Speaker 0 00:00:04 You are listening to right on radio on CA FAI 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Weber tonight on right on radio. Liz olds talks with Christine Colson, author of metropolitan stories, a novel, a surreal love letter to the private side of the met metropolitan stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant and big nets, and which we discovered larger than life characters. The downside of survival in the powerful voice of art itself. And I'm Annie Harvey. And the last part of the hour, day FEDEC we'll be speaking with Yulaina Bailey the author of how the streets were made. Housing, segregation and black life in America. She is currently the director of education policy at the state of Minnesota is professional educator licensing and standards board Bailey previously worked as a professor of English and cultural studies before pursuing public policy all of a sudden more so stay tuned to right on radio.
Speaker 1 00:01:10 But we're speaking tonight with Christine Colson, metropolitan stories, Christine, welcome to right on radio. And thanks for spending a part of your evening with us. Thank you. Uh, why don't we start with a little intro of what the book is about and then a reading tour? Well, you know, some people go to the mat once in a while, they're in New York, others go once in a lifetime and I got to live there for 25 years and every morning and every night I would walk through the halls of the museum, often alone, hearing only my footsteps on those marble floors. And there's an intimacy in that, the develops when you experience a place like that, you start to see the galleries and the works of art differently. I think because you relax. Um, and the men became home and the staff, the people who shared that experience has me became a sort of peculiar family.
Speaker 1 00:02:10 And that's what I wanted to capture in this novel. The magic of the place told from 16 different points of view, um, it's the magic of two collections, really the art, which I give human characteristics to. Um, the second chapter is written from the perspective of an 18th century chair, um, and the staff, particularly the unsung heroes behind the scenes who I treat like exquisite works of art. So the first passage I'm going to read is from that chapter where the chair is telling its own story. I often think about, um, objects as sort of survivors, that they have their own memory and they they've sort of seen everything firsthand that we're trying to uncover. Um, and I chose to wrote about right about this particular chair, because it still has its original upholstery, um, which is very rare. But I also, because I imagine that that original velvet holds 18th century dust and 18th century dandruff in it.
Speaker 1 00:03:15 Um, and I also think the reality of that chair is, um, that it will never be sat in again ever. Um, we won't let anyone sit in again, um, because we're a museum and I wonder if it longs for that human contact. So here's a bit of the chair reminiscing as it sits in the galleries. One time at the met a small boy, not more than three years old wandered past the galleries and the Wrightsman rounded past the barriers and the Wrightsman galleries and headed straight for me almost 225 years had passed, but he reminded me so much of those toddlers back in Parma, come on little guy, I thought from behind the gallery ropes, you can make it the boys plump hands extended forward, propelled by his thick tumbling, waddle his shoes clumping on the gallery floor. I felt like I was hanging from a cliff waiting for him to grip my arm and save me then a breeze of moist heat floated past as his mother grabbed him at the very last second, just before he reached me, that was 1978. I still dream about it. I imagine the boy climbing up onto my seat, his pleasant, folds, and warm springy Pudge nestled between my arms, a small puddle of drool soaking into my velvet, the life of it, racing through to my frame.
Speaker 1 00:04:39 Thank you. That was Christine Colson reading from metropolitan stories. Um, you know, you said in your email, when you were talking about reading this particular passage, you said you wanted to talk about honesty based on that passage. What, uh, what did you mean by that? Oh, well, I think that passage speaks more to the imagination. The next post is really about honesty. You know, it was fun to approach that chair as a character, but I think for readers to take that kind of leap of the imagination, the rest of the book has to really be grounded in a kind of authenticity. And with that authenticity came the truth of my experience, the truth of the physicality of the museum. Um, I'm very true to where the works of art are, what the galleries feel like the building itself. Um, but then there are moments, um, that really are grounded in truth.
Speaker 1 00:05:36 And the next passage I'm going to read is actually, um, part of a chapter about guards on the night shift. And this memo is a real memo. Um, probably the greatest memo written in the history of the mats. Um, and I used it in that chapter, um, strategically to talk about the predicament they, these characters get themselves in, um, without knowing who in real life they ever actually were. So here is the real memo from the metropolitan museum, the metropolitan museum of art into departmental memorandum to Richard M track nursing, your vice-president operations from Phillip Peterson, little chairman department of musical instruments, April 27th, 1994, while preparing for our benefit concert. Last evening, members of my department encountered a naked couple engaged in the pursuit of carnal knowledge in a closet of the euros conference room. Of course we, musicians are used to such indiscretion and indeed applaud this display of youthful enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 00:06:47 But if this usage is to be encouraged, the closet doors should be equipped with an inside lock to prevent interlopers from being nonplussed and staff users should be asked to check the day sheet first for possible schedule conflicts. That's great. And that's a real word for word memo. That's a real word for word map, like names have been changed, but what I love about that is that it does so much work for me as a writer. I mean, it really encapsulates what the met was like 25 years ago when I was young. And I just started there. This book really takes place in the first 10 years of my tenure when I'm wide-eyed and naive. Um, and the formality of that language is exactly how people communicated with one another, that kind of genteel bureaucracy in which the problem is not that people are having sex in the closet.
