In (Slight) Defense of Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews’ blunder following President Obama’s State of the Union Address is by now common knowledge to political junkies. But for those that missed it, Matthews was so enamored with Obama’s speech that, well, he “forgot [the President] was black for an hour:”

It's interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and past so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it's something we don't even think about. I was watching, I said, wait a minute, he's an African American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is president of the United States and we've completely forgotten that tonight -- completely forgotten it.

For Matthews, Obama’s speech was significant because, for that moment in time, he was stripped of his “blackness.” Obama wasn’t race-less, per se, but instead no longer black. The faux pas falls under the heading of colorblind ideology—i.e. the idea that racial inequality and division will disappear if we just stop obsessing over racial differences. According to the ideology’s adherents, adopting a “colorblind” outlook—pretending we don’t notice differences in skin pigment—is the pathway to a more equal, democratic civil society.

The problem with this framework in general, and Matthews’ comment in particular, is the effective whitewashing and subsuming of different cultures. In other words, the colorblind rhetoric can only be realized if all races, creeds and colors simply adopt and are assimilated into the dominant white discourse. The ideology of colorblindness doesn’t call for a new, radical framework of, say, American racial identity. No, by contrast, colorblind ideology accepts whiteness as a given from which “others” must assimilate. As Ta-Nehisi Coates argues, echoed by G.D. in Postbourgie’s recent Podcast, this failure to investigate whiteness is deeply problematic. Colorblind ideology obfuscates the intersection of race, power, and privilege by accepting the dominant racial identity as the standard from which all other races must acclimate. To accept a “colorblind” framework, therefore, is to accept the superiority and dominance of a singular racial identity.

Still, to defend Matthews ever-so-slightly, I do think his heart was in the right place. Look, the guy never thought he’d see an African-American leading the free world. For Matthews and plenty others of his generation, the idea of a black president was—until last year—unfathomable. So, in some respects, the intent of Matthews comment was to laud the normalization of a black man in a position of power. Which, in all fairness, is pretty remarkable. Just because Chris Matthews failed to introspectively challenge his own entrenched racial identity—no small task, if you ask me—doesn’t mean we should dismiss his astute observation wholesale.

Was Matthews’ commentary racist? Maybe—but only if we accept the sophisticated critique of colorblind ideology. Yet the average white American doesn’t exactly think about racial identity like this on a day-to-day basis. And, perhaps, it is this widespread pattern—not Matthews’ individual blunder—that lies at the root of the problem.

Dangerous Implications

In the months preceding December’s blockbuster explosion, two films have been dominating the box office: Lee Daniels’ Precious and John Lee Hancock’s The Blindside. Both films are based on critically acclaimed books and both take issues of racial inequality head-on. Albeit for different reasons, both films have also been lauded as inspiring stories of racial uplift.

I’d love to offer glowing reviews of both films, noting their sophisticated and nuanced take on contemporary race relations. I’d love to submit my own adoration for their careful depictions of disadvantage, dealing with complex and often contradictory emotions with honest realism. Most importantly, I’d love to express my satisfaction with their innovative explorations of solutions—some policy-relevant commentary, perhaps—to the problems of urban poverty vividly portrayed in each film.

But in reality, Precious is more of a shortsighted journey into insulated dysfunction, while The Blindside is closer to a condescending fairytale of Christian charity cure-alls.

Precious portrays internal, inner-city pathos like no film before it. The film’s main character, Precious, is morbidly obese, sixteen years old in the 8^th grade, pregnant with her second child from her father, living in abject poverty with her physically and emotionally abusive mother, and HIV-positive to boot. The film itself follows her through a particularly difficult period in her life, from the welfare office to the fried chicken spot to the alternative school where she can finally express herself—through writing in a journal, of course. But it rings of reality, and, anachronisms aside, speaks a few truths of urban poverty.

Yet the excessive focus on internal dysfunction and pathology ignores the role of external forces—be they shifts in the economy or social policy reforms—in perpetuating the conditions from which Precious emerges. For viewers ignorant to criminal justice reforms in the last two decades or AFDC or economic decentralization or employment discrimination, Precious provides a simplistic message of fried chicken loving, psychologically disturbed welfare queens. The system failed Precious well before her birth, but this reality of poverty is all but obscured by flying frying pans and hairy pigs’ feet. And the uplifting ending? Precious’ triumphant awakening as she exits the welfare office, finally standing up to her mother? It’s hard to forget that she’s still 16, with two mentally retarded children, homeless, no job, and slowly dying of AIDS. Forgive me for not feeling empowered.

The Blindside provides a glimpse into what Precious’ life could have been…had rich white people in Tennessee adopted her. The Blindside is based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless black teenager who’s athletic ability found him enrolled in a Memphis prep school. The gentle giant is ultimately adopted by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy after the Good Christian family discovers that poor Michael is, well, poor. They take Michael into their home and find him a tutor, raising his GPA to make him eligible for a college football scholarship. Michael ultimately “chooses” a scholarship from Ole Miss (his adopted parents are alums and boosters), and, as of the 2009 season, suits up for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens. For two hours of racial Kum Bay Ya, the white family accepts the black teenager without so much as an inkling of reservation, and the black teenager accepts the “crazy white people” without ever seriously questioning their intentions.

That’s not to say that The Blindside doesn’t include flashes of racial brilliance. In one scene, Leigh Anne (Michael Oher’s adopted mother, played by Sandra Bullock) has lunch with three of her affluent, white, female friends. One friend asks her how she can possibly feel comfortable with a big black boy in her home—she does have a teenage daughter, after all. Leigh Anne looks her square in the eyes, and with piercing subtlety, quietly states “Shame on you” as she leaves the restaurant. Later that night, she pulls her daughter aside and asks her—in a far less subtle tone—if she feels comfortable with Michael sleeping next door. She’s cool with it, but this mother-daughter awkwardness isn't the point of the scene. Rather, it illustrates the daily internal negotiations among socially conscious whites, constantly balancing pervasive stereotypes with their own moral inclinations. Racial literacy is a process, not a character trait, and this honest scene is quite powerful.

Ultimately, there are good scenes and bad scenes in each film. Yet both end with deeply problematic, insidious implications: Precious relegates disadvantage to internal pathos, and The Blindside perpetuates the dubious fairytale that a little bit of individual charity can solve group-level social problems. Why does concentrated poverty persist? Must be because the lives of poor African-Americans are in disarray as a result of drug abuse and parental neglect. And what can we do about it? Find some nice white people, and adopt all the helpless black children.

Internal dysfunction, solved with external charity. Not exactly the sophisticated portrayal of racial inequality I had hoped for.

Representing Reality with Integrity

Few television shows have received as much academic praise as HBO’s The Wire. From City Hall to the classroom to the street corner, The Wire brilliantly captured the heart and soul of urban America—the same heart and soul meticulously detailed in countless academic studies of urban inequality.

