So who is Biggie Smalls?

So this poster, sent out by Jackie O for the poetry workshop we are all taking, caused quite a kerfluffle. The ensuing discussions on the English Grad list-serve proved quite thought provoking.  I wanted to preserve them for my future perusal so I am posting them here.

The exchange begins with Jackie's apology. I never saw any of the initial complaints sent to her about the poster. 

From: Jacqueline Osherow 

Sent: Monday, July 21, 2014 11:19 AM

Subject: apologies

I understand that people were offended by the poster for my (severely under-enrolled) class.  I truly apologize.  

The poster has come down.  Never having advertised a class of mine in my life,  I had my daughter -- who specialized in race and  the media in her American Studies degree and has worked at the Boys' Club of New York in Harlem for two years -- design the poster.  She thought it was funny to imagine Biggie Smalls and Shakespeare as co-members of a poetry workshop.  It was certainly not her (or my) intention to offend anyone. 

I will have her design another poster.  

Again, my apologies.

Jackie

From Christine Allen-Yazzie:

Who complained about putting Biggie Smalls in a workshop with Shakespeare? This is one of scarce few corners of life where we get to mull over ideas then TAKE THEM OR LEAVE THEM. Or so I thought. Might as well return to the private sector where we haven't traded off pay for the opportunity to pull on our big kid pants for once. You've been to private sector, no? Where most jobs require you to self-censor your soul? And now our professor is apologizing. Here. Enjoy this. Enrique Chagoya works in university.

From Lindsay Appell:

‪I didn't realize apologizing for a potentially problematic or offensive juxtaposition of blackness with academia/canonical literature was akin to censoring one's soul!

‪Snarkiness aside, THAT was the reason for the complaint, if I understand correctly, not some uptight resistance to putting Biggie and Shakespeare on a poster together (I, for one, would love to take a class in which both were studied, which was not what was being advertised).

‪So, no, we're not children. We're adults living in a world where it's our responsibility to recognize subtle racism (regardless of intent), and call it out.  And discuss it.  "Mull over it," if you will. But when it comes to racism, "taking it or leaving it" is not the responsible path to take.

‪(I am speaking as a white person complicit in a racist system when I speak of responsibility. Not trying to speak for/to the reactions of POC to this type of thing.)

From Derek Henderson:

However, unless one of the details you may have missed was that "Shakespeare portrayed as the teacher of the workshop," or "Shakespeare is dressed in full-on Klan regalia," I'm afraid I'm still not entirely sure what's so offensive here. Granted, I haven't seen the posters, so there may very well be unintended racist connotations in the execution of the concept. What I'm visualizing is Bill and Biggie sitting at a table talking shop, which doesn't seem especially racist as a concept (in fact, it seems pretty cool).    

Anyone have any other details/specifics about the poster, or an image of the poster itself? (which I'm beginning to think was the link that didn't come through in Christine's email...)

Curiouserly and curiouserly,

Lillian’s response:

My understanding of the issue is that despite its good intent, the poster was participating in the recent (and not so recent) spate of using images of blackness (and/or black cultural references, a la Miley & her dancers) for purposes unrelated to examining aspects of said culture, and for the purposes of drawing in and attracting people by virtue of juxtaposition. 

Despite the humor, or even claims of positive promotion or feelings of being honorific towards "other" cultures, what the poster fails to do is communicate to what extent the class is going to present students with a dialogue on the connections between Shakespeare (his culture, context, content, and writing style) and Biggie (and rap music's culture, context, content, and writing style.) That information might also have been more useful to students deciding on what classes to take. If the class actually had no intention of doing those things, then the advertisement is even more problematic, because it's using images of blackness and black culture to sell students on something totally different, and in that sense it's also pedagogically misleading. 

Well-meaning? Yes, of course. But the well-meaning can still participate in "selling" images of blackness without promising an examination of the culture of where those images come from and the well-meaning can still be problematic. 

And no, "we" are not children. "We" are people of color. 

I'll say it again. We are not children. We are people of color. 

From Adam Atkinson:

First of all, hell yes, Lillian.

Second of all, the spate Lillian references is indeed as broadly cultural as Miley--but it's important to note that the poster in question isn't alone in our department as a participant in this spate. The enclosed poster mocks a particular representation of blackness (albeit one carefully attached to a presumably white body) as a sort of cautionary tale: This is what happens without English, or without 'good' English. The headline ("You know what I'm sayin...'?") and it's implied answer ("No.") place the author of the poster and its reader on either end of an in-joke about education, race, class, and standard English, in which the imagined, unintelligible speaker (isolated by 'bad' English) serves as the punchline. This would be a debatable strategy for promoting our department to a diverse student population as it was, but the fact that this joke is then arranged around a do rag and a tattoo font traditionally associated with black male bodies (and rappers in particular) leaves *me* troubled. I do wonder if the enclosed poster's author meant well deploying a white body as her central image. Regardless of intention, the message has merely been nuanced to insinuate that any failure on a white student's part to utilize 'good' English portends a more dangerous slippage into a tenuous whiteness and an adjacence to black stigma.

