quotation of the week (paul mooney)

Paul Mooney
(source)

In his book Black Is the New White, comedy legend Paul Mooney writes the following about breaking into stand-up in 1970, at Ye Little Club, "Joan Rivers's joint in Beverly Hills." Caution -- unrestrained language ahead:


Joan opens the place so she and her comedian friends have a place to try out material. It's small, casual, intimate, a jazz club for jazz people. . . .

My comedy is a nuclear bomb inside my mind. It's a weapon that's never been tested. It just blows up and flattens everybody. I start out talking about the funniest shit I know, which is race.

Thank God, Paul Revere was white, because if he was black, they'd have shot his ass. "He done stole that horse, let's kill him! Kill him!" And who do they say sewed the flag, what's her name? Betsy Ross? Now, come on -- they had slaves back then. Betsy Ross was asleep at six. You know some big black mama was up at night sewing that flag! "Honey, oh, Lawd, have mercy, I'm just up so late sewing this flag, I'm seeing stars!" And she's thinking about the stripes on her back, from the whip. So there we get it, the stars and stripes. But as soon as the white men got there, the white lady Betsy Ross jumped up, "See what I did?"

Right away, I notice something. The black people in the audience react to me way differently than the white people. Like in this routine. White people like the killing of the black horse-thief. They like the coon talk of the slave woman.

But the white folks get tight-faced and nervous when I start making fun of the white lady Betsy Ross. I know they like history. White people like going back in time, which is always a problem for me. I can only go back so far. Any farther and my black ass is in chains.

At Ye Little Club, I always drop some history into my act. It's knowledge. There's always a message in my comedy. But it's like a time bomb. The audiences might not get it right away. But they get it later that night, the next day, a week later. Then they understand.

I start to study white audiences. I see their reactions. I get my first walkouts. A lot of white people remind me of scared rabbits. When the wolf comes out, they run. They twitch their little pink noses and haul ass out of there.

When I imitate middle-class white speech, I see a flicker of unease cross the faces of the white people in the audience. Then, when I go into ghetto riff, the smiles return. They're fine as long as I am making fun of the same kind of people they make fun of, chinks and spics and niggers. But as soon as I start talking about them, I can clear a room.

My favorite is Lassie. Is that dog smart. Goddamn that dog is smart. They talk to Lassie like Lassie is a person. "Lassie, hey, Lassie, how's your mom? I love you! Call me in an hour!" I saw one episode, Grandpa has a heart attack? Lassie drove him to the hospital. And made a left turn. I said, Goddamn, Lassie, this is a smart dog. . . .

When I'm up onstage, I'm watching the audience like a hawk. I'm analyzing little tics, tells, and reactions they don't even know they are having. I study them. I have jungle eyes, I don't miss a thing.

I start to get so I can orchestrate my act. Some nights I feel like I'm Quincy Jones, like I'm playing the white audience like an instrument. That line'll make 'em nervous, but this line'll bring 'em back. I tease it to the edge.

It's funny, isn't it? Most of the white folks at Ye Little Club laugh about everyone else, but when I talk about them, they suddenly lose their sense of humor. They freeze up like an engine out of oil. If I do it enough, if I push it too far for them, they get up and leave.

So I think, Fuck them. I do it more than enough and I push it too far. Some nights I'm not happy until I provoke a walkout.

That's when I find my true audience. Black people, who are always with me, and brave white people. The non-rabbits of the bunch. The ones who can laugh at themselves.


Paul Mooney is the creator and star of Know Your History -- Jesus Was Black ... So Was Cleopatra and Analyzing White America. Mooney has also worked widely as an actor (Hollywood Shuffle, The Buddy Holly Story, Bamboozled), as a screenwriter (Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling), and as a television writer (Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color, Chappelle's Show). Mooney's memoir Black Is the New White, which focuses largely on his relationship with his life-long friend Richard Pryor, is a great read -- insightful, hilarious, revealing, and everything else that Dave Chappelle says about it in the book's Foreword.

think that because openly declared white supremacy is marginalized now, racism is dead

Comedian John Oliver of "The Daily Show" is at it again, making light of racism in Africa. Last year, he provided a pungent example of hipster racism during an interview with Zachary Muburi-Muita, the Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations. In that skit, Oliver tried to get his Kenyan interviewee to admit he misses the good old days of white colonialism. Oliver's white hipster irony became insufferable when Muburi-Muita objected to Oliver's trivialization of such a serious and painful subject, and Oliver just kept going, with what amounted to a rude and (truly) ironic racist joke.

Yesterday, Oliver struck again. In the following skit, he rides the World Cup bandwagon to South Africa, pretending to be a tourist on the hunt for "the good stuff" -- "vintage" racism, in the forms of hardcore bigotry and "real live race riots!"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

www.thedailyshow.com

The joke here is that although Oliver seems to search high and low, interviewing both black and white people, he just can't find racism anywhere -- "No matter where I looked, I couldn't find a single racist!" Until, that is, he encounters the lunatic, far-right fringe, in the form of a whacky, self-declared white supremacist. Oliver then lets Dan Roodt, an "activist for an all-white, separate nation," spout some ugly nonsense about crime and IQ differences and so on.

The problem with this skit's central joke is that it's based on a false premise. Oliver is playing a fool who doesn't realize something that everyone else supposedly knows, but that something actually isn't true; the skit's false premise is that racism is now effectively dead in South Africa. It's not.

What this skit does, in typical white-liberal fashion, is individualize racism. The far more damaging and insidious form -- institutional racism, a form very much alive in South Africa -- goes ignored.

In 2008, the country's Commission for Employment Equity released the results of a study of institutional racism. The commission's chair, Jimmy Manyi, said then that racism in South Africa "still rages":

"The only difference is that previously it was more overt, but now it has assumed sophisticated forms in day-to-day work practices," Manyi said.

Handing over the annual 2007/2008 report to Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, Manyi said the "finite data" received from large employers showed the "gross under-representation" of Africans, Coloureds and people with disabilities in the top three levels of management and that Whites dominated.

"Institutional racism continues to reign supreme," he said.

"The actual data we are getting from the companies is telling us that the people who are benefiting from recruitment and promotions in the majority are white," he said.

The report also shows that while South Africa's "Economically Active Population" is about 88% black, their proportion at top management levels in 2007 was only 28.8%. Affirmative Action policies have been in place as a corrective, in terms not only of race, but also disability and gender. However, Manyi said, "Only white women seem to be benefiting disproportionately in terms of this legislation [which allows for affirmative action] and black women are really lagging behind" (the report thus resembles results in the U.S., where the largest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action have also typically been white women).

I often enjoy the more biting satire of "The Daily Show," including that of John Oliver. However, when the topic of race comes up on the show, so do my hackles (though I do think their "Senior Black Correspondent," Larry Wilmore, consistently skewers white racism effectively). Laughing at hardcore racists might work to further marginalize them, but it's also a way of ignoring more refined, significant, and damaging forms of racism.

tell "you people" jokes

Swpd reader karinova wrote the following comment for an Open Thread post -- I think it should be its own post instead. And so, here we go.

I have a question for the commentariat. Mostly the white portion.