Yet the scholars that research urban America rarely come into contact with the actors that portray urban America in television or film. That is, until two weeks ago when three actors from The Wire—Andre Royo (Bubbles the junkie), Sonja Sohn (Kima the detective), and Michael Williams (Omar the stickup artist)—sat down with three scholars—Harvard sociologists William Julius Wilson and Larry Bobo, and Yale graduate student/Baltimore native Brandon Terry—to discuss the social policy implications and lessons from the show.

After the panel, Royo, Song, and Willams were escorted to a private after-party at The Harvard Lampoon, a building that houses the Harvard undergraduate humor magazine of the same name. Since the panel’s moderator is also my colleague in the Sociology department, I received a highly coveted (and much appreciated) invite to the party.

As a huge fan of the show, I could barely contain myself. I tried my best to keep it cool, keeping my camera in my pocket and resisting the urge to ask for an autograph. But when I sparked a conversation with Andre Royo, my composure started to fade. See, Bubs was my favorite character on the show, and Royo’s brilliant and careful portrayal of the homeless drug addict made my admiration for the character that much stronger. After a geek-out session about the show’s integration of professional actors with actual Baltimore natives (we went back and forth for a good five minutes listing each and every B-more local that appeared on the show), we started to talk about the inherent difficulty of portraying junkie.

Of course, playing a junkie isn’t that difficult, if the whole twitching-and-randomly-scratching-yourself caricature is your thing. But fans of The Wire know that Bubbles wasn’t your average junkie. There was an art to the way Royo played Bubs, a unique take on a classic character that fundamentally changed the way we approach “the junkie:” We never pitied him when he fell, but rather rooted for him to rise back up. In a strange way, the down-and-out junkie was the show’s most consistent hero.

According to Royo, a few unpaid consultants helped him develop the character. These consultants showed up at his trailer each morning, followed him and the production crew throughout Baltimore, and advised him through each and every scene. When he threw away a cigarette before smoking it to the filter, for example, they were quick to correct his mistake. How were they privy to the intimate details of life as a junkie? Because these consultants weren’t really consultants at all: They were the men and women that lived their lives on the streets of Baltimore. The very men and women Royo’s character was based on.

After each day, he’d retire to his trailer and remove his makeup. “And when I’d walk out,” he told me, “I looked at these people that had helped me all day, and I could see the betrayal in their eyes. At the end of the day, I could get cleaned up and go home, while they spent the night on the street. They looked at me like a sellout. It [messed] with my head for a long time.” Royo would feel depressed, and after particularly long days he often needed to spend time alone, away from everyone, to gather his thoughts. Here were men and women that could barely get by, struggling with addiction, and Royo was exploiting their lived experiences to get a paycheck. I asked Royo how he dealt with the guilt. “I just tried to portray the character—their world—with humanity. That’s all I could really do,” he replied. “But it was hard for me, emotionally.”

Detailing the lives of marginalized and disadvantaged communities requires a profound responsibility—a responsibility to be humble, compassionate, and above all else, honest. When Royo waxed philosophical, introspectively analyzing his role as both actor and representative, I couldn’t help but connect. As a qualitative researcher of urban inequality, I’m constantly dealing with the label of “privileged white guy that studies poor black people.” One the one hand, I feel a moral obligation to fight for those that are systematically disadvantaged. But on the other hand, such analyses can quickly become deeply paternalistic. Those that are familiar with my work and ideas know that I reject fetishizing “the other,” taking a comprehensive approach that avoids a singular focus on poor people of color. Still, the risk of exploitation never leaves the back of my mind. I never forget that I am making a career out of someone else’s life. I never forget who I am, constantly problematizing my ability to ever fully understand someone else’s world. And I never forget why I do it in the first place or why these issues matter. Like Royo, I constantly question myself, my work, and my role as a researcher.

Representing reality—be it on television or in academic research—requires a commitment to the craft of storytelling. But more importantly, it requires integrity. It was that integrity that made The Wire so powerful, and it is that critical honesty that makes good research. Urban polemics notwithstanding, this was the show’s most valuable lesson.

What Up?!

Watching the GOP scramble to rebrand their party’s image following President Obama’s election has been a fascinating development in American politics. But nothing has been quite as interesting as the GOP’s new website, launched yesterday, aptly found at GOP.com. In a dramatic push to make the Party appear more inclusive, the site depicts a wide range of “Faces of the GOP”—not surprisingly composed primarily of women and racial minorities.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele runs his own blog on the site, originally titled “What Up,” but later changed to “Change the Game” following ridicule from folks on the Left. Steele used his first blog post to laud the Internet’s mobilizing potential and prompt readers with the age-old question, “What makes you a Republican?” Judging from the Party’s current organizational schizophrenia, I can only imagine the range of responses Steele’s going to get.

Still, Steele’s efforts are admirable, if a little suspect. He really is committed to “changing the game,” making the GOP more inclusive in an era of multiculturalism and diversity. And GOP.com is a much better effort than Steele’s last push to attract more diversity to the Republican Party. When asked a few months back how he plans to bring more minorities to the GOP, Steele replied, “My plan is to say, ‘Ya’ll come.’” A member of the audience then shouted, “I’ll bring the collard greens,” to which Steele added, “I got the fried chicken and potato salad.” There’s no fried chicken recipes at GOP.com, but there certainly are many pictures of black faces sprinkled throughout the website. Dropping the racial stereotypes in favor of symbolic inclusion is, at the very least, a step forward for the GOP.

That said, it’s an understatement to interpret the site as a feigned, superficial attempt to promote racial diversity within a Party that still supports policies of racial inequality. It feels forced, to say the least. The fact that the website lacks a Spanish language conversion option only adds credence to its symbolic—rather than material, substantive, or tangible—purpose. We are talking about a Party with a long, storied history of racialized politics, after all. You know, the same Party that coined the term “welfare queens,” used Willie Horton for political advantage, and sent around emails depicting President Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. Yeah, that shining Party of racial inclusion.

It is at GOP.com that we truly see race, politics, and racial politics collide and intersect. Steele—the first black Chairman of the RNC—is desperately trying to respond to America’s changing demographics, pandering to a slice of the electorate that, at least in part, affected the outcome of last November’s historic election. That folks (often from the Left) are questioning Steele’s blackness only emphasizes the infusion of race in American politics. And it’s not just “racial politics” at play—you know, politicians catering to different racial groups—but an example of how race and racial considerations inform political messages and campaigns. Race is omnipresent in American politics, just as it is omnipresent in American culture. The content of GOP.com illustrates the political imperative of racial inclusion, but it’s difficult to imagine how the Party can reconcile this lofty goal with the politics of white resentment that has historically formed the Party’s base. Factor in Steele’s racial identity, and the RNC emerges as a social laboratory of racial dynamics, balancing multiculturalism with implicit racism and operating within the context of our nation’s first multi-racial President. Symbolic gesture or not, GOP.com is a window into a layered world of race and politics.

