this is our ninth and final talk into
human rights reconciliation information
billions speaker series ecology center
engine tonight's talk is by dr. Banton
cranes professor in the sociology
department and program director of a
common study a teacher scholar and
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crises and oppression
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where businesses are thriving where
african-americans are not only creating
institutions for themselves building
businesses building real communities but
thrive and we also see that within that
context racial terror rears its head in
those places as well so bring little the
home in 1923 is burned to the ground and
in the course of a two and a half day
race live where 300 African Americans
are killed several hundred others are
wounded and no white person face in
criminal charges whatsoever in the
course of such actions so even as all of
these things are happening black clothes
are still maintained in some sense that
it's possible for them to realize some
ambition some
hope for developing their own
communities and living full lives and
then we get to the end of the Jim Crow
era we getting civil rights movement but
we're still faced from that point on the
late night CCC on until the day we're
still faced with the reality African
Americans are victimized far more
frequently by accidental discrimination
still than perhaps any other group where
we get worked by people like diva pager
who showed that African Americans who
apply for jobs are less likely to D call
even with equal qualifications are less
likely to be called for interviews and
white males with people qualifications
and felony convictions on their records
warehousing audits showed that African
Americans in the housing market book for
rental and purchase are liable to
experience discrimination of some form
about half of the time so basically
fifty percent of the time when African
Americans are looking for housing in the
United States they are going to
experience some form of discrimination
whether it be scaring whether it be out
outright denial of vacancies whether it
be denial of mortgages for
discriminatory reasons all of this is
happening all the time
disproportionate poverty over general
stigmatization marginalization of
American Society remaining hallmarks of
the African American experience so
that's the context and so when we talk
about black folks bouncing back their
vents and backness from these harsh
realities so what do we put how do we
know that black holes about that well we
have culture we have African American
culture as clear indicators of the
capacity of that of African Americans to
rebound from these kinds of
circumstances so we can look at music
whether it be jazz blues R&B or hip-hop
you know even hip-hop as frequently
derided as it is it still remains a
cultural form an art form that allows
African Americans to express a capacity
for hope
certainly not all but at least in some
we can talk about dance whether we go
back to folks like the Nicholas brothers
or Katherine Dunham or Alvin Ailey
whether we're looking at the the
emergence of african-american dance as
hallmarks of American culture so how
many how many of you all have ever been
to a wedding not done the electric slide
so it's it's there it's a part of or the
Soul Train line we've all seen the Soul
Train and so those become manifestations
of the capacity for African American
culture began a medium through which we
we see these manifestations of the
capacity to bounce back from from crisis
from stress from calamity to choose to
express the possibilities of a vibrant
full life literature Thoreau Neal
Hurston James Baldwin Alice Walker
Alvaro Nikki Giovanni all of them write
incredibly powerful ways that Express
the the trauma and and the distress that
goes along with that experience but that
always maintain the capacity to express
hope ambition and even short and the
idea of the capacity to express joy to
to to talk about the possibility of a
black light live with joy and bring joy
even in the face of this history and
even in the face of this contemporary
experience it remains a clear indication
of the capacity for what we call
resilience yeah so being able to bounce
back being able to face trauma to face
stress and at the same time then to put
then to find the capacity to live your
life and even potentially to thrive in
the context of this new environment so
their crisis comes along or calamity
comes along and you find the possibility
the aftermath of that to create new
opportunities and new possibilities for
yourself
that's what resilience is about and so
when we talk about resiliency and excuse
me among african-american for that
matter among any group frequently this
is discussed as an individual capacity
so psychologists talked quite a bit
about resilience it is a major factor in
conversations and public health and
social work but most often it's seized
upon as a characteristic of the
individual psychological make up the
individual emotional capacity to absorb
stress and then to respond in positive
ways there are suppose who are talking
now increasingly about the idea of
resiliency that goes beyond the
individual so especially in the context
of talking about things like emergency
preparedness and responses to natural
disasters like Katrina or Hurricane
sandy I'm talking about regional
resiliency talking about the capacity
for cities and metropolitan areas to be
resilient based upon the development of
appropriate infrastructure the
capacities for appropriate and timely
evacuation the the ability to distribute
appropriate goods and services in the
aftermath of disaster all of those
things become a part of the conversation
but the idea of community resilience is
not nearly as prominent in the
conversation and especially in the
conversation about African Americans
that they're quite frequently even
though we talk about the idea that
African American culture on some level
is is possessed of a brick capacity for
resilience for bouncing back we don't
talk about resilience as a
characteristic of half of American
communities necessarily and that's what
a part of what I want to be able to talk
about we want to talk about community
resilience we want to be able to talk
about the institutional and collective
character of a community and to see
resilience as a manifestation of those
characteristics of those traits north
has defined for specific capacities
within communities or characteristics
within communities that are important
for that collective character so they
talk about economic development social
capital capacities for information and
communication and community confidence
and those who become sort of the