Back in the rush to the aid of crying white instigators of racism thread, a commenter noted that sometimes, when episodes like that occurred and the POC left the group upset, "the reactions [...] were everyone looking at each other, and then somebody would crack a racial joke or roll their eyes and make a rude gesture, and we'd all laugh and go on with our day."

Which reminded me of something I've been ruminating on; maybe you guys can shed some light?

So, there's this joke.

It's not really new, but it seems to be really really popular in the last few years -- specifically, in movies and tv (which is sort of the apex of the pop-culture feedback loop) -- and it's taken on a... different flavor.

The joke goes like this: a WP says something vaguely or overtly racist, or easily interpretable as such. A POC hears, is offended, and objects.

That's it. That's the whole joke.

I don't get it.

But those in the televisual arts can't seem get enough of it lately. I'll call it the You People joke. It shows up in "Tropic Thunder" -- and is so effing popular, you can get it on a t-shirt, which, let's face it, officially = Meme. (I submit that that entire movie is one long You People joke. God, I'm glad I didn't see it in the theatre. I live in an incredibly white town.)

Thing is, the exact same joke showed up in (off the top of my head) "Anger Management." And in "Me Myself & Irene." There are versions of it in the (terrible!) movie "How to Rob a Bank," in "The Hangover," and in an episode of "It's Always Sunny." I could go on.

WTF? Please. Help me out.

I've asked several white people, and no matter how non-threatening I try to be, it's gone... um, poorly. But I honestly want to know: Why is this "joke" funny? I want to hear from (thinking) white people especially. I can climb inside the white mindset very very well, but I can't quite grasp this. I really feel like it's a White Thing. (At any rate, I don't understand.)

Also, while I'm at it: d'y'all think any POC (specifically, BP) would buy that shirt?

Laughing at it as it goes by in the mixed company of a movie theatre (yet again) is one thing; we're trained to go-along-to-get-along. But sporting a shirt like that seems unlikely to me. Although... it's interesting to note that in the movie, that line, "what do you mean, 'you people'?!" is spoken twice -- once by AC (a white character who wears blackface for 90% of the movie) "in character" to another white guy, and then immediately by an offended Lazarus (an actual black guy), to AC.

Which character did you think of when you saw that shirt? Which do you think the buyers of that shirt are thinking of? What would you think if you saw a BP wearing that shirt? Would it be funny? Would you laugh? (Not the same question, btw.)

I'm almost tempted to make (not buy) one, just to, I dunno, culture-jam the meme.

flip the script to make an anti-racist point

Something to watch on a Friday -- an anti-racism activist name Josh put this video on YouTube last week. I'm thinking you're likely to like it.

Best lines? "The Europeans. Jeez! What a brutal group of people."






h/t: The Analyzer @ ONTD: Politics

assume that vanilla frosting is "skin" and chocolate sauce is "(white) skin covered in chocolate sauce"

Please skim through these four images of cakes before reading this post more carefully. Then ask yourself, are these cakes all supposed to represent white bodies? Also, what might make a person think that they all do represent white bodies?

An anonymous swpd reader sent me a link to the "Cake Wrecks" blog post that contains these images; I've also included in italics the text that accompanies them in the original post (I haven't reproduced the entire post here).

Ladies, are you tired of that unsightly gut?

Aw. It's so sad when belly dancers let themselves go.

And, men? Do you wish you had a pectorals and not just man ta-tas?

I know this is supposed to be a dude, 

but something really makes me want to censor those nips.

Well the wait is over! Now, with the Abdopectoralbuttmastersizer™, you too can look like a goddess!

A really, really tanned goddess. Covered in oil.
With an outy... and a... wait. Is that an Adam's apple?
Okay... well... it really is a lovely shade of dark orange!

Or so studly, your woman will want to cover you in chocolate sauce and star pasties!

Oohh La La!

(Ga Ga, Romama)

That's right: with the revolutionary Abdopectoralbuttmastersizer™ you are guaranteed to get shredded in places you didn't even know you had! . . . . Call now!


Okay, that's just part of the "Cake Wrecks" post. Note what the writer of the post sees in terms of race -- four white bodies, one of which is "tanned," and one of which is "covered in chocolate sauce."

Among the post's 140+ comments, a conversation ensued about the race(s) of the represented bodies.

As one commenter points out,

Re: really, really tanned & chocolate sauce

 Maybe those were supposed to be cakes of people who aren't, you know, white?

And later, someone else writes,

Man, you wreckies are fast -- you beat me to commenting on the fact that the "tanned" and "chocolate sauce" cakes probably just represent people with brown skin. (Some of us have that, you know.)

After a couple more such comments, the author of the post, "john (the hubby of Jen)," jumps in:

I firmly believe that the man covered in chocolate sauce and pasties is actually from Laos. Or possibly Honduras. Maybe Jamaica.

And the "Really, really tanned" torso actually looks very much like one of the white bodybuilders who has spent many an hour in a tanning booth. Could be African American. Probably tanning booth.

*sigh*

john

In the first sentence, john seems to be jokingly saying that . . . race doesn't matter? That, because the body's covered in chocolate sauce, the race is indeterminate? And what does that "sigh" mean? Actually, I think I know -- isn't it, basically, "Ugh. Why do you have to drag race into this!"?

Near the end of the thread, yet another commenter points out,

It seems that you assumed that all cakes are of white people, and that all of the people who read this blog are white. That doesn't make this blog a very friendly place for people of color to hang out. I really hope that you will change the comments under the third and fourth photo. . . . the point is not the realism of the cake, the point is that, when looking at cakes portraying brown and black skin, the author of the post assumed that these _must_ be white people _painted_ brown and black rather than people who _are_ brown and black. That's offensive.

In case anyone is interested in my race: I'm white.

Finally, it seems, john has enough of this -- so much that he shuts down the comment thread. But not before another, final, and sighing self-defense:

Alright, I'm done.

I am actually stunned by some of the comments so this will be the last one.

The mottled, dark orange torso cake didn't make me think of an African American because I've never seen an African American with mottled orange skin. I thought of this guy:

http://www.bodybuilder-photos.com/galleries/2003/2003-11_dorian-yates-grand-prix/images/bodybuilder_b-IMG_0017.jpg

See the bad spray tan?

And the fourth one? The one that I so thoughtlessly called "covered in chocolate sauce?" It's because it's COVERED IN CHOCOLATE SAUCE!

*sigh*

I hope some of you thought it was a fun post.

john


Well, I suppose it was a fun post, if you like laughing at bad cakes.

So what's the common white tendency of note here?

Aside from john's aversion to matters of race, and to seriously considering the possibility that he made a mistake in terms of race, I'm interested in what I also see as an assumption that seems to be at work in the post. And in many of the comments, except those that pointed out this assumption in the post -- that normal, default people, and bodies, are "white" ones.

So, what could lead white people to see cakes that may well represent non-white bodies as instead representing "tanned" and "chocolate-covered" (white) bodies?