It’s unclear how Americans, minority or otherwise, will react to GOP.com. There are, indeed, plenty of racial minorities that believe in limited government, states’ rights, and many other aspects of the Republican Party’s platform. But I imagine it’s hard to get on board with a Party that fans the flames of racial resentment for political gain. Will GOP.com “change the game?” Maybe, but it will be an uphill battle for the RNC. Unfortunately for Steele, a few black and brown faces on a website—the same site that beckons minorities by asking “What Up?!”—can’t exactly make up for decades of racial animus and exclusionary policies. The RNC’s racial conundrum may ultimately prove too difficult to overcome.

What The Notorious BIG Can Tell Us About Race and Immigration

In Black Identities, Harvard sociologist Mary Waters analyzes the racial and ethnic identities of first and second generation West Indian immigrants in New York City. At its core, Black Identities is a study of paradox. Waters eloquently states, “[For West Indians], America is a contradictory place…a land of greater opportunities than their homelands but simultaneously a land of racial stigma and discrimination. Immigrants readily buy into an image of American affluence, but are grounded in American racial and economic realities. One respondent noted despair that America is a “white world” in which “white people have all the money,” but in the same breath rejoiced in the fact that America is “a place where everyone has opportunity.” This is the inherent contradiction of the “American dream:” First generation West Indian immigrants must reconcile their lofty expectations of achievement with the myth of American social mobility as they grapple with structural and interpersonal racism in their day-to-day lives.

Second generation West Indian immigrants are also directly confronted with uniquely American race relations, resulting in contradictory immigrant identities. On the one hand, some immigrants embrace their Caribbean ancestry and construct social boundaries separating themselves from black Americans. On the other hand, many young, second generation West Indians (a plurality of her sample) buy into the uniquely American racial caste system and self-identify as black, abandoning other “ethnic options.” There wouldn’t be anything wrong with indentifying as “black,” if of course a slew of disadvantages and prejudices didn’t follow as a result. When race collides and interacts with social structure and culture, West Indian immigrant identity precariously wavers between ethnic loyalty and American assimilation. Paradoxically, the choice to remain loyal to their West Indian heritage affords these immigrants more social mobility than direct incorporation into American culture, as buying into American stereotypes often means downward mobility.

Sound familiar? Oddly reminiscent of a certain Brooklyn born rap legend? Indeed, The Notorious BIG represents an interesting case study—and exemplar—of Waters’ extensive empirical data. Biggie was born to a hardworking, loving Jamaican immigrant mother. While his father was largely absent from his life, Biggie’s mother held steady employment as a pre-school teacher and by all accounts was an involved parent. She enrolled her son in a private middle school in Brooklyn where he thrived academically. This scholastic success, of course, came to an end when Biggie began selling drugs at age 12. A (pun intended) notorious crack dealer, he eventually dropped out of high school, only to reach temporary stardom but ultimately suffer an untimely death.

A scene near the beginning of the recent biopic Notorious, in which Biggie’s character exhibits admiration and lust for the life of a street hustler, is telling. Waters’ research suggests that Biggie’s identity as a second generation West Indian immigrant could have, presumably, led him to continue his studies and perhaps achieve upward mobility—distancing himself both from the general stereotypes of American blacks and the actual hustlers in his immediate surroundings. But, when confronted with the reality of American race relations—in this example, Bed-Stuy/Clinton Hill in the early ‘90s—Biggie could have just as easily been propelled to identify more with the black Americans selling drugs on the corner by his house. Like many poor second generation West Indian immigrants, Biggie lacked local models of success, a disparity caused by urban economic marginalization and resulting in a push to identify with a certain type of black American.

Big had an ethnic “choice,” sure; claim his Jamaican roots, or step in line with America’s vision of race. But it was a structured choice provided under economic duress and within the context of a uniquely American racial order. The problem is, both paths of ethnic identity formation have problematic results for blacks as a whole. By distancing themselves from the “black underclass,” many West Indians reaffirm long-standing stereotypes of blacks as lazy, violent, and generally inferior. In this model, immigrants achieve individual mobility at the expense of group advancement. In other words, individual immigrants can use this boundary work to catapult themselves toward success, but it negates the possibility for the advancement of blacks as a group. West Indians face American stereotypes and norms of black insolence, and their rejection—and even acceptance—of this identity solidifies white preconceptions. This puts West Indian immigrants in a uniquely difficult position—a Catch-22 in which either path of identity formation reinforces a firm black-white color line.

Biggie’s life story dovetails nicely with Waters’ analysis, complicating traditional studies of race, immigration, and assimilation in the United States. Of course, Biggie’s life obviously doesn’t reflect the experiences of all second generation West Indian immigrants. Still, Waters’ analysis in Black Identities does help explain, in part, why “G-E-D, wasn’t B-I-G.”

The White Racist Meme

It would be an understatement to argue that the mass media has taken on racial analysis with unprecedented zeal since the election of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, in attempts to present fair and balanced news coverage, cable news programs have typically included panels with representatives from both sides of the Left-Right ideological spectrum.

The problem with this method, of course, is that subsequent analyses usually follow the same tired pattern: “That was racist!” vs. “That is ridiculous! Race was not a factor!” At best, this produces unproductive exchanges. At worst, it woefully simplifies complex social process and interactions, institutionalizing diametrically opposed ideological camps instead of offering nuanced analysis.

Luckily, the Washington Post has Eugene Robinson, who wrote an important op-ed last Friday:

“Of course it's possible to reject Obama's policies and philosophy without being racist. But there's a particularly nasty edge to the most vitriolic attacks -- a rejection not of Obama's programs but of his legitimacy as president. This denial of legitimacy is more pernicious than the abuse heaped upon George W. Bush by his critics (including me), and I can't find any explanation for it other than race.

I'm not talking about the majority of the citizens who went to town hall meetings to criticize Obama's plans for health-care reform or the majority of the "tea bag" demonstrators who complain that Obama is ushering in an era of big government. Those are, of course, legitimate points of view. Protest is part of our system. It's as American as apple pie.

I'm talking about the crazy "birthers." I'm talking about the nitwits who arrive at protest rallies bearing racially offensive caricatures -- Obama as a witch doctor, for example. I'm talking about the idiots who toss around words like "socialism" to make Obama seem alien and even dangerous -- who deny the fact that he, too, is as American as apple pie.”

Not to be outdone, Frank Rich weighed in on Saturday:

“But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.”

Robinson and Rich hit the nail on the head. To argue one way or another that current debates over healthcare or other social policies are solely “about race” is to miss the point entirely.

