#multimediaproject

artist residency ARL Dubrovnik / August2022

new multimedia project Between us3 

Scrolling down my Facebook timeline a few weeks ago, I stumbled on a fascinating Philly.com article promoting a new book written by Cheryl Woodruff-Brooks. This book is all about the once racially segregated Missouri Avenue Beach in Atlantic City, called Chicken Bone Beach. According to Blackpast.org, Chicken Bone Beach was designated as the exclusively African American section of the beach around 1900. During the segregation era, the beach provided recreation and later stellar entertainment for African Americans, both tourists and local residents. 

The name Chicken Bone Beach came from the fact that Blacks had to bring their own food to eat while spending the day at the beach, since they were not permitted to dine at most of the restaurants. One of the foods they brought was fried chicken. After eating, they would bury their chicken bones in the sand, which later were dug up by seagulls and led to cleaning crews having to clean up a bunch of chicken bones. Hence the name Chicken Bone Beach.

Mind you, we see this picture of beautiful women at the beach, having a great time with their friends. But this was the ONLY section of the beach where Black people were allowed to go. Quoting the Philly.com article, “Back then, African Americans were still being systematically denied most of the perks of American citizenship, such as voting and full access to most public accommodations. Yet there they were, happily posing for the camera as if they didn't have a care in the world. To me, the photos are a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and of how even during the most oppressive of times, people still manage to find joy.” 

This ability of oppressed people to still manage to find joy, is a theme we see in many cultures. An example of this comes from Donna Goldstein’s book, Laughter Out of Place. Goldstein introduces us to a part of Rio she was studying in the early 1990s. She describes a place ridden with racism, violence, and poverty, yet out of the all the madness, people still find time to laugh, or make light, of the occurrences of their very solemn lives.

According to Webster’s dictionary, “gentrification” is defined as “the process of repairing and rebuilding homes and businesses in a deteriorating area (such as an urban neighborhood)...” Hmmmm. That’s very interest way to say it. 

A slightly more accurate definition comes from the the documentary “My Brooklyn,” where Historian and MIT Professor Craig Wilder schools us that gentrification is not about one group of people moving out and another group moving in. It’s about corporations sectioning off large chunks of neighborhoods and planning out their long term development. And in that process, planning out the REMOVAL of large numbers of people with community attachments. In a sense, gentrification is about tearing down neighborhoods and building different neighborhoods. But let’s not be mistaken, this is done ON PURPOSE, intentionally, and the people being removed are people of color. Further, the idea that the people who helped build these communities are dismissed within the implementation of this change, is obscene.

And if we want to dig a little bit deeper, we can obtain another real definition of gentrification from the article “Negotiating grit and glamour: Young women of color and the gentrification of the Lowe East Side,” by Caitlin Cahill. In this article, the idea of gentrification is observed from the perspective of young working class women who have grown up on the Lower East Side of New York in the 80s and 90s. These women are a part of a group that experienced gentrification right before their eyes, “offering inside perspectives on urban restructuring rarely found in the gentrification literature.” Quoting one of the women, she sees gentrification as “these yuppie ass, money having, culture seeking, white people buying us poor people out of our neighborhood in part because they want a taste of our culture rich environment and the more of them who come in, the more of us are forced to leave because we can longer afford to live here.” Which to me, is 1000% times more accurate than what Webster’s Dictionary has to say. 

Overall, the part that hurts the most when it comes to gentrification is the complete lack of understanding from those behind the developmental wheel. In “My Brooklyn,” I could not stop shaking my head hearing these people talk about wanting to diversify Brooklyn, bring in supermarkets with organic/fresh foods, bring in jobs, etc., when at the end of the day it was really about real estate, money, and more money. And, everything was gone about in such an underhanded way, without the input of the Black and Brown people of the community. It’s sad to say this, but why couldn’t we build up the community together? Why so sneaky? One of the young women in Cahill’s article summed this up perfectly by stating, “I complain so much about how the white people are coming and making everything “trendy” but on the other hand, I like being trendy and I want to be able to one day mingle with that crowd, but I hate the fact that they are forcing us out. Why can’t it be that we all come together to form a culture rich yet trendy neighborhood? Why does it have to be one or other?”

Exactly. Why does it have to be one way or the other!?

I have to admit, whenever I see tags and labels that talk about buying “Fair Trade” goods, I usually ignore them. But after watching El Cacao: The Challenge of Fair Trade, I wish I had paid attention sooner. 

This very short, yet powerful, documentary walks us through the challenges of being a cacao farmer in a rural area of Central America. The main character talks to us about his family business, his high-quality organic cacao, and gives a sense of the extreme hands-on labor involved with farming cacao. You can have big farms in countries like Africa, that use heavy machinery and chemicals to farm their cacao, or you have the small farmer that uses their hands and machetes, and examines each cacao bean one by one to make sure they are providing an excellent product. The job of the small cacao farmer is a team effort, where even the animals and insects have a role to play, to produce the most amazing cacao beans for our consumption.

In the end, after all of the intensive labor, these small farmers still face potential disease to their crops, injury, and most likely being ripped off during the selling process that is supposed to protect them. So, should we support fair trade cacao, even if it costs a little more than your average Hershey bar? Most definitely.

The answer to the question in the title (What led a Kirkland yogurt shop to call police on a black man) is NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. It’s a shame that we have to read yet another story of White people calling the police on Black people for no reason whatsoever. If you read the article, you find out Byron Ragland was in the yogurt shop that day because he is a court appointed special advocate and a visitation supervisor, and was overseeing an outing between a mother and her son. Nonetheless, two White female employees were “scared” because he looked “suspicious,” but at the same time admitted he was not making them feel uncomfortable. Which are two completely contradictory statements. 

So the real question is, why does this keep happening? The author of the article reiterates this same notion when he asks, “Why didn’t anybody ask Ragland what was going on? How in the year 2018 are we still this clueless, to the point of being dehumanizing, around the issue of race?” And this is where we need to dig deeper. You see a Black man, minding his own business, and you are “scared?” Again, why is this the case?!

I wish the answer were a simple one, but the truth is, racism is usually the result of deeply rooted biases and misconceptions, that can easily be perpetuated by one’s own insecurities. A paper published by Wagner et al in 2016, titled “Anthropologists’ views on race, ancestry, and genetics,” states that “racism is found in individual and collective biases and prejudices as well as in the organizational behaviors that continue ‘to index race and promote racially unequal outcomes.’” We can also use the documentary film American Denial, as an example of “some of the potential underlying causes of racial biases still rooted in America’s systems and institutions today.” Gunnar Myrdal’s interviews with White people of the Jim Crow South in the 1940′s was one of the first to challenge the United State’s creed of liberty and justice for all, showing that racism was alive, well, and thriving, which is proving to still be true today. In the Byron Ragland case of being kicked out of the yogurt store, as much as the owner wants to claim that the police call had nothing to do with race, this sort of denial is exactly why we keep seeing things like this happen. There will be no solution until we ALL can admit there is a problem.

To quote something I heard on the radio the other day, “people should call the police for their SECURITY and not for their INSECURITIES.” I suppose time and education will eventually fix things, but in the meantime, please enjoy this very useful PSA by the lovely Niecy Nash ...

Get to know local author Rebecca Massey! She’s not your average grandma. Since 2013, Rebecca has published nine books in her “Colton’s Pocket Dragon” series and more are on the way. The books, inspired by Rebecca’s grandson, will transport you to a magical land filled with “fun flying adventures”. But first, get to know the author behind the magic. As you scroll through this site, you’ll learn about Rebecca, the series, where to get the books and more. Enjoy!