Speaker 1 00:07:41 It's really that they're not consulting the day sheet before they decide which closet to use. Um, and that kind of punctilious, um, behavior is so, um, evocative of the place and its eccentricities. Um, but it's also very much about the kind of shared law lore of a community that kind of, um, spends sort of too much time among its own community. I'd heard that story many times before I discovered that memo. I never knew who the guards actually were, but it's that kind of familial storytelling that gets repeated like a daily Thanksgiving, um, um, at the museum. And so the fun of being a fiction writer is then I got to make up the characters who then get themselves into that.
Speaker 1 00:08:34 I guess I would call this book magical realism. Would you agree with that? I think once the chair is talking well, yes. Um, have you ever had, or maybe you can describe if you have had a, uh, a moment or a situation of, I don't want to say that's too serious, but when dizzy whimsical magical stuff happened to you, I think the, um, probably the most powerful experience I had, there's a story, um, in the chapter called Adam, um, where an early Renaissance statue, marble statue of Adam, um, falls in the galleries and, and breaks into thousands of pieces. And that actually happened, um, in the museum. And it was like a death. I mean, that's, you know, we, we have one job which is to preserve those objects. And so when that happened in the museum, I remember that morning, it happened on a Sunday night and we were gathered around on Monday morning and it was like a crime scene.
Speaker 1 00:09:41 They had gritted the floor and they were bagging the dust into these little Ziplocs to sort of, um, so they would rebuild out them, which they eventually did. But in that moment I had this kind of sense of the statue itself. And I feel like I'm the only person in that moment who was thinking, I wonder what it felt like for that statute. And finally move, not necessarily say when it hit the ground, but when it was in the air, um, that, that moment, like, was that just an incredible release for a 500 year old object that's never moved before. Um, and so then again, I, as a writer, get to work back from that sort of surreal thought and, and pull it back into a story about why he may have moved. Yeah. It's, uh, arms and legs. Must've been awfully stiff after five minutes.
Speaker 1 00:10:39 Oh, I, the apple, yeah, really, uh, let's say the NPR museum podcasts said that museums are kind of their own little planets and your book does really create the met as its own little planet. And, um, you sort of addressed this a little while ago, but perhaps he can address it a little bit more, what it means to you to have the map be its own little planet, its own little universe. It is absolutely its own little universe and it is, you know, it's, um, four blocks long, two blocks deep, um, and in city blocks that's so that's a big building. It's 2 million square feet, 2200 people work there. Um, and I think it's distinctive particularly because we outsource nothing. Um, we have our own electricians, our own plumbers are all, you need something made out of plexiglass. There's a plexiglass shop, there are restaurants.
Speaker 1 00:11:38 So the scope of people who work there, um, is extraordinary. Um, and what I loved about writing about those people, you know, I write a chapter about the guys who changed the light bulbs, which is its own pursuit. Um, and I think the public doesn't understand the sort of depth of the operation to run this little city in this contained building. Um, and the fact that those guys who changed the light bulbs are as devoted to the museum and its mission as any curator. And so that connective tissue of the place, um, is a very, very powerful thing when you're a part of it. And so it was interesting for me to have the opportunity to give voices to some of those people who people don't even realize are there, you mentioned white and I have a little question a little further down about white, but I'll go to it now you really capture light and your descriptions wonderfully, well, the, the way that the light lands on a picture and makes it different if you move it and change it.
Speaker 1 00:12:47 And then the, the, uh, lappers lamplighters, uh, uh, uh, moody and the rest of them. Um, it's just an amazing image to me that they're not actually putting light bulbs upstairs. They're like scooping light out of a basket up there, you know, and I, I used to work lights in theater and so I, I dig loving light that much. And I just, you know, where did you get some of these ideas, especially about the scooping, the light up and putting it up in the thing without the lamp without, um, there's something very heroic about the Lampert. And that's a, that's a, I think that's just a met term from when the, um, lights were probably oil lamps or something, but, um, so the Lambers themselves, they seem to have to me, um, this real swagger within the museum culture. Um, and so to me, as, as I was conceiving of the, the sort of sub culture of the lampreys and what their characteristics would be, um, to me, they automatically have that magic because, um, I think at some point, you know, moody Russell, who's this sort of most wise and eldest of the lappers says, you know, likes the whole game, you know, without us, none of this stuff, you know, can do anything.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 And so I feel like there's a, there's a way in which, um, just like a scholar who can reveal information about an object, um, the lappers feel a kind of ownership of those works of art because they're the ones who make them look their best. And so with that, it was, it was nice to sort of exaggerate those characteristics and make them into this very jolly band of misfits, um, moving through the museum. It's interesting too. Um, I believe this might be the only time you reference, uh, the culture or the time of the book. And I assume it spreads out over a long period of time, but you do reference the New York blackout or the east coast blackout and how these poor guys live is their whole life. Wife's the whole thing and they are in the dark and they're trying to make it to the, uh, the only place they know where there's some white is just, uh, uh, it strikes the imagination, it straight, it strikes some, a little fear in my heart actually.
