Category Archives: racism

Black Face

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, racism

 

Recently we have learned about Blackface as a result of the controversy over revelations that the current Democratic governor of Virginian, was photographed about 30 years ago for his Medical School Yearbook, with his face in “black face.” His face was painted black. What made it worse was the photograph of the student next to him wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood.  The Governor handled it in a clumsy manner. First he apologized, then the next day he thought it was not a picture of him at all, but he admitted that on anotheroccasion he was in a dance contest where he imitated Michael Jackson and had a little bit of shoe polish on his face.

I really don’t think politicians should be hanged out to dry for dumb things they did in their college years, for then most of us are in big trouble. Who did not do stupid things in the days of youth? Now that does not excuse egregious behavior like US Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault for example, but we have to give youth, even college students, some slack. I know I need some.

One of the factors in decided whether or not to “forgive” the conduct is contrition. The perpetrator must demonstrate remorse and that he/she has learned to be a better person since the incident occurred. However, I am not sure that the Governor appreciated the seriousness of what he had done. I know that I did not understand it properly until recently. I had seen it occasionally years ago on televison and never thought it was a big deal. The key is, I did not really think about it

CNN host Van Jones recently interviewed 2 academics on the subject of what they called “Black Minstrelsy”.  I had never heard that expression before.

From the three of them I learned that you have to know a little of the history of black minstrelsy or black face to understand the issue.  Starting in the 1830s already it was common for white actors and performers to paint their faces black in order to entertain white audiences by caricaturing blacks. Typically the African-Americans were caricatured as stupid, lazy, and silly. They continued racial stereotyping and discrimination. They were not “merely” entertainment. They were more than that. They were part of a pattern of discrimination.

The white actors would use grease or shoe polish or burnt cork or anything handy to create stereotypical characters like ‘Mammy’ or ‘the trickster’ or ‘thief’ to make African-Americans the subject of their comedy routines.

What whites did not realize, or if they did what they did not care about, was that this was awfully demeaning to the African-Americans. The practice  clearly denigrated them. Really it denied them their humanity!  And that really is the point. It robbed an exploited group of their humanity. Frankly, it was deeply racist.  Many of the audience members, including myself when I watched it on television, were not aware of the denigration, or chose to ignore it as irrelevant. The best that we who watched it can hope for is that we wee ignorant. The entertainment though was very popular.

According to the academics, it is deeply engrained in American society. They said it was the first form of popular entertainment in America. As Professor Rae Lynn Barnes, Assistant Professor at Princeton University said, “they were meant to humiliate African-Americans.” In particular it was often done to humiliate black women, a double exploitation.

Dwandalyn R. Reece of the National Museum of African American History was asked by Jones how she reacted when she first saw black minstrelsy and she replied that she had a “visceral response”. It was painful and humiliating. That is the key. We have to realize how our actions affect others. We have to walk in their shoes.  Not just the shoes of our friends who can easily laugh about it and don’t consider it “a big deal”. To us it is not a big deal. To African-Americans it often is a big deal. Reece felt sadness at the lack of empathy that made it possible for the whites to fail to understand why the images were painful to African-Americans.

Some whites, like Megan Kelly, former Fox commentator and broadcaster, claimed that they put on black face to “honor African-Americans.” Really that is an absurd rationalization. Whites have to realize that by putting on blackface they are evoking memories of painful, dark oppression. They are not funny to African-Americans. How would we feel if we were in their position? That is what we must always consider.  It is not honoring anyone. It is bludgeoning them. As Van Jones said, “Half the time, we live in the United Shame of America.”

Interestingly, in a recent poll Virginians were asked if the Governor should be forced to resign. 47% of all Virginians said yes. But 57% of African-Americans from Virginia said no!

I am not sure that the Governor should be forced to resign. He should demonstrate that he has learned from this experience, but ultimately the voters in the next election should decide his fate. Let them decide if the Governor has the courage to run again.

I  want to add that Canada is no better. Soon I intend to blog about racism in Canada. It is just that living here in the U.S. for 3 months their issues keep coming up. Ours have to be dealt with too and I intend to blog about it.

 

BlacKkKlansman

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Extremism, Movies, racism, Trump

 

 

 

The film BlacKkKlansman written by Spike Lee and others and also directed by Lee, is based on a memoir written by Ron Stallworth in 2014. The film is set in the early 1970s and tells the story of Stallworth who was the first black African-American detective in Colorado Springs. Amazingly Stallworth infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (‘KKK’) by posing as a white supremacist on the telephone. When face-to-face meetings were necessary his colleague at the Police Department, also amazingly, was  a Jew, but nonetheless stepped in to help out posing as Stallworth.  He showed up at meetings in the basement of a KKK member whose wife served cheese and crackers to those planning racially based attacks.

