Black Dancers Are Funny Poets
Two statements I have heard this week:
Describing a poet scheduled to do a reading at a local college - “As he says ‘I’m black, Jewish, and a Buddhist.’ So, he’s an interesting poet.”
Describing a swing dancer performing for a select audience in Seattle – “Well, he’s black and he’s from Detroit, so what else do you have to say?”
I heard the former statement after the latter, and I heard the latter repeated twice in a single evening. They both have been stuck in my craw to varying degrees since hearing them.
Perhaps I should cut the poet statement a little slack. After all, it was made to a class of English majors that collect experience with different cultural and literary traditions like birders collect sightings. (“Why, yes, I have read Carribean lesbian poetry, and found it fascinating. Are you into Eastern European literary collage?”) There is, when studying literature, a tangible value in acquainting oneself with diverse traditions, so I should be willing to allow that might have been the intent.
But, it wasn’t, and I don’t cut it much slack atall atall.
The dancer statement might bother me more if it made any fucking sense. Are black guys from Detroit particularly good swing dancers and I didn’t know? Is it that their gigantic penises help with the turns? Add a little extra torque? It’s just such a ridiculous statement at the face, I can’t take it as seriously as maybe I should. Clearly, it is a nervous white moderate middle-class attempt to sound enlightened and saucy and safe, and while rooted in a need to Other, not much to get all post-colonial about. Just a silly cracker.
When it is from someone that should ostensibly know better, that gets me. Somehow the speaker allows their self-satisfaction at being enlightened and progressive and Right, g-ddamnit (and they love their g-d usage, I tell ya, it’s taken on its own little canonical status) to blind them to the objectification of a poet being interesting because he’s black and Jewish and a Buddhist as opposed to, I don’t know, his friggin’ poems. Which, hell yes, are informed by every bit of his subject position, even whether he had acne as a kid, but that isn’t the why of his value as an artist.
Seems like in each case the speaker was trying to make a shortcut, flash a wink at their audience, those in tacit agreement with the speaker’s ingrained preconceptions (case 1 – art is it’s socio-cultural value, case 2 – those negroes are excellent dancers). At least the dancer statement speaker is a little aware of it, knows he grips his car keys a little tighter in certain parts of town, while the poet statement speaker kids herself it isn’t demeaning to pat a poet on the head.
Describing a poet scheduled to do a reading at a local college - “As he says ‘I’m black, Jewish, and a Buddhist.’ So, he’s an interesting poet.”
Describing a swing dancer performing for a select audience in Seattle – “Well, he’s black and he’s from Detroit, so what else do you have to say?”
I heard the former statement after the latter, and I heard the latter repeated twice in a single evening. They both have been stuck in my craw to varying degrees since hearing them.
Perhaps I should cut the poet statement a little slack. After all, it was made to a class of English majors that collect experience with different cultural and literary traditions like birders collect sightings. (“Why, yes, I have read Carribean lesbian poetry, and found it fascinating. Are you into Eastern European literary collage?”) There is, when studying literature, a tangible value in acquainting oneself with diverse traditions, so I should be willing to allow that might have been the intent.
But, it wasn’t, and I don’t cut it much slack atall atall.
The dancer statement might bother me more if it made any fucking sense. Are black guys from Detroit particularly good swing dancers and I didn’t know? Is it that their gigantic penises help with the turns? Add a little extra torque? It’s just such a ridiculous statement at the face, I can’t take it as seriously as maybe I should. Clearly, it is a nervous white moderate middle-class attempt to sound enlightened and saucy and safe, and while rooted in a need to Other, not much to get all post-colonial about. Just a silly cracker.
When it is from someone that should ostensibly know better, that gets me. Somehow the speaker allows their self-satisfaction at being enlightened and progressive and Right, g-ddamnit (and they love their g-d usage, I tell ya, it’s taken on its own little canonical status) to blind them to the objectification of a poet being interesting because he’s black and Jewish and a Buddhist as opposed to, I don’t know, his friggin’ poems. Which, hell yes, are informed by every bit of his subject position, even whether he had acne as a kid, but that isn’t the why of his value as an artist.
Seems like in each case the speaker was trying to make a shortcut, flash a wink at their audience, those in tacit agreement with the speaker’s ingrained preconceptions (case 1 – art is it’s socio-cultural value, case 2 – those negroes are excellent dancers). At least the dancer statement speaker is a little aware of it, knows he grips his car keys a little tighter in certain parts of town, while the poet statement speaker kids herself it isn’t demeaning to pat a poet on the head.
posted by JJisafool at 11:43 PM
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