Awhile back, 60 minutes did an interview with Morgan Freeman, and one thing they touched on was the subject of racism. Freeman cut it short with a very good response. He said that, if folks want to stop racism, then the easiest way was to "stop talking about it".
That's a very good point. It seems to me that those most often writing about, preaching about, and polling about racism are those who stand to profit either financially or politically by the continuation of the subject.
Sadly, my own observations (and they are just that, my own) seem to support the idea that, while demagogues and party hacks keep bleating the subject of racism, the nation, by and large, has dealt with the issue and moved onto other things.
"But the same can't be said of most white Americans, whose desire for a noble, healing Negro hasn't faded."
I read that line from the link and my first impression was: "huh?!".
There's no way to make sense out of the trope because Spike Lee was just making something up out of whole cloth. There is no type of the sort he was suggesting.
I suspect the whole thing began with the typical complaint “Why aren't there better parts in movies for African Americans?”. You hear similar complaints from women, Asians, etc. The very suggestion is suspect. There aren't a great number of parts in movies for anybody. And by and large there are only parts for characters in movies that people will actually pay to see.
The examples usually given of the alleged type are so varied that it's obvious that there is no type—Uncle Remus, Sidney Poitier characters, Whoopi Goldberg's character in Ghost.
Uncle Remus is a literary device created by Joel Chandler Harris that enabled him to relate the (frequently African in origin) tales that he'd heard as a kid and tales in a similar vein he made up himself. Suggesting that Joel Chandler Harris did anything whatever on the basis of white guilt or to appeal to white guilt is absurd. The term itself is late 20th century and has no meaning outside of the late 20th century.
There is no such thing as a “Sidney Poitier” type. There is only Sidney Poitier. And there's nothing magical about the characters he played. Many of the characters are simply reactions to the stereotypes of African Americans that had prevailed in studio pictures in the 1930's and 1940's.
You complain about the stereotypes; then you complain about the reactions to the stereotypes. The obvious solution is, if you don't like the characters, write your own screenplays, produce your own movies. Well, that's what Spike Lee has done. So have others. Then the complaint becomes “Why don't people pay to see my movies?”
The part played by Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost could have been played by a person of any race. There's nothing particularly Negro about it. However, since Whoopi played the part and she is a unique she put her own distinct imprint onto it.
The term has taken on a life of its own but there's just no there there.
I think that Richard Brookhiser coined the phrase "numinous negro" to refer to this phenomenon, which means the same thing for all intents and purposes, but has a much snappier, alliterative beat about it.
My basic standards* for a black President are the same as for anyone else I'd consider voting for in that position: someone who is predisposed not to raise taxes, willing to blow the living crap out of our enemies at need, and who is disinclined to unnecessarily meddle in our lives. From prior observation, Obama ain't gonna come close to meeting those standards, and it's got nothing to do with his skin color.
* simplifying tremendously here, of course, but a thumbnail sketch can be useful and entertaining.
The term itself is late 20th century and has no meaning outside of the late 20th century.
A startlingly good observation.
I'll be 41 this year. I have seen virulent racism in my time, but I have never known an America where equal rights were not the expected norm by the wider society, and wherein racists were not marginalized.
Unconscious racism is a strange beast, and not at all like the one that people fought against during the civil rights movement. I think the difference is that unconscious racism is essentially the purview of people in positions of immediate power (hiring and firing, renting and selling real estate, etc). It's the idea that seeing "Juan Jesus Martinez" or "Tamika Jackson" on top of a resume or a housing application provokes an immediate, subtle and very different response in the mind of an employer/seller than "Henry Blake" or "Jessica Macdonald". It's not a clumsy "Them black/Latino people're tryin teh take the jobs of honest American white folk". It's more an unconscious assumption that someone with such a name will be less polished, less educated, more difficult to deal with, whatever. This is something I do believe in because I've seen it in action. It's less about skin color than it is about culture...specifically, the norms and behaviors of the (mostly white) upper middle class and the difficulty it has absorbing people who come from other sectors of American society. There is a very very particular set of phrases you use at a neighborhood barbeque in a wealthy white suburb that you can only learn in a wealthy white suburb.
