I went running today (weird, I know) and for some reason spent the whole time thinking about the post I wrote yesterday about Reed's portrayal of white characters (weirder still). In light of this, I want to revisit the topic and partially, but certainly not entirely, recant.
I still think the fact that Reed depicts his white characters as fundamentally unable to be genuinely engaged in Jes Grew suggests that different cultures cannot ever completely blend, and I still think that this is an extremely backwards idea. However, yesterday I felt like this notion was completely outdated—like Reed was buying into a 1920s mindset even though he was writing 50 years later. Now, after much further consideration (I do some of my best thinking on the treadmill), I'm not so sure.
It's pretty nice to think of America as a melting pot, and I guess I almost always have. But you know what? That's really not accurate. America is diverse, yes, but I wouldn't call it a "melting pot" exactly because that term implies the blending and mixing and, well, "melting" together of diverse cultures, and I'm not sure America can honestly boast that.
Maybe this is just due to our natural human desire to be with people we're in some way connected to, but the fact is that people in this country all too often splinter off into little groups, neighborhoods, etc. based on their race. It happens within basically every community, be it a school, a city, or the country as a whole, and on some level I think it does make sense. The chances are decently high that people who share an ethnic background might also share aspects of culture like food, language, and religion that makes it natural for them to gravitate towards each other.
However, at the same time, I don't see how we can consider ourselves a "melting pot" of a country if we're still divided in this way even now. Maybe outright racism has by now become taboo, but I don't see how this kind of self-imposed segregation between races is all that much better.
Reed makes Hinkle Von Vampton and Hubert "Safecracker" Gould look like bumbling, out-of-place idiots when they try to take part in the Harlem Renaissance scene and speak the Jes Grew language, but he's not being totally unreasonable when he does this because we as a society see people who try to cross racial borders in this light all the time, whether we do so intentionally or not. Sure, this is America where nothing can stop you from reaching your goals if you work hard enough or whatever, so no one's going to stop the Eminems and Jeremy Lins and [your favorite racial-stereotype-defier's name here]s of the world from being successful, but I think anyone who claims we see them in the exactly same light as we see their non-stereotype-defying colleagues is being a little ignorant. They baffle us, plain and simple—and in more or less the same way that Coalhouse Walker baffled Father in Ragtime, too.
(Largely unrelated but interesting side note: When I was discussing this with my mom over dinner today, I had settle for Vanilla Ice as a white rapper example instead of Eminem (generational gap, it would seem), which inspired me to Wikipedia him a little while ago and did you know his real last name is "Van Winkle," which sounds very similar to "Hinckle Von Vampton"? I mean, obviously Mumbo Jumbo predated Vanilla Ice's career, so this is entirely a coincidence, but I thought it was kind of interesting given that he and Von Vampton are similar in that they are white men trying to be a part of traditionally black culture. Anyways.)
What's funny to me at least is that I'd hardly paid any attention to this phenomenon until my run today, despite the fact that I've lived in this society all my life. I think the reason is (and I know I'm getting farther and farther from Mumbo Jumbo as I go, for which I apologize) that I've had a fairly poor sense of my own racial background for most of my life. I mean, I know where my parents are from, but as their both from entirely different countries, I've never felt as connected as I'd like to either half of my ethnic background, and thus the culture with which I most identify has always been, well, just American, whatever that is.
Consequently, I guess I've done a pretty good job of ignoring race dynamics for most of my life. But even then, if I really stop and think about it, I can't say I haven't ever noticed self-imposed racial segregation to some degree because I have, just not completely consciously. I mean, I'd be lying to say I've never felt a little odd arriving in some nearby town for a soccer game and finding the other team to be entirely white and blonde. I'm not sure how much it bothers me exactly, but I've certainly noticed it.
Yet, (and I'm really digressing here) there's a lot about race dynamics that I hadn't really noticed before simply because I've always grown up in fairly white-dominated communities. And that, really, is the problem with self-imposed racial segregation—it creates ignorance. The other day, for example, I was playing around with U.S. Census Bureau's website (not normally how I spend my free time, but very interesting if you ever want to try it) and for kicks I looked up the "QuickFacts" for Ann Arbor, Michigan—my hometown until I came here sophomore year—and compared them to those of Detroit, and quite frankly I was put off by the discrepancies.
Ann Arbor, according to the 2010 census, was 73% white and 7.7% black (I'm ignoring other races for now because these two seem to be the largest players in Mumbo Jumbo and that keeps things simple for my demonstrative purposes), whereas Detroit—just half an hour away, mind you—was 10.6% white and 82.6% black. Those are practically different worlds! And no, I don't need anyone to explain to me how such a discrepancy arises because I'm fully aware of the whole "affluent college town vs. struggling big city" deal, but I don't know; I still have a problem with it. Remember yesterday when I said, "Does Reed think we'd all be better off if each race had its own little corner of a city and no one ever tried to cross over at all?" Well, HELLO. That is completely what's happening here, and yet it never once struck me in all the many years I lived in Ann Arbor.