I'll close with a quotation that I think provides an answer, a summary of the common white mode of thought that seems to be at work here. It's from film scholar Richard Dyer's excellent book, White: Essays on Race and Culture --

The invisibility of whiteness as a racial position in white (which is to say dominant) discourse is of a piece with its ubiquity. . . . for most of the time, white people speak about nothing but white people; it's just that we couch it in terms of "people" in general. Research -- into books, museums, the press, advertising, films, television, software -- repeatedly shows that in Western representation whites are overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant, have the central and elaborated roles, and above all are placed as the norm, the ordinary, the standard. Whites are everywhere in representation. Yet precisely because of this and their placing as norm they seem not to be represented to themselves as whites, but as people who are variously gendered, classed, sexualised, and abled. At the level of racial representation, in other words, whites are not of a certain race, they're just the human race. . . .

We have not reached a situation in which white people and white cultural agendas are no longer in the ascendant. The media, politics, education are still in the hands of white people, still speak for whites while claiming -- and sometimes sincerely aiming -- to speak for humanity.

wonder how to combat racist jokes

An swpd reader's email includes the following questions:

Dear macon d,

I have seen on your blog a few posts or links about how to combat particular issues. As karinova says, it is easy for me to talk and learn, but it's meaningless if I don't do anything.

I've tried searching but with limited success at the moment.  Do you happen to have a link to something like a guide to an effective way to deal with the racist jokes my friends often make?  Within these jokes they seem to obtain a great deal of pleasure from using the word ni**er.  Whilst I can find a lot of essays written about it's use, I have not found a statement which I can use that sums up why it should not be used.  I currently say that the word encompasses all of the racial hatred and oppression suffered by millions and that it's use is an acceptance of this, but it seems to fall a little limply on their ears.

Kind regards,


I more or less wrote back the following -- do you have other suggestions for effectively combating racist jokes? Do you even bother to combat them?


Dear _________,

I admire your determination to do something against racism.

I don't think there's a panacea for racist jokes; various strategies work for some joke-tellers, but not for others. I like your method for combating jokes with the n-word, but I can see how it wouldn't work for some people.

I don't have a particular place to send you, but I can suggest methods that I've used with some success against racist jokers. Racist jokes have always bothered me, but I used to let them slide on by. Now I always make a point of saying something, since I recognize the role of such jokes in perpetuating damaging stereotypes. I've also come around to hating the kind of racist white solidarity that such joke tellers expect me join them in. It's like they suddenly think we're in some kind of club, taking potshots together at the other people we've excluded.

As Victoria wrote in a post here last year about racist emails she receives,

I've noticed in these situations that they expect me to give them the old wink and nod -- "I hear ya, buddy" -- tacitly indicating that we're a part of the same special whiteness clique.

So what to do?

Sometimes I simply say something abrupt and shocked, such as, "You know, that is simply disgusting," and then turn around and walk away. Depending on the situation, this method can lead people to really reflect on what they did, and to ask you about it later (though of course, it might not work that way with some people -- no method is going to work with everyone).

I've also tried asking about the joke later, which again lets the person know that I found the offense a serious one. I just ask them to explain the joke, as if I didn't get it. In the course of their doing that, what's wrong with the joke often becomes apparent.

I have also asked how they think a black person (or a Chinese person, or a Jewish person, etc.) would feel hearing such a joke. No matter what the response is, I lead the conversation toward forcing the person to say either that they do or do not consider black (etc.) people lesser than white people. If they really do think that, then I tell them that they're acting and thinking like retrograde racists, and that in the future, I'll be avoiding them.

That may be drastic, but then, I'm serious about racism. I have a better sense then I used to have of just how very damaging it still is for people of color, and I want as little part in inflicting that damage as possible. I also want to actively fight its presence in, and enactment by, other white people.

You said that your words "seem to fall a little limply" on the ears of others; what I guess I'm mostly saying is that what often works is to not be limp yourself -- to demonstrate actively a staunch moral and ethical disgust when faced with any form of racism, in whatever ways one can.

I hope this helps,

macon


As I asked above, do you have other suggestions for this reader? 

Do you even bother to combat racist jokes?

One other question -- I recently heard racist jokes described as "old fashioned." This (teenage white) person claimed they were dying out. Do you think that's true? Or do they seem about as commonplace as ever?

accuse those who point out white privilege of being anti-american

The following segment of "The O'Reilly Factor" has been around for awhile (since December, that is), but it's been sticking in my craw ever since then. I don't normally pay any attention to Fixed News, but this segment is such a good example of several ways that many white Americans think about racial issues these days.

And it's also kind of funny, to watch these two big, strong men act so cowardly in the presence of big, confusing words.



As I see it, the willful, (literally) appalling ignorance on display here articulates the following common white beliefs:

• attempting to discuss racism and other forms of oppression with any degree of seriousness is "anti-American"
• only the "far left" thinks racism is much of a problem anymore (along with, presumably, race-card-carrying members of racial minority groups who "refuse to stop sucking on the public teat")
• the idea of discussing "white privilege" is so bizarre and repellent that when you use the term, it should fall out of your mouth like pieces of rotten apple 
• public schools in the U.S. are hotbeds of radical left-wing indoctrination (instead of the opposite)
• incorporating discussion of privilege and oppression into school curricula can only result in a long, depressing, unrealistic sob-fest of negativity, all over things that (again) are just not a big deal anymore
• what you should do with unfamiliar multisyllabic words is hold them up for suspicion and ridicule (instead of finding out what they actually mean) 
• using big, confusing words in an educational setting to describe and analyze complex and ongoing modes of oppression is a radical plot to violently shove indoctrination "down the throats" of our nation's prostrate, defenseless youth
• even though I freely admit that I don't know all that much about these things, you should still listen to me as I loudly and confidently tell you what you should think about them
• everyone should be white, heterosexual, aggressive, pugnacious and rich like me, and if they're not then that's their own damn fault, so when in the hell are they ever going to stop whining like that?!

Did I miss anything?


And, if you know people who think like this -- about attempts in educational settings to address oppression, or otherwise -- how do you deal with them?


Finally, if you've been in courses that included material of the sort that Stossel and O'Reilly are so hot and bothered about here, did it work for you?


Transcript:

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Stossel Matters" segment tonight: an unbelievable situation at the University of Minnesota. Apparently the school's Twin Cities campus has put together a Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Force that would require education students to accept theories like "white privilege," "institutional racism," and "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. Here now from New York, Fox News and Business anchor John Stossel, who has been looking into the situation.

Now this isn't in place yet. 2011, they want to put it in place. But this is about as far left as it gets, and education schools are known for this. But this is really over the top. How do you see it?

JOHN STOSSEL, FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR: Yes. Ed schools are known for this. Some of it's ridiculous. This is just a discussion at this point, fortunately. I talked to the dean, one of the faculty members even suggested a course in "heteronormativity," or at least a class in that.

O'REILLY: What is that?

STOSSEL: That means that you discriminate against people who aren't straight. So, you can't do that.

O'REILLY: Heteronormativity?

STOSSEL: Heteronormativity. But look --

O'REILLY: Oh. So if I'm a heteronormative, uh, I'm, uh, homophobic?

