Next, from earlier this month at the harlem book fair, a panel on africanamerican identity. [applause] thank you very much. And im happy to be in harlem, because theres a lot of exciting things happening here at the harlem book fair and eternally grateful to Max Rodriguez for continuing the tradition. Di the my name is virginia vanessa ando many years ago i was a fashion journalist in rome, italy. I worked for a daily newspaper, and i was coming out of an afro and platform shoes. And i asked my editor, what was the uniform . What was the code of dress to be a fashion journalist covering Armani Versace and valentino . The coverage versus the town she said have expensive jewelry invested in a set of rules but also sensible shoes. Always where black. You dont no how expensive for how cheap that article of clothing is. Asas you can see and you watch television, his around in black. But today the woman on this panel are going to tackle the topic of fashioning the self the image of black. We continue to judge a book by its cover. The man walks in the room and his pants or datasets the automatically say when not be ready for prime time. Again woman comes in with a paira pair of hypocrites for stomach out, she might not be ready for prime time. I hope the Panel Discussion of us to better understand africanamerican studies program. In his 1st book she has written a number of books the politics and culture the sounding board for journal a former professional dancer member to company in the repertory ensemble and a young woman of color access are produced based projects in detroit, newark in new york city. Good afternoon. Welcome to the harlem book for his family and just acknowledge what they already no. The things that we think about happening community. We often think about the scholarly writing. So we write and speaking communities with you. I also want to turn to is amazing what if its okay having the way we should proceed today i like to offer some i truncated bio so you are speaking with. I would like to offer an additional frame to this conversation that is rooted in your. His depression talked about in the way that we are able to stay alive and i. I want to think about fashioning beyond the individual body is i hope you can do that today. We have to my far right now is in newark, new jersey has an author historian and edwards professor of American HistoryAmerica Princeton University and author of seven books including the history of white people, creating black americans, africanAmerican History and its meaning, 1690 to the present in my favorite. As a painter work digitally and manually on honest books most recently on art history. 27. Now she received her phd in history from harvard and are nsa and painting from the Rhode Island School of design. Please give a hand to her. Next line her an interdisciplinary scholars work explores how the aesthetics of race and gender theyre with fashion impact and are impacted by Popular Culture social history, and political life. Currently an associate professor at Cornell University where she is also the director grassroots studies and Africana Studies the author of three books command raising beauty culture, and africanamerican women. The choice for outstanding Academic Book and the Public Library association 1997 award for Outstanding University press book. Written ladies pages, africanamerican represent africanamerican studies. [applause] last but not least michelle gainer who is the author of the beautiful vintage by clamor. Butbut that Oprah Magazine named one of the ten best books to give and get. Regarding the. Lives in harlem and is currently completing vintage black grammar gentlemans quarters, mens edition. [applause] okay. I want to say a few words. I want to get into a conversation but its important offer different frame the title of this panel is fashioning the self each word offer so much for us to consider and we consider. What do we mean . Where the possible ways we can allow ourselves to see and imagine knew ways of creatively making ourselves. And then the word image. Image is formed in our minds materialized in countless ways including the visual arts consumer and the rituals, representations of people so fees, Academic Research and our own everyday ways of being in the world that are publicly viewed and privately experienced. Solidifying the stories we tell about ourselves and each other and played out in the actions we take the images produced social and legal outcomes that reach far beyond the space bar imagination. Of course, blackness or black identity. The panel can deal with that. Will be thinking about how they. What that means picture again. All of your work and across to the disciplinary practices employs a variety of methods to get us to think about fashion particularly as it relates to black women. How that relates to black women beyond this gender notion of fashion is simply about choices we make in the realm of how we dress ourselves adornment, beauty practices an individual body if i could ever like to start us off by thinking about this contemporary moment. I mean, this moment on the stage right now the possibilities. Ii want it to be about this moment and the larger context of the threat of black life. What we can do to think about the question of beauty, adornment, and fashion within that larger context. Thats a good place trust to start. Im thinking about black women long before it was Media Attention was is returned to what they do on the frontlines of protest. Involved in a political fashioning a political refashioning. Im also thinking about how in one weekly new cycle we can witness a 14 yearold micro code by a hyper Aggressive Police officer. Serena williams, Misty Copeland command Michelle Obama valorize been demonized for the physical bodies in the same spaces and a white woman taking claim for black womanhood in the strategic choices she makes about her hair clothing, speech patterns. Even with all of us. While all this is happening behind the cover of these replay narratives black women his face is we dont see televised have to contend with the residue from these overly mediated images. How