The Miami Dolphins bullying/hazing/conduct unbecoming case is still evolving, but I thought I’d take a look at the assertion by a Miami paper regarding the mood and opinions in the Dolphins locker room by some players. I guess if you live long enough, you can see where something from segregation gets recycled, and in this case, it’s the “honorary blackness” award. Here’s an excerpt from the Miami Herald:
Incognito considered black in Dolphins locker room
by Armando Salguero
. . . Richie Incognito left Jonathan Martin a voice mail that, among other things, called Martin a “half-n—-r.” And Dolphins players of color, knowing of the voicemail, have expressed no problems with Incognito.
“I don’t have a problem with Richie,” Mike Wallace said. “I love Richie.”
“I don’t think Richie is a racist,” cornerback Brent Grimes said.
“Richie Incognito isn’t a racist,” tight end Michael Egnew said.
ESPN analyst and former Dolphins wide receiver Cris Carter has know Mike Pouncey since the player’s childhood. Today Carter said on air he recently spoke to Mike Pouncey and the center, who is Incognito’s friend, addressed race.
“They don’t feel as if he’s a racist, they don’t feel as if he picked on Jonathan repeatedly and bullied him, but if they could do it all over again there would be situations that they might change but they’re very, very comfortable with Richie,” Carter said.
“They think it’s sad, not only that Jonathan’s not on the football team, but also that Richie is being depicted as a bigot and as a racist.”
How is this possible?
Well, I’ve spoken to multiple people today about this and the explanation from all of them is that in the Dolphins locker room, Richie Incognito was considered a black guy. He was accepted by the black players. He was an honorary black man.
And Jonathan Martin, who is bi-racial, was not. Indeed, Martin was considered less black than Incognito.
“Richie is honorary,” one player who left the Dolphins this offseason told me today. “I don’t expect you to understand because you’re not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It’s about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you’ve experienced. A lot of things.”
“I don’t expect you to understand because you’re not black”
BHAWAHAHAHAHAHA . . . If I had a dollar for every time someone used that line . . .
I wonder if those individuals who feel they have the power to bestow “honorary blackness” on behalf of the black race know their benevolence has historical connotations?
But first, here’s a brief rundown of those who were bestowed with “honorary blackness” and how they handled this dubious “honor”
Comedian Lisa Lampanelli:
The Lampanelli tweet, after whoever the hell she hangs with convinced her that she’d won “honorary blackness.” Note what she did with it.
Ex-Miami Dolphins player Richie Incognito spent his “honorary blackness” card like this:
“Hey, wassup, you half-n—-r piece of (expletive). I saw you on twitter, you been training ten weeks. Want to (expletive) in your (expletive) mouth. I’m going to slap your (expletive) mouth. Going to slap your real mother across the face. (laughter). You’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.”
For those unaware, Mike Pouncey is one of Richie Incognito’s defenders. Yes, they’ve got a real deep friendship going, based on mutual respect(eye-roll). Sure looks to me like Incognito called out Mike Pouncey in a very public place.
There’s also an report that Warren Sapp states Incognito called him a nigga/nigger (look, there’s no difference folks, no matter who pretends they’ve now created a “new” tenderly affectionate meaning for the word. My advice? Don’t try this at home).
A couple of very popular radio hosts who swore they were “honorary” black men back in the day:
Promo picture of Amos and Andy radio show. The writers, who were the creators and performers on the show are in blackface.
Amos and Andy (blackface version) note the “Here we is again. Ain’t dat sumpin!” which perpetuates the dialect stereotype
Excerpt from The Adventures of Amos ‘n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon by Melvin Ely. Items in bold are my doing:
“Forty million Americans indulged in a national obsession in 1930: they eagerly tuned in Amos ‘n’ Andy, the nightly radio serial in which a pair of white actors portrayed the adventures of two southern black men making a new life in a northern city. Fans insisted that the unfolding story of Amos, Andy, the Kingfish, Ruby, and their neighbors be piped into restaurants, movie theaters, and hotel lobbies: Amos ‘n’ Andy impressions and theme parties were the rage.
Meanwhile, African Americans argued passionately among themselves about the program. While one black newspaper gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures demanding that the show be banned, another chose Amos ‘n’ Andy’s white stars as guests of honor at a parade and picnic for the black children of Chicago.”