Speaker 1 00:15:16 I mean, I felt what they were feeling, right. I mean, and I think that, um, you know, in my time at the museum, I was there, um, during the blackout, um, and I was there for nine 11 and I was there so that, you know, that it has that feeling of home because so many, um, significant events in the world happened while I was in that building. And I experienced them with those people. Um, and so I think that communal aspect and that way in which we all seem to really grow up there together. Um, and I, that underpins a lot, um, and the D the shared dedication to that place, um, extends to one another. Um, so to me writing about this very formative time in the museum, when the museum was run by these larger than life characters, um, who were great fun to write about the director and, um, to allow myself to put, to go back to that time, um, a completely analog world.
Speaker 1 00:16:21 I mean, one of the reasons that I was able to connect with so many people there is that I was often delivering mail, and it was before the time of email. And before the time when, um, everything was done electronically. So it was a very part of being in that community was conquering the physical space of the museum and being able to navigate it and, and find these people, our offices are tucked away, um, all over the museum. So you've gotta be able to find your way and get to people and, um, traverse back and forth and across and over. And I really loved writing about that analog world kind of revisiting that pace, um, and the, the human to human contact that was involved in that.
Speaker 1 00:17:10 I'm curious what, uh, what, like authors and books inspired you and also gave you permission to write about the met in the way that you have written about it, both the magic piece and the realistic piece? Well, I think, you know, I never, um, took notes. I never kept a journal. I, you know, the, the stories that I write about and the details that I use are the things that, um, have always come back to me. I have always been, uh, uh, part of my thinking about the place, but it wasn't until 2017, when the museum gave me a yearlong sabbatical to write this book, um, that I sat down to start without an outline without a sense of what it was going to ultimately be. I knew I wanted to write about this time and it just came pouring out of me partially because I think I w I withheld it for so long.
Speaker 1 00:18:09 I was always, I've always been a writer for the men. So I've been writing in other people's voices. I was a speech writer for eight years. Um, so I had never written in my own voice before I sat down to write this. So I think it was tremendously liberating to be finally writing in my own voice, writing what I wanted to say. And for the museum's part, I think they knew my loyalties and trusted me enough to know that it was going to be a love letter to the place and the people. Um, so I never showed any of it to them. Um, they didn't read it until it was published. Um, and, you know, it's, I think the, the nicest thing that I've heard from so many staff members there is that they were just so grateful that I, that I wrote it down, that I wrote. I gave words to the way that they feel about the people and the objects, um, in a way that they have always thought about, but hadn't had it coalesced in this way. And to me, that's incredibly high praise from my colleagues.
Speaker 1 00:19:14 And it's interesting because although you never say, well, when you're in the character of like the chair, you say, I, this and I that, but you never bring yourself in as a character. And yet I almost feel like it's a memoir. Do you have a thought on that? I think, you know, a lot of it is memoir in, in, in, in it's capturing my thinking about the place. It certainly steeped in that. I think often people are looking for the character that is me since it is written from 16 different points of view. And my answer is usually that all the characters are me because it is the way I remember them and it, and so it's deeply infused with my own memories in that way that, um, memory has a way of editing itself. Um, and so often when I write about works of art, I distinctly don't look at them. I write about them from memory because I find that the most important parts of them surface in the writing. Um, if I don't look at it and then I go back and fact check and I always have things wrong and I get the scale wrong or something, but the initial impetus to write about a work of art often comes from it, um, permeating your memory in a very specific way. And so when you're writing about it, it's better not to look at it in some ways. Um, because memory is a more powerful influence.
Speaker 1 00:20:42 I also am curious, um, how you decided, I mean, there's some pieces, in my opinion, the, the, the, uh, magical part, those pieces are very magical and the realistic part is pretty realistic. I'm thinking in terms of Nick trying to find, uh, a gallery for his, uh, his exhibition. Yes. And I've worked in nonprofits. So I know what that's all about. I mean, I've definitely is very realistic. And I'm wondering how you decided which things to write in the whimsical way, like the, the lappers and which like Nick, you chose to write in a very intensely realistic way. Well, I, you know, I set out right in the beginning, even in the first line of the book, um, with this premise that, um, we, the staff feel like we're protecting and saving the art when the reality is that the art is protecting and saving us.
Speaker 1 00:21:40 Um, and that reciprocal relationship is very important to the structure of the book. And I was very conscious of that structure and the rhythm of how the stories unfolded. Um, I think the difference, what makes it a novel versus a collection of short stories is that you need to read them in order. I'm revealing information as you go, and, and references are looped back on. And, and that structure was very important to me when I was writing in deciding when to activate those magical parts when people would be ready for that, um, when they needed some more grounding in the stuff of the place and the, the more, um, truthful aspects and details. Um, and then when they were ready to launch again in another leap of the imagination. So I worked very hard to both, um, pare things down to their essence, but also to create a rhythm in the you'll also notice that some chapters are only two or three pages long.