do we think about fashioning this context . I want to open with that. What is this moment this time were speaking into it against and what do things like fashion and beauty and adornment, how you move through the world, how you make yourself has to do with these larger questions. So i turned to the panelists there is a lot for us to think about, but im hoping we can down the conversation my specific question is how would you define this moment command how does the work that you specifically write about, the work that you are engaged in providing intervention in this moment or speak to the importance of where we are now when we speak about race and body and fashion . Well, in this moment now as far as how we present ourselves the context of black lives and the danger wherein. I dont think there is safety. I dont see any way that you can dress yourself as a black person, as a black man or woman and be safe. Thats my thought initially yeah. [inaudible] a lot of the work that i did in my first two books th my first brook is about hair, the second is about black womens magazines. The first black womens magazine is from 1897. It is not essence in is 1970. Its a combination of essence and i vogue for black women in the 19th century. Just wanted to say that, because very often people will say you know how essence got its start . [laughter] im talking about five other magazines before we get to essence, right . In ourselves. A lot of the work that i do in those first two books i talk about as figuring out what it means to wear your race right or wrong. Like the things that i do about aesthetics in fashion and hair have as much to do with the playful kinds of choices that black folks make, that all people make about our bodies about how we want to represent ourselves. We just say it feels good, it looks good its soul satisfying. But depending on whos looking at your choices, depending on the space that youre in, people make determinations about if youre wearing your race in a way thats disturbing, thats upsetting around gender Politics Around sexuality around politics and around being too political and radical about not fitting and the responses. The thing that is important to think about is not just how you are representing your self, it has to do with the sense that people make of that when they look at you and very often we want to say that being free have pay beans we dont have to pay attention, we dont have to be mindful that being human and being adults means we get to make choices about who we are in most and most of the world and all kinds of ways that are often tragic and this is not true. Its often true in those moments where the choices cost you because they understand doorstop to be torso to be different than what you understand it to be. Its still something that happens regularly. I am working on a book called the truth about beauty. We have been colleagues since the 20th century. I talked about some of that work. It wasnt an artist book that it was before i went to art school and i think that the truth about beauty and about saving your life and i cant cross one truth and its not a new one. Actually, talking about seeing yourself from inside and outside and he was thinking about educated black men at the time like himself but there were still this sends out a game out there and then you struggle with that as a black person because you know your thoughts as a fullfledged person and that struggle is absolutely exhausting. Now that i and a person of age with wisdom they say were you ever discriminated against. Not big discrimination. Did you ever struggle but its been exhausting and i got this time my face is on facebook so im getting it all through facebook. People are exhausted. Every week having another atrocity to worry about, and i think that almost is a conspiracy to keep us from doing our work and to keep us from fashioning ourselves as individuals. Its almost as turning against your way of standing. This is a very difficult proposition because it means you dont do your work and you dont love yourself as an individual. Shutting down from outside to stop the barrage because we live in a capitalist society which most of the images that you see our marketing and it means i want you to feel bad about yourself. [applause] so shut down see your self from inside and do not hear or see the images that your society sends back a few. Thats what i want to say. Its interesting because yesterday i had the honor there was a panel last night moderated by the author and she said the same thing that you just did that focusing on the race into Different Things happening around us is keeping many of us from focusing and its a distraction and after a while it is something where every day there is a new hash tag and its taking us from our work so she says it doesnt mean that you ignore it or you dont have a conscience about it at some point you have to kind of take it in and make sure that you are focused and dont let it go. We are always in this reactionary mold and even in the way that we think and talk about our icons. It seems to always be talked about in reaction to some larger narrative and when we talk about the beauty of this is an us and in us and it isnt developed as a response to Something Else so i wonder if we can talk about how the process independent of reacting to something happened what are the ways that folks from your experience and the work that you do find ways to show themselves and represent themselves are not about resisting something or fighting back but its really just about the idea of the playfulness and pleasure in experiencing and sharing that. We have a problem talking to the playfulness that we should be playful and hairstyles dont mean anything. But its all just hair and anybody can wear it and we need to let things go or that we are all united and actually the levels of melanin in your skin is not something that we should talk about her be mindful of. And i find myself very often wanting people to be mindful of it so that we can move through it. Nothing like kylie jenner wearing cornrows and its just hair both teams being sent home for wearing