Jonathan Chait wrote this laughably unreflective and dim series of sentences in New York magazine:
Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate. Two decades ago, the only communities where the left could exert such hegemonic control lay within academia, which gave it an influence on intellectual life far out of proportion to its numeric size.
Today’s political correctness flourishes most consequentially on social media, where it enjoys a frisson of cool and vast new cultural reach. And since social media is also now the milieu that hosts most political debate, the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old.
It also makes money. Every media company knows that stories about race and gender bias draw huge audiences, making identity politics a reliable profit center in a media industry beset by insecurity.
His "left" can easily be replaced with "right" or "conservative"...and resonate with more bass and timbre.
Several years ago, a young man wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "straight rights" was supposedly waylaid and beaten upon in the streets of New York.
His effort at resistance via "truth-telling" was met with the most direct and transparent type of political action--a swift punch in the nose and a return to a state of affairs in which life is nasty, brutish, and short...except for the fact that he was not dispatched from this corporeal existence.
Of course, I do not support violence as a means of resolving disagreements over political speech.
Political speech is a call to action, an effort to channel emotion, and a type of claim on the nature of reality that is often both descriptive (how the speaker sees and understands reality) as well as normative (how the world ought to be).
Those claims and assumptions can be explicit or implied.
Spokespeople for the New York City police have responded in a predictable way by using the deaths of two officers as a means to delegitimize public concerns about police thuggery and murder in the aftermath of the public strangling of Eric Garner and the execution by cop of Michael Brown.
The Police Benevolence Association said this about the shootings in New York:
The head of the Policeman’s Benevolent Association in New Jersey said that the shooting of the officers was “spurred on by so much recent hatred aimed at officers everywhere.”
“Our society stands safer because of the sacrifices officers make everyday, but the hatred that has grown over the past few weeks in this country has gone unchecked by many elected leaders,” the official, Patrick Colligan, said in a statement posted on Facebook.
A declaration of war against people of color in New York has also been issued:
A statement purporting to be from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the biggest police union, blamed Mr. de Blasio for the shootings.
“The mayor’s hands are literally dripping with our blood because of his words, actions and policies,” read the statement, “and we have, for the first time in a number of years, become a ‘wartime’ police department. We will act accordingly.”
The statement instructed officers to forward it to colleagues, and it spread instantly through the department.
Threats of thuggery and retaliation have also been made against publicly elected officials:
The head of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, blamed the mayor for the shootings as he addressed officers outside Woodhull Hospital after the bodies of Officer Liu and Officer Ramos were borne away.
“There is blood on many hands, from those that incited violence under the guise of protest to try to tear down what police officers did every day,” Mr. Lynch said.
“That blood on the hands starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor.”
Now is a time of grieving, Mr. Lynch said. “We’ll mourn for our city and we’ll mourn for our brothers,” he said. “We’ll straighten our shoulders, we’ll stiffen our backs and we’ll wipe our tears.”
But he warned, “When those funerals are over, we’ll raise our heads and those that allowed this to go on will be held accountable.”
Social media has responded with the hashtag "#NYPDLIVESMATTER". This is a direct affront and effort to undermine the slogan "Black Lives Matter" and its affirmation of the value of black peoples' lives.
NYPDLIVESMATTER is a perverse and grotesque statement, one that assumes a lie and false assumption: of course the lives of police "matter"; there is an entire legal, social, and political apparatus to protect the police, and that empowers them to kill innocent people of color without consequences.
Moreover, that NYPDLIVESMATTER is positioned as a response to "Black Lives Matter" demonstrates how "law and order", white racial resentment, and white supremacy are deeply intertwined and almost inseparable in the (White) American political imagination.
Last week, The Atlantic featured a story about how a cadre of "unconventional" black college debaters were redefining that staid and lily white world. Does Traditional College Debate Reinforce White Privilege? explores how:
These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years.
But this transformation has also sparked a difficult, often painful controversy for a community that prides itself on handling volatile topics.
On March 24, 2014 at the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) Championships at Indiana University, two Towson University students, Ameena Ruffin and Korey Johnson, became the first African-American women to win a national college debate tournament, for which the resolution asked whether the U.S. president’s war powers should be restricted. Rather than address the resolution straight on, Ruffin and Johnson, along with other teams of African-Americans, attacked its premise.
The more pressing issue, they argued, is how the U.S. government is at war with poor black communities.In the final round, Ruffin and Johnson squared off against Rashid Campbell and George Lee from the University of Oklahoma, two highly accomplished African-American debaters with distinctive dreadlocks and dashikis.
Over four hours, the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like “nigga authenticity” and performed hip-hop and spoken-word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during Lee’s rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. “Fuck the time!” he yelled...
In the 2013 championship, two men from Emporia State University, Ryan Walsh and Elijah Smith, employed a similar style and became the first African-Americans to win two national debate tournaments. Many of their arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely ignored the stated resolution, and instead asserted that the framework of collegiate debate has historically privileged straight, white, middle-class students.
Tournament participants from all backgrounds say they have found some of these debate strategies offensive. Even so, the new style has received mainstream acceptance, sympathy, and awards.
Apparently, an unwillingness to follow established rules and decorum is linked to black racial "authenticity" and "culturally resistant" behavior. It would seem that Does Traditional College Debate Reinforce White Privilege? is a profile in white liberal guilt intermixed with a quest for negro novelty.
The “controversy” about the wildly popular reality TV show
Duck Dynasty is both laughable and sad for what it reveals about the woeful
state of American public discourse.
The manufactured fracas centers on Duck Dynasty
actor/character Phil Robertson (who is an ideal-typical example of the worst
sort of white trash) and his anti-gay bigotry as shared with GQ magazine during
a recent interview.
In the same piece, Robertson discussed his White Supremacist yearnings for the “good old days” of African-American subjugation and
oppression in the South, before the foul carpetbaggers, Civil Rights agitators,
and the evils of Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Great Society robbed the
good simple Negro people of their innocence and white toothed, big lipped,
toothy grinned, banjo playing, watermelon eating, cotton picking ways:
"Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for
the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white
trash," he said. "They're singing and happy. I never heard one
of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white
people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy?
They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”
For people such as Phil Robertson, and the white
conservatives who share his particular type of myopic and ahistorical
whiteness, the full liberty and freedom of black Americans, especially as
demonstrated through the use of our citizenship rights to redress grievances by struggling
for full equality, is morally objectionable.
Robertson and his Duck Dynasty clan are a depiction of how
a writer and show-runner have chosen to represent white trash America. How
can a network then feign surprise when an actor gives the very performance it has solicited?
The following may be a surprise for those people
who are not media literate or critical consumers of popular culture: reality TV
is not real. It is a type of entertainment that is predicated on the
cultivation and creation of an “irreality”.
The paradox is a simple one: actors pretend to be “real”
people, who viewers invest themselves in, as a means of distraction from the pain
and anxiety of the “real” real world.