foundations for any community to
establish itself as resilient now part
of their conversation has been really
tied to conversations of physical
communities that is towns or cities and
the idea of talking about the
african-american community or
african-american communities in this
sense also requires us to kind of tweak
this a little bit because when we talk
about african-american communities even
though in the context of a resident of
segregation that we continue to
experience in the United States where
African Americans are by far the most
segregated group and have historically
been that way the the the highest level
of segregation experienced by European
ethnic immigrants in the early part of
the 20th century is lower than the
lowest level of residential segregation
experienced by African Americans since
the 1930s so the highest that those
groups have ever been segregated is
still below the level of segregate the
lowest level of segregation that's been
experienced by African Americans and at
least in major metropolitan areas so
segregation is there and so in some
sense we can't talk in meaningful ways
about physical community when we talk
about African Americans but even so
because of a range of complicated
factors it's difficult to talk about
African American communities in the same
sense that Nora said I want to talk
about especially when we when we look at
capacities for information for
communication and economic development
where those are things that are
manifestations of larger dynamics of
infrastructure and capital investment
that don't reside necessarily within
African American communities and settles
it's also important in terms of talking
about understanding resilience I
understand that it means we need to
differentiate between the types of
stresses that that we're dealing with
when we're looking at resilience so
there are huge stressors those are
things that happen very quickly very
rapidly without a necessarily without a
lot of warning that may include things
like slights and they include things
like instances of mass violence natural
disasters earthquakes hurricanes but
other than individual level including
things like violent fun and then there
are chronic stresses these are stresses
that manifest themselves as the term
applies over an extended period of time
and part of what the some of the
resilience literature is again is
independence pointing out is the nature
of resilience from these stresses is not
necessarily going to be the same so if
we're interested in how people rebound
or how communities rebound from huge
stresses that the concerns that need to
be understood in those circumstances
aren't necessarily going to be the same
as those when we're looking at how
people were bound or how communities
were bound from chronic stressors and in
fact one of the things that has come out
is at some points they may actually work
against each other their capacities for
resilience in the face of huge stresses
may work against capacities for
resilience in the face of chronic stress
and vice versa so there's a level of
complexity that goes along with this
that is not necessarily well understood
so let's talk about the nature of
stresses in african-american experience
certainly both kinds of stresses have
been present so if we talk about acute
stresses we can talk about obviously the
the the master stations of sort of the
meek immediate concrete traumatic
experiences like enslavement like
racialized violence like Wyatts like
Lynn
as well as a broader set of acute
experiences that manifest themselves and
not at least ostensibly a my own
racialized way of like natural disasters
or Wars that have an impact on everyone
but that by virtue of the particulars
social and spatial locations of
african-americans manifests themselves
and really distinctive and unique ways
and I'll come back to that in a minute
but then I wanted this is where we begin
to grapple with this idea of structural
violence and the idea of structural
violence basically is the idea deny PETA
that was first put forward in in
discussions of in essence of ways in
which institutions operate to harm that
by virtue of the ways in which
institutions and policies are put
forward that they put people in harm's
way and that by virtue of the way that
they intersect with existing patterns of
privilege and disadvantage existing
patterns of inequality and power that
certain kinds of policy choices certain
kinds of institutional practices result
in injury to certain groups of people to
certain segments of society where others
are put into positions of advantage by
virtue of those same decisions so and
it's probably been it wasn't coined by
them but at least in much of the
literature the person who's been most
noted as articulating the principles of
structural violence of Palawan during a
great deal of work internationally
dealing with issues of human rights
access to health care and the
opportunity to address extreme poverty
so we talk about structural violence for
African Americans that gets manifested
through systemic oppression so this is
where we move beyond sort of individual
manifestations of bigotry and so we
certainly can can see instances like a
mention for example as an incredibly
traumatic experience or experiencing
discrimination at the hands of a
landlord or the hands of an employer as
a manifestation of huge stress but what
we also have to understand is how things
like zoning policies or school
assignment policies or judicial
decisions dealing with segregation or
desegregation law permit of action all
the combat positions of a systemic
pattern of oppression that manifests
itself in very powerful ways in
african-american lives we can also think
about seemingly non-racial decisions
that also have similar kinds of
consequences so if we look at
infrastructure development if we look
again at zoning laws that are ostensibly
not concerned with race or ethnicity but
that result in putting certain people in
harm's way and that also manifests
itself in terms of a pattern of
racialized oppression that moves beyond
the realm of thinking in terms of
individual bigotry or the intent or
motivation of a particular set of
individuals but nonetheless results in
detrimental consequences that to certain
groups of people and in this case
african-americans in particular so
Hurricane Katrina becomes a really good
way of illustrating this idea so we can
look at what happened with Hurricane
Katrina and in Hurricane Katrina also
becomes a really useful illustration
because what we also see is that it
becomes not only a huge stressor but it
also becomes a trigger by which many
chronic stresses become manifest so we
have the impact of Katrina we have the
damage that Katrina brought across the
