This Thing Called Hegemony

EXCERPT From a Research Paper Titled "MAN UP Brother MAN UP: A Critical Response to Cool Pose"

This Thing Called Hegemony
According to Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, there exists a class struggle, a conflict of sorts between the elite, or their oppressor and the underclass or the oppressed. Through the control of various religious educational and media institutions a hierarchical social control transmits ideology of the elite or oppressor. Coined, "hegemony," this struggle is constant between the classes (Gramsci, 1971). Examining hegemony through a racial lens, we're able to see, what is the opposite of white, not only in skin but additionally in philosophy, ideology, and even one’s language, must be negated. Again, this functions as a requisite for social control. Hall (2003) interprets media as the primary apparatus in this cycle of control and domination employed by those in power to “broadcast” various discourses, at will. Adjacent to agenda setting theory, which doesn’t tell one how to think but what to think about, Hall focuses his discussion on the issue of race. He states:
What they “produce” is, precisely, representations of the social world, images, descriptions, explanations and frames for understanding how the world is and why it works as it is said and shown to work. And amongst other kinds ideological labour, the media construct for us a definition of what race is, what meaning the imagery race carries, and what the “problem of race is understood to be.” They help to classify out the world in terms of the categories of race. (p. 90)
These same negations in turn serve as the foundation for the social classification of different peoples, otherwise known as the social constructions of race (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). According to Bonilla-Silva, "Race as well as gender has various social realities which produces real effects on the actors racialized as "black" or "white.'" If we extend these raced realities into the category of "black folk," this reality transforms into a negative personification of invisibility. As bell hooks (1992) states in her essay, “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination:
Since most white people do not have to "see" black people (constantly appearing on billboards, television, movies and magazines, etc.) and they do not have to be ever on guard nor to observe black people to be safe, they can live as though black people are invisible, and they can imagine that they are also invisible to blacks. Some white people may even imagine that there is no representation of whiteness in the black imagination, especially one that has been based on concrete observation or mythic conjecture (p. 168-169).
In Black Skin White Masks, Franz Fanon (1953/1967) roots this invisibility to colonialism in his chapter, "The Negro and Psychopathology."
In magazines, the Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Sprit, The Bad Man, the Savage are always by Negroes or Indians; since there is always identification with the victor, the little Negro, quite as easily as the little white boy becomes an explorer, an adventurer, a missionary "who faces the danger of being eaten by the wicked Negroes. (p. 146)
Fanon believes there is a systematic attack on the Negro from all points and it begins with the conditioning on black children. He refers not only to the Tarzan stories but specifically targets the French educational system that praises all things European and condemns all things Antillean.
The Antillean has therefore to choose between his family and European society; in other words, the individual who climbs up into society-white and civilized-tends to reject his family-black and savage…. (p. 154)
Fanon continues this logic to up to where the Negro is reduced to the biological, to nothing more than a genital. (p. 165) Furthermore, in the eyes of the oppressor, the Negro (male) is perceived a sexual beast with a lusty uncontrollable appetite beyond that civilized white human being. One could say that Fanon accepts this sexual reduction but only inversely. What one does not understand, he destroys. For what one envies, he mocks. And thus there is this proliferation --this animalistic sexual myth of the Negro, for the purposes of this discussion, the Negro male.
Taking this invisibility at face value, we see that it cloaks opportunity, accessibility, and life chances to the point where many African-Americans live on the margins of reality. In a gendered sense this marginality has pitted man against women and transversely brother against sister. In a society where the dominant “other” maintains a firm grip on power, we can see how that power enables the ability for one to construct social hierarchies. In American society we see the social hierarchies placing White men at the top of the racial and gender pyramid. In stark contrast the African-American man is placed at the bottom. It if we look at hegemonic masculinity as, Patricia Hill Collins (2004) suggest, in the pretext of racial superiority we can link this raced masculinity to the physical strength, the bravado, exclusive heterosexuality, suppression of vulnerable emotions such as remorse and uncertainty, economic independence and authority over women and other men and intense interest in sexual conquest . In short these essentials are emblematic of masculinity through the eyes the dominant other. Anything less is considered inferior, subordinate and deviant.

