Left of Black S3:E5 | Style Shifting with POTUS & Occupying the Music

Left of Black S3:E5 |   October 15, 2012

Style Shifting with POTUS & Occupying the Music

Left of Black host and Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Stanford University Professor H. Samy Alim, co-author of, with legendary social linguist Geneva Smitherman, Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language and Race in the U.S. (Oxford University Press).  Later Neal is joined, also via Skype, by singer-songwriter Alison Crockett, whose latest recording Mommy, What’s a Depression? and blog Diva Against Insanity hark back to the socially transformative music of the 1960s.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in  @ iTunes U

Review of 'The Passion of Tiger Woods'

A Review of  The Passion of Tiger Woods:

An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal by Orin Starn

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

For some golf is a game; for others it is leisure.  Golf, at its core, is about mastery; it’s about fantasy; it’s about fulfillment of the possibility of greatness.  It is about that hole-in-one at the local public course or the bullet drive that covered 300+ yards.  Golf provides the fulfillment of a myriad of “fantasies.” With his new book, The Passion of Tiger Woods, Orin Starn leads on a journey not to Pebble Beach or the courses of Hawaii, not into these fantasies playgrounds, but into the treacherous world and real-life drama that he describes as “Tigergate.” 

Starn starts his discussion with a foray into the sociology of golf, highlighting the emotional appeal of the game.  Describing golf as the “last chance to do “childish things” and as a cheap replacement for masculine yearning for outdoor adventures, Starn locates golf’s appeal within the mental stimulation and imagination afforded by golf’s immense challenges.  It’s appeal rests not with improved cardiovascular health, the camaraderie of pickup basketball or soccer, or even tradition (fathers and sons bonding), but with the mental stimulation; it appeal rests with its similarity to a video game rather than basketball or soccer.  “The game’s most elementary lure ... is that flush of satisfaction and even inner delight that comes from a good shot.”  The popularity of the game that Mark Twain once described as a “good walk spoiled” rests with the prospect of making “a twisting twenty-five foot put curving into the hole; a cleaver escape from under the tree.” While “none of us will ever know the ecstasy of running as fast as Usain Bolt or cutting through the water like Michael Phelps,” every once in a while, “even a rotten golfer will hit a shot as magnificent as if it had been hit by Tiger Woods” (15).

It is no wonder that golf is one of the most popular games despites its cost.  While not at the levels of baseball, football, or even NASCAR and basketball, golf is tremendously popular as a spectator sport and a leisure activity.   With over “17,000 golf courses, covering an area the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined” (XV), golf may not be America’s national pastime it might America’s most prominent and important hobby.  Golf is a national obsession, at least within certain (white; male; middle and upper-class) segments of the American populace. 

This analysis isn’t simply an interesting examination of golfing cultures but one that provides an important backdrop for understanding the rise and fall of Tiger Woods.  The popularity of golf, its cultural meaning, the ascendance of celebrity culture, and the increased power of new media all contributed to his ultimate tumble before the nation. 

Starn identifies the media spectacle surrounding Woods as evidence of the hegemony of the scandal industrial complex.  “Now scandal has become a multibillion dollar industry.  Talk shows and trash television, glossy magazines, supermarket tabloids, and gossip blogs power this vast and viral entertainment complex” (45).  Identifying “Tigergate” as the perfect storm, Starn argues that the media obsession and sensationalism embodied in the “celebritaization” of modern athletes.  Yet, his discussion goes beyond the missed placed priorities of today’s tabloid media circus to highlight Tiger Woods’ specific place within the American landscape.

Like the allure of the game itself, the rise and fall of Tiger Woods is equally about fantasy, about lost hope in a symbol of a post-racial America.  The passion for Tiger Woods and the anger resulting from his martial disrepair reflects the fantasies surrounding America’s most prominent multiracial citizen.  “Woods, America’s multicultural son, is a seductive element in a national image archive figured on the paradoxical claims about the nation,” writes C.L. Cole and David Andrews.  “While African American basketball players are regularly charged with violating national core values, Woods has become revered for his cultural heritage and cultural literacy” (p. 37).  As America’s multicultural son, as America’s symbol of racial progress and post-raciality, his indiscretions and the subsequent reactions not only put in question the declining significance of race, but the interest, anger, and fallout highlights how Woods did not simply betray his wife but the agreed upon narrative surrounding Woods, American exceptionalism, and the march toward racial progress. 

Highlighting the general sentiment amongst online commentators, and that emanating from the media in general, which consistently imagined Woods as one of “the last of the good ones,” as different from contemporary (black) athletes, Starn concludes that the emotional nature of the discourse highlights Woods’ meaning within the national landscape.

