Are you checking your Motives and Thoughts?

Last Friday, I read a (slam?)poem in class called Motives and Thoughts by Lauryn Hill. As I mentioned to the class, it was first heard in 2005 on Def Jam by Lauryn Hill. Def Jam was an American Record Label that was focused mostly on hip hop and urban music. It was founded by Rick Rubin at NYU University in the early 1980’s. The first recordings were put out in 1984, and as the decade continued, various other groups were signed onto the record. In 1998, it was merged into the Universal Music Group. In the 2000s, the company spread to other countries including Japan and Germany. The famous Jay-Z became the president of the company as well, and once the leadership was passed on, the company didn’t last for much longer. In April of 2014, it was decided that the label would no longer be active.

As a side note, and something that many of you have already been exposed to, Erykah Badu (another female rap artist), did a slam poem on Def Jam in 2003 that is really fun to watch and listen to. The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEXu6UmRPZc

I encourage you to watch it.

Anyways, Lauryn Hill’s performance took place sort of in the middle of her phasing out of the rap scene. She had decided that she wasn’t very satisfied with the pressure of fame and the music industry. So, it was significant that she made this appearance on Def Jam. The whole poem is sort of a critique of our society, though, and so I think she may have been comfortable coming out with something that was strong worded. The poem also teeters between rap and poetry because it has a lot of the “couplets” like rap, but isn’t as fast.

Rotating bodies, confusion of sound

Negative imagery, holding us down

Social delusion, clearly constructed

Human condition, morals corrupted

This is the first four lines of the poem, and we can see a type of rhythm already. I enjoyed both listening to it and reading it, but I also want to touch on what Lauryn Hill is actually talking about. She begins by talking about our society and how there is “negative imagery” and “social delusion.” She is shedding light on how the media affects our perception of the things around us. A line in the first stanza,

wicked theology, robbing the poor,

is saying that the less fortunate people in our world are the ones who suffer the most from our corrupt system. I think that although this doesn’t mention anything about race, we can infer that Hill is talking about black communities in our nation because of the generally higher poverty rates there. The poem continues, talking about the fact that we are all “hoes” in this society -- used as tools to do the work that our government wants us to without any good reason. There are some other good lines that serve as good examples to what Hill is trying to get at:

Primitive man with civilized knowledge

System collapse and he still won’t acknowledge

God is the saviour, studies behavior

Trying to fix the mix mind he gave ya

Although I think the poem is important to interpret on its own without knowing Lauryn Hill’s background, I do want to mention that she is pretty religious. I think she includes “God” in her poem to challenge the idea of our society always turning to science even when there is another source. I do think, however, that she also criticizes the institutionalized practice of religion in her poem, and believes that she has a different kind of relationship with God than anyone else. Towards the end of her poem, she has two blocks of:

Motives and thoughts

Check your motives and thoughts

that have another stanza in between them. I actually had the class read those with me on the whim (because we were all pretty tired and so I figured it would wake people up/help people understand the poem more), and I thought that it was nice for everyone to let those words sink in a little more. I think those lines serve as reminders to the reader/listener of this poem, but other people thought they were also messages to God or to Lauryn, herself. The end of the poem

Blind with the wickedness, deep in your heart

Modern day wickedness is all you’ve been taught

Lied to your neighbors, so you get ahead

Modern day trickery is all you’ve been fed

explains that people don’t know any better than to assume the worst of one another or thinking about the real consequences of things. There is more I could say, but I have already gone on for a while. I am wondering if Hill has the right to critique our society so strongly -- it seemed in class that the general vibe is that she doesn’t really. If we think about some of the rap we’ve listened to in class over the past couple of weeks, haven’t there been some strong critiques like this as well? The genre of “protest rap” is strong in this way, and I am only wondering if gender is involved. As in, does this poem come off strongly or stronger than other male rap artists because Lauryn Hill is a woman? If anyone has any opinions or comments, I would love to hear them. Thanks!

The link for Lauryn Hill’s live performance of Motives and Thoughts is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kntNPyThiH0

White Boy Shuffle

In White Boy Shuffle, I believe Paul Beatty has created a public space for black culture to be explored in the 21st century. Through basketball, poems, and hip hop, he is able to portray a more stereotypically black environment, but tries to challenge the expectations of race in our new world. Beatty critiques it through humor and mockery, but also validates the very real circumstances that many blacks (black men in particular) are in. And for Gunnar -- Beatty shows that it’s not his “calling” to be a leader, but just something that Gunnar has fallen into. This is different than many “black novels,” but I think sets a different trope to black male agenda. The population around him needs him to fit this role, even when he doesn’t care for it. Gunnar’s politics and culture are interspersed throughout the novel, and that re emphasizes the new type of leadership that White Boy Shuffle introduces.