entire Gulf Coast and Katrina did
indiscriminate Katrina if the winds and
the storm surge it impact the poor it
impacted the wealth you to impact the
flies impacted blacks and impacted
Latinos everybody was impacted but what
we see is that in the aftermath
Catrina that many of the consequences
were felt uneven so one of the things we
can see is the decimation of the Lower
Ninth Ward in particular in New Orleans
for those who don't know about the the
geography of New Orleans the Lower Ninth
Ward was a part of the city where the it
was overwhelmingly African American and
a significant portion of the African
American population lived there and in
the neighboring vicinity the Lower Ninth
Ward was under war when after Katrina
hit that was where the levees broke so
if you've ever seen the film or heard of
the film when the levees broke by Spike
Lee he was talking that was specifically
about what happened in the Lower Ninth
Ward and so what what you saw the
situation where everything that these
boats hung was gone it was wiped out
this was the the area of town that was
the farthest below sea level and it
ultimately ended up being the area of
town which was the most vulnerable and a
part of the conversation about local
violence is how does this end up being
the area where African Americans end up
concentrate well it ends up being that
way because it's the least desirable
here it's the most vulnerable and so
even there we can see that at one point
certainly perhaps there was a conscious
intent to do this but what we also see
is that over time conscious intent is no
longer necessary the existing policies
existing practices kept the momentum
going it kept us from that structural
reality in place and in efforts to do
anything about it
we're met with substantial resistance
again sometimes consciously and and
based upon intent but at other times
simply because people did not want a
destruction of the status quo because
they were concerned about content they
were concerned about what could happen
if they began to change and how that
might disrupt their interests and their
concerns so we see the decimation of the
Lower Ninth Ward we see that that part
of New Orleans still has not been
so we see other parts of New Orleans
especially in the area areas around the
wealthier parts of town the areas around
the French Quarter
they've all been rebuilt more not for
their entire swaths of that part of town
that remaining desolate there's no one
living there no new homes have been
built and the business leads us into the
next part of the conversation which is
the shipment population before Katrina
New Orleans was over 60% happening there
now it's less than four years after
substantial portions of the black
population were forced to leave town in
the aftermath of Katrina because there
was no housing available they moved to
neighboring states like Mississippi and
Texas and many of them simply have not
returned because there's nothing to
return to there is no available housing
and there is no prospect for ability
Thompson most of the housing that's been
built since then has not been afford
will have instead much of the focus has
been on developing middle and upper
income housing tracks and so the
prospects for african-americans who were
again disproportionately lower-income to
come back to New Orleans are slim and so
we've seen a fundamental shift in the
different graphics of the city and that
means we've also seen a fundamental
shift in the politics in the interest of
the city as well and then the
Mississippi Gulf Coast becomes also a
really interesting illustration of this
the conversation about Katrina
overwhelmingly focused on New Orleans
and to a lesser extent other parts of
Louisiana and and many folks weren't
involved in a really significant
conversation about the impact of Katrina
or on Mississippi but the Gulf Coast
area of Mississippi when it's a
relatively small part of the state
little corner that's tucked them in
between the Florida Panhandle
Alabama and Louisiana but it's also
it's also one of the wealthiest parts
about
I'm sorry Mississippi what was really
interesting about Mississippi and
Mississippi Gulf Coast is that when we
look at the relief effort and
specifically some of the money that was
put into a Community Development Block
Brandon you have to have the Katrina to
assist in rebuilding while Louisiana had
three times more property damage than
Mississippi Mississippi received out of
the number out of eleven over 11 million
dollars Mississippi received five new
element billion dollars Mississippi
received five billion okay so they
received nearly half of the money even
though Louisiana experienced about three
fourths of the damage and this was
specifically based upon the efforts of
Haley Barbour the governor Mississippi
and former chair of the Republican
National Committee and I want to play
this - just a short video from our
talking about the effort to deal with
the aftermath of Katrina
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is it as dimensionally of the image of
the city our people are strong so far
that's gonna turn out to be so much
worse than to me
the fucker in the Goblet of vodka with
the strangest things one of the biggest
happens with Katrina is it is
tremendously helped the image
Mississippi I'm people strong resilient
super on you know people mr. about
Mississippi we're not only recovering it
but business in his image has never been
better
or culture people saw Monte between the
spirit and character people Mississippi
so the very that mean really the very
definition of resilience right that's
what he's talking about he's talking
about basically saying that not only did
not only did the Mississippi come back
but it came back better that missus that
Katrina as bad as it was was a good
thing for Mississippi because it showed
the rest of the country how good people
in Mississippi were how much they were
both invested in helping each other and
and in fact he he went out in get a
number of instances that became a
recurring theme for him we're gonna make
we're gonna come back in this and
Mississippi especially the Gulf Coast
it's gonna be bigger and better that it
was before Katrina
that's a very embodiment of resilience
not only bouncing back from from crisis
and being as good as you were but being
better than you were so Haley Barbour's
is just presenting this this idea of
Mississippi as mr. 24 well let's talk a
bit about what that looks like and how
it works so their administration there
are a lot of things about this they're
really unique one is being extended
control that Barbour gap over this money
it wasn't granted it wasn't a lot when
it was given over to the legislature to
