Randall Kennedy
All,
It was a real pleasure to read Randall Kennedy's eloquent takedown and incisive critical dismantling of Touré's hopelessly jejune, shallow, and infantile new book on "racial identity and (in) authenticity" in the "new"(?) so-called "postracial era." That Kennedy of all people performs such a surgical dissection of Touré's highly fallacious "theory" of a crassly 'libertarian' uber-transcendence of racial politics in the United States is poetic justice given Kennedy's own past personal and intellectual struggles with these shamelessly bourgeois and excessively defensive notions of what it "means to be black" in the U.S. today. What is especially refreshing about Kennedy's penetrating analysis is that he systematically attacks not the public personality/persona of the man who wrote the book but keeps his laserlike attention fixed on the reductive, self aggrandizing and intellectually lazy flights from logical thought and historical/social/factual verisimilitude of Touré's highly dubious arguments about ALL forms and expressions of "blackness" being equally valid and "authentic."
What's particularly egregious about the appearance of Touré's new book (and its obvious, even clumsy timing in the wake of the emergence of Barack Obama on the national and global political and cultural stage) is that so many clueless young black intellectuals and artists from his generation (Touré was born in 1971) are presently engaged in the same sort of egocentric and arrogantly defensive displays of attacking what they erroneously identify as "black political correctness" using an aggressively transparent inversion of the exact same methodology and ideological reductionism that they deplore in others. For one very recent disturbing example of this "postmodern" black bourgeois tendency, I was appalled to read last month that the celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning "avant" black playwright and novelist Suzan Lori-Parks (b. 1963) is writing-- for a new all-black Broadway cast-- an "updated" (post) modern revised script of the execrable and notoriously racist 1935 "folk opera" Porgy and Bess by DuBose Heyward with music (largely stolen and "revised" from black vernacular folk sources) by George and Ira Gershwin. The "new" version while fastidiously "cleaning up" much of the rancidly racist pseudo-dialect of the original script by Heyward retains intact the ludicrous and brazenly offensive narrative of black bucks, coons, tragic mulattoes, hustlers, conmen, thieves, pimps, whores, and mammies that White American critics and standing room only audiences of the 1930s and '40s all the way up to the present day (!) have critically and commercially proclaimed 'a work of genius'. Condemned, assailed, and strongly dismissed by every major black intellectual and artist of the past 75 years (a long list that includes such iconic and legendary black cultural and political figures of the past century as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Lena Horne, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Harold Cruse, Josephine Baker, and Amiri Baraka, among many others), one's position on 'Porgy and Bess' stands as a major litmus test of the actual intellectual and political committment to genuine African American art, and an active critical and aesthetic repudiation of the imposed fake racial "standards" and "identities" provided by racist white artists, critics, and intellectuals, among others.
So in light of that heinous historical context it was particularly disturbing to see Ms. Lori-Parks defend herself, the all black award winning cast (including Audra McDonald (b. 1970) who plays Bess in this new production and who has won three Tony awards in her career for her singing and acting on Broadway), and their white female director by saying of this production (which by the way has been retitled "The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess" by the Gershwin estate which commissioned it): "The artist's job is not to be politically correct; the artist's job is to fully realize the characters. They needed to be fleshed out".
With that kind of pure adolescent sophistry and solipsism masquerading as transcendent Olympian detachment, contemporary black artists and intellectuals like Lori-Parks and Touré and far too many others have utterly failed to acknowledge the real dialectical relationship(s) between art, philosophy, and life in society, and have settled for a papier-mache thin notion of cultural identity and work that not only lacks any serious content but is bereft of vision as well. False consciousness on steroids. But take heart everybody: I understand that in the 'new and improved' "post(modern)" version of 'Porgy and Bess', Porgy no longer crawls around on his hands and knees. Oh no brothers and sisters. He now stumbles around upright with a cane! My goodness. How's THAT for "progress"?...
Kofi
Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University and the author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (Pantheon, 2011)
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Paulus-Parks-Murray-Reimagine-American-Repertory-Theaters-PORGY-AND-BESS-20101105
Creative Team to Re-imagine Porgy and Bess
Production to Open American Repertory Theater’s 2011-2012 Season
For Immediate Release
Contact: Anna Fitzloff
anna_fitzloff@harvard.edu
617-496-2000 ext. 8906
Cambridge, Mass — The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) announced today that Artistic Director Diane Paulus, Pulitzer prize-winning writer Suzan-Lori Parks, and two-time Obie winner Diedre Murray have been chosen by the Gershwin Trusts and the Heyward Trust to re-imagine the Gershwins’ seminal American opera Porgy and Bess. The creative team also includes choreographer Ronald K. Brown, set designer and regular A.R.T. collaborator Riccardo Hernandez, costume designer and Project Runway finalist Emilio Sosa, Tony Award-winning lighting designer Christopher Akerlind, sound by Acme Sound Partners, and casting by Telsey + Company who cast The Color Purple and La Bohème on Broadway. This production of Porgy and Bess will be presented in association with Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel and is currently scheduled to open the A.R.T.’s 2011-2012 season in early September 2011.
Spokespersons from the Gershwin family remarked, “The fusion of musical styles in Porgy and Bess is distinctly American. It has had, and continues to have, a successful life in opera houses around the world yet it contains some of America’s most beloved jazz and popular standards. The Gershwin family and the Heyward trustees are thrilled that the American Repertory Theater will be premiering a re-imagination of Porgy and Bess for a whole new generation of theatergoers. We cannot wait to see the results of Diane Paulus’, Suzan-Lori Parks’, and Diedre Murray’s collaboration as they venture forth from the original. We believe audiences will fall in love with their vision of this masterwork for the 21st century.”
In a meeting with the creative team, Diane Paulus commented, “The Gershwin and Heyward estates have given us the charge to create a version of Porgy and Bess that will have a unique identity as a musical. I am delighted to be working with Suzan-Lori Parks on making the characters in the story more fully realized. With one of the most incredible scores ever written, we want to bring Porgy and Bess to life on the musical stage in a way that feels essential, immediate, and passionate."