On Matters of Captalism

Very interesting list, as much as I despise
capitalism, (it's a very nasty
business) I applaud these folks on their efforts...
Now as I say that--
critically speaking, how much do these folk really
touch base w- the masses
of the poor-- not too many I'd guess. Like I asked
Richard Parsons of Time
Warner, yes your networks have the quality
programming, but to get the
quality, one has to pay-- there are a lot more poor
people (especially
people of color) than middle class. His reply, well
he have the programs on
DVD and VHS and some are going to PBS. In other
words, nothing...

-----Original Message-----
From: Sistrumatic@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Sistrumatic@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Thorrin
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 11:30 AM
To: Sistrumatic@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Sistrumatic] influential minorities

Why do you despise capitalism? Or what aspects do you
not like? Please answer in english and not Russ-speak
;)

-Thorrin

-----Original Message-----

From: "russell robinson"
Subj: RE: [Sistrumatic] influential minorities
Date: Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:57 pm
Size: 9K
To:

You really want to have debate :-)
OK, The truth, 1037 G Hunting Ridge Road Speak:
Capitalism breeds foolishness. People die because of capitalism all in the
name of profit. Don't get it twisted-- everyone should have a nice pocket
but at the same time-- capitalism exploits poor people, especially poor
people of color all in the name of making money.. It's like a pyramid scheme
gone bad... Remember when we would play monopoly. The rule of the game was
to own the board-- ok cool but in the process, to win one of us would have
to go bankrupt. Even when we would play it on the commodore back in the day
and the man had to collect fishbones in a trashcan lid, the man was going
broke. I mean it was fun to laugh at then, but it's hard to laugh at now
when I see the gross ill distribution of wealth among the power elite. This
hand full of people, few who look like us, few who have come from the other
side of the tracks have distanced themselves, socially, economically,
spiritually, academically, you name it from people who look like them. As
for dying-- it boils down to the basic trisecta. Without money in a
capitalist society, you get no sex (from a partner) and in short it makes
no difference if you are healthy or not. Capitalism in my honest opinion
forces people to do a lot of ill mess. War, enslavement, exploitation, self
exploitation. Health care in this country states if you don't have blue
cross/blue shield/piece of the rock/or good hands/ there will be some hands
leading you to the ground if you have burial insurance. Some people can't
afford quality health care and subsequently die on the streets a death void
of dignity and grace. These same people I walk over, around, to get to
class at Howard, or here at home are invisible in capitalist world but they
are not invisible to me. In fact, their invisibility scares me because when
you think you are invisible, you think you can't be touched. It breeds
nihilism which is akin to insanity. When one is insane, they have no regard
for themselves, so why would they have any regard for you or me. This
behavior leads to self hate, self mutilation, self destruction and shrapnel
from a bomb to my knowledge has no set trajectory. I mean think about it, a
person with nothing to lose is a mindless Robie Craig with ready to play
with a Mac 10, a Mac 11, an AK 47, a M60 with two six shooters and three
belts of hand grenades. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be
around nobody like that let alone see them. Capitalism has bread this
Frankenstein, this colossus. (by the way Juggernaut is in X3) Capitalism
has no real love of humanity but more so love of money. For the love of
money, people don't care who they lie hurt or cheat. Event the black
church, the root of black folk, has become corrupted by capitalism. First
we would talk about the sick and shut in, and we'd pray for them. Then we
would take up an offering. We'd use the church as a point of activism
social activism. Now the black church is about making money. These
morality plays have now become Mediea plays to put money in somebody's
pocket. It's profiteering off of misery. Is it a bad thing, you decide.
There is also a mega church--which has gotten away from saving souls and
more concerned with membership. To me capitalism breeds racism, sexism,
classicism, homophobia, ageism, and a whole bunch of other isms I can live
without. In our country-- we are so hell bent on profit, we will put you in
jail over a library book but we will not get guns off the street to keep
people safe. Let's look at law. Everybody knows that Michael Jackson had
no business getting in bed with that boy, let alone saying the mess on TV.
Lo and behold, Mike got a damn good lawyer, and walked away like OJ. Point
made: you can buy any verdict in the court system in the United States of
America. But say Ray Ray got busted with the same thing-- he'd be busting
in the rocks in the hot sun till his head was gray, wrinkled or comatose.
Even the jurors on that case are now saying, we let a guilty man go free and
are writing books about it. Why-- cause that mess sells. There is no
interest in guilt or innocence, just ratings, profits and deals. We will
say it is ok to exploit women to sell anything-- malt liquor, regular liquor
Viagra, sports cars, airline tickets, cigarettes, other women, bombs,
political ideology to maintain a power structure a power structure that
wasn't designed by poor folk but yet strangle them on a daily basis. I'm
like how much money does one person really need? Don't get it twisted, I
don't want to be dead broke but I don't filthy rich either-- I just want to
enjoy life without being dictated on how to live my live my life under rules
that I didn't write down in the first place. Here's a brief example: I go
in to buy a new bed since we're buying a house-- white woman rolls up on me
first thing out her mouth is I bet you play in instrument don't you. My
response-- the radio in my car -- now back to this bed...somehow-- she's
gotten a message/commercial media or what have you that black men with locks
play instruments -- I know it's far fetched but damn, capitalism drives a
lot of ideology, politics, what we think is news (which is nothing more than
propaganda) religion, but it has yet to drive humanity or answer a question
of why we are here. Capitalism is a vehicle to spend money, subscribe to
what society (dominant) say what one aught to be and as I said before
encourage competition. It drives one to be better than. Never has
capitalism inspired one be better within themselves... It's like alcoholism,
an alcoholic realizes they have psychological dysfunction when they consume
alcohol. So they can survive the recognize the problem and navigate the
issue ergo they are productive in society. I'm not naive about capitalism--
I live in the society that breeds it but at the same time I limit my
involvement and participation cause the negative effects are so blatant to
me...