Speaker 1 00:22:38 Um, partially because I, as a reader love when you come upon a three-page chapter, particularly after a long, um, a longer chapter. And often I will loop back on a story that was told earlier in the book, and there's a kind of Coda that comes back later and that, um, that architecture was very important to me, um, in balancing those two things. Um, so I like that you noticed that as a reader, um, and was the story about Nick based on one thing, or was it amalgam of things that happened all the time there? So Nick is a, uh, curator who is, um, in a chapter called the talent, and he represents, um, the curators at the museum in the aggregate. So there are 102 curators at the met, um, and they are wonderful. And I often compare them to akin to the dancers at the ballet.
Speaker 1 00:23:41 They are the people, we couldn't do it without them. I was infinitely replaceable during my 25 years. There I, their minds, their knowledge is not replaceable. And so to me, everything we were doing was sort of feeding up to their success. And in the end, Nick, um, is an aggregate of all their best and worst characteristics. Um, curators are wonderfully neurotic and, um, demanding and brilliant. And so it was great fun to write a character who captured all of their worst flaws. Well, you know, I kind of lost track of time. We only have a couple of minutes left, so, um, I've just, uh, loved your book. We've been speaking with Christine Colson, author of metropolitan stories, and just there briefly, what are you working on now? Uh, a follow-up book, that's sort of a cousin, it's an, it's an art book, but, um, totally different time period. And I'm still at the met though. Wonderful. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed your interview and, uh, enjoyed you. And I highly recommend your book, metropolitan stories by Christine Colson. Uh, thank you very much. You bet.
Speaker 2 00:25:02 <inaudible> hello? Julina are you with us quite yet? Sorry. I'm here. There you are. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:25:43 Good evening, Elena. Welcome to right on radio on <inaudible>.
Speaker 4 00:25:48 Thank you for having me here. Very excited.
Speaker 3 00:25:51 Yeah, we're really excited to have you. So this is Elena Bailey and with her book, how the streets were made housing, segregation and black life in America. Um, I'm going to begin by saying for a relatively small book. Uh, there's a lot going on in here. Um, it's really something I just enjoyed the heck out of it. So before we get going, why don't you tell us a little bit about the book? Um, for me, the title is a bit deceptive because there's more going on there than the title suggests. And then, um, maybe set us up for reading to get us started.
Speaker 4 00:26:22 Great. I would be happy to do that, and I would agree with you about the title. Uh, we always, I went back and forth with my editor on that one. Um, but we wanted to find something that wasn't too heavy that people might be interested in. Uh, but you're right. The book itself, um, it's called how the streets are made. How was he getting segregation of black life in America, but really, um, I, you know, there's been kind of a buzz the last, you know, five years or so with people getting into this question of how did we get to our racial wealth gap? What's the role of housing segregation? Um, Richard Rothstein has that book, the color of law that people kind of picked up on. And so my book, you know, takes that as a point of departure, but something that's been missing for me that, and it really is what most chapters are about is, well, yes, we have a history of housing segregation and created these physical spaces, but what did that do to our ideas of blackness and whiteness and who we are in the nation? How did housing segregation shape our very understanding of ourselves and one another? And how does that show up in literature and film and television and media. And so that's really what the book is about.
Speaker 3 00:27:30 It's really a book of cultural criticism and a, quite a contribution in that regard, I think. Um, so I'll stop talking and let's listen to you read.
Speaker 4 00:27:39 Okay. All right. So it was a bit tricky. I'm going to try this page. That is the beginning of chapter one. Okay. So we'll see. All right. Um, when I think about the way public housing policy and geographic segregation led to the creation of the streets as a socio-cultural construct, I think about the experiences of my mother and my stepfather, both of whom grew up in the housing projects in Minnesota, my stepfather, a white American grew up in a housing project in Duluth. In the 1950s, his family moved into the housing after world war two for them, public housing was transitional and they eventually were able to purchase a home and settle into middle-class American life. In contrast, my black American mother grew up in the housing projects of north Minneapolis, her mother, a young single parent moved into this housing in the 1960s. My mother joke in the recalls that the only time the police dared to come into the area was when they were rounding someone up.
