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Racial Bias and the Ability to Feel Others’ Pain
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Hernan Vera and I have written about the importance of the break down of empathy as part of the creation of racist systems, including discrimination and its racial framing. Discover magazine’s blog has reported recently on research study by the Italian scientist Alessio Avenanti, who
recruited white and black Italian volunteers and asked them to watch videos of a stranger’s hand being poked. When people watch such scenes, it’s actually possible to measure their brain’s empathic tendencies. By simulating how the prick would feel, the brain activates the neurons of the observer’s hand in roughly the same place. These neurons become less excitable in the future. By checking their sensitivity, Avenanti could measure the effect that the video had on his recruits …. most interestingly of all, he found that the recruits (both white and black) only responded empathetically when they saw hands that were the same skin tone as their own. If the hands belonged to a different ethnic group, the volunteers were unmoved by the pain they saw.
Interestingly, like we have argued,
Avenanti actually thinks that empathy is the default state, which only later gets disrupted by racial biases. He repeated his experiment using brightly coloured violet hands, which clearly didn’t belong to any known ethnic group. Despite the hands’ weird hues, when they were poked with needles, the recruits all showed a strong empathic response, reacting as they would to hands of their own skin tone. … strong evidence that the lack of empathy from the first experiment stems not from mere novelty, but from racial biases.
He also gave the recruits the Implicit Association Test
which looks for hidden biases by measuring how easily people make positive or negative connections between different ethnic groups. For example, white Italians are typically quicker to associate positive words with the term “Italian” and negative ones with the term “African”. And the faster they make those connections, the greater the differences in their responses to the stabbed black and white hands. … All in all, Avenanti says when we see pain befall a person from our own racial group, it immediately triggers resonant activity in our own nervous system. When we see the same event happening to someone of a different race, these simulations are weaker and take longer to form.
These anti-empathetic reactions are most serious for those who have the greatest power to oppress others, to cause great, routine, and recurring pain in racialized others, which is typically whites in Europe and the United States.
In the U.S. case whites’ recurring discriminatory actions targeting Americans of color require a breakdown of normal human empathy. Most social theorists have missed the importance of the fact that all human life begins in empathetic networks–the dyad of mother and child. Usually central to these first networks is basic human empathy, a desire and ability to understand the feelings of others. Without empathy on the part of mothers and other relatives, no child would survive. As it develops, racial oppression severely distorts human relationships and desensitizes the minds of those oppressing others.
Oppression requires in oppressors a lack of recognition of the full humanity of racialized others. Psychiatrists use the term alexithymia to people unable to understand the emotions of, and empathize with, others. Hernan Vera and I have suggested going beyond this individualistic interpretation to a concept of social alexithymia. Essential to being an oppressor is a significantly reduced ability to understand or relate to the emotions, such as recurring pain, of those targeted by oppression. Social alexithymia thus seems essential to the creation and maintenance of a racist society.
What needs most to be explained is not the reality of human empathy and solidarity—the problem often stated by western philosophers–but rather how this empathy for others gets destroyed and how human beings develop anti-empathetic inclinations essential to racial oppression.
More on Rand Paul and Racism Issues
Posted by: | CommentsThis Dailykos blogger lists these Rand Paul events. The Maddow discussion was blogged on previously by Adia and others, but there is more…… The plot thickens:
Strike #1. Rand Paul’s campaign spokesperson Chris Hightower was fired for posting “Happy Nigger day” with Lynching pics at Facebook along with posts describing how he liked to go to the local mall in KKK garb.
Strike #2. On The Rachel Maddow’s Show and NPR Rand Paul, repeatedly, objects to Title II of the Civil Rights Act, stating that Businesses should be able to discriminate based on race. Upon learning of the controversy he had stirred by airing his pro discrimination views, he backtracks and goes into hiding/damage control.
