White passing

On a more general note, how does passing as a white person influence the way that you are perceived by white society, but also how you navigate spaces within the black community? There are obviously privileges to being white passing, but I think the experience of white passing black folks is a lot more nuanced than we sometimes like to admit in the black community. They definitely do have the privilege of being able to pass as a white person in predominantly white spaces, but there is a stress and trauma that comes with that experience. Self-identifying as black while simultaneously being perceived as something else can be extremely exhausting. It is hard when other people place identities on you, especially when you know for a fact what you are.

Homecoming

Dear Pinky,

In grappling with what it means to live life "as an equal" how did you find the ease with which you made the transition into white society reflected in your difficult homecoming? Was it with reluctance that you turned to the woman who offered you a chance at living an "equal" life? Because home makes up such a large part of someone's identity, it seems as though the minute you felt at home in your skin was the minute you left your home with Dicey behind. For you, home could be a choice, and when you chose to return to the South, your ability to choose was stripped away, and you were an African-American woman again. If you could live today, with the freedom to choos, outside the bounds of your society's rigid categories, with whom would you be most at home? Did you feel the advantages of a privileged and humane existence outweighed the bonds of family, loyalty, and love that you forged with your grandmother and the home you were given?

Esther

Pride

Dear Auntie Dysey,

Throughout the movie, Pinky, your narrative is overshadowed by that of your granddaughter. I want to focus more on your story and your feelings about all of the things that occurred. The idea of pride is a major theme in the movie and its something that Pinky brings up and is also a character trait that you exhibit humbly. With this in mind, how were you able to claim your existence as a prideful, storing black woman, while still fitting into a white dominated society? You did well to instill important values like empathy, compassion, and determination into your granddaughter, and these values helped serve both of you well, but was it hard to maintain your pride when so many people were trying to diminish it? There is an instance in which the opposing lawyer is trying to get you to admit that you cannot read, but you and your pride ill not give him the satisfaction. This was an inspiring moment for me, but did instances like this ever make you doubt your abilities or lose pride? Eventually you and Pinky fight your way to a better life, and I am just thinking that many of the good things that came out of Pinky’s return would not have been possible without placing an emphasis on personal pride. Thank you for exhibiting personal pride as a black woman and leading your grand daughter to uphold the same values. 

Dear Ms. Ross

Dear Ms. Bet Ross,

I am inspired by your tenacity in defying your master, who was also your father, and your mistress in deciding who you wanted to marry. You endured the punishment of taxing field labor and little rest to maintain your right to dictate your life and claim your humanity. It is admirable that in such difficult times, you were still able to fight for your human rights. Not only do your children and grandchildren look up to you as a powerful woman, but so do all who hear your story through the story of your granddaughter, Ellen Baker. Thank you for your courage and candor.

Sincerely,
Taylor Wright

Slave Food

Dear Ella Jo,

The people you came from, your family, seemed extremely vital for your development as a person. Your people helped to forge your identity in more ways than one. Your grandmother, Josephine Elizabeth Ross' stories of defiance and triumph planted seeds within your young mind. Your mother, Anna Ross Baker's activity in Baptist Church parallels and inspires your legendary work in activism. Your maternal grandfather, Mitchell Ross' life as a freedmen's community leader served as a source of inspiration for you, as well. He definitely served as a nurturer of the community. Yet once your grandfather was a landowner, he rebuked the food that nourished the black community, the enslaved, for generations.

Your grandfather did not allow cornbread to be eaten in his household, but what are your opinions on the scraps that became staple foods for the African American community? Do you indulge in cornbread, chitterlings, yams, hog maws, okra, or pigs feet? This is a very minimal issue of importance, but these scraps are parts of African American culture. Soul food like this must have some essential positive benefit for the soul. I cannot just call it slave food, and denounce it. I personally think I can say "I yam what I am" and not harm forward mobility. I would love your opinion on this since "your people" are of a different era than mine.