Speaker 4 00:28:46 My parents divergent experiences are significant because they speak to the radically different ways. Subsidized housing operated for black and white Americans experiences. Like my stepfather's are often used to explain a way the specific anti-blackness is U S housing policy. If white people lived in the projects too, and managed to become socially mobile, then there was a notes use for black people. These types of broad generalizations represent both a misunderstanding of history and a misunderstanding of how race and space function in America. Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses this misconception and the case for operations. When he claims that an unsegregated America might see poverty and all its effects spread across the country with no particular bias towards skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin coats points out, um, that in contemporary America, race and poverty are largely intertwined. Thanks to the segregationist housing policies, understanding how the physical spaces of the streets came to be as well as how they were linked to certain racialized behaviors and social patterns helps us confront the untruth of questions. Like if white Americans were able to transition out of public housing and into their own homes, why didn't black people. If instead, we know that the housing projects designed for black Americans were a subpar counterpart. So the new deal, economic support extended to white Americans, we can begin to truly understand the roots of current racialized geography, geographic space and economic disparities.
Speaker 3 00:30:28 Thank you. That was Elaine Bailey reading from how the streets were made and perfect choice for reading, because it really sets up everything that, uh, I think we want to talk about. So let's begin at the top and with this idea of, for me anyway, the idea of streets as a social construct, so key to your book and your thesis, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 4 00:30:48 Yeah. I'm glad you asked that question because I realize it, it, it can be a, such a kind of academic term, but there's no other way to explain it for me. Right. Okay. Um, so what I mean by that is that, you know, I use the term, the streets, um, but people might interchangeable use the hood or the ghetto. Um, but I'm getting at the idea that these aren't just physical locations, right? That there are an entity that had been made through culture, through social internet, uh, interactions through power dynamics. And there's a reason why when, when someone says, you know, the hood or the streets that a certain image comes to mind that certain behaviors come to mind that certain interactions come to mind, certain TV shows come to mind that certain people come to mind. So all of those things that are conjured when we hear the streets, which is, you know, a physical space, that's what I'm getting at. And I'm trying to understand where that came from and how we got here.
Speaker 3 00:31:47 And that's the idea of it being a social construct. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Um, and this is intuitive, but let's talk about why this idea matters. Okay. So this is a phenomenon that you're teasing out of, out of our culture. And so why does this matter?
Speaker 4 00:32:02 Yeah. I love these questions. Um, so for me, you know, as a former, always we've all had this with our students. So what we tell them, putting your paper what's the, so what, so I think that's what you're asking, right. Um, for me, that kind of big, so what is, um, you know, we can understand how laws and policies lead us to, you know, neighborhoods like north Minneapolis or, you know, lake street, um, or how they lead us to the racial wealth gap, but we don't always understand why changes in the lot. Don't undo all of that. Right. So why the fair housing act didn't undo all these other things. And so the big, so what of why we need to understand the social and cultural constructs that come along with these things is so that we can understand why policy never operates alone. That operates in all these other ways. And so if we want change, we do need these structural changes. We need laws and policies, but we also have to do the cultural and the social work along with it. Um, so that's kind of the why this matters. And, you know, uh, I'm thinking of my students, uh, who would always say, no, you make it so hard for me to watch TV or enjoy anything. Um, but also, you know, so we can think critically, right. But what we're consuming, right. So what ideas are we getting from what we're watching, what we're reading. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:33:31 Oh, that's such a powerful point. So I'm an English major myself. You're an English professor. And I hope we have time to talk about that, how you bring your, um, understanding of words to your study here, because I think we could spend this half hour talking about the word street alone. For example, when you say the streets, no one thought of a diner or Mendota Heights. Um, and, uh, the why, why that happens is really important. Um, but let's dial it back a little bit and go back to what you introduced us to in your reading, which is your background. Um, thank you for sharing. Some of that I'll ask you to share a little more and how it informed your path to this book.
Speaker 4 00:34:08 Yeah, absolutely. Um, something I, you know, mentioned in that introduction is that for me, this book is like the culmination of my personal and professional interests. And personally, you know, I just read a little bit about my mom and my stepdad who, you know, both grew up in Minnesota, had families that had to make use of public housing, but very different ways. Um, and then I talk a little bit in the intro about, you know, my experience as, um, growing up around the twin cities. But, um, my mom who grew up in the projects in north Minneapolis, um, and eventually they moved to Brooklyn center. It's a long story, but all that to say that was her big thing to get out of there. And she wanted me to have the opportunity and the access to education that she didn't have, which meant staying in the first ring suburbs.
Speaker 4 00:34:59 Um, and so for, for my life growing up, it was about keeping us out of the streets, but that meant moving. So we moved every year, two years, uh, to find a thing, to keep me in the goals that I, you know, she, she knew I needed that education. Um, but she chose that life because that was the means to escape the street. So I think for me, part of this book is realizing that whether you grew up in north Minneapolis or in, you know, by lake street, or you grew up in Robinsdale for many black Americans, your lives are still shaped by the streets, in these very different ways.
Speaker 3 00:35:34 I'm going to ask you a really white guy question here and that doesn't, you know, forgive me of any sins here, but, uh, D do you feel you, I think you talked about this in the book, be some sort of disconnection because you were in Brooklyn center as opposed to in the streets. Um, so what does that mean for you as a black person growing up and how do you relate to that? Because that's a fair question.
