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Race and the U.S. Census: Hey NPR, Your Hipster Hate Hides Diversity
Posted by: | CommentsNPR recently ran a story called “New York’s Hipsters Too Cool For The Census.” This story has made the media-rounds with outlet after outlet (yes, even Stephan Colbert [video]) unable to resist grabbing the low-hanging fruit that is hipster-hate by arguing that hipsters in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn are too “cool” and busy Twittering to mail back their census forms.
(Creative Commons Image Source)
What is clear is that the very sizable non-hipster and non-affluent populations in Williamsburg are largely invisible to NPR and the others. We know that both non-whites and the poor are historically undercounted in the census (something the Bureau, to its credit, has been trying to solve). However, most in the media refer to Williamsburg simply as a hipster enclave and overlook the other populations in that diverse neighborhood.
You hear it all the time – that “Williamsburg is full of hipsters” (here, I’m trying to avoid the trap of defining this group that so often rejects definition). Yes, Williamsburg does have many “hipsters”, but the other populations seem to be mysteriously missing from discussions about the neighborhood. There exists sizable Hasidic, Hispanic (primarily Puerto Rican and Dominican), African American and non-affluent White populations as well.
Amazingly, NPR did mention that the true lower response rates come from the heavily Hasidic areas. Other bloggers have also pointed this out. However, faced with this obvious evidence for the low response rates, the title of NPR’s report, as well as most of its content and final conclusion (that the census needs to be “cool” for hipsters to respond), focuses on the largely affluent, white hipster.
Instead of using this as an opportunity to discuss the structural reasons why disadvantaged populations are undercounted in the census, NPR instead fuels (1) the invisibility of non-hipsters (primarily the Hasids, Hispanics, African Americans) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and (2) the knee-jerk reaction against self-presentations outside the norm that has taken the form of hipster-hate. Hipsters develop a self-presentation that is different than the norm, which causes confusion and, expectedly, leads to hate –hence the ridiculous knee-jerk conclusion that Williamsburg has low response rates because hipsters must be too cool or technologically connected to participate in the census.
~ Nathan Jurgenson, PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland
912 Protesters Fueled by Racism, Hatred of Obama
Posted by: | CommentsOn Saturday (9/12), thousands of protesters gathered in Washington to express their disdain for President Obama and his policies – particularly health care reform. The crowd was populated by white political conservatives — – organized by a loose-knit coalition of anti-tax, small-government proponents, and widely promoted by sympathetic voices in the blogosphere and on TV and talk radio. The protest was scheduled for 9/12 – the day after the anniversary of the terrorist attacks – as way to mark a point in time when Democrats and Republicans supposedly “shared a sense of purpose and unity and all Americans were patriotic.”
What few, if any, of the mainstream reports included in their coverage of the event was any discussion of the racial composition of the 912 crowd which was overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, white. According to The Washington Independent (the only news source I could find that was talking about this issue), the crowd was “99 percent white.” The reporter noted, “in my four-plus hours at the event, I’d only seen three African-American demonstrators.” When the reporter asked Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), one of the organizers of the event, about the lack of racial diversity in the crowd, DeMint blamed the event’s timing and the media coverage.
“If anyone does a fair analysis of the crowd, it’s a cross-section of the population. It’s probably just the time and organization and the media that promoted it,” DeMint said.
Now, just because it’s an exclusively white-folks event doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s fueled by racism, but it does give one pause. I certainly think it’s possible to oppose the policies of the Obama administration and not have those views fueled by racism. Yet, you can tell a good deal about a protest from the images and iconography that protesters choose to convey their message. And the signs people created and carried provide another kind of other evidence that the rhetorical and visual strategies of the protesters drew on a deeply embedded white racial frame.