However, the battle against this kind of racism is being fought absolutely the wrong way. This is not a sledgehammer 'all white people all the time' operation; lower middle class and lower class whites face many of these same obstacles. (Sometimes later in the game--during the interview, say, rather than at the time their resumes hit the boss's desk--but same idea.)
In my experience, it is ironically liberals who are the worst offenders when it comes to unconscious racism. They'll kick me out of the Democractic Party for saying so, but there it is. You would be utterly utterly shocked if you saw the way some of the NGO/nonprofit workers (typically liberal to very liberal) behave toward locals in this part of the world. Knocked my socks off.
I agree with the essay. I don't think it's unconscious "racism," so much as unconscious, or borderline-conscious, liberalism. We want "some of our best friends" to really be black. It need not be out of guilt -- it can be entirely positive, progressive impulses, even if they have the effect of objectifying the black person, or character, involved.
Some of us go out of our way to make friends with, say, Muslims, to make it all all right.
I don't see how the argument can be made that there is no such "type" in American culture as the Numinous Negro. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other types, but this one is ubiquitous. It's also mostly harmless, and maybe even useful.
Unless it becomes the reason to vote for someone to high elective office.
There is a very very particular set of phrases you use at a neighborhood barbeque in a wealthy white suburb that you can only learn in a wealthy white suburb.
Oh, no! Our secret language has been discovered! Someone alert the Dark Lord! The Whiteness must be preserved BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!
I've called Mr. Rove via the "Rove Signal." He's gotten back to me and assures me that 'the darkies' and 'Jew bankers,' while aware of our code language, are unable to crack it due to genetic impurities. And lack of a porperly diversified portfolio.
My only concern is that Dean expects an essay in the LA Times to make sense. Time to worry.
TimK cited Morgan Freeman. They both have right.
To reduce racism make sure it is racism.
Even those stereotyped 'losers' serving fast food know hamburgers are not fries. They think more clearly than the MSM. But then they have to, they bear more responsibilty.
There is a very very particular set of phrases you use at a neighborhood barbeque in a wealthy white suburb that you can only learn in a wealthy white suburb.
If you might. Could you list a few. I'm dying to know.
It's the idea that seeing "Juan Jesus Martinez" or "Tamika Jackson" on top of a resume or a housing application provokes an immediate, subtle and very different response in the mind of an employer/seller than "Henry Blake" or "Jessica Macdonald".
Except that "Mikhail Ivanov" and "Bobbie Lee Gump" are likely to provoke a very similar response.
I am subjected to a form of prejudice all summer long because I:
a. live in the mountainous "boondocks" of upstate NY,
b. am in the tourism service business,
and
c. have all the telltale signs of being a "worker" (as opposed to a woman of leisure), such as coarse, roughened hands, utility hairstyle, lack of jewelry, lack of elaborate and flawless makeup....
I might be asked 4 or 5 times a day "So....uh....what do you people do around here in the wintertime?"
Just the phrase "you people" is enough to offend, but then there's the body language - the smirk and the wink toward a companion, or the look around the room to see how large is the audience of peers, maybe. All of it says "I'm a bit better than you, which is obvious, and you're poor and probably not too bright because you come from the hills, and everybody has seen Deliverance".
Jerks like that really burn me. Depending on my mood, I might answer that I am working on my thesis, which is entitled Large scale seasonal use of hypoxic incursions as an adaptive foraging strategy by adult piscivores within a pelagic freshwater fish assemblage, and hope to have my PHD by the spring. Or I might smile with a distant, blank look and respond that last year we painted the outhouse, so this is the year we buy a new toothbrush for the family. Or I get all bright and cheerful and tell them how excited I am to be going to my cousin's wedding in November - after having 6 Love Children together she and my brother are finally getting hitched, and the youngest, the one with the shorter leg, is going to be the flower girl if the PA at the clinic will allow them to take the brace off so she can walk down the aisle.
Any way you cut it, the customer has insinuated something fairly insulting with his question (occasionally a really nice person will ask the same question and it's actually just a friendly, interested inquiry with no smug condescension intended, so I respond kindly as well).
I lived in rural East Tennessee for 15 years and found myself feeling superior lots of times. I, too, am guilty of smug condescension and regret every single incident (excluding my ex-husband, of course). It wasn't intentional, but I suppose the braggart in me couldn't resist pointing out that I know how to pronounce "plastic" and "tomato" and "pillow" and "Massachusetts". Maybe that's all it is with the tourists - just a big ego and an inability to resist showing off.
