I know for myself Spivak’s writing is my first time hearing the word subaltern thus I would like to provide some insight into what it is. The subaltern is a group of people in a society who are marginalized politically, socially, or geographically. The reason the subaltern are unable to have their voice be heard is these barriers. Back when India was colonized by Britain different regions of India were given new names split up into states. This separation acted as a way for the regions to now think for themselves so that they could survive within themselves. It became a lot harder for all the states to come together as one voice because they were now separate from each other. The subaltern really looks into the way colonialism was an issue for so long. This is kind of similar to the large amount of political tumultuousness we see in the U.S. today. There are so many states with differing ideas that we are not able to come together as one. This also relates to how minorities are not as capable of having their voices heard in the states.
Subaltern is the “lowest rank” in a society and are subjected to being othered constantly. The problem occurs when it is realized how important the indigenous elite within a civilization plays in this awful mistreatment. In a situation such as Britain’s colonization of India where there were Indian elite who remained in power and had a voice but were not willing to use it out of fear of losing that power. People who are wealthy are less willing to fight for the poor when they themselves have it good. Subaltern was also actively silenced through the use of epistemic violence which is the use of supposed superiority of knowledge, religion, social integration, etc. This is where use of gatekeeping to appear as if the ones in power have more insight into what is wrong and right. One example of this was the depiction of former Indian custom Sati as barbaric practice thus the nation as a whole requiring an overhaul. The main idea of the subaltern is that they are discredited and minimized so that they cannot speak. They are separated culturally, ideologically and regionally This is done as a tactic of control to keep the oppressors in power. The subaltern cannot speak because there is no podium.
C.A. Bayly(1988)Rallying Around the Subaltern,The Journal of Peasant Studies,16:1,110-120,DOI: 10.1080/03066158808438384
SIVARAMAKRISHNAN, K. (1995), Situating the Subaltern: History and Anthropology in the Subaltern Studies Project. Journal of Historical Sociology, 8: 395-429. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6443.1995.tb00173.x
Arturo Escobar (2001) Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization. Political Geography, 20: 139-174 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0962-6298(00)00064-0
Despite being targeted as a children’s movie Zootopia actually contains some complex issues of race, socioeconomic status, and class. Apart from being quite a humorous movie, there is a good message behind it. The movie is a fiction encompassing a society of talking animals where prey and predators now live in harmony. The movie follows Officer Judy Hopps who is a bunny from a small farm who proceeds to move into a big fast-moving city reminiscent of NYC.
She hopes to become a crime-fighting officer but soon realizes that the sergeant who is a ram is only picking the predator animals to protect and serve not allowing a small bunny to fight crime, thus she is assigned parking ticket duty. The mayor of the city is a sheep who is tired of being picked on so she tries to frame the predators for violent attacks within the city by injecting a few with a rabies-like substance. There becomes a growing divide within the city where now all the prey are scared of the predator animals despite them not actually being aggressive.
The predators are being othered and generalized for the violent behavior of a few and not given the benefit of the doubt. This reminds me of the way Changez was generalized after 9/11 in “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. Judy Hopps is also the only woman officer in her class so that is another reason that she is discriminated against by her sergeant. Hopps fights her small-town background and hindrances to get to the bottom of why the few predators of the city are acting so murderous. She eventually succeeds in solving the crime proving that despite being a bunny she was able to do a great job as a cop. The biggest correlation to real-life here is the large racial profiling that occurs within the U.S. When people stereotype a group of people, that leads to large injustices against them and it is racist. This film does a great job of showing how barriers placed onto individuals due to their identity leads to serious turmoil.
As of recent with the worldwide pandemic there has been a lot of rising discrimination within the Asian community. I recently had a roommate from China so I heard first-hand accounts from him as to the rising discrimination he felt and how he felt unwanted and unsafe here in the U.S. There was a spike of random attacks which I saw on the news and this was unsettling. One of the systemic ways I see Asian people discriminated against is in the ivy league college system. Schools like Harvard have come under fire for under accepting Asian students as they are a large part of their population and accepting students who may not be as qualified to have a more diverse population including White Americans. Although I am all for diversity at colleges I feel like the solution to this would be to accept more students who are less qualified and to accept all the Asian students whose spots were taken up. My roommate said that when he was putting in the work to do well in school he felt like his work counted for less than others just because of his race. It is an interesting dilemma as affirmative action is meant to help minorities who have been discriminated against but in this situation, it seems to be a form of discrimination against Asian students. Systemic racism is a lot less blatant to be seen and it is important that the right laws are set in place to live in a fair society. I feel like it is not correct to under accept a group of people for achieving so much. A case against Harvard was filed in 2014 titled “Students for fair admissions v. President and Fellow of Harvard College. It was rejected in 2019 but has once again reached the Supreme Court. In their admissions process Asians score disproportionately lower than all other races in the personality category. This is done to stifle their rankings against other applicants. Although it may be easy to just say that these applicants were born more privileged and had parents who could pay their way to a more advanced education this is not always the case. In New York City Stuyvesant is considered one of the top public high schools and is composed of a 75% Asian population. 90% of the students at Stuyvesant receive need based lunch subsidies. These students are clearly at a disadvantage and if they were to apply to Harvard they would be less likely to get in due to their race. This scenario reminds me of a topic we learned about in week one through Adichie’s Ted Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story”. When one believes that all Asian Americans are privileged and it is not an issue to discriminate against them then that is systemic racism. There are countless stories like the students of Stuyvesant who deserve to have an equal opportunity regardless of their identity. Affirmative action should help ALL minorities who are at a disadvantage because that is what is just.