While at least one news report (CNN) characterized the signs carried at the rally as “particularly distasteful” (e.g., “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy”), none in the mainstream media have called out the protesters for the overtly racist signs many of them carried. Here’s just one example (via Alternet):
The crudely drawn ‘monkey’ image in the middle of this sign suggests the deeply racist imagery of Obama that appeared during the campaign and has continued throughout his presidency. There are some more of these racist signs posted here. This is the same kind of racist hatred that is fueling the 400 percent increase in death threats to Obama that I mentioned here yesterday.
Although it’s possible that mainstream news outlets are not reporting on the racism at these protests out of some sort of concern for stoking the flames of racism, it seems more likely to me that those deciding on what is – and is not – newsworthy are steeped in a white racial frame that hinders them from accurately perceiving the many ways that the 912 protest is rooted in racism and white supremacy. The combination of this racism and the intense hatred of Obama makes for a dangerous combination.
The Racism in “The Great White Hope”
Posted by: | CommentsKeith Olbermann and Rep. Maxine Waters do a nice job of calling out the use of the phrase “great white hope” as steeped in racism. Here’s a clip on the long side (6:10) but worth watching all the way through if you missed the live broadcast:
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I really appreciate Olbermann saying “as a white guy” the recent political events make him uncomfortable. And, then poses the question to Rep. Waters, “are we going backwards or forwards?” It’s about the frankest discussion of racism on mainstream media that I’ve ever heard.
Fox News’ Racism
Posted by: | CommentsFox News’ Brian Kilmeade revealed a glimpse into the depths of his own racism on the air recently. During a discussion of a study based on research done in Finland and Sweden which showed people who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s, this exchange happened (short, less than 1 minute):
In this clip, Kilmeade questions the results of the study saying, “We are — we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other …” The co-host tried to distract Kilmeade, but he goes on to add, “See, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes …. Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society.”
The argument Kilmeade is making, and to their credit that his co-workers at Fox News seem appalled to hear, is one that’s rooted in the discredited racial pseudo-science of eugenics.
Eugenics, which reached ascendancy in the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s, advocated social progress through encouraging those deemed “fit” to reproduce to have children and discouraging, even coercing through forced sterilization, those thought to be “unfit.” One of the intellectual factories producing knowledge steeped in eugenics was at Cold Spring Harbor Lab on Long Island, just outside New York. While claims about “fitness” and “unfitness” were sometimes tied to inherited disease, just as often these designations were linked to poverty and race. Thus, people who are poor or not considered white are designated “unfit.” Indeed, in the extreme version of eugenics, some people were considered “less than human” or of “another species.” This kind of thinking is part of what fueled the Third Reich’s calculated extermination of six million Jews. Following the defeat of the Nazis and the liberation of the camps, the theory of eugenics fell into disfavor.
In his book, Backdoor to Eugenics (NY: Routledge, 2nd Ed., 2003), sociologist Troy Duster explores the ways that current practices, such as prenatal detection of birth defects, gene therapies, growth hormones, are once again introducing “genetic answers” to what are fundamentally social questions. In Kilmeade’s ill-informed discussion of research about the length of marriage, he is stepping into a long tradition of eugenics as the scientific basis for racism and antisemitism. Fox News rarely disappoints as a source for broadcasting such retrograde thinking.
Optimism & Everyday Racism
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A recent article called, “Voices Reflect Rising Sense of Optimism,” by Susan Saulny in The New York Times, trumpets the usual exuberance over the improvement in “race relations” in the wake the election of President Obama (
photo credit: Bjørn Giesenbauer).
I want to offer a different interpretation of some of the data in the article.
The reporting in this article is based on interviews in seven states throughout the U.S. It is meant to add some personal stories (what newspaper people used to call “color” and what sociologists might refer to as “qualitative data”) to support findings in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll (the quantitative data) in which two-thirds of Americans said race relations were generally good. Rather than a unequivocally optimistic story, as the headline suggests, the qualitative data (e.g., reporting) that the NYTimes presents here offers a glimpse into the micro-level interactions of how everyday racism operates. Let me show you what I mean.