distribute there was no state agency
that was that was identified by the
federal government to receive the funds
it went straight to borrow and he held
primary
or how that money got spent until he
finally seated some of that authority to
an agency that he created so he received
5.0 five billion dollars from her up
that 3.2 billion was spent in phase 1
and it was specified for insured
homeowners impacted by storm surge yeah
I mean that came in the form of grants
in the amount of a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars per home now what's
important to understand about the Gulf
Coast of Mississippi is that it kind of
inverts the logic of New Orleans so in
New Orleans the low-lying land was the
least desirable man because was below
sea level and it was vulnerable on the
other hand on the Mississippi Gulf Coast
the low-lying land with the desirable
because that was a land that was coastal
that was the oceanfront and so what did
we see in Mississippi we saw that the
huge majority of people who owned homes
inland and on land that was impacted by
the storm surge were wealthy white
Mississippians black folks tended to
live on higher elevations farther back
from the coast so their homes weren't as
frequently damaged by storm surge in
other parts of Mississippi there the
black folks dip at their homes damaged
by storm surge that was pushed up the
rivers and marshes but for those folks
in the Gulf Coast area their homes
weren't damaged by storm surge their
homes were damaged by winds
okay just as destiny as the the homes
that were hit by storm surge but the
nature of the damage was distinct and
here's the key thing about what's
happening here 3.2 billion dollars of
the five billion is set aside from
homeowners whose homes were damaged by
storm surge what was also done was that
Barbour negotiated with HUD to relax its
income restrictions because HUD
typically mandated that at least
half of the money in their Community
Development Block Grants would be spent
on low and moderate-income hormones
barber gets her to waive this
requirement so what we end up seeing is
3 billion of the five billion ends up
going to wealthy white corners people
literally with 6 billion homes high into
the six figures
there were news stories repeatedly
showing people who had these elaborate
homes on the oceanfront who are
receiving HUD assistance to rebuild
their homes okay meanwhile there is
nothing set aside for low-income
homeowners a substantial proportion of
black folks who owned homes in the Gulf
Coast area are excluded for phase one
because their homes were not damaged by
storm surge now here's the thing here
barb doesn't say we're never we're not
going to be black homeowners no one
steps forward and says we must exclude
black folks folks from the possibility
of this assistance rather this is put
forward as a set of policies that are
intended to deal with the consequences
of Hurricane Katrina and to address the
needs of those folks whose homes were
hurt whose homes were damaged by the
storm surge by the storm and that's what
most people were talking about they were
talking about the storm sir
so on the face of things that seems to
make perfect sense
and nobody beginning even thinks twice
about the excluding wind damage homes
until African Americans and a few other
folks who are concerned about low-income
folks begin to organize and they forget
to call attention to this in the
national media so it's not until several
years later so this this is I think
phase two and three finally kicked in
around 2009 from nonstate which was four
years after and when it kicks a
143 million dollars in aid is offered to
those homeowners who were excluded from
Facebook so you go from 3.2 billion in
grants of $150,000 to 143 million in
grants that initially were set at
$50,000 and eventually were negotiated
up to $100,000 and then what we also see
is that Farber negotiates a special
dispensation from HUD to divert 600
million dollars of the money away from a
to homeowners to repair damage to the
state for adults this is the faces of
structural violence this is what
structural violence looks like in
contemporary America nope no no clear
negative intent no effort to single out
a particular group of people based upon
their race or ethnicity but given the
historical realities of life in
Mississippi given the the patterns of
settlement given the the the spatial and
social location these policies represent
the fine lines and and they become
manifestations immediate manifestations
of a chronic stress so when we look at
the response to the acute stress and the
idea of Mississippi coming back bigger
and better from the acute stress what we
also see is it an exacerbates the
chronic stress that it takes the
existing disparities and the previous
patterns of structural violence and it
makes them even worse and so when we
when we try to come to grips with the
things that matter for resilience and
resilience in the african-american
community its these kinds of examples
that we have to keep them on I want to
talk about another aspect of
of this formulation as well thinking
about a few stresses and chronic
stresses and that's in the context
responding to the realities of race in
American society that we see acute
stress both manifested most powerfully
again in those those are the moments
those instances of discrimination and
bigotry and so the response typically is
to the moment the response is to this is
what happened right now how am I going
to deal with it and and how do we how do
we make sense of and then bounce back
the other parallels between chronic
stresses and systemic risk so when we
think about how institutions work public
policy is were existing patterns of
inequality and disparity and
stigmatization have worked those are a
place that those are the locations where
and we see the manifestation of chronic
stresses in african-american experience
those are the things that a long term
that are drawn out that we can't simply
isolate to these particular moments or
places but rather are continuous and
honorable okay and so when we want to
makes when we want to make sense that
the idea system embrace them we have to
understand that at least in the context
of thinking about resiliency also in
terms of this idea of chronic stressors
and it's also important to kind of
recognize again after the point of
trade-off that I've talked about before
sometimes the affective responsibilities
that sources of resilience in business
is a huge stress don't necessarily work
in dealing with chronic stress and if we
think about bigotry and racism in this
way that the tactics and strategies for
dealing with bigotry and concrete do
Tober discrimination frequently don't
work when we're trying to deal with the