Speaker 4 00:35:56 No, that's a great question. I, and I think that's part of why I put that in the book to, to be transparent. Um, and because part of my, I guess my larger point is that the street shape American life in general, but black American life is very specific way. So I grew up in the first ring suburbs, but I grew up there because of the streets, because my mom wanted to escape that. And even despite that, when I'm in and out of the suburbs, and when I go into a Minnetonka or briefly, when we lived in any Dyna, I was still looked at as someone who belonged to the streets and who didn't belong in those neighborhoods. So it's, even though we didn't live there, my life has always been shaded by that. And I'm, I'm seen as someone who belongs to that specific space. So I think that's part of what I was trying to get at is like, well, how does this thing have such a hold on on us? And that's kind of why I wanted to write this book.
Speaker 3 00:36:52 That's such a powerful idea that image, that vision of that connection to the streets, no matter where you are. Wow. Um, you mentioned Yulaina about segregation, policy rules and regs, um, throughout the course of American history, let's talk about that. Uh, and the impact that has had on what the streets are today. Um, that's a broad question, but maybe we can start with the federal housing authority, the FHA.
Speaker 4 00:37:20 Um, yeah. And if you don't mind, I might actually start a little earlier. I'll be brief. I promise this is the part where you say don't geek out too much, right?
Speaker 3 00:37:29 We're geeks here. That's why we have this. Anyone who's listening is an unapologetic geek.
Speaker 4 00:37:37 I'll do my best to sum it up, but I, so I'm glad that you brought up the FHA, right? So I think when most people think about housing segregation and these policies for good reason, you think of the federal housing administration and you take a poll, if you think of red lining, which I'll circle back to, because that is the crux of it on a national level. But I think what I try to do in the book and what I think is important for everyone to understand is that you really have to go back to the early 20th century to know how did we get there, right? What are the ideas and practices that cause this culmination of federal policy? So for me, you can't talk about red lining without saying, well, what is this a response to? And this is really a response to the great migration in the early 20th century, early 19 hundreds, where you have millions of black Americans migrating north, because they're fleeing violence in the south and staying opportunity in these Northern cities.
Speaker 4 00:38:31 Before that you did have some integration in Northern cities, I think famously web to voice who grew up in an integrated neighborhood while off. Um, but all of a sudden you have millions of black Americans coming, then you have a new response. And so the FHA is kind of a national culmination of what starts on these really local levels with, you know, covenants and, um, you know, city planning and different zoning that attempts to segregate and keep, you know, this black and white space, very, very separate, right. Um, I always think of, um, my best friend here who has a house over in Longfellow and Cooper. And, uh, when she bought her house, she was like, you have to see this, you're going to find this stuff fascinating. And her deed still has that clause that says, you'll never sell this house to a black person.
Speaker 4 00:39:18 And she, we laugh, of course, because now it was a black family living in the house. But, um, but so those are the things that, that start early on, right. Um, on one hand. And then I think people forget this bit of history, but it's one of my favorites. Um, again, very nerdy, but early in the 1910s and twenties, you have a national push for homeownership to be in the hands of kind of white Americans as a show of nationalism. So Hoover played a huge role in this, the own, your own home campaign means they're like in magazines to people to say, oh, in your own home, that makes you a good, you know, a good father, good American. Um, and really it's because people are scared of communism and owning the home as an investment in the nation. Um, but all of this is happening so that by the time you get to the federal housing administration, the new deal and the federal government is subsidizing homeownership, and now making it possible, you already have the groundwork of, well, we want to make sure we have these spaces racially separate.
Speaker 4 00:40:21 We want to make sure homeownership is tied to a very specific brand of American identity that is white and the kind of nuclear, you know, family. Um, so, you know, then when you get to the red lining where famously, I think everybody knows this, but I'll say it, you have the maps that they draw the neighborhoods. And, you know, what's significant to me is that it makes economic risk racial. So it's that, you know, the green neighborhoods or the white neighborhoods at the least financially risky all the way down to the red being the all black neighborhoods, the most financially recipe, but it's not even just blackness, that's risky, it's proximity to black. This that they're kind of in an integrated neighborhood, you're somewhat risky. Um, so FHA makes us a national systemic thing, but I think more importantly, it creates a logic there that that is existing even today, right? So famously Wells Fargo, I'll just send the news quite frequently, but it was for their kind of ghetto loans. If you remember that story. So even, you know, 50 years later, you still have that, that economic logic persist of blackness being, you know, risky, right? So it creates all of these things that have lasted long after that. Um, and I won't get into all the zoning and other things, but that's a brief, brief, brief history.
Speaker 3 00:41:38 Well, that, that's a nice summary. And thank you for digging further back then, the great depression era, because you said something, I think pretty powerful, which is these themes have there they've been part and parcel of the rules, quote, unquote, that we have made over time. I need to read from the 1934 FHA underwriting manual, I've circled it and underlined it so many times. I can barely read it. But if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes we consider today and say, boy, that's pretty segregated, but they sat there then and said, this is just common sense. This is the way you have a happy society. I mean, th this is generations of thinking just woven into law. Right?