The Flow of The White Boy Shuffle

I am sure that like me, you all have felt the different languages that each of the books we have read carry. Native Son was fairly straightforward to read, but had such specific detail that it needed (and we wanted to) close reading. Invisible Man was more layered because it was our narrator recounting his own story, but also because packed in many metaphors and parts where we needed to read between the lines. Their Eyes Were Watching God, of course, was in that "black" vernacular that Richard Wright wasn't too fond of. That was more difficult to start reading, but became an easy trope to follow. And finally, we are at White Boy Shuffle, and it has its own themes. 

As I was reading Chapter 8, I was especially thinking about the overall pace of White Boy Shuffle -- it doesn't acknowledge the reader as much as some of the other books in that it moves more in Gunnar's preferred pace. I think that's the point of the book, though. Not only to display Gunnar's life, but to let the reader feel his thoughts through the constant movement of the novel. 

"Gasping for air, I almost took the remedial schedule and the weeks' worth of lunch money my counselor, Ms. Baumgarten offered me, but my pride got the better of me" (153). In this moment, I was thinking "here we go...," and then he is off into "Just stop patronizing me and do your job." Gunnar jumps at the chance to live through honesty, and I definitely admire him for it. 

As we talked about recently in class, I appreciate the way Gunnar doensn't conform in the same way most of us would. College, the shots in the basketball game, the wife -- they all mean something different to him (if they mean something at all) than we might expect. And the language plays right along with this in that it parallels with piled on quotes or metaphors allowing Gunnar to let his mind run. I'm not saying this book is just unedited work, I'm just saying that the plot and the language go hand in hand. In the same Chapter 8, Gunnar has an encounter with the Harvard recruiter. The Harvard recruiter begins to teach him how to mountain climb, but Gunnar just goes "home." He "lowered himself into the night," and that represented his disinterest for Harvard. The next line reads "Mom was disappointed I wasn't going to Harvard" (160). I admire this decision making -- I wish I had the same skill. 

Kanye or Kim Appreciation?

Guess who still rests as the background of my blog!? Kanye! I thought I would take a moment to showcase his written reaction of an infamous photo of Kim Kardashian's butt that is swarming the internet currently. He used one of his tweets for this message.

I know this doesn't have much to do with race, but the Kim-Kanye relationship is very central to what he identifies with (black man marrying woman with large butt). I won't take time to talk very much about this right now, but if any of you have any comments about this dynamic, I would love to hear! Thanks.

Ethnic Notions

Ethnic Notions struck me in several ways: the culture of entertainment in the United States, the way that oppression continues because it psychologically controls people, the fashion in which blacks were supposed to be non-threatening, and also the way that our opinions of these caricatures have changed over time... or have they? Sorry, that seems like most of it. But I was very glad I watched the youtube video because it got my juices flowing (and now my words, I suppose).

Throughout my lifetime, I have been exposed to examples of blacks as entertainment for white people. This movie and Invisible Man have been more recent ones with their Sambo dolls and Mammy figures. But I am also thinking about the ridicule of black names by my classmates. Many black names are more creative or out-of-the-box than many “white” names, often times because they are newly invented. Part of this, I think, comes from the culture of R&B and jazz. I am thinking about many examples of blacks not being considered for voting or jobs because of their inadequacy. In all these ways, the idea of blacks being on the same level was hard for people to grasp. It’s interesting to me that we tend to poke such fun at anything that is different than us. I believe that many of the Sambo dolls and other black caricatures come from the insecurities of many figures in history (and today as well). There are many sayings that proceed along the lines of, “If you don’t get out now, you’ll never get out.” This has been applied to relationships, the Midwest, etc. But I think that often poor stricken areas keep their members in. In Ethnic Notions, there was a bit of talk about the oppression of blacks. It is easy to see that even though many obvious trails of racism are no longer here, racism persists, even if its forms are less overt. The caricatures displayed in the video may not be gone, but are black females really portrayed as “sexy” in our media today? Models are almost exclusively white;but does that mean that the “Mammy” character is really gone? If any of you have any ideas, I encourage you to share!

I would like to finish with a little piece of advice -- something that I have been thinking about since the summer but also since the movie. We, as a class at Uni, are privileged to be able to talk about the way that race manifests itself. We have education that many people are not able to get. I think that if you ever find yourself with someone who either racially crosses the line, or has questions about this topic, you are responsible for sharing your knowledge with them as well. Education really is the key in the erosion of racism in this country. And it’s cool that this class has a very real world aspect, because there are many things we can do with the tools we are acquiring!