consequences of systemic racism and
structural violence and so what is that
then then then these times and well one
of the things I understand is the ways
in which we've coped with bigotry and
the emphasis on over bigotry that has
manifested in our society has a
trade-off in terms of our capacity to
make to make sense of
and to deal with him to be resilient in
the face of systemic racism so so
emphasizing the big emphasizing the the
overt discrimination in many instances
leaves us incredibly vulnerable to the
consequences of systemic racism
um there's a whole nother dimension to
this as well which is the distinction
between community resilience and
individual results and again in many
instances those things that work at the
individual level don't necessarily
translate into successful resilience at
a collective level so let's think about
individual resiliency in the African
American context an N are all sorts of
examples of it but I want to seize on a
pun on one in particular the hospital
okay the person who's out there on his
hustle he's in the streets he's doing
what he needs to do to provide for
himself
to be able to rise up to be able to to
to achieve the goals that society has
said he's supposed to reach but has not
necessarily providing them the means to
reach okay so whether we're talking
about somebody like Frank Lucas how many
of you all know the Frank Lucas what do
you folks do associate especially those
with criminal out of the back Oh Frank
Lucas was an african-american who
basically took the drug trade in Harlem
away from the Mafia
Denzel Washington portrayed him of the
movies you years ago call American
Gangster that's Frank Lucas so whether
we're talking about Frank Lucas or
whether we talk about jay-z
okay one of my one of jay-z's most
famous songs here comes the rock man
okay because he got to start selling
crack and translated from selling crack
into you'll be an MC and that game
translates into becoming an icon so
people ask him what you know what do you
do
community my activism is like Obama's
activism my presence his activism I'm
not a businessman I'm a business that's
pretty good
so but if he embodies the hustle right
the whole idea you do what you do in
order to get by on to get ahead that is
the very definition of resilience you
take someone you isolate them from
opportunities and resources and they
find a way to breath it's not normal
it's not about you know morality law
it's simply what is your what is your
situation and how do you deal with it
how do you cope with and that the notion
of the hustle of being on the hustle
there's a whole lot of not only African
American life and culture but the life
and health of many marginalized groups
but in the context of understanding
African Americans it's there and it's in
its image and it's obvious in its it's
it's so available and apparent that
that's what's happening and so the
people who are managing to to survive in
that context of people who embrace this
idea of the hustle and so they are
individual and resilient they are
figuring out as individuals how can I
make this work for me how can I find a
way to get my best possible situation
progress but now we have to take that
step back from that and anything about
what is the collective
implication of the house what is the
collective does think that the hustle
the concept of the hustle translate into
collective resilience for the
african-american community not so much
that even as we see sort of symbolic
manifestations of the benefit of the
hospital
you've always got this idea of the the
beneficent hustler you know that the
drug dealer who goes out and buys toys
for kids on Christmas that's
like that so that there are these in
these moments where these folks make it
happen to say yeah I'm taking care of
our community but the reality is you're
selling drugs the means to your
resilience that means to you achieving
your past your best possible outcome
given the circumstance translates into a
detriment to the collective efficacy of
the community and so that that's one of
those areas where we can see this
trade-off which mean that the passage of
individual resilience and the capacities
for collective results and so we have to
kind of recognize that I also want to
talk about another sort of moment of
this kind of individual versus
collective capacity or resilience and
that's been talking about successful
African Americans and what we but what
we hear quite frequently from successful
African American and I would say
increasingly so in recent years is these
folks who've been able to succeed of
individuals in mainstream ways and so
we're not talking about folks who are
necessarily going to hustle or at least
the illegals there on their own the
legal hustle and they figured out ways
to make it work and so this is where we
see folks like Oprah Winfrey you know
entertainers these besides James even
kids who start through through criminal
enterprise have a folks like Pharrell
Williams who I'm going to talk about in
a minute or Kanye West's baby on set
these folks who by virtue of their
individual talents and and some good
luck to they found a way ways to drop in
the context of african-american life in
American society and one of the things
that we get we're getting from some of
these folks is that they are not only
has their resilience been a product of
individual capacities but they're also
then articulating these means these
narratives of the capacities for
individual success that that the way to
achieving what they've achieved is to
emulate it is to be individuals it is to
seek out
individual opportunities to be
responsible for oneself as an individual
and and part of what I want us to sort
of think about reflect on is to what
extent that also mirrors what we see
with the hospital that the individual
capacity for resilience in some ways may
be working counter to the possibilities
for collective and community facilities
and especially the capacity to respond
to these chronic stresses associated
with structural violence and I'm Mitch
ouch
or a minute and this is for those who
don't know got weird hat this is
Pharrell Williams he is a musician and
producer wildly successful everybody I
know you've heard this latest hit happy
happy song of my planet x perilla leaves
so and the whole hat thing that's but
this is an interview me dated with Oprah
Winfrey and talking about his success on
how he got to where he is some
controversies that are aversion in
particularly he's talking now here about
the controversy that emerged without an
album cover his latest album was called
the black colony as a picture of himself
I'm sorry not like it's got girls it's a
picture of himself and three women and
there was a big outcry because the women