Suzan-Lori Parks added, “I am thrilled to be part of the wonderful team working on Porgy and Bess. Our approach is fresh and respectful; we're working to retain all the best-loved elements of the original while crafting a piece that speaks to contemporary audiences.”
Diedre Murray said, “We want to move the story of Porgy and Bess forward on its continuum, re-envisioning it for a modern perspective. We will acknowledge the timelessness of this masterpiece, and stay true to its original spirit while illuminating this work and exploring it in a new way.”
Porgy and Bess first premiered at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30, 1935, with a libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward based on DuBose’s novel Porgy, and their play of the same name. Broadway performances followed featuring a cast of classically trained African-American singers — a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time.
It was a real pleasure to read Randall Kennedy's eloquent takedown and incisive critical dismantling of Touré's hopelessly jejune, shallow, and infantile new book on "racial identity and (in) authenticity" in the "new"(?) so-called "postracial era." That Kennedy of all people performs such a surgical dissection of Touré's highly fallacious "theory" of a crassly 'libertarian' uber-transcendence of racial politics in the United States is poetic justice given Kennedy's own past personal and intellectual struggles with these shamelessly bourgeois and excessively defensive notions of what it "means to be black" in the U.S. today. What is especially refreshing about Kennedy's penetrating analysis is that he systematically attacks not the public personality/persona of the man who wrote the book but keeps his laserlike attention fixed on the reductive, self aggrandizing and intellectually lazy flights from logical thought and historical/social/factual verisimilitude of Touré's highly dubious arguments about ALL forms and expressions of "blackness" being equally valid and "authentic."
What's particularly egregious about the appearance of Touré's new book (and its obvious, even clumsy timing in the wake of the emergence of Barack Obama on the national and global political and cultural stage) is that so many clueless young black intellectuals and artists from his generation (Touré was born in 1971) are presently engaged in the same sort of egocentric and arrogantly defensive displays of attacking what they erroneously identify as "black political correctness" using an aggressively transparent inversion of the exact same methodology and ideological reductionism that they deplore in others. For one very recent disturbing example of this "postmodern" black bourgeois tendency, I was appalled to read last month that the celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning "avant" black playwright and novelist Suzan Lori-Parks (b. 1963) is writing-- for a new all-black Broadway cast-- an "updated" (post) modern revised script of the execrable and notoriously racist 1935 "folk opera" Porgy and Bess by DuBose Heyward with music (largely stolen and "revised" from black vernacular folk sources) by George and Ira Gershwin. The "new" version while fastidiously "cleaning up" much of the rancidly racist pseudo-dialect of the original script by Heyward retains intact the ludicrous and brazenly offensive narrative of black bucks, coons, tragic mulattoes, hustlers, conmen, thieves, pimps, whores, and mammies that White American critics and standing room only audiences of the 1930s and '40s all the way up to the present day (!) have critically and commercially proclaimed 'a work of genius'. Condemned, assailed, and strongly dismissed by every major black intellectual and artist of the past 75 years (a long list that includes such iconic and legendary black cultural and political figures of the past century as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Lena Horne, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Harold Cruse, Josephine Baker, and Amiri Baraka, among many others), one's position on 'Porgy and Bess' stands as a major litmus test of the actual intellectual and political committment to genuine African American art, and an active critical and aesthetic repudiation of the imposed fake racial "standards" and "identities" provided by racist white artists, critics, and intellectuals, among others.
So in light of that heinous historical context it was particularly disturbing to see Ms. Lori-Parks defend herself, the all black award winning cast (including Audra McDonald (b. 1970) who plays Bess in this new production and who has won three Tony awards in her career for her singing and acting on Broadway), and their white female director by saying of this production (which by the way has been retitled "The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess" by the Gershwin estate which commissioned it): "The artist's job is not to be politically correct; the artist's job is to fully realize the characters. They needed to be fleshed out".
With that kind of pure adolescent sophistry and solipsism masquerading as transcendent Olympian detachment, contemporary black artists and intellectuals like Lori-Parks and Touré and far too many others have utterly failed to acknowledge the real dialectical relationship(s) between art, philosophy, and life in society, and have settled for a papier-mache thin notion of cultural identity and work that not only lacks any serious content but is bereft of vision as well. False consciousness on steroids. But take heart everybody: I understand that in the 'new and improved' "post(modern)" version of 'Porgy and Bess', Porgy no longer crawls around on his hands and knees. Oh no brothers and sisters. He now stumbles around upright with a cane! My goodness. How's THAT for "progress"?...
Kofi
The Fallacy of Touré's Post-Blackness Theory
by Randall Kennedy
August 11, 2011
The Root
In his latest book, the cultural critic argues that African Americans should never have their racial loyalty or authenticity questioned. This reviewer disagrees.
African Americans fight a multifront struggle in pursuing their ambitions. Along with the difficulties that others face -- bad luck, personal deficiencies, talented competitors -- blacks face additional obstacles. On one front they encounter prejudiced Caucasians. On another they encounter Negroes who, attached to stunted conceptions of racial solidarity, habitually castigate as disloyal blacks perceived as "acting white," being "oreos," "selling out."
Blacks characteristically confront white racism with uninhibited fury. With black critics, however, they often display ambivalence. Even when chafing miserably from constraints imposed by racial solidarity, many blacks nonetheless bite their tongues. They refrain from speaking openly and frankly because the rhetoric and performance of racial solidarity occupies an honored position in black American circles. It has claims on blacks' psyches even as they wrestle with the restraints that solidarity entails.
In Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What It Means to Be Black Now (Free Press 2011), Touré assails "self-appointed identity cops" who write "Authenticity Violations as if they were working for Internal Affairs making sure everyone does Blackness in the right way." His aim is to "destroy the idea that there is a correct or legitimate way of doing Blackness," maintaining that "if there's a right way then there must be a wrong way, and that [that] kind of thinking cuts us off from exploring the full potential of Black humanity." Touré claims that he wants African Americans to have the freedom to be black in whatever ways they choose and that he aspires "to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of 'authentic' Blackness."
"Post-Blackness" is the label Touré deploys to describe the sensibility he champions, a "modern individualist Blackness" that enthusiastically endorses novelty and diversity, fluidity and experimentation. "Post-Blackness," he insists, "is not a box, it's an unbox. It opens the door to everything. It's open-ended and open-sourced and endlessly customizable. It's whatever you want it to be." "Post-Blackness" means, he says, that "we are [like President Barack Obama] rooted in, but not restricted by, Blackness."
Touré, a 40-year-old author of three previous books, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone and a correspondent for MSNBC, is a keen student and practitioner of publicity who rounds up a posse of artists, scholars and journalists to assist with the promotion of his brand of "post-Blackness."
In Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness, he prominently features, for example, professor Michael Eric Dyson. "We've got to do away with the notion," Dyson writes, "that there's something that all Black folk have to believe in order to be Black. We've got to give ourselves permission to divide into subgroups, or out-groups, organized around what we like and dislike, and none of us is less or more Black for doing so."
"The undeniable need to fight oppression," Dyson declares, "can't overshadow the freedom to live and think Blackness just as we please." "Post-Blackness," he insists, "has little patience for racial patriotism, racial fundamentalism, and racial policing."
Selling Out or Not?
Touré and his allies are right to be concerned about charges of racial disloyalty. As I showed in Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, the specter of defection occupies a salient place in the African-American mind and soul. It figures in novels (such as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man), in films (Spike Lee's Bamboozled), in hip-hop (the Geto Boys' "No Sell Out") and in writings questioning whether blacks have an obligation to reside in "the hood," marry within the race or decline certain careers, such as prosecutor.
Anxieties over racial loyalty are echoed in incantations such as "Don't forget where you come from" and "Stay black." They are glimpsed in the obsessive scrutiny of prominent blacks for evidence of inadequate commitment to black solidarity.
These fears prompt blacks, especially those in elite, predominantly white settings, to signal conspicuously their allegiance to blackness. This angst contributes to the rise of what journalist John Blake termed "soul patrols," cliques of black folk "who impose their definition of blackness on other black people." Writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1992, in an article that Touré could have usefully cited, Blake complained that soul patrols are not content with choosing your friends. "They want to tell you how to think, where to live, how to do your job."
Touré's principal complaint with those he sneeringly dismisses as racial-identity police is that their disapproval trenches on personal freedom. He wants black people to be able to do what they please, free of inhibitory racial expectations. He wants blacks to be able to occupy offices as corporate or governmental chief executives without being immediately hectored as sellouts.
He wants African Americans to be able to have nonblack romantic partners without facing charges of racial abandonment. He wants Negroes out in public to be able to eat fried chicken or watermelon without feeling that they are disgracing the race. He wants black artists to be able to play with depictions of slavery, segregation or anything else without being indicted for defaming Afro-America.
Call the Blackness Police
Touré rightly assails principles or tactics that impose wrongful constraints on blacks (or anyone else). He errs, however, when he adopts a stance of libertarian absolutism, according to which it is always wrong for one black person to question another black person's fidelity to black America. This is the stance taken by Stephen L. Carter in Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby, in which he wrote, "Loving our people and loving our culture does not require any restriction on what black people can think or say or do or be ... "
No restriction? But what about an African American who expresses racial hatred for blacks? Or what about an African American who joins a legitimate black-uplift organization for the purpose of crippling it? Blacks (or anyone else) who do or say such things ought to be shunned as forcefully as possible in order to punish them, render them ineffective and dissuade others from following a similar course.
Some ideas ought to be stifled. Determining what ideas should meet that fate under what circumstances and by what means are large, complex, daunting questions that warrant the most careful attention. The world is awash in destructive censorship. And the broad swath of cultural freedom that has been painstakingly won in the United States is a treasure for which Americans should be willing to fight. At the same time, it bears repeating that under some circumstances, people behaving in certain ways -- which includes the expression of certain ideas -- ought to be ostracized.
Touré is rightly appalled by the pettiness, narrowness, bigotry and dictatorial character of those who have intermittently afflicted Negroes with destructive bouts of internecine warfare. Hence the purgings committed by proponents of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam and H. Rap Brown's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. "We've all heard and felt," Touré observes, "the Blackness police among us -- or within us -- judging and convicting and sentencing and verbally or mentally casting people out of the race for large and small offenses."
What Does It Mean to Be Black?
Touré's response is to so broaden the boundaries of blackness that no black person can properly be "convicted" of straying outside. In this post-black era, Touré writes, "the definitions and boundaries of Blackness are expanding ... into infinity ... [O]ur identity options are limitless." According to Touré, "Blackness is not a club you can be expelled from ... We've been arguing for decades and decades about identity and authenticity and who's Black and who's not and I want to yell above the din -- Truce! We're all Black! We all win!"
There are several problems here. First, Touré himself does not fully believe in the unbounded conceptions of blackness or post-blackness that he sometimes seems to propound. "Our commonality," he writes, "is too diverse, complex, imaginative, dynamic, fluid, creative, and beautiful to impose restraints on Blackness."
To what, however, does he refer to when he says "our"? For "our" to have meaning, it must have some boundary that separates "us" from "them." If post-black opens the door to everything, does that mean that anyone can rightly be deemed "Black"? Just suppose that Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, as a joke, declared themselves to be black. If there really are no restraints on blackness, no boundaries distinguishing "Blacks" from "non-Blacks," then it follows that there would be no basis on which to deny their claim. That, in my view, would be unsatisfactory.
