XPectations
on Month: December 2019
on RetroFutura: Tomorrow Mourning
on What does it mean to produce a visual soundtrack for a world that, breathing its last gasps, may not even exist in fifty years? How do we convey what is both most urgent and most fragile; what is most like us and most unlike us? How do we capture and convey that which is alien and foreign about ourselves and our counterpart others, yet refuse fetishization so that we can render it dignified? How do we learn from our mistakes and move forward in a fruitful, constructive way? And, most important, what role does Afro Asia play in this landscape?
The first thing we had to do was come to terms with the terminology. We wanted to play with the idea of an anachronism—the idea that something here was out of time. Not ‘out of time’ as in its time was up; nor as in being out of rhythmic step. We were considering what it meant to be out of time in the Sun-Ra sense: stepping into a scene, into a moment suspended in time but being from beyond that moments time. We knew that the best way to explain an anachronism was the imagine a movie set in 2009, but peppered throughout the movie was: the random car that hadn’t hit the market until 2013, the song in the background that hadn’t been recorded until 2011, and that apparel that had not been designed until after 2010. We knew what an anachronism was—our struggle was to define it succinctly, to make it an audiovisual moment that even a passive eye would be drawn to.
We couldn’t do it.
Sessions spent in the cluttered, and cramped Studio Room B25 at Lincoln Hall brought us a lot of rap but not a lot of production in those fraught early moments. Then, as if in display of their willingness to wait the process out, someone pulls out a book and starts reading: The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill. Someone else wants to know if it’s the right moment for that—if the moments we have together, as a group, are best used reading Mill on one side, and searching for pictures of broken landscapes on another.
Mill, it was explained, was the father of Utilitarianism and a leader in Liberal philosophy. Utilitarianism pushed the idea that any action, as long as it promoted happiness for the greatest amount of people, was not just right, but that it should be the guiding principle of conduct. Liberalism wasn’t too far removed—people should be guided by their reasonable faculties and given the freedom to develop in as healthy, prosperous, and diverse ways as they can. Oh, okay… But, uh, how does that help the group?
It couldn’t; at least not in any real and immediate way. However, that was much in the same way that neither Utilitarianism nor Liberalism could help people of non-European descent; how, from their earliest theoretical inceptions, both had been about the distance from and hegemonic position over the other. Mill called China a warning example of a backward people who, after having shown great promise and wisdom because of their formerly strong cultural practices, had nonetheless fallen stagnant. To Mill and his contemporaries, it wasn’t simply that China had “become stagnant—ha[d] remained so for thousands of years…if they are ever to be farther improved, it must be by foreigners” it was also that, to him and his contemporaries, China had lost the capacity to do so (Mill 74). On Liberty, Mill’s masterwork, was published in 1859, not quite twenty-five years after the English had abolished slavery in its colonial holdings and replaced the free labor of enslaved Africans with the near-free labor of indentured workers from China and India.
But they already had a history, one of the group members pointed out. They not only had a history, they also had thriving customs, norms, and a functioning government. However, these things could not be acknowledged without having to draw attention to the underlying reason of sidling up and declaring a paternal instinct for the less-developed.
Followed by the efforts at dehumanizing enslaved place, it makes sense that a site such as China would need to be labeled stagnant and backward, even as a left-handed compliment was given over China’s cultural norms and institutions, it’s history, and wisdom. For 19th Century Liberals freedom was conditioned on reason and where reason was ‘lacking’ freedom and democracy were inappropriate. The articulation that China’s hope of improvement “must be by foreigners” was simply the trope of empire reenacted yet again (74).
By the time we arrived at a song and the visual elements that would render what our vision of Afro-Asia had grown to be, we had come to understand the force and vibrancy of history. That in times of distress and of conquest, history was typically cited or invoked in one form or another; history provided a place or rootedness that, conquered or not, couldn’t be wholly taken. It was a rootedness that we found in Alice Coltrane’s “Journey to Satchindananda,” which had already begun haunting the group. The bass line thrummed through us, simultaneously chilling and exciting us with each pull, each dance of the fingers, each play. But there was also the spell of the oud, each pull on the long-necked instruments strings, made magic and evoked the mystic. And in the moments when Vishnu Wood’s fingers made the oud’s strings sound like broken glass over nightfall, what was evoked were mandolins and sitars, and a history to sway with and draw strength from.