The article starts with a description of what the past 30 years have been like for one working-class black man – a Mr. Sallis, 69 - in Milwaukee, WI, where being black “meant being mostly ignored, living a life invisible and unacknowledged in a larger white world.” Then, Mr. Sallis, 69, noticed a change.
“Since President Obama started campaigning, if I go almost anywhere, it’s: ‘Hi! Hello, how are you, sir?’ I’m talking about strangers. Calling me ‘sir.’ It makes you feel different, like, hey — maybe we are all equals. I’m no different than before. It’s just that other people seem to be realizing these things all around me.” [emphasis added]
Mr. Sallis is being euphemistic here when he says “strangers” – and the NYTimes doesn’t clarify – but he means “white people.” So, the big improvement in “race relations” is that white people have begun to say “Hi! Hellow, how are you sir?” to a black man that they presumably walked past for thirty years previously without acknowledging. I can see how this might qualify as ‘news’ but pardon me if I don’t quite share the optimism here. It seems to me that the broader pattern here is that white people routinely ignore and try to pretend that black people are invisible. So, yes, recognizing black people’s humanity is a big step forward. Mr. Sallis’ story is not an isolated example.
There are other examples of the shift in the micro-level of everyday racism, such as that of Kevin Chaison, a 39-year-old telemarketer in St. Louis, who also says that, as a black man, he used to feel invisible.
“I get more of a sense that I belong now. Now I’m getting more of a, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ than I was a year ago.”[emphasis added]
Again, note that Mr. Chaison is expressing optimism here about the fact that white people have acknowledged his existence with a simple, polite greeting. While it’s certainly good news, it also highlights the fact that until the historic election of the first African American president, white people were in the habit of not speaking to their fellow citizens who happen to be black. Perhaps this is what some white people mean when they insist that they’re colorblind and “don’t see race.”
A third black man quoted in the article, Chester J. Fontenot Jr., 59, a professor of English and director of Africana studies at Mercer University in Macon, GA, says that he has felt a shift on his campus in terms of the micro-level interactions. Here’s Professor Fontenot:
“I think what’s happened with a number of white people who have come up and started talking to me is they feel comfortable with him (President Obama), and that makes it O.K. to come up and engage me. They feel like they have something in common with me now, we have something to talk about. Now you get the head nod, or a smile that you just didn’t get a year or two ago. For me, it was like, ‘I’m not even going to acknowledge this black person.’ They’d just keep on their merry way. But now, I get acknowledged.” [emphasis added]
Once again, the mere fact of being acknowledged is noteworthy because it is such a dramatic shift in the micro-level interactions that make up everyday racism.
While I think there’s room for some optimism, I also think that it’s important to recognize that what seems to have changed is white people’s behavior. And, the changes being reported here are at an incredibly small, micro-level of interaction. This is progress to be sure, but it’s a long way from dismantling the institutionalized discrimination that operates whether or not someone says “Hey, how you doing?”
Racism, Reporting and 100 Days
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This week marked President Obama’s first 100 days in office ( photo credit: Alexander van Dijk). Lots of reporters took the opportunity of this somewhat artificial marker to evaluate Obama’s achievements and popularity. The reporting on his first 100 days was also the occasion for some racism in journalism that it’s important to call out.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing at The Atlantic, is right when he says that he finds Byron York’s (Washington Examiner) “incredibly racist.” Here’s the relevant passage:
On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.
Coates writes about his hesitancy to call out York for the racism in this passage because of what he calls “political correctness run amok” in which identifying racism is seen as more egregious than the racism itself. Coates is more eloquent:
We live in a country that may well be offended by racism, but it’s equally offended that anyone might actually charge as much.
For evidence, he cites some of the recent examples of overt racist expressions by James Watson, Geraldine Ferraro, Michael Richards, “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman, which were then all followed by plaintive wails of racial innocence and crys of “offense” by these white folks at being labeled racist.