STOSSEL: You just assume everybody else is straight, and this might make you a bad teacher if you had a lot of gay kids in your class. I don't know. I don't presume to know. But this isn't as bad as it could be. Some of these ed schools are awful. This is one of the good ones. U.S. News rates it in the top 10 percent. Are you telling me you --


O'REILLY: Then why -- if it's one of the good ones, why do they want to get out into the radical left branch? I mean, look, they want to incorporate into this curriculum "white privilege," "hegemonic masculinity." I guess that means that men have all the power.

STOSSEL: Right.

O'REILLY: You know, "internalized oppression." What is internalized oppression? What is that?

STOSSEL: Are you telling me you don't think there is white privilege in America? I mean, Obama notwithstanding?

O'REILLY: I think there is white privilege in America, and I think it should be discussed. I don't think it should be accepted as the way it was, say 50 years ago. You know, look, if you're going to push "America's a terrible place," which is what this is all about, and you tell your students America is a terrible place, I'm going to oppose you on every front.

STOSSEL: Well, I would, too. But I don't know that they're doing this. It's one of the best ed schools in the country. Are you telling me when you were a teacher, that you or some of your colleagues might not have been helped by a cultural sensitivity course? In some Asian cultures, it's impolite to look an adult in the eye. So if the kid is looking down, the teacher may think he's not paying attention when he's just being polite. That stuff's good to know.

O'REILLY: But what this is, is a continuation -- and this is the extreme -- a continuation of the theory on college campuses that America's a bad place. Look, we got problems in America. You know, the white majority has oppressed minorities, not just African-Americans, but others. Yes. But America is the best country in the world because it affords the most amount of people the biggest opportunity to pursue happiness under the freedom and capitalistic banner. This is a bunch of garbage because it emphasizes the negative. You know, it emphasizes everything bad about America. And that's what I object to. And that's what's being taught on all, you know, all these college campuses in the ed schools. That's what they're getting rammed down their throat.

STOSSEL: They often are. And I agree with you. But what really outrages me is that prospective teachers have to go to these ed schools in the first place, that the government monopoly on K through 12 education demands these degrees, many of which are lousy. Let the schools hire anybody they want. You or I or President Obama would not be allowed to teach in a public school, because of these --

O'REILLY: Well, if you pass this certification and you get in the union, you can teach. It doesn't matter if you have an ed degree or a history degree or an English degree.

STOSSEL: But in many places, you have to take the four to six years of college, spend $100,000 at a private school, $40,000 at a public school. Shouldn't have to.

O'REILLY: Well, I think you have to have a degree to teach, and you have to pass a certification course. But the fact remains is, that there's indoctrination taking place now all across the United States, and it's left-wing indoctrination. And surely as a libertarian, you can't support a left-wing indoctrination taking place. And that's what's going on in America's public schools by and large.

STOSSEL: But 87 percent of the teachers are white. Almost half the kids are not white anymore. Some training wouldn't hurt.

O'REILLY: Training about what?

STOSSEL: Training about how races may be different, how kids from other cultures may learn differently.

O'REILLY: OK, I'll cede you that there can be that kind of a presentation. But that's not what this Minnesota thing's about. This is about America's bad, ram it down your students' throat. And you and I know it, Stossel.

STOSSEL: If that's the case, I'm with you.

O'REILLY: All right. You ought to be. You ought to be with me all the time. John Stossel, everybody.

feel disappointed because Obama apparently isn't a magic negro

In the following "Daily Show" clip, Jon Stewart and "Senior Black Correspondent" Larry Wilmore assess the first year of Obama's presidency. Or rather, they assess common reactions to Obama's first year. Stewart first satirizes the common and reductive cable-news tendency to offer analyses that consist of even less than one word -- that is, a letter, as in a grade.

I'm more interested in Larry Wilmore's segment (at 02:25), in which he satirizes common white expectations of a heroically positioned black man -- expectations, that is, that Obama would be another iteration of an old Hollywood standby, the Magic Negro.

I do agree that with Wilmore's satiric point: that a lot of white liberals had their hopes for Obama primed by the cultural pervasiveness of this racial stereotype, and that part of their current disappointment in Obama is a realization that he hasn't proven to be another Magic Negro.

So I'm interested, as Wilmore seems to be, in common white reactions to Obama as a black man. But I'm also interested in common white reactions to Larry Wilmore, as a black man analyzing those common white reactions to Obama as a black man. More about that below the clip . . .

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
The First 364 Days 23 Hours
www.thedailyshow.com

I first saw this clip at Gawker, which has long struck me as a place that assumes its readership is comprised primarily of media-savvy, relatively hip, mostly white people (and maybe even people who, although they openly hate "hipsters," often actually fit the hipster profile). In Gawker's post about this clip, the main point of which is that the "The Daily Show" writers "still haven't gotten a good bead on" Obama, Wilmore's segment is briefly described -- and not analyzed:

Larry Wilmore followed and did his thing, which is basically: Talking to white people like they are all racist. This was pretty funny too!

I don't know about you, but given the general tone at Gawker, that description reads to me like sarcasm. Sarcasm that really means, "Wilmore did his same old shtick, which really wasn't all that funny, because it's actually offensive. It's reverse racism, because come now, not all white people are racist! Who does this black man think he is, implying things like that about white people?" And so on.

I think that as before, Jon Stewart does play "typical white guy" here to Larry Wilmore's "racially wise black guy." Stewart again acts rather cowed and frightened by Wilmore, as well as disappointed. He becomes disappointed because although he's feeling sort of racially vulnerable, he still is listening respectfully to what Wilmore has to say. As a result, his typical and naive white liberal hopes -- in this case, in Obama -- are being exposed as such, and then dashed yet again.

In other words, I think that Wilmore's satiric insights -- in this case, about a common white-liberal tendency to let Obama's non-threatening blackness evoke the hoary Magic Negro stereotype -- are brilliant. And Stewart and his writers seem to agree; I think they're basically providing a platform of sorts that makes the insights offered by Wilmore available to those white people willing to grapple with them.

As for Stewart's ongoing role in the brief, staged dialogues that he sometimes has with Wilmore, I think he may be enacting how he and/or his writers think the show's largely white liberal audience should receive Wilmore's insights into their thought and behavior. That is, humbly, and respectfully. Even if, for a lot of white people in such a dialogue, that can be uncomfortable, and even scary.

I wonder, though, how many white viewers actually do grasp Wilmore's deeper and (for them) newer insights. Is the brief Gawker assessment above of Wilmore -- which takes up only a tiny part of their assessment of this two-part segment -- typically dismissive of black insights like those offered by Wilmore? If so, that wouldn't surprise me. After all, white people, even well-intentioned liberals, aren't used to listening respectfully to black people talking about race. Especially if instead of talking about themselves, they're talking about white people.

The Gawker assessment of this segment was written by Adrian Chen, whose name suggests that he's not white. Nevertheless, I think his assessment of this "Daily Show" segment, in its basic dismissal of what Wilmore actually had to say, reflects a common white reaction to black insights into common white ways.

