Watts article (Re: NP Genoa)

[Judith A. Panetta]

Whew...I feel like I'm treading on extremely thin ice here...not offering
any objective reasoning nor well-researched citations.

Paul, I'm not clear what point you were trying to make with the Watts quote,
although the discussion has digressed from your original intention, I
suspect.

Be that as it may, the violence described in these two incidents (Watts and
Genoa) do not deserve comparison except perhaps on the most abstract of
levels.

But what about poor urban neighborhoods in the sixties...I'm an ole fogy
too. I like to think about that time as well. I wasn't in LA. I was in
Philly. I didn't drive through those neighborhoods, I lived there. I
remember the exploitation of white fear and ignorance by politicians. And
the parade of agency people that city government threw our way, as a bone. I
remember the fires. Although the molotov cocktails in my neighborhood were
more often than not lobbed by white store owners who wanted out. No arrests
in those incidents. I was well into adulthood before I learned that cops
might not have an agenda other than "protect and serve." It comes from being
systematically harassed. It comes from seeing your neighbor dragged out of
their house and having the shit beaten out of them. It comes from being
suspect simply because of color, income or geography...but mostly color. I
remember the hot summer nights and the anger. I've not met many people who
understand the anger that grows from shame and frustration that can erupt in
a heartbeat.

It's not rational, but neither is the situation. It's not a disease. It just
is. And it is who you are.

I reread the Watts article after many years. It rang true for me. I didn't
find it patronizing. The were two cultures. There are two cultures. Perhaps
the casting is more fluid now. Perhaps not. I'd like to think the cultures
have come closer together. Although I fear I am delusional.

Had I seen you driving through my neighborhood, I wouldn't have thrown a
rock at your car. Then, as now, I would decline because of the doubt that I
didn't fully understand who you were or your position. But I confess, I
might've been tempted.

With the best intentions, Judy



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
Behalf Of Terrance
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 10:31 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Watts article (Re: NP Genoa)




Paul Mackin wrote to jbor:

Although young Pynchon  was trying to be helpful, to speak of the violence
of
Watts as perhaps being an expression of  WHO THE PEOPLE ARE is patronizing
in
the extreme. This is notwithstanding the fact that other violence had been
committed earlier against the perpetrators or their friends and neighbors.
What
Pynchon SHOULD HAVE SAID is that the violence displayed in Watts by its
citizenry  is the very essence of how many whites, including perhaps  P
himself
on a bad day, views  (in some cases holds in awe) the negro.  Of course
there is
little besides the fact of violence  putting the Wattsers in the same
category
as the rock and fire bomb throwing tiny minority of the protesters in Genoa
And
for one reason or another no one is going to patronize them so.

However I do not discount your remarks on the subject.


> Rob:
> It's certainly OK to put the best light on things possible but the wording
was
> unfortunate. Seems to me also that the two cultures thing was mildly
dismaying
> testimony to Pynchon's callowness.

Yes.

But again, in a fictional context ("The Secret Integration")
it is possible to credit P with a more mature understanding
of the two cultures (two cultures, as you note, I think, can
be a risky if at times helpful reductionism) w/o putting on
the rose colored
specs, but by putting on a theoretical cap.


Again, I suggest Joe Boulter's essay.

http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/boulter24.htm









God knows American white culture (to
> momentarily posit there is such a monolith) can ligitimately be called a
mess and
> that the black/white divide in America and throughout the world a bigger
mess.

Right. Certainly "Whites" continue to control a widely
disproportionate amount of Power in  the U.S.; that
injustice has not much changed. However, we might consider,
what that injustice is  and how is it represented?


Consider the so called "Rodney King Riots." ( I use the term
"riots" here because this is the term that the media used
and not civil unrest, rebellion, uprising, insurrection,
upheaval).

The "White" media controlled the representational binary,
eventually it was literally Black/White in living Tube
color--Rodney G. King vs. Reginald O. Denny (diverting
attention from the "white" police). The events, not covered
by the media,  were a culmination of what Pynchon attempted
to expose, unsuccessfully I think, that is, years of
neglect, abandonment, despair, hopelessness, alienation,
injustice, isolation, oppression, and all manner of
"civilizing" evil. The suspicion, the distrust, the fear of
the police, is real, very real, but beneath these fears,
forged by  very  real experiences, opression and the abuse
of power, lies a distrust of something more fundemantal,
more insidious,  and much more obvious to the residents. The
multi-ethnic city, the "world city" of Los Angeles is a
"white myth" constructed by the power elite to keep people
in their place.  Los Angeles, like America at large, is a
tragic collection of seperate and unequal communities. In
1968 the Kenner Commission Report concluded that America was
divided, much as P divides it in his essay, into two
seperate and unequal Nations--one black and one white. This
is how we used to talk about race realtions in America. This
only made things worse in my opinion and so some time ago
here  I attempted, with bad bad results,   to subvert this
discussion of the "negro problem." I don't think we could
ever, define race relations in the U.S. as black/white, but
we surely can't do it today. That being said, I also believe
that African-Americans, particularly Black males, continue
to be the most endangered memebers of our society, in part
because, as Boulter discusses (Baudrillard, p.531) "he is
[considered, represented, discussed] not as an independent
subject outside discourse," but as "the dependent object of
discourse." And so I must acknowledge the inherent hypocricy
here and shut up.

