Gerald Early

Pre-reading

Gerald Early (1952-　) is Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies, Director of the Center for Humanities, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is an American essayist and American culture critic. His research interests include American literature, African-American culture (1940-1960), Afro-American autobiography, non-fiction prose, etc. His father, a baker, died when Early was nine months old, leaving his mother, a preschool teacher, to raise him and his two sisters on her own. Living in a poor area of the city, Early grew up befriending members of the Fifth and the South Street gangs, though he never became a member himself.

Gerald Early is not one to shy away from controversy, using the power of the pen to write about American culture and issues of race. After the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, in August 2014 in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Early wrote an essay for Time magazine about the city’s racial divisions and concluded that there “remains in St. Louis a sense that African-Americans are strangers in a strange land”.

Prompts for Your Reading

1.What is the real reason for the author’s daughters’ interest in beauty contests?

2.What is the white-culture stereotype of a black woman like?

3.What does the author mean by “royalty” in Paragraph 2?

4.How has beauty contest changed in recent years?

5.What is the attitude of Gerald Early’s daughters towards beauty?

6.What was Linnet’s attitude about her hairstyle and her own appearance?

7.Have you ever experienced a “conjunction of oppression and exhibitionistic desire: self-consciousness”? Describe it.

8.How did the mother respond to the problems in school caused by the girls’hairstyle?

9.Why is the mother against the idea of having the girl’s ears pierced?

10.How did the author interpret his daughter’s reply “maybe” in Paragraphs 7 to 8?

11.Goffman wrote: It is black women, because they are mothers, who perpetuate their sense of inferiority by passing it on to their children. What does it mean? What is your attitude towards this statement?

[1] My daughters, Linnet, age ten, and Rosalind, age seven, have become staunch fans of beauty contests in the last three years. In that time they have watched, in their entirety, several Miss America pageants, one Miss Black America contest, and one Miss USA. At first, I ascribed this to the same impulse that made my wife interested in such events when she was little: something secretly female, just as an interest in professional sports might be ascribed to something peculiarly male. Probably it is a sort of resentment that black girls harbor toward these contests. But that could not really be the case with my daughters. After all, they have seen several black entrants in these contests and have even seen black winners. They also have black dolls.

[2] Back in the fall of 1983 when Vanessa Williams1 became Miss America, we, as a family, had our picture taken with her when she visited St. Louis. We went, my wife and I, to celebrate the grand moment when white American popular culture decided to embrace black women as something other than sexual subversives or fat, kindly maids cleaning up and caring for white families. We had our own, well, royalty, and royal origins mean a great deal to people who have been denied their myths and their right to human blood. White women reformers may be ready to scrap the Miss America contest. (And the contest has certainly responded to the criticism it has been subjected to in recent years by muting some of the fleshier aspects of the program while, in its attempts to be even more the anxiety-ridden middle-class dream-wish, emphasizing more and more the magic of education and scholarly attainments.) It is now the contest that signifies the quest for professionalism among bourgeois women, and the first achievement of the professional career is to win something in a competition. But if there is a movement afoot to bring down the curtain finally on Miss America, my wife wants no part of it: “Whites always want to reform and end things when black people start getting on the gravy train they’ve been enjoying for years. What harm does the Miss America contest do?” None, I suppose, especially since black women have been winning lately.

[3] Linnet and Rosalind were too young when we met Vanessa Williams to recall anything about the pictures, but they are amazed to see themselves in a bright, color Polaroid picture with a famous person, being part of an event which does not strike a chord2 in their consciousness because they cannot remember being alive when it happened. I often wonder if they attach any significance to the pictures at all. They think Vanessa is very pretty, prettier than their mother, but they attach no significance to being pretty — that is to say, no real value; they would not admire someone simply because he or she was good-looking. They think Williams is beautiful, but they do not wish that she was their mother. And this issue of being beautiful is not to be taken lightly in the life of a black girl. About two years ago Linnet started coming home from school wishing aloud that her hair was long and blond so that she could fling it about, the way she saw many of her white classmates doing. As she attends a school that is more than 90 percent white, it seemed inevitable to my wife that one of our daughters would become sensitive about her appearance. At this time Linnet’s hair was not straightened and she wore it in braids. Oddly, despite the fact that she wanted a different hairstyle that would permit her hair to “blow in the wind”, so to speak, she vehemently opposed having it straightened, although my wife has straightened hair, after having worn an Afro3 for several years. I am not sure why Linnet did not want her hair straightened; perhaps, after seeing her teenage cousin have her hair straightened on several occasions, the process of hair straightening seemed distasteful or disheartening or frightening. Actually, I do not think Linnet wanted to change her hair to be beautiful; she wanted to be like everyone else. But perhaps this is simply wishful thinking here or playing with words because Linnet must have felt her difference as being a kind of ugliness. Yet she is not a girl who is subject to illusion. Once, about a year earlier, when she had had a particularly rough day in school, I told her, in a father’s patronizing way with a daughter, that I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She looked at me strangely when I said that and then replied matter-of-factly: “I don’t think I’m beautiful at all. I think I’m just ordinary. There is nothing wrong with that, is there, Daddy? Just to be ordinary?”“Are you unhappy to be ordinary?” I asked. She thought for a moment, then said quietly and finally, “No. Are you? ”