Many Internet posters seemed most disturbed by the hypocrisy of what they perceived to have been Tiger’s selling of a false imagine.  Tarquinis1 compared Woods to an infamous Ponzi schemer: “He’s professionally marketed himself to a worldwide audience as much more than a talented athlete but as a descent man, a family man who loved his wife and children . . . . Just how is this fundamentally different from Bernie Maddof?  Professionally marketed frauds, for the sake of a literal ocean of financial reward . . . . Many of Tiger’s former fans believed he had fallen altogether rom the pantheon.  They saw the golfer now as a “sexual psycho,” “uber cad,” or as in one’s poster thesaurus of invective, “arrogant, spoiled, bad tempered, childish, immature, foul-mouthed, whiny, disloyal, condescending, infantile, repugnant, loathsome, abominable, detestable, offensive, despicable, abhorrent, and damnable” (61).

While potentially an outlier in its anger and its verbosity, Starn makes the case that these posts, and the online discourse general, are not only a mirror into larger societal sentiments, but is in fact a better gauge.  He concludes that “racial anxiety and distrust often find most direct expressions in the surreptitious, off-stage arenas of our private thoughts … or most accessible to the anthropologist, an anonymous post on some blog, comment board, or chat room.”  (86-87).

Starn, thus, concludes that the fall of Tiger Woods and the nature of the demonization he experienced reflects the waning appeal of his narrative – the fantasy of Woods could no longer deliver.   “The amazing success of this young brown-skinned man in a formerly white sports seemed to support the familiar Fox News, Rush-Limbaugh-style view that the only real impediments to black advancement are black laziness, broken families, or … inferior genes.”  Starn sees the fallout as resulting from anger at this lost narrative: “When white fans cheered for Tiger, it sometimes felt as if they were also congratulating themselves demonstrating their own enlightened racial good will be embracing a golfer of color” (p. 73).  Tiger took this away, leading to ample anger and bitterness, highlighting that he did not just cheat on his partner but he cheated on his fans and the narrative surrounding his ascendance into the national fabric.

Tigergate also revealed longstanding anxiety over black male sexuality, opposition to black-white sexual relations, and the hegemony of racial stereotypes.  It was not just sexual infidelity from an uber sports star in an era of tabloid journal and online spectacles, but all of those things from a black male engaged in sex with white women.  From photoshopped pictures of Tiger with Snoop as dueling pimps to jokes about Tiger’s penis, Tigergate was fueled by and gave life to longstanding ideologies surrounding black male sexuality.  “Tiger’s fall from grace – in particular, the expiration of his exemption from racist hated and stereotyping” was crystal clear with ubiquitous focus on his penis and his sexual prowess.  “Tiger was cut down to a single body part by this coarse modern variant of the primordial racist trope of black savagery: the big black phallus” (p. 91).

The power of Starn’s narrative rests with its ability to explain Tiger’s cultural power (as greatest golfer and as participant in most notorious celebrity scandal) for golf fans and nonfans alike.  I don’t really like golf; I like Tiger. I would agree with George Carlin, who once described golf as less appealing than “watching flies fuck.”  They might as well rename the PGA (Professional Golfer’s Association) the TGW – Tiger’s Golf World. Despite his recent difficulties on and off the course, my relationship with golf begins and ends with Tiger Woods.  For me, my interest in golf and my love for Tiger has only increased since Tigergate.  He has faced endless criticism shaping my hope that he will soon be able proverbial middle finger to his haters.  It isn’t about redemption but rather seeing media critics, and bitter fans choke on their wars.  With each victory, with each brilliant chip shot and putt and with each step closer to history, Tiger is finding his way to silence the haters,

Golf is not simply a game; Tiger Woods is not simply a golfer; Tigergate was not simply a scandal.  Orin Starn makes this clear highlight the many ways that golf, Woods, and Tigergate offer a mirror into larger social, cultural and racial realities.  So next time you find yourself rooting for or against Tiger, or cracking joke about Eldridge Woods, remember, it is never just a game or joke.   Without basketball, my summer sports TV watching often centers around golf.  More precisely, without the NBA, I find myself watching Tiger Woods.  When he is competing, I watch golf; when he is atop the leaderboard, Tiger Woods changes my schedule in part because golf is never just a game.

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press.

Higher Education in Mitt Romney’s America

Higher Education in Mitt Romney’s America

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

The media focus on student debt, on congressional battles over student loans, and the scarcity of jobs for college graduates obscures the racial and class dynamics that define America’s colleges and universities. With the public discourse surrounding the unfairness of affirmative action for Whites, the threat that Ethnic Studies represents to (White) America, and the absence of “White student unions” in college campuses, public discussions re-imagine Whiteness as precarious, and Whites as victim and at the frontlines of a changing educational landscape.   Despite the daily lamenting of the state and future of America’s White students, particularly those with middle and upper-middle incomes, college campuses are still White.  In fact, Whites, particularly those whose parents are part of the top 5% of the income distribution, continue to reap the benefits of privilege in (1) admittance, (2) scholarship, and (3) treatment.  Let's not get things twisted here; these colleges and universities are in America, so yes the rules of the game (racism, sexism, classism) do apply.