Here was a Coltrane and an Asia lying side by, brought to the present by the dark predilections of colonists and now-faded empires. Those hegemonic European societies whose pride was predicated on their supposed civilized nature, their civilizedness and the supposed burden they had ‘to assume’ of ‘raising’ the rest of the developing world. However, their dominance waned and, ultimately, the vestiges of their erstwhile and brutal greatness was found most starkly on the ruin they left behind, in the aftermath of their presence. But here remained a Jazz and an Asia, and as stark as the world looks in the moment, they are a testament to the human spirit.
We deployed Rammellzee, an Afro Futurist, to span the underground histories of visual art and emerge from the tunnels which, themselves stood as historic passages. The permanence of the tunnel structures that Rammellzee frequented—that he himself haunted—fully implied the hold and presence on the future that the past had. And through his work, Ramel was summoned to span the gap, to ferry us all from one moment into the next; through the tunnels of the past into the future that might be waiting. From Coltrane to Mandy Chan to Joey Bada$$, we spanned a bleakness born of the exigencies of the moment, of exploited histories, postcolonial trauma, of liberal capitalist democracy. With us, too, was Lisa Lowe who guided us sternly, taking us past Utilitarianism and Liberalism and reminding us that the same thinkers who gave us the exclusion of modern humanism which was persistently centered on “secular European tradition of liberal philosophy” that always positioned itself over and above the Other for the success of its own positionality (Lowe 192).
We too reached for history, approaching it with the reverence of standing on sacred ground. The world we had seen behind us was bleak, our sound reflective of both our pasts and our present. We might have sent the message in our song that we thought we’d lost substantial ground, but none of us was wholly convinced that we had gained enormous swaths of ground to begin with. Today we felt besieged by politics, by a collapsing environment, by inequality and injustice; by the crude gestures at the Other, by Exclusion Acts, and acts of exclusion. From the upper reaches of the halls of power where there was the demand to know ‘why did we need to keep taking in immigrants from shithole countries’ with more Europeans being the only viable alternative. And, too, there is Stephen Miller, a white nationalist and now top advisor to the president on matters of immigration. The history we stepped onto was of blood-softened ground that cried out to us. Yet, somehow, as we pieced together the landscape we imagined based on the facts as we understood them, something strange, almost mystical happened.
The tools with which we would tell our version of events were humble: FL Studios and our laptops, Adobe Premier Pro and our voices; a kick and a snare; Overflow, DJ Mad Dog, DJ Darkside, and DJ NoThankU; YouTube and our hope. Our hope to tell an honest story that an Afro-Asia fifty, sixty, a hundred and seventy-five years ahead of us would hear and “say this is how it happened, and this is what we have to get right.” But Joey Bada$$ told the story clearest as the video drew down: we have to survive, there is no other choice. We have to survive because we have stories to hand down. In fifty years, ours will be the words of the Ancients, and the Afro-Asia we encounter then will have to be a place from where we can draw strength even as we honor the histories of those behind us. We will pick up their chains and the contracts of their indentiture, we will touch the soil they tilled shoulder to shoulder, enslaved and indentured, and we will say, “Tell us your stories, so that we might tell them forward and finally learn from what our fathers’ fathers did not.” This is hope.
[RetroFutura: Catherine…Nick…Chau…Elias]
Dated: Dec. 18, 2019
Ithaca, NY
Works Cited
Lowe, Lisa. “The Intimacies of Four Continents,” in Haunted by Empire, ed. Ann Laura Stoler. Durham: Duke University Press. 2008.
Mill, John Stuart. The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill, Notes and Commentary by Dale E. Miller. New York: The Modern Library. 2002.
Rose, Joel. “Leaked Emails Fuel Calls for Stephen Miller to Leave White House.” NPR Online Edition, November 26, 2019. (https://www.npr.org/2019/11/26/783047584/leaked-emails-fuel-calls-for-stephen-miller-to-leave-white-house).