And now Strike #3. Rand Paul has received funds and promotion from white supremacists, Neo-Nazi’s and KKK leadership via Stormfront.org
Is this US political scene getting closer to tragic political events in Germany in early 1930s?
Race, Redemption, and Respectability: White Racism in Athletics
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(This is co-authored with David J. Leonard.)
The ongoing media fascination with Tiger Woods and his personal transgressions should remind us of what a prominent place race, redemption, and respectability play in sport today. Like Michael Jordan, Woods’ immense talent tied to his well-known story of dedication and drive have allowed media commentators, commercial culture, and fans alike to see the golfer as having transcended race, to become emblematic of the ideals of a supposedly post-racial order. In wake of martial infedility, his cultural capital and real capital have allowed him to chart an increasingly familiar course of redemption for the rich and famous: apology, treatment, and a rededication to faith and/or family. Few African American athletes today can become a new person so easily. Redemption is reserved for whites and those who are imagined as Picca and Feagin have argued as “honorary whites.” In fact, we would suggest that commodification and criminalization of blackness, that the class and gendered signifiers associated with dominant “white racial frame,” particularly in the context of sport, has made them unredeemable.
Case in point. Just this week, a more common pattern unfolds, one that colors the possibilities for redemption in a purportedly colorblind era. On Sunday, in the wake of a public spat with a woman at a bar and amid a pending suspension for violating the league substance abuse policy, the Pittsburgh Steelers traded Santonio Holmes to the New York Jets. Media accounts suggest that this was in large measure because of “his rap sheet,” because team owners were tired of Holmes’ bad behavior, which had include illegal drug use and a previous suspension. Fans and analysts, moreover, referred to the MVP of the 2008 Super Bowl as “a problem child” with “a sense of entitlement” and “a bad boy” “infected by low morals” and made regular connections between Holmes and new teammates best known for their transgressions—Braylon Edwards who had previous run-ins with the law and Antonio Cromartie, who was lampooned for having seven children with five different women and needed a large signing bonus to pay off overdue child support. An article in today’s New York Daily News goes so far as to described the team as “[Coah Rex] Ryan’s halfway house for misbehaving millionaires.”In an article on National Football Post, Andrew Brandt questioned the logic behind the Jets’ acquisitions, noting “management feels this coach can take a potentially combustible mix of players and mold them into a productive group” He and others seem to wonder whether or not the father figure can redeem and reform their abject and pathologically dysfunctional black bodies.
Whereas as other athletes and public figures, from Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger to Jesse James and countless politicians, have given the opportunity to seek public forgiveness, Holmes received no opportunity to apologize or make amends for his violation of league policies and bad public behavior. In fact, the elite athlete was summarily traded for a lowly fifth round pick in the upcoming draft–exiled, cast off, pilloried, damned.
In contrast, his former teammate, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger took to a podium in a Steelers’ locker room Monday evening and made a brief statement, stating in part,
“I’m truly sorry for the disappointment and negative attention I brought to my family, my teammates, coaches, the Rooneys and the NFL. I understand that the opportunities I have been blessed with are a privilege, and much is expected of me as the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers…I have much work to do to earn this trust. And I’m committed to improving and showing everyone my true values.”
Roethlisberger offered an apology, the second in nine months, following accusations of sexual assault. In the most recent case, he stood accused of attacking a 20 year-old woman in the bathroom a bar after plying her with drinks. Although the star quarterback received his share of criticism from the public and the owner of the Steelers reportedly was “furious,” he was not quickly traded for a pattern of bad behavior and violation of the player code of conduct. Moreover, in contrast with a number of African American players who have had punitive actions taken before the rendering of legal decisions, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who William Rhoden described as “the law and order commissioner”who in the past has “wasted no time throwing down the gantlet and issuing verbal and financial penalties” opted to take no immediate action. He preferred to wait on local authorities before acting.