In 2005, less than one in eight youth from the poorest 25% of society would enroll at a 4-year college university within 2 years of high school graduation.  According to Peter Schmidt, author of The Color of Money, “a rich child has about 25 times as much a chance as a poor one of someday enrolling in a college rated as highly selective or better.”  Colleges’ overreliance on SAT scores, heightens cultural bias, and the unequal advantages resulting from SAT prep classes, which have proven to benefit Whites and the middle-class.  In addition, because admissions give credence to a school’s reputation (which cannot be seen apart from segregation, and racial and class inequality), the rules and the game of college are set up to advantage Mitt Romney’s America: the already privileged.  Worse yet, the hegemony of the narratives of meritocracy and the illusion of diversity—which Lani Guiner describes as “a leaf to camouflage privilege”—obscure  the endless privileges afforded to the members of middle and upper middle class White America, before they ever step foot on a college campus. 

This is evident as we look at the racial and class stratification of student loans and other forms of aid.  The Chronicle of Higher Education found that “colleges with more than $500 million in their endowments…served disproportionately few students from families with incomes low enough to qualify for federal Pell Grants.” In other words, the money that makes college a possibility is funneled to those whose families often have the requisite dollars to make college a reality.  Schmidt tells us that “[j]ust 40 percent of the financial aid money being distributed by public colleges is going to students with documented financial need,” adding that “[m]ost such money is being used to offer merit-based scholarships or tuition discounts to potential recruits who can enhance a college's reputation, or appear likely to cover the rest of their tuition tab and to donate down the road.”  Despite the widely circulated, albeit factually false ideas about students of color and scholarships, the vast majority of scholarship money finds its way into the pocket of White students.  Tim Wise makes this clear:

It is simply false that scholarships for people of color crowd out monies for White students. According to a national study by the General Accounting Office, less than four percent of scholarship money in the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a factor at all, while only 0.25 percent (one quarter of one percent) of all undergrad scholarship dollars come from awards that are restricted to persons of color alone (1). In other words, Whites are fully capable of competing for and receiving any of the other monies — roughly 99.75 percent of all scholarship funds out there for college. Although this GAO study was conducted in the mid-’90s, there is little reason to expect that the numbers have changed since then. If anything, increasing backlash to affirmative action and fear of lawsuits brought by conservatives against such efforts would likely have further limited such awards as a percentage of national scholarships.

Second, it is also false that large numbers of students of color receive the benefits of race-based scholarships. In truth, only 3.5 percent of college students of color receive any scholarship even partly based on race, suggesting that such programs remain a pathetically small piece of the financial aid picture (2). So when Mr. Bohannon walks around campus and sees students of color, he may believe them all to be wards of some race-based preference scheme; yet the evidence suggests that at least 96.5 percent of them received no race-based scholarship at all.

The money is there for White students, particularly those who already have class advantages. From access to prep classes to performative enhancing drugs, from legacies to the “donation path,” America’s colleges and universities are overpopulated by Whites, by the sons and daughter’s of the elite, not because of some level of intelligence, the requisite values, or some all-powerful work ethic, but because of the power of privilege and money.

This points to a clear conclusion: because of access to money, prep classes, or mere connections, that is, because of privilege, America’s colleges and universities, particularly the elite schools, are overpopulated with White students lacking the requisite skills to succeed within these spaces.  It is no wonder that America’s colleges and universities are increasingly the educational weight stations for the ill prepared and ill qualified.  Returning to Peter Schmidt 

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are White teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.

Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.

Who are these mediocre White students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.

A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.

Given this reality, should it be a surprise that high school and college students, are popping Adderall like they are tic tacks.  Is the pressure to succeed to not only fulfill the expectations of a White middle class sensibility, but to thrive amid challenging conditions? 

It is interesting that in popular culture and popular media, we hear so much about students of color, those who supposedly are the beneficiaries of affirmative action, who struggle yet, it is White students who often lack the require scores one supposedly needs to succeed in higher education.  Makes me wonder if that is leading to a proliferation of drug use among students trying to find ways to succeed.   Between 2002 and 2005, sales of Adderall increased by 3,100%; in 2011; 34.5% admitted to using this illegal drug.  Treated as little more than a performance enhancing drugs, colleges are rife for drug abuse.  According to Linda Carroll, the problem runs deep:

At colleges across America, students are becoming addicted to a popular prescription drug — not because they’re trying to get high, but because they hope to get smarter. The drug, Adderall, is normally prescribed for kids with attention deficit disorder. But some college kids are taking the medication because it helps them focus and pull all-nighters.

One ‘A’ student at one of the nation’s top tier colleges explained the appeal of the pills kids call “study buddies.”

“When I’m on Adderall and I’m looking at the textbook I can forget about everything else around me,” she told NBC News’ Amy Robach, in a report aired on TODAY. “I figured if everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I get the advantage?”         