Scattered Dispersal – “Ego Death”
on “Ego Death” – Breaking Down Social Constructs that Limit the Sense of Self
- Authors: Sherrie Chen, Kennedy Graves, Eugene Park, and Lynn-Saskya Toussaint
- Link to Video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YWpuy1Z5ziV00BFjPUt19BjnlM7snuX4
Abstract
The Afro-Asian future, from Scattered Dispersal’s view, looks and feels like ego death. An “ego” in the metaphysical, and from a philosophical perspective, represents a conscious thinking subject with a sense of self, self-esteem, and self-importance. Throughout human history, people have built social constructs that incentivize us to live and behave in a competitive manner while making these constructs central to their egos. While this has had many positive effects, such as the creation of prosperous nations and beautiful cultures, the salience of social constructs have also given people opportunities and reasons to persecute, discriminate, and ostracize groups they view as outside of the self. The goal of Scattered Dispersal’s “Ego Death” is to help people recognize these constructs for what they are and realize a more encompassing sense of self. Using messages of revolution, philosophy, cultural diffusion, migration, and solidarity, “Ego Death” presents the viewer with a chance to come to a “hiii-gher” understanding of the universe’s tie to the soul.
Audio
“HiiiPower” by rapper Kendrick Lamar is an integral part of “Ego-Death”, as elements of the song constitute the main audio content for the first three minutes of the project. The introduction to both the song and, eventually, the project captures a desperate call to action for oppressed peoples to rise and revolutionize their reality. Kendrick states “The sky is falling, the wind is calling / Stand for something, or die in the morning,” effectively evoking both a literal and symbolic sense of threat to our lives and sustenance; on one hand, his reference to elements of nature reflects a state of apocalypse, and, on the other, his use of symbolic diction illustrates how one must fully endorse a cause or “stand for something” in order to mentally survive in the future or “in the morning,” for not standing for anything would mean the death of personal agency. In combination, these two threats hope to create a dialectic or poetic process for the development of a new future and the death of the status quo: the corporeal oppression of people will naturally prompt a mental response that, through expression and personal agency, reorganize the corporeal dynamics of their reality. Kendrick, at the 1:28 mark of “Ego-Death,” reinforces this theme; “My issue wasn’t televised, and you ain’t gotta tell the wise / How to stay on beat, because our life’s an instrumental / This is physical and mental.” (Lamar) He explains how his struggle is outside the realm of conventional knowledge, that it isn’t publicized or “televised” information, and “the wise” are conscious of the struggle reflected in their daily lives. Here, “beat” and “instrumental,” which are synonyms, symbolize the mental response to corporeal oppression, displaying how the true nature of the struggle can only be genuinely understood – both physically and mentally – by those that were oppressed.
At this juncture, while the power of poetry vested in the oppressed can bring liberation, there is a mental hurdle that must be overcome to access means such as personal expression and agency. Many oppressed people are not in touch with the use of poetry for various reasons. Some may not be aware of their or others’ oppression. Others may be stripped of hope that their reality will ever get better, or they may even willingly contribute to the oppression for advancement of a dominant-culture-informed version of self-interest. Returning to the introduction, “die in the morning” can also be heard as “mourning,” which indicates how the naturally negative mental response to oppression can lock people in stagnation and away from agency. This creates a vicious cycle between mental and corporeal negativity that maintains the status quo. Much like when Kendrick calls the audience to action when he says, “Stand for something,” “Ego-Death” seeks to achieve the effect of convincing or aiding the audience to trust in the efficacy of poetry and the hope that things will improve. Only once people believe that their actions will have a desired effect will they start to act upon their desires. On the 0:27 mark of “Ego-Death,” Kendrick pleads the audience to join him: “While you mothafuckas waiting, I be off the slave ship / Building pyramids, writing my own hieroglyphs.” He explicates how artistic expression and personal agency, the “pyramids” and “hieroglyphs,” are not only means of liberating the oppressed but also are, in themselves, a mental liberation from the state of negativity and “mourning.”
Kendrick lastly gives a reminder that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. One that makes a stand against oppression, is still very much under oppression, and, to say the least, it’s not easy destroying historic structures of hegemony that manifest themselves in every aspect of society. He states at the 2:46 mark, “Who said a black man in the Illuminati? / Last time I checked, that was the biggest racist party / Last time I checked, we was racing with Marcus Garvey / On the freeway to Africa ‘til I wreck my Audi,” displays how there are specific, powerful, and active associations that deliberately maintain forms of oppression, like the “racist party.” (Lamar) On a broader scale, he touches upon how the structures of hegemony formulate Capitalism and Globalization, as it is impossible to survive – or do anything for that matter – without utilizing an institution or element of an intrinsically oppressive society. In this sense, the road to liberation, or “the freeway to Africa,” is constrained and controlled by the very thing that makes people want to seek refuge in a better place than now. The vehicle that promises liberation is compromised, much like how Kendrick’s music must endure oppression and scrutiny about his style, content, artistry, and race from the hegemonic music industry.
