Who We Be : The Colorization of America (9781466854659)
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4. Lucy Lippard, ed, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (Berkeley: University of California Press, reprint edition, 1997), 75.
5. In 2010, the advertising agency OgilvyOne Worldwide sponsored a contest on YouTube called “The Search for the World’s Greatest Sales Person,” offering a job to the winner. Their task? Sell a brick.
6. Alan Wallach, “Furor Continues over Exhibit of ‘Nigger Drawings,’” Art Workers News, May 1979, 7.
7. Paul McMahon in 5000 Artists Return to Artists Space, 85.
8. His work was often hilarious, and included a 1984 Fab-5-Freddy-and-Charlie-Ahearn-sendup music video called Mild Style.
9. Dick Gregory with Robert Lipsyte, Nigger: An Autobiography (New York: Dutton, 1964), 209.
10. Jerry Farber, The Student as Nigger: Essays and Stories (North Hollywood: Contact Books, 1969). “Artists are the Blacks of the white intelligentsia,” Lucy Lippard had written in an Art Workers’ Coalition manifesto, “A bright, angry Black woman artist may be the most explosive factor around.” Lucy Lippard, ed., Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change (New York: Dutton, 1984), 17.
11. David Driskell once told Esther Iverem a story about speaking to his friend Georgia O’Keeffe at the opening to her Whitney retrospective in October 1970. He complained that there were no places for African American artists to show. O’Keeffe told him, “What are you complaining about? You’re a man! If there’s any such thing as the niggers of the art world, it’s women. It’s not any man.” Esther Iverem, “David Driskell’s Big Picture: A Connoisseur of African American Art Frames His Collection in a Broader Context,” Washington Post, November 23, 1998, D1.
12. Richard Goldstein added in his piece, “The Romance of Racism,” “If neutralizing language is what their work has been about, then shouldn’t the victim be let in on the joke?” Goldstein, “The Romance of Racism,” Village Voice, April 2, 1979.
13. For a thorough and compelling unpacking of the white radical/avant-garde fascination with the notion of “the nigger,” see Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay, eds., White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race (New York: Verso, 2011). The antithesis of this position is in the shock-value aesthetic of pioneering punk zinester John Holmstrom. “I mean, we weren’t racists. But we were unashamedly saying, ‘We’re white, and we’re proud. Like, they’re black and they’re proud. That’s fine. We were totally into that, you know? I always thought, if you’re black and you want to be hip you’re a Black Panther, and you tell whitey to go fuck off. And you carry a gun. That’s what I thought was cool. And if you’re white, you’re like us. You don’t try to be black. What I thought was stupid was white people trying to act black. Like Lester. His use of the word ‘nigger’ was his way of trying to act black. He was trying to be the ‘white nigger.’ The ‘white nigger’ idea was Norman Mailer’s fifties lesson in how to be cool. And we were really rejecting that. We were rejecting the fifties and sixties instructions on how to be cool.” McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 278.
14. Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 9.
15. McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 371.
16. Wallach, “Furor Continues,” 7.
17. “Open Letter to Artists’ Space,” March 5, 1979, courtesy of the Artists Space Archive. The signers were: Carl Andre, Amy Baker, Rudolf Baranik, Edit DeAk, Cliff Joseph, Kate Linker, Lucy Lippard, Howardena Pindell, Faith Ringgold, Ingrid Sischy, May Stevens, and Tony Whitfield.
18. Kellie Jones, “Howardena Pindell: Painter,” interview conducted April 2, 1989, Artist and Influence 9 (1990), 114.
19. Ibid.
20. Western Union Mailgram to Helene Winer from the New York State Council on the Arts, March 5, 1979. Sourced from the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives.
21. Letter from Linda Goode Bryant to Kitty Carlisle Hart, Chairperson, New York State Council on the Arts, March 14, 1979, sourced from both the Artists Space Archive and the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives. This quote also headlined a flyer from Action Against Racism in the Arts, undated. Sources from the Artists Space Archive.