Excerpt of a review of Melvin Patrick Ely’s book on the phenom of Amos n Andy:
Back in the day, when “honorary blackness” was bestowed it was generally framed as making that white person one of your family. However, its important to note that unlike the Queen of England bestowing knighthood, “honorary blackness” came with no lovely parting gifts. It was usually just something to show how much affection a black character claimed to have for the white character they’d quickly bonded with, and ironically, white writers advanced this propaganda.
So it shouldn’t be any surprise that bestowing honorary blackness is alluded to in The Help. Because there’s a section in the novel where Aibileen tells Skeeter this:
Aibileen relays the message that Skeeter is now part of the family, AKA bestowing honorary blackness
Here’s how the scene begins:
We set there a second, listening to the storm. I think about the first time Miss Skeeter came to my house,. how awkward we was. Now I feel like we family.
“Are you scared Aibileen?” she asks. “Of what might happen?”
I turn so she can’t see my eyes. “I’m alright.”
“Sometimes I don’t know if this was worth it. If something happens to you . . . how am I going to live with that, knowing it was because of me?” She presses her hand over her eyes, like she don’t want to see what’s gone happen.
I go to my bedroom and bring out the package from Reverend Johnson. She take off the paper and stare at the book, all the names signed in it. “I was gone send it to you in New York, but I think you need to have it now.”
“I don’t . . . understand,” she say. “This for me?”
“Yes ma’am.” Then I pass on Reverend ‘s message, that she is part of our family. (Page 436)
Aibileen takes it even further (or basically, Kathryn Stockett decided to amp up the Uncle Tom factor, which equated to Aibileen being a “good negro”).
That night I lay in bed thinking I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her Part a me wishes I could have a new start too. The cleaning article, that’s new. But I’m not young. My life’s about done.(Page 437)
Stockett lays it on so thick that even before this scene, both Minny and Aibileen try to convince Skeeter not to worry about their well being after their book “HELP” is released. Minny finally snatches the phone from Aibileen, and in true sassy, stereotypical domestic fashion, demands this of Skeeter. “Don’t walk your white butt to New York, run it” (Page 424)
It’s important to note that the novel doesn’t have Aibileen shedding tears over the recent death of her only child. Treelore has been dead about three years when Skeeter finally leaves Jackson.
What’s also interesting to note, is that Skeeter actually hollers at Aibileen in one section of the novel, when not enough maids come on board. And Aibileen has never been invited over Skeeter’s house, not even after Skeeter’s participation in publishing the novel is revealed. So why Aibileen would state “Now I feel like we family” is the affection myth I covered in this post
Houston Chronicle, 1923 article regarding the need for a National Mammy Monument:
Click image for larger view:
Mammy monument article pg 1
Mammy monument pg 2
Mammy monument pg 3
Whatever concerned her “white folks” concerned her. If she belonged to them, they in a different-but in her sight not less real, they belonged to her.
Mammy monument pg 4
“Her memory will outlive granite and marble and bronze. Though her skin was black, her soul was white.”
The layers and levels behind the Miami Dolphins bullying/hazing/disrespect debacle continues to play out. For anyone not familiar with this sad saga (and it is a saga, because something like this takes time to grow roots in an organization) what probably started as a rite of passage has turned into something more sinister and ugly, year after year.
As more players from other teams and also ex-players speak out, a picture is starting to emerge which may end up focusing not just the NFL’s policies, but current accepted norms in American society.
It’s also a cautionary tale for any other organization, because something like this is not limited to the game of football. It’s not an isolated event, it’s a climate that was allowed to grow until the breaking point came last week. Sadly, a number of African American players are in the thick of it, sticking to a code of honor regarding those who snitch.
When interviewed, player after player in the Miami Dolphins locker room spoke of keeping their problems “in-house” (though not all, I must stress that).
The old-skol phrase was “don’t put your business in the street.” But the intent is the same. Keep quiet, no matter what. Apparently Richie Incognito didn’t get the memo, as his behavior, and his words, at least on this tape obtained by TMZ speaks for itself:
“Mike Pouncey, Nigga! Fuck this shit!” can be heard as soon as the tape begins:
If I’m not mistaken, this wasn’t done in the locker room, but a public place. So much for keeping their behavior “in-house”.
I’m a big football fan and I have been since I was a child. What I recall, was a time that young black athletes came together to listen as Muhammad Ali explained why he could not fight in the Vietnam War.
In 1967, young black athletes show solidarity behind Muhammad Ali. Front row: Bill Russell, Ali, Jim Brown, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (formerly Lew Alcindor). Back row: Mayor Carl Stokes, Walter Beach, Bobby Mitchell, Sid Williams, Curtis McClinton, Willie Davis, Jim Shorter and John Wooten.
According to this article by Branson Wright of The Plain Dealer, Jim Brown explained the purpose of the summit in an excerpt from an ESPN article:
“That was a situation that had to be addressed. I was the president of the Black Economic Union, John Wooten was my executive director. I called John from London and told him to contact all of the top black athletes from around the country and have them meet Ali in Cleveland so we could discuss his situation with the draft. They all showed up and we had about a three-hour meeting with him [Ali] in the back room of my office in Cleveland. [We] realized that he was very sincere in his position and that because of his religion, he was not going to go into the Army and we backed him. … It was a very wonderful thing to have these young players not worry about risking their careers, but getting the right information from the horse’s mouth so that they could make judgment on this man’s action.“
When almost to a man, some players in Miami inferred that somehow the culture in their locker room/relationship with each other was something the average fan wouldn’t understand, I have to disagree. I’ve seen and heard this kind of talk before, it’s origins imho from a mash of street culture that has permeated not just sports, but educational institutions, entertainment and other venues.
It’s sad that while it didn’t occur in this case, at least during the 1960s black athletes got together to show the world they could listen to Ali going against the Vietnam War without resorting to calling his manhood into question. There’s a social consciousness that’s sorely missing from the public statements made by some of the Miami players.
Taking out the obscene voice mail to Jonathan Martin, how does “Mike Pouncey, Nigga!” instill brotherly love? Exactly what would any of these players tell a Pop Warner Pee Wee football team regarding the behavior in their locker room, where for years, African Americans fought and died for the right to be called ”men” and not “Nigga” and yet some of these players are condoning it, and more?
I AM A MAN. The march meant to have America recognize that fact. Note the lone brave white male willing to march among black men.
And why wouldn’t someone warn Incognito that not everyone gets all warm and fuzzy when hearing the word “Nigga” aimed at either themselves or another black person, even in jest?
Children arrested while protesting segregation. Young males and females who still have a prison record to this day, as a badge of honor for standing up against inequality.
Mind you, these are players who’ve graduated from college, just like Jonathan Martin. From where I sit, they appear more like Jonathan Martin than the individuals they seem to want to pretend they are. These guys aren’t hardened thugs, no matter how many tattoos and drunken tirades they go on.
And sadly, those who harbor dreams of throwing away a good paying career in order to play a thug, quickly find out that prisons are the new plantations.
“Real men” come in every shape, size and demeanor. But much like whatever the hell a “real woman” is supposed to be, I have no idea what the bizarre definitions coming out this week of what a ”real man” should do even applies in an age where people take their anger out on others via mental and physical intimidation, and using weapons like their fists and guns and even bombs.
The prison/gang mentality has felled many a male, both black and white. If an individual can’t keep the line between their actions in the locker room and the real world separate, then once their football career is over, God Help Them.
For another perspective on bestowing “honorary blackness” on a non-minority, see this post:
There’s an “insider” article by a former teammate of both Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito. Unfortunately, the article validates much of what Martin alleges imho, instead of letting Incognito off the hook, as well as others on the team who may have participated in the systematic bullying of one of their own.
Excerpt:
” . . . when Martin wasn’t showing effort, Richie would give him a lot of crap. He was a leader on the team, and he would get in your face if you were unprepared or playing poorly. The crap he would give Martin was no more than he gave anyone else, including me. Other players said the same things Incognito said to Martin, so you’d need to suspend the whole team if you suspend Incognito.
Somehow I just can’t get that TMZ video out of my head of a drunken Incognito fairly screaming “Mike Pouncey, Nigga! Fuck This Shit!”
Yes, that’s a real leader for you. And to think, Mike Pouncey spoke up for Incognito. I shudder to think how deep Pouncey’s involvement in all of this vicious belittling/hazing/bullying scandal is. If there was a not so secret group that ran roughshod over the offensive line, it’s just a matter of time before it all comes out.
This article by Jason Whitlock of ESPN.com is a must-read, and breaks down much better than anyone I’ve read so far on what Martin’s working conditions must have been like:
Martin walked into twisted world
He confronted an unrelenting, prison yard mentality in the Miami locker room
by Jason Whitlock, ESPN.com
Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate.
According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito “honorary” status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.
Welcome to Incarceration Nation, where the mindset of the Miami Dolphins‘ locker room mirrors the mentality of a maximum-security prison yard and where a wide swath of America believes the nonviolent intellectual needs to adopt the tactics of the barbarian.
Read the entire riveting and on point opinion piece here:
It took a lot of courage to walk away and to speak out.
I’ve seen far too many young black men change who they are in order to fit in with guys who have an aggressive, overbearing personality, or basically, who truly believed they were “runnin’ thangs”
At your heart, you are a GOOD PERSON. Never forget that. Even though you slipped during this ordeal (believe me, what you went through was an ordeal that will probably leave you with residual post traumatic stress) at least you agonized over who you were becoming and whether you even wanted to go down the same hellish road Richie Incognito, Mike Pouncey and John Jerry created and maintained.
And it’s a damn shame that being a quiet man has somehow become a liability.
Even more amazing though, that hateful monikers intent on demoting men with allegations of them being more like women have taken root and don’t appear to be going away anytime soon.
There have been a number of quiet athletes who’ve made good in their sport. Tim Duncan in basketball, Hank Aaron and Derek Jeter in baseball come to mind. Davis Love III in Golf. And now Jonathan Martin in football, among other quiet, introverted personality types. Not everyone likes or wants to be the life of the party. There’s even been criticism of President Obama for seeming aloof or too coolly composed at times.
But see, as much as I enjoy Kevin Hart’s comedy, there no way I could sit through a movie with everyone behaving like Kevin. And yet, what the Jonathan Martin ordeal does confirm is what many people already knew. First, can black people be racist?
Hell yes. Just read the report in the link I’ve provided below for examples.
Second, had Jonathan Martin behaved in any shape or form like some people suggest, that is for him to punch out the perpetrators, then its possible the default benefit of the doubt would’ve shifted squarely in Incognito’s favor.
Trayvon Martin was branded a “thug” and George Zimmerman was acquitted of the teen’s cold blooded murder, even though many of George’s recent actions cast troubling questions on just how scared or non-confrontational he acted on that fateful night of Martin’s murder. I’m speaking of Zimmerman’s recent arrests with his domestic partners, and the fight that was cancelled, where he would’ve gotten into the ring with rapper DMX. Also, Zimmerman tried to sell a piece of “artwork” that was simply a copyrighted photo made by someone else.
Had Jonathan Martin violently fought back, he would’ve been branded a “thug” for his actions, and those who instigated it all would’ve kept it up, with a new target. There were a number of teammates who sided and still side with Incognito, including those who acted in concert with him to conceal the in-house ridicule. Even one of their targets issued a statement that basically said their ribbing about his sexually didn’t bother him (the player has since been identified and appears to want to distance himself from this whole thing). All one can do is take him at his word.
Still, I can’t help but feel for Richie Incognito at this moment.
Incognito appears to be able to dish it out but not take it in return. It’s been reported that he’s deleted his twitter account after the official report came out, this after posting a tweet on Valentine’s day that stated “stop the hate”:
After Richie Incognito gets taste of his own medicine, can it be a cure?
Poor guy. After the NFL announced Friday the findings of an independent report that determined Incognito had pushed Jonathan Martin to the point of leaving the Dolphins and even contemplating suicide, Incognito was under attack on Twitter. Mean people said mean things to him, picking on him when he was down, mocking him and taunting him and in effect treating him like the Wells report said he treated Jonathan Martin when they were teammates on the Dolphins.
No, it won’t do to subject him to what he instigated and inflicted many times on others. But he was not the only one. He had help.
Jonathan Martin being interviewed by Tony Dungy of NBC
For anyone who hasn’t read the full report, I urge you to read it. Those who still want to defend the gang of three who basically ran things on Miami’s offensive line conveniently forget there were more people subjected to unrelenting racist, homophobic and sexist comments. It’s also important to note that the excuses given by the main perpetrators read uncomfortably like they just don’t get it, or they will continue to deny, deny, deny, even when faced with the evidence of their misdeeds.
Incognito tweet, shortly before report was released.
Here’s the pdf link to the report, created by the law firm of Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP:
After that, please take a look at the best opinion piece on the locker room culture that Martin landed in. It’s by Jason Whitlock of ESPN:
Martin walked into twisted world
He confronted an unrelenting, prison yard mentality in the Miami locker room
by Jason Whitlock of ESPN
“Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate.
According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito “honorary” status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.”
I’ll be back to put this whole thing in a historical context, in particular, how it touches on race and intra-racism (two of the alleged perpetrators of harassment are black, or more specifically, Mike Pouncey is bi-racial. However, contrary to some early reports, Jonathan Martin is not bi-racial. Neither his mom or his father is white). I’m not sure if Pouncey or Jerry realize that their actions were routine during segregation, where pitting African American males against one another because someone was “uppity” (articulate, seemed to have their head in a book most of the time, and for some asinine reasoning that appeared to be against the “norm” for black people) and also the still used phrase of ”not black enough” as if there’s some sort of test to measure blackness.
Whether Incognito had gotten word that the report contained damaging information is not known. But after weeks of silence, for some reason Incognito decided to lash out at Jonathan Martin and those he believed sided with Martin.
The Myth of the “real black man”
“The liberal mainstream media, notice how they have tried to destroy Sarah Palin. Notice how the more popular Michele Bachmann gets, the more they try to destroy her. You want to know why they go after those two ladies more viciously? Because they know that Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin is going to draw a lot of the women vote away from the Democrat Party. They are scared to death of that, if they were to run and get the nomination. They are doubly scared that a real black man might run against Barack Obama.”
In this case Herman Cain tried using Obama’s bi-racial background to claim that Obama somehow wasn’t “black” enough, but Cain was, simply by his African American ancestry. Cain failed with this questionable line of attack.
There are two issues I’d like to explore in this post. One is to briefly go over the “real man” myth, and to investigate the “real black man” myth, because while there are similarities, there are also glaring differences.
The “real man” myth includes rules like men don’t cry, real men take care of and protect their families. In this context, manliness depends on strength in deeds, being seriously alpha and courageous, with a heterosexual requirement.
Looking at the opinion on whether one is a real black man or not, it seems things are less straightforward. Former ESPN Sports Commentator Rob Parker made the mistake of imposing the real black man myth on Quarterback Robert Griffin III:
Rob Parker brings up the real black man myth
Here’s former ESPN sports analyst Rob Parker trying to explain what a “real black man” is, in reference to Washington Quarterback RGIII
So, the videos with Herman Cain and Rob Parker show two different views on what constitutes a “real black man”. One seems to be proof a black ancestry, the other is the need to act and look “black” which neither man seemed to understand at the time, that their views were highly stereotypical.
When the Martin/Incognito story first broke last year, the media focused on Richie Incognito’s voice mail, where Incognito said this to Martin:
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that in April of 2013, Incognito left a voicemail for Martin saying, “Hey, wassup, you half n—– piece of [expletive] . . . I saw you on Twitter, you been training ten weeks. [I want to] [expletive] in your [expletive] mouth. [I'm going to] slap your [expletive] mouth. [I'm going to] slap your real mother across the face (laughter). [Expletive] you, you’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.”
However, in Incognito’s taunt of Martin, he uses the slur of “you half nigga piece of shit.”
It’s important for readers to understand that Incognito’s greeting isn’t really friendly, and it’s not being used as a term of endearment. He’s trying to put Martin in his place.
Unfortunately for Incognito there are also a couple of text messages in the report that show him joking about shooting black people. I doubt if this revelation makes Mike Pouncey or John Jerry feel like special snowflakes anymore.
On December 13, 2012, Incognito and a former Dolphins offensive lineman, who is white, communicated about purchasing guns, apparently for recreational purposes. (We identify this former Dolphin as Player B.) The discussion veered into jokes about shooting black people:
Player B: Especially if u plan living in Arizona in the future, that’s exactly what you want
Incognito: Yea. For picking off zombies
Player B: Lol isn’t that why we own any weapons!?
Incognito: That and black people
Player B: Mmm def all black ppl
Four days later, Incognito and Player B discussed rifle scopes in text messages.
Player B: Yes. That’s a solid optic made specifically for a .308 battle rifle
This sheds a bit of light on why Jonathan Martin’s race became the club that a racially diverse group of bullies use to bash him with. However, more info on Mike Pouncey and John Jerry needs to come out. Because they reportedly joined in with Incognito’s slurs, possibly even encouraging some of them.
And how is it that some sort of pseudo-gang/street mentality was allowed to take root on an NFL team? Note this stereotypical exchange between Mike Pouncey and Richie Incognito, where two grown men discuss getting “snitched” on:
Incognito: F–k Jmart That f—t is never back
Pouncey: Bro I said the same thing I can’t even look at him the same he’s a pussy
Incognito: My agent just said if we held mandatory strip club meetings Jmart is f–king ratting on everyone
Pouncey: Lol wow are you serious he is a f–k boy
Pouncey: He’s not welcome back bro I can’t be around that f–king guy
Incognito: F–k that guy if Ur not with [u]s Ur against us
Pouncey: No question bro he’s a coward for snitching
Incognito: Snitches get stiches Blood in blood out F–king guy
(This exchange is also in the report presented to the Miami Dolphins by the law firm)
It pains me to see “if Ur not with us Ur against us” and “Snitches get stiches” coming from guys who make millions each year. The whole exchange is ridiculous.
Incognito’s days in the NFL are history, imo. Miami may have to clean house and get rid of the other two, because this brotherly ”bully” bond they’ve formed is not only unhealthy, but they appear to embolden one another’s questionable thinking and actions. Mike Pouncey is 24, while John Jerry is 27. Yet can anyone say with a certainty that Pouncey or Jerry can be trusted to adhere to any signed agreement monitoring their behavior?
Keep in mind that both these guys either defended or downplayed Incognito’s actions (in light of the report, now its clearer why. Because he could have “snitched” on their own complicity in all this). And Miami already had a policy in place regarding employee behavior.
What I see coming somewhere down the line is Pouncey and Jerry suddenly seeing the light and giving an apology. Whether it will be heartfelt is something no one will honestly know. However, if they have to do it to continue playing in the NFL, they will. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they now threw Incognito further under the bus by claiming they only went along because they were. . . wait for it . . . scared. One or both might claim that they too felt like Jonathan Martin, but couldn’t back out because Incognito was so controlling.
For all I know, these might be young men who have religious convictions when they’re not singling out others to taunt. But even Jesus wouldn’t be safe around guys who elect themselves enforcers of bogus rules on who should be considered a “real man” or a real black man.
Intra-racism with the Black Brute Stereotype
Hires ad, “Yassuh . . .” Black males were also required to grovel and give service with a smile during segregation.
Having black people talk ill of one another, and singling out black men for ridicule isn’t new. Even in the novel The Help, Kathryn Stockett has Aibileen, a maid who’s written as the most compassionate character in the novel, stereotypically speak of her ex husband Clyde. In fact, for all three maids of the book the black males they’re paired with are wanting.
Here’s what Stockett has Minny saying about “plenty of black men”:
Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but that’s just not something the colored woman do. We’ve got the kids to think about.
- Minny, page 311 of the novel – hard cover version
This type of sociological smearing which has no basis in fact is woven throughout the book, yet some readers missed it. Segregationist ideology on the habits of black people, which are passed off as either amusing anecdotes or scenes with stupid as hell dialogue pulled me right out of the novel.
Note this exchange by Aibileen and Minny, where once again a black man is maligned, this time for being a gigolo and perhaps giving a venereal disease to his mistress (but somehow Aibileen was spared). For whatever reason, no editor caught this, and no one thought to check whether this was one of the reasons bigoted whites blocked integration, as they feared black children having venereal disease. Minny is the first speaker and Aibileen answers in this excerpt:
“You know Cocoa, the one Clyde ran off with ?”