Towards the end of the soundtrack, the words of Zen Buddhist philosopher Alan Watts can be heard over “Sabali” by Amadou & Mariam. Overall, Watts’ view on the concept of self is that, “it’s going to become basic common sense that you are not some alien being who confronts an external world that is not you, but that almost every intelligent person will have the feeling of being an activity of the entire Universe.” Because human consciousness is experienced in a linear construct of time, we tend to look for answers that explain our observances of the past, present, and future. However, we get so caught up in creating definitions that we lose sight of the fact that life is just life, and the sheer breadth of its subjectivity – in form of perception and awareness – is evidence of its omnipotence. The idea of “nature” encompassing forces outside of one’s control is an observance of that, yet humans are constantly trying to opt out of and have more control over it.
The point of life is not to become something, it is to just “be” because you already “are.” You don’t have to know how or why you live and die, you just do it. This is not to say that people lack purpose during their linear lifetimes, however, but by recognizing that everything in this life is part of one common energy, their ideas about their purpose can be more inclusive and are more likely to involve moving towards a society where reaching the common good is everyone’s priority. This would allow us to undo structures of oppression and discrimination on the bases of constructs like gender, race, and monetary wealth.
Juxtaposing Watt’s poetic words with “Sabali” reminds us to have patience in our fight against oppression. In our Afro-Asian future, acknowledgement of Watt’s theory is the norm. However, the enlightenment of an entire species is not going to happen instantly and neither is the reversal of hegemony. In order to not feel faithless and pessimistic about our cause, we have to have patience and be willing to accept that we might not see the fruits of our labor within our linear lifetimes. What we can do is continue to give the next generation the best chance to improve on what we’ve done.
Visuals
Our main visual in our video is a compilation of short videos shot all around Cornell’s campus. Our idea of Afro-Asian Futurism has the goal of breaking down social constructs (like race) that make us feel the needs to separate “us” and “them”, while simultaneously cultivating and preserving race and culture in an order to respect all heritages of all people. The message we want to convey in our video is that even though we are all unique and are going through our own experiences as students at Cornell, there is commonality in our journey as Cornellians and as people in general. The live action shots we chose are from locations on campus that every Cornellian shares/ is familiar with, from seats on the TCAT bus to the slope to the Thurston bridge. Although every one of us has had different experiences in these locations, they all tie us to this one location and to this one experience. The constant showcasing of these videos is intended to leave a message that encourages solidarity and respect for each other on this campus and in general. Choosing locations that we all share like class, libraries, and quads showcases that we all really are more alike than we are different. Although you may go one way to this class and I go one way to that class, at the end of the day we both ride the bus to this one location. “The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same” – Corrine Bailey Rae.
Every being wants to enjoy the pleasures of the Earth, and the best way to ensure that everyone does is by behaving in a manner that respects our existences together: also known as Ego Death. The ending of our video with the students on Slope Day and the compilation of faces of students in our class helps our audience visualize this energy and ties together our theme through showing experiences we share positively and respectfully as one.
Our supplementary visuals included snippets from Sun Ra’s, “Space Is The Place” and Wednesday Campanella’s “Ikkyu-san”.
Echoing the cultural nationalist movement in 1960s United States, in which people of African descent reclaim ancient Egypt as the birthplace of civilization and the origin of blackness, the ancient Egyptian theme in “Space Is The Place” reconstructs a mythical Black body that transcends space and time. Since the storytelling of Egyptian civilization was distorted by European imperialists, the definition of blackness is a process of reinforcing White supremacy and erasing Black history. For example, in “Venus in Two Acts,” Saidiya Hartman argues that “the barracoon, the hollow of the slave ship… the master’s bedroom—turns out to be exactly the same place and in all of them she is called Venus.” (Hartman 1) The nonexistence of witness renders the enslaved a symbol of violence. Black people are ostracized by the white supremacist ego and are pushed to be in a constant state of migration. Therefore, Sun Ra’s states that “you are not real. If you were you’d have some status among the nations of the world. So we are both myths.” (Space Is The Place) Sun Ra’s metallic Egyptian outfits celebrate a Black legacy and correct the racial prejudice of archaeologists, thereby redefining a universal ego that is simultaneously ancient and futuristic. This parallels well with our theme as it represents a redefinition of the universe through the past while ridding social constructs that bind us into separate groups.
