Book Review--Brothers Gonna Work it Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism

Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics In The Golden Age Of Rap Nationalism
by Charise L. Cheney
Paperback: 222 pages
Publisher: New York University Press (August 18, 2005)

REVIEW BY TAMI NAVARRO


It is often said that a book should never be judged by its cover. It stands to reason, by extension, that one ought not base one’s judgment on a title, either. However, both the title and cover of Charise Cheney’s recent Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism accurately reflect the work she does throughout this text. The cover image, a shot of militant beret-sporting black men (including Chuck D and Flava Flav of Public Enemy (for those unfamiliar with this groundbreaking rap group, the latter figure, toting his signature stopwatch around his neck, may be recognized from his recent foray into reality television with the program “Flavor of Love”)—sets the tone for Brothers: an exploration of the masculinist under- (and over-) tones in the world of rap. Moreover, it is important for Cheney’s project that the figures depicted are wearing the sunglasses and berets commonly associated with members of the Black Panther Party (as well as raising their fists in the symbol for “Black Power”), as she goes on to explore the possibilities for politically-aware rap, such as that created by Public Enemy. Finally, Brothers Gonna Work It Out raises questions about the complex relationship between an artist, their art, and the consuming public: What can be expected of rappers? How do they see themselves functioning in various, including political, spheres? How successful are politically-motivated rappers at affecting political change?

Cheney makes the connection between rap and politics clear at the outset of this text by framing her discussion in terms of rap nationalists. Terming politically-sentient rappers like Chuck D “raptivists” (one of the milder attempts at verbal wizardry that make an appearance in this text. “GangstAfronationalist” is among the more far-fetched), Cheney writes that “this book locates ‘raptivism’ within black popular culture and political culture” (Cheney 3). While she represents these ‘raptivists’ as Gramscian organic intellectuals, busily engaged in the work of speaking truth to power, she does recognize the limits of this argument, writing that the inclusion of all rap music under the banner of political “dilutes rap music’s significance as a mode of black cultural expression…and undermines the social authority of those artists whose lyrics explicitly and mindfully engage the issue of black liberation” (Cheney 7). Her project, then, is an engagement with politically-minded rappers during what she understands as rap’s “golden age” (late 1980’s/early 1990’s). I find the beginning chapters of Brothers Gonna Work It Out particularly interesting, as it is here that Cheney lays out her argument and is most clear about the intellectual conversations in which she is engaged. For instance, early on this text she borrows from Paul Gilroy’s work on the black Atlantic and modernity, writing: “born in the school of hard knocks at the crossroads of black Atlantic migrations, rap music is a form of black and urban expression that was forged as a truly New World, or diasporic, music” (Cheney 10).

She goes on to argue that “rap music is a truly pan-American phenomenon, a postmodern example of they type of cultural traffic that has been occurring in the black Atlantic since Africans were first brought to the New World” (Cheney 11). Cheney borrows this notion of the black Atlantic to argue for both the centrality of rap as a traveling art form connecting members of the black Diaspora (a claim about which I am generally wary, as it is a slippery slope toward a quasi-Hersovitsian search for Africanisms in various cultural forms) and its attempt to be simultaneously a cultural and political endeavor. What is most interesting about the former point is her brief engagement with a discussion of what, for lack of better term, I will call ‘diasporic blackness.’ To be fair, she does give a shout-out to the fact that many African-American rap artists have transnational backgrounds (“Many influential hip-hop artists—both DJs and lyricists—are first- or second-generation West Indian immigrants”) yet this casual note seems underdone in light of her broader project of situating rap music as a thread connecting the black Diaspora (Cheney 11).

While Cheney is interested in representing rap music as a point of connection among the African diaspora, her central argument remains the positioning of politically-minded ‘raptivists’ and as such, she goes on to engage in a discussion of the political stance taken by many such artists during “golden age”: black nationalism. Part history lesson, part citation-fest, Cheney uses this section to provide the reader with a working knowledge of (black) nationalism. She cites black nationalists such as Malcolm X who called for the creation of a separate black nation, but herself sides with thinkers such as Wahneema Lubiano, Sterling Stuckey, and Komozi Woodard, who “recommend that definitions of black nationalism go beyond the nation-state configuration and be comprehensive enough to include its cultural manifestations” (Cheney 17). Clearly, the inclusion of cultural forms in a black nationalist platform is central to Cheney’s argument. For her, ‘raptivism’ is often rooted in nationalist ideology. However, it is also the case that nationalism has often worked to silence groups within the nation and downplay their leadership abilities (this has been the case particularly in regard to women). Thus, it comes as no great surprise that the politics of rap music are also problematic in regard to gender.