I feel small in remembering that I did this - it's a side of me I wish had never surfaced. I hope it's controlled now, because I certainly don't like it when I am the victim. And I don't like to think I might be a bigot AT ALL. That thought distresses me greatly.
I like the term "magic negro" simply because it sounds spiffy. Seriously, there are more "magical" negroes out there than Barack Obama (who is not magical since he's a politician). Eddie Murphy and Michael Jordan are magic incarnate. Look at the effect they have and have had on people! Obama? Heck no. Bill Clinton had the same effect on people. And he was a musician to boot.
I'll bet a lot of Obama's appeal to liberals is that "magic negro" bit - because most liberals (our Dean and a few others excluded) really do think they should feel quilty about slavery, segregation and continued racism (real and imaginary) in the United States. There is an uncritical acceptance of Obama out there which must spring from what he represents to the audience, rather than any real appraisal of his rather conventional, liberal-left policy positions, which are a dime a dozen among senior Democrats.
Out here in the thinking part of the world, however, this is all just kinda funny to watch. I'd love to be able to read liberal minds as they cast their primary ballots as they agonize over whether a vote against Obama is evidence of their latent racism...Obama might just win the Democratic nomination on the strength of liberals' fear their anti-Obama vote will be found out.
My particular Magical Negro was a black pinsetter in a bowling alley in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood in the late winter of 1949-1950, when I was approaching 16 years of age and setting pins for food money.
I was hungry as hell that night, and I had no food and no money to buy any. He had a bowl of nice warm chili, and he shared with me. Unasked.
He must of have been in his late 30's or early 40s back then, 57 years ago. So if there's a heaven, a real Jesus and a God, I hope he made it there and they were both there for him to come home to.
The white men and women who owned that big bowling emporium, in which black men could work their asses of but not bowl or buy drinks, treated the pinboys like shit. They treated the blacks like less than shit. I hope those owners lived nasty lives and died unhappy.
I'm sorry I never learned his name, my Magical Negro. Because I have a long memory for the significant days, nights, hours, minutes and even split-seconds of my life.
And yes, he was a competent pin-setter, in addition to being a generous man.
When you get up in years, you are haunted as much over the recurring memories of the sweet events that have touched your life, in contrast with the sour ones.
Maybe even more so about the sweet ones. Because if you are honest about the lessons of life, those sweet experiences sometimes induce you to reshape your life according to the angels of your better nature, and not cave in the devils.
That's a lesson I picked up from that hungry night late in a mean Chicago winter, in a mean Chicago bowling alley, from am african American who treated a white kid as if he had been his father.
"Setting pins is hard work, kid. Harder if you're hungry. So finish off this bowl of beans."
That's what he told me. And I never did forget him, the bowl of beans, or the gesture.
That is what altruism is, Arnold. Doing good because you can; not because you have to. Because you can.
I've never been hungry, but every day I try to do at least one good deed to help another - whether it is to hold a door for a stranger, offer to carry a bag, or assist a waitress by making my table as clean as I can before I leave it. Pick up some litter on a city street and can it.
The little kindnesses, they aren't much alone, but together they add up to a great thing.
I was about 6 (early 1971), and I was waiting in line at the grocery store with my mother and behind us in line was this black lady - and she smiled at me (as women are wont to do with little boys), and it was the most angelic smile I had ever seen, and to this day, in my mind, she remains the most beautiful woman I've ever seen - even prettier than Audry Hepburn (and that is saying a lot!).
There is a very very particular set of phrases you use at a neighborhood barbeque in a wealthy white suburb that you can only learn in a wealthy white suburb.
If you might. Could you list a few. I'm dying to know.
_____________________________
"Pass the gray poupon please."
"Muffy, where are my topsiders?"
5.29.2007 7:18pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Awhile back, 60 minutes did an interview with Morgan Freeman, and one thing they touched on was the subject of racism. Freeman cut it short with a very good response. He said that, if folks want to stop racism, then the easiest way was to "stop talking about it".
That's a very good point. It seems to me that those most often writing about, preaching about, and polling about racism are those who stand to profit either financially or politically by the continuation of the subject.