their hair that can and i want to push back because we are good with this. They are being thrown out consistently for wearing a hair style that is a but its hardly some sort of a strange things so there is a difference. Shes talking about the characteristics of the expression and she says the first one is the will to adorn. What we do with our hair and bodies and fashion and how we make something that is. And what she says is the number one expression. If we can think of all the ways that for example if youve been to baltimore you know somebody southern versus somebody from brooklyn. They dont necessarily look all the same. Its the way that we understand in what we are affirming that is so satisfying that we absolutely should be able to do but at the same time we also have to be able to say if it is the only standard of beauty that doesnt look they by accident comes in such a wide spectrum we claim it all. We recognize it and celebrate it all. But on a cultural stage where it is celebrated as a certain little subset of that spectrum you can say from central america. So they wont even have a space that you could actually talk about how it matters. There are not that many people that actually want to break things down to that level. But they will tell you those kind of things matter and if we are not going to have those kind of conversations at least notice and own it but not to be swept away by it or me depressed or turn on each other, thats not the point. But to at least notice it because you cant fix what you dont see. Thats what i was getting at. Then there is the fact that we dont always act in reaction to making it independent but there are clear consequences for there you are a their you are a man or woman which is what i want to get to. Can we talk about what this means in a way that we talk about the playfulness and how you present yourself and if you can get us to think about the gender dimensions of that and what we should be thinking about in this idea of beauty as it plays out. I think it depends because in my book and the forthcoming book we are focusing on the individuals. Its not really people whove made impact in history into the Cultural Survey tends to be entertainers artists, actors photographers writers. So im not sure about the playfulness part because a lot of it was they wanted to look sharp. He was cut short in high school. Some people have whatever is going on. Some women are just never going to go through to the corner store without lipstick. I am not one of those women that i just giving you an idea. That is an individual thing and it is a personal thing. I dont know that my particular books have anything to do with that particular question. One is that it is easier to feel a sense of solidarity with one another and to feel linked into the community and that is important. And to learn about being kept down in terms of appearance with ic what i see is much more playfulness and a kind of happiness that seems almost unamerican. Black people are wearing great things and showing all kinds of bodies and in a way that long black people sometimes hesitate to do so that is just to scratch the surface. One thing and i speak as a former historian is history. And i think that the knowledge of history is not good for you. I think that the emigrants among us are for not carrying our history so heavily. I think if you remember our history if you remember the part part about remembering the creation part i call my book creating black america and the inside of it is about trauma and creation. We also have to remember that creation part. If you focus too heavily you cant do anything because you feel they are going to cut me off. They wont let me do it. The police will get me. If you only focus on the numbers and statistics it is so abysmal that he you would just stay home in bed. So, let us respectfully not keep our history and not keep our social statistics for most in mind. But as a sane person in the United States of america, you need to forget. [applause] maybe i can tag onto the answer because part of what i do is not to ignore the trauma that too but people know in the history that its not all trauma to give you another, not just another story about having to go through the back door in a white hotel but it is a picture of taking a dance class. She is a hard worker. People love beyonce and talk about her work ethic and i always like to bring that up in that context. They love the art of every type, reading books. She was a big reader. It is enlightening. Im so glad you said that because especially the undergraduates say to me all im learning in the studies is how bad it is. Even in this moment. At what point do i have any agency to do something in the context . Spin spigots between optimists and pessimists and it turns out that optimists get things done and succeed. It turns out that the pessimists are right about the world. This is a term i got from some of the young black women that they work within the traits that are around 16yearsold and they said that there is a difference between a struggle and struggling. Its what we all go through as human beings on the planet. But they said its something different. Its when they saw what was happening and struggling as when you are constantly battling in fighting with no prospect of anything Getting Better and that no human being should live in that struggling space and so the way they thought about this at this had a lot to do with how they carried carry themselves and their ability to be creative not in fashion but to write in ways that are in defiance of this idea of struggling so we understand that there is a history for all of us and they understood the history of what it meant but to know that and see beyond something is very different. And if you do know the history and depending on the vision that you have there is no group that doesnt win something sometime. We have victory is. We did things. People should know about this. Of the narrative that you have can be all about the trauma for a variety of reasons but that isnt necessarily the narrative that i have. But if you need to understand the conditio