Race is omnipresent in this country. Racial distinctions inform policy debates, delineate opportunity, and structure social interactions. But that doesn’t mean that all white people, or all white protestors, are uniformly “racist.” Nor can the omnipresence of race sufficiently and adequately capture the nuance of white racial identity. For different people, different social processes precipitate racial prejudice. Some learn from their parents, while others learn from conflict in the workplace. Some develop prejudices from economic competition with minorities, while others experience blind ignorance as a result of extreme social isolation. Among the so-labeled “racists,” some hold disdain for “welfare queens,” while others fear random violence from young black men. Some are overwhelmingly concerned with illegal immigration and “protecting our borders,” while others can’t even stand the thought of sitting next to a minority. Some believe in the racial profiling of Middle Eastern folks at airports, while others blame blacks for their own disadvantage. Some engage in recreational racism, while others use disdain for social policies like affirmative action as proxies for bigotry. Some whites hold a combination of these prejudices, while others hold none. Sometimes these prejudices are grounded in real life experiences, but sometimes they aren't. At the very least, white racial identity and prejudice is complicated and takes innumerable, varied forms.

To discuss and analyze race is not to revert to an either/or, racist/not racist false dichotomy. Race matters as an everyday reality of inequality, yes, but it’s not as simple as the White Racist Meme suggests. Race matters because it’s always mattered. But racism matters in increasingly complex ways.

The question is not if race matters. The question is how.

"The Rest All Look Alike"

Last week’s episode of Mad Men was filled with thought provoking social commentary. Daniel wrote an excellent wrap-up, but one point deserves deeper context and discussion.

Roger Sterling’s hilarious rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home”—donning sloppily applied blackface—was just one of the episode’s jaw-dropping moments. Sterling’s minstrel performance was timely, airing only a few weeks after rapper Nas and Nick Cannon’s mock minstrel Youtube video went viral.

While Mad Men situates minstrelsy in the late 1950s/early 1960s, blackface remains a staple of American pop culture. Just swing by your local university’s frat row during Halloween and you’ll see my point. And no, this isn’t a false generalization because, yes, I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

That’s not to suggest that dressing in blackface carries a maliciously racist intent, however. Indeed, minstrel shows are just one example of what historian David MP. Freund brilliantly refers to as “recreational racism.” Think of it as the ultimate “What do you call a group of black guys running down a hill?” joke: a collective celebration of whiteness and white superiority at the expense of racial and ethnic minorities. Whites that engage in such rituals of racial entitlement often rationalize their behaviors by noting, “It’s all in good fun”—implying that recreational racism is less incendiary than more overt forms of racial prejudice or discrimination.

The image accompanying this post comes from my own research on a Detroit neighborhood—a community I refer to as Woodline Gardens, to preserve anonymity. It was published in the neighborhood’s local newsletter in July of 1947, quite a few years before Roger Sterling’s fictional performance on Mad Men. Woodline residents were exceptionally proud of their new community tradition, including three separate pictures of their inaugural minstrel show in the community newsletter. The caption of this particular picture reads: “The two white mean are C.R. Richards and C.H. Buckwater, interlocuters. The rest all look alike.”

This picture perfectly (and succinctly) articulates the underlying logic of minstrel shows and other forms of recreational racism. The rest all look alike, as if any race other than Caucasian represented a monolithic group worthy of degradation and parody. The logic of this phrase, rooted in privilege, elitism, and social isolation, wipes any semblance of humanity away from African Americans. Do blacks have individual personalities, morals, or feelings? Nope; they all look alike.

Understanding social isolation is paramount to placing minstrel shows in the proper context of American race relations. Residents of Woodline Gardens, like Roger Sterling, were socially and spatially isolated from poor, black, and poor black communities. Part of this isolation stemmed from physical boundaries (residential segregation), but cultural boundaries (styles of life, patterns of consumption) were also important. This isolation fueled racial stereotypes and precipitated the communal embrace of recreational racism.

Your everyday American probably doesn’t know the historical context behind blackface or minstrelsy. Movies like Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Nas & Cannon’s awkward public service announcement largely fall on deaf ears as a result. To the average person, blackface appears to be a theatrical device employed sporadically across film and television, whitewashed of its less than wholesome history.

But blackface is not without a history firmly nested in contentious race relations and struggles for racial equality. As David Freund argues, it’s recreational racism, but that doesn’t make its continued use any less problematic. Hopefully, with each reference to minstrelsy in pop culture, we move that much closer to a clearer understanding of blackface in its proper historical context. Widespread, accurate historical knowledge is never a bad thing.

Racial Inequality and the Rhetoric of Responsibility

Last Spring, Brown University economist Glenn Loury presented at Harvard sociology’s Workshop on Race and Black Youth Culture. He titled his talk “Culture, Causation and Confusion: Why Bill Cosby is Wasting His Time,” engaging with the pervasive “rhetoric of responsibility” frequently applied to blacks in the United States. As Loury argued, our public discourse is saturated with demands on the so-called black community to police its own ranks. This rhetoric of “black communal responsibility” suggests that the solutions to racial inequality are cultural, and the ill-defined “black community” should therefore bear the burden of “fixing” its collective deficiencies.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility is a common response to discussions of racial inequality, and black folks seem to be hearing it from both sides. From within, you have Bill Cosby, John McWhorter and even President Obama stressing the role of black parents in the cultivation and education of black children. From the outside, you have a slew of white conservatives, wide-eyed and incredulous, wondering why the black community just can’t lift itself out of disadvantage.

The problem, as Loury astutely pointed out, is that categories such as “black community,” “black culture,” and “black leaders” are political constructs void of intellectual definitions. So-called “culture talk” imputes a sense of groupness where no such political collectivity exists. African-Americans, as a race, have no institutional structures to police themselves and bring about the kind of solutions culture critics (like Cosby) demand. They don’t hold conferences or summits—at least, none that all blacks are required to attend by virtue of their racial identity. There aren’t any meeting minutes we can rifle through to make sure they are working to “fix” their collective culture. This notion of an aggregate “black community” was invented ex post facto with a distinctly political motive: impute agency on a racial category where none exists, and wipe our hands clean of any societal responsibility for inequality.

That’s not to say that racial groups don’t share certain histories, privileges, or disadvantages by virtue of their socially constructed racial identity. Moreover, many racial and ethnic groups often share certain traditions, rituals, and affinities. As a Jew, I frequently refer to myself as a “member of the tribe,” implying both a shared allegiance and shared history with my fellow Tribesmen. Such is the general case for other races and ethnicities in the U.S., African-Americans included.

But that doesn’t mean they can be expected to act like a civic collectivity or a civic organization and, by extension, engage in civic action. Who elected Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson to be the spokesmen for the so-called black community? I don’t seem to recall a campaign or election for these self-appointed leaders. Yet the “black culture” rhetoric, purported so frequently in public discourse, assumes their civic appointment. The ability of blacks to act as a distinct group is taken for granted—an assumption of their collective agency. But a racial category is not a group with civic powers. Nor is it a collective body with a unified political or cultural agenda. As University of Chicago sociologist Mario Small has argued on countless occasions, there are multiple black communities and multiple black cultures.