The third chapter of Brothers Gonna Work It Out, a section which shares its title with the overall work, features Cheney acting as an historian, tracing the historical links between rap music (and its practitioners) and politics. Describing artists such as Chuck D, she writes that “they purposefully invoked the rhetorical and political styling of the Black Panther Party and the Black Power movement of the late 1960’s, complete with its envisioning of black nationalism as a politics of masculine protest…Rap nationalists intentionally conjured a tradition of model, and militant, black manhood” (Cheney 63). She goes on to outline the ways in which raptivists during the ‘golden age’ modeled themselves on political actors such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. It is in this section that Cheney’s temporal bracketing (i.e. her single-minded focus on rap during the 1980’s and 1990’s) begins to strike an odd chord: while she is able to make clear the links between culture and politics during this period (a feat accomplished in large part because of her careful contextualization of rap within the larger societal moment defined by issues such as stagflation), her decision not to include more recent artists works to weaken her argument regarding the central importance of the genre. It is true that her final chapter focuses on Mos Def and Talib Kweli (two current hip-hop artists who also perform together in a group known as “Black Star”—a moniker whose political implications are clear to those even fleetingly familiar with Garveyism). However, the fact that this engagement with contemporary hip-hop comes at the end of the text and lasts only a few pages causes Brothers Gonna Work It Out to seem more like a work on the historical particularity of the ‘golden age’ than a treatise on the space where hip-hop and politics meet. In one telling passage, Cheney cites Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian who suggests that “…with rap music a lot of masculine men said, ‘Yeah, this is the way I can sing without singing, and this is a way for me to write poetry without being a poet, like a soft poet.’ And that is why rap is so popular because you can still keep your masculinity” (Cheney 64). This passage, representing rhyming and singing as mutually exclusive for masculine black men calls to mind work done by John Jackson in his recent text, Real Black. In this text Jackson credits, coincidentally enough, Mos Def with bridging this seeming chasm: “Hip-hop polices the borders between singers and rappers quite stringently…Singers are not rappers just as much as the reverse—except when making specific moves to increase the distance between those two forms by crossing that line in recognizably ironic and parodic ways…” However, Jackson goes on to claim that by singing and rapping seriously on his album Black on Both Sides, “Mos Def opens up space for the black, male, hip-hop body to sing itself anew, to destroy the categories of expressive difference that make an authentic male rapper different from an authentic male singer…” (Jackson 187-8). While Cheney does the important work of situating her examples within their broader sociopolitical context, this reader felt that her decision to explore the interstices between rap and politics during the ‘golden age’ make her arguments seem dated: her primary example of someone who transgresses predetermined gender roles she turns to Speech of Arrested Development. Perhaps her introduction of gangsta rap was meant to circumvent this critique, but fails to do so as her discussion centers around artists such as Ice Cube.

There is much to recommend Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Cheney is clearly a capable scholar and hip-hop fan (a combination that makes her text both thoroughgoing and insightful); her style of writing is easily accessible, allowing the reader to follow the ideological course she is plotting, rather than struggle through disciplinary jargon. Further, Cheney does the brave work of outlining fractures within the black community. While she is centrally concerned with inter- gender divisions, she also points to intra- gender complexity, a point most clearly demonstrated in her discussion of the divergent ideological positions taken by Queen Latifah and Sister Souljah in relation to female participation in hip-hop.

In her conclusion entitled “Be True to the Game,” Cheney continues her project of problematizing black nationalism by introducing gender while noting the “continued power of ‘it’s-a-dick-thing’ masculinity and masculinist politicking in U.S. black nationalism” (Cheney 170). In closing Cheney turns to Anne McClintock whose work points to the dangerous silences often produced by nationalism. Toward the end of McClintock’s text, Imperial Leather, she writes: “A crucial question thus remains for progressive nationalism: Can the iconography of the family be retained as the figure for national unity, or must an alternative, radical iconography be developed?” (McClintock 386). Cheney’s contribution is her ability to use rap to skillfully introduce race into the equation such that, for this reader, the question becomes: “Can the black community continue to be understood as a family (or an unproblematized Diaspora), or must this representation be revisited?”

***

TAMI NAVARRO is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.

"A Social Disaster" : Voices from Durham--Dasan Ahanu

I was walking down the street and I saw her looking at me kind of strange
A polite hello and she asked if I was the guy at the open mic last week
I said “yeah” and she commented on the words I spoke
She said my poem had a lot of depth, but I didn’t know as much as I thought
See she was a survivor
And though I saw the problem
I lacked the initiative to say what I was going to do about it
She asked if I ever cried of knew the face of pain
If I ever held a scar so deep that I hide it’s presence
Am I willing to examine it and learn the lesson
Confused, I asked her if that is how it feels
She said no,
That’s how you should feel to know they lied to you about what a man should be
And one victim happened to be me
I promised her I would edit my poem and my mind
And have it ready for her the next time…
Lyrics from “Til” by Dasan Ahanu


Behind the Liquid Wall
by Dasan Ahanu

The lyrics to Til were running through my mind as I stood there on Buchannan. I was standing outside amidst a beautiful crowd of people wondering how this continues to happen. We were holding pots and pans and being led by drums in a harmony of noise and protest . Our attention was set on a house occupied by three captains of the men’s lacrosse team at Duke that was the scene of a rape investigation . I was happy to see people who emphatically wanted to see justice served cry out in support of the survivor of the rape, and voice concern over the culture that allows this to happen at Duke, in Durham, in the US, and around the world.

I began to think about the silence the lacrosse team had taken with authorities. I also began to think about an institution like Duke and the impact the assault has on campus. It seemed that there were two worlds intersecting here that shared similar patterns of behavior. I asked myself at what point does loyalty and tradition take a twisted turn. So often a wall is created that protects and preserves both the positive and negative. This wall silences any outcry that wants change or scrutiny of that negative. What does that wall do to accountability? What does that wall do to offset and already unequal power dynamic? What does that wall do to safety and security for all those affected by what it masks? I see it as a wall of liquid bricks. It begins with a false impression of social interaction and enjoyment, is supported by a tradition of tolerance, and chronicled in the tears of so many survivors.

Liquid Courage

Liquid courage: a slang phrase used to refer to any alcoholic beverage. It refers to the fact that many people are more courageous (or, to put it in less optimistic terms, "have less discretion") once they have become intoxicated with alcohol. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_courage)

When I think about the lyrics to Til I am saddened about how men see their masculinity and run from any critical analysis about it. We are so willing to accept the role identified by society and act it out to the fullest. Then in an attempt to run from self-discovery and from the responsibility and accountability that comes with it, we find ways to bypass the fears this avoidance brings.

