Back in the 90s, there was a kind of clumsy course correction by the entertainment industry when it came to the portrayal of black men. In its typical ham-fisted way, Hollywood attempted to assert its benign, market-driven progressivism by filling its middle brow shlock with impossibly noble black characters. Every other movie seemed to feature a black man who had no particular character traits beyond a) nobility and b) harmlessness. In the least self-aware versions, this manifested itself in explicit ways, the better to demonstrate to white audiences that these characters posed no threat. So the noble black man in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is mentally disabled; the one in Fried Green Tomatoes, mute.
It’s real progress that, at this point, this kind of impossible nobility and inoffensiveness has been largely written out of the movies. We are a savvier people than we were, when it comes to race. I think we’re far less likely to see the kind of virtue-through-neutering than we once were. Clearly, there’s a lot wrong with this particular manifestation of the effort to make black characters palatable to a white audience, and simultaneously to flatter that audience for their enlightenment. But I also think it’s essential to say that while these are particularly unfortunate ways to manifest the white desire to be saved from accusations of racism, this basic behavior is still a permanent part of educated white culture. It’s simply waged in a more savvy manner now.
So look at Richard Sherman. I think that this Deadspin piece makes the essential case very well.
There are some key facts that those folks who come to the defense of Richard Sherman usually point out: He’s from Compton, he graduated from Stanford, and he’s never been arrested. Also, he’s never cursed in a post-game interview. Moreover, he doesn’t have reputation as a “dirty player.” And finally, they note that he appealed and won when he was supposed to have been suspended for allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs….
And it sounds innocuous enough. Noble even. And no doubt, these folks who presented these sorts of defenses have good intentions. But the road to hell is littered with good intentions.
And white privilege.
There is no question that the outrage over Sherman’s infamous post-game diatribe was in large measure racially motivated. And those calling Sherman a “thug” were just using the socially savvy way to call him the n-word. It was necessary for people to respond and reject that thinking. But very quickly, that effort bled into the familiar pattern of white people instrumentalizing and dehumanizing a complex black person into an instrument of their political self-definition. At some point, the very public celebration of Sherman by white liberals became less about him and more about them.
People quickly course corrected from the “he went to STANFORD!” thing. The savvy set are quick learners and they are very finely attuned to these developments. But the essential point to understand is that it’s not the way in which people instrumentalized Sherman but the fact that they did. “Richard Sherman” is now, for a very many white progressives, a piece of code, and any part of his complex and imperfect humanity has been bled out of their understanding.
This led to a useless distorting effect where people competed to shower him with praise that had less and less to do with reality. Several of my Facebook friends began to compare Sherman to Muhammad Ali or Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Which is bonkers. Ali opposed one of the most senseless and destructive wars in the history of our country and the cost to him was enormous. Smith and Carlos made an explicitly political gesture in a sport where their livelihoods were far from secure. What Sherman did is not remotely comparable. So you’ve had this liberal cottage industry of trying to read the tea leaves to write him into some progressive narrative, scrounging through quotes to find evidence that he’s a political leftist. Which, to be clear, is just a more sophisticated version of that early 90s tendency to look for saintly black men; it’s squeezing black human complexity into a form that’s designed to appeal to white liberals. This is an inevitable consequence of so deeply enmeshing social justice politics with social competition that no one is sure where the one ends and the other begins.
You can certainly think that Kendrick Lamar was robbed at the Grammy’s, and in so doing damaged the history of relevance and integrity that the award is so well known for. And you can certainly think that Macklemore’s race has helped him achieve his success, in a way that unfairly disadvantages black artists. But at some point, waging this battle very publicly and constantly becomes more about you than about either of them.
None of which is to say that there’s a simple way to defend Richard Sherman from the racism of his critics without indulging in this. I don’t know how you would proceed to go about responding to the bullshit criticism without a little self-indulgence. And to be clear, if the alternative is between Richard Sherman being called a thug all day without response or white liberals dehumanizing and essentializing Sherman in order to defend him, then I’ll take the latter. I just wish people were a little more upfront and conscious about their systems for demonstrating their social justice bona fides. There are all sorts of ways to say “some of my best friends are black.” (Actually, making fun of people for saying “some of my best friends are black” is a very popular way to subtly say “some of my best friends are black.”) The question is whether you have the rhetorical skill and cultural savvy to do this in a sophisticated way, or if you lack those privileges and can only do it in a clumsy way. My ways of fulfilling this function are very sophisticated indeed.