Black Folk and Power

Who has the power? I mean everybody wants power but few have it. In fact, we probably need to define power as the concept has many incarnations. Does the black man really posess power in the face of a white supermacist pactriary? I really don't think so. We have illusions of power but in the final schematic-- I sincerely think our power (if we have any) is grossly limited. In this posting, I will attempt to create linkages to the construct of power as it pretains to Blacks in America-- As we are African by design, American by trade, Slave by profession we must establish where we fit inside of the power dyanamic.

First we must identify the economic system/structure of our nation. America, founded in the sprit of competition is rooted in captalisim and free trade. Everything goes to the higest bidder inculding the quality of life. If one has the ability to control a great deal of wealth, then one can sustain a rather comfortable life-- at least in a captalistic system. Accordig to Marx, there are various classes (social classes) that extend from a captalistic structure-- the bougsouie and the proletaritate. -- I further that by offering that the Americanized model of captalisim breeds social classes based in race. These same social classes hold ranks, privileges and libilities. For many Black Folk, (myself included) we strive hard to achieve this idealized American Dream. For many other Black Folk that American Dream morphs into their American Nightmare as they strive just to "live for the city," in the underclass at or below the polverty line. In fact, I venture to say that below them there exists another class -- the Invisible Class. -- I define this class as follows:
Captalisim breeds racisim, classisim, sexisim, homophobia, ageisim along with a whole list of other isims. In America at least, when you have money you access to quite a few things, material, cognative, sex, power you name it. When you don't have money, you have access to a few other things as well such as abuse, brutality, invisiblity, insensitivity, a systemic structure that is stacked against you. There is alcholisim, narcotics that will dull the pain of being poor. Few people lack the resouces, cognatively to deflect these agents of self distruction. There are days that I think I might be close to that edge. There even have been times I have though about jumping completely over the cliff. But for some reason, my sprituality and my strong belief in sprits/ghosts/spectres/angles whatever you would like to call them, prevents me from doing it. If I could cry I really would, God knows I've got a few reasons. But I can't for some reason. For some reason I am determined to see this thing through-- paying off this bill, staying married, graduating and really saying what needs to be said about our way of life, this American dream which is nothing more than ultimate mind fuck for African Americans. For those who may be squemish-- the ultimate brainwash. Now why do I say that? Well like I said earlier about classisim, if you don't have money, you fit perfectly into a certain class. If you can remain invislble, in the Elisonian sense, and not be affected, consider that a positive. Saying that, I would further that by adding a false postive. You may think you are invisible, but the truth of the matter is, you are under servelance. Already living on the marings of life, one step over the line and you are rendered invisible by a legal sense. The systems say, we don't want to deal with you and we don't have to deal with you so the only dealing we WILL have to do with you is to put out of sight out of mind, hence--we set the game up so you fail. We'll keep you under employeed just long enough for you to drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, or one of your own kind takes your life. Now if you are a stubborn son of a bitch, then we'll systematically dispose of you i.e. the legal system. There one damn sure doesn't stand a chance because of I factor-- the insensivity/invisible factor. I think Al Pachino put it best in his film Insomnia. Talking to Robin Williams, who was the villian, he says, "you are about as facinating to me as a block toilet is to a plumber, I deal with at least eight of your kind a day." Now the irony is, that classic dialouge is the trueisim of the judicial system when it comes to matters of the poor. So if you are poor, caught in the mix of the legal system, you are buttfucked there too. In