“Ikkyu-san” imagines Afro-Asian romance in a vibrant queer party. The Japanese singer dressed in Chinese Qipao dances with Ikkyu-san, a racially ambiguous man personating Ikkyu from a classic Japanese manga. Located in a racially homogenous country (Japan), the playful interruption of identity demonstrates the dispersal of culture and the transgression of racial boundaries in Afro-Asia futurism. Inserting “Ikkyu-san” in-between party footages from Cornell’s slope day foreshadows that Cornellians have the possibility of breaking down the constructs of race and nationality, and with these final snapshots we hoped to have achieved a great showcasing of “Ego Death”.
Works Cited
- “水曜日のカンパネラ. “水曜日のカンパネラ『アラジン』”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyI_xZKisUw. YouTube, 31 Oct. 2016. Web. 10 Dec. 2019.
- Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe, no. 26, 2008, pp. 1-14. ProQuest, https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/docview/195789319?accountid=10267.
- Lamar, Kendrick, and J. Cole. “Kendrick Lamar – HiiiPoWeR.” Genius. N.p., 12 Apr. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2019.
- Space Is The Place. Perf. Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra. YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2019.
- Watts, Alan. “The Real You”. YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2019.
- Wurtz, Bill. “History of the Entire World, I Guess”. YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2019.
Tracklist
- “In My Room” by Frank Ocean [0:00 – 0:13]
- Ben’s Voice [0:16]
- “HiiiPoWeR” by Kendrick Lamar [0:27; 1:28; 2:46]
- “Patience” by Nas & Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley [0:40 – 1:17]
- “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix [1:55-2:17]
- “Sabali” by Amadou & Mariam [3:21 – 5:01]
Song List for “A Neofuturist Anthem”
on I just wanted to share the song list for my group’s DJ Visual Soundtrack because I remember Nick commented that he was interested in seeing the song list for other groups’ projects:
00:00 – 00:50: “Fukk Sleep” by A$AP Rocky ft. FKA twigs; “Sativa” by Jhené Aiko ft. Rae Sremmurd
00:47 – 00:53: “Sativa” by Jhené Aiko ft. Rae Sremmurd
00:46 – 00:57: “Fukk Sleep” by A$AP Rocky ft. FKA twigs; “Front Memory” by Shinsei Kamattechan ft. Kawamoto Makoto
00:57 – 1:20: “Front Memory” by Shinsei Kamattechan ft. Kawamoto Makoto
1:20 – 2:55: “Dirty Computer” by Janelle Monáe ft. Brian Wilson; “BIG BROTHER” by WORLD ORDER
2:53 – 3:17: “Let’s start WW3” by WORLD ORDER; “Front Memory” by Shinsei Kamattechan ft. Kawamoto Makoto
3:17 – 3:45: “Nights Like This” by Kehlani ft. Ty Dolla $ign
3:45 – 4:22: “The Other Generation” from Flower Drum Song; “Panini” by Lil Nas X
4:22 – 4:55: “Beginner” by AKB48; “‘Hitori de Ikiraresou’ tte Sore tte Nee, Homete Iru no?” by Juice=Juice
4:51 – 5:10: “‘Hitori de Ikiraresou’ tte Sore tte Nee, Homete Iru no?” by Juice=Juice; “Zenzen Okiagarenai SUNDAY” by ANGERME
5:10 – 5:18: “Fukk Sleep” by A$AP Rocky ft. FKA twigs
I would love to see the song lists for others’ projects if anyone’s still checking this blog!
Best wishes for the end of the semester.