22. Letter from Janet Henry to James Reinisch, Program Associate, Visual Arts Services, New York State Council on the Arts, March 6, 1979, sourced from both the Artists Space Archive and the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives.
23. Henry to Reinisch.
24. Donald Newman, “In Response to the Open Letter (Attached) You Sent to Artists’ Space on March 5th,” March 8, 1979, sourced from the Artists Space Archive.
25. Artists Space public letter, March 10, 1979, sourced from the Artists Space Archive and the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives. The letter read, in part: Artists Space made a commitment to the artist and his work, and as in other instances, respected his right to present his work unedited. Artists Space and the artist acknowledge that greater and different consideration should have been given to the title in this case. We made an error in assuming that this word could be legitimately used in an art context. In fact, it appears to many its use is categorically unacceptable.… It is our sincere wish that this incident not affect our ability to continue to provide a viable program.
26. Groan! Goldstein, “Romance of Racism.”
27. The full list of signers is: Carl Andre, Benny Andrews, Rudolf Baranik, Joan Braderman, Horace Brockington, Linda Bryant, Donna DeSalvo, Carol Duncan, Mel Edwards, Leon Golub, Paul Goode, David Hammons, Janet Henry, Cliff Joseph, Janet Koenig, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Howardena Pindell, Charles Simonds, Ingrid Sischy, Michelle Stuart, Joyce Timpanelli, Alan Wallach, Randy Williams. See also “Letters: Art and Language Divorced,” Village Voice, April 9, 1979.
28. Unaddressed open letter from Donald Newman, April 7, 1979, sourced from the Artists Space Archive. The critic Craig Owens echoed this argument almost word for word in a defense of Newman in the April issue of Skyline magazine. It’s not clear who wrote the passage first. “Is it not ironic that those ‘liberals’ who in the sixties, when government support of the arts was hotly debated, warned against the danger of censorship, turn out to be precisely those who attempt to use the governmental agency as an instrument of repression.” From “Black and White,” Skyline, April 1979, 16.
29. E-mail letter to author, February 10, 2010.
30. Jacqueline Trescott, “Minorities and the Visual Arts: Controversy Before the Endowment,” Washington Post, May 2, 1979.
31. Goldstein, “Romance of Racism.”
32. Douglas Crimp, “Commentaries on Artists Space’s Exhibit of ‘Nigger Drawings,’” Art Workers News, June 1979.
33. Elizabeth Hess, “Art-World Apartheid,” Seven Days 3:6 (May 18, 1979), 27.
34. Roberta Smith, “Donald at Artists Space,” Art in America, July–August 1979.
35. Letter from Alan Wallach to James Reinisch, Visual Arts Services, New York State Council on the Arts, March 19, 1979.
36. Hess, “Art-World Apartheid.”
37. Goldstein, “Romance of Racism.”
38. Lawrence Alloway, “Art,” Nation, May 26, 1979, citing a study by Nancy Jervis and Maureen Schilds published in the April 1979 issue of Art Workers News.
39. Goldstein, “Romance of Racism.”
40. My deepest gratitude to Camille Billops and James Hatch, who took these photos and taped this meeting. They are available at the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives, New York City.
41. Elizabeth Hess, “Art-World Apartheid.”
42. “An Open Letter to all Artists,” Artists Space, April 28, 1979, sourced from the Artists Space Archive.
43. Mitchell Algus, “Donald’s ‘The Nigger Drawings,’” unpublished review, undated, probably mid-1990s, courtesy of the author.
44. Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (New York: Anchor, 1987), 276. The original piece actually ran in the Village Voice on the pages immediately preceding Richard Goldstein’s second story on Donald Newman, Helene Winer, and the Nigger Drawings controvers
y at Artists Space, in the April 30, 1979 issue. 1979 was a crucial year for discussing punk culture and racism. Bad Brains appeared on the New York scene later that year. Bangs also wrote that Ivan Julian, the Black guitarist for Richard Hell’s band the Voidoids, had given him perspective: “Once when I was drunk I told Hell that the only reason hippies ever existed in the first place was because of niggers, and when I mentioned it to Ivan while doing this article I said, “You probably don’t even remember—” “Oh yeah, I remember,” he cut me off. And that was two years ago, one ostensibly harmless slip. You take a lifetime of that, and you got grounds for trying in any way possible, even it’s only by convincing one individual at a time, to remove those words from the face of the earth,” 277.