Sadly, my own observations (and they are just that, my own) seem to support the idea that, while demagogues and party hacks keep bleating the subject of racism, the nation, by and large, has dealt with the issue and moved onto other things.
Respects,
I read that line from the link and my first impression was: "huh?!".
I suspect the whole thing began with the typical complaint “Why aren't there better parts in movies for African Americans?”. You hear similar complaints from women, Asians, etc. The very suggestion is suspect. There aren't a great number of parts in movies for anybody. And by and large there are only parts for characters in movies that people will actually pay to see.
The examples usually given of the alleged type are so varied that it's obvious that there is no type—Uncle Remus, Sidney Poitier characters, Whoopi Goldberg's character in Ghost.
Uncle Remus is a literary device created by Joel Chandler Harris that enabled him to relate the (frequently African in origin) tales that he'd heard as a kid and tales in a similar vein he made up himself. Suggesting that Joel Chandler Harris did anything whatever on the basis of white guilt or to appeal to white guilt is absurd. The term itself is late 20th century and has no meaning outside of the late 20th century.
There is no such thing as a “Sidney Poitier” type. There is only Sidney Poitier. And there's nothing magical about the characters he played. Many of the characters are simply reactions to the stereotypes of African Americans that had prevailed in studio pictures in the 1930's and 1940's.
You complain about the stereotypes; then you complain about the reactions to the stereotypes. The obvious solution is, if you don't like the characters, write your own screenplays, produce your own movies. Well, that's what Spike Lee has done. So have others. Then the complaint becomes “Why don't people pay to see my movies?”
The part played by Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost could have been played by a person of any race. There's nothing particularly Negro about it. However, since Whoopi played the part and she is a unique she put her own distinct imprint onto it.
The term has taken on a life of its own but there's just no there there.
* simplifying tremendously here, of course, but a thumbnail sketch can be useful and entertaining.
A startlingly good observation.
I'll be 41 this year. I have seen virulent racism in my time, but I have never known an America where equal rights were not the expected norm by the wider society, and wherein racists were not marginalized.
However, the battle against this kind of racism is being fought absolutely the wrong way. This is not a sledgehammer 'all white people all the time' operation; lower middle class and lower class whites face many of these same obstacles. (Sometimes later in the game--during the interview, say, rather than at the time their resumes hit the boss's desk--but same idea.)
In my experience, it is ironically liberals who are the worst offenders when it comes to unconscious racism. They'll kick me out of the Democractic Party for saying so, but there it is. You would be utterly utterly shocked if you saw the way some of the NGO/nonprofit workers (typically liberal to very liberal) behave toward locals in this part of the world. Knocked my socks off.
Some of us go out of our way to make friends with, say, Muslims, to make it all all right.
I don't see how the argument can be made that there is no such "type" in American culture as the Numinous Negro. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other types, but this one is ubiquitous. It's also mostly harmless, and maybe even useful.
Unless it becomes the reason to vote for someone to high elective office.
Oh, no! Our secret language has been discovered! Someone alert the Dark Lord! The Whiteness must be preserved BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!
I've called Mr. Rove via the "Rove Signal." He's gotten back to me and assures me that 'the darkies' and 'Jew bankers,' while aware of our code language, are unable to crack it due to genetic impurities. And lack of a porperly diversified portfolio.
Our white supremacy is safe, my white friend.
TimK cited Morgan Freeman. They both have right.
To reduce racism make sure it is racism.
Even those stereotyped 'losers' serving fast food know hamburgers are not fries. They think more clearly than the MSM. But then they have to, they bear more responsibilty.
If you might. Could you list a few. I'm dying to know.
Except that "Mikhail Ivanov" and "Bobbie Lee Gump" are likely to provoke a very similar response.
a. live in the mountainous "boondocks" of upstate NY,
b. am in the tourism service business,
and
c. have all the telltale signs of being a "worker" (as opposed to a woman of leisure), such as coarse, roughened hands, utility hairstyle, lack of jewelry, lack of elaborate and flawless makeup....
I might be asked 4 or 5 times a day "So....uh....what do you people do around here in the wintertime?"
Just the phrase "you people" is enough to offend, but then there's the body language - the smirk and the wink toward a companion, or the look around the room to see how large is the audience of peers, maybe. All of it says "I'm a bit better than you, which is obvious, and you're poor and probably not too bright because you come from the hills, and everybody has seen Deliverance".