What Touré and his allies seek to escape are fundamental aspects of any community: boundaries and discipline. Every community -- be it a family, firm or nation-state -- necessarily has boundaries that distinguish members from nonmembers. That boundary is a constituent element of the community's existence.
Touré could opt to reject affiliations that are organized around racial identity. He could abandon blackness or post-blackness or any and all racial labelings and groupings. But Touré eschews that option. It is, among other things, all too unpopular for his taste.
Despite his avant-garde pretensions, Touré is at bottom rather conventional: a politically liberal black guy who wants to make it in the white-dominated world of print journalism and television broadcasting without catching flak from "brothas" and "sistahs" because of the way he talks (preppy), because of his significant other (a woman who is not African American) and because of his attachment to ideas that he knows some blacks will disdain.
Touré voices, for instance, an instrumental patriotism: "We may need to more fully embrace our American-ness in order to maximize the power we have as individuals and as a collective." He praises "Black people who can make the leap to loving and trusting white people" because these African Americans "have far more ability [than others] to climb the ladders of power." He frankly propounds a preference for insiderism:
We need more and more Blacks sitting at tables of real power. Let's be like Barack and get what we want from America in spite of racism ... Let's buy into the promise of America and get what we deserve: a place in the American life lottery. Let's come home. You can fight the power, but I want us to be the power.
Aware that some African Americans will see in these beliefs an ugly ethic of racial brownnosing aimed merely at attaining robust tokenism, Touré seeks a general truce whereby blacks forgo judging the racial politics of one another. But that aim is futile; judgment is inevitable.
Touré claims to accept as equally "Black" all beliefs advanced by African Americans. But he doesn't really believe this. He insists repeatedly, for instance, that he is no "oreo" -- an inauthentic Negro -- black on the outside but white on the inside. In saying that he is not an oreo, however, Touré concedes that someone is.
Touré supports the continuation of blacks as a distinct community in America. He situates himself in a racialized "we": "We Blacks." He views his book as a contribution to a more effective and enlightened black collective action. Collective action, however, requires coordination; coordination requires discipline; and discipline requires coercion.
Consider the magnificent Montgomery Bus Boycott triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks. The boycott is typically portrayed as an entirely voluntary enterprise in which the heroes of the story wage their struggle against racist villains without morally soiling their hands. The reality, however, was considerably more complicated. The boycott was mainly animated by the commitment of blacks to resisting Jim Crow oppression. It was also reinforced, however, by fear. While few African Americans rode the buses, more would have, had they not feared reprisal.
Improper policing can indeed impinge unduly on individual freedoms, prompt excessive self-censorship, truncate needed debate and nurture demagoguery. But policing is part of the unavoidable cost of group maintenance. That is why all nations have criminal laws, including prohibitions against treason.
Boycotting Clarence Thomas
To the extent that Touré wants to perpetuate black communities but eschew policing, he seeks a sociological impossibility. The erection of boundaries and the enforcement of stigmatization, including the threat of expulsion, are inescapable, albeit dangerous, aspects of any collective enterprise.
Some folks ought to have their racial credentials lifted. Consider Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- the most vilified black official in American history, a man whose very name has become synonymous with selling out. Many organizations, including scores of law schools, refuse to bestow any semblance of prestige or support through association with him. He is being massively boycotted. And like all boycotts, this one is coercive. It applies pressure to the target.
It also applies pressure to third parties, threatening with disapproval those who might cross the boycotters' picket line. The boycott of Thomas is largely monitored by blacks who detest his reactionary politics and rue his paradoxical success in exploiting black racial loyalism. Remember that but for his appeal for protection against a "high-tech lynching," he would probably have failed to win senatorial confirmation to the seat once occupied by Thurgood Marshall.
Is it right for blacks to cast Thomas from their communion? Is it appropriate to indict him for betrayal? These questions have arisen on numerous occasions. In confronting them now, I conclude that I have erred in the past. Previously I have criticized Thomas' performance as a jurist -- his complacent acceptance of policies that unjustly harm those tragically vulnerable to ingrained prejudices; his naked Republican Party parochialism; and his proud, Palinesque ignorance. But I have also chastised those who labeled him a sellout.
I was a sap. Blacks should ostracize Thomas as persona non grata. Despite his parentage, physiognomy and racial self-identification, he ought to be put outside of respectful affiliation with black folk because of his indifference or hostility to their collective condition. His conduct has been so hurtful to and antagonistic toward the black American community that he ought to be expelled from membership in it.
Touré rejects the idea that an African American can ever properly be dismissed from the race -- "de-blacked," to use the memorable term coined by Washington University professor Kimberly Jade Norwood. How one stands on this matter depends on how one conceptualizes racial membership. Some view racial membership as an immutable status -- you are born black and that is it. I do not. I view choice as an integral element of membership. In my view, a person (or at least an adult person) should be black by choice, with a recognized right of resignation.
Carrying through with that contractualist conception, I also believe that a black person should have no immunity from being de-blacked. Any Negro should be subject to having his or her membership in blackness revoked if he or she pursues a course of conduct that convincingly demonstrates the absence of even a minimal communal allegiance.
Religions impose excommunication. Nations revoke citizenship. Parents disown children. Children disown parents. Why, as a matter of principle, should blacks be disallowed from casting from their community those adjudged to be enemies of it? The power of expulsion is so weighty that prudence should demand extraordinary care in exercising it. Still, the power to exclude and expel is, and should be, part of what constitutes black America.
Unlike the United States, individual states or Indian tribes, black America lacks mechanisms of sovereignty -- courts, for example -- that can provide centralized, authoritative and enforceable judgments regarding membership. In black America, only an amorphous public opinion adjudicates such matters, generating inconclusive results. Nonetheless, black public opinion should and does exercise some control over its communal boundary, determining in the process a person's standing as member, guest, enemy and so on.