And, in a support show of support for Coates’ assessment, Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress, says:
Ta-Nehisi Coates has an important post here that I think could probably use an “amen” from a white person. It’s absurd how totally disproportionate the volume of public concern is about black people “playing the race card” or about “political correctness” stifling someone or other to the volume of public concern about actual racism.
I can add another hardy “amen” to the white people that agree with Coates. Of course, I agree with Yglesias that actual racism is a much bigger problem than the putative threat of “playing the race card,” and I commend him for saying so publicly.
Clearly, this is not a widely held opinion among the (supposedly liberal) readers at Think Progress. Have a look at the comments (120 and growing rapidly last I checked) over there; most are from white people who do not agree with Yglesias.
Update @ 12:05pmET: Coates punches out another post about this ongoing controversy, “Byron York is Not a Racist.”
Open Thread: Tea Bag Racism?
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By now, you’ve probably heard about the “tea bag” protests on April 15 (tax day for folks in the U.S. – image from HuffPo). “Tea” here is an acronym that stands for “taxed enough already,” and is meant to be a play on the revolutionary war era Boston Tea Party. The term “tea bagging” also has another meaning – not related to drinking tea – which has prompted no end of bad punning and adolescent humor.
The protests are, depending on who you ask, either a grassroots movement of angry citizens upset about high taxes, or an astroturf – or fake grassroots campaign organized by the GOP and pumped by FOX News, or “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up,” as Janeane Garofalo said the other night.
So, time for a Friday Open Thread. What do you think? Is it a movement of angry citizens upset about high taxes? Is it astroturf, or fake grass roots? Or, is it racism straight up? Why?
Take the poll (to the left of this post). Or, if you prefer the short answer/essay version, drop a comment. Be sure to answer the “why” portion.
AP Posts Tale of Segregationist, Now a “Reformed” Racist
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The U.S. press has always been fond of redemption tales, especially those involving whites seeking exoneration for earlier crimes against black communities ( photo credit: Image Editor). This recent news story from the Associated Press about an older, now apologetic segregationist and Klan supporter, Elwin Wilson, is no different. This extensive piece written by Helen O’Neill and posted on the Yahoo.com homepage adheres to all the confines and revealing silences of traditional white discourse on racism.
Wilson has apologized publicly and often to this history:
The former Ku Klux Klan supporter says he wants to atone for the cross burnings on Hollis Lake Road. He wants to apologize for hanging a black doll in a noose at the end of his drive, for flinging cantaloupes at black men walking down Main Street, for hurling a jack handle at the black kid jiggling the soda machine in his father’s service station, for brutally beating a 21-year-old seminary student at the bus station in 1961
Once wonders where the attempt at serious reparations is. Apologizing seems rather too weak, indeed.
For another thing, the journalist’s piece reeks of the prevailing white folk theory of racism. As outlined by Jane Hill, the conventional white folk theory of racism treats white racism as a mere pathology held by individuals, something which can be rooted out with education and socio-economic uplift. The author of the AP tale seeks to present Elwin Wilson, a “former Ku Kluxer,” as a redeemed white man who has been enlightened to the error of his old segregationist ways. His apologetic actions play into the white racial frame by pushing white racism, past or present, to the margins of society, rather than being seen as inherent in the dominant white perspective and perpetuated, allowed, or beheld as actions by many, if not all, whites.
According to Otto Santa Ana, the prevailing metaphor for U.S. racism is Racism as Disease. The AP journalist plays into this old white metaphor by describing Wilson as “a sad, sickly man haunted by time.” By characterizing him in this individualistic manner, the (assumed to be white) reader can dissociate him/herself from the aging Wilson, a former Ku-Kluxer suffering from the individual pathology of racism. This tactic of pegging Mr. Wilson as someone suffering from a “peculiar” disease only reinforces the dominant white view that U.S. racism is an individual-level problem, something to be confronted by individuals and not something foundational to the operating of U.S. society. The author reveals her naiveté when she fails to acknowledge the institutionalized, structural nature of racism or its very long, continuing, and unjust history. Wilson did not act alone or as an innovator.
