I was facilitating a group discussion last week and a white participant raised the question of why it's acceptable for black (and brown) people to drop the N-bomb but not white people. "It's an unfair double standard," she said, as have hundreds of other before her.
I've always found this to be an odd complaint. There are all sorts of things that each one of us can say to family and friends that would be off limits if a total stranger said those very same words.
But so many white people have voiced this double standard complaint over the years that I've come to see their struggle as rooted in more than the issues unique to race relations and the disturbing legacy of that word. What I see now is that young white people in this generation do not want to drop the N-bomb (with the "a" ending) as a means of entitlement, "If you get to say it, we get to say it." I'm starting to think that they want to do so because that word has become the "gold standard of cool."
Let's face it. Urban African Americans are the epitome of coolness. It's been like this for generations. Jazz. Cool. Rock -n- Roll. Cool. Hip Hop. Cool. Timberland shoes worn by white people. Uncool. Tims worn by black people. Cool. You get my point.
Watch Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock and a long list of lesser others kicking around N-bombs. What white person with any healthy barometer of coolness does NOT want to be as cool as Chapelle or Rock? And what it looks like these days is you're not going to get there if you can't drop the N-bomb -- especially in mixed company, with black gatekeepers of cool nodding or laughing in approval. THAT is the ultimate statement that says "I'm cool," AND "I've been admitted into the club."
Very simply, young white people may be wrestling with "nigga" not so much as a racial signifier as a signifier of "cool." In comparison to the generations that preceeded them, black people have reshaped the word from its singularly hateful focus and now it stands in the center of the culture as an indicator of much more than the state of race relations.
More to come...
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Demise of the Race Traitor
I first heard the term "race traitor" about fifteen years ago while watching a documentary on white supremacist groups. A KKK member used it in reference to white people who marry outside of the white race and, in her estimation, weaken the "natural and God given supreme power of white people." Years later I began hearing references to race traitors coming from some members of the black and Chicano (i.e., Mexican American) communities. They used it to refer to black and Mexican people who do not embrace the "white privilege leads to white racism leads to black and brown disempowerment" paradigm. An example of this kind of race traitor would be Ward Connerly, the conservative-libertarian African American activist who has fought to roll back government and social policies that put minorities in special categories such that they are, in his words, "treated differently than members of majority groups" (e.g., affirmative action programs).
So recently I've read some references to Obama as a "race traitor" because he has stood behind some ideas that have been popular among people who are often demonized by leftists as racist and bigoted. One of these ideas is that some of the responsibility for impoverishment and disenfranchisement in communities of color rests with the members of those very communities. For example, Obama has excoriated black and Hispanic men for fathering and not taking responsibility for children. (Nearly two-thirds of black babies are born to unmarried women, as are nearly half of all Hispanic babies.) He has chastised people young and old for searching for a quick dollar but being unwilling to suffer through the sweat and strain of school and moving up the social mobility ladder from minimum wage to something better by way of hard work. Yes, this does sound reminicent of the criticisms that I've been listening to all of my life: "all minorities want to be on welfare" and "blacks and Hispanics don't want to work hard."
Certainly the problem is that such blanket generalizations are absurd and, for the most part, racist. Most people on welfare are white, after all, and the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics have jobs and work as hard as anyone else. But as a community activist who has spent many years in neighborhoods that have been rocked by joblessness and limited economic and educational opportunities, Obama has witnessed his share of people who actually do NOT take responsibility for the decisions they make and who consequently weaken the social fabric of their communities. What Obama has said is that when these decisions negatively affect others--as when a poor, unmarried woman gets pregnant or a jobless man gets a woman pregnant--other people must invariably step in to help provide social and economic assistance. In other words, responsibility must shift from one person to another person, family, or even an entire community.
Complicating all of this, Obama has argued, is that sympathetic observers and sometimes the actors themselves often try to defend the negative behavior by claiming that it is caused by racism, as though individuals could not have acted otherwise. This type of thinking, he insists, will never change the underlying structures of inequality that undermine poor communities; it only leads to white resentment and further unwillingness to critically example past wrongs and their present-day consequences.
In this sense, Obama represents a new generation of activists and thinkers in the black and brown communities, people who are willing to publicly examine the ways in which poor people participate in their own plight. They are open to examining the nexus of individual free will and the structural constraints of human behavior. In doing so they offer all of us an opportunity to step away from old arguments that bury opportunities for dialogue and move us toward some new kind of common ground.