On Monday afternoon, District Attorney Fred Bright concluded he could not bring charges against Roethlisberger due to a lack evidence compounded by the victim’s desire to avoid a media saturated trial. During his press conference, Bright admonished Roethlisberger and condemned his behavior, maturity, and failure to be an adequate role model. He also advised him to “grow up.” These sentiments echoed comments from fans and pundits, who wonder when he would learn from his behavior, mature, and realize his potential. In others, the fallen hero can, and perhaps even must, redeem himself. And this appears to be what Steleers owner Art Rooney hopes to achieve:
During the past few weeks I have met with Ben on a number of occasions, not only to discuss this incident, but also to discuss his commitment to making sure something like this never happens again. The Pittsburgh Steelers take the conduct of players and staff very seriously. Ben will now have to work hard to earn back the respect and trust of Steelers fans, and to live up to the leadership responsibilities we all expect of him.
Responsibility and respectability interwoven in these comments provide a pathway to redemption for the star quarterback.
While one may quibble about the relative value of Holmes and Roethlisberger to the franchise, the difference in their treatment is telling: the former is traded, rapidly punished for violations, and marked as a deviant; the latter is retained and counseled, awaits possible punishment from the league and/or his team, and rendered a broken work in progress. These differences emerge from the application of a white racial frame, particularly the narratives it makes possible. Whereas Holmes fits neatly within pre-existing accounts of blackness—disobedient, transgressive, criminal, unredeemable, childlike—that must always already must be policed but can never been redeemed; whereas Roethlisberger takes on the role of the tragic hero, wounded by immaturity, hubris and wrong actions, who has the potential to be redeemed and otherwise grow-up. Furthermore, where Roethlisberger enjoyed and can earn back respect from his teammates, his boss, his fans, and perhaps even his critics, Holmes became doomed to exile and damned to condemnation. Failing to stay within confines of the politics of respectability and become a racially transcendent commodity, Holmes was sent packing. Writing about black masculinity and the politics of respectability in wake of the election of Barack Obama, Mark Anthony Neal argues that cultural inclusion and the calls for proper behavior and respectable “performances will ultimately falter under the weight of their pretensions. Like a suit that no longer fits, their performances are coming apart at the seams” (http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2010/04/coming-apart-at-seams-black-masculinity.html). For Holmes, his blackness and the associated signifiers within the dominant white racial frame precluded him from navigating the paths toward respectability. Yet for Roethlisberger, the journey toward acceptance, the efforts to perform an acceptable identity were just coming together, albeit with the powerful threads of whiteness.
Vanity Fair: Fair-Skinned Racism?
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The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has an interesting comment and poll on this Vanity Fair cover that is supposedly about a “new Hollywood 2010.”
As they point out this is not new, but a quite whitewashed view of what Hollywood and US female acting talent/beauty supposedly are, yet again:
. . . the latest cover of Vanity Fair magazine, which features nine young Hollywood actresses and muses—all very young, very thin and exclusively white. There are no Asian, Black, Middle Eastern or Latina actresses featured in “A New Hollywood 2010.”
‘Tis interesting how “liberal” and “post-racial” U.S. society is, well, not. Also, this NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) site is a very useful source of race/racism, African American, and civil rights news that seems not to be well known. I recommend it for bookmarking.
Racist and Homophobic Attacks on Members of Congress: What Next?
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The racist and homophobic, and sometimes violent, explosion by the almost all white teabaggers seems to have accelerated, according to this McClatchy newspapers story:
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Capitol, angry over the proposed health care bill, shouted “nigger” Saturday at U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who was nearly beaten to death during an Alabama march in the 1960s…. Lewis said he was leaving the Cannon office building to walk to the Capitol to vote when protesters shouted “Kill the bill, kill the bill,” Lewis said. … A colleague who was accompanying Lewis said people in the crowd responded by saying “Kill the bill, then the N-word.” . . . “It was a chorus,” Cleaver said. “In a way, I feel sorry for those people who are doing this nasty stuff – they’re being whipped up. I decided I wouldn’t be angry with any of them.” Cleaver’s office said later in a statement that he’d also been spat upon and that Capitol Police had arrested his assailant.