they're you know basically are all
fair-skinned and so people initially say
well why are they go black women or Val
and he said no no no this is the woman
right you know closest to my face in the
image she's a black woman I've dated her
so she yeah she's black but the people
still said well you know and here you
are a black artist and you're basically
the only black woman your you're
portraying on this is someone who's so
fair-skinned that other people couldn't
recognize her flat and and that you know
you're here you're saying that this
album is dedicated to women and
and especially to black women because
you're talking about living in your life
with women in your experience who
supported you and helped you get where
you are
why or why might be portraying and so
he's kind of really kind of challenging
the idea that there's there needs to be
there should be the sort of standard of
who's black enough to represent
blackness and black women and that then
leads him into this little piece into
the one that worked for you or it's
going to work against you and you got a
people side you can feel you can choose
you choose the eyes
sorry person yeah
how much I want this to come shit now
why try to translate what he's saying
[Applause]
because you know recently on GQ dot-com
there's a well responded to the
controversy over his album cover but
attorney called the new black
so what is the new black the word black
doesn't blame all the races for our
issues the new black dreams are realized
is that it's not a pigmentation into the
tality and it seems going to work for
you or some of our history and you got a
papal side you're gonna be able you can
choose and choose feel in wow that was
not called race it's over okay it's the
female species - my mom is black my mom
is a huge part of my business and
justify it because there's certain
people who allowed the delusion and
never and their own inner skin to the
Commission's
mission my confidence outside of your
there why are you sharing your dilution
whatever that whatever that air that
space is between you and your mirror
does it have to repeat this is my work
and what does it look I recognize that
there are there are issues pending we we
get judged on our skin but I just stated
the fact that there hadn't been of
african-american life so mean look at
things like that
allow that to run my life American top
the charts right and I appreciate it
what for years I have a hole here I
appreciate it but I don't live my life
trying to be black what I do is I
nurtured our curiosity and music I'm
happy what I am yeah so my thing is
mentality it's a it's a you know
contains Russia back into things because
I'm genuinely interested in something
too isn't it is it okay so that gets us
again back to this idea that the
possibilities for african-americans to
deal with their circumstances to deal
with the realities of what it means to
be black in America what what it has
meant to be black America started to
change that that color that fun that
says the new black and that's that's a
side to here you know this idea that
he's putting forward that the new way to
be black and a new way to be responsive
and it be successful is to step back
from the collective conversation that
doesn't mean that that you know the
question that they're raising about what
I call the brokering of authenticity are
not good question they are but the
question of who did Society was black
enough that's a very deep and complex
conversation but what key also leaders
on to that is this idea that he is
successful as an individual and that
that that that the nature of that
success is the solution to these issues
that the way to deal with the realities
of black life and American society are
to be like Pharrell or to be like over
and that and
that is something that's encapsulated in
this individual moment this capacity to
be an individual to think as an
individual to reach thousand individuals
and operate as an individual without
this idea of any sort of collective
obligation or or solidarity that's
rooted in what he's referring to as skin
color but that ultimately is rooted in a
conversation about common social
location and collective history and so
here we have again it's different and
this is an incredibly common strategy
for many individuals somebody like
Pharrell or Oprah or Clarence Thomas or
me for instance I've been in a position
of privilege in my life I don't come
money but I've been privileged in other
ways and I've been able to translate
that into being where I am there but the
idea that I'm going to go out and go
talk to some other African Americans and
see some folks were struggling to deal
with their circumstances and say to them
you just need to be like me I'm an
individual just follow my example
they don't have the resources I've had
they didn't have the experiences I've
had they don't have the social capital
I've had but this is one of the pieces
one of the the narratives that's being
put forward and that Pharrell is trying
to encapsulate here as the new black and
the thing to understand is it's an
incredibly effective narrative for you
what does that mean it means it's a
great source of individual resilience he
gets slapped in the face that that story
that way of thinking that mentality as
he calls it becomes the means by which
he can then surmount that difficulty and
be even more successful and that's a
part of what he goes through an
interview he talks about the things that
have stood at is weighing how we
overcame them as an individual but it
never comes back to this moment so
understand the uniqueness and the
distinctiveness of human self
and then generalizing that to the idea
that every other individual can do the
same things he's done and then the other
parallel to that is color wise so
whether he says he's he's the new black
there are other African Americans who
talk about themselves in the same vein
and our society has it has discussed
which is this idea that we are colorful
we don't see color we don't think in
terms of worse race doesn't exist simply
an illusion it's a fallacy and we need
to get but the problem is those black
postal or non-core did get the
opportunity to go that's not strategy
that was made available to those black
folks are in the Gulf Coast of
Mississippi they've been happy - cumin
nobody said to them do you wanna be
called a lot and the thing that that
ends up happening is as a nearly barber
manifests this but it was seen as far
back as 1896 and if you've never read it
you should read the dissenting opinion
Justice John Harlan and Plessy versus
Ferguson he's the sole Supreme Court
justice who dissented and he in fact is
the source of the phrase that the
Constitution of the United States of
