The Return of Blackface: Further Unraveling of the Leftist Coalition

We apologize for the tardiness of this week’s blog. We are in San Francisco with some of our students working on the Race Project and attending the International Communication Association meeting.

In the May 31, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone (#1027), David Holthouse profiles Shirley Q. Liquor, the African American female alter ego of white gay comic and Quaker deacon Chuck Knipp. The shocking act depicting over-the-top stereotypes of black women has led to protests across the country. Liquor is “a welfare mother with nineteen kids who guzzles malt liquor, drives a Caddy and [speaks] in an ‘ignunt’ Gulf Coast black dialect.” Liquor has been entertaining gay white men and celebrities such as Sela Ward, Brooks and Dunn, and RuPaul for the past few years, but as her profile has been raised, the protests are mounting.

There are serious implications of this seemingly benign politically incorrect mockery of America’s troubling tradition of intersecting race and poverty. Holthouse’s story reveals the (increasingly?) deep rifts between the (overwhelmingly white) gay activist community and the black community – a rift that jeopardizes not only an electoral coalition that Democrats have relied upon, but that interferes with prospective civil rights gains by both groups.

On one level, there is the racist and bigoted performances that Knipp acknowledges give him pause: “Wealthy white people are starting to hire me for private parties. . . . From the way they interact with me, I can see that my being there as Shirley makes them feel it’s acceptable to openly mock black people in a way they otherwise would not, and that does give me second thoughts.” On the other hand, Knipp argues that “there is no difference between his donning blackface and Dave Chappelle putting on whiteface to make fun of white folks. . .” It’s a tired false reasoning that we have addressed here before: it’s not possible to “flip the script” and refute charges of racism. There is no racism against white people because racism inherently relies upon the privileged group having access to the power structure, and only whites have such access. Individual-level bigotry can work in any direction, of course; there are plenty of people of color who have hostile attitudes about whites. But those individual-level attitudes must be distinguished from cultural and institutional oppression that only works in one direction (pro-white, pro-heterosexual, pro-male).

On another level, there are the overt claims that members of the LGBT community have no obligation to avoid hateful images and words about the black community, whose members by and large have not been supportive of the struggle for gay rights (and in many ways have contributed to their oppression). In Holthouse’s piece, a black drag queen is quoted as saying, “I’m not offended by Shirley Q. Liquor because my sexuality is more important to my sense of who I am than my skin color is, and I don’t see the so-called black community out in the streets protesting for my right to love. . . who I want. Black comics have been calling people like me a faggot and making jokes at our expense for a long time, and folks just laugh. But now I’m supposed to get all upset because this white man is having a little fun with a black stereotype? I don’t think so. That’s payback, honey.”

And at still another level, Knipp astutely acknowledges that there are aspects of the controversy rooted in communicative norms and traditions (similar to Jamaican patois): “I think sometimes that my act is viewed as a violation of private language. Starting with slave songs that contained multiple meanings and cries for freedom their masters couldn’t comprehend, black slang, or private black-speak, has been a primary social identifier of black culture. For this reason, there are people who feel it’s a violation for white people to talk black, even though there are a lot of people who talk white depending on the situation.”

The winner in all of this? The status quo. Social movements ultimately need allies to join their fight; wedges between marginalized groups serves to keep in place a system that disadvantages both. The black civil rights movement is far from over, and the gay civil rights movement is well underway. Language that reinforces and perpetuates disinterest (at best) or contempt (at worst) between groups that could use each other’s support only results in delaying progress for either or both.

A Week in Race - With Obama & Stephanopoulos

Last Sunday, Barack Obama appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos for a lengthy interview that was taped in Iowa. A significant part of the interview focused on race and Obama’s perceptions of his chances of being elected the first black president. Below, we provide some excerpts of the interview, along with our analysis of what Obama is up to with his responses.

The first questions addressed Obama’s support for affirmative action. Stephanopoulos raised the point that many middle-class white Americans raise: Shouldn’t any affirmative action program be centered on class, rather than race or gender? Obama gave an answer that would be palatable to those citizens.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Your candidacy brings the issue of race right to the top...

OBAMA: Right.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... of the national conversation. You've been a strong supporter of affirmative action...

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... and you're a constitutional law professor, so let's go back in the classroom. I'm your student, I say, "Professor, you and your wife went to Harvard Law School. You've got plenty of money. You're running for president. Why should your daughters, when they go to college, get affirmative action?"

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged, and I think that there's nothing wrong with us taking that into account as we consider admissions policies at universities.

I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed.

So I don't think those concepts are mutually exclusive. I think what we can say is that in our society, race and class still intersect, that there are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first generation as opposed to fifth or sixth generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that in 25 years,

affirmative action may no longer be necessary. Is she right?

OBAMA: I would like to think that if we make good decisions and we invest in early childhood education, improve K-12, if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.

This is a tough position for Obama. It goes beyond his economic privilege. He has been hounded by questions of being “really black” because his ancestors were not American slaves. Since affirmative action programs are designed to offset a history of systemic discrimination, Obama would have to convince middle-class white and black voters alike that his support, if applied to his own family, was justified.

