The Natives Are Restless; Does Anyone Care?

This week, only three presidential candidates attended a presidential forum at the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' reservation in Southern California, reports Diana Marrero of the Gannett news service. (Marrero interviewed Stephen at length for the piece but did not include any of his brilliance in the final edition. WHATEVER!) Bill Richardson, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich showed up, but the so-called “top three” (Clinton, Obama and Edwards) were conspicuously absent. It’s dangerous to read too much into the strategies of national campaigns by examining what events candidates do and do not attend, but given that this likely to be the only significant event to be held by and for American Indians, we should consider what this means for the amount of attention being paid to the numerically smallest historically-oppressed racial minority group.

Marrero reports that “[t]ribes contributed $7.6 million to federal candidates in 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They spent $16.7 million on Washington lobbying last year.” Issues surrounding Native American interests in casinos was at the center of the Jack Abramoff scandal, which was an indication that the lobbying efforts have been ratcheted up in recent years. Besides being taken for granted or ignored completely, there is a real danger that the issues of concern to the four million Native Americans are limited to casinos.

Like other historically-oppressed racial minority groups, there is disproportionate poverty in American Indian communities and on reservations. And with respect to language, there has been significant concern in the past decade about college and professional sports teams exploiting stereotypes that perpetuate negative imagery of Indians. Yet that issue has not surfaced in a presidential debate.

We are not arguing that the appropriateness of the Florida State Seminole “chop” should take precedence over discussion of the war in Iraq, the economy, healthcare or education, for instance, but it is certainly more important than “say something good and bad about the person to your left” or “would you invite Barry Bonds to the White House?” The utter invisibility of members of this community ( a sizeable portion of which come from important swing states) who are making a concerted effort to exert influence into the political process is disturbing. We are as guilty as anyone else: we are approaching the one-year anniversary of This Week in Race, and of those fifty-two entries, this is the first to address Native Americans. While it’s true that this space is dedicated to scholarly analysis of issues in the news, we cannot hide behind the mainstream media’s inattention. We’ve been clear that we wish to provide leadership on these issues, and like the presidential candidates who failed to show up to the “Prez on the Rez” event this week, we’ve been neglectful.

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.

Politicizing Barry Bonds: Implications for 2008

We generally try not to blog on similar topics two weeks in a row, but as we noted last week, baseball player Barry Bonds has been close to breaking the career home run record. He did so this week, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to address it.

Bonds hit number 756 late Tuesday night as his Giants played the Washington Nationals in San Francisco. Of course, the event will forever be clouded by accusations of performance-enhancing drug use. (ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski summarizes the sentiment of those who anticipate an asterisk in the record books beside Bonds’s name.) Some have claimed that the controversy is either partly or largely related to the fact that Bonds is black.

As we noted last week about Michael Irvin, the racial issue is more complicated than people simply being bigoted; Bonds “acts black” in the sense that he conforms to negative stereotypes about African Americans being mouthy, flashy, direct and even hostile about racial issues, etc. Like Irvin, Bonds is easy to hate, but we continue to ask ourselves (and you) how much of that hatred is rooted in embedded negative assumptions bout blacks.

Even more interesting (politically) is that just hours before the record was broken, Barack Obama was asked about Bonds’s record by Keith Olbermann in the AFL-CIO Democratic presidential candidate debate in Chicago. Here’s the exchange:

MR. OLBERMANN: Senator Obama, were you president of the United States today, would you honor Barry Bonds at the White House? (Laughter, booing.)

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, he’s still got to hit one more, and it’s been taking a while. And I had the opportunity to meet Hank Aaron just this past weekend. It reminded me of what sports should be, and that is something that young people can look up to.

Now, Barry Bonds has been a remarkable baseball player, and I honor his achievements. But I hope that all of us are focused on making sure that sports is something that kids can look up to, not something that they start feeling cynical about. We’ve got cynicism in politics without having cynicism in our sports teams as well. (Applause.)

MR. OLBERMANN: Is that a no, sir, or a yes?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, like I said, he hasn’t done it yet, so we’ll answer the question when it comes. (Laughter.)

This is curious on a number of levels. First, it’s one of the very few questions that were not directly related to public policy or government in the debate. Why Olbermann decided to give this question to Obama, we can’t know. Race may be one issue. Obama has been outspoken about his love for Chicago sports, so perhaps that had something to do with it. But it was nonetheless a strange moment in the debate. Beyond that, Obama’s response is unsettling. He clearly wasn’t expecting the question (how could he?), and he bobbled it. The response contained appropriate content, but as Olbermann noted, he clearly was ducking a direct answer. Was his reluctance related to his standing among black and white voters, respectively?

Back in May, ESPN reported results of a poll that showed that black fans were more than twice as likely to hope that Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s record than whites (74% to 28%). Further, blacks were less likely to think Bonds has used steroids than whites (37% to 76%). Twenty-five percent of black respondents thought Bonds has been treated unfairly because of his race, while “virtually none” of the white respondents who thought Bonds has been treated unfairly attributed it to race.