Keeping It Real
Opposed to the idea of racial boundaries, Touré is also against the idea of racial authenticity. His opening chapter is titled "Thirty-Five Million Ways to Be Black," an homage to a statement he attributes to Henry Louis Gates Jr.:
If there are thirty-five million Black Americans then there are thirty-five million ways to be Black. There are ten billion cultural artifacts of Blackness and if you add them up and put them in a pot and stew it, that's what Black culture is. Not one of those things is more authentic than the other.
Recall that one of Touré's aims is "to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of 'authentic' Blackness." That aim is misleading. To be sure, there are numerous instances in which blacks' racial authenticity has been challenged on spurious grounds by people claiming that "real" blacks don't (fill in the blank) fence, ski, enjoy Mozart, climb mountains, study hard, etc. These ignorant suppositions have generated destructive consequences -- shriveling expectations, discouraging curiosity, reinforcing stereotypes.
One should differentiate, however, between specious and defensible notions of racial authenticity. Out of frustration with the former, Touré throws out the latter. Authentic blackness can be discerned by comparing it with performances in which people self-consciously dilute their artistry or message to give it "crossover" appeal. Whether such dilution is warranted or not in a given circumstance is not the immediate point. The point is simply that in some circumstances, African Americans do vary the racial character of their performances, and the language of authenticity is one way of noting that variation.
When African-American artists, politicians or activists assert that they are going to "keep it real" despite complaints that they are "too black," they are adopting a stance that is important to appreciate even if one disagrees with it. That stance, like the strategy of dilution, is no figment of the imagination. It is a choice that gives rise to different grades of blackness. That is why it is proper, Henry Louis Gates notwithstanding, to recognize that the music of James Brown at the Apollo is more authentically black than the music of the Supremes at the Copacabana.
Racial solidarity will always depend to some extent on self-appointed monitors of racial virtue. Touré himself, of course, is just such a monitor. His chiding of black political correctness is itself a variant of black political correctness.
Those who want to maintain black community while containing the peer pressure that makes collective action possible must recognize that solidarity always poses a problem of balance between unity and freedom. That is why libertarian romanticism is untenable when conjoined with a desire for collective advancement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
by Randall Kennedy
August 11, 2011
The Root
In his latest book, the cultural critic argues that African Americans should never have their racial loyalty or authenticity questioned. This reviewer disagrees.
African Americans fight a multifront struggle in pursuing their ambitions. Along with the difficulties that others face -- bad luck, personal deficiencies, talented competitors -- blacks face additional obstacles. On one front they encounter prejudiced Caucasians. On another they encounter Negroes who, attached to stunted conceptions of racial solidarity, habitually castigate as disloyal blacks perceived as "acting white," being "oreos," "selling out."
Blacks characteristically confront white racism with uninhibited fury. With black critics, however, they often display ambivalence. Even when chafing miserably from constraints imposed by racial solidarity, many blacks nonetheless bite their tongues. They refrain from speaking openly and frankly because the rhetoric and performance of racial solidarity occupies an honored position in black American circles. It has claims on blacks' psyches even as they wrestle with the restraints that solidarity entails.
In Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What It Means to Be Black Now (Free Press 2011), Touré assails "self-appointed identity cops" who write "Authenticity Violations as if they were working for Internal Affairs making sure everyone does Blackness in the right way." His aim is to "destroy the idea that there is a correct or legitimate way of doing Blackness," maintaining that "if there's a right way then there must be a wrong way, and that [that] kind of thinking cuts us off from exploring the full potential of Black humanity." Touré claims that he wants African Americans to have the freedom to be black in whatever ways they choose and that he aspires "to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of 'authentic' Blackness."
"Post-Blackness" is the label Touré deploys to describe the sensibility he champions, a "modern individualist Blackness" that enthusiastically endorses novelty and diversity, fluidity and experimentation. "Post-Blackness," he insists, "is not a box, it's an unbox. It opens the door to everything. It's open-ended and open-sourced and endlessly customizable. It's whatever you want it to be." "Post-Blackness" means, he says, that "we are [like President Barack Obama] rooted in, but not restricted by, Blackness."
Touré, a 40-year-old author of three previous books, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone and a correspondent for MSNBC, is a keen student and practitioner of publicity who rounds up a posse of artists, scholars and journalists to assist with the promotion of his brand of "post-Blackness."
In Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness, he prominently features, for example, professor Michael Eric Dyson. "We've got to do away with the notion," Dyson writes, "that there's something that all Black folk have to believe in order to be Black. We've got to give ourselves permission to divide into subgroups, or out-groups, organized around what we like and dislike, and none of us is less or more Black for doing so."
"The undeniable need to fight oppression," Dyson declares, "can't overshadow the freedom to live and think Blackness just as we please." "Post-Blackness," he insists, "has little patience for racial patriotism, racial fundamentalism, and racial policing."
Selling Out or Not?
Touré and his allies are right to be concerned about charges of racial disloyalty. As I showed in Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, the specter of defection occupies a salient place in the African-American mind and soul. It figures in novels (such as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man), in films (Spike Lee's Bamboozled), in hip-hop (the Geto Boys' "No Sell Out") and in writings questioning whether blacks have an obligation to reside in "the hood," marry within the race or decline certain careers, such as prosecutor.
Anxieties over racial loyalty are echoed in incantations such as "Don't forget where you come from" and "Stay black." They are glimpsed in the obsessive scrutiny of prominent blacks for evidence of inadequate commitment to black solidarity.
These fears prompt blacks, especially those in elite, predominantly white settings, to signal conspicuously their allegiance to blackness. This angst contributes to the rise of what journalist John Blake termed "soul patrols," cliques of black folk "who impose their definition of blackness on other black people." Writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1992, in an article that Touré could have usefully cited, Blake complained that soul patrols are not content with choosing your friends. "They want to tell you how to think, where to live, how to do your job."