Another student, “Mike,” who asked that his real name be withheld, elaborated. “It’s given me the boost to work non-stop for 10 hours a day,” he explained. “Baseball players take steroids to be the best and students take Adderall to be the best. It’s steroids for school.”

Like football games, partying, and cheating, drugs are part and parcel of today’s college experience.  It is an epidemic, which can be partially explained by changes in technology, also reflecting the larger conditions of today’s colleges and universities.  “Yes, cheating is rampant, and for teachers the game of catch-up never stops,” notes Mark Bauerlein. “Part of the problem stems from the high-stakes system, where a bad grade can jeopardize chances for medical school. For the ‘overachievers,’ cheating isn’t a vice. It’s a survival skill.”  The work of Peter Schmidt and others points to how the “overachievers” are often White.  Should it surprise us that cheating has become part and parcel with the college experience? 

According Susan D. Blum, in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, close to 70 percent of students admitted lifting material directly from the Internet without citation or other forms of attribution; 75 percent admitted to engage in cheating. Copying and pasting, purchasing papers online, and other forms of cheating have become the new normal.  Keeping tests on file at fraternity houses and other forms of academic dishonesty are commonplace.  Look at Harvard, where 125 out of 250 students enrolled in Introduction to Congress (Spring 2012) have been accused of cheating. Yet, the media, including  The New York Times, have framed cheating in college campuses around athlete culture and even blackness (with picture of African American basketball players as leads to the story, for instance; see Deadspin piece for further evidence).  The cheating scandal in Harvard is indicative of a culture that admits Whites—wealthy Whites—into  the Ivy doors irrespective of their readiness or deservedness.

What does all of this reveal?  What does the SAT scandal, where in New Jersey students hired someone to take the test for them, tells us about who is and isn’t prepared for higher education?  What does this tell us about race, class, and higher education?   Whether this represents the cause of the persistent inequality within higher education (greater access to prep course, performance enhancing drugs, money to pay for exam takers) or whether these destructive and harmful behaviors result from the unearned privileges of admission into America’s elite colleges and universities, remains in question.  What is clear is that race and class matters.

While the national press and politicians lament the status and predicament facing (White) college graduates, let us not forget the broader issues at work here. It is revealing that while the face of the aggrieved student is often White, and while the narrative of the student left behind is White, they are not the faces of those students who are getting admitted to universities without “deserving” to be there.  Whites are not the face of having easy access to financial aid; they are not the face of those who can afford to and are using drugs without being busted; they are not the face who pop performance enhancing pills; they are not the face of cheating scandals.  Yet, instead Whiteness remains the face of victimized student who deserves to be in college, who deserves to secure the American Dream.  If that is the case, I think we need to return to a basic lesson: a more accurate definition of "deserve."

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press.

Oak Creek Blues

Oak Creek Blues

by Courtney Baker | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Writing this hurts. As I have been reading the reports coming out of Wisconsin, following the tweets (@sepiamutiny has been an exceptionally good source), and watching (barely tolerable and woefully meager) television coverage of the mass shooting of a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, my heart has been breaking.

I simply cannot fathom how another mass shooting could break out less than a month after the country was collectively horrified by the killings in Aurora, Colorado. My stomach seized up when it dawned on me that the Oak Creek shooter—and in all likelihood others as well—felt something other than raw disgust and shock about Aurora’s misery. Some one out there must have thought something along the lines of, “That looks like a good idea,” or “I could do better,” or “Ok, so that’s what I need to do,” or—and this is the one that truly chills me, as a black woman—“That guy in Aurora picked the wrong targets.”

That is when it hit me: That despite the denials of the tweeters and the pundits and of the CNN reporter who deliberately cut off the Sikh interviewee who was historicizing violence against Sikh’s in America, Oak Creek is different because of the way that race figures in.

I am not saying, here, that white people are not victims of gun violence. Of course they are, and that’s a reason that, in my opinion, we need to have a serious conversation about gun control in this country. (I hope that it isn’t the case that we can only talk about gun violence when white folks are involved, though.)

Even if the shooter did not turn out to be white supremacist, we should still have been able to read the event through the clarifying lenses of race. Even before Wade Michael Page’s card-carrying membership member of Wage Apathy (a skinhead band, according to Huffington Post) was exposed, we could already recognize patterns that made it most likely that this was a racially-motivated killing spree. He clearly had an intention to kill a group of people, not an individual, and he didn’t show up at a white church service which, presumably, would have been closer to him and easier to infiltrate).

What I am saying is that acknowledging the reality of race helps us to make sense of this tragedy.

Race is not intrinsically evil. When race is celebrated as a feature of one’s individuality and identity, it can be a wonderful thing. But race is a double-edged sword. Just as we use race to understand ourselves, so too do we use race to understand the world around us. In the worst instances, this plays out as racism—when we make assessments of others based on superficial observations that serve no other purpose than to elevate our own identities over that of others.