The rhetoric of black communal responsibility imputes collective agency where none exists, assuming group-level cultural deficiencies while ignoring the society-level creation and maintenance of racial inequality. The logic is problematic and condescending at best, dangerous and incendiary at worst. It at once obscures the tremendous diversity among African-Americans and distracts our attention away from the actual causes of inequality. Whatever “the black community” is, we can’t exactly depend on “it” to solve, or do, anything without the institutional means to solve, or do, anything. Assuming communal responsibility is dead-end rhetoric, promoting a self-fulfilling prophecy of disadvantage. It serves a political purpose, but does little to advance our intellectual understanding of inequality.

Individual communities can certainly make important contributions toward greater social equality. But you just can’t expect an artificially constructed group, based on an arbitrarily constructed racial category, to solve inequality at the national level by itself. You can’t expect action where no institutional ability to act exists.

Monday's Musings: New Name, New Look But Same Old Neighborhood, Same Old Politics

I am not one much for looking down on new initiatives that aim to help others. In fact, it is usually quite the opposite, especially when it comes to education initiatives (one of my areas of academic interest). On Sunday, Kathleen McGrory wrote about the changes to Edison Senior High School in Miami in her article “Miami Edison Senior High Gets New Name, New Look.” A little background as to why these changes are so important and worthy of attention. Edison Senior High (aka Haiti High) is a school in one of Miami’s most economically disadvantaged areas, Liberty City, is predominately Haitian (the area is generally called Little Haiti), has made headlines for its deplorable performance on state exams (the FCAT—a grade of F in 7 of its 8 last performances) and tensions between students and staff recently culminated (or rather degraded into) in a riot.

McGrory reports that the new initiatives are aimed at adding that spark, providing that incentive, to get students to take education seriously. To use her words, “the challenge [is to] take one of the state’s lowest-performing schools and transform it into a place the county’s best students are clamoring to attend.” She is right to call such an ambitious goal a challenge. It is herculean task for even the most ambitious of us all. I applaud Miami-Dade County Public School officials for embarking upon such an arduous journey; they are surely to be commended.

One of the key changes to the school that may prove to be its more attractive and efficacious features, to students and teachers alike, is the internal restructuring of the curriculum, broadly defined. More specifically, Edison will now be structured like a university with four colleges within it where students get to choose the college that best fits the academic and extracurricular activities. I believe that this is important because it at once empowers students through their ability to choose and also matching teachers with students actually interested in the material being taught. The former should not be taken lightly; having control over one’s life, in this case, one aspect of one’s life, is empowering. The latter deserves equal credit as having engaged teachers with equally engaged teachers is something special.

However, as the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Again, I am not arguing against the program; I am simply being and arguing for others to be cautious of accepting such new initiatives blindly for in our zeal for progressive and promising projects, we can become shortsighted. The reason I go along this cautionary road specifically in the case of Edison and its changes is best explained using a car metaphor (bare with me). The oil is the lifeblood of the car; without it, you are not going far. The dirtier the oil, the worse the car runs until it finally breaks down. So far so good. Well, to me, the kids are the oil. The school, the car—literally and figuratively the engine of social (im)mobility. If the students only interacted with the school things would run smoothly (or at least smoother than they do now). The problem is that the oil—these students—must first run through the muck, the dirt, the filth that is the remains of Liberty City, a part of Miami that is poor, hostage to criminal activity, and still recovering from race riots of generations past. It goes without saying that this areas is also as political disenfranchised as it is economically. I am not making an argument against the individuals who attend Edison or live in this area. What I am saying in connecting the students, school, and community has been posited by many immigration and race scholars like Harvard Sociologist Mary Waters and Princeton Sociologist Alejandro Portes: the immediate location of these immigrant and native communities matter with respect to the students’ well-being and how they come to formulate their identities and their connection (or lack thereof) to schooling and mainstream routes to upward mobility.

Portes with his colleague Min Zhou argue that segmented assimilation occurs when immigrants are blocked from upward mobility by different barriers, whether they be political, language, social, cultural, or any combination of the above. In response to such barriers, subsequent generations of immigrants (the second generation) begin to identify with different subcultures—in the case of the Haitian population in Miami, poor, inner-city blacks who have experienced the effects of both interpersonal and structural racism. This is where I find such an initiative as an amazing step forward but one with the possibility to do more harm than good because it places all its resources in the school to the neglect of the community. The problem is that is that if this program does not succeed with amazing results, then cultural arguments will be everyone’s rationale for why things didn’t work: these people, the individuals and their cultural patterns at writ large, are somehow defective. The comment box for the article already presents itself as evidence for such a prediction. However, such attacks against the group would never take factors like the deleterious effects of residential segregation, the cumulative disadvantages of living in concentrated poverty, the racial politics of Miami with respect to its Cuban, Haitian, Black, and White citizenry, and the like into consideration.

The new name—Edison EduPlex—new look—paint job, planting trees, the works—and new “structure”—transforming the internal running of the school to mimic a university with four colleges within it—addresses structural problems of the school. However, by effectively placing the school in the spotlight and key component of the reform efforts to the detriment of a more critical assessment of the antithetical role the community can play when attempting to create initiatives of this kind, we may find ourselves with the same problem once the attraction of the newness wears off. Is this a recipe for change or one of another cycling of resources with mixed and inconclusive results?

A Different Kind of Concentration Effect: Mental Health in the Juvenile Justice System

A friend from Amherst passed along a Solomon Moore's NYT article, "Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System," and asked SSL to comment on it. The article speaks to the current state of mental health issues within the criminal justice systems. More specifically, the trend of courts to funnel juvenile delinquents who have documented mental health issues into the juvenile criminal justice system instead of hospitals or mental health facilities. In responding to the request, I will speak on the content of the article and the article itself.

First, this is some depressing material: “About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates—who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999—have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.” These numbers are surprising to me because, admittedly, I tend not to factor in mental illnesses like bipolar disorder when thinking about criminal activity. I think part of the reason why the two are decoupled in my mind is because I always considered (emphasis on the past tense here) certain mental disorders as “problems” of the rich (and white). I am revealing my own biases but when one thinks about how mental disorders, as opposed to physical or medical disorders like diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and the like, are represented in popular media, the news, and even in schools, “illnesses” become stratified by race and class in the mind. To give one example, think back to when the character Kim from Moesha, says something like “Mama always said that the only thing black folks need is Jesus and Oprah.” I do not speak for all; I am simply relating the abstract image of diseases with their social groupings. Reading this article made me realize even more that such stereotypes, as stereotypes always are, obscure reality.