Gay members are also being attacked:
Protesters also used a slur as they confronted Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., an openly gay member of Congress. … Frank said the crowd consisted of a couple of hundred of people and that they referred to him as ‘homo.’ A writer for The Huffington Post said the protesters called Frank a “faggot.”
The fact that so much of this racist, homophobic, and/or violent rhetoric and action has easily take place in and around the Capitol building suggests how pro-conservative so much of the leadership of this country has become. Where is the speaking out against this extremist activity by conservatives of integrity? Will we see assaults on members of congress soon from these extremist groups?
Indeed, it is also striking how seldom the whiteness of these extremist movements is seriously analyzed in the mainstream media. Whites usually seem to be let off the hook when they are operating out of extreme versions of the white racial frame and/or the extreme anti-government frame. I feel sure that if they were black Americans or other Americans of color, that reality would be centered in a good many stories. What do you think?
Still Racial Pawns: Blacks in Academia
Posted by: | CommentsI woke up that bright California morning my fingers were stretched in the lap of stiff and hardened sheets within the meager continental breakfast offering hotel. I had no idea that the night would end with me in this same room with clinched fists and a mind filled with questions layered in questions that were neatly folded between a strong measureable dose of pure fury. As I sit at the desk in my room writing this piece, it has dawned on me that the previous unexpected phone calls from the chair of the search committee were clues of what was to come. It struck me oddly as to why she called twice after offering me a chance to visit the campus as to rather I truly wanted to come to the campus. In her words, “Are you sure you want to come? You know you are not going to make a lot of money as an assistant professor in comparisons to your current job?” Was she kidding? I was a Ph.D. working on teacher contract in a public school system in the Midwest. I was not a CEO of a fortune 500 company; I knew exactly what I was getting into. Have you ever seen an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs is fooled and made to look stupid and as he looks toward the viewers his face is replaced by a Jackass? Well that was me at that moment.
That morning I pressed my favorite blue suit and my second favorite “fancy pants” silk tie. I cleaned my Black stylish but conservative dress shoes. I sprayed on the only bottle of cologne I had at home that had less than three or five sprays that would allow me present a solid argument to the security at the airport when he/she would tell me the bottle was larger than the 3oz. allowed within carry-on luggage. Finally I looked into the bathroom mirror before exiting and said out loud, “If this is the place for you, this is your job. Go get it.” I walked out of my room, grabbed a banana at the continental breakfast area, and met the chair of the search committee outside where it was a beautiful 73 degree bright day. Beyond the standard conversation and basic tour of the campus, I saw nothing out of the norm. The campus was primarily Latino and White. When I did see a Black face, I got an interesting response. See, when Black people are in large numbers in many places, I have an amateurishly calculated a 30 to 70% chance of them acknowledging me when eye contact is made. There, the look in the two sets of eyes that I saw on campus reminded me of someone being pleasantly surprised. In fact, a look that said, “Help Me!” was evident.
Putting my observations aside, I was later introduced to the faculty. I decided to answer a question that had been on my mind since the interview was set up. Why was I asked to not worry about presenting a formal presentation on my research or teaching interests? They basically told me that they wanted to try something different this time with this position. A red alert glared off in my mind. As I talked and referenced my research, interests, and teaching philosophy, I noticed the questions that came from the peanut galley were questions that gave the impression that my CV was foreign to them. Have they read it? Of course, right? Out of two applicants that were brought to the campus, surely they know who I am and have an idea of my passions for social justice, right? What? You had no idea I wrote a book you say. Yes, my research is focused on the marginalized population of males of color. No I do not live currently in California. I am from Illinois. As they questions pilled on as we all walked to lunch, I became confused. I have rarely been at a loss for words, but this interview ushered in a new experience when the faculty began to talk about the active Aryan Nation and KKK groups in the town. What the hell? Confusion mounted when I told them all at lunch that I was committed to social justice and putting social work on the front line as a profession that as a whole does not do enough to attack racism and social justice for all. Then I performed a great magic trick. After my confession, I split the table into two with words only. One half never talked to me while the other discussed politics in California. I simply made my soup and salad last as long as possible.