Best regards,
Kory

Sexuality and Violence as Release

Dear Angela Davis,

In your piece "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism", not only do you disprove the assumptions of conformity of black women within white patriarchal ideologies post-Reconstruction, but you also provide penetrating against academics who misread the complexities presented by women blues singers and lyrics and simplify them as normative. The subject of black women, even in a contemporary academic examination, is so often simplified into the dichotomy of compliant or rebellious, white purity or black deviance. This trap of categorizing black women's history into a single narrative is what historians aware of the intersectional and personal complexities of women from the past must prove fallacious.

Your commentary especially on black women's sexuality as the "tangible expression of freedom" is paradigmatic in understanding blues lyrics and, thus, black women's lives of the time (8). Until then, black women were oppressed most through their sexuality, or rather the complete repression and denial of its existence. White slaveowners viewed enslaved black women as reproductive machines, dehumanized to a point where sexuality was never a matter of choice. This is the embodiment of violence. It is no wonder, then, for black women to seek sexual liberation and violent revenge - at the very least, by expression through song and not real enactment. Sex and violence are the two cornerstones of human psychology, particularly in regard to trauma and the processing of it. With blues being a form of "secular spiritual", as you referenced James Cone and C. Eric Lincoln, the psychospiritual healing and release that blues songs sung by women provided towards black women audience was sensational then still is now.

Best regards,
Christina

To Tom from Pinky

Dear Tom,

I hope you are well. It has been nearly a year since you left and a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t thought of you. I really do hope that Denver is treating you well. I reckon it gets quite cold in those parts so I hope that you are keeping warm. I thought you might like to know that I have made Ms. Em’s house– my house, into a clinic and a nursery school. You see, there are so many young girls who would just be thrilled with the opportunity to go to nursing school but are never given the chance. I was actually approached about speaking with such girls in my area about nursing, though I had refused the offer. Now that I have established this clinic and school, I see how much such a place was needed in this community.

I am not hiding in a closet like you mentioned when we last spoke. I’m out here in the open living my life as the truest version pf myself I ever was. I am very happy, Tom. I feel as though my life has so much more purpose now. I’m where I’m meant to be. I hope that you are happy too. I wish you only happiness and success in your endeavors out west.

Sincerely,

Pinky

"You can't live without pride"

Dear Pinky Johnson,
    Watching your story was incredibly impactful for me, and made me think a lot about the ideas of identity and pride in oneself. At one point in the film you try to explain your decision to stay in your hometown by simply saying, “You can’t live without pride”. That moved me because I’d never thought about the fact that passing necessitates accepting the idea that being black is something to be ashamed of, something to hide if possible.
    One thing that really struck me is your relationship with Tom Adams, and the way that both of your views on race diverged over the course of the film. There’s a really interesting point in the film where you talk about how not pursuing the case would let down yourself and your people, and he angrily replies that black people aren’t “your people”. I feel like this ties back into the idea of possessive individualism vs. collective autonomy: he’s unable to understand the idea that you are tied to the others in your community. Ultimately he saw your blackness as something that had to be overcome with a change of name and location; you came to view as an integral part of who you are and of your purpose in the world.
    Something I wonder about is how the black community of the area treated you. Were you welcomed back by everyone or prejudiced against because of your apparent whiteness, especially after permanently settling in your hometown.
    In any case, I will definitely be thinking about your story for weeks and months to come.

Ella

Ella,

I find it admirable how your family’s philosophy wasn’t the “expected one”. You used your religion for the betterment of others, rejecting the idea of all talk but no actual work. I admire how you describe your mother, who rejects the idea that women must be fragile and passive. She saw herself as an equal and were not afraid to voice her opinion against those who did not. Without question, one’s upbringing has a major impact on how they grow to perceive the world around you, and no doubt, yours contributed to you wanting to change it.

On Art, Radicalism, and Identity

Dear Angela Davis,

You analyze some of the manifestations of Black liberation through music, specifically Black women's liberation through Blues. As you explored the music of quotidian routine and expectations of women, you also made substantial claims about the status of Black women in the movement for Black progress. It made me think more deeply about art as a radical political force: a tool which results in cultural revolution, which is arguably just as important, if not more important than, sociopolitical and economic revolution. With the evolution of the political aesthetic in visual and performing arts, we have seen counterculture movements ignite and propel ideology toward reconciliation and reform. That is to say, a cultural revolution changes the mind in a generational fashion such that policy has no option but to accommodate for this shift.