Aqaba wanna that's part of that that
that dissenting thing he was opposed to
the idea of the federal government
rubber-stamping Jim Crow laws but part
of that opinion goes on to say the right
white race does not need to do this then
if we simply allow things to be as they
are that the superiority of the white
race is a shoe that the the existing
structures and disparities that have
been realized in American society up to
1896 would be sufficient for the
foreseeable future in ensuring the
inequality of that of Americans so you
didn't need Jim Crow that's clumsy it's
obvious is to over it's an easy target
just simply allow things to work as they
are working and
that's really the fundamental dilemma
here that that and this is what we're
confronted with when we look at these
incidences of structural violence and
when we talk about the capacities of
African Americans collectively to be
resilient in the face of substance of
structural violence color blindness and
the new black are insufficient they do
not provide the necessary leverage the
necessary capacities and resources to
effectively disrupt those realities and
it's ultimately on with a realization of
that with a realization of the necessity
for those kinds of collective resources
and engagements and to deal with the
structural Menace and institutional
realities something that individuals are
incapable of that the real possibilities
for community resilience
so given colorblind is it too late
that's the narrative of individualism
permeated so so thoroughly structural
preferences that's one of the realities
is that again we want to frame this in
terms of resilience America is
confronted with it with a foot of
reality our society in front of the
reality the same way to do all this work
and the Moreland's are still wrestling
with that reality they haven't announced
that they're part of the reason and the
bounce back is because my folks have
that back New Orleans is struggling to
get back to where it was because the
black population is decimated not only
in numbers but also in
and one of the things that ultimately
gives up necessary realization and some
folks get this but but increasingly and
I think because there is a sort of
individualistic and in competitive frame
of reference that so many Americans are
utilizing they don't think of these
terms if black folks are struggling the
Americas kept asking for resilience is
Henry period and at some point that's
kind of click and we and especially
given the demographic realities that
were looking at it may not necessarily
be black folks but people of color so
we're looking at the prospect for
Latinos to be 20% of the population
probably about about 2022 and probably
about a third of the population by 2040
and so if the United States has not done
something about racial inequality ruling
in a situation where about then
rejection is 2042 for whites to be less
than half of the population chances are
to be before then usually the
projections are conservative so it's
probably somewhere around twenty thirty
five twenty thirty eight people of color
will be the majority of the population
and the majority of those are going to
be like brown and black folks so you
know the Asian financial beads
comparable perforce with the population
after their make around thirteen
fourteen percent but it's going to be
Latinos African Americans Native
Americans and mates they remain
marginalized and they continue to you
know to to experience limited life
chances and the prospect for the United
States as a nation to be resilient in
the face of whatever challenges it faces
when that larger proportion of its
population is marginalized and doesn't
have adequate life chances doesn't have
the capacity to thrive either
individually or collectively it's gonna
be an anchor and in a big way they're
already either to be part of the
conversation when we talk about the
America with when they come when they
compare the United States to in
education for example to countries like
Finland well part of the reality is
Finland doesn't have inequality and they
want to put it on the teachers and the
schools is the inequality and anybody
with any real good sense and any
objectivity would be what is equal to
make sensitive they were understand the
Finns don't have to educate
disproportionately poor people they
don't have to educate kids who haven't
been experienced a you know adequate
developmental environments and then
figure out how to pull them up so it's
and I can't say that people have figured
out any more than I can say that people
will pocket will figure out that global
warming I mean they're building I hat so
in young I read a statement and said you
know one of one of the things I
understand about climate change is the
end of the world is not mean the end of
the planet so we can be dead and gone
the planets Ganpati to exist all right
plant economy Brazil it's not that we
may not be capable of being preserved in
the face of a crisis and I think the
same thing is true of our country out of
our society in the face of even
happening bother I think part of it is
in terms of this individual
individualism versus collectivism
myosins whether their groups worked on
with the memory that's not just hug the
memory of circle violence but the
resilience the resistance if we go on
with education most people don't
understand that the reason why we have
mass education is because what people
got there first
yeah you know there's everybody came
down to finally acknowledged and said
hey you know when you did they bite
bucks will come to find out there was
5,000 schools in the south
two years after emancipation as I
thought we need to catch up and then
they started fitting into policies for
accreditation things like that but it
was only in the budget of that existence
to say slave society that
he's educated really like whatever
menace that you had that but that's
always been have trajectory that there's
always resilience in existence so now
you have a very arousing look we've
worked higher that throat but I don't
think they're actually what's named to
store what and again you talk about
collective memory and collective
narrative that that is it's a critical
source of agents I mean your ability to
draw on these these stories to then
understand and interpret what you're
experiencing now is it is a key way that
people make sense of the things they're
experiencing and then are able to arrive
at what the possible choices are and and
so if you don't have if you don't have
this narrative of structural violence to
make sense that the structural violence
you're experiencing your loss Rachel
structure power its capacity for
resilience especially in the wake and
some rights legislation and the growing
