The basketball court at the Y on Rhode Island and 17th
streets is essentially n the center of the North west
section of DC. Any one can show up and play 3 on 3 or
5 on 5 basketball during most hours of the day.
Performance of race and mass observation were on my
mind while I played 5 on 5 basketball. The teams were
not split by race like the new survivor or equally
divided as though we were not conscious of the racial
divide. It was who was picked and who could play.
Professional Basketball is dominated by black men and
there is no arguing with the black presence and
contribution to the game. But in this lies an almost
lack of race performance. We picked teams not based
race but only who you thought would best provide a
chance at winning. So in a way a place where at first
I thought performance of race would be most prevalent
it was not. Race was not performed only sport. Whether
basketball skill can be defined or attributed to
blackness is another argument.
What?
This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.
Why?
We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
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