In April 2016, author, historian

and professor Ibram X. Kendi
published
his
National
Book

Award-winning “Stamped from
the
Beginning.”
In
what
he

subtitles “The Definitive History
of Racist Ideas in America,” Kendi’s
exhaustive research chronicles the
timeline of anti-Black racist ideas
and their shifting power throughout
American history.

Kendi, one of America’s leading

antiracist voices, was the youngest-
ever winner of the National Book
Award for Nonfiction in 2016.
The same year, Jason Reynolds’s
“Ghost” was nominated for the
National Book Award in Young
People’s Literature. This prestigious
celebration of the best literature in
America is where the two men met.

But, it wasn’t until March of this

year, nearly four years later, that
“Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and
You” was released — the remix of
Kendi’s original book, reimagined
by Reynolds. In an interview with
“CBS This Morning,” Reynolds
reveals that he initially declined
Kendi’s request to write the remix:
“I said no because I’m careful about
tampering with things that I believe
are sacred.” Yet, he finally agreed

when he realized “this work was
bigger than the both of us, and it’s
not about either one of us.”

Reynolds’s
remix
is
geared

toward a younger audience, readers
12 and up. While Kendi is a scholar
who holds a position as the Director
of the Antiracist Research & Policy
Center at American University,
where he is a professor of history
and
international
relations,

Reynolds is a writer of books and
poetry for young adults and middle-
grade audiences. On his website,
Reynolds declares that he plans to
“not write boring books.” He goes
on to say that “I know there are a lot
of young people who hate reading…
but they don’t actually hate books,
they hate boredom” — which is one
of the initial obstacles he faced with
the remix.

So Reynolds, who has said that

young people don’t like to read
history books, decided that his
remix wasn’t a history book, “but
a book about the present: here and
now.”

Like Kendi’s original version,

Reynolds structures the book using
five historical figures: Puritan
minister
Cotton
Mather
from

the 17th century, founding father
Thomas
Jefferson,
abolitionist

William Lloyd Garrison, writer
and activist W. E. B. Du Bois and
radical activist and writer Angela
Davis. The division of the book

into five sections coincides with
the five guides, spanning from the
1400s to modern day. While that
encompasses over 600 years of
history, Reynolds’s remix caps at
248 pages, half of Kendi’s 500-page
original.

Another important similarity

in the remix is the three different
definitions used to identify and
describe
the
people
explored:

segregationists, assimilationists and
antiracists. These three categories
are repeated frequently throughout
the book, helping us to understand
the historical figures represented
along with their motives and beliefs
(which we often discover to be
contradictory).

Reynolds
simplifies
the

definitions to help young readers
grasp
the
complex
material,

calling
segregationists
“haters,”

assimilationists as “the people who
like you, but only with quotation
marks” and antiracists as “the
people who love you because you’re
like you.” Later, when discussing
figures like Abraham Lincoln, it was
helpful to have these definitions as
we approached his contradictory
views — like that he wanted slavery
gone, but didn’t think Black people
should
necessarily
have
equal

rights: an assimilationist.

An

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, August 31, 2020 — 15

BOOK REVIEW

CULTURE NOTEBOOK
CULTURE NOTEBOOK

Review: ‘Stamped: Racism,
Anti-Racism and You’

KALAMAZOO PUBLIC LIBRARY

LILLY PEARCE
Daily Arts Writer

On Dec. 13, 1963, Bob Dylan

was given the “Tom Paine
Award” by the Emergency Civil
Liberties Committee for his
political
activism.
A
visibly

shaken, and likely drunk, Dylan
said he accepted the award on
behalf of “everybody that went
down to Cuba,” then unleashed
a doozy: “I got to admit that
the man who shot President
Kennedy, Lee Oswald … I saw
some of myself in him.” The
crowd booed him off the stage.

A
few
days
later,
Dylan

released a statement that read,
in part, “If there’s violence in
the times, then there must be
violence in me.”

*
It’s 2020, and the times are

more violent than ever. They have
been for a while. Where has Bob
Dylan been in the era of Donald
Trump, mass shootings, climate
crisis and COVID-19? Where’s
the singer who marched on
Washington with Martin Luther
King Jr. and wrote searing
political
anthems
like
“The

Times They Are a-Changin’,”
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie
Carroll” and “Only a Pawn in
Their Game?” He was releasing
Sinatra cover albums — three,
to be exact — from 2015-2017. It

seemed, for those who hoped for
a guiding message from rock’s
poet laureate, that Dylan had
decided to sit this one out.

Yet, in June 2020, Bob Dylan

is back with his first album of
original music in almost a decade
— Rough and Rowdy Ways. It’s a
career-defining masterpiece, an
album both bracingly current
yet timeless in its compositional
breadth, pulling from the best
of Dylan’s work through the
decades. Rough and Rowdy Ways
has the enthralling auditory grit
of 1997’s Grammy-winning Time
Out of Mind, the socio-political
layers of Highway 61 Revisited
and the personal revelations of
Blood on the Tracks.