So, to reign this tangent back in and finally get to a point, I still take issue with Reed's suggestion that a white character can never really be a part of the Jes Grew movement, but I'm no longer pinning the blame on him for adopting an outdated mindset. Rather, I'm going to pin the blame on our society (I tend to think blaming society is a lovely solution for problems no one can solve (kidding)) for still conforming to that mindset. I can't reasonably get mad at Reed for not presenting early twentieth-century America as a blossoming melting pot if it's not even a melting pot now, practically one hundred years later.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Hypocrisy in "Mumbo Jumbo"
I think Ishmael Reed's portrayal of white people and white culture would strike me very differently had Mumbo Jumbo been written some fifty or sixty years earlier than it was (effectively removing the whole "historical" aspect, I know). On the one hand, he does an impressively good job of taking the onesided way we're used to seeing white writers from the early twentieth century depict their black characters and turning it on its head. Such a portrayal may not be quite fair to his white characters, but I would excuse that had Reed written the novel a hundred years ago with the intention of making a statement that would rub people the wrong way and really make them think.
However, given that Mumbo Jumbo is only looking back on the early twentieth century when it was actually written in the '70s, Reed's portrayal of white culture and characters actually strikes me as a little hypocritical. If his point is to mock the idea that anyone would consider the spread of jazz culture a threatening "epidemic," then it seems counterintuitive that he'd also present any white character, be it Thor Wintergreen or Hinkle Von Vampton, who tries to engage himself in said culture as both idiotic and ultimately malicious.
I guess I don't understand how the Wallflower Order can seem so evil for wanting to stop the spread of Jes Grew when Reed himself won't allow his white characters to take part in or even just display a genuine interest in the movement. If this is a book that affirms dividing society along racial lines, then what the Wallflower Order is trying to do should not seem out of line. But, if this is a book about the spread of culture, then race should not be the divider that it is.
By forbiding his white characters from taking part in Jes Grew and presenting them as foolish when they try to, Reed seems to suggest that there is some sort of inherent barrier between people of different races that makes it so they can't ever truly understand each other. To an extent, I grant that this is maybe somewhat true (enough qualifying statements for you?)--that no matter how hard you try, you can't ever completely understand a culture to which you do not belong or the plight of the person whose life is fundamentally different than your own. However, I also see it is highly problematic.
Is Reed suggesting, then, that cultures cannot ever blend, or that segregation along racial lines is inevitable and, therefore, not something that people should even try to fix? I'm on board with him that the Wallflower Order is completely ridiculous in seeing the spread of jazz culture as a disease and feeling that their civilization will crumble entirely if they don't stop it, but it doesn't sit well with me that Reed also portrays Thor Wintergreen as a traitor and Hinkle Von Vampton as a deceptive double agent. Perhaps they can't ever completely be a part of Jes Grew (although I'm not sure I see why exactly they can't), but is it really so terrible of them to try? Does Reed think we'd all be better off if each race had its own little corner of a city and no one ever tried to cross over at all? Sounds like a pretty outdated opinion to me.
Thus, while I do think Reed makes a statement with his unforgiving portrayal of white culture, it feels to me a little out of place. If he wants to critique the mindset of a particular time period, he can't just buy into it himself, albeit from a slightly different angle, because isn't that just stooping to their level?
It all makes me wonder what Reed's point is--is he in favor of the spread of jazz culture or against it? If the former is the case, as I originally thought it was, then he can't present Jes Grew as a movement that is liberating to one race yet fundamentally inaccessible to another.
However, given that Mumbo Jumbo is only looking back on the early twentieth century when it was actually written in the '70s, Reed's portrayal of white culture and characters actually strikes me as a little hypocritical. If his point is to mock the idea that anyone would consider the spread of jazz culture a threatening "epidemic," then it seems counterintuitive that he'd also present any white character, be it Thor Wintergreen or Hinkle Von Vampton, who tries to engage himself in said culture as both idiotic and ultimately malicious.
I guess I don't understand how the Wallflower Order can seem so evil for wanting to stop the spread of Jes Grew when Reed himself won't allow his white characters to take part in or even just display a genuine interest in the movement. If this is a book that affirms dividing society along racial lines, then what the Wallflower Order is trying to do should not seem out of line. But, if this is a book about the spread of culture, then race should not be the divider that it is.
By forbiding his white characters from taking part in Jes Grew and presenting them as foolish when they try to, Reed seems to suggest that there is some sort of inherent barrier between people of different races that makes it so they can't ever truly understand each other. To an extent, I grant that this is maybe somewhat true (enough qualifying statements for you?)--that no matter how hard you try, you can't ever completely understand a culture to which you do not belong or the plight of the person whose life is fundamentally different than your own. However, I also see it is highly problematic.
Is Reed suggesting, then, that cultures cannot ever blend, or that segregation along racial lines is inevitable and, therefore, not something that people should even try to fix? I'm on board with him that the Wallflower Order is completely ridiculous in seeing the spread of jazz culture as a disease and feeling that their civilization will crumble entirely if they don't stop it, but it doesn't sit well with me that Reed also portrays Thor Wintergreen as a traitor and Hinkle Von Vampton as a deceptive double agent. Perhaps they can't ever completely be a part of Jes Grew (although I'm not sure I see why exactly they can't), but is it really so terrible of them to try? Does Reed think we'd all be better off if each race had its own little corner of a city and no one ever tried to cross over at all? Sounds like a pretty outdated opinion to me.
Thus, while I do think Reed makes a statement with his unforgiving portrayal of white culture, it feels to me a little out of place. If he wants to critique the mindset of a particular time period, he can't just buy into it himself, albeit from a slightly different angle, because isn't that just stooping to their level?
It all makes me wonder what Reed's point is--is he in favor of the spread of jazz culture or against it? If the former is the case, as I originally thought it was, then he can't present Jes Grew as a movement that is liberating to one race yet fundamentally inaccessible to another.
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