Elvis Was a Hero (To Most)

This week commemorates the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. Among the flocks of fans heading toward Memphis is the release of a duet between Elvis and his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. Of all Elvis’s hits, the song selected was “In the Ghetto” from 1969. This reminds us about Elvis’s legacy with respect to race, as well as the difference between racism and bigotry.

In 1989, Public Enemy recorded their most identifiable song, “Fight the Power.” Serving to solidify Elvis’s reputation as a bigot, Chuck D rhymes:

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me
A straight-up racist
The sucker was simple and plain

After Flava Flav extended a verbal middle finger to both the king and John Wayne, Chuck D continues:

Cause I'm Black and I'm proud
I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps
Sample a look back you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check

Much of the discussion of Elvis’s racism centers on his growing up white in the South, only to “steal” black music and, on the backs of countless black musicians, become “the king of rock ‘n roll” (a term Elvis always rejected). White rapper Eminem gives a nod to this theory in his 2002 song “Without Me”:

Though I'm not the first king of controversy
I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
To do black music so selfishly
And use it to get myself wealthy
(Hey) there's a concept that works
20 million other white rappers emerge

Another part of the controversy is that Elvis allegedly said that “The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes.” It’s quite probable that Elvis never made that statement, but his not doing so does not get him off the hook of being racist any more than having black friends or liking Tiger Woods (he surely would have!). (See this thoughtful article about Elvis and his racial legacy for still more discussion of this issue.)

If we are clear that “racism” refers to the systemic privileging of whites over people of color by transmitting negative predispositions about the latter throughout culture from generation to generation, then of course Elvis was racist. When Chuck D refers to Elvis as a “straight-up” racist, it’s likely he’s calling Elvis a bigot, which refers to a conscious dislike of members of a certain race (or the privileging of a race). As we have noted previously, as social scientists, we are not particularly interested in intent – it’s pretty difficult to “know someone’s heart.” While bigotry has much to do with conscious attitudes and intent, racism does not. So, as is usually the case, the argument goes on with continued conflation of those discrete constructs.

Last week, Peter Guralnick wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times pointing out both Elvis’s intent (not at all bigoted) and his effect on race relations at the time. On FreeRepublic.com, members responding to the content of the piece were particularly scornful of singer Mary J. Blige’s comments in 2002 that she “prayed about” performing an Elvis song for a VH1 special because, as she said later, “I knew Elvis was a racist.” The outrage of such a negative association with a (white) American cultural icon is stunning. Here are a few of our favorite quips:

"I will be glad when the world stops being defined around who is or is not or was never or has never been a GD racist. it is asinine....it cripples our resolve to tackle the real threats to our way of life. the redress for racial wrongs which have been with us for all of recorded history is in my opinion more damaging than the evil they are in responce to. folks today don’t know what real white racism is...know why? cause there is so damned little. the big racists today are yesterday’s victims rolling in high cotton ignoring their own collapse and selling racist wolf tickets as fast as they can print them. and sillyassed soft stupid (SSS) white fools are buyng it like a cure for cancer. by today’s standards everyone is racist....i know I sure must be.... but you know what? frankly my dear I don’t give a damn. i feel emancipated ....jubilee!"

"It seems there are more black folk, (the minority) who are racist than in the majority, (White folk). Another great example of THE TYRANNY of the minority. I guess people of color are just like the rest of the folk, they hate that which masters them. (Uncle Sam’s Plantation) Get over it and assimilate in the greatest, freest nation on earth already!"

"As for this racist crap, these morons that repeat that can stick it where the sun don’t shine."

"Clearly, Mary J. Bilge is a racist. She will certainly never see a dime of my money."

"Many, if not most, blacks consider ANY white person “racist”, which says more about the racism of blacks."