“Today and tomorrow, and

yesterday too,” Dylan begins the
album’s first song, “I Contain
Multitudes.” “The flowers are
dyin’, like all things do.” Dylan’s
message is clear from the start:
These are the end times. Yet after
this apocalyptic pronouncement,
he implores an unnamed woman
to “Follow me close … I’ll lose
my mind if you don’t come with
me.” In Dylan’s world, where
“Everything’s flowing, all at the
same time,” one can “sleep with
life and death in the same bed.”
Basically, even if everyone’s
going to die, they don’t have to
die alone.

In
a
whimsical,
almost

snide cadence, Dylan throws
in a myriad of other personal
complexities, but one line stands

out: “I’m just like Anne Frank,
like Indiana Jones and them
British bad boys the Rolling
Stones.” The lyric bristles at
the ear, mainly because it’s
so impenetrable. How is the
79-year-old Dylan, while a rock
star like the Rolling Stones, like
Anne Frank or Indiana Jones?

Right from the start, Rough

and Rowdy Ways is sonically
striking. Dylan’s last original
album, 2012’s Tempest, was
chock-full of crashing drums,
out-of-control guitars and a
voice that sounded like Dylan
had swallowed a gallon of rocks.
Dylan has self-produced every
one of his albums since 1997,
and generally favors a raw,
unfiltered performance by both
himself and his tour band. This
time, though, he’s meticulously
crafted every aspect of the
album. The instrumentation and
his voice transform to reflect the
subject matter of each song. “I
Contain Multitudes” is almost
completely acoustic, intimately
shading the confessional lyrics
as the listener is drawn in by
Dylan’s soft voice.

This comfort is ripped away

on the second track, “False
Prophet.” Amid crashing drums
and
smarmy
guitar,
Dylan

continues the dark lamentations
in a Tempest-style bark — “I
know how it happened, I saw it
begin. I opened my heart to the
world, and the world caved in.”
While he doesn’t yet reveal what

caused this apocalypse, Dylan
asserts with haggard surety “I’m
no false prophet, I just know
what I know.”

Things get weirder in “My

Own Version of You,” a song
backed by a mournful steel guitar
straight out of a retro horror
flick. Dylan details his plan to
dig up “limbs and livers and
brains and hearts” and “bring
someone to life … someone who
feels the way that I feel.” Again,
love and death are bedmates.
While Dylan, parroting Victor
Frankenstein, swears to act
with “decency and common
sense … for the benefit of all
mankind” with his creation, he
also asks “What would Julius
Caesar do?” Like Caesar, and all
authoritarians, Dylan considers
his actions, however inhumane,
permissible since he believes
himself to be working for the
common good. Adding to this
prescient commentary, Dylan

invites the listener to “Step right
into the burning hell, where
some of the best-known enemies
of mankind dwell.”

In
these
flames,
Dylan

somehow finds a way to sing a
masterful love song, “I’ve Made
Up My Mind to Give Myself to
You.”

“I’m sitting on my terrace,

lost in the stars,” he begins.
The Sinatra phase has paid
off
—
Dylan’s
voice
hasn’t

sounded this sharp in decades,
a cavernous croon that soars
with genuine affection. The
soft instrumentation builds to
a sublime electric guitar solo
that’s one of the best moments
on the album. There are also
faint,
almost
imperceptible

backing singers, one of which
just might be Fiona Apple, whose
soft choral drone gives the song a
sense of deep melancholy. When
Dylan sings, almost tearfully, “I
don’t think I could bear to live

my life alone,” it’s as moving as
anything from his love-sick opus
Blood on the Tracks. Thankfully
Dylan meets someone, telling
this unnamed lover “I’ll lay down
beside you when everyone’s
gone.” In a time when reality
itself seems to be falling apart,
Dylan’s honesty is piercing.

Then comes “Black Rider.” To

the tune of a slithering acoustic
guitar,
Dylan
criticizes
an

unnamed man for womanizing,
violence and arrogance (all of
which Dylan has displayed thus
far in the album, making one
wonder if the song is a soliloquy,
critiquing
Dylan’s
own
dark,

masculine shades). Whoever the
black rider is, Dylan tells the guy
“You’ve been on the job too long,”
before giving one the album’s most
brutal, unexpected lines.

