amy Papaelias, “Navigations of Blackness—1,” 2013. Courtesy of the artist. 19 20 African diaspora performance is read as a response to Euro- American or 21 white frames of reference. Th is stance ignores the complex interplay of Afri- 22 can descendants with other ethnic groups in the panorama of social identi- 23 ties. Jacqueline Nassy Brown simplifi es this notion asserting: “Diaspora is 24 better understood as a relation rather than a condition” (38). Th e interplay of 25 ethnic communities at each local site is what constitutes transnational expe- 26 riences of diaspora (Fryer; Small; Nassy Brown). Concepts about blackness 27 are developed within the subject “blacks” and also constructed by others in 28 response to the presence of Africans and African descendants. 29 Performances of blackness were unnecessary before African encounters 30 with other ethnicities and their social practices. In the absence of common 31 languages, performance—physical, vocal, and emotional—captures the on- 32 going negotiation of social status. Th is means that points of origin, claims of 33 authenticity, national or racial inclusion, are all relative. Th is chapter exam- 34 ines two case studies, one contemporary and one historical, in which black 35 performance is part of an ongoing and evolving dialogue with other ethnici- 36 ties for economic and social status. My project focuses on local mediated 37 practices that are responses to African presence. At two distinct geographic 38 sites—Liverpool, England, and Oaxaca, Mexico—non- black performers use 39S African identities as cultural collateral for a social acceptance that approxi- 40N mates whiteness. I call this process of negotiating with blackness a social 20 / Anita Gonzalez Book DUK DeFrantz 13610.indb 20 12/10/13 11:18 AM navigation. Performers of all ethnicities learn the social codes of power and 1 subservience, and then use performance to jockeyPROOF public opinion as they 2 steer a path toward upward mobility. In Liverpool, transplanted Irishmen 3 use minstrelsy to distance themselves from the rapidly growing African and 4 Black Caribbean community. In Oaxaca, the Chontal Native Americans im- 5 personate the rebellion of their Negrito neighbors. In both cases, “black per- 6 formance” requires a masquerade in which layers of applied makeup, or the 7 impermeable surface of the physical mask, substitute for inferior social sta- 8 tus. Social whiteness or mainstream acceptance is the ultimate goal for each 9 of these ethnic communities that seek to distance themselves from negritude. 10 11 Smoked Irish and Whiteness 12 Whiteness studies of Irish heritage generally focus on the mid to late nine- 13 teenth century, a historical time period when Irish populations migrated 14 en masse to mainland England and consequently to the United States. Th e 15 potato famine that ravaged Ireland between 1845 and 1855 was a direct im- 16 petus for this relocation. Poor Irish migrants congregated in ghettos and 17 slums—the North End in Liverpool and Little Five Points in New York 18 where the transplanted “white Negroes” and real Negroes rubbed shoul- 19 ders and became nearly indistinguishable. Stereotypical representations of 20 Irish, while fi ctional, circulated and perpetuated ideas about Irish lifestyles. 21 Th e Irish, like the African Americans in the United States, were associated 22 with rural practices and agricultural communities. Irish were commonly 23 referred to as “niggers turned inside out,” while blacks were called “smoked 24 Irish.” Noel Ignatiev, in his foundational text How the Irish Became White, 25 describes how constructs of race were used by the Catholic Irish to move 26 from their status as an oppressed “race” to an oppressing group within the 27 Americas. Nineteenth- century racial notions fi xed the Irish at the lowest 28 rung of the Caucasian hierarchy so that “by the 1860s the ‘representative 29 Irishman’ was to all appearances an anthropoid ape” (Curtis, 2). Stigmatized 30 but not subjugated, the Irish, especially in Liverpool, were far from pas- 31 sive victims of such prejudice. Th e Emerald, “the fi rst Irish Magazine ever 32 brought out in Liverpool,” drew critical attention to “Irish misrepresenta- 33 tions, for the vulgar stage representation of them has contributed more than 34 even their own worse conduct has done toward making our countrymen 35 in England objects of contempt, or of a condescending patronage (like the 36 humoring of a lunatic or wayward buff oon) which is far harder to bear than 37 down right contempt” (Belchem, 14). 38 Irish presence within newly formed urban enclaves of the nineteenth cen- S39 tury provided a site for the alchemy of racial transformation. Trapped within N40 Navigations / 21 Book DUK DeFrantz 13610.indb 21 12/10/13 11:18 AM 1 unsanitary ghettos without food or running water, the two ethnicities, Irish 2 and African, competed for jobs requiring unskilledPROOF labor. Th ey drank and 3 caroused together, and gave birth to mixed race children, who further con- 4 fused the racial categories designed by British and American social codes. 5 Liverpool’s “Black People of Mixed Origins,” like Americas’s mulattoes, were 6 ostracized through social codes and purged from mainstream cultural lives 7 of both England and the United States with national laws that chose not to 8 distinguish between the “fi lth” of its lowest- class citizens (Small, 515). As 9 poverty persisted, how were the Irish to socially advance and overcome their 10 racial stigma? Penal codes prevented them from voting, holding public of- 11 fi ce, or living within the boundaries of incorporated towns (Ignatiev, 34). 12 Progressive movement toward social acceptance was a fraught path for the 13 new settlers. 14 Performance was a strategic, vernacular way of publicly demonstrating 15 the diff erences between the two immigrant groups. Over a one- hundred- 16 year period, Irish residents strove to assimilate into the white working class 17 and to advance within the social cauldron of the United States and Brit- 18 ish politics. Performance tropes captured the evolving social realignments 19 that characterized this collective shift . Pubs and street corners were cultural 20 breeding grounds for ongoing exchanges of performance activities in which 21 song and dance competitions, fi ddling, brawls and drunken sea shanties, 22 pitted performers against one another. Th e dance competition between John 23 Diamond and William Henry Lane (also known as Master Juba) exemplifi es 24 this type of performance exchange. Th is widely publicized dance battle of 25 rhythm and foot clogging traversed the Atlantic Ocean as the two dancers 26 competed in both London and New York. Th eir competitive performances 27 were but one of many types of ethnic performance trade- off s. In 1841 Charles 28 Dickens witnessed jig competitions at the black- owned Almack’s club on 29 Orange Street in the Little Five Points district of New York (Anbinder, 173). 30 Five Points housed many dance clubs and drinking establishments.

Load more