Social interaction can be difficult for many of us. This is especially true if we are still struggling with our own identity and place in the world. Men are not taught to take any real time to determine who they are. Men are also not encouraged to engage in healthy dialogue or discovery with other men about their identities. With such a narrow understanding of masculinity, interaction with women in a sincere and compassionate way is hard. This is with the full understanding that interactions with queer folks and anyone outside of the gender binary is even harder.

One perceived solution to overcoming the insecurity in social settings is to use alcohol. Alcohol, also know as “liquid courage” can be seen as the way to free the inner you. It reduces inhibitions and encourages risk as the level of consumption greatens. Depending on the tolerance level of the drinker, it may not take much to feel socially adept. Men use alcohol to escape the reservations of insecurity, but also to numb their conscious. What kind of scene does this set? What problems does this create? What danger does this present when balance and privilege of gender is tilted toward men? Now these men have numbed their conscious, set aside their inhibitions, and quieted their moral sensibility. What is the cost?

Men sit and laugh at each other. Often because a guy got “wet” or drunk and woke up with someone he doesn’t know with a vague recollection of what happened. They make jokes and excuse his actions to the alcohol. Other times it’s because they each have stories of wild things a guy did once intoxicated. These stories are of actions that would normally be considered inappropriate, but are excused to the alcohol. When men chronicle the adventures of “liquid courage” in this way, what do you think they will do when the result was an unwanted sexual advance or a rape?

Wet Environment

Wet: supporting or permitting the legal production and sale of alcoholic beverages; "a wet candidate running on a wet platform"; "a wet county"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

This definition describes an environment where alcohol is welcomed and encouraged. Some colleges are environments where alcohol is welcomed and culturally encouraged. The problem with an environment of tolerance is that undergraduates are mostly underage. What kind of environment is created when alcohol is welcome and tolerated in a space where most of the people occupying the space are under the legal age to purchase it. What kind of environment is created when students are able to indulge within the watch of the institution, behind a wall of tradition and entitlement?

I consider that to be a “wet” institution. An institution that considers partying and alcohol to be part of the college experience. It is an institution that would rather attempt to monitor and contain this lifestyle than deny their students their right to party as they choose. Imagine the ramifications if the “wet” institution is one of prestige and affluence, where the students can get access not just to alcohol, but a lot of alcohol. What effect does tolerance have on campus life when students can throw the biggest, most elaborate, and frequent parties they can imagine? Think of how hard it would be to try and change the culture of partying and alcohol on a campus that is lead by fraternal life. Can you imagine the backlash from male alumnus who valued these experiences and relationships so dearly? How could they rob these new young men of that opportunity to make those same memories? How influential do their criticisms sound to male administrators, some also alums, and how influential are their checkbooks?

The statistics are there. You can Google search and see the number of statistics on alcohol and assaults. Most institutions have an alcohol policy and someone on staff to monitor it. Duke’s policy and enforcement of it has become steadily more stringent. Of course, this means that students will become more creative in order to maintain the culture of access that was allowed their predecessors at the University. This includes the prevalence of utilizing the rental properties around campus. Duke University Police and the Durham Police Department have made efforts to crack down on these events, but they still continue. Not only do these parties continue, but each one gets more elaborate than the last.

The Wet Wall

Solidarity: A feeling or condition of unity based on common goals, interests, and sympathies among a group's members
www.fieldsofhope.org/resources/glossary.asp

I was watching a TV special and listening to one man talk about being loyal to his homeboy. He said that he would “ride” with him no matter what, even if his friend had done something stupid. He said he would talk to him afterwards about how stupid the act was, but would stand with him nonetheless. This is a common theme with men. It is the idea that we protect our own, stand in solidarity, and the whole is more important than the one. I think about this self-destructive habit men have as I witness the silence the lacrosse team has taken. It may be dictated by the coaches who are also men. It may be dictated by the University which is led by a man. Yet, it is a male practice that commonly hides indiscretions.

In a 2004 movie called Wall of Silence directed by Christopher Menaul, the tag line was “Do you say anything if you saw anything?”. I found this to be an interesting way to set up a movie where a crime was committed in public eye and no witnesses would step forward. It highlighted the same practice of not saying anything that would harm one of us. It shames me that we would live with this us versus them mentality that would outweigh an atrocious act being perpetrated on another human being. Does the continuum of masculinity go from men don’t cry to men don’t tell?

Tears Fall, a Sad Song Gets Sung

I have to admit I’ve cried and I know the face of pain. I shed tears through my own pain and struggle. I’ve seen the pain on survivor’s faces and on the faces of those who love them. I’ve held a scar so deep that I hide its presence and only through the support and push of strong people in the movement to end the violence have I learned to examine and learn the lesson. I hope that the assault is not a scar that the men on the lacrosse team continue to hide. I hope the assault is not a scar that Duke hides and isn’t willing to learn the lesson.

Tears have been falling in Durham. The community members in the neighborhood around the house where the assault happened have gathered and shed tears. The students who are horrified that this happened have shed tears. Durham has shed tears as it sees the news reports and reads the articles. There is a survivor still shedding tears with her loved ones and children. Other survivors taken back to their own experiences are shedding tears.

There is an interesting fable by Aesop that I feel fits.

A DOE hard pressed by hunters sought refuge in a cave belonging to a Lion. The Lion concealed himself on seeing her approach, but when she was safe within the cave, sprang upon her and tore her to pieces. “Woe is me,” exclaimed the Doe, “who have escaped from man, only to throw myself into the mouth of a wild beast?”
In avoiding one evil, care must be taken not to fall into another.

Imagine the struggle of trying to escape the culture of society as a whole to end up caught in an even worse situation. To have your response to one struggle used as justification to the outcome of the other. To have your pain overlooked and the larger problem ignored. Imagine having to face the fact that the truth is hidden behind a wall of silence.