national consensus their overt
discrimination is wrong that the
capacity for resilience evisceration of
their power has been the capacity to
incorporate as individuals people from
minority groups but nerves
ichiro point for neoliberal capitalism
where that capacity to absorb because
individuals is ending and look at the
housing crisis like the housing crisis
was counted as one of the major
mechanisms to the injury to the middle
class the bubble burst and he winds up
being cited not only losing their houses
by and large but then blamed for the
economic collapse it's it's it's
minorities people that my brother would
say never should have taken 11 in the
first place and Emerson gotten it the
government got away so this is a you
know national economy that's lost losing
rather be is ability to incorporate
groups as
Michels and that people that you know
Farrell's an outlier here today right
his ability to succeed beyond his
wildest imagination letter P in German
set to you might be we might be a month
where although it may have seemed like
on some level it's too late but that the
destruction caused by the economic
collapse is kind of creating some people
accident you know in the sense that wait
a minute maybe inclusion isn't really as
possible to prepare individuals as we
may know though it is an impossible
thing racialized power structures for
American silver you're sure yeah
after all that has been around for
several centuries and I think you know I
can't get the willingness of these
individuals to be incorporated into that
structure I mean so that's that's a part
of what's also going on is we're getting
we're getting for folks of color lots of
them know you know Asian who are now
participating in that and saying there
is no racialized structure the new black
is just talking about resilience and I
feel like there's all there's no
Brazilian but I think in my mind I've
always thought about it in this sort of
darker like the darker side of
resilience which is not that you make
anything of your tragedy but how do you
ability just with can you just pranic
information right enjoy keep thank you
and I feel like in the context of just
like
widening inequality I'm thinking about
the situation of like so of workers
right leg locate workers and so Walmart
and so there's the resiliency this model
which Walmart sort of capitalized
right which is okay we'll come in is
that every little worker and then you
have the opportunity to become manager
behind your wall street right into the
pits or if you take your take your
deprivation and your nothingness in you
and it makes you motivated to become you
know widely successful and then there's
the one then there's the Macdonald
budget right which is your our little
bitch worker and we're going to show you
how to make the budget and it includes
the fact that you have a second job and
the only way that this budget makes
sense is because we not we make a budget
that doesn't include a car payment or
eat right store and so that the other
resilience right which is like and we're
counting on and we need to count on you
as a as a reserve army of workers right
it's like so trying to just the expense
of these two forms of resilience and the
ways that that one needs to rely on the
other one right the only way Walmart to
tell this story is because right was I
mean hard what's going on there isn't
appropriation so we're getting folks who
are talking about resiliency in ways
that don't reflect the actual meaning of
the eye of the term but instead becomes
a sort of effort to to clean up the
notion of people who are getting by yeah
that getting by now this brazilian yeah
because resilience has this connotation
that that you have here people who are
somehow you know you know they're clear
doing okay yeah it's not just getting by
it's not you know Barbara Ehrenreich
never entertain the idea of saying that
what she experienced when she was doing
what she before that I thought was was
thriving or even being resilient in any
way right it was just people survive and
this is this is it's not unusual we
certainly ain't seen this effort on the
part of folks who are involved in in
markets a those who are really really
really driven by the accumulation of
capital to appropriate key terms and to
then manipulate those terms to their
purposes but I think that what the
interesting kind of the
if you're looking where the concept of
resilience comes from and we look at how
it's used in that context so we're
looking here at the science looking at
technology people were eager izing
complex sensors and they're not talking
about resilience as this idea of a
system that just kind of limps along if
they're talking about the idea of
resilience as this system that when
faced with a stress can then deal with
that stress then continue to operate
efficiently effectively and that's a
very different idea than the McDonald's
worker who's just scraping by and I
think that at some point represented and
understood yeah yeah
so but I think at some point those
things are gonna clash yeah because it
and I think it'll be a really
interesting class to look at because the
technology piece is an engine of capital
accumulation and so they can't talk
effectively about resilience and how
they want to design and implement
resilient systems because of that
concept of resilience has been hijacked
over here and turned into something
altogether different you know how
they're going to say ok we'll find you
can have reserves we'll come up with
another tournament for that kind of like
that and say that's not what resilience
and at some point you kind of you know
they lose that protect you know a little
tidbit of ammunition that they gain by
trying to appropriate the truck
but then if there's nothing resilient
whatsoever about the general idea
certainly you get people work in front
of the crisis and trauma and they and
they figure out how to figure out how to
survive with it but being Brazilian is
not simply scraping by it is here's this
new situation I'm figuring out how this
new situation works based on the
resources I have to do as it's never
just a it's not this isolated thing I
mean even for talking about
psychological resources those are
grounded not only in this sort of
fundamental makeup of the individual and
the personality but developmental
experiences social capital emotional
connection
and support almost same thing so and
it's always you know the income the
inability of Americans to see me not
this sort of narrative of the of the
atomized individual to recognize that
any individual who has succeeded unless
you get somebody who calls out of the
forest ever come CEO the next day
okay then they did make it on our own
somebody help
[Music]
[Applause]
you