The portrait of the Klan members is not flattering. Their racism seems impossible. How could people have the crazy ideas they had? I kept thinking that Lee ought to have made a film about covert racism instead of the easy target of the KKK. After all there can’t be any racists like that anymore, I thought.  Yet the more I thought about the film the more I realized that is not true.  Many of the Klan members expressed views that seem to have come directly from Trump. They said that they just wanted American First and wanted to make it great again. By which of course they meant they white and non-Jewish.

Stallworth said the US would never elect someone “like Duke”, the leader of the Klan.  We as the audience experienced a hush at this point, knowing how in 2016 they did exactly that. Such racism is alive and “well” in the U.S as it is in Canada. Canada just picks a different target–indigenous people.

I was particularly affected by the racism of the women in the film.  One of the KKK members was affectionately hugging his spouse while she coos about how grateful she is that after all these years they are finally going to “kill some niggers.” She loves her husband for giving her this glorious opportunity. And then there were women watching a racist film at a Klan meeting who responded viscerally to a scene where a black man was lynched by a “brave” mob of whites. Watching it, as we cringed, she yelled, “String em up,” reminding me of how Trump’s female supporters would shout out at Trump rallies at the mention of Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up.”

The film ends with a shock. Lee included actual video footage from the 2017 Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville where various white supremacists, including David Duke the Klan leader, marched the streets of the city Virginia. The march included self-identified members of the far-right, alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others. The white supremacist marchers chanted racist and antisemitic slogans, carried semi-automatic rifles (Virginia is an open carry state), Nazi symbols including the swastika, and of course, Confederate flags. Many wore Trump “Make America Great Again” hats.

The footage of the rampage was shocking. It showed men violently attacking counter protesters and a car mowing down pedestrians. About 40 of the counter protesters were injured and 1 was killed. One of them was paralyzed as a result of the attacks.

Not that all the counter protesters were without blemish. Some of them egged on the supremacists. These days it is sadly not uncommon for Leftists to forget that people who disagree with them also have freedom of speech.

After that the film switched to a few of Trump’s reactions to the events. Trump did not clearly criticize the white supremacists, but instead said, “There were good people on both sides.” The two sides were hardly equivalent.

It’s not surprising that after Trump’s comments Duke the KK leader  responded by calling the protests “a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.” After Trump’s subsequent tweets Duke thanked Trump for telling the truth and the fact that he “condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Anitfa.” Later when Trump did finally criticize the white supremacists, Duke reminded Trump to  “take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.” Duke knows a racist when he sees one, even if millions of Trump supporters either don’t or don’t care.

I was wrong.  This is  an important movie. Clearly such blatant racism is not a thing of the past. It is the “history of the present” to use an expression by Pankaj Mishra.

The film closed quietly with a simple but dramatic image: the American flag lying upside down, gradually turning from full color to black and white. As seems to be happening so much in America (and Canada too), many people don’t seem to see in colour any more. Everything is black and white. The extremes are winning. I hope I am wrong about that.

If Beale Street Could Talk.   

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, racism

https://www.dropbox.com/s/az8hn7v3f4ba3t3/Screenshot%202019-02-06%2013.16.42.png?dl=0

 

If Beale Street Could Talk is not an outstanding film, but it is a good one. Based on a novel by the same name,  by one of America’s greatest writers, James Baldwin, this movie tells the story of 2 young black lovers from Harlem, Fonny and Tish. Fonny is falsely accused of rape and is placed in jail without bail very early on in the film. Tish is only 19 and is already pregnant when Fonny is put in jail. Tish’s family hires a white lawyer to defend him and her mother tries to get evidence that would support Fonny’s case.

The root of the film is love–parental and romantic. It is love that drives the film and floods it with warmth. The love between Trish and Fonny is palpable, as is the love between Trish’s family and the couple. The love from Fonny’s family, except for the father, is pretty thin gruel, diluted as it is by religion. Fonny’s   family evoked a familiar Baldwin theme–how racism frequently turned its victims, especially black men, into self-hating monsters that lash out at the only ones they could–i.e. their own families. Black people too often attack the ones they love the most because they are incapable of attacking those who oppress them. Warmth from family is desperately  needed to hold back the cold of prison and the American “justice” system.  That system is the background for the film, and it is not a pretty one. For the sad fact is that the criminal justice system is not a just one for black Americans.

Trish makes a telling remark early in the film. She says, “We were told we weren’t worth shit, and looking around us we saw the proof that it was true.” The reality of the American criminal justice system is that starting around the time that the book on which the film was based, mass incarceration as a result of ‘law and order’ politics was beginning to fill American jails, primarily with black men. In recent years in America 65% of convictions are against blacks who only make up 20% of the population.