Touré's principal complaint with those he sneeringly dismisses as racial-identity police is that their disapproval trenches on personal freedom. He wants black people to be able to do what they please, free of inhibitory racial expectations. He wants blacks to be able to occupy offices as corporate or governmental chief executives without being immediately hectored as sellouts.
He wants African Americans to be able to have nonblack romantic partners without facing charges of racial abandonment. He wants Negroes out in public to be able to eat fried chicken or watermelon without feeling that they are disgracing the race. He wants black artists to be able to play with depictions of slavery, segregation or anything else without being indicted for defaming Afro-America.
Call the Blackness Police
Touré rightly assails principles or tactics that impose wrongful constraints on blacks (or anyone else). He errs, however, when he adopts a stance of libertarian absolutism, according to which it is always wrong for one black person to question another black person's fidelity to black America. This is the stance taken by Stephen L. Carter in Confessions of an Affirmative Action Baby, in which he wrote, "Loving our people and loving our culture does not require any restriction on what black people can think or say or do or be ... "
No restriction? But what about an African American who expresses racial hatred for blacks? Or what about an African American who joins a legitimate black-uplift organization for the purpose of crippling it? Blacks (or anyone else) who do or say such things ought to be shunned as forcefully as possible in order to punish them, render them ineffective and dissuade others from following a similar course.
Some ideas ought to be stifled. Determining what ideas should meet that fate under what circumstances and by what means are large, complex, daunting questions that warrant the most careful attention. The world is awash in destructive censorship. And the broad swath of cultural freedom that has been painstakingly won in the United States is a treasure for which Americans should be willing to fight. At the same time, it bears repeating that under some circumstances, people behaving in certain ways -- which includes the expression of certain ideas -- ought to be ostracized.
Touré is rightly appalled by the pettiness, narrowness, bigotry and dictatorial character of those who have intermittently afflicted Negroes with destructive bouts of internecine warfare. Hence the purgings committed by proponents of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam and H. Rap Brown's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. "We've all heard and felt," Touré observes, "the Blackness police among us -- or within us -- judging and convicting and sentencing and verbally or mentally casting people out of the race for large and small offenses."
What Does It Mean to Be Black?
Touré's response is to so broaden the boundaries of blackness that no black person can properly be "convicted" of straying outside. In this post-black era, Touré writes, "the definitions and boundaries of Blackness are expanding ... into infinity ... [O]ur identity options are limitless." According to Touré, "Blackness is not a club you can be expelled from ... We've been arguing for decades and decades about identity and authenticity and who's Black and who's not and I want to yell above the din -- Truce! We're all Black! We all win!"
There are several problems here. First, Touré himself does not fully believe in the unbounded conceptions of blackness or post-blackness that he sometimes seems to propound. "Our commonality," he writes, "is too diverse, complex, imaginative, dynamic, fluid, creative, and beautiful to impose restraints on Blackness."
To what, however, does he refer to when he says "our"? For "our" to have meaning, it must have some boundary that separates "us" from "them." If post-black opens the door to everything, does that mean that anyone can rightly be deemed "Black"? Just suppose that Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, as a joke, declared themselves to be black. If there really are no restraints on blackness, no boundaries distinguishing "Blacks" from "non-Blacks," then it follows that there would be no basis on which to deny their claim. That, in my view, would be unsatisfactory.
What Touré and his allies seek to escape are fundamental aspects of any community: boundaries and discipline. Every community -- be it a family, firm or nation-state -- necessarily has boundaries that distinguish members from nonmembers. That boundary is a constituent element of the community's existence.
Touré could opt to reject affiliations that are organized around racial identity. He could abandon blackness or post-blackness or any and all racial labelings and groupings. But Touré eschews that option. It is, among other things, all too unpopular for his taste.
Despite his avant-garde pretensions, Touré is at bottom rather conventional: a politically liberal black guy who wants to make it in the white-dominated world of print journalism and television broadcasting without catching flak from "brothas" and "sistahs" because of the way he talks (preppy), because of his significant other (a woman who is not African American) and because of his attachment to ideas that he knows some blacks will disdain.
Touré voices, for instance, an instrumental patriotism: "We may need to more fully embrace our American-ness in order to maximize the power we have as individuals and as a collective." He praises "Black people who can make the leap to loving and trusting white people" because these African Americans "have far more ability [than others] to climb the ladders of power." He frankly propounds a preference for insiderism:
We need more and more Blacks sitting at tables of real power. Let's be like Barack and get what we want from America in spite of racism ... Let's buy into the promise of America and get what we deserve: a place in the American life lottery. Let's come home. You can fight the power, but I want us to be the power.
Aware that some African Americans will see in these beliefs an ugly ethic of racial brownnosing aimed merely at attaining robust tokenism, Touré seeks a general truce whereby blacks forgo judging the racial politics of one another. But that aim is futile; judgment is inevitable.
Touré claims to accept as equally "Black" all beliefs advanced by African Americans. But he doesn't really believe this. He insists repeatedly, for instance, that he is no "oreo" -- an inauthentic Negro -- black on the outside but white on the inside. In saying that he is not an oreo, however, Touré concedes that someone is.
Touré supports the continuation of blacks as a distinct community in America. He situates himself in a racialized "we": "We Blacks." He views his book as a contribution to a more effective and enlightened black collective action. Collective action, however, requires coordination; coordination requires discipline; and discipline requires coercion.
Consider the magnificent Montgomery Bus Boycott triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks. The boycott is typically portrayed as an entirely voluntary enterprise in which the heroes of the story wage their struggle against racist villains without morally soiling their hands. The reality, however, was considerably more complicated. The boycott was mainly animated by the commitment of blacks to resisting Jim Crow oppression. It was also reinforced, however, by fear. While few African Americans rode the buses, more would have, had they not feared reprisal.
Improper policing can indeed impinge unduly on individual freedoms, prompt excessive self-censorship, truncate needed debate and nurture demagoguery. But policing is part of the unavoidable cost of group maintenance. That is why all nations have criminal laws, including prohibitions against treason.