Similarly, however, I wonder what we lose with an aestheticized politic? Within the increasingly narrower constrictions of capitalist structure, as it is applicable both to the political body as well as to the conscious ideologies, we find that art as careerism dilutes the gravity and essence of such art. Art as a capitalist livelihood thus defeats the purpose of art in representation of the People, with limited accessibility, audience/buyer-interested aestheticism, and commodification of social message.

And from this arises the question: what is Black art? How intimately involved is it with Black consciousness, and how is this intimacy received by audiences? What are its advantages and downfalls in the pursuit of collectivism (as it pertains to identity and selfhood)?

Angela Davis

Angela Davis, in the article, you mention the independence that blues women, notably Ma Rainey, claimed and illuminated through their music. The production of love and sex-oriented songs would have been strictly prohibited in prior years, so I feel it is safe to say that blues women used their art to empower themselves and resist the biased standards of society. Your writing was particularly interesting because August Wilson paints Ma Rainey differently in his play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. He instead chooses to characterize her through the men in the play and completely avoids discussing the incredible liberties taken in her music. Though the play focuses on many other significant issues, Wilson's writing completely underscores the significance of the artist, as highlighted by you.

Dearest Angela Davis,

You wrote that some of the main themes of the blues were sex and travel -- in any way do
you see these things as linked? I saw them in some ways as a resistance to containment.
Liberation, which meant different things and was sought differently for black men and
women, also differs among races. You wrote about how love was, in a way, gendered and
racialized. Gendered for being associated with domesticity when applied to white families
and racialized for meaning different things to white and black people. Should the same
word even be used for different groups and does this in a way homogenize their struggles?
Similarly, many feminists consider the sexualization of women to be a form of objectification.
However, it seems that at the time of the blues, black womens’ decision to sexualize
themselves was a form of liberation. In something else you wrote, you stated that feminism
should be a considered a methodology. Is there a way to implement this methodology when
studying history and considering these divergent experiences? Similarly, you quoted Ralph
Ellison in saying that the blues have an ability to “imply far more than they state outright.” In
writing about how the meaning of the blues is not immediately understood and therefore
often misinterpreted I thought about how white patriarchal hegemony forced black women to
achieve their goals through less visible, immediate means. What would feminism as a
methodology look like in understanding the dimensional parts of this history?

Dear Ella

Ella Baker,

I also grew up in an extremely religious home, but I never had the courage to use my religion as a tool to really truly help those unable to help themselves, instead I was/am always just focusing on learning the different ways the religion pertains to myself and my experiences. You have shown me that religion is truly so much more than just a singular experience.

Religion gave you and the women around you so much autonomy, it is truly amazing. You took that privilege and ran with it and did amazing things for others as well as yourself. Although you were fighting to and beyond the very end, you brought justice and light to so many individuals. Through your work with the NAACP, SCLC, and the SNCC, you were powerful.

Your mother was amazing and was clearly a force to be reckoned with. Your relationship with her and your admiration of her is similar to that of me and my mother.

It was also so interesting that you kept your personal life and your business so separate. Nowadays there is so much dissonance in the way women are expected to treat their careers and the way that men are expected to treat their careers. While we are trying to figure out how to navigate this difficulty, decades before you had already perfected it.

You are an amazing, strong, personal yet professional, self-confident woman with a beautiful "ego" (but no in the traditional sense) ;)

Thank you,

Camille

Dear Helga

     You are quick to recognize hypocrisy all around you, but are wary to discuss those that may be present within yourself. Can  the bitterness and animosity that surrounds your existence in your time ever be erased from your weary soul? Should hatred and distaste be a motivator for change? Do you see identity as a definer of one's worth, or a burden to be carried throughout one's life?

Esther

On Self-Identification With Stereotypes

Dear Helga,

What are your thoughts on self-hate? Is it enough to simply acknowledge that one possesses it? Or ought there be some form of action taken against that manifestation of hatred? And if an action were to be taken, then in what direction would the action be carried out? That is, ought one act in a way that denies the flawed ideologies and stereotypes that fuel this self-hate, or should one go about disrupting these stereotypes by actively living the way you want?