 There are clearly no such momoliths in  America (White,
European, Black, African, Asian, Hispanic, Latino, Native
American).  The risks, I contend, of constructing these
groupings along color lines, continental lines, ethnic
lines, etc.  (aside from the absurdity of it) far outweighs
the rewards to all but a few, not all of them white, but all
very powerful.

As I said previously, the demographic shifts in the U.S.
after WWII, particularly after the Vietnam War, are very
positive and I am optomistic that the mythic binaries will
prove much more difficult to sustain (though I never
underestimate the power, subtle and
manipulative,  that constructs these mythic binaries)  but
at the same time, the tensions and polarizations among
different ethnic and racial groups in cities like LA and NYC
remain potentially explosive. African Americans, for
example, are being squeezed out (of NYC,  Harlem, for
example), further away from the center, and thus away from
affordable housing, jobs, education, health, social
programs, the cultural history they have made, by a
combination of gentrification and immigration, not to
mention what some call the fascist policies of our mayor and
his police department, although I think this is a small
exageration that only serves to divert attention from the
workings of NYC's political machinery (redistricting, there
was an article in the NY Times a few weeks back, "Nueva
York", it addressed the shifting and chaninging Latino
community in NYC, once predominantly Puerto Rican and to
lesser extent Dominican community)  and the more sensitive
heart of the Apple, the responsibility of its citizens.

In any event, each group, particularly African Americans,
are concerned that they are losing the political and
economic "gains" they made during the 1960s civil rights
struggle. Communities are understandably suspicious of the
growing number of new immigrants, particularly those that
have managed to establish businesses in "their" communities.
(Note, in the LA uprising, over 2,700 Korean businesses were
damaged or destroyed, or $500 million, half of all property
damages). This situation is very volitile, even in these
relatively good economic times. If the politics of race
continues to domminate the discussion, the representation by
the media, if polarization along racial lines is the way in
which we approach these complex problems, the problems will
persist, pitting minority group against minority group, and
the system of injustice will prevail even as the uprisings
spread. Yes, the 1992 uprising spread, it was not confined
geographically (SCLA), but spread into middle class
neghborhoods and it was multiethnic.  As Pynchon says,
although he is correct to be critical,  in the 1960s
the response, part of a broader response and civil rights,
Americans were more willing to "pay for" the social and
econoic programs to aid the underprivlidged and their was
optimism, if only briefly (Jack and Malcolm got murdered,
GR) that the uprisings were also about expectations ("Almost
cut my hair" , Bobby got the gun too), but the 1992 uprising
was not about expectations, it was more a screaming across
the sky, a scream of dispair after a tree had fallen Right
in the woods (VL) and nobody was Left to hear it.








> But to seemingly romanticize so called black culture is no good for
anyone. I will
> give the Watts piece one thing. Pynchon's heart was in the right place.
Can't
> always be sure about his other nonfiction efforts (efforts assuming he's
really
> trying) . To me Pynchon will remain the  fiction written in written in his
> maturity starting with the Rainbow book although V. is  very good as a
first
> novel.
>
> But as old Max sez who am I?
>
>                 P.
>
> jbor wrote:
>
> > on 7/22/01 5:05 PM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:
> >
> > > Rob:
> > > Although young Pynchon  was trying to be helpful, to speak of the
violence of
> > > Watts as perhaps being an expression of  WHO THE PEOPLE ARE is
patronizing in
> > > the extreme.
> >
> > Hi Paul
> >
> > I didn't read it like that at all. Not an "expression of" but an
"attempt to
> > be". I read it to mean that the people of Watts weren't permitted to be
"who
> > they are": because they were made to dress and act and cut their hair to
> > conform with "white" expectations, to get jobs, to be respectable
members of
> > the society etc; because they were victimised and harassed and killed by
the
> > police in the streets just because of "who they are"; because their
identity
> > and heritage was totally devalued by the dominant culture; and so forth.
And
> > that, with every other option closed to them, only by violence could
they
> > attempt to be "who they are". I don't think that he meant to say that he
> > believes the violence defines them or is part of their identity. Not on
the
> > strength of the rest of the article at any rate.
> >
> > Perhaps it's just an ambiguity in that sentence? Or maybe I've got those
> > rose-coloured specs on again.
> >
> > best
> >
> > > >
> > > > "Far from a sickness, violence may be an attempt to communicate, or
to be
> > > > who you really are." --Thomas Pynchon, 1966,  still under 30
(slightly) and
> > > > trustable.
> > > >
> > > > But, hey, not everyone is getting the message. The Washington Post
sez this
> > > > morning that despite the rock throwing and Molotov Cocktails only of
tiny
> > > > proportion of the protestors are doing anying  but protesting--not
engaged
> > > > in violence.