Also interesting in these terms is the reaction to Wilmore of the show's studio audience (also largely white, I assume, which is not to say that people of color don't also enjoy "The Daily Show"). An especially good line of Wilmore's, for instance, seems to fall on deaf ears ("[Obama's] just suffering from the hard bigotry of high expectations!"). Listening carefully to the laughter and other audience reactions again makes me wonder just how willing, let alone ready, white people in general are to listen to black observations about whiteness. And of course, recent conversations in the comment threads on this blog have made me wonder the same thing. Wilmore is basically functioning as a comedian here, but like many black comics before him (and like Paul Mooney, for example [nsfw], today), he has serious revelations to offer white people about themselves.

Gawker is a popular site; at this writing, a day after that piece on the "Daily Show" was posted, it's already been viewed over 8,000 times. So far, it only has 18 comments, two of which address Wilmore's segment -- how do you read them? Do they seem to be taking Wilmore's serious comedy seriously?

Yeah, it seems lots of people were disappointed that Obama was not the "Magic Negro" that they were hoping for.

Next time, Dems, you need to run Morgan Freeman - he's GOD.

---

Oh - folks got the sads now 'cause he doesn't have a magic wand to fix everything right away?

Please. His presidency has managed to restore a certain amount of confidence in the US around the world. Eventually, this should be more effective than any Homeland Security regulation imagineable.

---

I cannot tell a lie. I really thought he was magic.

Damn you, privileged, white upbringing!


Oh wait, there is a fourth comment there, one that I agree with (the part about Wilmore, that is; I don't consider Colbert's satiric persona an annoying one-trick pony):

This Larry Wilmore needs his own show. Sorry, but Colbert is a one trick pony who's act is grating and one dimensional. I want a Wilmore show instead.

But then, if Wilmore did have a show, and he continued to talk to white Americans like this, I don't think it would last very long. That's because white Americans in general aren't ready to listen to a black man's insights into their common ways of being.


[And by the way, again, I'm not saying that people of color don't watch and enjoy "The Daily Show" -- I'm sure many do. I'm interested in common white reactions to it, and especially to Larry Wilmore. I'm also not addressing here Obama's declining popularity more generally, so no comments, please, about what that has to do with his politics, unless your comment clearly has something to do with stuff white people do.]

idealize jesus christ

For those with Jesus Christ on their minds (and maybe even more for those who don't), here's a clip I posted this past summer. I certainly hope the implication here -- that Jesus Christ was a racist -- doesn't curdle anyone's eggnog. (The original swpd post currently has 39 comments, many of which have a go at the possibility that Jesus had it out for a certain group of people.)




In a more serious vein, those of you with Jesus on your minds might also ponder this post from awhile back on the white/Western whitening of him/Him: "recreate jesus in their own image."

And speaking of Jesus' own racial status -- why is it that nativity scenes with very likely inaccurate white characters pop up all over the place, and no one seems to consider that a problem, but when someone puts together a nativity scene with more accurate black characters, white people issue a call to arms? (Well, okay, the white complainers in that story are members of Italy's rabidly anti-immigration Northern League Party; I certainly hope that if someone in my own neighborhood ever decides to get a bit more real by adorning their front yard with a black nativity scene, none of my white neighbors would sneak over and desecrate it, or otherwise complain. Maybe most of them wouldn't even mind.)

And finally, what's up with this relatively new annual tradition, the wounded cries about some fictitious "War on Christmas"? Is that a "white" thing too? Why IS it that the people I see busting their blood vessels over that are always white people?



Anyway, all the best to your and yours, every one and all of you! Thanks for all the reading, the comments, the emails, the guest posts, the support, the challenges, and so much more. I'll probably be posting lightly for the next week or so, and then I'll be back in the saddle for the new year.

think the white house should be "white"

Ma'ariv

A: How many people in the U.S. think it's just plain wrong to have a "black" family in the "White" House?

B: A lot. Significant numbers. More than enough for it to be a real problem.

A: I agree. So, how many people in the U.S., when presented with photos like the following, would curse, and gnash their teeth, and like, hatch nefarious plots?

B: A lot. Significant numbers. More than enough for it to be a real problem.

A: I agree.

The White House, South Lawn
An event supporting Chicago's bid
for the 2016 Olympics
(September, 2009)

A: But then, Barack Obama's not quite the first "black" president, is he?

B: ??

A: Well, Toni Morrison said --

B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Respect to Toni Morrison, but like, that was then.

George Clinton
"Paint the White House Black"
(1993)

make classist web sites

This photo is from the latest user-submitted photo blog to go viral, "People of Walmart [sic]." The caption there says, "I have to assume that this guy, in a fit of rage after a monster truck rally or tractor pull, ripped off his sleeves and then went to Wal-Mart to get a few cases of beer to enjoy on the couch on his front porch."

Can you count the classist stereotypes in that sentence? (I came up with six.)

CNN noticed the blog's popularity and posted a story about it, reporting in part:

It's a blog where people post, and make fun of, pictures of out-of-shape, poorly dressed and otherwise awkward people shopping at Wal-Mart.

And, in less than a month, with no marketing to speak of, it's become the toast of the Internet.

"People of Wal-Mart," a gag started by two 20-something brothers and their buddy to share crazy pictures with their friends, has gone viral. Promoted largely on sites like Digg and Funny or Die -- and linked ad nauseam on Facebook and Twitter -- the site picked up enough traffic to crash its servers on Wednesday.

"I'm still baffled -- I really am," said Andrew Kipple, 23, one of the creators of the site, who said his team was frantically working Wednesday to add enough server space to handle the surge in traffic.

Photos on the site, sent in by viewers all over the United States, frequently feature overweight people wearing tight clothes, bizarre hairstyles (with versions of the short-in-front, long-in-back "mullet" leading the pack) and fashion crimes ranging from furry leg warmers to miniskirts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

There's a guy enjoying a can of beer outside a Wal-Mart, a guy dressed as Captain America and another guy with a goat. Yes, a live goat.


Can you believe it? A live goat! Freakin' hilarious, dude!!! [/sarcasm]

I suppose that some people from any social class could laugh at this site's photos of "awkward" people (really, CNN? "awkward"? I doubt that's a word most of the site's fans would use). But when people who occupy higher rungs on the socioeconomic ladder laugh at them, their laughter is derisive, unsympathetic, and condescending. That's because the laughter is mostly triggered by connections that many of the photos make with the unexamined classist stereotypes firmly embedded in their heads.

It seems to me that much of the online CNN report is also largely written from an unidentified middle-class perspective, one that views working-class people from a safe, smug distance, and reduces them to a "crazy," "bizarre" spectacle. Which, despite my best intentions, is not unlike my own perspective at times on working-class people, as in a recent post about a car launch in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin.

Many commenters there pointed out my own classist perspective in that post, and for that I'm grateful. As I noted in a comment of my own, I think another blogger's post about my "car launch" post summed up well, just in its satiric title, the main problem with my post, and also with the "People of Walmart" blog. Jane Van Galen's brief post about my messed-up post is entitled "Those Curious Working Class Folks." I now think that her title is a valid imitation of my post's distanced, classist approach to the Turtle Lake car launch fans.

But then, maybe in labeling the People of Walmart blog "classist" instead of "funny," I'm just demonstrating that I have a PC stick up my posterior?