Emphasis here, what is new about their approach, is that they want to do this publicly. Members of black and brown communities have always been engaged in this debate--it's just that somehow when the debate shifted to a public volume free will and individual responsibility were toned down while the structural constraints of racism and discrimination were voiced loudly for all to hear, especially white people. The fear has always been that if concerns about individual responsibility were carried into the public arena, then white people would use these concerns as an excuse to no longer accept their share of responsibility for the racism and discrimination that does exist and that does benefit white communities. This is why the Rev. Jesse Jackson whispered that he'd like to "cut off Obama's nuts" for continually attacking irresponsible black men. According to the thinking of Jackson and others, these black men would not be "irresponsible" if it were not for deeply institutionalized racism and descrimination, if they had had a fair shake in the marketplace of school and work.
Jackson's criticism makes sense, of course, but the genie may be out of the bottle and these new activists of color may not be willing to keep these criticisms localized to the black and brown communities. They want an open, honest conversation because they believe this is crucial for the change they want to see. And even if it means that leftists like Obama and Corey Booker, the young mayor of Newark, New Jersey, are sitting at the same table as conservatives like Connerly, the conversation is going to take place in public. The only way to create the change that all sides want to see, they say, is to focus on empowerment and THAT must come by way of a thorough accountability for people's actions--white people AND black and brown people.
As the old guard lose their grip on the public conversation, their ability to silence the "race traitors" is going to become increasingly difficult.
So recently I've read some references to Obama as a "race traitor" because he has stood behind some ideas that have been popular among people who are often demonized by leftists as racist and bigoted. One of these ideas is that some of the responsibility for impoverishment and disenfranchisement in communities of color rests with the members of those very communities. For example, Obama has excoriated black and Hispanic men for fathering and not taking responsibility for children. (Nearly two-thirds of black babies are born to unmarried women, as are nearly half of all Hispanic babies.) He has chastised people young and old for searching for a quick dollar but being unwilling to suffer through the sweat and strain of school and moving up the social mobility ladder from minimum wage to something better by way of hard work. Yes, this does sound reminicent of the criticisms that I've been listening to all of my life: "all minorities want to be on welfare" and "blacks and Hispanics don't want to work hard."
Certainly the problem is that such blanket generalizations are absurd and, for the most part, racist. Most people on welfare are white, after all, and the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics have jobs and work as hard as anyone else. But as a community activist who has spent many years in neighborhoods that have been rocked by joblessness and limited economic and educational opportunities, Obama has witnessed his share of people who actually do NOT take responsibility for the decisions they make and who consequently weaken the social fabric of their communities. What Obama has said is that when these decisions negatively affect others--as when a poor, unmarried woman gets pregnant or a jobless man gets a woman pregnant--other people must invariably step in to help provide social and economic assistance. In other words, responsibility must shift from one person to another person, family, or even an entire community.
Complicating all of this, Obama has argued, is that sympathetic observers and sometimes the actors themselves often try to defend the negative behavior by claiming that it is caused by racism, as though individuals could not have acted otherwise. This type of thinking, he insists, will never change the underlying structures of inequality that undermine poor communities; it only leads to white resentment and further unwillingness to critically example past wrongs and their present-day consequences.
In this sense, Obama represents a new generation of activists and thinkers in the black and brown communities, people who are willing to publicly examine the ways in which poor people participate in their own plight. They are open to examining the nexus of individual free will and the structural constraints of human behavior. In doing so they offer all of us an opportunity to step away from old arguments that bury opportunities for dialogue and move us toward some new kind of common ground.
Emphasis here, what is new about their approach, is that they want to do this publicly. Members of black and brown communities have always been engaged in this debate--it's just that somehow when the debate shifted to a public volume free will and individual responsibility were toned down while the structural constraints of racism and discrimination were voiced loudly for all to hear, especially white people. The fear has always been that if concerns about individual responsibility were carried into the public arena, then white people would use these concerns as an excuse to no longer accept their share of responsibility for the racism and discrimination that does exist and that does benefit white communities. This is why the Rev. Jesse Jackson whispered that he'd like to "cut off Obama's nuts" for continually attacking irresponsible black men. According to the thinking of Jackson and others, these black men would not be "irresponsible" if it were not for deeply institutionalized racism and descrimination, if they had had a fair shake in the marketplace of school and work.
Jackson's criticism makes sense, of course, but the genie may be out of the bottle and these new activists of color may not be willing to keep these criticisms localized to the black and brown communities. They want an open, honest conversation because they believe this is crucial for the change they want to see. And even if it means that leftists like Obama and Corey Booker, the young mayor of Newark, New Jersey, are sitting at the same table as conservatives like Connerly, the conversation is going to take place in public. The only way to create the change that all sides want to see, they say, is to focus on empowerment and THAT must come by way of a thorough accountability for people's actions--white people AND black and brown people.
As the old guard lose their grip on the public conversation, their ability to silence the "race traitors" is going to become increasingly difficult.
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