Wigger Lover

Incognegro

From today's South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Review: 'Incognegro,' Mat
Johnson, art by Warren Pleece

Chauncey Mabe
Book Editor

February 24, 2008

Incognegro. Mat Johnson. Art by Warren Pleece. Vertigo. $19.99. 136 pp.

If you look at photos of NAACP leadership from the 1930s, you'll find a wiry, professorial-looking man with blond hair and fair skin at the center of many. This is Walter Francis White who, despite his appearance, was a black man. He used his white looks to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and wrote many on-the-scene articles exposing the horrors of lynching.

White is the inspiration behind Incognegro, the graphic novel by literary prose writer Mat Johnson and British artist Warren Pleece.

"Incognegro" is the pseudonym of Zane Pinchback, a Southern-born, Harlem-based reporter who, like White, takes advantage of his appearance — attending lynchings, taking names and addresses under the guise of selling personalized postcards of the event, and writing exposés of the hatred and violence visited upon blacks in the '30s.

The work is dangerous — at the opening of the novel, he barely escapes with his life when a lynch mob figures out he's a spy of some kind and pegs him for a — shall we say, "negro"?

Pinchback, aware of his good fortune at eluding discovery or worse, returns to Harlem determined to give up the undercover work. Besides, he's an ambitious young journalist, chafing under the knowledge that while the "Incognegro" byline is famous, almost nobody knows the work of Zane Pinchback. He wants to write commentary and arts criticism to find out just where his talent might lead.

When Pinchback learns his twin brother has been arrested for murdering a white woman, however, he heads South one last time.

From that point Incognegro becomes a mixture of pulp mystery, Southern gothic, and Jim Crow parable. Pinchback's brother, Alonzo, who looks just like him, but with dark skin, is a moonshiner charged with bashing in the face of a white woman named Michaela Mathers.

Posing as a Klan official, Pinchback interviews Alonzo in jail. Michaela was, in fact, his brother's girlfriend and partner in the illegal whiskey operation. In the best crime fiction tradition, Pinchback must investigate the crime to find the real culprit — and before a mob overwhelms the sheriff's determination to protect his prisoner.

It's a journey that takes Pinchback to the remote still site, into the town's black enclave, and out into the hinterland where a family of mentally unstable hill folk may have information.

Pinchback's best friend, Carl, a dandy-ish tag-along, complicates matters by pretending to be a rich Englishman charming the local white elite, insensible of the risks.

Johnson, an award-winning literary novelist and short-story writer who teaches at the University of Houston, shows a feel for both the seriousness of his subject, and the lurid conventions of the pulp mystery and the graphic novel.

Among the admirable facets of Incognegro is the way Johnson develops substantial characterizations through action. Pinchback's brusque editor is a familiar type, but one with more nuance than Superman's Perry White or Spiderman's J. Jonah Jameson. A local black man Pinchback enlists to help shows the dignity and keen sense of self-preservation required of people living under extreme oppression. Even the hill people, the closest Johnson comes to stereotype, are individually delineated characters.

Perhaps the characters Johnson most impressively captures are the racists. They feel fully justified in their actions, preserving the natural hierarchy of humanity, yet some, at least, know they are motivated by self-interest.

One character, abducting a black man, explains both: "On one side we got God's white people, and all of our spoils of war, such as this very land. And on the other side we got all the mud people, the invaders, who want what's ours."

He adds: "It's understandable. We got the best stuff. Who wouldn't want all that we have? But I'm not going to let you take what's mine. I don't care if it's something I stole, I'd be a fool if I let you have it. That's just common sense."

Likewise, Johnson's understanding of the period — and Pleece's as well — seems thorough and convincing. I detected not a single anachronism.

Incognegro proves once more, if proof is still needed, that the graphic novel equals prose, film and stage in its potential for all kinds of creative expression.

Chauncey Mabe can be reached at cmabe@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4710. Visit the blog at Sun-Sentinel.com/offthepage.