I just want the wall to come down and a real change to be made.

***

I would like to thank all those who believe in stopping the violence by changing the culture, the survivors and their strength, advocates and activists who push for social change, the women who have showed us how to fight, the queer community who have showed us how to fight, and the ancestors and elders who gave of themselves to stop all oppressions. Thank you to Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Dr. Jean Leonard, Kevin Powell, NCCASA (www.nccasa.org), NCADV (www.ncadv.org) and Bryan Proffitt and he guys of MARC (http://www.marcnc.blogspot.com/).

Chris Massenburg a.k.a. Dasan Ahanu is a co-founder of Men Against Rape Culture (MARC) and a poet, emcee, activist, organizer, and educator. He can be reached at dasan67@gmail.com.

A Social Disaster : Voices from Durham--Bryan Proffitt

Don’t Nobody Move
by Bryan Proffitt

I can already see folks packing up their pots, pans, and protest signs. I am reading the newspaper reporters, so quick to sensationalize in the past few weeks, rolling up their rage and heading home. The T.V. producers, not two steps out of the cutting room, headed back in to rewrite the story.

“White men attacked”

“Innocent Students Demand Justice”

“Tawanna Brawley All Over Again”

Please.

I’ve read the same reports that everybody else has. In mid-March, a Black student/mother/daughter/woman/human was hired to dance at a party hosted by members of the Duke University lacrosse team. She leaves the party, calls the police, and reports that she and a companion have been racially assaulted, and that she has been sexually assaulted by three members of the team. There is a medical exam that reveals sustained physical trauma. The Durham police take a DNA sample from every white member of the team because the woman identifies her assailants as white men. Weeks of protest, education, and counter-protest and counter-education. The DNA samples come back negative.

And?

Look, those of us that have been concerned about sexual assault for more than just the last few weeks have been clear about this thing from the start. We have a commitment to believing those who come forward with stories of survival first. This case is no different. Something dehumanizing, frightening, and wrong happened in that house. Regardless of the specifics, there is healing to be done and justice to be fought for. Sexual assault is a parasite that feeds on silence, and with each heroic public step forward, the wall of silence is chipped away. One of the most, if not the most, important factors in the healing process of survivors is to be believed. Too many are unwilling. Too many ask questions like, “What were you doing in his room?” “How many drinks had you had?” and “Why did you put yourself in that situation in the first place?” With each insidiously incriminating question, survivors are systematically put back in their places. And not just survivors of a particular assault, countless survivors who have had this story forced upon them are thrust back into reliving a painful process each time this cycle repeats itself. This case, as with most others, has done immeasurable emotional damage to ALL survivors.

But, the publicity of this case has also already provided the space for many survivors to heroically step forward and tell their stories. The importance of this space cannot be understated.

However, the inevitable backlash has already sown the seeds for future violence. From many corners, the questions about this woman’s profession have added bricks to the wall of silence. “She was a stripper. She should have known this was coming.” We don’t have this reaction when a construction worker is injured in an accident. We don’t chastise an airplane pilot when the actions of someone else cause a plane to crash. And we DEFINITELY don’t respond with, “well, he should have known this was coming,” to a tale of a policeman shot on the beat. The fact that this woman’s occupation was to play with the erotic is no justification for men raping a women they pay to provide a service. I’ll say that more plainly…there is nothing that this woman, or any woman, could have done to deserve being sexually assaulted, racially harassed, or otherwise violated or humiliated. Being in the wrong place at that wrong time is not a rape-able offense.

The fact that these responses have emerged, however, will serve to silence future survivors from coming forward, whether this particular woman’s story is proven in a court of law or not. A wife will not speak out against her husband because, well, “it’s her duty to provide him with sex.” A college student will not go to the police with her story because, “she shouldn’t have been drunk and in his room in the first place.” A gay high school student violently attacked will stay quiet because, “obviously, that is what he was asking for.” A sex worker will not step forward because, come on, “who would possibly believe a sex worker.” Even if this particular case is validated in a court of law, the seeds of doubt and future silences have already taken root.

And don’t let this thing get dis-proven in a court of law, or actually turn out to be false (those two statements, mind you, are not saying the same thing)…

Survivors will be forced further underground.

Conversely, men will become emboldened. For the last four years, my comrades in Men Against Rape Culture (MARC) and I have been doing workshops challenging men to confront the realities of sexual assault. I can’t remember a workshop when at least one man has not referred to the fact that men are under attack by women. “What happens if she wakes up and ‘calls' rape because she regrets it, or because we were both drunk? Now my life is ruined.” These men, of course, have little to no understanding about what it means to have one’s life ruined.

This is what having one’s life ruined looks like: regular sleep lost due to post-traumatic nightmares of sexual violence, a job lost due to the inability to focus while surviving from rape, doctor’s bills, a lifetime of counseling, expensive anti-depressants to keep you alive, eating disorders, struggles with a healthy sexuality and self-image, isolation and humiliation…these are just a few of the common after effects of sexual assault that might ruin somebody’s life.

Because of the process discussed above, it is extremely rare for someone to allege a sexual assault that did not actually happen. If this case turned out to be that exception to the rule of violence and silence, the white men on this lacrosse team will have had their lives altered. That much is true. The discomfort they would unjustly experience in that circumstance, however, is a toothpick compared to the forest of rape survival. Mountains and mole hills.

This particular case, as my MARC comrades and I say, is the “Rape CNN.” It is the sensationalized version of what happens every single day in this world. If we allow it to, it will dominate our public discussions about sexual assault for the next year. Those of us who have been working to end sexual violence, and all male violence, will not let this happen.

