Essentialism..

UPDATE:

WNYC contacted me to correct a couple of things about this post. I'm just going to go ahead and quote their e-mail on this one:

1. You state that Ms. Headlee is white. She is, in fact, multiracial, with white, African American and Native American ancestry.

2. The Takeaway is not an NPR program. Rather, it is a co-production of WNYC and Public Radio International, in collaboration with the BBC World Service, The New York Times, and WGBH Boston.

In addition, they provide the following context for the interview I discussed:

In addition, I’d like to offer some context for the interview. Ms. Headlee is the granddaughter of William Grant Still, hailed as "The Dean of African American Composers." She is also a classically trained soprano whose thesis, deeply rooted in the work of her grandfather, explored African American spirituals. As someone who holds her own grandfather's legacy so dear, her follow-up question to the student's stated lack of connection to this music was not rooted in racial assumptions. Rather, she was curious that someone whose own grandfather, as the founder of the Howard University choir, was instrumental in keeping this music alive, did not experience it as part of his family's legacy.

So, yeah. I was pretty off base on that one. Another lesson in how difficult this stuff can be to talk about.

***

I'm listening to a segment on NPR about a concert of civil rights music at the White House.  They have on members of Howard University's choir.  It's an interesting interview because Celeste Headlee-- the white co-host of The Takeaway-- is constantly being surprised about how the singers don't conform to stereotypes of African Americans. The stereotypes in this case are neither positive nor negative, and thus provide an interesting example of how essentialism can work in even little teensy tiny ways.

So first, Celeste Headlee asks the singers of the choir what it's like to sing Spirituals. And one of them talks about how he can't really relate to them on a personal level, but he enjoys singing them. And she's totally taken aback by this statement and has to ask at least one more time something along the lines of "wait a second, you don't feel a special connection to this music?" Now if the singer were white, this'd be nothing to write home about, but it's an interesting moment.

Then she asks which singer was the most exciting to share the stage with and the guy answers "Bob Dylan" and you can kind of hear her head explode through the other side of the radio. 

This brings me back in many ways to Suzan-Lori Parks' "New Black Math" essay, and Ta-Nehsi's writing on being a black nerd.  She's interviewing a black man. Who sings for a choir. At a Historically Black University.  But he doesn't really care about spirituals as a musical form and loves Bob Dylan. And because we navigate information in this world through stereotypes, this is completely and utterly shocking to Headlee. This doesn't make Headlee a racist or anything, it's just an example of what happens when we're confronted with counter stereotypic people, there's a kind of "does not compute!" that goes on.

Comments

[Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist]

That goes to prove we don't LIVE in a post-racial society like the NYT declared!!

people always ask me if I am half white, because they think it's "impossible" that a 100% Indian, Muslim female could actually be a punk rocker who wears Doc Martens and studs and leather. I find it really offensive and racist.

[Josh]

This is sort of off-topic, but DIMA's comment made me think of it. I thought it was weird when Santogold's album came out that many critics were saying she was just an M.I.A. ripoff. It was weird because their sounds have very little in common except a nod of the hat to New Wave. Santogold's album had a distinct Carribean influence while M.I.A.s songs have an Indian influence. Their albums have little in common.

What they do have in common is that they're both women of color that are doing unexpected things in music. The actual music doesn't have that much in common in terms of sound or style other than being hip. So comparisons seem entirely race based.

I have the same hairdresser as M.I.A.

[Scott Walters]

What it shows is that, as is true with all of the arts, we think that people who create art actually believe in what they're creating or else why would they do it? I'm afraid I don't think this has much to do with race at all.

[99]

Scott, it has to do with race because the opposite is rarely true. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a situation where it would be true: a white person is asked if he feels a "special connection" to a piece of work, and when he (or she) says "No. It's just work," the person pushes them on the point, as though it's unthinkable. The idea that a black person could feel no special connection to a Negro spiritual is unthinkable to some. And that includes black folks. A white artist wouldn't be asked the question if they were performing a Schubert lieder.

I may have mentioned this somewhere, but I recently saw a play by a black writer about a black family dealing with the aftermath of infidelity. Afterwards, another black person expressed surprise that it would be a scandal, as though the given circumstances of a black family makes infidelity okay.

It's about expectations and how some folks have to work hard to overcome them. Race is a part of that.

[Scott Walters]

Actually, I believe that white singers in classical music choirs, for instance, are often asked whether they have a special fondness for specific pieces of music. If one of them said, hell no I prefer Metallica but I'm getting 3 credits for singing this stuff, NPR might also be baffled about what to do with it.

[Abe Goldfarb]

Scott, I think you're actively avoiding the point here for some odd reason. Yes, it would be comical and strange that a white choir singer would be more into Metallica. It does not, however, twang the sense of cultural history that leads us to assume that a black person relates to a black spiritual. It would depend on what the white choir member was singing, yes, but the comparison is not apt.

More apt might be a Jew singing a Hebrew hymn in concert and saying that, no, actually, it's a gig, and he/she's more or less secular. That would be very surprising.

My opinion, in any case.