"Blood Done Sign My Name" The Movie

From today's News Observer.com.  Serving North Carolina and the Triangle area:

Tyson's 'Blood' to be filmed in N.C.
Memoir of racial killing attracts Hollywood A-list

J. Peder Zane, Staff Writer

At first take, they seem the oddest of couples. One is a rumpled Duke scholar who has devoted his life to racial healing. The other is a Hollywood heavyweight who wrote "Die Hard," "The Fugitive" and "Another 48 Hrs."

But Timothy B. Tyson and Jeb Stuart will join forces to make a movie based on "Blood Done Sign My Name," Tyson's history of a 1970 racial murder in Oxford.

Stuart has completed the script and will direct the independent film using North Carolina locations. Casting is set to begin in three to six weeks, and production could start as early as May.

Although Stuart hopes to keep costs below $10 million, "Blood" promises to be the biggest film made from a North Carolina book since Tim Burton adapted Daniel Wallace's novel "Big Fish" in 2004 and Anthony Minghella brought Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" to the screen in 2003.

"I am very excited about returning to North Carolina to tell this very important story," said Stuart, who grew up in Charlotte and Gastonia and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill.

"Blood Done Sign My Name" has become a publishing phenomenon. Since 2004, it has sold 140,000 copies and earned a slew of awards, including the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion, which carries a $200,000 prize. UNC-CH selected the book for its 2005 summer reading program.

Part history, part memoir, "Blood" begins on May 11, 1970, when three white men killed 23-year-old African-American Henry Marrow in broad daylight because, they claimed, he "said something" to a white woman. Marches, violence and boycotts ensued, continuing after an all-white jury acquitted the men.

Those events are a springboard for Tyson's larger exploration of the meaning and history of race in North Carolina and the United States. The book is also deeply personal. Tyson was a 10-year-old living in Oxford when the murder occurred. His father, Vernon, was a Methodist minister who tried to speak up for racial justice without alienating his congregants.

Tyson was wary when Stuart approached him two years ago.

"Hollywood doesn't have a great record on these complicated kind of stories," he said. "And I wondered why a guy who made all those big action movies was interested in my book."

Turns out, Stuart is also a minister's son. His father led Presbyterian congregations in North Carolina as the civil rights movements transformed the state and the nation.

"This is not the kind of story that I'm associated with in my professional life," Stuart said. "But it hit very close to home in my personal life. It's the type of story I've always wanted to tell, and I've reached a point in my career where I can do it."

No roles have been cast, but Robert Duvall, Don Cheadle, Eddie Murphy and Patrick Swayze are in the mix. Tyson said he has had "great fun" imagining who will play his parents.

At first, he suggested older actors, forgetting that the action takes place four decades ago, when his parents were younger than his 48 years.

"I thought Matthew McConaughey would be perfect for my dad, but he's not available," Tyson said. "For my mom, Jeb and I have talked about Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd and Ally Sheedy -- she's got the right eyes, those soulful brown eyes."

Tyson and Stuart have scouted locations, from Wilmington, Henderson and Hillsborough, to Reidsville, Mocksville and Shelby. Oxford is Tyson's first choice.

"The beautiful old buildings are still there," he said. "All we'd have to do is move the Confederate monument back to the center of town."

Tyson's book reopened some old wounds, but Oxford Mayor Al Woodlief said his community would welcome a film crew.

"It can be painful to revisit the past, but I have talked to the leadership of the black community, and they assured me there would be no problems," he said. "Oxford has changed very much during the last 30 years."

Tyson sees the film as a chance to further spread his message.

"The idea of teaching history to an audience of millions is a dream come true," Tyson said. "I consider myself a public educator, and this is a pretty good classroom.

"And besides, maybe I'll get to hang out with Gwyneth Paltrow."

peder.zane@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4773

Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration

"Even though I got muscle, that ain't my hustle
Takin a n---a's shit in a tussle
No skills, to pay the bills
Talkin about education to battle inflation
No college degree, just a dumb ass G
(Yeah you fool..) Who me?
I got a baby on the way, damn it's a mess
Have you ever been convicted of a felony? Yes!
Took some advice from my Uncle Fester
All dressed up in polyester
Welcome to McDonalds may I please help you?"