The desire to voice these reactions is not infantile. It *might* be infantile if I only ever talked about it here without talking to anyone else, such as directly to the instructor in question (with kindness)--the latter option being, ironically, the kind of action that merited the question of our childhood that started this thread.

In any case, I'm sure the author of the enclosed poster is a fine instructor and a smart person, and I'm not including this here to besmirch her name, only to illuminate for more of you the environment into which Jackie's poster entered (part of the spate Lillian references) and why there was a sort of swell of conversation about it. Prominent among the qualities this poster shares with Jackie's is the placement of rap-related imagery in subservience to a more ideal English: In the enclosed poster, the featured man needs it and is laughable without it; in Jackie's poster, Biggie owes something to it, is made to honor it, and is legitimized by it. However well-intended these posters' authors were, these representations of black subservience and secondary status take part in a sordid past and present of white supremacy in academia, with which many aren't readily familiar because they needn't be.

So, yeah. That's why the complaint and the possible future complaints. Not to censor or shame or wield institutional force in a way that mimics the private sector, but to be as forthright as possible about the extent to which our department unnecessarily replicates racial problematics, to the particular detriment of the scholars of color at all levels who study, write, and teach here.

From Ryan Seimers:

The numbers I've seen for English majors are pretty steady. That said, I have two quick thoughts about more attractive course design.

1) Apropos of the previous discussion, a class that engages pop culture and canonical literature in a meaningful way (a class that actually did discuss Shakespeare and Biggie Smalls, for example) would attract students. If I had my druthers, I would build that approach into the standard intro-to-lit curriculum. Breaking Bad and Doctor Faustus, BSG and Shakespeare, anything with vampires in it and Stoker's Dracula, Disney's Maleficent and Wide Sargasso Sea. Mutually informing juxtapositions.

2) Framing a more traditional survey in seductive (transgressive) terms usually works. Kathryn Stockton does a good job of that: Jane Austen and perversion, for example. You, Andy, might frame a course around humor.

In general, I think a move away from historical period surveys and toward more transhistorical juxtapositions grouped thematically is more interesting. Unfortunately, our entire profession is organized around narrow periodization.

On a related note, does anyone know if the Book of Mormon as Literature class was well attended?

From Andy Farnsworth:

I’m stoked people are discussing things on the list serve again. And for people putting themselves out there to keep our department from making some visual pratfalls.

Also, it wouldn’t hurt for us to discuss ways to interest students in our classes. Enrollment is DOWN in ENGL classes. And maybe it’s for the people above us to figure this one out, but I’d be interested in hearing opinions on this.

_________________________________________________________

OKAY! So why am I so intrigued by this?

1)   I know so little about Rap/hiphop.

2)   In reading Invisible Man last semester, I was intrigued with the images of black culture, Zoot Suiters, and how this culture seemed to be motivating culture in general without the white hierarchy ever realizing it. Could rap/hiphop be the same kind of animating force today? Do we ignore it at our own peril? Is a failure to acknowledge this art form constricting our view of the world, creating a deficiency in our ability to comprehend the present, the future? (yeah, hyperbole, I know.)

3)   I’m interested that a very early book on rap by David Foster Wallace, written while he was still in school, has just been republished.  Hmm. Just because he died and was famous? Or because he recognized the form as important and sought to document its evolution.

4)    Then there was this article posted on The Daily Beast…”Americans have never loved poetry more, but they call it rap.” 

5)   So I feel the need to get up to speed. I responded with enthusiasm to the idea of combining the work of Shakespeare and Smalls in the same workshop, to the idea of extending the pertinence of poetry into the presence.

6)   Lillian, on her PHD exam reading list, included the Anthologyof Rap published by Yale.  It’s a couple of years old now, and has its detractors, but the introduction is great and it is available for not that much money, as anthologies go, on the kindle.  

Do I plan on diving head first into all things Rap? No, but I do hope to become conversant on the history, aesthetics, vocabulary and tradition of this genre of poetics, and to be able to defend it as such.  Luckily I am finding many (particularly a certain son-in-law) who are able to keep me from making a fool of myself.