We know a few things, and we are going to keep those things at the center of our work:

1) Something very wrong happened that night at 610 Buchanan Ave. in Durham. It could have been sexual assault, the unchecked violence of racism, or the fear and intimidation that comes from just the threat of violence. Much of this wouldn’t even be deemed an injury in the eyes of this legal system. The legal system in this country is ill prepared to work for actual justice, and it will never be an institution that can promote healing. It has never worked for women of color, why would it work now? Even if these white men are found innocent of sexual assault, the psychological and emotional damage has been done to the woman who has survived the trauma, to survivors of all trauma, and to the community of Durham. We will still work for healing. We will still work for justice.

2) Sexual assault happens every day and in every community. We will believe that this particular case is true until we are thoroughly convinced otherwise. We need to hear it from the mouth of the woman herself, and even then we recognize the potential impact that Duke’s money, social intimidation, or a broken system could have on the truth. This is our commitment to helping heal the individual and social wounds of sexual assault. We will still fight for accountability for the perpetrators, reparations to the survivor and the community, and a renewed focus on creating spaces for healing and the PREVENTION of future racial and sexual violence.

3) We will continue to assert points #1 and 2, regardless of the legal outcome of this case. This case, while publicly significant, and significant in the lives of those involved, is a tear drop in the sea of sexual assault. We will stay focused on the work of long-term, sustainable change as we seek healing and justice for this survivor.

4) Black women, and other women of color, are raped every day. White supremacy works to convince us that Black women, and other women of color, cannot be raped because they are ALWAYS sexually available. We know that all women of color are human beings with full sexual agency that must be respected at ALL times, no matter their occupation, relationship status, or the decisions that they make about their lives.

5) Men rape, men support rape, and make can end rape. Rape is not sex. It is an act of violence. Specifically, it is an act of MALE violence, though women certainly perpetrate sexual assault in small numbers, mostly against women and children. And while not all men are rapists, almost all rapists are men. Men rape women, men rape children, men rape other men, and men rape transgender individuals. Men also benefit from patriarchy, the cultural, political, and social institutions that privilege men and create hierarchy that must be enforced by violence. Men threaten and intimidate and use our power to frighten others. Men, most importantly, can play a powerful role in ending rape. It is our problem; it is our challenge; it is our task. Men can end rape.

6) America, and the world, is sick with white supremacy and racism; heterosexism and homophobia; patriarchy, sexism, and transphobia; and poverty and capitalist excess. These systems all interact to create a culture of violence that must be changed. We teach our children the lessons of these systems, and they grow up to reinforce them. We must dismantle these systems if we hope to end the onslaught of violence.

7) Survivors will create the path forward. In resisting violence, homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and capitalism, survivors of oppression generate the vision for the rest of us to follow. Their strength and their humanity is the only way out.

So don’t pack up your bags folks. It’s not time to retreat. It’s time to dig in and get ready for a fight that doesn’t end until the violence stops and we’re all free. It’s the fight that’s going to save our lives. It’s the fight that’s going to save our souls.

***

This essay was strengthened profoundly by the brilliant and challenging criticism and editing of Christy Tronnier, Nancy Wilson, Bob Pleasants, Beth Bruch, Dasan Ahanu, Kai Barrow, and Theo Luebke. Many thanks y’all.

Bryan Proffitt is a Hip-Hop generation white man that writes, organizes, teaches, and lives in Durham, NC. He is one of the co-founders of Men Against Rape Culture, and can be reached at bproffitt33@yahoo.com. Please send feedback.

A Social Disaster : Voices from Durham--Wahneema Lubiano

Perfect Offenders, Perfect Victim:
The Limitations of Spectacularity in the Aftermath of the Lacrosse Team Incident
by Wahneema Lubiano

Legal scholar and critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw has asserted that the default doctrine of colorblindness in law forces black Americans “to articulate themselves as perfect victims as against a perfect discriminator” [citation: The House That Race Built, (ed.) W. Lubiano]. Crenshaw’s language about the working of the law helps me think about some things that I’m hearing in this moment. Throughout various discussions of the criminal and social issues of this incident, I hear desire on the part of various constituencies for the comfort either of being able to construct a perfect offender and a perfect victim, and, therefore, some kind of resolution, or the converse position–the comfort of saying that the impossibility of constructing a perfect offender and a perfect victim means that nothing happened and that nothing needs to be resolved.

There is a spectacularity to what has been discussed and represented, and that spectacularity, I think, is driven in no small part by some desire for our understanding to be complete, coherent, and visible. This moment’s intensity is driven equally by the relative privateness of our encounters. We’re part of a university and a city, but absent the space that was opened up by the protests, vigils, and scattered limited fora such as this one, we don’t have a public sphere where discussion easily flows. And in the midst of the difficulty of bridging the distances between us and the structures of power wherein decisions are made, we have to yell in order to be heard.

At the same time we read and watch the media through which positions are articulated, and we consume again and again the spectacle that is news and the news as spectacle. Whatever our desires and fears are in this moment, depending upon our ability to be heard, the threads of our fears and desires are woven through the positions we articulate. And the positions that are articulated are filtered and modified by hierarchies of power and influence and by conventional wisdom which is itself influenced by powerful actors. The heat, then, is necessarily turned up.

In other words, I’m suggesting that some of the discussion, the rhetoric, being circulated in the aftermath of the incident and coming either from those defending the alleged offenders or those defending the alleged victim, is rhetoric driven, haunted, by a fight over whether or not we have offenders who can be seen as “perfect” in their villainy and a victim whose victimage can be seen as necessarily complete and thus “perfect.”