This was the featured story today at Princeton.edu. As usual the whole article is worth a read, but these are the greatest hits:

As a young girl growing up in Hawaii, Devah Pager was accustomed to a diverse society, where people of different ethnic groups blended easily and many of her peers claimed "mixed" racial identities. After her move to Los Angeles for college, however, she was struck by the degree to which the rest of American society, particularly in big cities, was divided by race.

This contrast sparked a curiosity in Pager -- who is now an associate professor of sociology at Princeton -- that has guided much of her career.

During her undergraduate years at the University of California-Los Angeles, Pager had her mind set on becoming a clinical psychologist. She worked at a homeless shelter, with a crisis intervention hotline and with troubled schoolchildren, as a way of gaining counseling experience. Along the way, she came to see that many of society's most endemic problems -- poverty, homelessness, unemployment -- stretched beyond the reach of traditional psychological perspectives.

The experience of working in these inner-city settings led Pager to develop a stronger interest in exploring issues of racial inequality through a broader sociological lens. That approach has become the heart of her academic career, as she focuses her work on the factors that perpetuate racial inequality in the United States. A major element of Pager's research is the criminal justice system, where black men are disproportionately represented, and from which many find it impossible to rebuild their lives. Her new book, "Marked: Race, Crime and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration," explores the roots and ramifications of this problem.

"Roughly one in three black men will spend some time in prison in his lifetime," Pager explained. "The ex-offender population is no longer just a fringe segment of society, so the implications of having spent time in prison are becoming broader all the time." Pager has found that negative stereotypes about black men and crime continue to pervade corporate America and have unfairly swayed some employers from considering any black job applicant -- even those who have no criminal histories.

While studies of discrimination in the labor market have traditionally relied upon survey data to gauge workplace attitudes about race, Pager has taken a more comprehensive, less theoretical approach -- sending test subjects from various backgrounds into live job interviews to see how they were treated by potential employers.

...

As a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pager designed an experiment to test employers' responses to job applicants of different races and varied criminal histories. She hired young men to work in matched pairs, one black and one white, and apply for various low-wage jobs in the city of Milwaukee. She created fictitious criminal records for her workers, randomly alternating the criminal history between members of the pair. Other than that, the applicants were similarly qualified.

Her results were disturbing: A white man with a criminal record was slightly more likely to be considered for a job than a black man with no criminal past. The study won the American Sociological Association's Dissertation Award. It also provided the premise of "Marked," in which Pager applied her research to current academic and policy debates about mass incarceration and the re-entry of prisoners into society.

"The field has changed a lot since I started working in the area, and I wanted to try to make the book as relevant as possible to those researchers and policy folks who are grappling with these issues," she said.

After joining the Princeton faculty in 2004, Pager and Bruce Western, a former Princeton sociologist now at Harvard University, conducted a broader follow-up study in New York City. The largest and most comprehensive project of its kind, it involved 13 applicants who went on nearly 3,500 interviews with 1,470 private employers -- with similarly stark results showing discrimination against black job seekers.

"These results did not surprise the African American public," Pager said. "However, most white Americans believe that this level of discrimination is a thing of the past, and that's simply not the case." Pager said this institutionalized discrimination is particularly dangerous because barriers to legitimate employment make it more likely that young men will turn to, or return to, a life of crime.

"Evidence of criminal activity is, and should always be, a relevant concern for prospective employers," she said. "But public policy needs to help employers figure out how to work with people who are generally on a path toward rehabilitation." She cited tax credits and incentives as policies that have been effective on a modest scale and said she would like her work to spark discussion of additional efforts.

In her next major course of research, Pager hopes to explore the roots of employers' attitudes. She has been interviewing hiring managers of New York firms about their experiences with workers of different races and has found many quite forthcoming.

"There are broad prejudices, about which employers have been surprisingly candid," she said. "I've been told that black workers are lazy, that they dress badly, that they have chips on their shoulders. And yet, many of these perceptions are only theoretical. Those who actually have had close working relationships with blacks report very positive experiences."