Assuming Obama is aware of the racial divide on this issue, he must have been miffed that he was the only one to get the question – he who is walking the finest line with respect to wooing black voters and not alienating white voters. Was Olbermann trying to tease out Obama’s racial loyalties? It’s impossible to say. But what is apparent is that this is yet another way that race plays into the 2008 presidential election since there is a strong black candidate running.

One White Man’s Burden: A Steelers Fan Struggles with Michael Irvin’s Induction

Here is Stephen’s response to NFL wide receiver Michael Irvin being inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend.

I hate Michael Irvin. I always have. He represents everything that I was taught to believe football should not be about. As a Pittsburgher (and, thus, a die-hard Steelers fan), I was taught that when one scores a touchdown, the appropriate action is to hand the ball to the referee (like Franco Harris often did), not to dance as if it’s the first and last time it would happen. I was taught that ball players are role models and should act as such off the field, as well. I was taught that respect for one’s opponent meant not “trash talking” on the field or off. In short, I was taught that people like Michael Irvin are bad for the game of football. But how much of what I was taught was rooted in racial prejudice?

I need to be clear that when I say “taught,” I refer to a football teaching community much larger than my family. My dad was my primary source of football knowledge, and his Harry-Chapin-listening-ass is certainly not bigoted. In Pittsburgh, at least since the 1970s, football is a community event. The malls are virtually empty on game day, the fans come in every shape, size, gender, age and color, and the city is awash in black and gold twelve months out of the year, not just during football season, and not just when the Steelers are doing well. (Tangentially, I’ve always dreamed about writing a paper about social capital in Pittsburgh as a result of all major sports teams having the same team colors – an element of community symbolism not enjoyed by any other city.)

“Teaching” racial prejudice does not happen in the oblique context of the family; it involves tacit and pervasive messages that often work to counter the explicit teachings in the home. So when I learned football, I learned racism. What I learned to privilege is rooted in white, middle-class values (as embraced and passed on by white working-class families who aspired to middle-class status). To be fair, my paternal grandfather was, like many Italian Americans of his generation, bigoted, but more than that, I grew up in a city with deep racial tensions that were seldom manifested in explicit discussions of race. Like the American experience broadly, it constantly bubbled under the surface in the press, pubs and union halls.

So why now, on the eve of his induction into the Pro Football Hall of fame (just two years after he became eligible) do I look at Michael Irvin’s induction with a fresh set of eyes? It’s not that I haven’t thought of him lately. I have thought of him every Sunday for the past four years when I turned on the ESPN pre-game show where he served as an analyst. I hate him because he played for the University of Miami – a program I was raised to believe was illegitimate because of its leniency of players’ conduct and lack of emphasis on academics. I hate him most because he played for the Dallas Cowboys, the nemesis of the Steelers during the 1970 (when the Steelers beat them in two Super Bowls) and later in the 1990s (when they beat the Steelers in a Super Bowl because of a crappy Steelers quarterback who will remain nameless). I hate him because he’s mouthy (uppity?), flashy (if you were one of 17 siblings, you’d probably try to find a way to stand out, too) and immodest. I think I partly hate him because he’s black.

Of course, it will come as no surprise to regular TWIR readers that neither of us equates being black to any of those characteristics. And to be fair, I grew up with distaste for white players who embodied those characteristics, too (Jim McMahon, Bill Romanowski, etc.), but I wonder if “we” didn’t dislike those players because we perceived them as acting too black. In some ways, we had (have) a higher tolerance for black players who veered from the white, middle-class football ethic noted above. We expected black players to act “like that” (read: black). But when they got too good on the field, the behavior became more annoying, and we looked for ways to discredit their accomplishments.

Bill Williamson writes that Irvin may not have made the Hall of Fame in the current era where players are being liberally suspended for off-field behaviors deemed unbecoming to professional athletes. Irvin certainly would have missed significant field time as a result of his involvement with illegal recreational (not performance-enhancing) drugs (he did miss five games in 1996). Even a money-over-principle owner like Jerry Jones may have cut Irvin loose if he wasn’t on the field enough to produce, and other teams may have been reluctant to sign him. His public image couldn’t have suffered much more, but his statistics very well may have.

Of course, this issue is not unrelated to what Barry Bonds (a former and subsequently detested Pittsburgh athlete who claimed he suffered from racism in the city – hmmmm.) is facing on the brink of his record-breaking performance. We have been waiting patiently for two weeks for him to do it so that we could blog on it. But he hasn’t, so we can’t. As the talk continues about Bonds, though, we ask readers to reflect on this offering and consider how much of our dislike for Bonds is racial and how much is legitimately about his cheating and/or his grumpiness toward sports writers. Maybe we can convince Mark McGwire to guest blog in this space next week.