When that infamous XOJane piece ran, I was struck by the fact that the author could have changed the piece in a very minor way and would have attracted praise from exactly those who showered her with anger. What was disastrous for her and her essay was not the overarching themes or argument but rather her inability to deliver the kind of signalling mechanisms that are now an essential part of navigating post-collegiate, culturally-liberal life. This is one of those essential unspoken aspects of going to a fancy college and enjoying an upbringing that exposes you to the many tacit requirements of bourgie existence: the social intelligence necessary to adequately hedge, to embed your beliefs in a framework of signals and references that indicate your fidelity to cultural and social norms which you mask as political conviction. When people indicated shock that someone could write that piece without understanding how it would be received, they were demonstrating privilege; knowing how the digerati operate is only obvious if you’ve been raised in a certain way.
If I’m often cynical about the liberal choir, it’s because of situations like that one. I think a lot of the anger from white liberals about that piece was not about the very real offensiveness of how she articulated herself but rather about the ways in which she failed to make the social cues that they have come to think of as the difference between being a racist and not. I also think, frankly, that she reminded them of themselves. If they didn’t identify with her in a way that made them uncomfortable, I doubt they would have been so aghast. I think the real complaint, for any number of them, was not so much “how could you possibly feel that way” but rather “how could you possibly be public about feeling that way!”
It doesn’t help that the way progressives argue now is to try and bend what you’ve actually said until it sufficiently resembles an argument that the crowd has already rejected. I spend more time defending myself from criticism of things I don’t believe and haven’t said than I do defending myself from criticism of things I do believe and have said. I hate a lot of my writing now because I have to fill it with so many goddamn hedges and announcements of what I’m not saying that there’s no room for my actual argument. But the alternative is to have a small army of people descending to say, “I squinted the right way and I read this super uncharitably and maybe invented a couple dozen sentences or so and I believe you are saying Terrible Offensive Thing.” Like clockwork. So I have to find myriad ways to say “I’m explicitly not saying Terrible Offensive Thing, which for the record I find Terrible and Offensive.” But I’m afraid there’s just no way to get so explicit with that stuff that somebody won’t say, “Look, my fellow book club radicals– deBoer seems to say Terrible and Offensive Thing.”
For myself, my growing awareness of the various systems I employ to project a certain kind of racial righteousness has created a growing sense of self-distrust. I just don’t think I am capable of policing myself in that way. Like I said: better to oppose conservative and racist stupidity and risk making black people into a symbol of your own righteousness than to let conservatives and racists win the day. But I despair at my ability to get outside of the deep weirdness that is white liberalism’s racial anxiety. Which just leads, once again, to the necessity of black economic, social, and political power, so that black people can better determine their own futures without having to count on the weird psychology of white progressives.
It’d be nice if some people (like the XoJane writer) would keep that stuff to themselves while trying to change their behavior. Seriously, you think to yourself, “Wait, is that racist? Probably should try to make sure it’s not” and change your behavior. I at least tried to do that with some recent job applicants I was on a committee to hire for – some of them were minorities, and going in I decided I’d double-check my reviews of their qualifications and ask myself if I was being unduly harsh on them or unduly lenient to the white applicants by comparison.
You don’t write a damn article about how you were so discomforted, and discomforted by your discomfort, although god forbid anyone not tell any stupid thing that’s on their minds to everybody in the Sharing Economy Age.
Sure. But people respond to incentives. And the incentives are not to work out your racial baggage privately. The incentive is to work them out very publicly, in a way that allows your peers to see you doing it, note your righteousness, and increase your relative esteem.
I know, and I hate it. Especially since I’ve read some black writers say basically the same type of thing – “why are you vocalizing your baggage and drawing attention to yourself about this?” – and it doesn’t sink it.
The liberal zealous, squinty pursuit of the Terrible Offensive Thing is so disheartening, like getting cut off by someone with a “COEXIST” bumper sticker who then gives you the finger. It’s like when conservatives celebrate traditional values in one breath and decry community activism in the next. Everyone seems to think love and charity are conditional upon whoever their object is, and not about subjective recalibration.
