The Christian Recorder<\/em> of March 1862, though i suspect its origin is much earlier than this<\/p>\nit was deployed to help express indifference to verbal insult while reckoning with the dangers of physical abuse or violence<\/p>\n
this verbal signification was a way to preserve the inner person<\/p>\n
that which would help folk tolerate whatever verbal insult or name-calling that came their way so that they could possibly survive the some-time deadly assault on black lives<\/p>\n
but from our 2021 perch, this can appear to be a rather thin defense against systematic \u201cisms\u201d that have been woven into the threads of our lives and scholarship and sometimes enters our classrooms<\/p>\n
to say that hurtful words may not cause physical pain and because they do not, one should ignore or disregard them<\/p>\n
rings as trite with all we know about the way that language functions in our ego and psyche to begin to wither us from within<\/p>\n
and can create hollowed out methods and musings that may be interesting but fail to address the rich excitement of living and the challenges we face in the academy and society to help translate our work into vibrant and public conversations interested in truth-telling<\/p>\n
rather than swapping misguided bromides of power in verbal and physical minefields<\/p>\n
as a sometimes grumpy social ethicist, i have an investment in the systems and structures that shape us as we shape them to be just and to try to suss out what we mean by powerful notions such as \u201cthe common good\u201d or \u201cacademic freedom\u201d<\/p>\n
and then it came to me: this old adage was a holding pattern for us<\/p>\n
it gave little black kids like me a chance to gain some thickness to our skin<\/p>\n
some confidence in our worth<\/p>\n
some time to believe we were just as much a gift to the rest of creation as anyone else<\/p>\n
so that when the name calling came\u2014we could catch it and deflect it<\/p>\n
and if safe to do so\u2014call out the lie and the constellation of stereotypes and caricatures that hold that lie in place
\nmuch of my work over these last several years has been exploring the nature of stereotypes that demean and draw what i think of as hellish caricatures of black folk, particularly black women and children<\/p>\n
aunt jemima<\/p>\n
sapphire<\/p>\n
welfare queen<\/p>\n
tragic mulatta<\/p>\n
pickaninny<\/p>\n
these names and others that call Asian groups, indigenous groups, ethnicities, nationalities, citizenships, genders, sexualities and more out of their name are meant to define, categorize, commodify and dismiss the complexity of lives that we often do not know, but have glimpses of<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and assume that the glimpse is exhaustive<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
these negative, demeaning caricatures\/stereotypes and other stereotypes based on other races and ethnicities, genders, nationalities, sexual orientations, age, political persuasions, religious beliefs, theologies are products of our imagination gone wrong<\/p>\n
what i term the fantastic hegemonic imagination\u2014drawing on Foucault\u2019s fantastic and Gramsci\u2019s hegemony melded by womanist social ethical methodology and analysis<\/p>\n
in short, the fantastic hegemonic imagination traffics in peoples\u2019 lives that are caricatured or pillaged so that the imagination that creates the fantastic can control the world in its own image<\/p>\n
if we say it enough, even when not true, we begin to think it accurate and representative and ultimately fact<\/p>\n
the caricature moves from simplification and exaggeration to policy and religious tenets or in the case of aunt jemima\u2014to pancake, waffle, and cornmeal mixes, grits, and syrup<\/p>\n
she was not a historical figure\u2014house slaves were, for the most part, mulatta or quadroon\u2014not dark-skinned<\/p>\n
they were not fat\u2014even though working in the plantation house, servants were not guaranteed an abundance of food, so few were stout<\/p>\n
but the minstrel shows of the late 1800s began to conjure her up for laughs and entertainment<\/p>\n
she was the creation of the white imagination that began appearing in post-civil war magazines imagining a bucolic south that never existed<\/p>\n
and from the moment she was introduced by the Pearl Milling Company of St Joseph, MO in 1888 for the first commercial pancake mix, black folk and allies protested her existence because she was not accurate nor true<\/p>\n
finally, Quaker has announced that it will remove the Aunt Jemima icon\u2014who did go through several iterations\u2014from its packaging and change the name of the brand in 2020<\/p>\n
now going back to its original name, Pearl Milling Company, this summer she will finally be gone from the packaging<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
but she lingers<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
one of the things about words is that they often conjure up images<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and the images created in the fantastic hegemonic imagination are no respecter of race or gender or any of the many ways we realize our living in our great diversity<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
words can harm but they can also heal<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
and this is where we in the academy can be helpful, if not necessary as we engage in putting the knowledge we have into public spaces and are constantly learning to help create a democracy that we can live in<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
that welcomes the diversity of what it means to be in this big tent republic of ours with all of the highest aspirations we have<\/p>\n
from Winthrop\u2019s city on a hill<\/p>\n
to Hoover\u2019s chicken in every pot<\/p>\n
to Roosevelt\u2019s happy days are here again<\/p>\n
to Eisenhower\u2019s peace and prosperity<\/p>\n
to Haaland\u2019s only one earth, let\u2019s take care of it<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
to Amanda Gorman who reminded us<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When day comes we step out of the shade,
\naflame and unafraid,
\nthe new dawn blooms as we free it.
\nFor there is always light,
\nif only we’re brave enough to see it.
\nIf only we’re brave enough to be it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thank you for your attention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emilie M. Townes Spring Faculty Assembly Presentation Delivered 1 April 2021 download a PDF of this presentation with its original formatting. perhaps you are familiar with this childhood chant: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me i remember my teachers, grandmother, parents, aunts, and other mothers teaching it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6668,"featured_media":3312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1064,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dean-townes","category-feature","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3302"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3311,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3302\/revisions\/3311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltdivinity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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