Politics is a performance too. As I have written about on a
number of occasions, the spectacle of American politics in the 24/7 news cycle--in
an age when capitalism and democracy are conflated, and public policy does not
serve the public good but rather a narrow set of private interests who win over
voters in much the same way as how a computer company brands its goods to create
consumer loyalty and a feeling of emotional attachment to a product--most
closely resembles professional wrestling. There is an important difference:
professional wrestling is much more honest and transparent.
As one more example of how a debased politics have become
almost inseparable from the public spectacle that is the mass media, Robertson’s
observations about how “lazy” and “complaining” black Americans have been “ruined”
by “entitlements” are none too different from what prominent Republicans and
the Right-wing media have being saying for decades about the black community.
One of my favorite experiences at an academic conference was when a discussant did not tear into the panelists (and their submitted papers) with gleeful viciousness. Instead, and I love this devious albeit "nice" move, he said that what he offers are "loving suggestions".
Yes, it is better to lube up the knife with Teflon before sticking it through the Kevlar. The pain exists; it is just more tolerable.
Ian Reifowtiz, who posts over at the Daily Kos, is by all accounts cool folks. I am hoping to have him as a guest on Season Two of WARN's podcast series.
In response to my piece on how Charlie Rangel accurately described the bigotry and racism of the Tea Party, Ian offered up a very nice and considerate essay that can be found here.
Language finds meaning through interpretation. I do believe that Ian "got" what I was suggesting more than he missed. However, I still have some thoughts and a loving intervention to offer in regards to his concern about harsh words and "stereotypes" used to describe the white racial reactionaries in the Tea Party.
One of my long-term projects is researching the concept of "liberal racism". Now, and I am being precise here, Ian is not, from my few interactions with him, a liberal racist, per se. However, his critique of Charlie Rangel's truth-telling about the Tea Party, can be located pretty close to, if not soundly within, the tradition that is liberal racism.
We anti-racists have argued for years that the decision about whether a term is offensive or not belongs to the party at whom the term is aimed. We've rightly not tolerated, in the best known example, non-black people claiming that they aren't using the n-word to refer to black people in general, just to the "bad" ones (criminals, etc.). We tell such people that they don't get to decide that their particular use of a slur is not offensive, it's simply not up to them.
Intellectually, philosophically, morally, and politically, it is untenable to say that the rules of deciding what is offensive are one thing for terms aimed at whites in America, and something else for terms aimed at groups who have traditionally faced discrimination. The same goes, obviously, for other kinds of slurs, those aimed at groups defined by religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Men don't get to say, "I don't mean all women when I say c*^t." And gay people DO get to decide that they want to use the word "queer" as a term of empowerment.
We who reject bigotry argue that the term belongs to the ones targeted. That argument rests on strong moral grounds, and those moral grounds must apply universally. If we undercut the universality of that argument, we undercut our ability to fight hate. And applying that argument universally gives us the moral high ground when it matters most, namely when we seek to combat bigotry aimed at historically oppressed groups.
I think this is an admirable principle. In practice, such an admirable principle often fails to bring results.
Moreover, Ian's logic is grossly under-theorized. The Golden Rule is a nice lesson to teach children. But, in the real world, do we want to suggest that when the out-group and the less-powerful talk in ways that make the in-group and the powerful uncomfortable that we should defer to them?
We can also not forget that White conservatives and White liberals are both the children of Whiteness and White Privilege.
Both deny the existence of White Privilege. The former rejects it outright. The latter just tries to dance around it. Some white liberals acknowledge that White Privilege is real while writing themselves out of it; other White Liberals want to introduce class as an over-determining variable so that race is made secondary; some White Liberals want to use the concept of White Privilege as a cudgel to beat White conservatives about the head, while denying that they too benefit from a society that gives them unearned advantages due to being "white".
In total, White liberals and others want to be talked to by people of color in a manner that is deferential to their racial privilege. Moreover, White liberals and White conservatives both want to have their feelings "respected" and not hurt by people of color who dare to engage in truth-telling about White Supremacy.
Consequently, White conservatives are for the most part the enemy of the Black Freedom Struggle. White liberals, with the exception of brothers like John Brown and the ride or die Freedom Riders, Abolitionists, and others having been duly noted, are allies of black and brown folks until it becomes inconvenient and challenges Left-leaning white folks' position of domination, privilege, power, paternalism, and ego towards non-whites.
In this way, White conservatives are much more honest racists than White liberals. White conservatives will let you know that black and brown folks are "uppity" and need to know their place. White liberals will often just derail and hijack the conversation by using thinly understood language gleamed from the introduction to books on white privilege or materials they found online.
I am curious as to your thoughts about Charlie Rangel's comments about the Tea Party. Sure, they can be described as impolitic or inconvenient. But, was Rangel wrong or inaccurate in his description of the racial politics of the Tea Party? And am I being to hard on White liberals and liberal racism in my loving intervention?
For the record, as with the previous accounts this is one more story of a pilot who was:
doing absolutely nothing wrong;
breaking no law, guidance, or suggestion formal or informal; and yet
was detained for an extended period, subjected to an intrusive search, and otherwise treated as a suspect in a process that yielded no incriminating material nor anything even vaguely suspicious.
Call me crazy, but the above sounds like an experience all too common to many black and brown people in the United States.
The shadow of the Trayvon Martin case is still with us. Now, George Zimmerman's attorneys embarked on a campaign to poison the jury pool by smearing Trayvon as a wayward "ghetto" black youth.
In their efforts to channel dark and ugly stereotypes about black criminality--in essence making Zimmerman's murder victim into a teen Willie Horton or "black beast rapist" out of the lynching imaginary of 19th and early 20th century America--they have reminded us of the mix of race, politics, and political ideology that make the Martin murder such a lightning rod issue.
If the more than 600 comments at the Daily Kos in response to my essay on the "niggerization" of Trayvon Martin are any indication of the divides in public mood and opinion regarding the case, there are two perspectives which track nicely along the color line in America.
Some assume that Trayvon Martin as a black teen is a priori guilty of some type of crime, and is an existential threat to public order, until proven otherwise. Others see it as ridiculous how a person can face summary execution by a vigilante who decided that he had the right to violate another person's basic freedom to walk down the street.
For a certain political personality type and cohort in the United States, black Americans are viewed as a threat and a poison in the community and public sphere. Whiteness is understood to be a condition of safety, security, and freedom. White privilege operates here through a basic understanding that "White" spaces must be protected and secured from some type of Other and outsider. Freedom operates here to give some individuals the license to deny it to other citizens...and to feel righteous and just in doing so.
Those black Americans who have a shared historical and collective memory of Jim and Jane Crow, slave passes, informal rules about stepping off of the sidewalk when white people pass, the Negro Motorist Green Book, family histories of being threatened by white racial pogroms and violence, or the day-to-day experience of suffering under racial micro-aggressions, see the Zimmerman killing of Trayvon Martin as one more reminder that in too many contexts people of color do not have any rights that white people--and those identified with White Authority--are bound to respect.