America, as I am writing on the fourth of July, the celebretatory day of White Independence, we have criminlised polverty. If you are among the poor, you are an outcast. It is a serious crime to be poor in America punishable by death…I think the next thing coming down the pike are debtors prisions. We already have that with the credit system in this land of milk and honey. We give you credit at a very early age-- when you are iresponsible and impressionable. But no one really explains the concept of paying the loan back therefore you get your first negative hits with credit in your early 20s. When/If you graduate college, you really aren't but so qualified to take the job you trained to do so you take a job just to get by, getting by is what you are patterened to do. If you do go to grad school, that costs more money and again-- failure to make the correct network, failure to understand that undergraudate education sets the stage for your future again puts you in a subaltern state. Grades aren't good enough to get a scholarship and so you have to work and go to school which can place your grades at risk or if you have a child at this stage, school rarely is an option. In essence you take out loans and more loans until damn you have got a serious bill to pay back. My God!!! In your late 20s if you are lucky you start to realized the damage you have done and by then you get to where I am, depressed, dazed and confused. You see the direction you want your life to go in, and you see some type of light at the end of the tunnel only to find out that it's a train. So you dodge the train only to see another one coming. Is this supposed to make stronger or my cynical-- I am confused. Like I said I really do want to cry but at the same time tears never solved a problem.. Patience, perserverance (Sir Percival) and intellegence move boulders. Right now -- I think I am in stonehenge….
So if we take invisiblity for what it is-- we see that it is a power that must be mastered if one is going to survive -- A text called Cool Pose suggests that black men wear masks that enable them to face these challenges however, I think that given the context, the Cool Pose is obsolete. No-- we must first accept the fact that we do live on the margins of society. Once we accept that we must then negotiate the fact that death is among us. Now what is death. When we -- black folk-- look at death we personify it-- see it-- as this grim reaper coming to take us off to judgement... Of course this is the Christian interpertation. Again, a monolithic misnoma of black folk-- we are christians. Being a baptist/budhist I don't fit into the box designed by the hegemony-- which will more than likly lead to my silencing but that's another story for another day. According to Cornel West, death can no longer afford to be construted or viewed in this one model. In fact he says that death has three aditional variations: psychic, spritual, and civic. Civic death equates to a legal statewide banishment form society-- i.e. jail, unemployement, the underground economy. Spritual death is coupled to self doubt--nihalisim, where one beleives their life has no value. Finally psychic death where these ideas transform into action, my life is worthless ergo lets become self destructive -- drug use, sucidal tendancy, slow death -- we kill oursleves softly. Now saying that-- I feel we must embrace death and learn to live with those notions of death opposed to running from it. Once we do that I strongly feel we come into a sense of cognizance and identify -- triangulate the various structures around us. The job doesn't stop there in fact it becoems more tedious because then we must take the time to deconstruct the opressive structures which engulf us daily--economics, education, race, class, gender in essence the Amercanized and now Globalized incarnations of captalism. After we then must re-construct the structures in our imigantions and then penitrate them at cautiously and use the power of opressor against itself. In short-- once you know the structures, you stratagize, you seize power. In my mind it makes very little sense for a mouse to go head to head with an elephant. However, it does make sense for the mouse to study the elephant and if need be strike the elephant with an elephant trap.
In essence -- summary, we as black folk, black men in particular must learn the power dynamics, or we are predestined to contiue in the perpetual cycle of BS also known as insanity.