Speaker 4 00:42:22 Absolutely. Absolutely. And I liked that you used that, that phrase common sense. You know, I think a lot of this is about like what was, what becomes cultural common sense and the law can't undo that cultural, common sense, which is why you have to start to think, you know, beyond the law, you know,
Speaker 3 00:42:40 You make that point very well in the book. And you say, look, even after they rewrote the laws, because they recognized her, they were called to, you know, people change their views. It was too late, it was already baked in the cake. Uh, and here we are. Um, so nicely done. Uh, so let, let's go. I'm looking at the clock already.
Speaker 4 00:42:58 I'm going to go quick. I'm going to turn
Speaker 3 00:43:00 My page and skip some other questions and let's jump into your cultural critiques. And this is where you bring that, um, English critical theoretical eye to the game here, which I'm impressed by. Uh, I'd love, I'd love to ask you how, uh, an, an English professor turns into a, a social critic like this. You can, you can share that with us if you'd like, but why don't you do that? And then jump into some of this cultural criticism and, and pick movies, books, or, uh, music and let's get started. Okay.
Speaker 4 00:43:28 Well, I, I will say I, so I wasn't, I was a professor in an English and cultural studies department, and I really, today my, my PhD is more cultural studies. So even though I do literature, that's part of it is, you know, we do this weird interdisciplinary study culture itself. Fascinating. So, yeah. Yeah. But, um, I pick, I don't know, is there something that is a particular interest?
Speaker 3 00:43:54 Well, let's talk about music, um, which is something, this is radio station and, um, and we're talking about books, but we could talk about books, but we often do that. Let's talk about music and tell us how, um, this music shapes our views of the street. And especially for, you know, people like me, or maybe people younger than me who are, you know, white, and, uh, we hear this music and make some assumptions. And what happens when I hear this stuff what's happening to my brain.
Speaker 4 00:44:23 That's excellent. I'm glad you chose that. Although I, you know, I'm always taking away to talk about the why, or do you talk about and poetry? Cause I love it all, but, um, no, so I, you know, obviously I have a chapter on hip hop, um, because he can't talk about the streets without talking about hip hop. And I, you know, I mentioned this in the book, but it's a genre that was created quite literally in the streets. Right. They was siphoned off electricity from the streetlamps and have turntables and block parties. And that's how you got the emergence of this genre. And, um, you know, I, I talk about, you know, when you think about hip hop as a genre, um, for a good reason, it's, it's one, so distinctly tied to kind of black youth culture of the streets, right? And it, it, it crosses over and bleeds into, you know, clothing and, you know, the emergence of film with the, you know, if you remember the hood genre films like boys in the hood, um, so it's become this huge cultural phenomenon and now it's very mainstream, but at the time it was this way that you had all these youth who for many, many, many reasons I won't get into.
Speaker 4 00:45:32 And the failure of kind of so-called urban, renewable projects, right. Um, you know, were suffering economically, couldn't find jobs and hip hop becomes this cultural force that fills this void. Um, and, and it's a way that people begin to articulate how they see themselves in their space in contrast to the narratives. And at the time, especially later on when he did to, you know, well, not later, but in the eighties and nineties, when we get to the very strong political discourse of, you know, super predators and these kind of political discourses of black youth that are, you know, very derogatory. And this is when you have, you know, the early kind of rise of mass incarceration. So you have these things going on in mainstream culture and then shimmy what's powerful and fascinating is how hip hop rises up in parallel to say, it's complicated, right. To say, yes, there's violence yesterday. Is there sometimes there's we participate in this, but we're also human beings and complex, and there's this nuance and we're articulating our sense of power and place in the world. Um, and so that's something I really try to dig in and really this idea of complexity to know, uh, it's not clean cut. Um, it's not that people are either, you know, poor, good souls surviving the hood or horrible gangsters, but that they're human beings living in these created conditions, the best they can.
Speaker 3 00:46:55 So I don't know if it's my training as an English lit guy and reading critically and whatnot. But when I, when I do eat and I do listen to some hip hop and I have over the years, and there was a genre of it, which deeply concerns certain elements of society, let's say, you know, the white people in the outer suburbs or not, what are they singing about? Well, it's important to think hard about what they're singing about and why they're singing about that, you know? And, uh, there are stories in there and all these sorts of things. Um, where am I going with this question? Um, I, I want to come back, uh, the role and the place of that music in our culture and white people who have appropriated it and maybe, you know, if that's the correct term, but they've appropriated, is that, um, what are they doing to that music? And what happens to the streets? What are the streets, if the whites are, they want to be a part of it. So now I'm blabbering.