The fact that so many of the youth in the criminal justice system are suffering from mental illnesses is frightening. For if these documented number are this high, what are the projections for those actually suffering but have not received any form of documented help as of yet. However, what saddens me more than the staggering statistics is the slippery slope recent fiscal cutbacks have created for this population. In the article, Moore highlights the fact that since the incorporation of powerful “antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals” across the nation. What is worse now, given our “we so broke” phase of the recession, more and more youth who are being funneled into the criminal justice system instead of mental health facilities because mental health facilities (both at the community and state levels) are harder hit by budget cutbacks. Even parents have opted to send their children to get help in juvenile facilities because community based facilities are disappearing. In other words, instead of being in an environment with trained mental health professionals, juvenile offenders are instead in a farm environment: prison guards as trained herders, wardens as farm owners, and padded cells as one’s pen.

This “farm” metaphor leads to a different from of concentration effect. In the study of urban poverty, to channel Harvard Sociologist William Julius Wilson, concentration effect is the term used to capture the consequences of the historical social transformation of the inner city which resulted in the disproportionate concentration of the most disadvantaged segments of the urban black population, creating a social milieu significantly different from the environment that existed in all black communities several decades before. This current social milieu is one of rampant crime, high violence, and other social dislocation that plague inner city environments. The prison is yet another one of these institutionalized environments where the concentration of disadvantage leads to increased aberrant behavior.

For those who already suffer from mental disorders being treated like chattel and placed with others who are experiencing the “jail house effect” only places fuel on the fire. To put it simply, it compounds the problem further. It is not surprising that one hears accounts like “he’s been in 130 fights since he’s been with us” (though I think 130 may be an exaggerated number). Such new policy lines by judges, according to Moore, to argue that juvenile are better than mental health facilities ignores such a reality.

With respect to that article itself, I find it troubling that race and class are at once conflated and implicit. I find this problematic because nowhere in the article are we given demographic characteristics to access exactly who the juvenile delinquents are. Though it may not be point of the article, because we are left in the dark (literally and figuratively) with facts about the “who,” we also do not know if even in this disadvantaged population if everyone is placed on the same track into the jails and not mental health facilities. In other words, is there tracking even amongst those who are tracked?

However, the question becomes how do we know that the population is disadvantaged? The answer, which troubles me as well, is because of the offhand comments included in the article. Take for instance, including what the grandmother said about her troubled grandson and then the psychiatrist who Moore uses to close the article. We are left with the picture of abandoned children and helpless (or hopeless) parents.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.” (Grandmother)

“Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail,” said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. “The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with each kid.” (Psychiatrist).

With its faults, I think Moore forces us to look at how the changing policies within the courts are dovetailing with the fiscal reality of communities, states, and the nation as a whole at the expense of those who are in need of help the most. For in this case, the help these young individuals need are beyond changes they can engender themselves.

The Reverse of Discrimination is "Not Discrimination"

I recently went on a road trip with my uncle, traveling from Boston to New York for my brother’s high school graduation. As we drove through western Massachusetts, our conversation eventually drifted to employment and the economy. In what would prove to be a fascinating discussion, my uncle began to recount his first job interview after college. He graduated from Northeastern University in the ‘70s—right around the time President Nixon institutionalized affirmative action and quotas served as the nation’s predominant employment policy. He had worked in Northeastern’s admissions office for a few years, so when a full-time position opened up at the University of Michigan’s admissions office, he made the 14 hour drive halfway across the country to interview for the job.

A funny thing happened during his interview, however. According to my uncle, his interviewer immediately apologized as he entered the room. ‘Look, I hate to say this,’ the interviewer said. ‘But there’s no way we’re going to be able to hire you. If you were a woman or black, I’d hire you on the spot. You are totally qualified, but we’ve got to fill our quotas.’ Naturally, my uncle was none too pleased, commenting plainly (but forcefully) that acts of “reverse discrimination” are unfair. I did my best to defend affirmative action policies, discussing their historical necessity, noting their negligible affect on white male employment, and even waxing philosophical about the entitlement associated with staking claim and ownership over falsely constructed “spots” in colleges or the workforce. It was all to no avail, though. Cliché as the phrase is, my uncle was “passed up” for the job, and there wasn’t much I could say.

We’d be naïve to trivialize my uncle’s experience or write it off as just another “reverse discrimination” fairytale. It happened. It’s a reality. The problem was not that this was an exaggeration; instead, it was that my uncle forgot about his lifetime of advantage as he harped on that one, single experience.

See, claiming reverse discrimination is a lot like recounting your golf score. It’s always the one or two bad rounds that leave the deepest, most painful impressions. You always remember the bogey on the 9th hole, but never the birdie on the 10th. Somehow, the abundance of good holes are taken for granted, while the one or two missteps are amplified and taken as indicative of the entire round. Sure, my uncle remembers getting passed up for the job with the University of Michigan—an event that (probably) happened the way he said it did. But, in the process of recounting this single experience, he forgot about a lifetime of job interviews in which he directly benefited from his whiteness or his gender. In all the jobs my uncle interviewed for, how many times were applicants immediately rejected for having “black” sounding names? How many women were turned away because employers didn’t think they could handle the stress of the job? How many times did my uncle’s employment prospects benefit from acts of statistical discrimination that weeded out potentially qualified minority applicants?

Still, many others that hide behind the “reverse discrimination” mantra often have few, if any, personal experiences to justify their outrage. But the golf analogy still fits. These folks are the ones that throw a fit over their buddy’s 10-stroke handicap. That’s not fair, they complain. But in their moral grandstanding, they forget all of their privileges that negate—and even surpass—their buddy’s handicap. These privileges may include the country club membership that afforded them hours of practice on the course, the childhood golf lessons their parents paid for, or the hand-me-down Callaways their father didn’t need anymore after he got his new set of clubs. Their buddy with the 10-stroke handicap was just allowed to join the country club recently, had parents that couldn’t afford to invest in clubs or other activities, and never inherited any valuable assets. In short, the two golfers didn’t begin the round on equal footing.

With some folks, claims of reverse discrimination are proxies for implicit assumptions of black or brown intellectual inferiority. The operative word here, however, is some. Other folks have had very real experiences with so-called “reverse discrimination”—it’s just that these isolated instances fill a disproportionate share of their memory. The real problem with the “reverse discrimination” debate (besides the logically incoherent label “reverse discrimination”—what is the reverse of discrimination anyway? Not discrimination?) is our inability to honestly discuss the issue. The question shouldn’t be whether or not this incident—or others like it—actually occurred. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, how often does this happen, and to what effect? Such acts rarely occur anymore, and the effect is almost always minor or marginal. And, of course, the folks that decry “reverse discrimination” have almost always benefited from other instances of privilege. They just tend to forget about them.

The Politics of "Othering"

Frank Rich’s column from Saturday’s New York Times is too good to go unnoticed here at Social Science Lite. Rich brilliantly tackles the “birthers” (proponents of The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World*), placing their rhetoric within our so-called “national conversation on race:”

“Obama’s election, far from alleviating paranoia in the white fringe, has only compounded it. There is no purer expression of this animus than to claim that Obama is literally not an American — or, as Sarah Palin would have it, not a “real American.” The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, S.C., in the real America of Dixie.