Done..

We're about to look like a bunch of Idiots

And the tragedy is, there's nothing we can do about it; or is there? Let's back up for a second. Who is the "we" and why are "we" going to look like a bunch of idiots and "why" can't "we" do anything about it. From my perspective, I look at we as Black Folk. We are about to look like a bunch of damn idiots. For some reason, we just can't seem to get it right. What is "it"? I think if we start at the broadest of terms and work our way down, we might get to the heart of the matter. Let's start with economics. In my honest opinion, there is no reason what so ever that we as a population should be living in and being victims of so much poverty. Not exclusively economic poverty -- that's easy, I mean moral poverty…

Before you begin to give me the eye roll, please allow me to unpack this a bit.

Somehow, we have become grossly afraid of each other and have become notoriously dependent upon too much technology; in short, we’ve drunk the Kool Aid very much like in Guyana. Instead of the grapevine, we comfort ourselves with AOL Instant Messenger. Instead of the family pipeline for discipline of our children, we rely on the state to introduce not only the biologically adolescent father to his children but also the socially adolescent to what is and what is not socially acceptable. Plain and simple, we don't actively engage our kids anymore -- we look to the TV nanny (Super Nanny) to say how to correct our children and demonstrate the mythos of the American ideology. Right now my wife and I are planning a family-- I don't know what made us plan it -- well yes I do, we both came from households were education -academic education was stressed as the gateway to a better life-- so that she being an educational psychologist and I a media culturist we both want the best for our child/children-- where we part ways is that she might get too pragmatic and I might get just a bit impatient. Mo is like--the book says X, this theory says Y and my mind goes Zzzzzzz. I'm more direct. I believe in the hierarchy of parenting meaning-- me pop, you child, you act up, me pop. Where she likes to theorize the book, I like to apply the book. Mind you because we live in an electronic age, it's not unfeasible to think that your child won't call child abuse, especially when you may have called child protective services on your own parents. I speak from experience. My first knowledge of Janet Jackson was through good times when she played Penny. Thinking what happens in TV happens in real life, after a whipping, I went back to school talking about child abuse. Oh what a world of mess I put myself in. But my point is simple; our parents (circa 1970s, 1960s) had the tools required to be parents. They were children from an age of Jim Crow. By witnessing the work of their parents who did what they had to do (not essentially what they wanted to), in many cases wearing the mask that grinned and lied, they made generational sacrifices.  They in many cases went in the back door so we could go through the front.  At the end of those days, our grandparents came home, parented and did this until our parents were in college.  My parents, from the civil rights era, in many cases replicated what they saw and achieved middle class status.  In doing so, in hindsight, I really never knew struggle.  I really didn’t have to work for too much and the cause effect relationship was just bad.  I had no appreciation for process, the past, or the sacrifices made for me. I think now, times are drastically different and being a teen in the 21st century is intergalacticly different than being a teen in 1983. Cable TV only had 40 channels. When it got dark outside, we knew we had to be home, if not our own house, our friend's telling parents when to expect us. There wasn't a lot of stock placed in the material world as there is today. Sure there was Madonna talking about the Material World, but she was also signifying an icon that none of us had a real connection to, Marylyn Monroe. However, racism was not as overt as it is today. At least in the 80s there were some rules to the thing, now the rules are like the Matrix, "it's all in your mind." Violence (among teens) is seen as quick and easy remedy to conflict. Or worse, it's a right of passage, a culture. You're not real if you don't get the beat down. I mean being a kid now is much harder than back in the day when it was safe to walk at night because there was a neighborhood comradery. There was this family tree that extended far beyond bloodlines. There was little back talk from the youth to the elders because the back talk of that type got you a back hand; see the last days of Marvin Gaye. In the economic sense, there was a sense of unity. There wasn't this dog eat dog mentality where before you get yours, I got to get mine.  There was a different code in the street that wasn't issued and decreed by Tony Montana. It was about ownership, self ownership and accountability. Now the code is written by Nike, T-Mobile, Seagram’s and Glock. For some reason, we think we're on time as a people but damn if we're not still late, no map and too damn proud to ask for directions. Just damn stupid some days of the week I swear! We've forgotten that we can go back to ourselves, seek out the destination MapQuest it out and do the right thing and stop the perpetual cycle of bullshit. How long, How long, How long will this bullshit go on?-- I think there is a reason why we don't have a leader anymore-- it falls to the decline of the black church. The black church is in conflict sinking in the river of denial. The black church was the foundation of mobility, spirituality, politics, social activity, pride-- now it's going down the tubes… The black church trained leaders--it ingrained humanity cause it was about love…. Now love is being found in everything--from the computer, to criminality, to corporatisim-- everywhere but where it needs to be -- at least in the Black community-- and for us that was and still is the black church… Back in the day, we as a people were about something, now we're about to look like a bunch of idiots.