In all, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is an unfortunate reminder of the perils (and failings) of racial profiling.
In my scenario, the initial riots begin spontaneously across affected
urban areas, as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and
other government welfare recipients learn that their EBT cards no longer
function.
This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which
will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and
other businesses. The media will initially portray these “food riots” as
at least partly justifiable. Sadly, millions of Americans have been
made largely, or even entirely, dependent on government wealth transfer
payments to put food on their tables...
Most of the mobs will
consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay.
Which minority doesn’t matter; each urban locale will come with its own
unique multi-ethnic dynamic...
Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they
will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the
American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial
context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a
safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a
hundred yards when The Other is of a different color.
We
Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible
racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division.
I am not a "shook one." It simply ain't in my nature. I am also not a badman (although in my fantasies, I am a bit of a "bad nigger." But then again, who isn't?).
I am also not a fool who ignores obvious threats to my safety and security.
If you are a public figure--even a mid tier blogger or freelance writer--you learn to develop a thick skin. This is especially true if you write about matters such as race and politics. Hate mail is common; it is to be expected. I imagine that as soon as we upright walking apes developed speech that one of us threw a rock at the leader of the tribe in order to show disapproval. In the age of the Internet, cyber racism has become a common means of silencing conversation, and of intimidating people of color (as well as our white allies and other decent folk).
There is a concerted effort by the White Right to threaten and bully those with whom they disagree. The White Right is organized, coordinated, and sophisticated. Because political thought and speech are the antecedents of political action and violence, we ignore the intimate relationship between between hate speech, cyber-racism, and violence at our own peril.
When I decided to start We Are Respectable Negroes, I pledged my allegiance to the truth. This includes empirical truth, moral truth, philosophical truth, and personal truth. As a ghetto nerd and fan of professional wrestling, I made a promise to myself: I would always be real and honest.The public knows when you are lying, obfuscating, or pretending to be something that you are not. One can only maintain a lie for so long when in the public gaze; the performance will inevitably fail and the cheers--and boos--will stop. To "get over" you have to always be yourself with the volume turned just a little bit up.
My recent essay on gun culture, race, and the media has received thousands of hits. Many of those visitors are from the rank afterbirth and cesspool of the Right-wing blogosphere and gun mania village. Apparently, my common sense observations about the relationship between guns and "angry white men" has hit a nerve among some "defenders" of "liberty" and "freedom." As always, imperiled Whiteness shows its essential character as a state of being that is forever imperiled, afraid, and victimized.
Most of the comments have been unintentionally humorous. Some have been bizarre. Others revealed the depths of hate that are increasingly common to conservatives in the Age of Obama. I tend not to give white racists any shine--as not to encourage them like flies on waste--but I also do not believe in denying the obvious.
There is something wrong in America. The sickness is not new. However, a public lulled into the lie of post-racialism, multicultural democracy, and drunk on the neo-liberal stew of colorblindness, are both ill equipped to understand how white supremacy is a changing same, while also being in deep denial about the old school, lynch culture, dominative racism that lingers in the collective subconscious of White America. For many people of color, this description is apt as well.
“My wife and I don’t have any children… I love my children even though they aren’t born yet, and I am sorry that they buried their child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like, and I pray for them daily.”
Zimmerman is possessed of a type of self-righteous narcissism and faux-empathy for those people whose lives he has ruined. In keeping with his belief that he was a tool of prophetic vengeance, Zimmerman also suggested that it was "god's plan" that he killed Trayvon Martin.
I do not know who is worse: Is Zimmerman the true villain here, a killer, perhaps mentally unbalanced and a child molester, with a cop fetish priapism who played Dirty Harry because he couldn't let one of "the blacks" get away again?
Or are those Right-wing reactionary conservatives like Sean Hannity who worship, coddle, and protect Zimmerman doing so because they wish that they were him, a trigger man, one who got to engage in the most dangerous game, hunting down and killing an innocent person of color for sport?
The role of George Zimmerman as an idol, victim, and martyr for the Right is both absurd and freakish.
Unfortunately, for many people who live in a society where political ideology and racial attitudes form a type of Gordian knot, they see justice for Trayvon Martin through a lens which views all people of color, and young blacks in particular, as perpetual suspects whose lives, citizenship, and safety are contingent and not absolute.
Criminality is a precondition of our existence for folks like George Zimmerman and his allies. This is especially true when black folks are confronted by White authority...and those who are overly identified with it.
In all, Zimmerman is likely surprised that he was arrested for the murder of Trayvon Martin. He intimately understands that black life is cheap in America. As such, what is the fuss over shooting dead a black teenager in the street? Zimmerman still does not have an answer to that question. Likewise, his supporters also do not have an answer to that question either.
This is the source of their love for Zimmerman, and sincere rage at his arrest and prosecution. If anything, the murder of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman should have just been a minor inconvenience for all involved--except of course the victim, his family, and community. He is just a black anyway, so what's the big deal? They die everyday in America and no one cares either way.
Consequently, how dare anyone suggest that legal and personal accountability should interfere with George Zimmerman's fantasy play and rent-a-cop, amusement park, joyride of death.
Once more, our political culture has proven itself to be sick. In a healthy democracy the social compact is respected. Political ideology is trumped by the common good. Divides of party are superseded by decency and common sense. With little fanfare, last week the Republican Party in North Carolina demonstrated that such basic understandings about government (and the golden rule in society at large) are to be disregarded.
Their decision is one more example of white conservative populism run amok, where it works to promote a particular and narrow ideology (usually mobilizing the cold and distracting language of "budgetary concerns and priorities") over the common good and human decency. Moreover, even working from within a framework of "principled" conservatism--one that is pragmatic and utilitarian--I would suggest that there is little if any philosophical basis for such a cold and cruel decision.
The Right obsessively shrieks about "tyranny" and "big government." However, the Republicans in North Carolina's Senate do not consider forced sterilization by the state a great crime against personal freedom and liberty.
Conservatives constantly crow and complain about fiscal responsibility and excess government spending. If they followed a simple economic calculus, these same Republicans would realize that a payout of 50,000 dollars is small, and thus preferable, when compared to the millions of dollars the plaintiffs will likely be awarded in a class action lawsuit.
Rule of law and the social contract were also disregarded in this case. Ideally, the law is a means to arbitrate disputes in the interest of finding a mutually agreeable solution that should balance both the private and public good. This is especially true when the parties to a crime are still alive: these justice claims are not being made against an entity or agents centuries-past and long ago dead. As such, the compensation could do something for the victims in the present. It would be immediate and material as opposed to a hollow apology given to folks who are long since dead and gone. Applying a different model of governance and decency, the Republican members of North Carolina's Senate decided to spit in the face of healing and community.
Assuming they are not irrational monsters, why would these Republicans choose to deny the victims of the state's eugenics policies any compensation for their pain, suffering, and violation of human liberty?
The victims of these policies were the Other. The black female bodies which became the symbols of this crime and violation are already marginalized. The black female voices who gave testimony about North Carolina's crimes against humanity are to be muted in the conservative political imagination. Both as women, and as people of color, these types of bodies are to be regulated and disciplined by the state, and in particular by white men. This is the core sentiment driving the Right's simultaneously prurient interest in women's sex organs, fear of female sexual agency, and a perverse desire to control women's reproductive choices.
These feelings resonate doubly when the body is black and female for she then becomes the ideal-typical "welfare queen" who has motivated conservative policy initiatives since at least the 1980s. On a very basic level, the political imagination which the Republican Party in North Carolina draws upon for logic and inspiration wants to see black and brown female bodies regulated by the state. Forced sterilization is just a less subtle aspect of a broader desire.
There is a second motivation here as well. While its advocates deploy "race neutral" rhetoric about small government, as well as individual freedom and liberty, in the United States contemporary conservatism is also very much motivated by white racial resentment, white victimology, and hostility to people of color. Together, these attitudes form a bundle of beliefs that cannot be easily separated from one another. This is especially true for the petit authoritarians who comprise the Tea Party New Right.
Because conservatives mine white racial resentment for political capital, the real issue in this dispute about forced sterilization is the ugly "R" word, the evil beast known as "reparations" for slavery.
“You just can’t rewrite history. It was a sorry time in this country,” state Sen. Don East (R) told the Associated Press. “I’m so sorry it happened, but throwing money don’t change it, don’t make it go away. It still happened”...“If you could lay the issue to rest, it might be one thing. But I’m not so sure it would lay the issue at rest because if you start compensating people who have been ‘victimized’ by past history, I don’t know where that would end,” Sen. Austin Allran (R) told the AP.
[An observation. By this logic, the past should be let go and left unaltered--except when the Tea Party GOP wants to rewrite history and science textbooks in order to serve a Christian Nationalist agenda in the present.]
In essence, they turned to the poor, the disabled, the marginalized, and in particular at black and brown women, and said "it sucks to be you!"
This gross selfishness, betrayal of the social compact, and hostility to "surplus" people who are not "productive" in the Ayn Randian whiteopia dream of the Tea Party GOP is one more data point in the bizarre play that is post civil rights, Age of Obama America. Ultimately, an ethic of care and concern, and a respect for justice, are trumped by political ideology and the Right's efforts to construct a historically myopic and blameless whiteness.
And they wonder why many folks say that in America today conservatism and racism are one and the same.
George Romero’s classic 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead begins with the famous warning that “they are coming to get you Barbra!” In the movie, the “they” were hordes of zombies, hungry for the flesh of the living and intent on destroying human society like a plague, an inexorable natural disaster, a tsunami of the undead.
Decades later, and perhaps inspired by Romero’s master work, the conservative media has conjured up a new terror: black young people are the “new” monsters, causing chaos and sowing destruction across the United States. Who is their prey? Innocent white folks that are being waylaid, murdered, and assaulted in an imagined race war by roving bands of black “zombies” whose barbarism is inspired by the election of Barack Obama.
Several weeks ago Bill O’Reilly, the most watched TV personality on Fox News, ran a series of stories on what he suggests is a “racially motivated” attack on two white journalists in Norfolk, Virginia that he claimed was covered up by the local press.
As Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins details, the facts reveal a different reality: a rock was thrown at a car, the occupants had an argument with a group of men and a fight ensued. The reporters were not severely injured. Although an unfortunate incident in a city that is struggling with violent crime, it was neither particularly noteworthy or an anomaly. In fact, the newspaper for which the journalists worked thought the event was a non-story. This did not deter Bill O’Reilly. He could frame the story as part of a national race war by introducing one fact--the victims of the assault were white and the perpetrators were black.
The National Review’s Thomas Sowell legitimated this narrative of a race war against whites in a column which circulated widely throughout the Right-wing media and blogosphere. There he listed a series of such assaults in major cities such as Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and Los Angeles, which involved groups of young black people committing random assaults on pedestrians, robbing people of their cell phones and Ipods, and fighting on beaches and in malls.
These narratives of white victimhood at the hands of blacks have even gained traction internationally: the London based Daily Mail recently featured a story about a white man who was attacked by a black gang of “twenty hooded youths” outside of a pub.
Once more, instead of a story about random street crime in major cities (something all too frequent), white racial anxiety is used as the connective tissue tying these disparate and unrelated events together. As Sowell observes, "What the authorities and the media seem determined to suppress is that the hoodlum elements in many ghettos launch coordinated attacks on whites in public places.” Apparently, in the conservative imagination there is a nationwide plot and a scheme to silence white pain and anger as they are made the targets of systematic, brutal, anti-white racism.
The Conservative media’s race war narrative falls apart when one encounters the facts. In an effort to stir up white anxiety, these stories ignore that violent crime in the United States has been declining for decades. Oftentimes, these mob attacks are either random street crimes or actually a byproduct of long standing feuds between the participants and victims. And looking to context, most crime in the United States is intra-racial and committed by family members, friends, and associates. And one cannot generalize from aggregate crime statistics down to the probability that a given person will commit a criminal act.
Nevertheless, the conservative media keeps up the drumbeat of alleged black on white crime.
History matters. The conservative media’s suggestion that the country is in the midst of an anti-white race war does not come out of the ether.
While these fears were born in slavery and Emancipation as a means to justify white terrorism against people of color, there are many noteworthy examples in the near past as well.
Up through the first half of the 20th century, The New York Times featured many news items about “giant negroes” who would attack police, any innocent white people nearby, and have to be brought down by overwhelming police violence. In an eerie foreshadowing of the conservative media at present, The New York Times archive also contains stories with headlines such as the following: “Mobs of Blacks Retaliate for Riots”; “Negro Mob Terrorizing the Citizens of Jacksonville”; “Negro Mob in South Shouts for Lynching”; and “Negro Mob Killed Sheriff.”
Stories about black mob behavior were also common during the 1960s. And of course, American popular culture during the Reagan era featured a recurring motif of white vigilantes such as Charles Bronson and Dirty Harry who protected “normal” white society from black gang violence and “wilding” teens.
The conservative media’s pandering to fears of black violence is a sophisticated effort. The race war must be brought home to predominantly white areas. Places like Iowa and Wisconsin do not have large populations of black people; but in the conservative media, this is no protection from the race war apparently being waged against white Americans. The Daily Caller and other conservative websites repeatedly featured coverage of what was labeled as “beat whitey night” a state fair in Iowa. The conservative media doubled down on their “white folks imperiled even in Red State rural America” meme by giving extensive coverage to how white people were ambushed and beaten at a similar event in Wisconsin.
All of these news items are part of an effort to craft a dramatic, exaggerated story that plays on racial fears, and channels many of the themes common to Right-wing identity politics in the aftermath of the Civil Rights era. Crime; black violence; a fear of black young people; and an emphasis on cities and urban areas (and the people who live there) as embodying everything wrong with America, have mobilized Republican voters and right leaning Independents since (at least) Richard Nixon’s appeals to “the silent majority.”
Here is a great news item with which to start the new academic year. The Right-wing in America is anti-intellectual. We know this. The populist Tea Party GOP brigands even more so.
Yet, we must not sleep on them: Conservatives have a long plan to reshape the academy by destroying tenure (and by implication academic freedom), making sure to fund think tanks and named chairs which push their economic and political agenda despite any empirical evidence in support of its validity, and to push an agenda of "balance" where (white) conservatives are a new class of "minorities" in need of "affirmative action" on college campuses.
That is the genius in the reframing of reality offered by the populist Right--just as they created the myth of the liberal media--the Right-wing's spin doctors and Orwellian propagandists have generated the lie that "higher education" is a space run amok with liberals. The truth is much, much, more complicated than the tired, thin and flat version of events commonly offered by Conservatives. Academia is very conservative and traditional in many ways. It is also moving more rightward as corporate models of "profit and loss" are applied to the liberal arts model of learning in colleges and universities.
Now, I admit it. I have repeatedly called the Tea Party GOP "tea baggers." I have had evaluations where sensitive conservatives have complained that I am "mean" to them and do not validate their views; one student even mentioned my "disrespect" towards the Tea Party as "unacceptable."
Confessing further, I also have described Sarah Palin as a person with a head full of nothing, as well as called out the Right-wing populists as "mouth breathers" and neo-John Birchers during my seminars. The truth hurts I guess.
Maybe, they will come after little old Chauncey DeVega next...not holding my breath.
Pay careful attention to how Mike Adams suggests that right-leaning students should use the very mechanisms which Conservatives once condemned as "identity politics" to further break the system. The New Right and the Tea Party GOP are dangerous and dishonest folks who are capable of anything as long as it serves their ideological ends. Until reasonable centrists, progressives, liberals, and old school principled conservatives understand that reality, they will keep on losing, and losing badly.
How to Harass a Tea Partier
Hello Curtis (Curtis Wright is a conservative talk show host in Wilmington, North Carolina):
I want to thank you personally for forwarding a letter from a student complaining about the extent of political indoctrination that is present in the classroom in the so-called social sciences at UNC-Wilmington. While I found many of her complaints to be minor, I was troubled by one obscene reference to members of the Tea Party, which was allegedly made in class by her political science professor. That, of course, was the reference to members of the Tea Party as “tea baggers.”
There is no need to go into great detail regarding the sexual nature of the term “tea bagger.” It is a term that is simply not used in polite company. It certainly has no place in academic discussions held in political sciences classes in front of a captive audience of college students.
College professors who choose to incorporate terms like "tea bagging" into their lectures have long enjoyed the protection of the First Amendment. In recent years, however, universities have decided that their own harassment codes trump the First Amendment. And that provides us with a unique opportunity to teach the teacher a thing or two about the tension between civil discourse and the First Amendment.
UNC-Wilmington defines sexual harassment as follows:"unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when such conduct constitutes an express or implied condition to another person's academic pursuits, university employment, or participation in activities sponsored by the university or organizations or groups related to the university, or is engaged in for the purpose of interfering with such pursuits, employment, or participation, or creates a hostile, intimidating, or offensive environment for such pursuits, employment, or participation."
Obviously, when a male political science professor dismisses a female supporter of the Tea Party as one who enjoys oral sex, he has offended her. And that falls squarely within the university definition of sexual harassment.
The university website further states that: “Harassment at UNCW is taken seriously. Faculty and staff are required to report sexual harassment when it is alleged. Harassment by an employee must be reported to UNCW Human Resources and harassment by a student should be reported to the Office of the Dean of Students.”
The Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, Dr. Jose Hernandez, has been forwarded an email, from a female student, expressing her concerns about the use of the term “tea baggers” in the classroom. Therefore, it is now his responsibility to move forward with an investigation against the professor who has allegedly been using this term in the classroom. I’m sure that the female student feels excluded by hearing obscene sexualized references to her and those who share her political beliefs.
There could be more bad news for professors who like to insult students in the classroom by using obscene references. Recently, the Obama administration issued an order to all universities who receive financial aid from the federal government. Under the order, they are mandated (a patriarchal term if I have ever heard one) to employ a “preponderance of evidence” standard in all campus sexual harassment and sexual assault cases. This means that professors referring to female students as “tea baggers” can be found liable even if the accuser demonstrates that the accusations are only “probably” true.
Using the “probably” standard rather than “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” makes it easier to convict the guilty. But it also makes it easier to convict the innocent. The Obama administration seems to be equally comfortable with both prospects. Furthermore, if universities refuse to employ the lower standard they will lose all federal funding, including all student financial assistance.
The time has come for conservative students to take the gloves off and start fighting campus indoctrination by turning the weapons of the left against the leftists themselves. By taking my advice and using the “harassment” mechanism, one of two things is guaranteed to happen:
1. We can get rid of scores of leftist professors who create a climate of “intimidation” and “offense” in the classroom.
2. We can enlist the help of campus leftists in restoring the standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in campus sexual assault and sexual harassment cases.
Either way, this should prove to be a win-win situation. Our Founding Fathers would be proud. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Curtis. It will soon be brought to the attention of the general administration as well as the general public.
Energy can be converted from one form to another, though. Mechanical energy, such as the kinetic energy of motion, can be converted to heat energy, for example in the heating of a car's brakes when it slows down. Chemical energy in the gasoline of the car can be converted into both heat energy in the exhaust and heating the engine, and into mechanical energy to move the car. Potential energy, such as the gravitational potential energy stored in an object which is on a high shelf, can be converted into kinetic energy as the object falls down. Electrical energy can be converted to heat or mechanical energy or sound energy in a variety of useful ways around the house using common appliances.
It is often the conversion of one form of energy to another which is the most important application of this rule. Often predictions of the behavior of physical systems are very much more easily made when using the idea that the total amount of energy remains constant. And careful measurements of different kinds of energy before and after a transformation always show that the total always adds up to the same amount.
What say you all? Is this just a little bit of poetic justice? Or is Glenn Beck, crocodile tears on full display, a legitimately aggrieved person, and "victim" of a Liberal/Progressive "lynch mob?"
1. Seeing solidly middle and upper class black families achieving and doing more than well (owning a construction company is way past good to people from my working class roots).
2. Julianne Malveaux is always a welcome voice. She stayed away from the victomology narratives which are all to common to these "let's go look at the Negroes in the window" television shows. Dr. Malveaux also brought some much needed attention to the fact that the majority of blacks in America are not poor, are not in jail, are not pathological, are not birthing out of wedlock babies, and guess what? they have the same struggles, worries, and hopes as "regular" Americans.
3. The brother struggling on 1 income to take care of his two wonderful children. Interesting though that no point was made about his not receiving palimony and how the life of this gentlemen's kids would certainly be easier if he had some support from the children's mother--a narrative which certainly would have been inserted if the gender roles were reversed.
4. Dr. Roland Fryer from Harvard University. It is exciting (and makes me a bit jealous in a good way) to see a young, black Econ Professor doing applied research on incentive structures and public education--economics is an extremely difficult field to break into, and doubly so for young people of color.
5. The older sister in Harlem talking about the day to day travails of being poor and struggling on a daily basis to do things that many Americans take for granted, i.e. how in some neighborhoods basic goods and services are hard to find at reasonable prices. The sum effect is what some have called "the black tax," or more appropriately, the poor, black, and elderly tax, which in sum makes the satisfying of basic household and life needs more expensive, more time consuming, and much more difficult.
6. Soledad O'Brien. Smart, poised, beautiful, down to earth, and "real." She has many of the qualities that makes this respectable negro's heart commence to racing when he sees her.
The Bad
1. At about 45 minutes into the special we switch gears into the obligatory what is wrong, pathological, and in crisis in Black America. I must ask, is there still a Black America? Or is there a Black America that is actually constructed of many smaller Black Americas distinguished by class, ethnicity, geography, and "culture"--shared or otherwise?
2. The tired trope of insert Black Pathology/Unique problem here and continue forward in story: tonight we were treated to single black mothers, the marriage "crisis" in black communities, a taste of the prison industrial complex, and the obligatory portrait of the young brothers shot up and laying in a hospital bed who serve as living symbols of the Beirut like violence plaguing many black neighborhoods.
1. Please get a better introductory host for future installments of any similarly themed shows. In this special we were treated to a hip hopesque, spoken word, poor man's version of Common with marginal talent. Why? Because of course bad hip hop spoken word Common wannabes appeal to the sensibilities of black middle class/neo-soul/NPR listening CNN viewers. I am not saying that we need to have a bourgeois host with a fake British accent, but there has to be a better way.
2. Marry Your Baby-Daddy Day. Come on black people! On one hand we have white, red state, fathers symbolically marrying their daughters in creepy, Christian fascist inspired protecting their daughter's "purity" ceremonies--you do know that women are repositories of a nation's pride, honor, and courage and their virtue must be protected at all costs, right? (there is so much wrong there I don't know where to start. Someone please reanimate Freud so he can help these pedophilesque fathers...men who probably want to actually deflower their own daughters). On the other hand, we have a situation that is so dire in many of our communities that we have to have special ceremonies, Marry Your Baby Daddy Days, to encourage our wayward youth to get married because "marriage isn't just for white people." I don't know what was more painful? Watching the men and women in these ceremonies dance down the aisle, or listening to the labored, over-intellectualized explanations of how "baby daddy" is actually an affectionate and enduring term. As was said in Ghostbusters, we truly are a society too sick to survive.
Some thoughts and questions.
1. Me and Zora were talking on the phone during the show--yes, she is alive and well--and Zora made a great observation in regards to her interest (or lack thereof) in these Black expose news programs. Apparently, Zora doesn't generally watch these programs because she doesn't see herself in these documentaries. I can't help but agree. By extension, I do wonder where the silent black majority is? Where is the voice of those black people, who like Black folk in mass, are also struggling against the shared challenge of succeeding in what is still a racist society, but who don't fit any of these tropes of criminality, poor educational achievement, single motherhood, or the like? Perhaps, focusing on this silent majority would make for bad television.
2. I am always struck by the lack of attention given to class in these documentaries about race in America. This is a function of how America as a society is uncomfortable with talking about class generally, and how we are trying to explain the "common" or the "typical" experiences of our subjects as opposed to focusing too much on outliers. Now that issue aside, I do think there is something intellectually dishonest about framing the black experience as one dominated by crime, dysfunction, and exclusion--this was made glaringly clear by how the black middle class experience was given short thrift in CNN's first installment of this series.
3. A related thought, what would a class based conversation on race look like? We got a little taste of it tonight when the brother from Harvard highlighted the relationship between wealth and education. Scholars such as Thomas Shapiro have demonstrated that the wealth gap is at the core of the work, both historically and in the present, that racism does in structuring American society. Wealth, real assets as opposed to income, is horribly maldistributed in this country. When we account for race as a variable, the differences become even starker where the typical white working class person has more wealth and assets than an upper middle class black person.
This is the lived legacy of white supremacy.
Racial discrimination and class disparities are intimately linked. As a qualifier, I am not an old school Marxist who has spent a significant amount of time theorizing slavery and white supremacy as systems based instead in economic, as opposed to being purely, racial exploitation (I am not smart or patient enough).
But, it must be stated that because it was historically illegal for blacks to accrue wealth; inter-generational means of wealth transferal were very limited, housing options were segregated, i.e. red lining, and the market values of black homes made artificially low (important because the primary way that wealth is transferred between generations is through home ownership); the government created through racially discriminatory policies (such as the GI Bill and Veteran's Administration housing programs) a white ownership and professional class; and job discrimination in the present means that even when controlling for education, black Americans make about 60 cents on the dollar of what comparably educated whites make; that wealth remains in the present one of the invisible ways through which racial inequality is perpetuated. Adding an additional challenge is the frightening way that the rise of prison industrial complex, and the historical exclusion of large numbers of potentially productive citizens from the labor market by the State through criminalization and imprisonment, have also damaged the ability of Black Americans to accrue substantial inter-generational economic resources:
This difference will only become more stark as white baby-boomers pass their resources onto their children and grandchildren in the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history. If I were to effect a policy change, it would be here, where through a combination of increased taxation on wealth transfers and substantial investments in education and public infrastructure, that we could improve opportunities for all citizens. I would also support a guaranteed minimum income...and yes, I know that is never going to happen, but it would help alleviate some of the racial wealth disparities in this country.
4. One final thought. How great would it be to have a show that focuses on white pathology? Or on the problems in Hispanic, Asian, or Native American communities? These ghetto muckraking news specials love to highlight the problems of black communities as though they are exclusive to those grouped as "black" or "African American". Yes, the black experience is in many ways unique, but these social problems are largely a function of the failures of State, a crisis in personal responsibility, a lack of community accountability, i.e. what used to be called shame, and deficiencies of resources. If CNN's next special was called Poor in America or The Ghetto Underclass in Appalachia (which would be an ironic turn because the culture of poverty and social capital arguments that are now associated with the black inner city poor were first advanced by a scholar who studied a rural Mexican community) I wonder what the response would be? For example, this hypothetical, never to be produced news program, could focus on the out of wedlock birth rates, high percentage of students whom withdraw from secondary education prior to graduation, and inter-generational poverty among Hispanic and many "ethnic" Asian communities (you know those "non-model minority" Asians that no one wants to talk about).
The documentary could also feature the crippling levels of poverty among the white rural poor in Appalachia where a deficit of social capital is compounded by a lack of the social services found in major urban areas. If these journalists and documentary film makers were really brave, they could look at drug use, out of wedlock births, family dysfunction, and std and abortion rates among suburban, "middle class" whites. But then again, we can only hope that a news network would be brave enough to present such compelling television. I would suggest that you don't hold your breath too long in waiting.
In light of yesterday’s Victimology Blues post, this week’s Friday Five features expressions of victimology that tend to come from the relatively privileged. Since mainstream media accuse only minorities and women of “playing the victim,” the following statements are never linked to victim mentality:
1.) White people are being denied college admission and work promotions because Affirmative Action rewards mediocre minorities in order to promote diversity.
2.) Immigrants are taking all of the jobs that rightfully belong to Americans like me.
3.) Hollywood and New York cultural elites are forcing the homosexual lifestyle on our kids.
4.) When a woman accuses a man of domestic violence or rape, law enforcement and the courts are biased against the man.
5.) The secular left and the Jews are persecuting Christians by trying to remove Jesus from our government and culture.
Thank you for this passionate, intelligent reply, Sister Zora.
I will respond to a few of your most relevant points, but I will address the bulk of them in the next installments of the Victimology Blues posts.
First, I never suggested that Civil Rights injustices be fought primarily with positive images.WAOD’s explicit goal is to combat negative media depictions of black women. If McCauley and her supporters believe that media and popular culture are the main battlegrounds, then their chief strategy should be publicizing as many stories of positive black women as possible, not publicizing crimes in which black women are victimized.
Moreover, I don’t think that McCauley is really framing these crimes and their handling as Civil Rights issues, which is surprising given that she’s a lawyer.If McCauley and co. had decided to highlight the policing and legal ramifications of these crimes, I might feel differently about WAOD. McCauley makes clear, though, that WAOD is mainly a matter of cleaning up a poisonous culture.
Some lip service notwithstanding, the thrust of the site is not, “Let’s do everything we can to 1) help the police locate and arrest the perpetrators, 2) support these black women victims financially and legally, and 3) mobilize political change to our corrupt law enforcement and judicial systems.” It’s “see, black women are victims too!”WAOD is treating the crimes themselves, not the surrounding legal issues, as newsworthy.Without question, these crimes are significant to the victims and the communities where they occur; however, I don’t see how they are significant beyond their local contexts, and it’s not because the victims are black women. Frankly, I don’t think that any such cases deserve attention from national media.For instance, why spend airtime on stories about JonBenet Ramsey and Natalie Hollaway, who have been dead for years? And what about the current media fixation on Stacy Peterson?The mainstream media is disingenuously stating that their coverage might bring Peterson home, but that’s nonsense: they are assuming that she’s already dead.I’m sorry, I just don’t see why this case has merit as a national news story.
You are right to note the importance of publicizing injustice, and yes, I think that all symbolic victim-based activism is exploitative in a sense. But some forms of exploitation are more defensible than others: it all comes down to the wider implications. In the iconic Civil Rights era crimes you mention, law enforcement and the state was supportive of (and often involved in) the crimes and the legal cover ups.That state governments engaged in total disenfranchisement and the federal government looked the other way meant that black residents had no legal way to remedy the systemic injustices.The entire political, social, legal, economic, system was rotten. Wells, King, etc. worked to fight systemic collective injustice. These missing or brutalized woman cases are matters of personal, localized injustice. The notion that these crimes occur because our popular culture devalues black women is nonsense. Allow me to revert back to Social Science mode for a moment: correlation does not = causation.
Violence has been a fundamental reality throughout recorded human history. Rape and physical abuse were around long before the advent of mass media.I don’t deny that negative images have an adverse affect on the perception of certain groups, but removing these images from public and commercial spaces will not get at the heart of the problem.Entertainment isn’t really the relevant battleground.The problem is that consumer-citizensare treating songs, movies, and TV shows as a valid source of information about groups of people.That has almost nothing to do with the “negative” content; that has to do with short-circuits in peoples’ social interaction and perhaps in their cognitive ability.Don’t those of us interested in progressive social and political change always say that we need to attack the roots of problems?It’s easy to point a finger at the big corporations for spreading trash; it’s not as satisfying to shift responsibility toward families and other social institutions that should prevent and/or correct these short-circuits.
It’s true that I defend people’s right to disrespect black women, but that’s somewhat misleading.I defend people’s right to disrespect anyone—that’s the very essence of freedom of speech. Still, I’m less concerned with defending bigots than I am with fighting the effects of censorship.Black people from previous generations endured far worse in terms of public vilification and were stronger for it.I believe that we’re breeding a society of psychological weaklings whose first impulse is not to engage and defeat offending voices, but to silence them.Just to clear up any confusion, this is a problem throughout societies, not one limited to any specific identity group.
I’m glad you mentioned “Girls, Girls, Girls” because it not only highlights our disagreements, it also recalls my issue with TAN.In the song, Jay-Z frequently conflates Indian (from India) and Native American stereotypes; he attributes french braids, french kissing, and french fries to France; the part about the African woman is lifted directly from Ed Murph’s stand-up comedy special Raw, which is, I’ll admit, one of the most misogynistic screeds from a man who clearly has issues with women …unless they have penises.
I don’t take from the song that Jay-Z disparages black women in comparison to other women across the world; I take from it that Jay-Z works with dominant cultural stereotypes to reveal their inherent ridiculousness. As such, “Girls, Girls, Girls” is one of Jay-Z’s most clever songs.But it wasn’t popular because people understood its satirical bent; it was popular because listeners like to revel in stereotypes and the beat was catchy as hell. The problems with the song’s reception are the same problems that led to Chappelle’s crisis: people don’t like to acknowledge that popular cultural texts can mean different things to different audiences, and the base meaning normally overshadows every other meaning.I don’t think Jay-Z cares; after all, no one outside of Dyson-types really considered him a social critic.Chappelle definitely cares, though, which is why he was never meant for long-term stratospheric popularity.
Sister Zora, yes, you are a woman, but I think black women’s desire to be treated like white women is unhealthy.Sojourner Truth was speaking in the middle of the 19th Century. Much has changed since then.Your call for black men to defend black women’s honor and your wish for black women victims to receive the kind of national media attention reserved for (usually young, blonde, middle-to-upper class, and relatively attractive) white women shows a surprising attachment to gender orthodoxy.It’s accepted wisdom in our line of work that when men talk about defending female honor, they are usually providing a justification for controlling not only women’s bodies but also ideas about gender roles in society. The history of the rhetoric surrounding lynching and war is all the evidence one needs to confirm this.
I understand that black women don’t even have the luxury of being “overprotected” and that the concern about having ones honor exploited underscores the privilege of upper class white feminists. But let’s say that you get your wish and black women are afforded the same victim value that white women receive.Better to be a victim than a ho, right?Well, yeah, of course, but you’re still a victim.You’re still an abstraction. You’re still an archetype. You’ll never be a woman, a human being with inherent worth and agency, as long as you’re only important as a victim, a caretaker, or a Jezebel (all in the service of men).
Finally, you can say that this isn’t about hurt feelings, but that’s hard to believe. How else do you explain the popularity of the tired “Why don’t black men love us?” topic cluttering magazine racks, bookshelves, TV, and the net?
I like Gina McCauley, the creator of What About Our Daughters (WAOD). She is smart, and she comes across as poised, even in the face of unjust criticism. I applaud her success at promoting her cause and her site, which attracts scores of intelligent, passionate readers. I am especially thrilled that she calls attention to the double standards of so-called black leaders who are quick to jump in front of a camera and protest when a black person is victimized by a white person, but who aren’t nearly as interested in bringing attention to the insane levels of black on black crime. So even though I am usually suspicious of activists who frame their issues as matters of “protecting our children,” I had very high hopes for WAOD before I ever visited the site.
McCauley’s stated goal is to combat negative images of black women in popular culture. Now there’s a goal this respectable negro can support! I am always looking for resources to which I can direct young black girls and boys (yes, young men need positive depictions of women too). But given this professed goal, what sense does it make that most of the site’s posts are dedicated to publicizing and valorizing black female victims? These include victims of serious, violentcrimes, as well as the “victims” of Don Imus’ “assault on black women.” But what about the women forced at gunpoint to gyrate half-naked in videos, while various rappers douse them with champagne and charge their services via American Ass-press…or is it American Expr-Ass)?
Now, I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the horrific crimes committed against the first group, and I understand that such cases can never go national via the mainstream media because the victims aren’t white women, but how is this focus supposed to combat popular negative images of black women? What does the current emphasis say to black girls: you too can one day attract the attention of and be exploited by a handful of journalists and media hustlers…but only if you’re brutalized by a (black) man? Keep those fingers crossed, girls!!!
McCauley and her supporters claim that WAOD is at the vanguard of a new activist revolution. The black bloggers on board cast themselves opposite the old guard Civil Rights establishment, which, these bloggers argue, does not stand up for black women. Yet WAOD’s strategy consists largely of appealing to (or shaming) old establishment leaders and organizations into taking up particular causes. I’m sorry to disappoint y’all, but that doesn’t sound like a revolution to me; that sounds like the same-ol’ same-ol’. In two major respects, those behind WAOD are considerably similar to the media circus-driven race crusaders they criticize:
1. They share the same M.O. of victim-based rallying. WAOD merely seeks to replace one victim (black people vis-à-vis white people) with another (black women vis-à-vis black men, white men, men in general, the “entertainment industrial complex”*). But why not dispense with the victim framework altogether and adopt one that prizes agency, one that lauds black women who make great things happen rather than black women who have terrible things happen to them?
2. They also share the same superficial, almost childish focus on the entertainment industry as a primary site of political and social activism. The NAACP, for instance, is concerned with defending Mike Vick, celebrating sociopaths like R Kelly and Isaiah Washington, and castigating Imus, KKKramer, and The Academy Awards; WAOD focuses on BET, Imus (plus black comedians who have the audacity to defend his right to free speech), and various rappers.
When you press these “activists” on why so much of their effort revolves around athletes, musicians, actors, TV personalities, etc., they answer that it’s because many look up to these celebrities and that the images propagated by the entertainment industry have an adverse effect on the perception of black people generally, or black women specifically. They usually fall into one of two camps, though sometimes they have a foot in both. The first is concerned about these images influencing black children, especially those with absentee parents; the second is worried about how these images make black people look to outsiders. Not one of these “activists” addresses why mothers and fathers (regardless of race) are not raising children with enough common sense to know that what is depicted on TV, movie screens, radio stations, albums, and the Internet is not reality. If McCauley and co. were truly interested in combating the negative effects of popular culture, the site would be called What About Their Parents?
Furthermore, if people are so impressionable and/or dim-witted that they allow entertainment to govern their behavior, how on earth will simply removing a few stimuli solve their problems? The sheep who reproduce what they absorb from entertainment (as opposed to exercising critical thought and free will) exhibit serious cognitive and social deficiencies. These issues cannot be addressed with microwave measures. And this is not even taking into account the loathsome policy of censorship, soft or hard.
At times, I look at WAOD and think, “What a colossal waste of creative energy and resources.” But it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that McCauley and co. know that their “victories”have no real practical value.
Since WAOD is not about practical results, one can only assume that its purpose is symbolic in nature. Underlying WAOD’s stated goal is the idea that strengthening the self-esteem of black girls should be a top priority because our society does not love or respect them. Again, this is a noble cause. We do need to encourage among young black women forms of self-esteem that do not rely on boys or sex. This implicit idea is the key to explaining WAOD’s main strategies: publicizing black women who are victims of violent crimes and leading meaningless crusades against entertainers who say or do things that some black women find offensive.
In short, WAOD is driven by these black women’s desire to be loved and valued. By emphasizing black women as victims, McCauley and co. hope to elicit sympathy and love. By boycotting entertainers who degrade black women, they wish to signal that black women’s feelings are hurt and that they do not feel desired, respected, and loved. Thus, those behind WAOD are not political activists; they’re participants in a self-esteem building therapy session writ large. In addition, the self-esteem of the contributors seems to be more important than the self-esteem of the website’s titular daughters. These things aren’t inherently bad. I can anticipate the argument that, because of all they have to endure, black women need and deserve this type of collective affirmation. From this perspective, the misleading nature of the site is harmless at worst, cathartic and therapeutic at best.
Fine.
But I have a huge problem with WAOD using the victim narrative to fuel its self-esteem building efforts and supposed “political activism.” As I will detail in the next installment of this series, there are formidable political and psychological drawbacks to over-emphasizing victimhood, especially for historically disenfranchised, less privileged people.
If McCauley ever decides to try to realize WAOD’s stated goal, I have a very simple suggestion: feature more professional black women who defy stereotypes by excelling in medicine, art, academia, business, government, etc. (a few “good news” links at the end of the year aren’t enough). I can think of at least one successful lawyer/networker who would be perfect for such a feature.
It’s time for folks to throw the question back at McCauley and WAOD**: When it comes to offering positive images of black women, what about our daughters (and sons), indeed?
*I am a product of left academia, where prison riots are often dubbed “rebellions,” and irresponsible, risky sexual behavior is fashioned as political resistance, but I wasn’t aware that activists were employing this bit of rhetorical claptrap in an attempt to elevate popular music, sports, film, and TV to the level of importance of the military and prison industrial complexes. Part of me thinks this shit is satire. TAN, are you reading?
