Noliew Rooks' "Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African-American Women"

The chapter Broadening Representational Boundaries in Noliew Rooks' "Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African-American Women", embodies the concept of the "New Negro" by illustrating the ways in which key figures in early the cultivation of African-American beauty culture, like Madame CJ Walker, were able to reconfigure what constituted as an "acceptable" representation of blackness within the public sphere. My thesis "the politics of white supremacy has shaped the ideology of the black beauty culture and influenced the formation of what the "new negro" was constructed to be." In relation to this, Rooks demonstrates the way in which black beauty culture was constructed to fit into a certain type of image for blacks. She also illustrates within her analysis, the conflicting views of Locke and Baldwin regarding what image and stature the "new negro" should represent. Contrary to the argument made by Locke about the "new negro" belonging to intellectual and powerful among the race, Rooks examination of Madame CJ Walkers agrees with Baldwin’s’ conflicting view of the “new negro” being everyday blacks with the ability to influence blackness within white society.

Rooks specifically examines way in which Madame CJ Walker aligned herself with middle class African-American businessmen as a method to boast her product visibility. However, within doing so, Walker remained suspicious of the motivations behind efforts to "uplift the masses" and to position middle class identity as the sole model of success and leadership (Rooks, 76). This connection to the ideological debate about the who is to represent the "new negro" and the attitude reflected by a key member in the formation of beauty culture aids in looking at the way in which beauty culture in relation to representation was important in the establishment of what it meant to be the "new negro". Rooks also goes to show that contrary to what she wanted her image to reflect “ the construction and distribution of her image had the effect of reconfiguring the terms of representation for African Americans within the public sphere” (Rooks, 88). In relation to my papers thesis, this source is extremely significant because through looking at how Walkers’ image was reconfigured in order to resemble what it meant to be a respectable woman in the eyes of whiteness. 

The New Negro: Baldwin, Locke and Similarities

       Baldwins interpretation of the New Negro differs from Alain Locke's in that he expands the narrow definition or expectation set by Alain Locke.  To Baldwin, the New Negro was as ordinary as the common man but could be as extraordinary as any artist, author, or "talent tenth" negro described by W.E.B. DuBois. Baldwin describes the migration of black from the South to Chicago as a fresh and ready to explore new opportunities and ventures. Unlike Locke, Baldwin gave voice to the common people, while Locke who focused on blacks that studied the arts and other prestigious things and carried the view that movers and shakers of the race would not be common people.

  

       Although they had their different outlooks on negroes and who would be the movers and shakers of the race, they did agree that negroes who threatened and challenged the racial hierarchy of the time, were what they determined to be "new negroes". Baldwin’s approach expanded the views of Locke to include any negro that could alter and threaten the racial hierarchy of the time. Jack Johnson represented that negro Baldwin described in that he counter the idea that black men were physically inferior to white men. Also, his inclusion of Madame C.J. Walker as someone who embodied the new negro, even though beauty culture was seen as contradictory to what the new negro was supposed to represent

I Too

I Too

"I, too, am America.

- Langston Hughes

"I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes.

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong."

          Langston Hughes work "I Too" stood out to me after reading Isabel Wilkerson's work The Warmth of Other Suns, the section labeled The Stirrings of Discontent. Langston Hughes work, in my opinion, encompasses the attitude and spirit if the "new negro" that I've come to understand through the various works we've looked at. In "The Stirrings of Discontent" Wilkerson goes into detail of the what life was like for negroes in the south following the civil war. Things such as lynchings, defiance of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1869, which guaranteed all men the right to vote,  and southern state legislatures that devised precision laws that would regulate every aspect of black people's lives (40), flies in the face of blacks who built up their nation, specifically the south. Wilkerson goes to show that legislation that once gave blacks privileges like voting and riding on trains was stripped away over night (42), which reminds me of the line "They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes". Now from Hughes, who speaks of being the darker brother, uses his solitude to grow strong, characteristic what began happening when blacks began migrating to the north. 

"To-morrow

I'll sit at the table

When company comes

Nobody "ll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen"

Then. 

Besides , they'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed, - 

I, too, am America. "

In my eyes, Hughes work plainly illuminates the injustices towards blacks, yet at the same time shows the irony of those injustices. By allowing the darker brother to grow strong in his oppression and solitude, he eventually grows strong and powerful, so that he is no longer confined to the kitchen, and in reality, the south, any longer. I find this poem so important when looking at the oppression experienced by blacks in the south. The irony of Jim Crow and all the hatred shown to blacks is always astonishing to me, given without the labor of these people, the US would not exist the way it did. My favorite part of the poem is " Besides, they'll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed". Although it doesn't really correlate with the passage from Wilkerson, but it illustrates what will later come in American history with the emergence of the "new negro". 

Blog #1

I started out my black studies career winter quarter of my freshman year. The very first class I took was black studies one with Professor Banks. Contrary to the hype about her perception among students, Professor Banks instantly became one of my favorite professors. Aside from the content that I found radically different from any black history I learned prior to UCSB, I really appreciated the standard to which she held her students and their work. Professor Banks did something none of my professors thus far were able to do. She inspired me intellectually, demanded my attention, and set her class expectations far above any level that had ever been required of me before. As I continued in the black studies department I found that many of my professors demanded the same level of participation, work content and intellectual rigor that Prof. Banks did, and that compiled with material I found relatable, interesting and emotionally stimulating, aided in my desire to pursue a major in black studies in conjunction with political science. 

The next class that I took that had a significant impact in my understanding of what black studies meant to me and how I perceived blackness globally was Africa and US policy with Prof. McCauley. This course was my first upper division class in the major and I also needed it as a pre-requisite for my Ghana Immersion Study abroad program. This course radically changed the way I viewed black studies and allowed me to make connections with material I was learning in the political science department. 

Some of the other courses I’ve taken in the black studies department include women’s political body with Prof. Banks, black social experience with Prof. McCauley and education of the black child with Prof. H. Johnson. These courses stand out to me most because they were courses that had a significant impact on my view of myself,  background and community.