Or maybe, to put a finer point on it: depending on who's laughing at the people exposed by People of Walmart, some of the laughter it elicits is fine, and some of the laughter is classist (and, for some of the site's photos, racist, sexist, and heterosexist as well).

At any rate, I'm not the only one who finds this photo blog generally despicable. Much to its credit, CNN also reports that "not everyone appreciates the humor," adding that some say "the site goes out of its way to mock poor and rural patrons of the store, reinforcing stereotypes along the way":

"American culture likes to single out people who appear to be different," said Tim Marema, vice president of the Whitesburg, Kentucky-based Center for Rural Strategies. "Whether it's a joke or not, all depends on which side of the camera you're on."

Furthering stereotypes can strengthen the rifts between rural, urban and suburban residents and, in the worst-case scenario, can affect the way some people are treated by government and industry, he said.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer with more than 4,200 U.S. stores and over $400 billion in annual sales, may be more prominent in rural areas, Marema said, but to use that to stereotype its shoppers doesn't make sense.

"The reality is that everybody shops at Wal-Mart," he said. "If you want to find the guy in the golf shirt and khakis, he's there too."

It's not quite true that "everybody" shops at Wal-Mart, but I do agree with Tim Marema's point that associating it with working-class people, and then mocking those people, furthers damaging stereotypes.

As for the People of Walmart blog, who knows what the future holds? Maybe a blook?

So far, it doesn't seem that the site's creators are listening to their critics. The "About Us" page does suggest that the creators are alert to, and ready to block, ableism: "There is no reason to send us pictures of people that are seriously and unfortunately handicapped so don’t be an asshole."

But classism? Not so much, as evinced by this statement on that page -- again, can you count the classist (and heterosexist) stereotypes here?

It’s not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels. Where else can one go to pick up underwear at 3 O’clock in the afternoon and spot the greatest mullet of all time paired with a mustard stained wife beater (which only accents the extreme amount of body hair) and camo pants that were actually used in Vietnam. And if you haven’t run into the 6’2” bull-dyke with a shaved head, rockin a wonder bra, flannel cutoff shirt, and jean shorts at 2 a.m. when you’re there to pick up frozen pizza, chips, and cookies, then you can get the fuck out right now.

How's that for classy?

describe east asian people as "yellow"

Here's a great moment from an old children's quiz show:




Go Jerry!

I've heard people of Asian descent, and especially people of various East Asian descents, referred to as "yellow." I also still hear such people referred to as "Orientals." In both cases, the speakers were older white Americans. Both usages should be at least as long gone and forgotten as the old TV show that this clip is from, but they're not yet.

I also found this exchange in the comments at YouTube interesting:


m4lvolio (2 days ago)

That asian kid is gonna go brucelee on his [sic] ass after the show.

rathrio (1 day ago)

you're as cliché-oriented as that little girl is.

m4lvolio (1 day ago)

The only difference being that I did it intentionally, as a joke. It kinda ruins the fun when you have to explain something like this.


"Ruins the fun"?

m4lvolio doesn't seem to realize that while acting racist in a joking, ironic manner may seem "fun," it's still racist. Not to mention, as rathrio points out, cliché oriented.

Some still wonder if "yellow" is a racist term. They should ask the Israeli Ambassador to Australia about it. In 2006, Naftali Tamir was "recalled" from his ambassadorship for making this loaded comment:

Israel and Australia are like sisters in Asia. We are in Asia without the characteristics of Asians. We don't have yellow skin and slanted eyes. Asia is basically the yellow race. Australia and Israel are not -- we are basically the white race.


Speaking of quiz shows, here's a quiz for this blog's many smart readers -- why is referring to people in racial terms as "yellow" considered racist, and yet, doing so with the terms "black" or "white" is not considered racist?



h/t: Angry Asian Man; the YouTube commeters write that the program this clip is from was aired in New Zealand in the 1980s, and was called "W3."

feel incomplete without a homie

If you've got a minute look closely at Homies & Honkies (it's just one page).

You're sure to smile once or twice, maybe even laugh.

Lots of memories there, too.

And I never noticed, but I guess Burt is lighter -- whiter? -- than Ernie.



h/t: The Last Electic Bohemian Griot

try to use humor to distance themselves from racism

So did you catch David Arquette's "hilarious" assessment of Sonia Sotomayor? That one-minute drive-by he did on "Fox and Friends"?

You know it was funny -- racist, true, but hey, funny too! -- because that "Fox and Friends" technician reacted right on cue.

He's the guy (or gal) who sits there with a finger poised over some button, waiting to release a whistle-and-rimshot sound effect, which I guess says something like, "Wow, THAT was pretty nuts, wasn't it folks?! But it's all good, har har har!"



The transcript of Arquette's idiotic remarks appear below. They're so stupid and disrespectful that they hardly merit comment (though if you want to comment on them, by all means, please do).

What interests me more is that whistle-and-rimshot sound effect. Or maybe, whistle-and-cymbal? What IS that second sound? And more to the point, what exactly is the whole sound effect supposed to indicate?

I think it's another among many examples of something more general, a common white tendency. That common tendency is to think that it's okay to say or do something racist, if you turn it into a joke somehow.

If you're worried about being labeled a racist, just start grinning and somehow suggest that the racism isn't a reflection on you. Act in a way that more or less says, "hey, I know this here is racist, but I'm just joking! So don't worry, I myself am certainly not a racist!"

"Never mind," you also seem to be saying at such moments, "that I do just somehow have to say this racist thing, because, like, you know, it's just true, right?"

In this case, I think it's "Fox and Friends" that wants to distance itself from Arquette's racist commentary (although he's doing a lot of his own Distancing Laughter too), by using that sound effect. And it's not the first time Fox has used it. Just last week, I noticed that they used that sound for the same distancing effect when Brian Kilmeade started prattling outrageously about how pure-blooded people shouldn't marry "ethnics" and "other species."

This use of such a sound effect on live programs, to blunt or counteract someone's objectionable words, is new to me.

Does Fox use it on other shows? Are there other networks that use anything like it?

At any rate, it's certainly a common "white" thing, isn't it, when it's used to deflect serious attention from someone's racism, with something that's supposed to elicit laughter, instead of anger.


Here's the transcript of David Arquette's remarks:

Can I mention something about Sotomayor since we're like, you know, it's politics? I think Latino women are -- it depends on the woman -- but I think they are very, they have great judgment, but there are some that are just nuts.

Really?

I would just say it. I mean, it's -- you can't -- (laughs)

[distancing sound effect]

Personal history?

Now your wife, Courtney Cox, is not Latino, is she?

No, she's not Latino, but I'm from Los Angeles so we know all about the Latino women.

I get it! Now we're getting into your personal history.

I don't know what I'm talking about but --

But she's qualified?

Oh yeah, she's qualified. But who knows if she's nuts or not! No, I'm just kidding.

Well you know what, David? Sometimes you're a little nuts.

That's right. I love Latina women!


h/t: Vanessa @ feministing


Update (7/17/09): David Arquette has apologized; he really was just trying to be "humorous." And hey, give the guy a break, some of his best friends are Latinas!