[4] Hair straightening, therefore, was not an option and would not have been even if Linnet had wanted it, because my wife was opposed to having Linnet’s hair straightened at her age. At first, Linnet began going to school with her hair unbraided. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a disastrous hairdo, as her hair shrank during the course of a day to a tangled mess. Finally, my wife decided to have both Linnet and Rosalind get short Afro haircuts. Ostensibly, this was to ease the problem of taking swim lessons during the summer. In reality, it was to end Linnet’s wishes for a white hairstyle by, in effect, foreclosing any possibility that she could remotely capture such a look. Rosalind’s hair was cut so that Linnet would not feel that she was being singled out. (Alas, the trials of being both the second and the younger child!) At first, the haircuts caused many problems in school. Some of the children — both black and white — made fun of them. Brillo heads, they were called, and fungus and Afro heads. One group of black girls at school refused to play with Linnet. “You look so ugly with that short hair,” they would say. “Why don’t you wear your hair straight like your mom. Your mom’s hair is so pretty.” Then, for the first time, the girls were called niggers by a white child on their school bus, although I think neither the child nor my daughters completely understood the gravity of that obscenity4. People in supermarkets would refer to them as boys unless they were wearing dresses. Both girls went through a period when they suffered most acutely from that particular American disease, that particularly African-American disease, the conjunction of oppression and exhibitionistic desire: self-consciousness. They thought about their hair all the time. My wife called the parents of the children who teased them. The teasing stopped for the most part, although a few of the black girls remained so persistent that the white school counselor suggested that Linnets and Rosalind’s hair be straightened. “I’m white,” he said, “and maybe I shouldn’t get into this, but they might feel more comfortable if they wore a different hairstyle.” My wife angrily rejected that bit of advice. She had them wear dresses more often to make them look unmistakably like girls, although she refused out of hand my suggestion of having their ears pierced. She is convinced that pierced ears are just a form of mutilation, primitive tattooing or scarring passing itself off as something fashionable. Eventually, the girls became used to their hair. Now, after more than a year, they hardly think about it, and even if Linnet wears a sweat suit or jeans, no one thinks she is a boy because she is budding breasts. Poor Rosalind still suffers on occasion in supermarkets because she shows no outward signs of sexual maturity. Once, while watching Linnet look at her mother’s very long and silken straight hair, the hair that the other black girls at school admire, always calling it pretty, I asked her if she would like to have hers straightened.

[5]“Not now,” she said. “Maybe when I’m older. It’ll be something different.”

[6]“Do you think you will like it?” I asked.

[7]“Maybe.” she said.

[8] And in that “maybe”, so calmly and evenly uttered, rests the complex contradictions, the uneasy tentative negotiations of that which cannot be compromised yet can never be realized in this flawed world as an ideal; there is, in that “maybe”, the epistemology of race pride for black American women so paradoxically symbolized by their straightened hair. In the February 1939 issue of The Atlantic Monthly5, a black woman named Kimbal Goffman(possibly a pseudonym) wrote an essay entitled Black Pride in which she accused blacks of being ashamed of their heritage and, even more damningly in some of her barbs obviously aimed at black women, of their looks:... why are so many manufacturers becoming rich through the manufacture of bleaching preparations? Why are hair-straightening combs found in nearly every Negro home? Why is the following remark made so often to a newborn baby, when grandma or auntie visits it for the first time? “Tell Mother she must pinch your nose every morning. If she doesn’ t, you’re gonna have a sure’nough darky nose.”