After a few more hours of talking to people in more expensive suits than mine that I will soon forget, I was asked to answer questions from a night graduate class before my last free meal. I attempted to be me and the class laughed at the appropriate times and shook their heads when I was being serious and motivational. I was a hit! But as I talked, I noticed the two faculty members in the rear with unimpressed pale faces. At that moment, I knew I was not getting this gig. But I did not know I was probably set up until an ex-hippie lecturer who I really connected with told me in private that if I was serious about this position, I had competition. In my research one molded mind, I felt I had no competition. But then he sympathetically divulged with me that the other person was from the area and a graduate of the department. Was I a pawn in their pursuit to hire one of their own? Was I the token Black male in a predominately White female profession? Hey, we were able to interview one of them; it just so happens he was not the right fit? As I got on the plane to leave the sun for the cold, the only thing that could come out of my mouth was “Hee haw….. Hee haw!!”
Racist Campus Climates, Again in California
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The San Diego Union-Tribune has an article about a racist “ghetto” party by University of California (San Diego) students off campus:
An invitation to the “Compton Cookout” event urged participants to wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly, according to wording circulated by outraged students and verified by campus administrators. As a guide for girls attending the event, the invitation read, “For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks — Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes. …”
White students at many colleges and universities have had these “ghetto fabulous” parties in recent years. Clearly, these white students are acting—likely regularly–out of a racist framing of whites as superior, and of African Americans and other Americans of color as odd and inferior. In this case their mocking images of African Americans seem to accent a modest range of rather old stereotypes, and include a reference to a black community in the Los Angeles area (Compton). Their emotions and narratives of superiority are on display here too.
Note too that “Outrage over UCSD Party Mocking Black Culture” is the title of the newspaper article, revealing a white racial framing by the newspaper writer or editors which appears similar to that of the white students. Gold teeth, fighting, cheap clothes seem to be their view too of “black culture.”
The university has so far responded like the racist performances are no big deal. The chancellor does not seem to be taking the racist partying very seriously since she only issued verbal statements saying “we were distressed” at the offensive party and strongly “condemn” it, but her administration has indicated that the university-recognized fraternity connected to the party will receive no sanctions of any kind for its hyper-racist activities. The meek university response includes a call for students and faculty to attend a teach-in in a few days “to explore how such incidents continue to occur today and to discuss the importance of mutual respect and civility.”
A bit slow and meely to the mark, since this is not the first such incident. University administrators seem uninterested in doing anything serious about their racist campuses, such as some required, term-length instruction in the basics of Stereotyping 101, Respect for Others 101, or Racism 101. One faculty member was also quoted in the Union-Tribune story noting there are few black faculty and students on campus, and that the university has had trouble recruiting them because “There’s something about the climate here that drives black students away.”
Indeed, “something” is not so vague, and it does drive the students away: large-scale white racism.
The article writer/editor also seems favorably inclined toward the fraternity since the article concludes by accenting (and quoting a student who graduated named Washom) that the fraternity
is known for having strong athletics, organizing philanthropic events and being diverse. “I never really found someone who wasn’t courteous or respectful of other people,” Washom said. “I couldn’t see someone doing anything deliberately racist.”
Well, I guess now he has seen it? And have the writer and editor?
Lessons in Anti-Racism
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When I was in graduate school, Tom Pettigrew used to remind us that many white Americans hold their racial prejudices and stereotypes at a rather superficial level, mainly as a way of conforming to whites and the white supremacist culture/society around them. (He suggested that a smaller proportion held these views very deeply, as a Freudian-type “crutch” that held their very troubled personalities together.) The clear lesson he was offering is that for many whites some significant change in racial views should not be difficult. The learning context matters.