“In the Ghetto” is a particularly powerful indication of this dilemma. The way the word “ghetto” was used then, as it is now, referred most prominently to communities of color in inner cities. It certainly seems as if it the song designed to be sympathetic toward (and invoke empathy for) the plight of poor blacks in inner-city America. It’s a sad song that tacitly addresses the cycle of poverty and the troubling situations that, in 1969 as today, many inner-city families confront. So it is hard to argue that Elvis is a bigot from the song. The lyrics, however, are full of racial stereotypes that easily serve as justification for us to discount systemic pressures and barriers, placing the full weight of inner-city poverty on those who suffer from it:

A poor little baby child is born
In the ghetto
And his mama cries

‘Cause if there’s one thing that she don’t need
It’s another hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto


So begins the tale, as we find a woman who is not prepared to have a child having one anyway. Why? Could it be that the mythical black libido, so uncontrollable and wild, churned so heavily that she and her partner (no father is mentioned in the song) weren’t able to keep from having sex? Or maybe blacks are too stupid to use birth control. Or maybe she’s a prostitute. When middle class white women find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy, it is an “accident” or she was “careless.” For black women, codified in Elvis’s song, it’s part of the saga of “the ghetto.” If “those people” would just stop having sex, all of this poverty would surely die off in a generation or two, right?

So, as the song continues, the kid becomes a young man, and since he lives in these conditions, he’s driven to crime. While there is a reading of this song that allows for the narrator to recognize that environmental forces lead to crime (not just individual behavior), the message is not strong enough to prohibit an alternative reading: the kid made bad decisions. “So what if you’re poor? That’s no reason to resort to crime.” Here’s what happens in the song:

And his hunger burns

So he starts to roam the streets at night
And he learns how to steal
And he learns how to fight
In the ghetto

Then one night in desperation
A young man breaks away
He buys a gun, steals a car,
Tries to run, but he don’t get far
And his mama cries


The kid ends up dead, of course (a reality still all too accurate almost forty years later). As he dies, another child is born, which brings home the cyclical nature of poverty in a poetic, if not particularly insightful, way. Elvis clearly wants us “people” (presumably whites who have access to power, make policy, etc., as well as those who vote them into office) to care. But why?

People, don’t you understand
The child needs a helping hand
Or he’ll grow to be an angry young man some day.

The suggestion here is that we should care because of how it will affect us, not for any humanistic or altruistic reason. The song objectifies, makes spectacle, and renders inner-city black Americans politically impotent by portraying them as things to be considered and fixed, rather than a group of citizens who have been and are continually disadvantaged by a system that was, in fact, clearly designed to do just that. Well intended or not, the song delivers a view of inner-city black America that is overly simplistic and individualized.

That might mean that Elvis was a bigot, but it surely means that he was racist. It is certainly worth noting that Chuck D has since refined his position on Elvis’s racial legacy, but given our conceptualization of the term, it is hard to argue that anyone, even “the king” is not racist. This week’s miracle-of-technology duet serves as a reminder of the multi-faceted effect that Elvis Presley had on race relations through his music and his life.

This is especially pertinent given the fact that Lisa Marie also conflates black America with poverty when she chose not only what song to sing but who to “dedicate” it to. "All fingers pointed towards New Orleans," she said. While Ms. Presley wishes for the same helping hand her father sang about, she is quite mistaken if she believes the inner-city world of the Chicago ghettos in 1969 are reminiscent of the whole of New Orleans that was lost to hurricane Katrina. These were people whose desperations came as a direct and momentary result of a legacy of racism, expressed in the present as a specific refusal to provide the helping hand of government (one all too willing and ready to reach out the privileged).

New Orleans was not, like the song implies, the story of a people living wholesale in abject poverty – without resources, without agency, without the ingenuity to improvise and make a way where there is no way. In fact the story of New Orleans is quite the opposite, both historically before and following Katrina. However, Lisa Marie’s choice and recipient of the dedication of this song speaks volumes in its association: Like those in the song, the people of New Orleans brought this on themselves. They are now destitute because they chose not to act. It is their fault. Government, like god, only helps those who help themselves.

Whether conveyed in overtures of benevolence or not, blaming the outcomes of America’s racist legacy on the victims of that legacy is the essence of both racism and bigotry.