He could do that. While his answer is accurate and understandable, it is also true that he and his children are every bit as susceptible to unconscious bias as a sixth-generation African American. It is the politically wise position, however, to argue that while he is in favor of affirmative action programs for disadvantaged folks (including whites), he does not include his family among that group. Voters may disagree with his position on affirmative action, but they will also likely not attribute his support to the fact that his family would benefit from such a program. It takes his “agenda” out of the equation and makes him appear to be more altruistic.

Stephanopoulos then asked a very curious question with racially insensitive undercurrents:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings, when you're out on the campaign trail. And I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

OBAMA: That's interesting.

We LOVE the response. “It’s interesting,” which means, “what the hell is THAT supposed to mean?! All black people are ‘cool?’”

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your friends told the New Yorker Magazine that "the mainstream is just not ready for a fire-breathing black man." Did you turn down the temperature on purpose?

Again, what the hell, George?! Is “fire-breathing” an inherent adjective to “black man as “Catholic” is to “Pope?” Why equate black men with fictitious, aggressive, irrational creatures? We don’t understand the question. Obama clearly doesn’t get it either, but he responds well nonetheless, ignoring the inherent racist assumptions in the question.

OBAMA: You know, I don't think it has to do with race. I think it has to do with when I'm campaigning, I'm in a conversation. And what I don't do when I'm campaigning is to try to press a lot of hot buttons and use a lot of cheap applause lines, because I want people to get a sense of how I think about this process.

A few minutes later, after playing a clip of Obama’s now legendary speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Obama had this to say about his perceived and self-professed role as a uniter.

OBAMA: But keep in mind, I'm not interested in bringing people together just for the sake of bringing people together. I'm not naïve enough to think that if we all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya" that somehow health care gets solved or, you know, education gets solved. Right now, what we need to make significant progress on these problems is to be able to build enough bridges to get things done.

So, I'm furious about the young men that I see standing on corners on the South Side of Chicago without hope, without opportunity, without prospects for the future. I am furious about the mothers I meet here in Iowa who are giving me hugs and telling me about their son who died in a war and asking, did their son die for a mistake?

It breaks my heart. But what I know is that the only way we're going to solve the problem is not to assign blame. It's to say, "Here's a vision for the future that we can do something about."

This position is direct, but rhetorically savvy. His anger is most likely directed at the system that has served to disadvantage those young men on the corners on the South Side of Chicago, but he doesn’t directly say that, which leaves open to interpretation by those who would point the finger of blame for their seemingly hopeless position directly at those youngsters that Obama is angry with THEM, rather than the system. This will satisfy those who are looking for a leader who will emphasize personal responsibility and a Horatio Alger mindset rather than address the more deeply-rooted problems that Obama clearly understands are precursors to the behavior and mentality to which he refers.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've had to ask for Secret Service protection awful early in this campaign. Were you reluctant?

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?

OBAMA: I'm not an entourage guy. You know, up until recently, I was still, you know, taking my wife Michelle's grocery list and going to the grocery store once in awhile. And so obviously it's constrained, but I'm obviously appreciative of their efforts. They're extraordinarily professional.

Not satisfied that Obama didn’t mention race in his answer, Stephanopoulos pushes the issue further.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Durbin, your friend, who talked to the review board, said a lot of the threats that were coming in are racially motivated. How serious are they? How much are you told? How much do you worry about it?

OBAMA: You know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it or considering the details of this. But just to broaden the issue, are there people who would be troubled with an African-American president? Yes. Are there folks who might not vote for me because

I'm African-American? No doubt.

What I'm confident about, though, as I travel around the country, is that people are decent at their core in America. The vast majority of folks want to do the right thing.

If I don't win, it's not going to be because of my race. It's going to be because I didn't project a vision of leadership that gave people confidence. It's going to be because of something I didn't do as opposed to because I'm African-American.

Here’s the translation: “Look, George, if you couldn’t figure it out by now, I don’t want to talk about this. People see that I’m black. They will either be troubled by this or not, but making my candidacy about my blackness (or alleged lack thereof) is not going to help me to win. I am a multi-faceted candidate who is black and is both thoughtful about that and has been shaped by that experience, and your persistence in trying to make me talk about race all the time is annoying and not at all helpful to what I’m trying to do. So back off, pretty boy!”

Unfortunately for Obama, he won’t be able to say this to Stephanopoulos or anyone else anytime soon. He is going to continually be asked to filter every issue through his race (which he certainly does, but doesn’t wish to reveal to a white public who does not have a sophisticated understanding of how race matters in America), and he will time and time again do a nifty dance around the question to get out what he wants people to know about this. And just like that, Obama is in the same position of every other politician: answer what you want, not what they ask.

Lynn Sweet blog

This Week with George Stephanopoulos

Zebras Without Stripes : A Whistle-Blower’s Story

Last week, an academic paper surfaced that found racial bias among referees in the National Basketball Association. There was immediate banter about its validity (some of it from academics, but most from people associated with the NBA), but we wanted to take a week and look over the 43-page paper to see if we could figure out what merit and/or weaknesses might be present.

