Assessing Solomon's Blog

After reading this blog, I felt slightly unsettled due to my own unmet expectations of the author and her neglect to directly address the issues which trouble her. The first paragraph of the blog uses strong language to inform the reader about her stance: "I knew if I indulged in even a smidgen more about this little girl, I'd find myself walking among stunted souls who traffic in the idea that full lips, large eyes, broad nose, and dark brown skin of a Jay-Z is inherently ugly." She describes people who subscribe to racist views of beauty as "stunted souls", suggesting that they are lacking in compassion, empathy, wisdom - everything that a 'soul' might imply. Personally, the word 'traffic' (in reference to something traded illegally) conjured up the idea of drug use, implying not only that racism is a drug, but that there is a black market economy that is based on it. People are being wronged and taken advantage of for the success of others, and in this blog, it is racism that is being perpetuated to create a dominant conception of beauty.

I can agree with all of that. I can also agree with Solomon's strategy of naming specific stereotypical characteristics about African American people as opposed to simply saying 'blackness', a strategy that slows the reader down and makes him or her take inventory of their own conceptions of those characteristics.

What I don't agree with is in the next paragraph, where Solomon seems to shift tones from anger to a sad and (in my opinion) unwarranted optimism. That isn't to say that she shouldn't be optimistic, but rather that appears to succumb to not only allowing the problem to exist  but to pretending that it doesn't exist. She writes, "I do believe these statements are a true expression of what too many people - my people - are saying about this child and feeling about themselves. There's nothing I can write to make this better. Not addressing it won't make it better, either." Here, she assesses what she believes is the underlying cause of the statements she shared about Blue Ivy Carter and then promptly excuses herself by claiming powerlessness. However, she leaves off with the expectation that she will, in fact, address the issue at hand by admitting that she cannot "make it better" by "not addressing it". Instead, Solomon's tone shifts again: "There is, though, some beauty to be had in matters like colorism. Personally, I've found solace in good books, particularly works of fiction that allow me to process the nauseating reality from a distance." As opposed to discussing the actual problem of the racist implications of Eurocentric standards of beauty, Solomon dives into a discussion about how a sample of Gwendolyn Brooks' work sets a framework for African American people to happily live without facing the issue of racism. She appears to be offering a home remedy to a non-serious matter with her use of the words 'personally' and 'solace'. Solomon also writes, "[p]eople can be so ugly, but words are pretty". This quote was particularly problematic to me because it implies that words have no meaning beyond creating loveliness for their readers. (Personally, I am of the firm belief that sometimes words need to be ugly in order to be more than simple words.) The fact that Solomon writes, "words are pretty", as opposed to using a more impermanent term such as 'can', implies the belief that words are always "pretty".

Solomon's description of Gwendolyn Brooks' work is additionally problematic for me, specifically in the sentence, "Brooks shows us how some women of color look in the mirror and assess what they see with pragmatism rather than self-destructive melodrama." Following this sentence, Brooks' character describes herself as "sweet. But I am certainly not what he would call pretty...Pretty would be a little cream-colored thing with curly hair" Despite Solomon's initial disgust with hatred towards stereotypical African American features, she characterizes Maud's description of herself as "pragmatic". She writes later in her blog that "[t]he power in these passages lie in their straightforwardness and honesty...Maud and Paul know what world they're living in, and they do just that: Live". While the characters may be very honest about their opinions of themselves, what Solomon is not addressing is that their self-image has been hindered by the very racist standards of beauty that Solomon was lamenting in the beginning of her article. Her dismissal, whether conscious or unconscious, of what values lay beneath the dialogue in Brooks' work, along with Solomon's failure to address the topic she showed so much initial anger towards, left me feeling unsatisfied after reading her blog.