[…]

One of the loudest birther enablers is not at Fox but CNN: Lou Dobbs, who was heretofore best known for trying to link immigrants, especially Hispanics, to civic havoc. Dobbs is one-stop shopping for the excesses of this seismic period of racial transition. And he is following a traditional, if toxic, American playbook. The escalating white fear of newly empowered ethnic groups and blacks is a naked replay of more than a century ago, when large waves of immigration and the northern migration of emancipated blacks, coupled with a tumultuous modernization of the American work force, unleashed a similar storm of racial and nativist panic.”

Racial panic over minority invasions and challenges to white hegemony is nothing new; the history of “othering” minorities is a long and storied one, with its organizational zenith going as far back as the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. There, white Americans celebrated the supposed supremacy of American culture, collectively embracing whiteness as they mocked and ridiculed “savage” foreign societies. White Americans defined their unstable racial identity in opposition to an ill-defined, uncivilized racial “other.” At the Chicago World’s Fair, whiteness, nationalism and modernity were all intertwined: to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American was to be white; to be white was to be intellectually superior, patriotic, and American. Sounds familiar, right?

This collective re-drawing of racial boundaries has been a common American practice during times of economic distress and demographic change. Take the influx of African-Americans into manufacturing jobs during the 1930s and 40s. This onslaught of blacks into Northern industrial cities during the Second Great Migration precipitated violent resistance in formerly all-white neighborhoods and workplaces. In more recent decades, the growing Hispanic population in America has spawned a pervasive anti-immigrant ethos with blatantly racist overtones. In each instance, white Americans enacted social, political, and economic structures—such as restrictive covenants, redlining, and political gerrymandering—to limit upward mobility when people of color challenged their hegemonic power.

So-called “birthers”—questioning President Obama’s country of birth—are only the latest in a long line of white Americans dead-set on “othering” minority populations. There's just no way this Obama guy is one of us. This "othering" of President Obama is exactly where we need to focus our discussions of race in America—not on individualized instances of racial discrimination, but on historical continuities and the institutionalization of racial animus. Our “national conversation on race” won’t happen over beers, but through careful historical analyses of racial identity formation and the hoarding of economic and political resources.

The politics of “othering” has long been a dominant facet of public discourse. No “national conversation on race” is going to do much if we don’t address this core aspect of American political identity.


* I'm officially coining "The Greatest Political Conspiracy in the History of the World" as my new term for the "birther" claims.

Monday's Musing: Race Makes Scripted Appearance Yet Again

Quick Point: Race makes Scripted, Ten Second Appearance (Yet Again)

Suffice it to say, Hollywood loves the Hood.

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to accompany her to see the film version of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. I had no idea what the movie was about so I checked out the trailer and then researched the book and its author a little bit. I said, sure, it's five dollars, “Why not?” So I go. And yes, like the other millions of people who saw the movie, the tears began to roll well before the movie got going. I was ready to say “job well done” until a short ten second segment came across the screen that immediately didn’t sit right with me but I wasn’t sure why.

I am speaking specifically about the new ending the directors gave to the movie. For those of you who have not seen the movie or read the book, read no further unless you don’t care that I ruin both. First, it must be said that even Picoult did not hold her tongue about the movie’s alternative ending. However, I believe her distaste for the ending came from a different place than my own. She disliked it because they changed which daughter dies. In the book, Kate, the sick daughter, lives because Anna, the younger daughter, gets into an accident where she is deemed brain-dead. Thus, the accident allows Kate access to Anna’s organs and the lifesaving medical procedures they could not do otherwise. In the movie, the family moves on but comes together to remember Kate by traveling as a family on her birthday. The mother returns to work as a lawyer, the son focuses on his art, and the father retires to work with inner-city youth. Picoult argued that it flattened the story and made it too neat of ending. I was troubled by something much more viral.

Race was not a factor in this film. Or rather, due to the racial composition of the family and their surroundings, race is invisible, unmarked, thus white. Sure there were issues of class and privilege—the mother was able to leave work as a semi-high powered lawyer to take care of Kate and the father worked as a fireman with some pull—but even this was not a factor in the movie. To be specific, my reaction did not come from the rescripting of Kate’s death, the son’s artistic rather than arsonist behavior, or the mother’s life post Kate’s death; it was the rescripting of the father’s. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Brian, the stargazer, would all of a sudden volunteer with inner-city youth (shown as all black), the very few black bodies that you see in this movie besides the one nurse who herself plays the part of the stereotypical “black nurse.” Hollywood Strikes Again.

What are we to make of the fact that in their right to exercise artistic license with the movie, in their freedom to bring this book to “life” in a way they saw fit, they included poor, inner-city youth as the mechanism through which the father regains his life? I say it once more: Hollywood Strikes Again. I spoke about the scripting of race in movies with Pixar’s UP. Although this particular incident in My Sister’s Keeper was less than ten seconds of the total movie as compared to being the “major” minor character that Beta was, it stands as yet another example that the representation of African Americans in different mediums is so often conflated with class—and a specific class (read: lower class)—and place—this time, as with many times before it, the inner city. In other words, in an otherwise good (for its content) and homogenously white (for its cast and setting) movie, the dark birthmark of American race relations and images of racial groups, stands out the same way as it did on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Georgiana from the short story The Birthmark.

I do not believe that I am making a mountain out of ten second molehill. In their concerted and calculated actions to adapt a Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, they casted dark bodies to fulfill that old familiar role of those in need to help, those in need of aid.

Black In America 2: Africanism and Black Divisions by Class and Age

Many academics, public intellectuals, and fellow bloggers have now voiced their opinions about Black In America 2. Some have praised it as being better than last year while others have said that Black In America 2 and the number 2 had much more in common than CNN would like to admit. I am more on the side of it being better than last year but agree that it is still off the mark. One of the key differences that made it better than last year is that in the first segment (of which I will speak about further below) they grounded the discussion of the poorer students and the problems they face in the historical legacy of and lasting effects of the rapid deterioration of their neighborhood as well as urban decline. I may be giving Black In America 2 too much credit here because even this discussion was short and rather weak. If you are going to begin with such an opening, then structural forces—decline of jobs, residential segregation, and the like—must be put at the forefront and stated explicitly, not in passing. Nevertheless there were some, for lack of a better word, problems with it that stuck out to me beyond what has been talked about in other venues. I focus on two points that I felt slipped under the radar.

The first has to with the apparent Africanism in the first segment but also its place in larger society. Although highlighting the work of Malaak Compton-Rock giving to the community, they presented Journey for Change as a program not to expose inner-city youth to a different way of life per se, but rather to a poorer, more destitute way of life so that they can appreciate what (little) they have back home in Bushwick. I am sorry but if that is not a variation of Edward Said’s Orientalism I do not know what is. One point Said makes of the harmful effects of orientatlism is how “the Occident” began to see “the Orient” and conduct themselves toward the region itself and also those from that region.