[9] According to Goffman, blacks do not exploit what society has given them; they are simply ashamed to have what they have, tainted as it is with being associated with a degraded people, and long to be white or to have possessions that would accrue a kind of white status. In the essay, blacks in general receive their share of criticism but only black women are criticized in a gender-specific way that their neurotic sense of inferiority concerning physical appearance is a particularly dangerous form of reactionism as it stigmatizes each new generation. According to Goffman, it is black women, because they are mothers, who perpetuate their sense of inferiority by passing it on to their children. In this largely Du Boisian6 argument, Goffman advises, “Originality is the backbone of all progress.” And, in this sense, originality means understanding blackness as something uncontrolled or uninfluenced by what whites say it is. This is the idealism of race pride that demands both purity and parity.

Notes

1.Vanessa Williams: (1963-　) Actress, singer, dancer and author, the first African-American to win the Miss America title in 1983. Vanessa Williams is one of the most respected and multi-faceted performers in entertainment today.

2.strike a chord: create an emotional response

3.Afro: a rounded thickly curled hairdo

4.the gravity of that obscenity: the serious state of being indecent

5.The Atlantic Monthly: American magazine, founded in 1857 in Boston. The magazine is now based in Washington, D.C. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine, growing to achieve a national reputation as a high-quality review with a moderate worldview.

6.Du Boisian: of Du Bois (1868-1963), American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor, Harvard first African American to earn a doctorate, leader of the Niagara Movement who wanted equal rights for blacks.

Questions for Further Thinking

1.The author believes that his daughters may not have the resentment towards the beauty contests which seem to be a white-girls culture. He argues “after all, they have seen several black entrants in these contests and have even seen black winners. They also have black dolls.” What is the significance of black girls having black dolls?

2.If you were a black girl, would you prefer a white doll or a black one? Explain the reasons for your choice.

3.The beauty contests organizers mute some of the fleshier aspects of the program while emphasizing more and more the magic of education and scholarly attainments. Why do you think they do so? What’s your comment on some of Chinese TV shows that may be characterized with this “flesh”-laden trend?

4.In today’s society, a person’s appearance is very much valued and good looks are considered a privilege in career as well as in personal life. Do you think the issue of being beautiful should be taken lightly or seriously? Why?

5.The two daughters have rather different attitudes from their mother’s towards beauty contests. What do you think is the problem with the mother concerning these events?

6.“About two years ago Linnet started coming home from school wishing aloud that her hair was long and blond so that she could fling it about, the way she saw many of her white classmates doing.” In what situation would you follow the mainstream fashion or keep your individual style? Why?

7.Why do people sometimes want to imitate someone else? What are the positive and negative effects of imitation?

8.Gerald Early wrote, “Both girls went through a period when they suffered most acutely from that particular American disease, that particularly African-American disease, the conjunction of oppression and exhibitionistic desire: self-consciousness.” How would you perceive this “disease”?

9.Do you value your “race pride”? Where does it come from?

10.What lessons have you learned from this essay? How would you carry yourself as an individual in society?

After-reading Assignment

Oral Work

1.Search the Internet for information about various beauty contests in the world and report to the class about some major events. Discuss the significance of such activities in your group. You may stage a debate about the positive and negative social impact of beauty contests.

2.There are different standards for beauty in different cultures and times. Make a survey and compare the different standards in different cultures, and in different times. Then share your findings with your partner(s) and work together to propose a standard of beauty in our time.

3.Conduct a case study of a celebrity of your choice. Study his / her appearance, public images and social influence. What are your recommendations and suggestions concerning his / her appearance and behavior? Present your findings and comments to your class.

4.One irrational feeling in society is that some people are regarded superior while others inferior in various ways. If you believe in equal dignity as human beings, how come there is this kind of categorization or classification of people? Discuss with your group members and try to find out who is to blame for this situation. Report your results to the class.

Written Work

1.In the modern time, we witness or experience all kinds of competitions or contests, such as the college entrance exam, tests for a job, talent shows and sports games, to name just a few. Reflect on your own experience and prepare an outline for an argumentative essay in support of the belief that winners of competitions will have a greater chance of future success. Or argue against the belief.

2.The author of this essay is concerned with black people with their “complex contradictions, the uneasy tentative negotiations of that which cannot be compromised yet can never be realized in this flawed world as an ideal.” He is talking about their race pride. Similarly, in a foreign language university where 90% of the students are girls, how can a boy student with an average academic performance realize his “gender pride”? Write an essay of about 500 words, illustrating the ways to keep the “boy pride” in such a situation.

3.Do some research about one famous black person who enjoys world-wide respect. Make notes of personal traits, major events and achievements in this person’s life. Then write a short biography of this person.