“When They Reminisce Over You, My God!”:

Reminiscing Racial Violence, In and Out of School

Carmen Kynard, Ph.D.John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Associate Professor of English

“They Reminisce Over You”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKJ9fRa2MTc

(Pete Rock and CL Smooth on Arsenio Hall)

End of first verse and C.L. Smooth’s last two bars:Déjà vu, Tell You What I’m Gonna Do

When They Reminisce Over You, My God!The weight and impact of such re-remembering is exactly what schools quite actively and deliberately keep us from doing.

Zeus Leonardo’s work asks us to understand:

•Problems of research and action theorized solely from the location of white privilege •“White privilege” is a passive description of white racial domination•Racial domination never happens without active agents• Whiteness is not a state of being dominant•Whiteness is a calculated and calculating series of racist processes.

“Backwater Blues” by Bessie SmithI woke up this mornin', can't even get out of

my doorI woke up this mornin', can't even get out of my doorThere's been enough trouble to

make a poor girl wonder where she want to go…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRTHHkeQ8sE

In 1927, the Mississippi River broke out of its levee system in 145 places and flooded 27,000

square miles

Structural and institutional racism are NOT subtle or

invisible.

Oppression could never work if it were invisible or

unfelt.

“I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others

on fire.” ~Cornel West, Brother West

“Being oppressed means the absence of

choices.” ~bell hooks

“The blues women did not passively reflect the vast social

changes of their time; they provided new ways of thinking

about these changes, alternative conceptions of the physical and

social world for their audience of migrating and urban women and

men, and social models for women who aspired to escape from and now improve their

conditions of existence.” ~Hazel Carby

Excerpt from my syllabus:

Writing about texts is perhaps the singlemost, common trademark

for the kind of writing and thinking that is expected of you in the academy. However, this does NOT mean: that you write

about things you don’t care about, that you write as if you sound like an encyclopedia/

wikipedia, that you omit your own voice and perspective, that you

cannot be creative and energetic….

… that you must sound like the type of person who might wear wool/plaid jackets with suede

patches on the elbows in order to be taken seriously, that you

cannot be everything that makes up your multiple selves, that you

cannot be Hip Hop, Soul, Bachata, Bomba, Metal, or Rock-

N-Roll, that you cannot have some fun with it. You do not give up who you are to be an academic writer; on the contrary, you take who are even MORE seriously.

From the Feminist Wire…Monica Casper makes a

compelling case: that we need to talk about “specifically the

historical, systemic racism of white women.” And Heather Laine

Talley makes it clear that expressions like “well, not all

white women/white feminists are like that” is a form of white

denial and bad allying.

From Fannie Lou Hamer…

“I’m just up here to rap and tell you

what it is and to tell it like it is.”

“Until I Am Free, You Are Not Free Either” (1971 speech ay UW-Madison)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZYinmLyOxI

“When They Reminisce Over You, My God!”: Reminiscing Racial Violence, In & Out of School

Carmen Kynard, Ph.D.ckynard@jjay.cuny.edu