Within the terms of the responses to the incident, I understand the impulse of those outraged and who see the alleged offenders as the exemplars of the upper end of the class hierarchy, the politically dominant race and ethnicity, the dominant gender, the dominant sexuality, and the dominant social group on campus. Further, this group has been responsible for extended social violence against the neighborhood in which they reside. In short, by a combination of their behaviors and what they represent in terms of social facts, and by virtue of their relation to the alleged victim, for those who are defenders of the victim, the members of the team are almost perfect offenders in the sense that Crenshaw writes about. As more information circulates and the stakes are raised by virtue of considerations of Duke’s and the nation’s long-standing class, race, and gender disparities, they are increasingly “perfected” as offenders. As part of this dynamic, the young woman, black and non-wealthy, made even more vulnerable by virtue of being employed by the perfect offenders and outnumbered, approaches the state of perfect victim. However, even within the media circulation of narratives, neither the offenders’ nor the victim’s “perfection” is absolutely complete; our own imaginations and our own language has to complete it.

For those who are critical of the victim, her specific vulnerabilities as someone who works at a job socially disapproved of by much of the public, whose presence in the house constitutes for them a mitigation of her victimage–even a rationale for what might have happened to her, and whose complexities as parent and student are marginalized in discussions that support the offenders, her victimage is far from perfect. Being a woman already means that her behavior is subject to heightened social scrutiny and disciplining and makes her a target both of free-floating sexism that regulates the social behavior of women and of Puritanism about the body and its display. For those critical of the alleged victim, her “perfectness” as victim is severely decreased by her position as an outlier in terms of norms of acceptable female gender behavior. Against this assault by her critics, her race, her gender, her class standing, her status as a mother, and her position as a student have to be rhetorically heightened by her defenders in order for them to secure a tenuous hold on her perfectness as victim.

Within the specifics of this moment, for those who are critical of the team, in order for their “perfectness” as offenders to intensify, any ethnic differences among the offenders have to disappear into a general “whiteness”; any differences among the familial wealth has to disappear into a general understanding of their privilege; and any differences among the behaviors of individual players has to disappear into a general understanding of their record of bad behavior. Within the specifics of this moment, any complexity of the victim has to disappear into a general understanding of what she represents historically–a category of those socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged who are subject to the domination of the offender category. The perfectness of the offenders has to be solidified so that a critique of their social and institutional production can be underscored. Against this solidification of their perfectness as offenders, their defenders have to reinforce and heighten the circulation of rhetoric around a narrative, among other things, of their wonderful athletic ability, understandings of them as fine, upstanding young men or boys who are good students, the products of good homes, and the possessors of good characters attested to by their grades, their performances, and the fine characters and records of those who support them. Their perfectness as offenders has to be lessened, mitigated, or disrupted to the point that any bad behavior is forgiveable by virtue of the mitigations – mitigations such as “they aren’t any different from other young men” who drink and party in boisterous manner and, occasionally, slip over the line of acceptable behavior; therefore, what is happening to them is a horrible injustice. Their offense has to decrease in size and severity.

In this moment, my concern is with the attractiveness either of the dynamic of the construction or the utter dissolution of perfect victimage and perfect offenders and, by extension, the demand that any offense itself be perfect or perfectible. Whatever is routine about this incident is marginalized while a desire for the incident to live up to its most horrific possibilities fights it out in public discussion with its rhetorical other – the desire to mitigate the routine ugliness by insisting that the most horrific possibilities are impossible under the particular circumstances of the case. This fight of desires then extends to the question of evidence – a demand for perfect evidence on the part of the defenders of the team (a demand most spectacularly articulated by, but not limited, of course, to their lawyers). The idea that evidence, like all other aspects of the incident, is part of a circulation of narratives seems to be lost as the newspapers and the television move from one flash point to another.

Now, why am I talking about what is happening in discussions about this incident in this way? Why am I raising these questions? I want to move from the specific harms associated with the incident alleged at the house on N. Buchanan Blvd. in order to look at the more difficult to “see,” the less spectacularly visible harms of more generally structured and distributed sexism and racism. I want to do this for what I consider two imporant reasons.

1. I want to help clarify thinking and discussion around what has happened in the aftermath of March 13th. If a crime occurred, I want to insist that the victim need not be spectacularly represented or constructed as a perfect victim; the offenders need not be spectacularly represented or constructed as perfect offenders; the crime need not have the contours of the worst possible set of actions that can be imagined for great harm to have been done to this young woman. Gendered violence is much more often banal and routine as much as it is horrific. I want us all to remember that.

2. As a precondition of thinking through the complexities of necessary institutional change in this moment, I offer my critique of perfect offender, perfect victim, perfect crime, and perfect evidence construction and dissolution as an analogy for thinking about such change. I offer this to all of us but especially to individuals, newspaper editors, and columnists weighing in on this matter in print on this campus. I do think that the Duke administration is getting the point.

In other words, (1) Duke need not be proved to be the worst or the only institutional sinner ever to have inhabited the earth, (2) not every single person of color and/or woman on this campus needs to have been harmed moment-by-moment by either the most horrific presence of racism and/or sexism or their most routine manifestations, and (3) Durham does not need to have to prove that it never benefitted from Duke’s presence, in order for change in the institution to be undertakened. And the proving of all acts of individual racism, sexism, and gendered violence is not necessary before structural racism and sexism are addressed.

Different versions of this desire for perfection that I’m talking about become visible in a kind of dominant or mainstream discourse and call for a perfect proof of harm: within that discourse, all people of color must be called some version of nigger, raghead, or wetback for racism to register its presence; all women must show themselves to be of sterling character and careful of their dress, behavior, and location when sexism is demonstrated in order for its workings to be acknowledged; all those who are less well-off must certify their lack of income and its relation to their diminished social and economic opportunities in order for classism to be raised as a concern.