When I think of the congregants of the Oak Creek gurdwara (“gurdwara” is the name of the Sikh temple of worship) who were hiding for hours upon end, listening to the moans of those who had already been shot, fearing that another shooter or shooters would strike, I have to imagine that they were recruiting all of their analytical skills to help think them out of that dangerous situation. I have to imagine that they were seeing this white guy, with a gun, in their house of worship, and thinking not, “Who among us is he looking for?” and “Why is he so angry?” but, “Oh my god, they are trying to kill us. Again.”

Because it has happened before that Sikhs were killed just for being Sikh. Or, to be more precise, Sikhs were killed because racists only “know” that the Ayrabs responsible for 9/11 are brown and dress “ethnic.” It was that state of affairs that resulted in the death of Balbir Singh Sodi, a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona who was shot dead on September 15, 2001 by a white man named Frank Silva Roque who was seeking retribution for the 9/11 attacks. Similar retributive murders followed in New York and Texas, and there were numerous threats issued against Sikhs in the days that followed 9/11, and threats are continually renewed.

All of this is bad enough, and convincing enough to me to disqualify all of the race-deniers calls that we shouldn’t discuss what happened in Oak Creek in terms of race and to ignore all of the insults and threats that they hurled against anyone who did. Not only is the recent record of anti-Sikh hatred (I refuse to that condescending term, “sentiment”) pretty damning, there are also major historical precedents in the U.S. that demonstrate exactly how racist violence operates.

The six murdered Sikhs in the Oak Creek gurdwara got me thinking about the four murdered African-American girls who were blown to pieces in their church by a white supremacist’s bomb in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. I fear that the gall, the misdirected fury, and the heretical disregard for human life was on vivid display that September day was on display again in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this August. I weep at the prospect that this country might arrive on September 15^th in 2013, at the fifty-year anniversary of the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing not having learned a damn thing.

From Birmingham. From the Pequot Massacre. From the Holocaust.

We are truly in a worse place today than we were then if we can’t even talk about racism and racialized violence. We simply cannot turn a blind eye to what is going on. And the deniers cannot gaslight me into thinking that what I and my Sikh brothers and sisters have experienced of hatred is not real.

My experiences arereal, and no one can shut me up or shame me about it. Call me an embedded journalist or a field anthropologist: I knowwhat happened because I was there. This is the skin I live in.

I am so unspeakable tired of those I love and of myself being identified as practice targets based on our non-whiteness. I refuse to hear that that statement is racist because if I didn’t inhabit the world watching my back, being mindful of how I might be perceived at any moment by anyone, you would call me a fool. Emmett Till got killed in part for “foolishly” acting like that target wasn’t always pinned to his back.

We can’t live like this anymore. We need to talk about racism in America. If we don’t start talking now, pretty soon nobody will be left.

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Courtney Baker is Assistant Professor of English at Connecticut College. A graduate of Harvard and Duke universities, she researches and writes on African-American visual culture and literature, death, and ethics. Her book, entitled Human Insight: Looking at Images of Black Death and Suffering, is forthcoming.

DL Hughley Talks Race, Obama and America with Michael Eric Dyson

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

DL Hughley discusses his new book I Want You to Shut the F*ck Up: How the Audacity of Dopes is Ruining America on The Ed Show with Guest Host Michael Eric Dyson

"Dear White People...": Satire about being a Black Face in a White Place

DearWhitePeople: Concept Trailer

A satire about being a Black face in a white place.
 

Click here to help get this film made for real: http://bit.ly/DWPYoTu

Ill Doctrine: Ugly Shoes and Good Intentions

Ill Doctrine: Ugly Shoes and Good Intentions from ANIMALNewYork.com on Vimeo.

From Animal New York: Jay Smooth's  quick thoughts on the controversy over the Adidas "shackle sneakers"

Saturday Edition | Keeping Up Appearances: The Myth of the “Inner City”

Saturday Edition

Keeping Up Appearances: The Myth of the “Inner City”

by John (J.D.) Roberts  | special to NewBlackMan

On a recent trip back from a Hampton Roads vacation, I saw a black family setting up a barbeque on their rural front lawn in Snow Hill, Maryland.  They seemed to have it all; a nice pleasant house, a green front lawn, an open porch, and a (seemingly) happy tight-knit family.  I had not really given this scene much thought until a few weeks after I had gotten home from this vacation.  I saw a few news stories discussing the plight of an “inner city” school somewhere in the U.S., which then made me question what the term “inner city” really meant.  The term “inner city” is a relic of American history, transformed/remixed to denote two things: dysfunction and a place where people of color live.  It is a loaded term, filled with bullsh*t, and we as thinking acting caring Americans should reject it every time we hear it. 

