Last night Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Daily Caller‘s Tucker Carlson were apoplectic about a 2007 video in which then-Sen. Barack Obama identified himself as black to a black audience with an “cadences,” an “accent” and “gestures” some blacks use.

Yes, world. Barack Obama is black. This is clearly shocking to some of you, but it shouldn’t be. He’s been open out his blackness for many years. He even wrote a bestselling book about it. The speech and all its blackness shouldn’t be a surprise either. “Obama’s Other Race Speech” – as Hannity and Carlson call it – was covered by numerous mainstream media outlets.

This tape “revelation” is a non-story, but the response by Hannity, the Daily Caller and others who are trying to make something out of nothing is a story.

First, the timing of all this is highly suspect.. and transparent: A five-year-old speech that had been reported and shown is then re-released 24 hours before the first presidential debate? It seems worried Romney supporters are trying to distract voters away from the Republican’s floundering campaign.

And look at what they’re using: Race. In a world without nuance – yes, a black and white world – anytime a progressive brings up race, it’s racism. In that world, calling out racism, is racism. (In the real world, though, talking about race isn’t necessarily racism. Using race as a way to oppress one group while giving another privileges is racism.) A black president who identifies with a black audience is a racist. Why? Because, in that world encased in a conservative bubble that’s immune to facts and reason, it stokes the fear that Obama will take stuff away from working-class white people and give it to poor lazy black people in the form of welfare. It’s the same world where Obama is a secret muslim who wasn’t born in the United States. It’s a world that seeks to delegitimize his presidency by saying he’s not an American.

So, given the GOP’s history of using racism in campaigns, to this year’s race-baiting by Newt Gingrich and even Romney himself, it shouldn’t be news that a tape like this “surfaced.”

In August, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said about the GOP: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Making something out of nothing from this tape is an attempt to get a few more angry white guys to vote for Romeny.

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In case you missed it, the New York Times reported a super PAC called the Ending Spending Action Fund – a separate entity from Mitt Romney’s campaign and working independently from them – was thinking about making Wright’s statements a campaign issue after this year’s Democratic National Convention. This didn’t come from a group of people brainstorming or having an extended spit-balling session. They were going to use racial divisiveness and fear to win votes.

From the New York Times:

The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as “black liberation theology.”

After the plan was made public on Thursday, Mitt Romney repudiated it and a spokesperson for Ricketts said the billionaire rejects “that approach to politics.” So, it doesn’t look like that proposal will be executed. But why would a group of people write up a 54-page proposal and consider spending $10 million to stir up fear of black people? Why would they re-hash Rev. Wright’s sermons and try again to tie them to President Obama, who the Ricketts plan said deceived America into thinking he was a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln?”

Thursday’s news from the Census Bureau may have the answers. For the first time ever, there are more Hispanic, black and Asian babies in the U.S. under one-year old than there are white babies: 50.4% vs. 49.5% respectively. In other words, minority babies now outnumber white babies in America. The Census Bureau estimates the United States will be a minority-majority country, with whites making up less than half of the total population, by 2042.

It’s probably a coincidence that both stories came out within a day of each other, but that doesn’t mean the stories aren’t related. The people at the Ending Spending Action Fund who conceived the Wright plan, called “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good,” know that many Americans are uncomfortable with the country’s changing color. The different skin tones and languages are redefining how America looks and sounds.

I’ve said before that Obama’s life story is the embodiment of the changing nature of race and class in America. For some Americans who think the U.S. should be a predominately white country where whites have all or most of the power, “Change You Can Believe In” might seem like a nightmare. These are some of the same people who believe Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., believe he is a secret Muslim and think he is only helping black people. Making Rev. Wright an issue again attempts to incite fear and motivate those people to vote against Obama.

Change doesn’t need to be feared. In fact, it should be embraced. Fast. As the Census numbers point out, change isn’t on the way. It’s happening right now.

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“According to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black. It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.” She adds, “And besides Obama is not even black. He’s got a mixture of race. It’s his choice of what his nationality is.”

Why should we pay attention to this ignorance? Joanna Schroeder in the Good Men Project tells us.