45. Newman cofounded Sonicnet.com, a music Web site bought by MTV, and oversaw tech for a few Silicon Alley startups.
46. Letter from Linda Goode Bryant to Kitty Carlisle Hart, March 14, 1979.
Part Two: Who Are We? 1980–1993
Chapter Six
The End of the World As We Know It: Whiteness, the Rainbow, and the Culture Wars
1. David Treuer, “Kill the Indians, Then Copy Them,” New York Times, September 29, 2012.
2. Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, directed by Stefan Forbes (2008).
3. Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall. Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 221–22.
4. Ibid., 145
5. Alexander Lamis, The Two-Party South, 2nd ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 26. This interview—revealed in an asterisked note in its original context—has been much cited and even more broadly debated. Less often noted is the late political scientist Lamis’s own note: “Needless to say, how much one is doing away with the race issue in this context is debatable.” As an addendum, the actual tape of the interview itself has now been released by Rick Perlstein on the Web site of The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy.
6. Edsall and Edsall, Chain Reaction, 11.
7. David Roediger, How Race Survived U.S. History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon (New York: Verso, 2008), 205.
8. Stuart Butler, Michael Sanera, and W. Bruce Weinrod. Mandate for Leadership II: Continuing the Conservative Revolution (Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation, 1984), 155.
9. Ibid.
10. John Brady, Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 183
11. Eric Alterman, “G.O.P. Chairman Lee Atwater: Playing Hardball,” New York Times Magazine, April 30, 1989.
12. Brady, Bad Boy, 181.
13. Alterman, “G.O.P. Chairman Lee Atwater.”
14. Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling, 144.
15. Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling, 15.
16. Scott Kraft, “Were Foreclosure Pressures to Blame? Farm Family Deaths Shock Hamlet,” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1986, http://articles.latimes.com/print/1986-01-10/news/mn-839_1_farm-crisis.
17. Jeffrey S. Nordhaus, “Farm Foreclosures Will Increase,” Harvard Crimson, April 11, 1986, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1986/4/11/farm-foreclosures-will-increase-pforeclosures-on/.
18. Gary Orfield and John T. Yun, “Resegregation in America’s Schools,” Harvard University: The Civil Rights Project, June 1999, 12.
19. Ibid., 14.
20. Steven M. Gillon, “That’s Not What We Meant to Do”: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 163–64.
21. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York,” October 3, 1965, http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/651003.asp.
22. Office of Immigration Statistics, 2009 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, (Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security, August 2010), http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2009/ois_yb_2009.pdf.
23. Marshall Frady, Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 306.
24. All Jackson quotes are from Josh Gottheimer, ed., Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 375–76.
25. Ishmael Reed, Kathryn Trueblood, and Shawn Wong, eds., The Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), xi.
26. Ishmael Reed, “America: The Multinational Society,” in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker, eds., The Graywolf Annual Five: Multicultural Literacy: Opening the American Mind (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1988), 160.
27. John F. Kennedy. “Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963,” http://arts.gov/about/kennedy.
28. As quoted in Michael Brenson, Visionaries and Outcasts: The NEA, Congress, and the Place of the Visual Artist in America (New York: New Press, 2001), 15.
29. Kennedy, “Remarks at Amherst College.”
30. Stephen C. Dubin. Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 1992), 96.
31. See Richard Bolton, ed., Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts (New York: New Press, 1992), 338–42.
32. Omari H. Kokole, “The Master Essayist,” in Omari H. Kokole, ed., The Global African: A Portrait of Ali A. Mazrui (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998), 14. See also Jon Weiner, “‘Hard to Muzzle’: The Return of Lynne Cheney,” Nation, October 2, 2000.