Boycotting Clarence Thomas
To the extent that Touré wants to perpetuate black communities but eschew policing, he seeks a sociological impossibility. The erection of boundaries and the enforcement of stigmatization, including the threat of expulsion, are inescapable, albeit dangerous, aspects of any collective enterprise.
Some folks ought to have their racial credentials lifted. Consider Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- the most vilified black official in American history, a man whose very name has become synonymous with selling out. Many organizations, including scores of law schools, refuse to bestow any semblance of prestige or support through association with him. He is being massively boycotted. And like all boycotts, this one is coercive. It applies pressure to the target.
It also applies pressure to third parties, threatening with disapproval those who might cross the boycotters' picket line. The boycott of Thomas is largely monitored by blacks who detest his reactionary politics and rue his paradoxical success in exploiting black racial loyalism. Remember that but for his appeal for protection against a "high-tech lynching," he would probably have failed to win senatorial confirmation to the seat once occupied by Thurgood Marshall.
Is it right for blacks to cast Thomas from their communion? Is it appropriate to indict him for betrayal? These questions have arisen on numerous occasions. In confronting them now, I conclude that I have erred in the past. Previously I have criticized Thomas' performance as a jurist -- his complacent acceptance of policies that unjustly harm those tragically vulnerable to ingrained prejudices; his naked Republican Party parochialism; and his proud, Palinesque ignorance. But I have also chastised those who labeled him a sellout.
I was a sap. Blacks should ostracize Thomas as persona non grata. Despite his parentage, physiognomy and racial self-identification, he ought to be put outside of respectful affiliation with black folk because of his indifference or hostility to their collective condition. His conduct has been so hurtful to and antagonistic toward the black American community that he ought to be expelled from membership in it.
Touré rejects the idea that an African American can ever properly be dismissed from the race -- "de-blacked," to use the memorable term coined by Washington University professor Kimberly Jade Norwood. How one stands on this matter depends on how one conceptualizes racial membership. Some view racial membership as an immutable status -- you are born black and that is it. I do not. I view choice as an integral element of membership. In my view, a person (or at least an adult person) should be black by choice, with a recognized right of resignation.
Carrying through with that contractualist conception, I also believe that a black person should have no immunity from being de-blacked. Any Negro should be subject to having his or her membership in blackness revoked if he or she pursues a course of conduct that convincingly demonstrates the absence of even a minimal communal allegiance.
Religions impose excommunication. Nations revoke citizenship. Parents disown children. Children disown parents. Why, as a matter of principle, should blacks be disallowed from casting from their community those adjudged to be enemies of it? The power of expulsion is so weighty that prudence should demand extraordinary care in exercising it. Still, the power to exclude and expel is, and should be, part of what constitutes black America.
Unlike the United States, individual states or Indian tribes, black America lacks mechanisms of sovereignty -- courts, for example -- that can provide centralized, authoritative and enforceable judgments regarding membership. In black America, only an amorphous public opinion adjudicates such matters, generating inconclusive results. Nonetheless, black public opinion should and does exercise some control over its communal boundary, determining in the process a person's standing as member, guest, enemy and so on.
Keeping It Real
Opposed to the idea of racial boundaries, Touré is also against the idea of racial authenticity. His opening chapter is titled "Thirty-Five Million Ways to Be Black," an homage to a statement he attributes to Henry Louis Gates Jr.:
If there are thirty-five million Black Americans then there are thirty-five million ways to be Black. There are ten billion cultural artifacts of Blackness and if you add them up and put them in a pot and stew it, that's what Black culture is. Not one of those things is more authentic than the other.
Recall that one of Touré's aims is "to banish from the collective mind the bankrupt, fraudulent concept of 'authentic' Blackness." That aim is misleading. To be sure, there are numerous instances in which blacks' racial authenticity has been challenged on spurious grounds by people claiming that "real" blacks don't (fill in the blank) fence, ski, enjoy Mozart, climb mountains, study hard, etc. These ignorant suppositions have generated destructive consequences -- shriveling expectations, discouraging curiosity, reinforcing stereotypes.
One should differentiate, however, between specious and defensible notions of racial authenticity. Out of frustration with the former, Touré throws out the latter. Authentic blackness can be discerned by comparing it with performances in which people self-consciously dilute their artistry or message to give it "crossover" appeal. Whether such dilution is warranted or not in a given circumstance is not the immediate point. The point is simply that in some circumstances, African Americans do vary the racial character of their performances, and the language of authenticity is one way of noting that variation.
When African-American artists, politicians or activists assert that they are going to "keep it real" despite complaints that they are "too black," they are adopting a stance that is important to appreciate even if one disagrees with it. That stance, like the strategy of dilution, is no figment of the imagination. It is a choice that gives rise to different grades of blackness. That is why it is proper, Henry Louis Gates notwithstanding, to recognize that the music of James Brown at the Apollo is more authentically black than the music of the Supremes at the Copacabana.
Racial solidarity will always depend to some extent on self-appointed monitors of racial virtue. Touré himself, of course, is just such a monitor. His chiding of black political correctness is itself a variant of black political correctness.
Those who want to maintain black community while containing the peer pressure that makes collective action possible must recognize that solidarity always poses a problem of balance between unity and freedom. That is why libertarian romanticism is untenable when conjoined with a desire for collective advancement.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University and the author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (Pantheon, 2011)
https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Paulus-Parks-Murray-Reimagine-American-Repertory-Theaters-PORGY-AND-BESS-20101105
Creative Team to Re-imagine Porgy and Bess
Production to Open American Repertory Theater’s 2011-2012 Season
For Immediate Release
Contact: Anna Fitzloff
anna_fitzloff@harvard.edu
617-496-2000 ext. 8906
Cambridge, Mass — The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) announced today that Artistic Director Diane Paulus, Pulitzer prize-winning writer Suzan-Lori Parks, and two-time Obie winner Diedre Murray have been chosen by the Gershwin Trusts and the Heyward Trust to re-imagine the Gershwins’ seminal American opera Porgy and Bess. The creative team also includes choreographer Ronald K. Brown, set designer and regular A.R.T. collaborator Riccardo Hernandez, costume designer and Project Runway finalist Emilio Sosa, Tony Award-winning lighting designer Christopher Akerlind, sound by Acme Sound Partners, and casting by Telsey + Company who cast The Color Purple and La Bohème on Broadway. This production of Porgy and Bess will be presented in association with Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel and is currently scheduled to open the A.R.T.’s 2011-2012 season in early September 2011.