What attention to spectacularity brings with it is a hideous cost: the absolute worst that can be imagined must be shown to be present for any harm to be perceived as possible. Such thinking, if extended to a history of the institution’s past or a history of its present, means that harms can’t be addressed unless the worst possible individual subjects are caught in the act of behaving in the worst possible fashion to the most severely injured and worthy victims. A movement away from the demand for spectacularity of sexism, racism, and gender violence toward understanding and consideration of the everydayness of those things could work toward erasing or at least easing the almost knee-jerk dismissal of charges of racism, sexism, and a critique of class entitlements, a dismissal continually on display in newspaper editorials and columns, and by individual speakers and groups that insist on spectacularly visible expressions of such. We don’t have to wait for fully attested to conspiracies among highly placed officials, or cross burnings on the quad or in dorm halls, or assaults attested to by perfectly placed witnesses and evidence in order to undertake change.

Regardless of the “truth” established in whatever period of time about the incident at the house on N. Buchanan Blvd., the engine of outcry in this moment has been fueled by the difficult and mundane reality that pre-existed this incident and that continues to occur in everday and non-spectacular life in this place. Whatever happens with the court case, what people are asking is that something changes.

***

Wahneema Lubiano is Associate Professor of Literature and African and African American Studies(Ph.D., Stanford, 1987). Before coming to Duke she taught at Princeton, the University of Texas at Austin, and Williams College. Her essays and articles have been published in Social Text, Cultural Critique, boundary 2, American Literary History, Callaloo, New Engladn Quarterly, among other publications. She is author of the forthcoming books Messing With the Machine: Politics, Form and African-American Fiction and Like Being Mugged by a Metaphor: "Deep Cover" and Other "Black" Fictions, and editor of The House That Race Built: Black Americans, U.S. Terrain (1996). Her current research interests include African-American literature, African-American popular culture and film, womens' studies, black intellectual history, and nationalism.

A Social Disaster : Voices from Durham--Mark Anthony Neal

(White) Male Privilege, Black Respectability, and Black Women’s Bodies
by Mark Anthony Neal


“As a black female, you go to a party, you're expected to dance, you're expected to be sexually provocative. You [are expected to] want to be touched, to be grabbed, to be fondled…As if they're re-enacting a rap video or something. As if we're there to be their video ho, basically. We can't just be regular students here. We can't just go to a party and enjoy ourselves.”—Audrey Christopher and Danielle Terrazas Williams (The Independent Weekly, 3.29.06)

“Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.”
—Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”


When a young black women was allegedly raped, sodomized, robbed and beaten by members of the Duke University Lacrosse team of March 13th of this year, it was initially treated as little more than another case of “(privileged) boys gone wild”. As word began to spread about the specifics of the case, various communities mobilized to lay claim to its significance. These groups include Durham residents with long-standing grievances against the University, activists rightfully protesting yet another incident of alleged sexual violence related to a college campus, members of various black communities who wanted to highlight the racist implications of the alleged assault and of course those who felt that too many people were rushing to judgment about the alleged rapists, well before the true facts of the case were established. At the center of all of these claims and allegiances is the body of a young black woman, who in many ways has been continually assaulted, by the inability of the various narratives surrounding the case to take serious the realities of racialized sexual violence against women of color.

To date no charges have been filed in the so called “Duke lacrosse rape case”. The results of a DNA analysis taken after the alleged attack suggest that the members of the Duke lacrosse team were not involved in the attack, though the local district attorney will continue to pursue the case. As such I am less interested in trafficking through declarations of guilt and innocence in the case, but rather interested in illuminating the various perceptions that have been and will continue to be projected onto the body of the black woman who is the focal point of this case. As has been reported so far, the accuser is a full-time student at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and a single mother of two. The young woman and a friend were purportedly hired to dance at a bachelor party at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd. in Durham—a residence shared by several of the lacrosse team players.

Though some have downplayed the significance of race in this case—violence against women is violence against women—the intersections and race and gender are palpable. As Greg Garber notes in his fine coverage of the case for ESPN.com, the default request for exotic dancers at mainstream escort agencies is often white women (preferably blonde and big-breasted). Thus in all likelihood, regardless of what happened inside of 610 N. Buchanan Blvd, the young men were hoping to consume something that they felt that a black woman uniquely possessed. If these young men did in fact rape, sodomize, rob, and beat this young women, it wasn’t simply because she was a women, but because she was a black woman.

UCLA and Columbia University Law professor and critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw explains the uniqueness of discrimination against black women in her seminal essay “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”. According to Crenshaw: “Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction , and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling in any number of directions, and sometimes, from all of them.” Using the traffic intersection as a metaphor, Crenshaw argues that black women often “experience double discrimination—the combined efforts of practices which discriminate on the basis of race and on the basis of sex. And sometimes, they experience discrimination as black women—not the sum of race and sex discrimination, but as black women.”