Rather than provide yet another overview of the findings, we direct you to this New York Times story and to the paper itself.

After receiving a draft of the paper last year, the NBA commissioned its own study, which found no statistically significant evidence of racial bias in league officiating. The NBA study is fraught with problems, most notably that it includes only a fraction of the number of games (and fouls) in the original study and that it fails to control for the myriad variables the authors of the academic paper included (position and size of players, all-star status, etc.). However, the NBA study has one major advantage over the academic paper, and this causes us to wince a bit at the latter’s findings, which we fully expect are accurate.

Because the league refused to release their data on individual referees’ calls against specific players, the academic authors had to rely on publicly available “box scores” that show, among other statistics, the number of fouls each player received in the game. They categorized the race of the referees for each game in terms of the racial composition of the three-person crew, since they had no way of knowing which of the three referees called fouls on which of the players. That is, a crew was either categorized as all-white, all-black, 2/3 white or 1/3 white. Without knowing exactly which referee called a foul on which player, the empirical argument about racial bias is suspect when scholarly standards are applied.

That does not mean, however, that the study is not rigorous (it will very likely be published after vetted through the peer-review process) or substantively inaccurate. As several commentators have pointed out, scholars have found empirical evidence of unconscious bias in other areas of American life – why would the NBA be immune?

If you only listened to the NBA players, though, you’d believe that they live in a racially-equal utopian bubble within our larger racist culture. We’ve seen no report of a black player corroborating the findings or even failing to call them into question. The AP reports that P.J. Brown said, “Somebody’s got too much time on their hands.” Phil Jackson said, “you can almost make statistics prove what you want to prove.” This is a common response to our work, as well. “If you’re looking for it, of course you’re going to find it!”

What is most encouraging about this study and the attention paid to it by the mainstream public, however, is that it has stimulated more discussion about implicit racism as opposed to explicit bigotry. To date, our work has not sparked such a widespread discussion. Other studies on topics such as job hiring have not received this much attention. But released in the context of the NBA finals, this study that has the effect of calling into question the results of basketball games (and thus is of interest to a much larger audience) has bloggers writing about “cognitive racism” and “affinity bias.” To be fair, these are blogs that have considered the complexities of race in the past (blackprof does so regularly), but we expect that folks who have never visited those sites before have done so in the last week to find out what’s going on.

So we’re disappointed with the data available to the authors of the scholarly piece (it would be wonderful if the NBA would release its data to them), but the end-result is still important: there is certainly implicit racial bias in the NBA as in all other aspects of American culture, and more people are becoming familiar with the differences between racism and bigotry than ever before.

This Week’s Non-Racist: A Knuckle-Dragging Commentator

Fox News commentator John Gibson has been raising some eyebrows. In the context of attacking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on his radio show on April 23, Gibson referred to Iraqis as “knuckle-dragging savages from the 10^th Century” and blamed them for the continual killings in Iraq. While this comment has gotten some attention, we are interested in the phrase that preceded the racist comment. What Gibson said was this: “If you're saying it's our fault that we unmasked them as knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century, fine. I'll take credit.”

That the U.S. “unmasked” Iraqis suggests that the Iraqi people have been attempting to hide the fact of what they really are. Perhaps they have been hiding this for 1,100 years? There is power in the imagery that the U.S. is such the proponent of truth, wisdom and goodness that rather than instigate hostility and violence, we – as super heroes or, more accurately, Scooby Doo, might do – revealed the latent tendencies of these imposters of civilization and exposed them for what they really are. The level of arrogance is astonishing, but what’s more astonishing is that while the language Gibson used was met with criticism, the sentiments behind those words are far less frequently scrutinized. The nationalistic concern of the deaths of American lives being more newsworthy (read, “more troublesome”; read, “worth more”) than the lives of Iraqi soldiers or civilians illustrates this trend in reasoning. While Gibson’s comments are bigoted (that is, overt), the sentiments that most of us consciously or unconsciously share are racist.

This isn’t the first time that Gibson has revealed his bigotry. Last year, Gibson addressed a report that Hispanic Americans are having more babies than white non-Hispanic Americans by arguing that white people should have more babies. The tone is light, suggesting the bit was tongue-in-cheek, but humor is often an opportunity to “unmask” (to use Gibson’s metaphor) beliefs. It is clear from his tone that the remarks were not meant to be ironic (that is, to poke fun of someone who would actually call for whites to have more babies to offset Hispanic births). While Gibson reportedly backtracked when pressed to say that he intended to encourage all Americans to have more babies, his facetious “Hispanics can’t carry the whole load” remark undermines that claim and plays into stereotypical images of Hispanics having more children than they can support. In the midst of a debate on immigration that centers most heavily on Mexicans (which is the case now, as well as when Gibson made the comments), such sentiments are disturbing, to say the least. But, like so much other public language we cover here each week, the sentiments are revealing, as well.

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U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama (D-IL) has had his security increased as a result of his rising popularity and (corresponding?) racist “chatter” made on white supremacist websites, as well as a general concern about having a prominent black candidate in the presidential race. We hope to have more on this in next week’s blog.