I would like to issue an apology for the comments I made on Fox and Friends. My intent was to be humorous and not offensive. I have nothing but love and respect for Latina women and women in general of all cultural backgrounds. What saddens me most is that it took away from the issue of Hunger in America, for which I was on the show to begin with. I work and [sic] a pantry in Venice California with a hispanic women named Delpia (who has been feeding people at St. Joseph's Center for 29 years) and she is my personal hero. Having been raised in Los Angeles I have grown up with a deep and profound love for the Latino culture.

forget that Jesus was a racist

Here's a clip from an eye-opening, paradigm-shifting BBC documentary on the real life of Jesus:






Note to any offended fans of Jesus: this portrait of Jesus is not an attempt to depict an actual Jesus. And really, how could it be ? Jesus wasn't even white. Let alone British.


h/t: Missives from Marx & That Mitchell and Webb Look

make class-project videos on racism

One of the ways I try to check the pulse of today's racism is by cruising around on YouTube. I don't know yet just how YouTube fits into and represents "our culture" (whatever that is), but its search function does cough up all sorts of trends and phenomena that I didn't know existed.

One example that's existed for a long time now, and that's also made its way to YouTube, is the class-project video. I remember making one in high school, for a course called "Mass Media." Thrust together randomly with three people I didn't know, I proposed that we address "world hunger." We ended up patching together crude juxtapositions of starving-African-children photos with the footage we'd shot on a rainy afternoon -- extreme closeups of each other's mouths as we gorged ourselves at McDonald's.

Although the ostensible topic of that video was the same as its unimaginative title -- "World Hunger" -- our project probably had an unintentional subtext on "whiteness," given that we were all white, and that we all lived in the unstated-but-purposefully "white" suburbs. Since thinking about that video still makes me feel kind of nauseous, I'll leave it to you to imagine any racial, racist, or racish* subtext it may have had.

I wish I could show you that long-lost classic, "World Hunger," but alas, the videotaped copies we made for each other are probably long gone. Anyway, I have a much better one to send you off on your wonderful weekend with.

The following anti-racism class project was made by students at Oak Park High School, in Winnipeg, Canada, for Mr. Pearase's Digital Film class. I know all of that not from YouTube, but rather from another blog that posted this video, boingboing. That's where Mr. Pearase sent a link to the video, along with an introduction. The comment thread there is great, because some of the students who made the video jumped in, along with Mr. Pearase.




Do you remember making group-project videos in high school, or in college?

Can you recommend any other especially effective ones that are available online?

The best one I've seen so far is one I've posted before, Kiri Smith's award-winning "A Girl Like Me." It's about racism, the insidious power of "whiteness," and what it takes for some people to resist it. (I should also mention Phillip Wang's excellent and hilarious "Yellow Fever," which seems like it might've been a class project, but I'm not sure about that.)






*h/t to myblackfriendsays for the word "racish," a term I hereby deem most worthy of high circulation.

think that blackface is okay if white people are the butt of the joke

Chicago-Lake Liquors

Minneapolis, Minnesota
(click here for larger version)

On the absorbing and informative blog Kiss My Black Ads, Craig Brimm responds to an ad campaign currently being run by Chicago-Lake Liquors, a store located in a largely black area of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The images above are apparently billboards, and I've embedded below the three TV commercials also included in this campaign. (If you can't view them, they're also running now on the store's site here.)

The ads include "black" language, gestures, body language and so on, as performed by white, middle-class men (why no white women?). As I understand it, the joke is that these white folks are making fools of themselves by imitating black people.

Are these ads racist? Or are they making fun of racist white people? And if they're "only" doing the latter, does that really make the contemporary blackface here any more acceptable?

Does context matter here, with Chicago-Lake Liquors located in a largely black area? Given that, perhaps the ads allow black people to feel superior in a way to these white people, by laughing at their silly efforts to get hip by acting "black." Maybe, but that seems like a stretch.

Speaking of context -- while blackface is largely condemned in the U.S., because it perpetuates and solidifies racist stereotypes, it serves other purposes in some other countries. Take a look at these other examples; as a United States citizen trying to become more aware on a daily level of racism and my own whiteness, I have increasing trouble ever seeing blackface, literal or otherwise, as acceptable. And yet, I'm a strong believer in the meaning-generating significance of social, historical, and cultural context. Many things have different meanings in different contexts.

Last summer, I posted a video in which British TV star Tracey Ullman donned blackface, in order to satirize (effectively, I thought) self-aggrandizing white people who adopt African children. Now, though, I'm not so sure this skit is worth applauding, despite the good point that I think it makes.




Is that acceptable blackface?

Then there's this recent blackface performance by a Turkish newscaster. Apparently, according to ScoopThis.Org, this is a complicated joke of sorts, mostly meant to pay homage and gentle respect to Obama, and also to criticize Turkey itself for recent dealings with the U.S. BuzzFeed adds this: "Apparently, it's actually a metaphor for the way the Bush administration 'darkened' the face of the Turkish public, and how the anchor hopes Obama will turn things around."



Within a Turkish context, is this acceptable blackface?

Whether your answer is "yes" or "no," it does seem worthwhile to interpret this performance in light of the strong probability that Turkish society in general has little sense or understanding of the particular, deeply racist history of blackface in the United States.

I'm also reminded of the Japanese teenagers who used to dress up, and maybe still do, in a fashion known as Ganguro (ガングロ), which literally means "black-face."

According to a Western video report on this phenomenon, this look does not come from people of African descent; instead, its origins are traceable to a Japanese comic's donning of blackface in order to clown around in a loincloth in the guise of an aboriginal Australian.*

(source)

So, I do find the Chicago-Lake Liquors ads racist. Even though the satiric butt of their central joke is clueless white people instead of black people, their version of blackness is insultingly cartoonish. They also basically revive what amounts to an American white supremacist tradition that deserves to die, blackface minstrelsy.

Still, I wonder -- if we consider geographic, sociohistorical context, are some versions of blackface okay? Perhaps even, given its urban location, the contemporary American version in Chicago-Lake Liquors' ad campaign?


* As Restructure! notes in a comment, Ganguro is one of three such modes of teenage blackface identified in the video; Yamanba, which means "mountain hag," is the name of the one that's tied to a comic's racist parody of an aboriginal Australian. Jonathan Ross, the narrator of the video, notes that when Ganguro appeared after Yamanba, "many thought it was simply an homage" to the comic's "beloved creation," but apparently it's not.

spice up blandly white entertainment with bizarre asian characters

Ken Jeong in The Hangover

Who went to see The Hangover this weekend? Show of hands please . . .

Okay, so, what did you think of that weird Asian guy?

I just paid cash money to see this movie, so I can tell you a bit about it, including the unaccountably weird Asian guy. I thought that overall it was pretty funny, and for those of you who haven't seen it, I don't think I'm spoiling anything if I say the following.

The Hangover is about four American men (all white guys) who go to Vegas for a sort of stag night, since once of them is about to get married. They rent a super-expensive hotel suite and wake up to the sight of a live tiger, a chicken, and a totally trashed suite. One of the four, Doug, is missing.

The three remaining guys head out and eventually find their lost car. As they moan and groan through their hangovers, missing teeth and so on, they continue to wonder where Doug could've gone, until they hear someone pounding and yelling in the trunk.