Hello and welcome everybody to the yo is this racist podcast. My name is Fabian Rodriguez. And today I’ll be diving into the topic of art in specific African American art in specific paintings. I myself love art and paintings, and I’m sure many of you do as well. Unfortunately, since the beginning of my youth in all my art classes growing up, I realized something that was pretty disappointing. And that’s that there isn’t a lot of African American artists that are talked about in mainstream media or in the classroom. Of course, you have the likes of Da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, even or Warhol, but you think about it, and all those are just white men. I feel like if you were to even ask, like the common person name five paintings by African American artists, it’d be quite a task for most people, honestly. And this just shows how under-acknowledged African Americans are here in our world. And this is due to our history of likely bias against African American artists.
Looking at a study, it turns out, in 18 major museums throughout the US major museums throughout the US there’s 85%, white, in terms of percentage of paintings 87% male and 1.2% of the share belongs to African Americans. Now, I’m not a statistician by any means. But I say that this is definitely wavering on the side of racist.
Now, there are many factors that go into this outlandish number but i’d like start at the bottom level. And that really starts at a young age inside of the school’s African Americans are more likely to live in school districts that are underfunded, and this is and due to this underfunding in the schools, their education just isn’t as good as it could be in a more privileged area that has all their fruits just handed to them. This really encompasses the term systemic justice, where there are systems in place to keep minorities stuck in a place of smaller power. I feel like these systems are hard to notice. It’s it’s not blatant racism that has being spoken, and can be seen, but more of a behind the scenes reasons as to why these people are at a disadvantage. The second reason for this disparity in the art world is the system in place that keeps our powerful. A strong driver of what makes a piece of art famous is its demand for ownership.
Very elite, wealthy people are willing to spend boatloads of cash for famous pieces of art
DaVinci’s Salvator Mundi painting sold for $450 million.
That’s a lot. It really is a simple economics supply and demand formula.
The people who judge are the wealthy elites, and if they have biases against African Americans, and they don’t want to buy from them, then museum owners are not willing to display their art for the world’s enjoy.
Art has an extraordinary way of creating emotion and having an impact on society. And when a small percent of African Americans have the opportunity to do that, it is a problem or is meant to be something that is beautiful to look at, or thought provoking. And the music museum system currently says African American art does not do this, when that is just simply highly unlikely.
As a result of this injustice, African Americans are not appreciated for the art that they bring into this world, which has a major influence on what we see as influential figures.
I think that it is especially crucial that at a young age that were exposed to African Americans who make a good impact and can serve as role models. Like I’m sure some of the other famous artists are for some people. Now let’s talk more about the museum system. So within the museum system, curators are the people work for museums who ultimately do their little research and decide which
art is to go within a museum. And in the US, only 5% of curators are African Americans, in comparison to a 14% of population in the US in 2019.
This definitely leads to the measly 1.4% Share factor, which should be tenfold if they wanted to match that 14% total population.
I don’t know guys, maybe I am a statistician.
The image of something definitely has the possibility to sway one psychology. And throughout history, paintings have been banned or promoted to push narratives.
I think mostly about during the Renaissance era, during the Reformation, where art was used by the Protestant versus the Catholic Church to push strong ideals.
With the current Black Lives Matter movement occurring, there is no secret that there is being push for a change. If I were a museum or a director, my response to the Black Lives Matter protests would be to include more black artworks in my museum, without making it some kind of special event or token, sometimes you’ll see in museums there’s little sections or parts of the museum that exclusively feature African American art. And the reason I feel this isn’t very good, because it’s almost used as a token, like look here, I have a black painting in my museum, when it’s really just for show it be more proper to push for these artworks, which deserve the praise to be placed in more of the spotlight areas of the museum. And when I’m vetting for the patrons for sale, i would include these artworks and push them more heavily, so that they can have a chance at that important influence and power that these other paintings have. A lot of times in the art world, why art that looks like what you would usually see in many museums is considered fine art.
But once you add any other kind of ethnicity into the mix, the painting involved, it seems to become another genre classified as cultural art, which is a barrier to what is considered fine art.
And specifically, I think of portraits. And this is huge, because if you were to just do a quick Google search of fine art, you’ll see plenty portraits of white people. But once it’s a portrait of a black person or any other ethnicity, it’s now considered a cultural art piece. This just doesn’t sit right with me and seems a little off.
Now, something that you guys listening can do to help promote black art is to actively. Learn about some of these artists and some of the most prominent modern figures in
the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, Jacob Lawrence and Kerry James Marshall.
It’s important that you look at these artworks and all African Americans art works with the lens of fine art. So making my final judgment on whether I think this situation that has been curated is racist, I’d say yes. And when taking the barriers of entry into account, I would definitely say that the underexposure of African American art is racist due to systemic injustice. Because with such low representation, the numbers just don’t add up at the National Gallery of Art out of 153,623 art works.
Guess how many 968 artworks are by black artists. This is minuscule. And it’s important that we keep the elite patrons and museums accountable for this disparity since art has such a important meaning for society.
It is necessary to have good African American role models for our youth not only so that they can see that they can do it too, but so that the privileged can also see that someone different than them did something amazing.
So I push and hope that you guys are able to do your part for a better future.
All right.
Thanks guys I hope you enjoyed listening thanks for tuning in Have a good one