Recently, one of my former graduate students, now a professor, sent me this comment about a new white student in her class:
I am beginning a new semester of my Race class. I decided to formally introduce your “white racial frame” concept the first week of the semester this time…My students journal free-form every other week or so, and here is the very first journal entry I read. I particularly love the last line of the first paragraph:
White Racial Frame: When first entering this course I never imagined that within the first class session my mindset would be changing about race and the role it has in the world today. The idea of the “white racial frame” is what immediately caught my attention. The idea that there is a term for a frame of mind I never knew existed struck me. I am the typical definition of a “white girl” and I know it. Blonde hair, blue eyes, sheltered lifestyle and never struggled a day in my life, I know I am a white girl. I just never considered that my frame of mind about the world is compromised because of it.
I always thought of my life as fair. I had the ideal mindset that the United States represents all that is fair; everyone has their own chance and makes their own choices from a totally level playing field. It is only now that I can see that things may be set up differently. My view was that my parents work hard for what we have and that anyone can do the same for their families. Maybe it is a naive frame of mind to believe the world to be fair, but it was nice that way. It is only in more recent years I can see the trends that lead me to believe that all is not fair and the world is a tough place. I believe that is partially due to my sheltered life that I grew up with and partially because of the “white racial frame” that I did not know I possessed.
Society prioritizes the white race and does not even realize it. I have done it and only now realize it. Everyday simple situations I find myself choosing someone who is white for a job, or maybe being more comfortable with a white person than anyone else. Even in my relationship preference I have only dated white men. Have had several opportunities to do otherwise, but simply never acted upon it. Before this class I never questioned that the president has always been a white male (until Obama obviously). I am realizing that the “white racial frame” expands into so many things in our lives. It can be as simple as daily life within my own home, and can expand all the way into politics in the world. I am excited to be in this course to help open my mind to more of these situations and to educate myself more on the role of race in society.
Things can change. Excellent teaching and teachers matter.
The Common Ground of Reid and Steele: From White Racial Framing to Hegemonic Whiteness
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There’s been a lot said about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) comments in Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s new book Game Change, which hit bookstores yesterday.
The authors quote Reid as saying Obama, as a black candidate, is successful because of his “light-skinned” appearance alongside his speaking patterns “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Along these lines, I refer readers to Joe’s post from yesterday, which deals with the “white racial framing” of Reid’s remarks.
Yet, one of the most vociferous challenges to Reid’s comments comes from GOP chairman Michael Steele. On Sunday, Steele called for Reid to step down. The remarks, Steele stressed, were just as contemptuous as those made by former Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who once praised Strom Thurmond’s segregationist presidential candidacy.
As a former student of mine, Taylor Harris, wrote:
Forget Michael Steele’s inane comparison of Reid’s comments to Trent Lott’s in 2002. Lott endorsed a segregationist, Reid endorsed a fair-skinned Ivy-Leaguer. As national anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise posted on his Facebook page, “That’s like the difference between saying, on the one hand, ‘gee Tim, you don’t look Jewish,’ and ‘Wow, those Nazis were really on to something.’ One is insensitive and stupid, while the other is monstrous.
Whether Steele is right or wrong in demanding an apology and a resignation is moot. This is the same Michael Steele who recently remarked that African Americans should join the Republican Party because he was going to offer “fried chicken and potato salad,” or his very recent remarks in which he matter-of-factly dropped the phrase “Honest injun.” Here, both Reid and Steele are employing the same historically-embedded worldview—one of white racial framing.
Rather than examine how white supremacist invective invades the wordplay of both the left and the right, the debate remains hijacked by the familiar “culture war” saga of red v. blue and right v. left. Most discourse centers on whether the left only criticizes the right for racism and excuses it amidst its own ranks, or whether or not Steele (and the right) is engaging in hypocritical political opportunism as a way of jump-starting predicted Republican gains in the House and Senate come the next election cycle.