"Doug!" they all shout, but when they open the trunk, out leaps a naked Asian man! He has a tire iron in his hands, and some weird, Kung Fu-like noises are coming out of his mouth. He quickly flattens the three white guys with some jujitsu or karate or something, then runs off into the distance.

None of the guys can remember who this Asian man might've been in the wilderness of the night before. The weird Asian guy shows up later (I won't give away how and why), and he acts even more weird.

Mr. Chow (played by Ken Jeong -- you might remember him as a quirky doctor in Knocked Up) soon demonstrates that he's cruel, arrogant, and probably gay, which is also supposed to be funny; as reaction shots of the white guys help us see, Mr. Chow is just headscratchingly off the wall. Mr. Chow laughs repeatedly at one of the white guys, taunting him as "the fat one." This laughter is clearly supposed to be extra-humiliating and emasculating, given its source -- a man who's not only bizarre, short and gay, but also Asian (the sexualized racism here is further cemented at one point, when he grabs his crotch and invites the white guys to do something with "my little Chinese balls!").

So, I'm wondering, just what the hell is Mr. Chow doing in this movie? I mean, what purpose does it serve to make the one Asian character so weird? No one else in the movie is this flatout bizarre, not even Mike Tyson, who shows up in a cameo.

I think that for one thing, this movie is made for a target audience that's assumed to be white. Mr. Chow seems meant to serve as a bit of spice for the blandly white characters at the movie's center. As usual, the few, stereotypical minor roles for black actors also serve this purpose, including a street-talkin' black drug dealer and a large, bossy, black female cop (who shouts "Not up in here!" and so on). However, while these black roles are stereotypical, they're not also over-the-top, just-plain weird, like the role of Mr. Chow.

I'm reminded of the unaccountably weird Asian characters in a KFC ad that I posted about recently. In both that commercial and this movie, the mood is supposed to be bouncy and funny, and that mood is meant to be somehow enhanced by these zany, cartoonish Asian men.

Is this zany-Asian-character thing a trend in corporate entertainment? Maybe it's just an old standby. In either case, I don't like it.

As a good, happy citizen-consumer, I'm supposed to brush aside any negative, "PC" feelings brought on by such dehumanizing, racist portrayals, and just yuck it up along with the other white people. But I just can't do that anymore.

Because of Mr. Chow, I left this movie with a bad taste in my mouth.

And finally, on top of that, why couldn't they make at least one of the four lead roles a non-white guy? Would that be so implausible?



In case you're interested and haven't seen a trailer for The Hangover yet, here ya go (there's also a "restricted" version, with more glimpses of Mr. Chow, here).

think that doing something racist is okay if you somehow distance yourself from the racism

So many forms of racism are emerging these days in response to the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor that I'm finding it difficult to keep up. Much of it is blatant, such as the bilious eruptions of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan, and some of it is more covert.

Here's a cartoon about Sotomayor that's making the blog-rounds this week. This image strikes me as clearly sexist, and its racism seems obvious as well. But then, does the latter actually depend on how you read it?

"fiesta time at the confirmation hearing"

Chip Bok @ The Oklahoman

It seems to me that the first problem with this cartoon is that it's ambiguous. A quick interpretation for many would be That's racist!, because it depicts a Latina as a piñata (and also depicts her hanging from what looks like a noose) and it plunks a Mexican stereotype on the head of Obama.

Who is not Mexican, but rather . . . African American.

Okaaaaaaay. . .

As I said, whatever this cartoon means can quickly become ambiguous. Here's one possible reading, given the presence of the rather confused elephants/Republicans:

Obama's selection of a Hispanic/Latin American woman was at least in part racially motivated, but that's because he knew that Republicans would reflexively attack her in terms of race, by dredging up all sorts of stereotypes about her (as represented by the piñata and sombrero). Thus, the cartoon represents Obama cleverly tricking Republicans into beating up on Sotomayor, making themselves look bad in the process.

That the cartoonist depicts the Republicans as hesitant, rather than rabidly ready to take the bait, suggests that he gives them some credit for being able to at least check their racist impulses. Or maybe, given the multiple cameras pointed at the scene, for knowing that they'll be seen as racist if they "beat up" Sotomayor in interviews, newspaper columns, and then the confirmation hearings.

That's one way to interpret this depiction of a racially charged political moment, the relative calm before Sotomayor's confirmation hearings. By this reading, the cartoon doesn't seem to land squarely on either side of the political spectrum (such as it is in the American corporate press, which almost always equates "Right" and "Left" merely with "Republican" and "Democratic").

This reading would also seem to absolve the cartoon, and the cartoonist, from charges of racism, because his depiction of blatantly racist stereotypes is distanced in a way. The stereotypes are supposed to be in Republicans' heads, and maybe in Obama's (because he knows they're in Republicans' heads), and not in the head of the cartoonist. He's depicting them, that is, ironically. Which would mean it's okay that the piñata and the sombrero are there, and that they're stereotypically attached to Mexico, instead of to Sotomayor's actual background place, Puerto Rico.

However, as anyone who's been paying attention to the new ways that racism works these days knows, ironic racism is still, basically, racism. "Hipster racism" is a good example, as exemplified by such purveyors as Asher Roth, Amy Sedaris, John Oliver, or a has-been trying to make a comeback with "I'm not REALLY a racist" humor, Paulie Shore.

Is this a hipster cartoon?

Maybe. But even if you read it that way, the imagery it contains does not escape the charge of "racism" just because its racist imagery is portrayed ironically. It still circulates, and thus perpetuates, racist imagery.

You could also read the cartoon as more "conservative," which actually makes sense, given the particular cartoonist, Chris Bok. A look at other cartoons on his site, Bokbluster, demonstrates that Bok has a conservative bent. For instance, here's his take on the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller, who was killed because he performed late-term abortions:



Get it? Sure, Tiller's murder was heinous, but what's really important is that late-term abortions are heinous too. (Bok adds below this image on his blog, "When Obama started talking about heinous acts of violence I didn’t know if he was talking about Dr. Tiller’s murder or his job description.")

Here's what Bok wrote on his blog about his "Sotomayor-as-piñata" effort:

The president is all about minority life experience -- except in the case of Clarence Thomas, as WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel rudely points out by quoting him. As for Judge Sotomayor’s non-Latina qualifications, Jeffery Rosen in TNR says he’s been told she’s, “not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench”. Gallup, however, shows that the public likes her and David Broder thinks the president once again has republicans right where he wants them.

Like the cartoon, not exactly straightforward, but I think Bok is still distancing himself here from the cartoon's blatantly racism imagery. Instead of putting the racism in the Republican's heads, he's putting it solely in Obama's head -- Obama is supposedly deploying racist stereotypes, merely by choosing a Latina nominee.

Bok seems to be saying, "Republicans wouldn't say anything racist; it's Obama who's the racist, because his affirmative-action Latina pick is a cynical attempt to bait Republicans into doing something racist."

Which still doesn't make the cartoon's racism okay (and probably makes it worse). Ironic racism from Conservatives is no less fundamentally racist than it is from hipsters.