And lest we forget why any of this matters, why it matters that there are still people in our country who are racists, let’s remember Trayvon Martin and his heartbroken family, whose unarmed teenage son was gunned down in Florida; and the man who pursued him-George Zimmerman-chased him down against police advice, threatened him, terrified him and finally murdered him in cold blood at close range, is still walking the streets, never having been arrested.

Racism is alive and well. And we all have a duty to put an end to it.

Read her entire piece in the Good Men Project.

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Delmar Boulevard divides a part of St. Louis with “million-dollar mansions directly to the south, and poverty-stricken areas to its north,” says the BBC.

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How different are the two sides of Delmar?

• The median home value to the north of Delmar: $73,000. To the south: $335,000.
• Median household income to the north: $18,000. To the south: $50,000
• Residents with bachelors degrees to the north: 10%. To the south: 70%
• The population north of Delmar is 98% black. The population south of it is 73% white.

The BBC talked to people living on both sides of Delmar about the two very different communities living across the street from one another. To no surprise, education and expectations are discussed by several residents.

See the entire story at BBC News.

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Mad Men is a show about lies, the lies we tell about who we are and what our country is, and what happens when those lies fall apart. The whole idea of the 1950s, picket-fence, Ozzie and Harriet American Dream was a lie, a well-told tale conjured up by Madison Avenue to sell vacuum cleaners and automobiles. And the single biggest lie at the core of that American Dream was the myth of white supremacy, the delusion that allowed a nation of immigrants, outcasts, and orphans to galvanize their standing in a new social order where status and self-worth were rooted in the accident of not being born black. Who is Don Draper but a white man pretending to be a sort of white person he’s not, and who suffers a complete breakdown when that lie is exposed? And what could better symbolize the story of white America in the 1960s?

Read Colby’s two pieces here and here.

And read my 2010 piece about Mad Men and race here.

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“Big and black??” I’ll say if I’m feeling cheeky. “Oh no.”

The story usually falls apart from there.

This isn’t to say there aren’t imposing and intimidating black men, as there are imposing and intimidating men of every race. Some rappers purposely strike an intimidating pose to show how tough and strong they are. That intimidation, though, also has to do with perception.

In a New York Times piece about white female rappers, Touré writes:

For many Americans, black male rappers are entrancing because they give off a sense of black masculine power — that sense of strength, ego and menace that derives from being part of the street — or because of the seductive display of black male cool.

In that passage, he writes as much about rappers as the public’s view of them: Menacing. Seductive.

Dangerous!

The same is true for the person who tells the story with “the big black guy.” That description often says more about the storyteller than the person in the story.

When talking about your Saturday night or your commute home, there should be a reason to disclose someone’s race. If you ran into a guy who you perceived as big and intimidating, then just say, “There was this big intimidating guy…” There’s nothing wrong with a black man being intimidating, but is it his blackness that makes him intimidating? Openly using “black” as a substitute for “scary” reinforces the stereotypes that blacks are to be feared simply for being black.

If it’s assumed that blacks are to be feared, then every black man and woman is under suspicion for something. It becomes acceptable for blacks to be disproportionately stopped and frisked by police, to be pulled over for Driving While Black and to be followed around a store as if they’re going to steal something.

So unless there’s a particular reason to indicate that the tall, imposing man in your story is an African-American, please don’t mention it.

Just say he’s a big guy.

As I was writing this post, I searched “big black guy” on YouTube. The video below was the first result and the featured selection.

As I said: menacing, seductive.

Dangerous.

See also:
Personal Impact Of The NYPD’s Stop-And-Frisk Policy

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On, December 18, the New York Times published a story that illustrates the way Stop-And-Frisks impacts individuals. Nicholas K. Peart is a 23-year-old black college student who has been stopped and frisked four times in nine years. He was never arrested and was released every time. He describes the effect those stops have had on him.

After the third incident I worried when police cars drove by; I was afraid I would be stopped and searched or that something worse would happen. I dress better if I go downtown. I don’t hang out with friends outside my neighborhood in Harlem as much as I used to. Essentially, I incorporated into my daily life the sense that I might find myself up against a wall or on the ground with an officer’s gun at my head. For a black man in his 20s like me, it’s just a fact of life in New York.