In either case Reid implicitly reproduces the notion that being “too black” is a political liability in our supposedly “post-racial” age, while Steele explicitly reproduces a virulent stereotype ripe from the text of Amos ‘n Andy, the bulk of the discourse misses that white supremacist discourse has been so normalized that is has become common-sensed or “hegemonic.” Such white supremacist logic knows no political boundaries and cannot be reduced to such.
My own sociological research bears this out. In a forthcoming article in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies (advance copy here), I present data from two politically-opposed racial organizations: a white nationalist group and a white antiracist group. I found that both often relied on similar “scripts,” if you will, to construct a robust understanding of white and non-white identity on a personal, interactive, micro-level.
In particular, both groups engaged in what I call an “Identity Politics of Hegemonic Whiteness”—they both possess analogous common-sensed “ideals” of white identity that function to guide their interactions in everyday life. These “scripts” serve as seemingly neutral yardsticks against which cultural behavior, norms, values, and expectations are measured. Hence, white identity is revealed as an ongoing process of formation in which (1) racist and reactionary scripts are used to demarcate white/non-white boundaries, and (2) performances of white racial identity that fail to adhere to those scripts are often marginalized and stigmatized, thereby creating intra-racial distinctions among whites. As just one example, and akin to Leslie and Joe’s book, I found that both groups reproduce overt and hostile racism in private settings whereby they feel more free to engage in language and actions deemed politically incorrect. For those whites that didn’t “go along with the crowd,” they often found themselves the brunt of jokes, marginalized within their respective organizations, and framed by others as somehow lacking in mental, physical, and/or cultural acuity.
Unless we can have a more robust public discussion of how white supremacist logic has invaded the dominant discourse of both the left and right, and intimately influences how many whites are encouraged to create a sense of their own racial selves, I’m afraid we may be missing the larger point.
Matthew W. Hughey, PhD is Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty member of African American Studies and Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. His research centers on racial identity formation, racialized organizations, and mass media representations of race. He can be reached at MHughey@soc.msstate.edu. His website is http://mwh163.sociology.msstate.edu
Senator Reid’s White Racial Framing: Obama as the “Exception to His Race”
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Well, I had several interviews yesterday on the Senator Reid story with CNN television and radio, so I thought I would jell my thoughts a bit more here. As the Associated Press story put it, summarizing some of the gossipyGame Change book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, Reid said privately that Barack Obama
should seek – and could win – the White House because Obama was a “light skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
Reid is operating out of an older version of the white racist frame. The words “Negro dialect” suggest his age and background (senator from a pretty white state), but certainly does not excuse it. Reid seems to be accenting here the view that Obama is an “exception to his race,” an old racist notion in white America dating way back to slavery days. In this view Obama speaks well because he does not use the “Negro dialect,” and with his being light-skinned and other things, that makes him attractive to voters. He, of course, does not say, but means white voters since most black voters are unlikely to be put off by Reid’s supposedly “bad” qualities here.
The Reid comments, brief as they are, raise interesting questions that few in the media have raised. What, for example, does he mean by “Negro dialect”? He likely means a certain stereotyped way that many whites think, often erroneously, most black Americans speak. (The provocative “Field Negro” blog puts this point rather sharply here.) Of course, whites’ mocking of what they think is the “Negro dialect” is extensive in this country, and there are reportedly hundreds of websites that get into extensive mocking of what whites think and construct as “Negro dialect.” (No similar array for “white speech”?)