Speaker 4 00:47:45 Yeah, no, I mean, this is a good question. I, and I find myself, you know, um, and I both embrace us and then realized, and now I sound like every other generation before me, I find myself wrestling, even myself with contemporary hip hop, because it feels very different to me than like what I listened to and the nineties and early two thousands. It just, you know, so I'm also of that. Well, it's not the same as, you know, sophomores. I acknowledge that that's, that's part of it that scholars have also looked at like, you know, what shifts in the nineties versus, uh, you know, there's a shift in what they call the golden era to today's hip hop. Um, because there, there were big changes. Um, but you know, I think the, the big thing about today as you're listening to it, it's realizing it's become about it's performance.
Speaker 4 00:48:35 Right. Um, so I talk about how this parallels and tonneau talks about this, one of his books, um, even when people use are in the streets, you know, and what you wear and how you display yourself. And, and it's a persona in your music, it's also performance, right? It's performance. I think people often read or, you know, read, let's meet, you see my cultural studies lines, but listen to, and analyze hip hop as, you know, as if it's all literal, right. Or as if it's, you know, yeah. And not looking at it as an art form that is, you know, expression and often exaggerated expression. Right. And that's allowed too many of the people. So I think that's the kind of takeaway I say is, you know, we'll let other people have these exaggerated, you know, expressions. We have to ask ourselves, well, why not this group? Um, but you're right. It has morphed. And it is mainstream. And it is a very different thing today than it was
Speaker 3 00:49:29 It's worldwide. It's in, you know, folk music around the world. I'm just, it blows my mind, uh, on this note and then we'll leave it. You do talk very frankly about times when you feel like, and mostly I recall it from this chapter on movies, when, um, black movie makers, filmmakers maybe don't do themselves or, um, black culture, any favors because in trying to make a movie that works in Hollywood, they have to cut corners. And then we get this distorted view of blackness for white people who don't know any different or other people. And I hate to hate to say the black, white thing all the time, but other people who don't know the streets, maybe it's street and non street people. So not street non street, people see this and they think, well, that's the streets when it's kind of not really the streets. Um,
Speaker 4 00:50:24 No, I mean, that's an excellent point and something, you know, I talked to about like the hygiene or films of the nineties. Yeah. They were at the time, you know, this was like a revolutionary thing to have black directors like John Singleton telling their own stories. But, um, I think we always run into this issue when you try to represent yourself, is that representation always falls flat because it's, it's interpreted as a model list. So people see the story boys in the hood, and that becomes all they know of the streets of the hood when in reality, people in space are more complicated than that. Right. Which is why I think a story, for example, like Moonlight takes that genre. And does it justice and kind of a new light today. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:51:07 Yeah. Good call. Um, you mentioned, uh, coats, uh, and you mentioned the great migration and I want to mention Charles and blow and, um, his ideas. Oh, I'm getting the two minute warning. Yulaina sadly. Uh, so maybe we'll leave the idea of the great migration back south, which Charles blow is advocating because I believe we live to talk to you about that, but, uh, I want to get to this big question I have at the end here about the arc of history bending toward justice. Um, and then Charles blow and others saying, well, no, you have to bend it. If we wait, nothing's going to change. Um, I just want to have your thoughts on this. Vis-a-vis your reading of history and where we've been, where we're going, because you've done this. You've, you've given us, uh, a lens to, to view this change over time. Where are we, where are we going? What do you think?
Speaker 4 00:52:00 Yeah, that's an excellent, and I'll be quick and brief. I mean, I, I agree with the thought that it it's, nothing is going justice won't happen. We have to make it happen. Right. So I do fall into that camp, but, um, but I do think that over time, things have grown and changed in terms of people's awareness. I mean, last summer was a hopeful moment in terms of people rallying against injustice. Um, but then, you know, yeah. Then there are the after moments to rethink well, so what really changed, um, especially in Minnesota where we're wrestling with things like that. Um, but I think I'm always reminded, or I have to remind myself, I should say, as someone who is a bit of a, you know, an existentialist of Mary Mariame Kaba saying that hope is a discipline. Um, and I think that to me is it goes hand in hand with this idea that we have to make justice happen, because I think it's very easy to see, look back at history and look at the growing kind of gap right now, the racial wealth gap, the housing ownership gap is getting worse in Minnesota in particular.
Speaker 4 00:53:06 Um, but I, myself am trying to, trying to have that discipline of hope, despite despite those realities. Well,
Speaker 3 00:53:14 Wonderful. We have been speaking with Yulaina Bailey author of how the streets were made, housing, segregation and black life in America, Minnesota zone Elaina, Bailey. I might add. And what's next for you? Please say you're writing, we're working on something else so we can have you back.
Speaker 4 00:53:30 I am working on a memoir, actually something a little less academic, so, but related to Minnesota and my experience in the streets and not the streets. So yeah.
Speaker 3 00:53:40 Yes. Fantastic. Well, I hope you let us know about it. Ilana. We'd love to have you back.
Speaker 4 00:53:44 Sounds great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank
Speaker 3 00:53:46 You. It was a pleasure. And now this.