Of course there are historic discourses that have constructed black women as hypersexual insatiable, and exotic—such discourses have often been employed as the rationale for racialized sexual and rhetorical violence against black women. Contemporary examples of such discourses can be found in the flippant and hateful on-air comments by national radio personalities Rush Limbaugh and Neil Boortz, who described the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse case and U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, respectively, as a “ho” and a “ghetto slut”. Though it is often the music videos of hip-hop artists that are targeted for the degradation of black women’s bodies, these videos—like the syndicated shows of Boortz and Limbaugh, television networks like BET and MTV, and recording labels—are simply the vehicles for the corporately controlled circulation of black women’s bodies as such . The message is clear: black women and their bodies have little value, little protection and are accessible to anyone who feels entitled to them. Thus it should not be surprising that a generation of young white men, for whom the consumption of hip-hop has been second nature, would find a black exotic dancer desirable or in the worse case scenario, sexually available to them, even if she resist their advances. But the Duke lacrosse rape case is not simply about centuries old dramas across the color line—It also about the tensions within black communities about which black bodies deserve protection and defense

As the “identity” of the young black woman in the case began to be constructed in the media, it was revealed that she was an “exotic dancer” and un-wed mother of two. These facts should be irrelevant in a sexual assault case, but as is well known, defense attorneys often seek to demonize rape victims—in the courts and in the media—so that the integrity of the victim is called into question. The goal is to have the public and juries to believe that rape victims bear the burden of responsibility in their assaults. As scholar Wahneema Lubiano recently opined, this is part of the tenuous status of being a women in American society; If you are not “at home” under the “supervision” of a father or a husband, it is open season on your body. Already there have been attempts to portray the young woman who was raped, sodomized, robbed and beaten as immoral on the basis that she was a “stripper” and an unfit mother, who left her two children home while she performed.

But such demonization takes on another dynamic within the world of “black respectability.” It was clear from the outset, that for some black communities in Durham, NC, the young women was not a “respectable” victim. The concept of “black respectability” can be traced back to the struggles of African-Americans in the early days following “emancipation”, where so many of the former enslaved sought to find common ground—a shared humanity—with the white citizenry. The strategy behind “black respectability”—exemplified in the late 19th and early 20th century by the Black Women’s Club Movement and the New Negro Movement and much later by the NAACP Image Awards—was to put the “best face” of the race forward. Accordingly, it also meant that less savory black bodies and antics had to be reduced to so-called “dirty laundry”—never to see the light of day. It was a logical strategy, given the pervasiveness of white supremacy in the century after emancipation and the desire of many black leaders to fight racism, disenfranchisement and racist violence on moral grounds. But it also created the context where those black bodies and practices that were not thought to be respectable enough were jettisoned to the margins of black life and culture.

Ultimately the desire was to find the most “respectable” victims to help animate black communities to struggle against racism, segregationist practices and disenfranchisement. The late Rosa Parks embodied such a “victim”. As noted scholar Aldon Morris notes in his book The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks galvanized blacks in Montgomery, AL and nationally, in part, because she was a “quiet, dignified woman of high morals”. (52) The same could not be said for fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, who more than 8 months _before_ Rosa Parks’s historic act, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. Unlike Ms. Parks, Ms. Colvin loudly protested the request that she move from her seat and was eventually charged with assault and battery on the bus driver who made the request and the police officers who were called in to intervene. When it was eventually revealed that Ms. Colvin was an un-wed, pregnant teen, black activists in Montgomery backed off of her case, waiting for a more respectable candidate—Ms. Parks—to emerge. Though the Duke Lacrosse case occurs in a different historical context than the Montgomery bus boycott, the silence and ambiguity emitting from some in black communities in Durham and elsewhere resembles the efforts of Montgomery’s black leaders to distance themselves from Colvin.

Even more profound are those who would distance themselves from the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse case, because she was involved in “immoral” behavior. Such a point was made by Herald-Sun columnist John McCann—in many ways the “voice” of Black Durham—who suggested that the case was about the “consequences of violating moral laws.” (3.29.06) He later added in a subsequent column that the young woman was at 512 Buchanan Blvd. to “arouse and titillate young men who allegedly stumbled the same way she did—inappropriately using the body and mind.” (4.04.06) In McCann’s world a “thin line separates the criminal”—rape—and the “immoral”—exotic dancing. McCann’s comments are reflective of a deep social conservatism that offers little protection those who are thought to be immoral. Thus had the alleged victim in this case had been a gay black man or a black lesbian—such as the late Sakia Gunn (and far too many like her)—who was randomly assaulted, their assaults would likely be met with the same level of silence and moral scrutiny (as compared to your run-of-the-mill gang-banger, who gets shot by a law enforcement officer).

The real immorality here is the way that “silence” makes so many black folk complicit in sexual attacks against black women and girls. For every media spectacle, which highlights sexual violence across the color line, there are numerous black women who are assaulted in their own communities and even homes by black men. This is the point that Aishah Shahidah Simmons’s poignant documentary NO! makes throughout. Black male sexual violence against black women and girls is more often than not, met with blatant silence and denial or in the case of black celebrities, what University of Florida law professor Katheryn Russell-Brown calls “black protectionism”. In her book Protecting Our Own: Race, Crime, and African-Americans (Rowman & Littlefield) defines black protectionism as “what happens when the African-American community rallies around its fallen heroes—those prominent blacks who have been accused of wrongdoing.” Black protectionism figures prominently in issues of rape and sexual abuse in the black community given the number of highly visible black men, to name a few, who have been accused (Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), convicted (heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson and former congressman Mel Reynolds) and recorded (R. Kelly) of/in acts of sexual abuse and harassment against black women and girls. In each case, to varying degrees, these men benefited from black protectionism. As Russell-Brown notes, “black protectionism splits the Black community by gender. It treats prominent black men as a unique class.”

The Duke lacrosse rape case has generated so much attention and media coverage because it traffics in the time tested spectacles of race relations and white privilege gone awry. Regardless of whether or not anyone is indicted and convicted in the case, the reality is that women will continue to be raped and those sexual assaults will continue to be met with silence and a degree of dismissiveness that holds the victims accountable for attacks on their bodies. If anything should come of the human tragedy that is unfolding in Durham, NC, it should be to challenge us as a nation to take very seriously the incidences of sexual assault—in all of its forms—and to construct responses to those crimes that are reflective of a society concerned with all assaults on our humanity.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is Associate Professor of African-American Studies at Duke University and the author of four books, including the recent New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity.