This Week’s Non-Racists: Michael Richards and Clint Eastwood

Much of the discussion of race in America this week has centered on ex-Seinfeld star Michael Richards’s (“Kramer”) tirade against an African American heckler at a comedy club. Few would disagree that it was offensive, uncalled for, and embarrassing. But our concern is primarily the way that Richards apologized.

In the same fashion as outed “racists” before him (see our discussion of Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, for example), Richards claimed during his satellite appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (arranged by Jerry Seinfeld), “I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.” Once again, it’s another missed opportunity to talk about the roots of racism in America. Of course he’s racist. As we’ve noted before, if racism is understood as a system of beliefs that we are socialized to accept (consciously or otherwise), none of us is clear of that label. He means, of course, that under normal circumstances he’s not a bigot, and he wishes not to be racist. Running from the label is a large part of the reason that we cannot deal with race honestly.

That’s not to say that Richards didn’t try. It was clear from his appearance on The Late Show that he was personally shaken and that he had spent the days since the event reflecting on his own racism (even though he denies the label, conflating it with overt bigotry). At one point, he acknowledges the wider racial problems in America, and even expresses concern about the implications of his behavior. He astutely notes the irony that, at the time of his outburst, his colleagues were in Las Vegas and New Orleans raising money through Comic Relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina (who are disproportionately black). “And yet it’s said, it comes through, it fires out of me,” Richards laments. He clearly understands that it’s something that is present in our subconscious, available to be made visible in times of stress.

Paul Haggis’s film Crash illustrates this point nicely. In our sober moments, we are careful to suppress what we believe to be “bad” or “wrong” or “unjust” or “unfair” negative racial predispositions. But when we’re sleep deprived or intoxicated or angry or frightened or get cut off in traffic or are being heckled at a comedy club, that latent hatred and hostility that has been programmed into us may surface. When pushed by Letterman about what he can do besides apologize, Richards responded, “I have to do personal work.” He’s not alone in that, but he is exceptional – at least at this moment – in the sense that he realizes that he has personal work to do.

But here’s the problem: Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman typically missed an opportunity to take the issue away from Richards – whose real crime was to be caught allowing his racism to surface (most of us get away with it because no one has a video camera in our car when we accuse the person in the car next to us of Driving While Asian) – and focus it on the wider issues of systemic racism. Richards clumsily tried to do it by making a larger point about where the “rage” comes from. He mentioned that there was a parallel between a white comic raging against a black heckler and America raging against another nation. Letterman interrupted him to ask him what would have happened if the hecklers had been white. What a stupid question! What does he think would have happened? Does he think Richards would have referred to the white hecklers with the “n” word? Again, we see the American tendency to individualize the behavior, rather than linking it to a larger tendency that is racism (as opposed to bigotry). By leaving it on Richards’s shoulders, we let ourselves off the hook. “It’s not our problem; that guy’s a racist.” It’s too easy, and it fails to get to the root of the problem. Again.

But Richards contributes to this, too, in a comment that would cause W.E.B. DuBois to roll over in his grave. Late in the interview, Richards notes that folks have appropriately taken his behavior to the press to make it public, and then says, “The fact that there’s that kind of solidarity and confronting those kinds of remarks – I think it’s important for the Afro-American community to make sure this kind of crap doesn’t come about.” So let’s review: It is the responsibility of individuals like Richards to stop saying such things that reflect and promote hatred, and it’s the responsibility of the black community to make sure those things don’t happen. This perfectly encapsulates why, 400 years after the first slave ships arrived, and more than 150 years since emancipation, we still have racial problems.

There are three groups of note: people of color, whites who are sensitive and concerned about racial inequality, and whites who are bigoted. The first group cannot bring about meaningful change in this area because they have been systematically denied access to the power in America. The third group has access to power, but no interest in bringing about racial equality. So it’s people who are thoughtful about racial inequality and desirous of a solution who are ultimately in a position to effect such change. But those folks invariably deflect that burden by claiming that they’re “not racist” because they have black friends or they “don’t see race” or their brother is married to a black woman and “we’re all okay with it.” It’s this refusal to embrace our racism and deal with the deeper issues that allow racial injustice to continue generation after generation.

And that invisibility is precisely what New York University journalism professor Yvonne Latty tried to confront in her November 2 USA Today op-ed about the film Flags of Our Fathers. Noting this invisibility of the black Marines who fought at Iwo Jima in Clint Eastwoods new film, Latty notes the racism that these men had to face from their colleagues, as well as the heroism with which they fought. Both of these realities are excluded, she complains, in Flags. She notes that “we . . . owe [surviving black WWII veterans] this recognition.” Does this mean that Eastwood is racist? You bet. It does not necessarily mean that he’s a bigot, but that’s beside the point. It’s not important to figure out if Eastwood intentionally excluded black soldiers from the film. He probably did not. It is perhaps more powerful to understand that as a white man, he didn’t even consider whether or not there were black soldiers at Iwo Jima. That’s a privilege of being white: white folks don’t have to think about race.

Predictably, Latty has gotten some very hostile responses to her column. As noted in a report in the Washington Square News, one USA Today reader posted a note proclaiming, “When we make a movie about cotton-picking slaves in the 1800s, they’ll be black. I promise. And when we make a movie about useless, crack-smoking, welfare-grabbing, pregnant whores, they’ll be black.” As disgusting as such sentiments are, we are more concerned with the fact that progressive-minded whites feel comfortable shaking off the label “racist” by distancing themselves from such remarks. These words are articulations of deep-seeded racial hatred that Americans of all races have been subtly encouraged to internalize throughout our lives. A lot of it sticks, whether we like it or not. If we continue to place the burden on the shoulders of people of color and people like Michael Richards, we, in the words DuBois wrote over 100 years ago, “sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.”