I must stop here and say that I am an unapologetic Americanist, though one with humanist tendencies. Nevertheless, maybe because I am an Americanist, I do not jump on the bandwagon of those who go outside the United States to help those in need. If two houses are burning, which one do you put out first: your’s or your neighbor’s? I know that framing it this way makes it an either/or question without moral implications and as one that ignores present day politics and the history of colonialism and the like. However, the question remains that if there is a cancer threatening to destroy your body from the inside from the same mechanisms, through the same actions, and that of someone else, what do you do first?

The way in which it was framed also obscures the plight of blacks, Latinos, and some whites here in the United States. I am sorry, if you wanted to show them more extreme poverty than what they are used to, there are pockets here in the United States that are just as or even worse off economically. Both urban and rural. Let us not forget the work of Amartya Sen who found that even though one may live in a richer nation, one’s life expectancy and quality might be quite lower than those in poorer nations. If you wanted to show them the detrimental effects the AIDS virus has on communities, there are pockets in many Chocolate Cities that have as high or higher concentration of AIDS than many parts of Africa. I mean to speak honestly, the way in which they first introduced Journey for Change overshadowed the positive cultural, educational, and political aspects of the program. It was almost as if they used Africa—since there was so little (i.e. none) conversation about how Africa is more than just South Africa and that it was a heterogeneous place (another form of Africansim with roots in the theme of orientalism)—as a tool to shock, awe, and inspire. I am sorry, but this is both amoral and wrong. As those over at The Retort noted, Compton-Rock spoke as if this trip was to act as a panacea of social and academic ills. I am sorry, it doesn’t work like that.

Before I continue, I must say that I appreciate programs like this and those who invest time into them, the organizers, family, and students themselves. However, I stand with my previous criticism of this program.

The second aspect of the first segment that stuck with me was the lack of parallel between the ages of the low income black students from Connecticut and New York and middle class blacks. This may seem like a minor point but I do not believe it is; in fact, I think it highlights both some of the assumptions and prejudiced thoughts about blacks in America. If you notice, the poor blacks were middle and high school aged individuals. The middle class blacks were college aged or above. Remember, we only saw low-income older adults as parents with medical, mental health, or financial issues. Even though I too appreciated the awareness of racial issues of this year’s cohort of middle class interviewees, I was troubled by this age divide.

I think that parallel would have been stronger if they would have went to Exeter, Andover, St. Paul, Deerfield, and the other prep, day, and boarding school in the Northeast to see the experience of same aged middle class blacks at these predominately white institutions. Or, to flip it the other way, found some low-income college black college students to parallel those middle class blacks that spoke of their experiences. Believe it or not, poor blacks (and minorities for that matter) make it to both the Ivy and non-Ivy halls as well. Instead of a smorgasbord of black people and education, CNN, NOT SOLEDAD O’BRIEN ALONE, missed an opportunity for a richer and deeper glimpse inside Black America.

We missed another opportunity to access what it means to be black in America. Though I have to admit this year was a step forward rather than backward (though I admit that would have been hard even for Black In America). I do not know if what I have presented here is more of me responding more to what was in the show or the way it was presented. I am happy if it is both.

He’s Assertive; She’s a Bitch

A while back, I wrote about the racial privilege associated with speaking forcefully and having your message heard. I argued—and continue to believe—that folks of color are more susceptible to racially charged interpretations of their tone of voice. In other words, a black guy offering the same message as me would, more often than not, be painted as “angry” or “militant,” while I would, more often than not, be seen as “passionate” or “engaging.” When I get into an impassioned rant, my audience—particularly white audiences—may think I’m a bit over the top; I’ll concede that. But my words and tone aren’t going to trigger the racialized stereotype of black male hyper-masculinity and irrational anger, since, of course, I’m a white guy.

A few of our thoughtful (and sharp) readers suggested that the racial privilege I wrote about was also gendered—meaning that women are not afforded the same privilege to speak forcefully without fear of negative stereotyping.

I have to admit, this was a pretty egregious oversight on my part. Given the current political climate—from Hilary Clinton to Sonia Sotomayor to Michelle Obama—it's clear that strong, prominent women haven’t exactly received the most positive national news coverage. Clinton’s been called “shrill,” Sotomayor’s been called a “bully,” and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin begins each post on Michelle Obama with a picture of the First Lady scowling or frowning—a racially charged attempt to depict her as excessively scary and militant.

Such instances are not simply relegated to high profile women; it’s a safe bet that most of our (assertive, thoughtful, vocal) female readers can relate to this pervasive stereotype. Moreover, this isn’t simply an example of a “double standard;” rather, it’s male privilege in action. If I bang my finger on the table during a rant in a seminar here at Harvard, no one’s going to call me “shrill” or “domineering.” These are words used to describe folks that defy stereotypes and resist domination or subservience. These are words used to put them in their place, to remind them they’re not white; they’re not men. These are words that evoke, employ, and perpetuate privilege.

While I can't really speak from personal experience, dating a woman in corporate America has helped make these gendered stereotypes salient. Big business—a male dominated field predicated on assertiveness and team-based problem solving—is probably one of the better examples to illustrate male privilege and the gendered interpretation of tone. Consider a corporate team planning a company’s new investment strategy. The team leader is, statistically speaking, most likely a white man. He’s leading the group in a brainstorming session, and invites input from the team. The majority of the team is, statistically speaking, most likely white and male. Everyone is generally cordial and polite considering they're working together toward a common goal. But when male and female team members assert their respective dominance, they prompt two very different responses.

See, when a male team member speaks out of turn, interrupting the flow of conversation to interject his brilliant idea, he’s a valuable asset to the company. He’s being a good team member. He’s assertive. But when a female team member tries to compete, simply asserting her equality and intellectual evenness with her male counterparts, she’s excessively domineering. She’s overstepping authority, displaying improper professional etiquette. She’s a bitch.

Ultimately, these stereotypes may—perhaps, obviously—fall most severely on the shoulders of black women. Black women that forcefully assert intellectual or physical equality with men are doubly susceptible to negative stereotyping as “ghetto,” “shrill,” or a combination of the two. Privilege isn’t an either/or phenomenon; multiple social identities create multiple structures of privilege, and black women find themselves at the bottom of this stratified order.

Look, this (admittedly oversimplified) example is not meant as an indictment of corporate America, nor is it indicative of every woman’s professional or personal experience. But it most certainly reflects decades of social science research on the perceptions of women in positions of power. And, more importantly, it most certainly underscores an underappreciated mechanism influencing social inequality.

The problem here is when privilege translates into material winners and losers; when privilege affords job promotions, favorable peer evaluations, and wage premiums, and lack thereof results in economic, political, or social ceilings. Privilege is a very real—and pernicious—component of inequality. The measures needed to correct these racist, sexist, and generally misguided notions are, of course, debatable. But the privilege is real, and it carries a material impact. Exposing and recognizing it is a necessary first step toward greater equality.