I chose the term bullsh*t purposefully here to illustrate a point.  In Harry G. Frankfurt’s philosophy text On Bullsh*t, the meaning of the word bullsh*t gets explored to its fullest extent.  When Frankfurt discusses bullsh*t’s relation to humbug, he uses a scenario of the orator discussing the Founding Fathers at a July 4^thcelebration.  In Frankfurt’s case study, the orator’s glowing prose about the Founding Fathers did not have basis in knowledge or factual accuracy, but rooted itself in what the orator wanted the crowd to think about him and his patriotism.[1]  The essence of the word “bullsh*t” boils down to using language and statements that “keep up appearances,” much like the term “inner city” does. 

The “inner city” allows the listener/reader to imagine whatever/wherever they like, no matter how loaded and nebulous the term actually is.  “Inner city” describes a place in seemingly precise geographic terms, but is also used to describe groups of people, certain aspects of culture, or activities as well.  It means everything and nothing; it allows the purveyor and audience’s perceptions of the word to be vague, but it is never used to describe one place: poor and working class white urban spaces.      

The “inner city’s” identity as “not white” is not the only concern.  Barring stories of miraculous salvation and escape, when was the last time a newspaper printed a positive story about the “inner city” (“Inner city Philadelphia: What a Great Place To Raise a Family”)?  They have not because there are supposedly no good stories coming out of the “inner city” without intervention from outside.  When was the last time a poor white urban space was called the “inner city” (Bostonians who are familiar with Charlestown can hopefully give me an amen here)?  The term “inner city” almost begs for a ridiculous Seinfeldian comedy routine asking something like, “Where does the inner city end and the outer city begin?” 

This line of thinking eventually leads to the second reason why the term “inner city” should be considered bullsh*t: the term is incredibly concerned with sincerity.  As Frankfurt states in his text, in our postmodern world, feigning sincerity has replaced the quest for correctness.[2]  Truth has been superseded by the intent or appearance of being sincere, polite, caring, and compassionate.  Therefore, the term “inner city,” a catch all term for the alleged dysfunction of people of color living in a decaying urban setting functions both as a weapon for those in a position of power and authority and as a prison of sincerity and compassion for those living in these urban areas deemed “inner city.”   Where do these ideas of urban spaces originate though?

White flight out of urban spaces after World War II is a well known phenomenon, (and I will not cover it too deeply here) but this flight is important to note as a product of older historical undercurrents and social thought.  Automobility and America’s Interstate Highway System allowed (primarily) white Americans to flee America’s cities to live in newly created suburbs with their families and drive to work in the increasingly abandoned cities.  The urge to flee these urban settings has always been a part of America’s history though.  Early in its history, New York City symbolized the filth, depravity, decay, crime and sickening conditions early cities generally had to offer. 

By the 1830s, New York City was a city that could not offer its citizens adequate water resources, sanitation, or health care, and did not believe it had a duty to as a city.  By the 1850s and 1860s, people such as Charles Loring Brace started promoting the health benefits of rural living, sometimes nefariously/forcibly moving children out of cities and into the country through his Children’s Aid Society.  These relocated children worked on the farms of rural (white) foster families in an effort to promote clean living, work, and a healthy lifestyle.  According to Brace and the majority of his contemporaries, the city was a corrupting element, particularly to children. 

Books such as Herbert Asbury’s retrospective book The Gangs of New York surveyed not only the crime-ridden streets of New York City in the 19^th century, but also the disgusting, unhealthy and putrid conditions people lived in.  Designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted not only designed Central Park, but planned suburbs as well to provide spaces for people to leave the unhealthy living of urban communities.  They hoped that trees, greenscapes and rural air would revive the spirit and lives of (white) Americans. 

Moving forward to the beginning of the post World War II flights out of cities by whites, authors like Mickey Spillane created characters such as Mike Hammer, a hard boiled private investigator that cleaned the urban streets of scum and vice with his Colt 45.  American culture has continually inculcated in its citizenry from the very beginning that urban living is unhealthy, unnatural and creates pathology.

So with this historical background in place, we now return to the term “inner city.”  People of color in America, particularly Black Americans, have become inextricably linked to the term, which also inherently links blackness in general to the so-called “inner city.”  Since the city has also traditionally symbolized dysfunction and unhealthy living, blackness, by its connection with the term “inner city” has become intertwined with dysfunction in America.    This subtle intertwining of racial identity with geography and living space can obviously be carried even further to examine the much used (often hated) term “ghetto,” which has and still could fill many tomes with its interrogation, investigation, and inquiry.  Additionally, by extension, terms like “urban radio” have replaced the term “black radio” that prevailed in the 1960s through the 1980s, further essentializing blackness with urbanity.    

This is not to say blackness or Latino identity are never connected to rural living, but often, those connections to rurality are also portrayed negatively, spelling rural poverty in the Deep South for Black Americans, or in the case of Latinos, agricultural work on the West Coast.  Media depictions of rural blackness in America often follow these tropes, rarely straying to depict a well-rounded rural blackness (Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins), or the impressive ranch holdings of some Latinos in the Western U.S. 