(Untitled)
on Hi everyone,
I just heard it on the radio, and I thought it was pretty cool 🙂
Blk Diamond – Zebra Katz x Leila
on Zebra Katz conjures up powerfully provocative images in this music video. It made me think about reconciliation and reflections of the past for the Black community. The music video portrays Zebra Katz being tied up, dragged, hung upside down, puncturing, and plenty of other cruel acts. To me, these depictions draw upon the past of lynching and enslavement.
Kim Kardashian and the Black Female Body
on After discussing Venus in Two Acts and Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman’s story, I thought about how many beauty trends today involve evoking black culture and black features without having to experience the oppressive and systematic inequalities that come with actually being black. Time magazine published an article after Kim Kardashian, a celebrity well known for appropriating blackness within her and her family’s brand, “broke the internet” by posting nude photos that were strikingly similar to depictions of Saartjie’s body.
Check it out here: https://time.com/3586176/kim-kardashian-saartjie-baartman/
Clips from DJ Lab
on Made a drive with some of the videos I took during the DJ lab with Ben. It was really cool to see how the equipment worked and get guidance on how to work with audio.
Check them out here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uOlwR8xj-gkffkMWyg1-R4tdAdM3OziZ?usp=sharing
Week 14 – Pao Close Reading
on Chapter 21
“When I look at her I see that she really hate me. Her face look hard and her mouth got a real cruel twist. If she was a man she would have thump me. She would have try to mash me up just so she can let off some steam and work out how she feel. But she not a man and she can’t do that. She can only stand there and think that maybe she can wear me down with her stare.
But just then she grab the vase and throw it at me.
…
Then suddenly I realise how long it is since I touch her. How long it been since I feel her warm body next to me. And then I can’t tell if I am pushing her away or pulling her towards me. She putting up a good fight either way. She surprise me how strong and agile she get. I even forget I fighting with a woman. I just trying to defend myself. I just trying to get outta this tangle in one piece.”
In this excerpt we see Pao’s mixed emotions about fighting with Fay and his thoughts on gender roles. When thinking about using violence, Pao characterizes that act as a way for men to deal with and express their emotions; “Let off some steam” and “work out how [they] feel”. By leading up to the fight with commentary describing Fay’s femininity as an inhibitor of having the right to take violent action, Young sets the stage for Pao to be abruptly proved wrong (signaled by the start of a new paragraph beginning with “but”).
Toward the middle of the fight, Pao’s mind moves from experiencing a sense of nostalgic intimacy to admiring Fay’s strength to realizing that he is being overpowered. This paragaph troubled me because I could not tell whether or not Pao had learned anything in this moment. Despite the seriousness and gravity of Fay’s anger, he somehow still sexualizes the moment and focuses on himself rather than validating her emotions and grievances with him. The effects from being socialized in a mysogynistic manner cannot be unravelled after one incident, obviously, but it is excruciating to see a missed opportunity to realize and acknowledge one’s ignorance.
Week 12 – Pao Close Reading
on Chapter 4; page 58 (on iBooks)
“Then one day me and the boys sitting on some empty orange crate on the corner of Barry Street trying to catch some shade when Hampton look across the street and say, ‘That bwoy well out of his jurisdiction,’ which start me and Judge Finley laughing.
Finley say, ‘Where you get a word like that, bwoy?’
And Hampton lean over to him and say, ‘Is the wrong word?’ which set me and Finley off laughing even more.
I look over and see some skinny white boy standing outside the post office trying to look mean.
‘Is a white boy?’
‘No,’ Hampton say, ‘him just like to think so. Him papa white, but his mama just some whore from West Kingston.’
‘What, a real whore?’
‘They all whores, man.”
Kerry Young does an excellent job of packing loads of commentary about race, class, and gender in brief interactions and encounters. Riddled with instances of racism and mysogyny, Pao emerses the reader in this toxic environment while providing many important lessons about life. From this passage alone we can learn how whiteness, in this context, is not just based on appearance. Whiteness is also about inheritance and respect derived from patriarchal morals and capitalist ideology.
Another striking aspect about Pao – exhibited in this passage – is the variation in spelling certain words to evoke different voices and tones. Young uses an interplay of Patois and English words to create an atmosphere of colloquialism and authenticity. For example, “bwoy” and “boy” refer to the same subject, however the use of “boy” when Pao is questioning the subject’s race may be Young’s way of signaling the reader that a shift in the tone of the discussion has occured.