Spokespersons from the Gershwin family remarked, “The fusion of musical styles in Porgy and Bess is distinctly American. It has had, and continues to have, a successful life in opera houses around the world yet it contains some of America’s most beloved jazz and popular standards. The Gershwin family and the Heyward trustees are thrilled that the American Repertory Theater will be premiering a re-imagination of Porgy and Bess for a whole new generation of theatergoers. We cannot wait to see the results of Diane Paulus’, Suzan-Lori Parks’, and Diedre Murray’s collaboration as they venture forth from the original. We believe audiences will fall in love with their vision of this masterwork for the 21st century.”
In a meeting with the creative team, Diane Paulus commented, “The Gershwin and Heyward estates have given us the charge to create a version of Porgy and Bess that will have a unique identity as a musical. I am delighted to be working with Suzan-Lori Parks on making the characters in the story more fully realized. With one of the most incredible scores ever written, we want to bring Porgy and Bess to life on the musical stage in a way that feels essential, immediate, and passionate."
Suzan-Lori Parks added, “I am thrilled to be part of the wonderful team working on Porgy and Bess. Our approach is fresh and respectful; we're working to retain all the best-loved elements of the original while crafting a piece that speaks to contemporary audiences.”
Diedre Murray said, “We want to move the story of Porgy and Bess forward on its continuum, re-envisioning it for a modern perspective. We will acknowledge the timelessness of this masterpiece, and stay true to its original spirit while illuminating this work and exploring it in a new way.”
Porgy and Bess first premiered at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30, 1935, with a libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward based on DuBose’s novel Porgy, and their play of the same name. Broadway performances followed featuring a cast of classically trained African-American singers — a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Diedre Murray
is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, two-time Obie Winner and master musician.
An innovative composer, cellist, producer and curator, her credits
include Unending Pain, co-presented by the Performance Garage and the
Whitney Museum of American Art; Lets Go Down to the River, for the
Willasau Jazz Festival in Switzerland; The Eves of Nhor, for National
Dutch Radio and De Effenaar Festival in Eindhoven Holland; Five Minute
Tango, for the inaugural concert at the Danny Kaye/Sylvia Fine
Playhouse, performed by the Manhattan Brass Quintet; You Don't Miss the
Water, a music-theatre piece, in collaboration with noted poet Cornelius Eady, produced by the Music-Theatre Group
(MTG); Women In The Dunes, a dance piece created by Blondel Cummings
for the Japan Society; the jazz-opera Running Man, for which she wrote
the original story, score, and book with Cornelius Eady,
won two Obie Awards, and was named a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer
Prize for Drama; music arrangements for Eli's Coming for which she won
an Obie Award; The Blackamour Angel, a cabaret opera written by Carl Hancock Rux; an adaptation by Diane Paulus of James Baldwin's Another Country; The Voice Within co-written with Marcus Gardley, and produced by Harlem Stage and the Apollo Theatre; and Best of Both Worlds with writer Randy Weiner, directed by Diane Paulus, featured in the Shakespeare Exploded! festival at the A.R.T. in 2009.
Suzan-Lori Parks
is one of the most exciting and acclaimed playwrights in American drama
today. She was named one of TIME magazine's "100 Innovators for the
Next New Wave," and is the first African-American woman to receive the
Pulitzer Prize in Drama for the Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog. Other
plays include In the Blood (2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus (1996
Obie Award), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World,
f-ing A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 Obie
Award for Best New American Play), and The America Play (produced at the
A.R.T. in 1994). Her Ray Charles musical, Unchain My Heart is scheduled to premiere on Broadway in the spring of 2011. Her screenplays include Girl 6 for Spike Lee and her adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God for ABC's "Oprah Winfrey
Presents". In 2007 her project 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in over
700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots
collaborations in theater history. Her first novel, Getting Mother's
Body , was published by Random House in 2003. She is a MacArthur
"Genius" Award recipient, and has been awarded grants from numerous
organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council
on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Guggenheim
Foundation Grant. She has received a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Award
and a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama). Suzan-Lori Parks is an alumnae of New Dramatists and her work is the subject of the PBS Film The Topdog Diaries.
Diane Paulus is the Artistic Director of the American Repertory
Theater, where she helmed The Donkey Show, Best of Both Worlds, and
Johnny Baseball in her inaugural season. Her recent theater credits
include The Public Theater's
revival of Hair on Broadway (2009 Tony Award winner for Best Revival of
a Musical, nominated for 8 Tony Awards including Best Director, as well
as winner of a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama
League Award for Best Revival of a Musical), London's West End and
national tour. Her other recent work includes Kiss Me, Kate
(Glimmerglass Opera) and Lost Highway (ENO co-production with the Young
Vic.) Opera credits include Il Mondo Della Luna (Gotham Chamber Opera at
the Hayden Planetarium), Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Turn Of The
Screw, Cosi fan tutte; and Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria,
L'incoronazione di Poppea, and Orfeo at the Chicago Opera Theater. Diane
is a Part-Time Professor of the Practice in the Harvard University
faculty of Arts and Sciences' Department of English. Her upcoming work
at the A.R.T. includes Prometheus Bound and Death and The Powers: The
Robots' Opera.