To me, the worst part about the liberal fixation with race is it’s painfully clear that “people of color” are basically considered objects, not persons with agency. The whole “don’t be a racist” push is not because they don’t want to be seen as racists by black people, but because they don’t want to be seen as racists by other white liberals. It’s basically a self-enforcing social norm which governs how people talk, but not how people actually act.
To show what I mean, I’ll talk about here in Pittsburgh, where I’ve lived for nine years now. There’s still a large working-class white population in the city, and in my neighborhood in particular. Some of them will say awful racist things, talking about “the blacks” or in some cases dropping the N word. But socially, they do mingle extensively, especially the younger generations. Lots of poor whites with actual black friends, black coworkers, sending their kids to racially mixed schools, interracial dating and marriage in some situations, etc.
In contrast, the white gentrifier population would never say those things. But they do not tend to live in neighborhoods where there are a lot of black people. Even when they do, they don’t socialize with the local black population in any real way. They send their children to private schools which are overwhelmingly white, as opposed to the 50% black public school system.
The point is, while the former might “talk racist,” in aggregate they don’t act that way any longer. And the latter might talk quite PC, but in reality live segregated lives. Indeed, I believe part of the reason why racist comments are so derided is because class has become wrapped up in it – you don’t want to seem like a redneck rube do you?
The contradictions on race among liberals actually have a pretty strong parallel in terms of the contradictions on sexuality among conservatives. Despite public proclamations on the fidelity of marriage, evangelicals seem more likely to divorce than the irreligious. And it is considered more important to tell teenagers to not have sex than to actually enact policies which might reduce their sexual activity. But in general, I think you can find similar disjoint between stated ideals and lived actions across most, if not all, human cultures.
Yes, this. My origins are solidly redneck, and I have a cousin who has a giant Confederate flag decal on the back window of his raised pickup. I guarantee you he associates with and is friends with more black people than the white scolds at The Atlantic have ever met in their lives. I left redneck-land and moved to DC, where I live basically the same lives that they do, and I can pretty definitively say that my old life was a whole lot more diverse.
The root cause of almost all white liberal social activism is the desire not to be seen as a lower-class white person. Which makes us pretty much completely fucking useless as agents of real change.
I agree with everything you’ve written, but don’t see why it’s so hard to defend Sherman without resorting to racial instrumentalism. How about: “He’s a professional competitor, who has worked with a fury that no lumpy office drone could ever imagine, for his entire life, to reach the pinnacle of his sport, who had just played in, and won, one of the most legendary playoff games of that sport, on the way to a championship in that sport. You know how emotionally giddy you get when you get a promotion, or a raise, or when someone flirts with you? Imagine that times infinity, and maybe you can understand why Sherman was a bit emotionally volatile.”
There. The truth, without making Sherman into a “clean articulate black male” or the second coming of Malcolm X.
I’m on board!
I live in the Seattle media market and have seen a ton of Richard Sherman the last couple of years (he does love to talk). No idea if this is signaling or not, but in a sports media environment where questions are almost always predictable and answers anodyne he’s been reliably smart, funny, and engaging. No reference to his background required.
Freddie,
Was all of the criticism directed at Sherman racially motivated? I have heard the argument that had Sherman been white this would have been a non-issue, but I’m skeptical. For many people with different upbringings what Sherman did was disrespectful and unsportsmanlike. It bothered them and they didn’t use the word thug in their criticism. I personally found it a little off-putting, but my cultural concept of sportsmanship isn’t everyone’s. That being said I am Canadian and I don’t live in the US.
Different cultures and subcultures have different codes of etiquette. For instance in the US in some regions it is considered unacceptable for children to address adults by their first names. In other regions it’s no big deal. The Sherman ordeal strikes me as a similar cultural clash over etiquette
“I squinted the right way and I read this super uncharitably and maybe invented a couple dozen sentences or so and I believe you are saying Terrible Offensive Thing.”
Incidentally, this is what “progressive” scholars have been doing more or less constantly for fifty years to Paul’s letters in the New Testament. Paul was a master rhetorician and not afraid of pissing off people in the early Christian community. He was definitely not the lovey-dovey Jesus of the liberal Christian imagination. Therefore these scholars have blamed Paul for homophobia, misogyny, and anti-Semitism in Christianity — even though they would do better to look in the more recent past for the construction of these prejudices.