Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper considers how racial ambiguity�in particular, the body of a fair-skinned black woman�is used in Morrison�s underanalyzed 1981 novel Tar Baby as a narrative marker of intraracial class privilege.

I begin by advancing a narrative theory of black middle class embodiment: while we do not usually think of class as an identity category that is written directly on the body as race and gender might be, the unique historical circumstances surrounding the so-called �black� body mean that class, and particularly class privilege, can sometimes be understood as an embodied state within African American subjectivity. In other words, I posit that it might be possible to consider interraciality�s traces in and on the black body as classed signs. After all, the complex socioeconomic saga of interracial sexual contact in the United States has been linked, historically, to the accrual of a host of material and symbolic privileges to those blacks bearing phenotypical markers of racial mixture (including skin color, eye color, and hair color and texture) on their bodies.

As such, I argue, African American cultural narratives have frequently used these phenotypical markers as tropes of intraracial difference, and even alienation, particularly in their representations of the black bourgeois subject. This phenomenon, I go on to suggest, has been exacerbated and complicated in what I will call (following Thelma Golden, Mark Anthony Neal, and others) the �post-soul� or post-Civil Rights era, with the dramatic expansion and geographic dispersal of the black American middle class.

In this paper, I go on to analyze Morrison�s character Jadine, repeatedly described in the novel as �yalla� (yellow) because of her light complexion. My discussion first addresses Morrison�s representation of Jadine as alienated from a traditional black Southern culture (as well as black Caribbean and African cultures). I go on, however, to ask the more crucial question of why Morrison must portray Jadine�s character as �yalla,� and, indeed, why that portrayal is not accompanied by any credible narrative explanation. Although readers are expected to understand Jadine as racially ambiguous�with skin so light it only darkens perceptibly after months of �tanning from the sun��the text is oddly silent about the source of Jadine�s coloring. Close reading indicates that Jadine does not have a white parent, and that no one else in her family is particularly fair-skinned; as such, Morrison�s continued description of Jadine as a �yalla� woman is strikingly inexplicable.

Ultimately, I argue that Morrison�s text represents Jadine as �yalla� precisely because her character is meant to signify racial alienation and material privilege. Jadine�s body is literally �whitened� in the narrative, made visibly ambiguous, so that readers can more easily read her estrangement from a particular version of black culture�her skin color is a sort of shorthand for a cultural logic aligning racial ambiguity, class privilege, and black cultural (in)authenticity. My analysis exposes the persistence of this logic, which underlies the concept of middle class embodiment articulated in the paper�s introduction, and finally questions its continued relevance in African American cultural production.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Corruption has become commonplace for the people in Bangladesh as evident from the recent annual reports of the German-based Transparency International (TI). Bangladesh earned and retained the championship amongst the most corrupt countries as listed by the TI over the last 4 consecutive years. The capital market in Bangladesh experienced a devastating crash in 1996 following an unprecedented share scam. Investor confidence wad awfully damaged. In a bid to increase investment in the capital market, the subsequent governments allowed black money be invested in the market without any questions being asked about the source of income of investors. This policy turns out to be wrong, because only a small amount of black money came into the market, but the corruption was believed to be encouraged by such relaxations. Ultimately, the rich are became richer making the poor even poorer. This article critically examines the implications of such a flawed legal policy for the society and the national economy by reference to the recent experience of Bangladesh.