Wilson himself fails to grasp this systemic racism, when he states that “his parents treated everyone equally.” This denying attitude about the segregation era resonates with the findings of Houts-Picca and Feagin, who show from college student diaries just how much whites seek to deny racism even as they do it, and how often they describe as “good” and “fun” or “nice” the white friends or relatives who do blatant racism. By defining recurring racism as a pathological trait beheld by otherwise “good” individuals, it becomes impossible to locate responsibility for white racism.
Also, the journalist unquestionably accepts an Us vs. Them dichotomy when discussing Wilson’s segregationist past and other racial matters with Wilson, who himself seems more concerned with gaining entrance to heaven (his words) than actually righting the wrongs of his past. Wilson refers to African Americans as “[those] people I had trouble with,” and his wife nonchalantly states “they’re going to be [in heaven] with you.” Later he even states, “By the time I went to college I had dropped all that jumping on them, [but] I still didn’t want to marry one or anything like that.” (By jumping, he means violence.) We can see just how unchanged Wilson’s othering attitudes are. Though he may be touted as a repenting celebrity by many whites and some others, especially those who have internalized the myth of the U.S. now entering a “postracial” era (see the article itself for quotes from some of his elated admirers), one can easily sense ambivalence and continuing white racial framing in the man’s contemporary words and actions.
The AP article is but another example of white writers stroking the egos of the white public, who see whites as rather easily “overcoming” the openly-racist rhetoric and action of the past. Instead of confronting the latent, deep, and commonplace remainders of white-on-black oppression today, this breezy article reinforces the prevailing disease metaphor for white racism and pushes understanding that systemic racism again to the margins of society.
Racist Images: In (and Out of) Racist Context, Pt.1
Posted by: | CommentsThe NAACP protest against The New York Post and Murdoch’s News Corp for the loathsome Sean Delonas cartoon they published of a couple of weeks ago continues to spread as does the disagreement about whether or not the cartoon was racist or not, including this fascinating discussion by some of our sociological brethren over at Scatterplot. While the Scatterplot blogger Shaka called the cartoon “deeply racist to my eye,” lots of others vehemently disagreed with his take on the cartoon, and thus a lengthy debate ensued about whether or not the image is/is not racist. While the sociology grad student who blogs at Skinny Malinky tried to infuse some scholarly literature into the discussion that recognizes the perspective of those who are the targets of such racist images (a la critical race theory), this attempt got pretty thoroughly dumped on here. Beyond these few instances, The New York Post cartoon controversy (like the discussion of racism as a whole) goes unmentioned on most of the sociology blogs.
I still agree with Shaka (and lots of other folks) that the image is racist and part of why I think that has to do with the social context in which the image was published.
Cultural sociologist Wendy Griswold has a conceptual framework she calls the “cultural diamond” that is useful for understanding any cultural product (e.g., novel, film, political cartoon). I use Griswold’s work in my research and in my teaching and I think it could illuminate the discussion of racist images. In her framework (first published here), Griswold argues that to understand a cultural product, we should always take into account four perspectives: 1) the author’s/director’s intent, 2) the audience/reader’s interpretation, 3) the text itself and 4) the social context (imagine these as four points on a baseball-diamond-like shape). Much of the analysis of this cartoon has focused heavily on the author’s intent (e.g., “well, the cartoonist said he didn’t intend it to be racist”) and the reader’s interpretation of the cartoon (e.g., “well, I don’t read it as racist so therefore, the problem is all you people reading it as racist”). The social context of the cartoon is the crucial, and underexamined, point here. This cartoon did not emerge in a vacuum but rather within a very specific social milieu and context. The cartoon was published by The New York Post (a publication with a history of white racism) after the election of the first African American president following centuries of institutionalized white supremacy, often enforced through violence, and frequently legitimated through the use of dehumanizing images of blacks, often depicting them as apes. Without a knowledge of and appreciation for this social context, a cartoon like the one in The Post published is unfathomable.