Your encounter with "the grotesque ebony figure" who cried out to God for the "pore los' Jezebel" women struck me as a sentiment in need of some analysis. Language as a tactical tool of negativity has some cogency to me: if you insult someone, naturally they will be offended or foster some negative emotion, at least temporarily. To manipulate language into an entire system of oppressing a people has been one of the more insidious creations of man which still perplexes me. The Jezebel caricature, which has so much history that must be contextualized, to be adopted and adapted in such a way as to make it subtly acceptable though inherently demeaning, is one of those mechanisms of language that serve as strategic means of subjugation.

Additionally, the recognition or denial of the existence of a language further perpetuates racial hierarchy. As you recall the words "pore los' Jezebel," you force us to acknowledge AAVE as an aspect of Black presence, Black existence. White folks, who have consistently denied this as an independent language by reducing it to a deviation of "Standard" American English has been one such way in which white people dominate the self by dominating the aspects of the self. With no language, no verbal expression, no claim to an identity that is objectively yours, white people have managed to put a lock on yet another facet of agency and selfhood.

on the perpetual sense of not belonging

dear helga,

i'm sorry that you're struggling with the concept of belonging. in a society based on a racial binary, it seems that you are too 'black' for white people and too 'white' for black people. it is difficult to feel that you are suspended between different worlds, never completely belonging to any of them. 

although my personal experiences are different, it is also sometimes difficult for me to feel that i belong. my grandparents immigrated to the united states from sudan in 1975. i was born in davis, california, but at nine years old, i was uprooted when my family moved to riyadh, saudi arabia. in riyadh, the concept of home and belonging became elusive to me. i attended four different schools and lived in six different houses in the span of six years. i never stayed in a school or a neighborhood long enough for me to consider it as a real home. as a result, i couldn't help but feel a perpetual sense of unsettlement. my family spent school breaks in either sudan or california. in sudan, my sisters and i were called “the americans,” despite speaking arabic in a flawless sudanese accent. in my country of birth, the united states, i felt like a tourist, flying into the country every year in mid-june, suitcases in hand, and leaving at the end of august. 

i wasn't black enough, sudanese enough, american enough, and certainly not saudi enough.

but i've learned that i get to define what each of those identities mean to me. i listen to sudanese music while i exercise in my dorm room in stern hall located on the east side of campus (because i hate the gym), i keep lotion in my backpack because my hands get ashy especially after i wash them, i have a saudi red and white ghotra hung up on my wall, and i've even admittedly sung the national anthem a few times before. 

home to me is the books that i have read. it is my doc marten boots. it is setting the table and knowing which utensils each member of my family uses. home is when my roommate and i set off countless alarms in the morning, praying that we'll wake up at seven-thirty am to get some work done (but also knowing well that we won't leave our beds before nine am — on a good day).

you belong to you and your home is where your body, mind, and soul are and it is a sacred place.

love, 

faatimah

Dear Helga

Dear Helga,

You struggle with a sense of identity common to people of mixed-race. Rejected by one world and unaccustomed to the other. I am not of mixed-race but I understand the feeling of rejection from a race of people you belong to. Throughout my life, I have not been considered "black enough" to be part of the black community. I haven't always fit in culturally, so I was looked down upon for not being authentically myself. Blackness isn't evidenced in the way you speak or eat or live. It's who you are. I hope that you know that though you are in between two worlds, you are wholly you. You can be white, black, or mixed, and be you. Thank you for your story.

Best,
Taylor

Dear Helga

Dear Helga, 

You are beautiful. The world can be a really malicious and mean place to be. Copenhagen, Chicago, New York... The world just doesn’t seem to have enough corners that offer protection from the racism that plagues every continent. Right now it might seem like the world is out to get you and only you You are not properly accepted by the black community and definitely not accepted by the white community. Harlem looked like it would offer a safe place for free expression and originality, but it seems that even there, you didn’t receive quite the respect you deserved. It may be hard to be the first, but know that you are just that–- one of the first of many. By the year 2050, the majority of Americas are expected to look much more like you than your mother, or your step father, or your aunt or even your husband. So, let me reiterate. Know that you are gorgeous and that you are not alone.

Love and Light,

Jordan