33. Hilton Kramer, The Revenge of the Philistines: Art and Culture, 1972–1982 (New York: Free Press, 1985), 335–41. See also Daniel A. Seidell, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 121.
34. The exhibition had previously been canceled at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. It had included the work Man in Polyester Suit, among many other images of Black men he had taken over the years.
35. In protest, Papp and others refused their grant awards and the oath was soon ruled unconstitutional.
36. It was the first public controversy for the author of Push, later renamed Precious for its movie adaptation.
37. Joyce Price and George Archibald, “Frohnmayer’s Out at the NEA,” Washington Times, February 22, 1992, A1.
38. John Frohnmayer, Leaving Town Alive (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 324–27.
39. Robert M. Andrews, “Poll Says Majority Supports Federal Aid for Controversial Art,” Associated Press, April 19, 1990.
40. Michele Wallace, “The Culture War within the Culture Wars: Race” in Julie Ault, Brian Wallis, Marianne Weems, and Philip Yenawine, eds., Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 180. Also in Michele Wallace, Dark Designs & Visual Culture. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
41. Bureau of the Census. We the American … Children (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, September 1993), https://www.census.gov/prod/cen1990/wepeople/we-10.pdf.
42. Allan Bloom, “Our Listless Universities,” National Review, December 10, 1982, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/218808/our-listless-universities/flashback.
43. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 147.
44. George Lowery, “40 Years Ago, a Campus Takeover that Symbolized an Era of Change,” Ezra 1:3 (Spring 2009), http://ezramagazine.cornell.edu/SUMMER09/CampusLife.html.
45. Joseph Berger, “Scholars Attack Campus ‘Radicals,’” New York Times, November 15, 1988.
46. Quoted from his newsletter, From the Right, by Nancy Murray, “Columbus and the USA: From Mythology to Ideology,” Race & Class 33:3 (1992), Curse of Columbus issue, 55.
47. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower, viii.
48. William H. Honan, “Schlesinger Sees Free Speech in Peril,” New York Times, May 27, 1994.
49. Richard Bernstein, Dictatorship of Virtue: How the Battle over Multiculturalism Is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, Our Lives (New York: Random House, 1995), 11.
50. Ibid., 8.
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51. Ibid., 3–5.
52. Ibid., 11.
53. Ibid., 7.
54. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Politics of Identity,” Daedalus, Fall 2006, 15.
55. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower, 229.
56. Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” April 3, 1964, speech delivered in Cleveland, in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1990), 26.
57. Ibid.
58. Paul Beatty, The White Boy Shuffle (New York: Picador, 1996), 53.
59. Patrick Buchanan, “1992 Republican Convention Speech,” August 17 1992, http://buchanan.org/blog/1992-republican-national-convention-speech-148.iRick Orlov, “L.A. Residents say Pat’s ‘Force’ Story Is Fiction,” Los Angeles Daily News, August 19, 1992, http://articles.philly.com/1992-08-19/news/25991511_1_mob-vermont-knoll-retirement-center-jewell-anderson.
Chapter Seven
Unity and Reconciliation: The Era of Identity
1. Catharine R. Stimpson, “On Differences: Modern Language Association Presidential Address,” Papers of the Modern Language Association 106:3 (May 1991), 403.
2. Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes,” Critical Inquiry 12:1 (Autumn 1985), 6, 12, 13.
3. Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990), 19.
4. Mary Rourke. “Marcia Tucker, 66; Curator Championed Emerging Artists,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2006.
5. Nilda Peraza, “A Conversation,” in Louis Young, ed., The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s (New York: Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem, 1990), 10.
6. Cited in Elaine Kim, “Interstitial Subjects: Asian American Visual Art as a Site for New Cultural Conversations,” in Elaine H. Kim, Margo Machida, and Sharon Mizota, eds., Fresh Talk/Daring Gazes: Conversations on Asian American Art (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 7.
7. “Cultural Diversity Based on Cultural Grounding II: Ratification Statement, October 19, 1991,” Wn Marta Moreno Vega and Cheryll Y. Greene, eds., Voices from the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity, (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1993), 177.