I am not saying that Black Americans should listen to Arrested Development and head down to Tennessee.  I am not saying people of color should eschew their urban environs.  What I am saying though is all Americans should recognize the power of terms like “inner city” because these terms are incredibly powerful forms of bullsh*t.  They essentialize groups of people.  They help create dominant narratives.  They influence economic, political, social and security decisions regarding groups of people.  At the “speed of stereotype,” groups of people are generalized, rationalized and have decisions made for them based on false assumptions derived from loaded words and terms.  These terms help institute phony social contracts based on feigned sincerity and false compassion, which then lulls people into a sense of cooperation and participation in their own oppression and subjugation.  This is why words matter. 

We must reject bullsh*t at every turn because it breeds complacency and subtly encourages cooperation with oppressive state agendas and the status quo.  I would argue there is no “inner city,” and we should allow no bullsh*t term to replace its role as a placeholder for geographically-oriented racism and oppression.  Furthermore, the rural black family I saw in Snow Hill, Maryland deserves to represent the rich complex tapestry of blackness just as much as the black family from Brooklyn, Houston, Atlanta, or Chicago does in the minds, media, and cultural representations of America.

***

           

John (J.D.) Roberts is a PhD student in the History Dept at UMass-Amherst. He focuses on drug trafficking history in Latin America, but has researched and written on a wide array of issues globally, particularly globalization and illegality.

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[1] Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullsh*t (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 17-19.

[2] Ibid., pg. 65.

ESPN Must be High: Drugs & Jim Crow in Sports’ Reporting

ESPN Must be High: Drugs & Jim Crow in Sports’ Reporting

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

My concern and interest in sports often has little to do with sports.  While I am clearly a fan, someone who enjoys watching and thinking about sports, I am often drawn into the world sports because of the larger implications and meanings.  Sports are more than a game; it is a pedagogy, a technology, and an instrument of larger social, political, and racial processes.  During a recent interview with Colorlines, I spoke about the danger in seeing sport as purely game, entertainment, or distraction:

One of the things that often strikes me is the disconnect between progressive and those engaged in anti-racist movement and struggles — and sports. Sports continues to be seen as antithetical or a distraction, or not part and parcel with the movements for justice. I think that when you have a society that is increasingly invested in and has been for the last 30 years, with incarceration, with a suspension culture, with racial profiling, it’s not a coincidence that you have a sports culture that’s equally invested in those practices. And invested in the language of the criminal justice system.

I consume and am consumed by sports not simply because of the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” but because of its potential as a source of social change.  Yet, sports continue to be a site for the perpetuation of injustice, violence, and despair.  As a critical scholar, as an anti-racist practitioner, and as someone committed to justice, my gaze is never just as fan.  In watching games, listening to commentaries, and reading various sports publications, I am unable and unwilling to suspend this gaze.  So, it should be no surprise that when I recently opened ESPN: The Magazine, to find an article on drug use and college football, it had my attention.

“Of 400,000 athletes, about 0.6 percent will be tested for marijuana by the NCAA.” The lead-to ESPN’s sensationalized and misleading story on marijuana use and collegiate football, thus, frames the story as one about both rampant illegal drug use and the absence of accountability.  While attempting to draw readers into their stereotyped-ridden, sensationalized tabloid journalism masking as investigative reporting/journalistic expose, it reflects the dangerous in this piece.  “College football players smoking marijuana is nothing new. Coaches and administrators have been battling the problem and disciplining players who do so for decades,” writes Mark Schlabach.  He highlights the purported epidemic plaguing college football by citing the following:

NCAA statistics show a bump in the number of stoned athletes. In the NCAA's latest drug-use survey, conducted in 2009 and released in January, 22.6 percent of athletes admitted to using marijuana in the previous 12 months, a 1.4 percentage point increase over a similar 2005 study. Some 26.7 percent of football players surveyed fessed up, a higher percentage than in any other major sport. (The use of other drugs, such as steroids and amphetamines, has declined or held steady.) A smaller percentage of athletes actually get caught, but those numbers are also on the rise. In the latest available postseason drug-testing results, positive pot tests increased in all three divisions, from 28 in 2008-09 to 71 the following school year.

It is important to examine the evidence because of the narrative being offered here and the larger context given the racial implications of the war on drugs. 

According to Schlabach, 22.6 percent of football players acknowledging using marijuana; in student-athletes playing football were the most likely to acknowledge marijuana amongst those participating in MAJOR sports.  While unclear how he is defining major sports, I would gather that those major sports include football, track, basketball, and baseball, coincidentally sports dominated by African Americans in disproportionate numbers.  Why limit the discussion here other than to perpetuate a stereotype?  Does the revenue or popularity of a sport require greater scrutiny?  I think not. 