For example, on one site there is the mocking translation of a speech by Socrates: “How ya’ gots felt, O dudes o’ Athens, a hearin’ de speeches o’ mah accusers.” Such mocking of black speech is linked on many white-generated Internet sites to a broad range of racist stereotypes, jokes, and images. The site also listed events at a fictional “Ebonic Olympic Games”: the “torching of the Olympic City” and the “Gang Colors Parade.” Antiblack websites spread racist images globally. There is at least one antiblack site in Russian. (These examples are from the research of Margaret Ronkin and Helen Karn in Journal of Sociolinguistics).
Interestingly, commenting on Reid, Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell takes this language issue in a quite different direction:
Obama was not a viable contender until he learned to execute the cadences, rhythms, word choice and cultural references shared in many black communities. His stiff, wonkish approach in the 2000 congressional race led many African-Americans to be suspicious of his rootedness in black communities and his understanding of black community issues.
She thus contends that with some black voters (Reid seems to forget them in his comments) Obama had to accent certain cadences and other distinctive ways of speaking. This is a quite different language issue than what Reid had in mind.
Harris-Lacewell also questions whether lighter skin actually makes a difference with most white voters:
Some social science research finds that white voters demonstrate an unconscious preference for black faces with lighter skin and narrower facial features. It is likely that physical characteristics, like skin tone, may influence voters in this third group to view light-skin candidates as more “like them” and therefore “safer” to choose in an election. [However] These effects are negligible in determining election outcomes. Issue positions, partisan identification, assessment of electoral viability and previous elected office have far greater effects on vote choice.
I think she may be missing the main point here. Reid is considering skin color as just one characteristic along other features of Obama’s white-middle class orientation or “style,” not by itself. There is also the often unconsciously sensed danger-of-dark-skin motif in much white framing, as the cited research suggests. As Adia and I put it in our book on the Obama election and racism: Had Obama been a darker-skinned black man, he likely would have faced greater difficulty in escaping the “dangerous black man” characterizations that are part of the white racial frame. Some recent research is interesting on this point. For example, research on the impact of skin color and distinctive “black features” has shown that in court proceedings white judges tend to give harsher sentences to darker-skinned African Americans that lighter-skinned African Americans with similar records.
When Adia and I were researching our book we found several news stories that illustrate Reid was correct in some of his implications that numerous white voters would like Obama’s language, orientation, background, and/or style. Reportedly drawing on the canvassing approach of trying not to make voters mad, one white Obama campaign volunteer cited on a New York Times site made this comment to a potential voter: “One thing you have to remember is that Obama, he’s half white and he was raised by his white mother. So his views are more white than black really.” The volunteer thus assured the voter that Obama was acceptable because of his substantial white ancestry and white relatives’ socialization. Another white community volunteer reportedly spoke to fellow whites at a local church about how Senator Obama “doesn’t come from the African-American perspective – he’s not of that tradition. . . . He’s not a product of any ghetto.”
(Reid also has a track record on racial matters that makes one less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt in these matters. For example, he reportedly opposed some leading (and well-elected) black politicians in Illinois as unelectable replacements for President Obama.)
The white racial frame is so strong in white minds, even in relatively liberal white minds like Reid’s, that it is blurted out from time to time, and thus shows what many whites are really thinking–thinking they mostly try to hide in frontstage settings. We should take Reid’s commentary, and other such liberal-racist commentary, as a sign of what is really going on in the society. Reid’s commentary, and much more vulgar forms of it, were likely very commonplace across white America during the 2008 primaries and election. They still are. It is just that somehow this bit of the backstage got out without the cover of more socially “correct” language. One issue that has not come up much in the public controversy so far is the profound meaning of this backstage racist reality—the extensive blatant racism that goes on in the white backstage, something we have examined numerous times on this blog.
I should point out too that the book that generated the Reid controversy has even more dynamite quotes indicating the anti-Obama and hostile racialized views of Bill Clinton, such as those he made to and about Ted Kennedy endorsing Barack Obama. To Kennedy, Clinton reportedly said, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” And Clinton also said, “the only reason you are endorsing him is because he’s black. Let’s just be clear.”