Jerks like that really burn me. Depending on my mood, I might answer that I am working on my thesis, which is entitled Large scale seasonal use of hypoxic incursions as an adaptive foraging strategy by adult piscivores within a pelagic freshwater fish assemblage, and hope to have my PHD by the spring. Or I might smile with a distant, blank look and respond that last year we painted the outhouse, so this is the year we buy a new toothbrush for the family. Or I get all bright and cheerful and tell them how excited I am to be going to my cousin's wedding in November - after having 6 Love Children together she and my brother are finally getting hitched, and the youngest, the one with the shorter leg, is going to be the flower girl if the PA at the clinic will allow them to take the brace off so she can walk down the aisle.
Any way you cut it, the customer has insinuated something fairly insulting with his question (occasionally a really nice person will ask the same question and it's actually just a friendly, interested inquiry with no smug condescension intended, so I respond kindly as well).
I lived in rural East Tennessee for 15 years and found myself feeling superior lots of times. I, too, am guilty of smug condescension and regret every single incident (excluding my ex-husband, of course). It wasn't intentional, but I suppose the braggart in me couldn't resist pointing out that I know how to pronounce "plastic" and "tomato" and "pillow" and "Massachusetts". Maybe that's all it is with the tourists - just a big ego and an inability to resist showing off.
I feel small in remembering that I did this - it's a side of me I wish had never surfaced. I hope it's controlled now, because I certainly don't like it when I am the victim. And I don't like to think I might be a bigot AT ALL. That thought distresses me greatly.
Linda
Just takes swallowing a bit of crow to curb those urges to brag.
Linda
Bullshit. If only that were true.
If it were, we would never speak the names of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, and people like Maxine Waters and Cynthia McKinney would not be electable.
Out here in the thinking part of the world, however, this is all just kinda funny to watch. I'd love to be able to read liberal minds as they cast their primary ballots as they agonize over whether a vote against Obama is evidence of their latent racism...Obama might just win the Democratic nomination on the strength of liberals' fear their anti-Obama vote will be found out.
I was hungry as hell that night, and I had no food and no money to buy any. He had a bowl of nice warm chili, and he shared with me. Unasked.
He must of have been in his late 30's or early 40s back then, 57 years ago. So if there's a heaven, a real Jesus and a God, I hope he made it there and they were both there for him to come home to.
The white men and women who owned that big bowling emporium, in which black men could work their asses of but not bowl or buy drinks, treated the pinboys like shit. They treated the blacks like less than shit. I hope those owners lived nasty lives and died unhappy.
I'm sorry I never learned his name, my Magical Negro. Because I have a long memory for the significant days, nights, hours, minutes and even split-seconds of my life.
And yes, he was a competent pin-setter, in addition to being a generous man.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The above was one of the reasons.
You crusty old bastard.
When you get up in years, you are haunted as much over the recurring memories of the sweet events that have touched your life, in contrast with the sour ones.
Maybe even more so about the sweet ones. Because if you are honest about the lessons of life, those sweet experiences sometimes induce you to reshape your life according to the angels of your better nature, and not cave in the devils.
That's a lesson I picked up from that hungry night late in a mean Chicago winter, in a mean Chicago bowling alley, from am african American who treated a white kid as if he had been his father.
"Setting pins is hard work, kid. Harder if you're hungry. So finish off this bowl of beans."
That's what he told me. And I never did forget him, the bowl of beans, or the gesture.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I've never been hungry, but every day I try to do at least one good deed to help another - whether it is to hold a door for a stranger, offer to carry a bag, or assist a waitress by making my table as clean as I can before I leave it. Pick up some litter on a city street and can it.
The little kindnesses, they aren't much alone, but together they add up to a great thing.
I was about 6 (early 1971), and I was waiting in line at the grocery store with my mother and behind us in line was this black lady - and she smiled at me (as women are wont to do with little boys), and it was the most angelic smile I had ever seen, and to this day, in my mind, she remains the most beautiful woman I've ever seen - even prettier than Audry Hepburn (and that is saying a lot!).
That cured me of any chance of being a racist.
If you might. Could you list a few. I'm dying to know.
_____________________________
"Pass the gray poupon please."
"Muffy, where are my topsiders?"
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.