Last year while we were in Arizona Chris and I heard a talk with Cornell West who rages against this system.  I heard him say on the radio one time, “If you don’t speak out against such injustice the rocks are going to cry out.” He also pointed out that “Every 28 hours for the last 7 years a black or brown man, woman, or child in America was murdered by the police or private security guard services. And the reason West said was because black lives are devalued. Black lives don’t matter. That was even though a black President led America at the time.

One of the real values of this film, is that it puts such facts in your face. This is particularly brought home during the family meeting between Fonny, Trish, and their young son in prison. Prison is the background to their “family life.” The couple lives in a toxic atmosphere of racial suppression. That was what life was like in America at the time. How much has it really changed?

The movie offered no facile solutions. I appreciated that. Such “solutions” would not have been honest. Fonny was in jail at the beginning of the film and he was still there when his young son came to visit him there with his mother.

The movie showed some “good whites” like the woman storekeeper who tried to defend Fonny and the Jewish landlord who was kind.

Yet Fonny’s friend, another young black man, asked if Malcolm X was right when he rhetorically asked if the white man was the devil? Fonny’s friend after describing briefly his woes in prison commented, “The white man sure does hate niggers.” I would apologize for using this word, but it was used in the movie. Scrubbing it would not be honest. That is also the way young black men would talk at that time in that situation.

Are such uncomfortable question like this not entirely appropriate when more than half of black men without a college education go to prison at some time in their lives? Or when you consider that there are more black men in American prisons than there were enslaved during the height of slavery? In America black lives often don’t matter, at least to whites. In America, as in Canada, racism still lies at its core. Until it is expunged and redeemed there is no hope for either country.

Green Book

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, racism

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vb2milab9xlcr7b/Screenshot%202019-01-28%2008.55.42.png?dl=0

This movie has received a lukewarm reception from the critics, but I dissent from their views. Critics have suggested this movie is superficial. I suggest the reviews are superficial.

Sometimes a movie does not need great subtlety to be worthwhile. This movie tells a story that must be told, over and over again. It tells the story of horrendous racism in America not that long ago. We all need to hear this story. This is even true of us non-Americans who are by no means free of racism ourselves. We must learn to speak out against racism. That is sometimes hard. As Angela Davis said, “In a racist society it is not enough not to be a racist, one must be anti-racist.”  That is one of the reasons I have started to blog. I want to denounce some injustices. Racism is one of them.

I liked the fact that the serious topic of racism in the movie was handled with humour. That is not always easy to do. The movie made us laugh and think. Isn’t that pretty good?

The movie is sort of twist on “Driving Mis Daisy, ” with the racial roles reversed. The driver is Tony Vallelonga, a.k.a. Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). He is a white iconoclastic Italian New Yorker. The elegant passenger is a brilliant and rich black musician, Donald Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali). Donald hires Tony to drive him through the Deep South before the civil rights successes in the 60s. They need the “Green Book” to find safe places for Donald to eat and stay. His wealth and fame is not enough. They are definitely an odd couple. Tony is brash, loud, unsophisticated and talkative. Dr. Donald Shirley is quiet, thoughtful, and refined.

The story in the film is how both of them become woke to the intricacies of the other. Both have to learn to get around the stereo-types. Tony begins as a racist, who discards in the trash glasses used by 2 black workers in his home, but learns in time to appreciate and befriend Donald. He overcomes his own racism. He is better than that. Donald learns to see the good  heart and street smarts underneath the rough exterior of Tony. Both have to get through the surface of the other to the richness underneath. Both have to look beyond skin color. That should be easy, but by now we know it is not. It is difficult to overcome deeply ingrained prejudice.

Tony is a self-confessed bullshitter. But he denies lying. He tells stories to others to get them to do what he wants. Reminds me a lot of a certain President.

While driving Tony is surprised that Donald seems unconnected to modern black popular music. He doesn’t seem to know the music of Chubby Checker, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke. This causes Tony to exclaim: “These are your people!” Tony exclaims, ultimately adding, “I’m blacker than you are!”

Donald on the other hand realizes that he is rich, talented, famous, and alone. He cries out that he is “not black enough, not white enough, not man enough,” and adds, with bewildered anguish, “What am I?” He has no place. He does not belong.  He gains an epiphany of sorts in a black jazz/blues club as he performs classical music for a surprised crowd and then joins a black band playing rousing blues and jazz. I loved their jamming.

I won’t say that the movie is brilliant. But I loved it. Sometimes brilliance is not necessary.