It also changed the way Peart feels about police.

When I was young I thought cops were cool. They had a respectable and honorable job to keep people safe and fight crime. Now, I think their tactics are unfair and they abuse their authority. The police should consider the consequences of a generation of young people who want nothing to do with them — distrust, alienation and more crime.

Read the entire article here.

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It’s hypocritical for African-Americans, like Sherri Sheppard, to say “nigger,” but think people of other races are barred from saying it under any circumstances. It doesn’t take into account the intent of the person using the word. Saying it recklessly or maliciously is very different from reporting a story as Barbara Walters was doing in the segment above.

Yes, it’s a very offensive word, but to have an honest and respectful conversation about the word “nigger,” you need to say it. Clarity is important when talking about race. Calling it the “n-word” isn’t protecting the delicate sensibilities of others. It’s immature. If you’re having a discussion with adults, use adult words.

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I’m very excited.

Porgy And Bess, based on the 1925 novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, is about a crippled street beggar in Charleston, South Carolina and the woman he falls in love with. Bess is addicted to drugs and is already with Crown, the baddest dude in Catfish Row. That doesn’t stop the romance between Porgy and Bess.

The book was turned into an opera in 1935 with lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. The story became a feature film in 1959 starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandrige, Sammy Davis. Jr., Pearl Bailey, and Diahann Carroll.

I based my M.A. thesis on the book the movie, examining masculinity and the idea of the black bad man as Heyward’s inspiration for the story.

There’s a lot to be said for the progressiveness of the opera. It was one of the first American shows to incorporate black and European classical music.

The story of the people behind it is equally fascinating. Heyward was from an aristocratic white Southern family, and had a curiosity (bordering on envy, which I argued in my thesis) for the blacks he saw in Charleston. He wrote a book about them and teamed up with the Gershwins, two Jews from New York, to conceive an opera based around this story using black music and starring black actors. It was a great example of American racial and regional diversity.

On the other hand..

The novel and opera were conceived and written in pre-Civil Rights America. The movie came before the movement’s peak. They all portrayed racial stereotypes that were common and acceptable in those times. The story about a crippled black street beggar who sings, “I got plenty o’ nuttin’ and nuttin’ is plenty for me,” along with the violence, drug use and misogyny in a story about poor black characters didn’t play well to some audiences back then and, in its original form, wouldn’t play well to audiences now.

This production will star Tony Winner Audra MacDonald and comedian David Alan Grier. There will be shows in August at the American Repertory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then the production moves to Broadway where previews will begin on December 17. It will open on January 12, 2012.

There have been many other stage and screen productions of Porgy and Bess. This production is called a “re-imagining” of the opera, but there aren’t too many other details about it. I’m very excited to see how this American classic, that I spent so much time with a few years ago, is updated for modern audiences.

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..put two or more headstrong African-American women in the same room, and let the fireworks begin. From Oxygen’s Bad Girls to Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, the small screen is awash with black females who roll their eyes, bob their heads, snap their fingers, talk trash, and otherwise reinforce the ugly stereotype of the “angry black woman.”

In her Newsweek piece “Reality TV Trashes Black Women,” Allison Samuels singles out the feud on this season’s Celebrity Apprentice between Real Housewives Of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes and Star Jones, the former co-host of The View. It’s an example of a “catfight” between two black women that’s “had viewers glued to their sets.”

But Samuels concedes that reality TV is “an equal-opportunity offender when it comes to stereotyping,” citing MTV’s hit Jersey Shore as an example. So, where’s the problem? Samuels quotes Celebrity Apprentice alum Holly Robinson Peete who may have the answer.

“Listen, there are plenty of white women acting a fool on television every night…But there’s a balance for them. They have shows on the major networks—not just cable and not just reality shows about them running companies, being great mothers, and having loving relationships. We don’t have enough of that.”

It’s the lack of a complete and diverse picture of black women – and I would add black men – on television that’s the problem. Showing people acting like fools on TV is fine. It can often be great television! But if a group of people is portrayed only one way across multiple channels without showing the diversity and depth of who they are, then TV as an industry, and not just one genre, is what’s really trashing them.

Read the entire article here.

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