This week our class began its investigation on race and the construction of Blackness, specifically, how it is seen as abject and criminal. When thinking of how Black bodies are marked, the first thing that came to mind before reading the assigned materials was a quote from Hortense Spillers’ Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe in which she writes,
“the names by which I am called in the public place render an example of signifying property plus. In order for me to speak a truer word concerning myself, I must strip down through layers of attenuated meaning, made an excess in time; over time; assigned by a particular historical order, and there awaits whatever marvels of my own inventiveness.” (1987)
In this quote, Spillers looks at the [Black] body as a site of cultural meaning, social experience, and political resistance. With an understanding that Blackness was something socially constructed over time that impacts how particular bodies are perceived and able to move through the world, I felt as though I had an adequate understanding of race and its implications before engaging the course materials.
With this in mind, upon reading both the Pinn and DuBois pieces, my focus shifted towards a deeper understanding of the creation of the “negro” and how racist ideology was perpetuated and normalized through social institutions. Like Spillers, DusBois and Pinn describe how every-day language and terminology is deeply historically embedded and build on the notion that to deconstruct modern grammar, labels, and stereotypes, one must “go back in time” and consider the legacies of slavery, as well as tropes that had developed as a result. DuBois’ account made clear that through the creation of Blackness, individuals were stripped of autonomy or any sense of self; they were simply marked as ‘other’ and were forcibly read as such, regardless of their true character. Racist ideals were also a pervasive part of the socialization process. This is demonstrated in Birth of a Nation, which helped reinforce many of the negative/harmful stereotypes about Black people. However, while media was one means of justifying racialized violence, I was particularly alarmed by Pinn’s excerpt from Genesis 2:7–8, 18–25 which described the creation of beasts. As someone who was not raised in a monotheistic, let alone Christian faith, this is the first time I have come across an actual passage from the Bible and seen how it could be weaponized to further classify Black people as subhuman.