Examination of the actual NCAA study tells a different story.  Indeed, baseball (21.5%); basketball (22.2%), and track (16.0%) trail football.  Only men’s golf and tennis, with numbers of 22.5% 23.2% trails football amongst non-major sports.  If one compares reported marijuana use between collegiate football players to their peers in swimming (27.2%) ice hockey (27.4%), wrestling (27.7%), soccer (29.4%), and lacrosse (48.5%), it becomes clear that football is not the problem.  Add women’s field hockey (35.7) and women’s lacrosse into that mix, and yet again it is clear who is getting high.  In fact, when High Times or Bill Maher looks for a role model within collegiate sports, they are more likely to call upon soccer or lacrosse players than a football player. 

ESPN further mischaracterizes the study by failing to sufficiently acknowledge the differences drug use in Division 1 football and Division III.  The NCAA study found that marijuana use is least common amongst Division I student-athletes (16.9%), where Division II student-athletes (21.4%) and those from Division III having the highest level of usage with a number of 28.3%.  Since the 2005 study, drug usage actually declined at the Division I level, while increases were seen in other two divisions.  

Yet, ESPN and others continue to disseminate these false and harmful stereotypes about big-time collegiate athletes as spoiled, entitled, out-of-control and HIGH; as criminals lacking discipline and immune from accountability.  Irrespective of intent, by focusing on “big-time” sports and by failing to differentiate between Division 1 and Division 3, ESPN and others play upon racial stereotypes.  Is it just a coincidence that ESPN doesn’t note that marijuana use is highest amongst collegiate athletes from Division III; is it just coincidence that 76.7% white Division III football players are white?  It is just an oversight that the focus is on Division 1, even though marijuana use is well below averages for student-athletes and non-student athletes alike? 

Is it just a coincidence that focus is on the sport – football – that is 51% black?  What does it tell us that men’s lacrosse, which is 91% white, wrestling (80% white), field hockey (90.5%), ice hockey (89.5%) and men’s soccer (72.1% white) are all sports with high marijuana use yet are unseen as problems?  What does it tell us that ESPN and others conveniently erase them from a story on drug use and higher education?  If fact, it tells us a lot about the sport media and the misuse of data for the sake of a sensationalized story.  In that same April 30^th issue, ESPN published a story about drugs and University of Oregon where Sam Alipour notes that, “between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed”:

The school's football program reflects those realities. In interviews with The Magazine, 19 current or former Oregon players and officials revealed widespread marijuana use by football players for at least the past 15 years. Former Ducks, including current pros, estimate between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed; current Ducks say that range remains accurate.

While I am no social scientist, interviews with 19 people along with the fact that “The Princeton Review and High Times both have ranked the University of Oregon among the most pot-friendly schools” and that during the 1990s the “Grateful Dead made Autzen Stadium a regular tour stop” is not evidence of a drug epidemic within the Duck football program.  It certainly isn’t evidence that allows for statistical claims such as 40-60%, a number that not surprisingly was circulated widely by other media outlets.

Both articles reveal even more in terms of the perpetuation of stereotypes that have consequences in both the sport world and beyond.  It is yet another illustration as how “what it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness” is “what it means to be black.”  As argued by Michelle Alexander, “the term black criminal is nearly redundant” so much so that “to be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable – a social pariah” (p. 193).  One has to look no further than a Yahoo report –“ESPN's 'Higher Education': Rampant Use of Marijuana in College Football Isn't the Least Bit Shocking” to these conections.  Responding to ESPN: The Magazine report, Adam C. Biggers waxes sociologist to explain their findings:  

One part of the story that should be looked into is the player's backgrounds. Many of the athletes in the ESPN report are African-American and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Based on my experience, marijuana isn't considered a "drug" by many in the urban community. I've been around college athletes, even coached at the prep level in Flint, Mich., and it's clearly evident that marijuana is ‘nothing’ when compared to other illicit substances.  That may be true, but it's still illegal. In hockey and baseball, the use of smokeless tobacco is acceptable. Young players under the age of 18 use it on a regular basis. To them, it's part of the culture, as is marijuana to the urban community.

One has to wonder how Mr. Biggers would explain marijuana use amongst lacrosse or soccer players; what sort of stereotypes and white racial frames might he use to interpret prescription drug and recreational drug use amongst non-athlete students?

The effort to isolate the problem to football and to connect to “urban culture” is not surprising given fact that a study from the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education found that 95 percent of respondents imagined an African American when asked about drug user.  The media narrative here (and elsewhere) is both indicative of the racial – Jim Crow – nature of the war on drugs and reflective of ways that dominant culture justifies and sanctions the racist war on drugs.  According to Michelle Alexander, “racial bias in drug was inevitable” (104).   Part of the reason why it was inevitable and remains the case today is the false narratives, stereotypes, and misinformation disseminated by the likes of ESPN has turned the problem of drugs into a problem of blackness.  From Cops to ESPN: The Magazine, from the world of politics to the world of sports, America’s drug habit has been defined through and around blackness, rationalizing and sanctioning a war on blackness. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.