Bob Dylan in 2020: Love,
violence in the end of times

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
MUSIC NOTEBOOK

DYLAN YONO
Daily Arts Writer

POETS.ORG

Pop culture would have us

believe that the Venn diagram
between sports fans and art nerds
is more or less two separate circles.
As a humble representative of the
tiny sliver in the middle, I want to
introduce my friends on both sides
to the world of their culturally
prescribed adversary. There are
some similarities between the
two that few would expect to
find — similarities that, I argue,
allow us to view sport as art. Let’s
set the scene. Our protagonist
is NFL analyst Adam Schefter,
who stakes his reputation on his
straight-shooter,
no-nonsense

reporting. Schefter’s Twitter feed
is the Associated Press of the NFL
world; if he says something, it’s
true. A few weeks ago, Schefter
put on his best suit, set up his
webcam in front of his well-
stocked bookcase, and joined an
ESPN broadcast held over Zoom,
complete with all the aggressive
rock music, flashy graphics and
artificial urgency we’ve come to
expect from the network. The
occasion? The announcement of
the order in which next season’s
NFL games will be played in.

One might think the order of

games isn’t particularly interesting
news, perhaps worthy of a short
segment highlighting interesting
matchups, but ESPN had other
thoughts. They instead hosted a
three-hour show breaking down
each team’s schedule with such
pressing commentary as “X team
won’t be able to handle so many
games in cold cities in December,”
or, “Y rookie quarterback will be
demoralized by difficult opponents
early on.” This was stated with a
baffling level of confidence, despite
being months away from a season
whose fate is already uncertain
due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, Schefter desperately
tries to do the impossible and fill
the home stretch of this painfully
long production with anything
resembling objective analysis.

How did Schefter find himself

in this position? The ESPN show
is an extreme example of the
increasing role of narrative in
professional sports. A three-hour
show for a schedule release is a bit
excessive, but the stories that the
media constructs around games
are a large part of what makes
them so exciting. Each NFL team
plays 16 regular-season games.
Though the average broadcast is
over three hours long, the ball is
only in play for about 11 minutes
per game. To make these short
bursts of action feel consequential,
the media sets up elaborate
storylines in the hours and days
leading up to games. They do so by
creating characters out of athletes
and framing games such that
they follow a traditional narrative
arc, putting their characters in
situations where they have to
overcome obstacles larger than
the game itself. The week one
matchup between the Saints and
the Buccaneers, for instance,
becomes not just a potentially
good game, but a battle between
veterans Drew Brees and Tom
Brady to solidify their legacy as
the best quarterback in the league
and to push the limits of how many
years they can play at a high level.
Analysts will routinely praise the
determination and perseverance
required of Brees and Brady to play
through their 40s.

Each play thus carries far

more weight, as it’s not just
the game on the line, but also a
whole host of abstract values and
principles. In this light, analysts
can
be
considered
analogous

to storytellers — more so than
regular journalists, as they add
far more narrative to their subject
matter than a reporter covering
a “real” news story. That is to
say, the difference between the
actual events and their portrayal
in the media is greater in sports
journalism than it is in other
branches of journalism. Athletes
are, in a sense, analogous to
performers, coaches to directors,
referees to stage managers and
so on. The result is a coherent
“show” so to speak, a circular
system consisting of the game
and the media’s commentary
about the game. The tendency to

narrativize games can be found in
other sports, but the NFL and its
media apparatus have used these
techniques the most. It pays off for
them too. The NFL has for some
time been the most watched sports
league in the United States. One
might argue that this phenomenon
is just a way to sensationalize
the game and increase profits.
Though I’m inclined to agree,
the narrativization of sport has
nonetheless created the conditions
by which sport can — and I think
should — be considered art.

Coinciding with the rise of

narrativized sport, we’ve seen
athletes and sports journalists
broaden the scope of the issues that
they’re willing to discuss. Whereas
sports media in the past generally
had a narrow focus on the sport
itself (e.g. play-by-play recaps,
statistics,
trade
and
contract

negotiations, etc.), it now doesn’t
shy away players’ personalities,
drama and even broader social
issues that don’t directly relate to
sports. This is mostly an organic
process, without any motivation
outside
of
generating
more

content for its own sake. People
in sports media are probably not
intentionally making sport like
art, and if they are, it is only for
the practical concern of making
games more entertaining. There
are, however, real stakes to these
conversations.

Sports media, especially NFL

media, often uses rhetoric that
praises
athletes’
toughness,

determination,
grit
and

other similar attributes. This
traditionally masculine rhetoric
is often channelled to destructive
ends.
Athletes’
toughness
is

used to justify and downplay the
serious health risks associated
with playing a contact sport like
football. Countless football players
have suffered from CTE, and
though the NFL has made some
small gestures to player safety,
the
problem
remains
largely

unaddressed. Violence by athletes
is routinely swept under the rug.



On the intersection of

sports and the arts

SEJJAD ALKHALBY

Daily Arts Writer

ARTS NOTEBOOK

Read more online at

michigandaily.com
Read more online at

michigandaily.com

Read more online at

michigandaily.com