The Pilot

Welcome to the Joke Show-- also know as the episodes of my life-- Now because I don't know you, well you will get an edited version how I live and what I do-- Let's begin our journey:

Black Entertainment and the Social Contract
This comes to us from an email conversation on one of the listserves I contribute to:
Sounds a lot like an accusation to me-- not in the negative sense but more in an assertive sense--first I think we should all be happy when any brother takes the inatiative to even go to Africa--period. Speaking for myself, I have yet to go but will be there before I am 40. Next-- let's be honest and look at this issue critically. Yes, the land, the animals, the backdrop may be white owned but at the same time, there are other above the line and below the line costs that too are white owned and operated which conjointly contributed to the production of this music video (white owned) that will air on a music channel (white owned). The airline for starters, the union production company, the hotel, and possibly even the catering company--all very well may be white owned. Lets get to the brass tacks of the matter: as much as we may want to think Luda was the mastermind behind this seemingly Africanised video, Luda is only a link a much larger coporate chain. Lastly, I think the question that is before is centers on the issue of cultural obligation and does Luda have said obligation to African/African-American people-- (more commonly refered to as Black Folk)? In a legal sense, no. To date, there exists no cultural contract which we sign that says we as Black Folk are obliged to operate in efforts that benifit the black community. However, in a moral sense, as people with a history of strugle, in collective cells, yes that expectation does exists; however, is rarely it ever reinforced. There is no D.R.O.P Squad (as much as we need it) however, collectively we will drop various people if we feel they exhibit extreme violations of the unwritten cultural contract, especially in arenas of pop culture and gender politics, for example Lionel Richie, Clarance Thomas, Armstrong Williams, OJ Simpson (before he killed or was held responsible for the killing of the white people). In the case of Lionel Richie, sistas droped him like a hot pistol when they found out he cheated on his wife with a white woman and his record sales consequetnly droped. What is intersting though is the reverse. When Luke and gangsta rap were at his peaks, many of these songs objectfied our women pretty hard, but for some reason, we (collectively) didn't drop/mash on them. In fact, they were promoted in our cultural hierachy, which is mysogonistic bordering sadistic. In close-- as we project cultural expectations on our pop icons i.e. the promotion of Africa, Black Folk, Black cohesiveness, economic enfranchisement, restoration of pride, I think that expectation must be holistic -- which goes back to the question of ownership. Who truly owns the means of cultural production within the spectrum of African-American entertainment?