To the impossibly young, like some of my college students born in 1990, it’s understandable that they might not know this history given that the basic facts about this country’s history of racism are still not included in the K-12 curriculum. To the full grown adults with advanced degrees in sociology, it’s a little surprising to me that they don’t this history, but then maybe it shouldn’t be. Still, there’s the more immediate social context of Obama’s presidential campaign, during which he was specifically targeted with racist images by those on the right. These images were intended to demean him based on his race, and suggest something suspect about his character, rather than simply criticize him as a politician for his views. Add to all that the further context of the racist death threats against Obama and the systematic police brutality in New York City and across the U.S. directed at black and brown folks, and the cartoon comes into focus as a piece of propaganda that legitimizes violence against non-white people (if not calling for the assassination of a sitting president).
Making sense of the images like the Delonas cartoon requires an understanding of that image within the context in which it appeared and sociology can help us understand that context. The wider debate surrounding The Post cartoon strikes me as a little facile, as in this disappointing piece by Nat Hentoff who tries the libertarian ploy of recasting this as a first amendment issue, which only serves to deflect attention away from a discussion of racism. There’s a much more difficult and complicated discussion to be had about racist images in and out of context, and for that, I’ll be back with Part 2.
American Racism
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American racism is getting more coverage on the mainstream news than it has since the Civil Rights era. And, that’s not surprising given antics like this image included in a mailing from the Chaffey Community Republican Women, a regional arm of the GOP in California (more on the story and image source here). For her part, the group’s president, Diane Fedele, draws on the rhetoric of “race-blindness” to defend her actions. She reportedly said that she received the illustration in a number of chain e-mails and decided to reprint it for her members in the group’s newsletter because she was offended that Obama would draw attention to his own race. She said she doesn’t think in racist terms, pointing out she once supported Republican Alan Keyes, an African-American who previously ran for president. She continues this “race-blind” rhetorical strategy when she says:
“I didn’t see it the way that it’s being taken. I never connected,” she said. “It was just food to me. It didn’t mean anything else.”
Now, the somewhat encouraging news is that lots of people are pointing out this overt racism and calling it what it is, including those on rather mainstream (albeit left-leaning) blogs and cable news networks.
However, the way stories like the one about the circulation of this image of “Obama bucks” are overly focused on individual racism, rooted in psychological explanations. For example, Fedele made the top of Olbermann’s “Worst Person” list on his nightly broadcast, as have others in this political season who’ve been guilty of engaging in the most overt racist tactics. And, in a perfectly fine piece at the Huffington Post, Peter Wolson has a thorough discussion of the psychology of “othering.” I don’t disagree with either of these. Indeed, I welcome more discussion of American racism in as many venues as possible. The problem with these is that the focus on the individual and psychological aspects of racism within a larger political discourse of “race-blindness” elides the way in which racism is systemic, built in, institutionalized, and structural.
The focus on the individual expressions of overt racism and the psychological roots of such expressions also forestall any sort of discussions about responses to racism by society as a whole. To illustrate this, note the contrasting response to individual racism in Denmark recently. A 33-year-old woman was convicted under Danish laws against racism after posting racist remarks on her personal web page (she was given a fine). Unfortunately, in the U.S. we seem reluctant to adopt such a societal-level response to overt expressions of racism, even in this political season and even when many, many people see such expressions as wrong and immoral. Instead, there is a knee-jerk, libertarian response to any call for accountability under the law for such expressions in the United States. In point of fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has made a number of decisions that restrict certain types of racist speech that don’t make a contribution to the public sphere. Yet, prominent figures such as Rush Limbaugh, get away with what amounts to enciting racist hatred with their speech, such as this recent tirade against black children allegedly “raised as militants.”
Identifying individuals who engage in overt racism is important, and understanding the psychology of such expressions is valuable, but coming to terms with American racism takes much more than that. And, dealing with it will require a broad-based political will and systemic social change. We’re not there yet.
