Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity…

Latoya Ruby Frazier

In The Notion of Family, a series of photographs and videos, Latoya Ruby Frazier and her family bear witness to the impact of industrialism, environmental racism and oppression on Black women. Frazier particularly centers on the three generations of women in her maternal family: her grandmother, mother, and herself living in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Raised by her grandmother Ruby, Frazier’s photographs are often autobiographical. Her portraits counter stereotypes perpetuated in the media of Black women living in poverty, while also considering the holistic and insidious ways systemic racism damages a community.

Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls is a black and white portrait of Frazier’s grandmother Ruby shown in profile, smoking a pall mall cigarette in her night shirt. Porcelain dolls line the shelves and floor, leaving room for walking space. Family photos adorn the walls. Frazier explained that Grandma Ruby began collecting the dolls as a form of protection after the murder of her daughter. Ruby referred to them as her guardian angels.

“The history of a place is written on the body and the landscape.” Frazier

Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill, Edgar Thomson Works, began operating in 1875 in the Pittsburgh-area communities of Braddock and North Braddock, Pennsylvania and became one of the largest US steel mills. For decades, it employed many of the townspeople and created a thriving economy. The makeup of Braddock changed dramatically after World War II, ushered by the National Housing Act of 1934, the GI Bill (aka the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944), and the resulting “white flight.” Most of the white townspeople migrated to nearby suburbs, escaping the harmful air emissions from the mill. Black people and people of color were denied that opportunity largely because of redlining - a policy of structural and systemic racism. Redlining was a government policy that intentionally furthered segregation efforts by refusing to insure mortgages in and near African-American neighborhoods. Banks, led by the Federal Housing Authority, would withhold home loans to people of color in certain “designated white” areas, and only approve loans for segregated “designated colored” areas within the redlines drawn by the FHA (Mckeever 2018). As a form of systemic racism, redlining sustains white supremacy by intentionally allowing people of color to live in devalued or damaged locations. In Braddock, that meant the townspeople continued to live exposed to harmful elements.

“...through discrimination and racial and systemic oppression, you see how black people were entrapped in that area — through redlining, and not being able to get loans from banks to move to the suburbs, how they were left behind.” Frazier

Black people and people of color disproportionately live near pollutants and absorb pollution. A study by the National Center for Environmental Assessment indicated “...that race has a stronger effect on exposure to pollutants than poverty”(Newkirk II 2008); a narrative that these communities have tried to explain with little success. Associated with environmental racism and folded into systemic oppression, is implicit bias in healthcare. Provider shortages and barriers to access are major factors in Black death, especially in Black women and Black transpeople. Frazier has said her mother has an undiagnosed neurological condition. Her mother has since stopped seeking medical help after repeated belittling and invalidation of her experience by doctors.

The toxicity from the mill degraded the health of Frazier’s family and her community for generations. Her grandmother suffered from pancreatic cancer, her mother suffers from cancer and an undiagnosed neurological condition, and Latoya suffers from lupus. These diseases can be triggered and correlated to environmental factors (Kumarathasan, P., Vincent, R. et.al 2018).

By the 1970s the decline of the steel industry, diminishing population via suburbanization, and the closure of the local hospital further devastated the town. By centering her family and neighborhood in her work, Frazier challenges that people living in poverty are more than their socioeconomic status and that oppressed peoples’ stories are important.

Although born into completely different circumstances, I find myself thinking of my maternal grandmother when I look at Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls. After my family immigrated from Haiti to the states, my grandmothers, respectively, helped rear their grandchildren as their own children worked to support the family. In my family, and in many Haitian families, it is not uncommon to be raised with our grandmothers in our homes. Like Frazier, my grandmother helped raise my brother and me.

In respect to the photo, I imagine Frazier captured her grandmother in the midst of one of her bedtime rituals; cigarettes and a welcomed rest on the couch. An ashtray is placed where I imagine Grandma Ruby would sit. Her body hunched over in procedure to light and accept the smoke.

My maternal grandmother was not a smoker, but this work still takes me to memories of my grandmother’s own nighttime rituals- greasing and braiding her hair, translating the play-by-play activity of wrestling matching on tv, eating labouyi (porridge) with bread. My grandmother has overcome adversity throughout her life. She has lived through civil wars, political violence, death, immigration all while being a single mother.

I honor the labor that is done as the leader of a family. Grandma Ruby and my grandma, Madame Maca, were the matriarchs, the pillars in their respective families. And they worked hard. In this society, Black womens’ labor is erased and not celebrated nearly enough. Despite that, Black women do the thankless work. Black women helped engineer astronauts into space. Black women are teachers, makers, caretakers and builders. Black women and Black transwomen helped facilitate movements for equity and equality. This photo is a celebration of that work and it does not go unnoticed to me. So when I see a matriarch, I respect and acknowledge her for her labor, her story, her struggles, her successes and her humanity. I am not me without those who came and paved the way before me.