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 However, yesterday I felt like this notion was completely outdated—like Reed was buying into a 1920s mindset even though he was writing 50 years later.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.
Good reflection, Nikita! I totally see what you're saying, and it's probably pretty hard for most of us to realize. It's easy to blame Reed for portraying his world in a black and white (pardon the pun) way and making "real" integration seem like a far-fetched idea, but it's not as if he's doing it just because he's a total pessimist. Even today, we really aren't all that "melted," so in a lot of ways, Mumbo Jumbo presents what's actually pretty close to the situation now--it's just that we don't like to admit it because we have this optimistic (and somewhat unwarranted) sense of a job well done.
ReplyDeleteI think this is really great Nikita. You take a theme that you noticed in the book, and even though you mention (frequently) how much you're digressing, I think what you're taking about is relevant. This is really insightful, and I agree with everything that you bring up. I think it's interesting how American society is so concerned with multiculturalism, being respectful of other cultures, letting others share their cultures, etc., yet when someone like Eminem or Jeremy Lin comes along, everyone is shocked, or judges them for it. It's as though however hard we try, in theory, to believe that we're all part of the same culture, when it comes down to a real world application, it doesn't end up panning out. Very poignant post!
ReplyDeleteI've always had a problem with the "melting pot" metaphor, because if everything "melts" in the same pot, the majority flavor will dilute minority elements--everything becomes a kind of whitish, murky bland. Some have suggested a *quilt* as a more apt analogy for cultural interaction, where variety and difference come together into a single fabric, while still retaining their "colors" and shapes and patters. No metaphor will be perfect, probably, but they reveal much about how we think about the "goal" of a multicultural society.
ReplyDeleteI'm not at all sure that Reed is denouncing any participation by whites in black culture--HVV and Safecracker are not *really* trying to participate in the Harlem Renaissance; they've got their own agenda. They are "moles." And Reed does suggest (with some justice, I think) that there is good reason for black artists of all stripes to be suspicious of whites looking to praise and patronize them (while also often articulating what kind of artist they should be, or what essential "black experience" they aptly represent). I would posit hip-hop culture and the way it has grown as an exception to this pattern, as I've sketched in a recent blog entry. It maybe has something to do with the spirit with which the outsider approaches the culture--a certain humility and self-effacement is called for. None of this, "Aren't you so flattered that I dig your work?" crap. Because "sign on the dotted line" is often looming somewhere in the background.
That said, Robbie Van Winkle (nee V. Ice) is a great candidate for Talking Android! There are so many ways his story contrasts with Eminem's, it's a really instructive example.