“Phhh. I never forget her.”
“Week after Clyde left you, I heard that Cocoa wake up to her cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster. Didn’t get better for three months. Bertina, she good friends with Cocoa. She know your prayer works.”
My mouth drop open. Why she never tell me this before? “You saying people think I got the black magic?”
“I knew it worry you if I told you. They just think you got a better connection than most. We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear.”
- Minny and Aibileen speaking on page 24
With so many insults packed into this short excerpt, I need to list them all:
1) Aibileen’s husband, like most of the black men paired with the main characters is a scoundrel. He’s a womanizer, while Minny’s husband Leroy is the brutish, violent one. Constantine’s lover never married her, and he just up and leaves once their child is born. Stockett gives Aibileen this clunker of a link to say about Connor, Constantine’s ex: “He was dark as me” as if being of a darker complexion is something she should be ashamed of. This pattern of Aibileen whining about her skin color comes up a other scenes of the book.
2) Clyde runs off with Cocoa, and a mere week later Cocoa has come down with a venereal disease. But that’s not all folks. Cocoa is apparently too dumb to seek medical attention, and Stockett somehow wants the reader to believe that not only didn’t Aibileen catch anything, but the folks in her church think she has the power to call down a venereal disease on the other woman (Cocoa).
3) Aibileen asks “You saying people think I got the black magic?” During segregation, no matter what religion a black person professed to be, jokes were made about blacks reverting to the pagan believes of the motherland, Africa. One of those “beliefs” had to do with black magic (think of that witch doctor photo of Obama). It’s a slur still used to this day, yet it gets inserted into The Help as if it’s so cute that Minny and Aibileen are speaking this stupidly.
Scan from a 1963 Jackson, Mississippi newspaper:
Women of Mississippi spread demeaning myths, scan from Clarion-Ledger 1963
Wednesdays in Mississippi was a multi-racial group which tried to combat the untruths and derogatory myths spread about African Americans during the 1960s. Please read the info highlighted by the red box:
wims-wednesdays-in-mississippi, residents talk about blacks having venereal diseases and that northern agitators are communists
The above scan is from the book Wednesdays in Mississippi, a non fiction book written by
I wish this was simply a joke, but apparently it’s not. I guess it’s best to file this under “Oh Hell Naw” or “But their hearts were in the right place” (eye-roll).
Margaret Mitchell’s estate has okay’ed a book about the character of Mammy, the fiesty, loyal and highly stereotypical maid from Gone With The Wind. Since the book is due for release this October, its been in the works for a while, probably right after the dubious “success” of The Help. An imprint of Simon & Schuster, Atria books is the publisher.
Mammy and Minny, together at last. This image is from racismstillexisttumblr.com
The writer is Donald McCaig, known for Jacob’s Ladder and another offshoot from GWTW, “Rhett Butler’s People.” Unfortunately, the publisher and the writer may find the reading public’s taste has changed since The Help:
“The completed book, “Ruth’s Journey,” is the fictional telling of the life of one of the novel’s central characters, a house servant called Mammy who otherwise remains nameless. The story begins in 1804, when Ruth is brought from her birthplace, the French colony of Saint-Domingue that is now known as Haiti, to Savannah, Ga.”
“Mitchell was criticized for the one-dimensional nature of many African-American characters in the book, particularly Mammy, who cared for the fiery Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara. An unauthorized parody of the classic novel, “The Wind Done Gone,” published in 2001 over the objections of the Mitchell estate, was told from the perspective of a slave whose mother was Mammy.
Mr. Borland said the new book addresses those criticisms head on.
“What’s really remarkable about what Donald has done is that it’s a book that respects and honors its source material, but it also provides a necessary correction to what is one of the more troubling aspects of the book, which is how the black characters are portrayed,” Mr. Borland said.”
Okay, my first thoughts are that this is a business deal, and it has nothing to do with trying to provide a “necessary correction to what is one of the more troubling aspects of the book” as quoted in the article.
The new book will serve to generate sales for the original source material, and the estate will garner more income. But I doubt if it will gain any goodwill, because the character of Mammy is already ingrained in American society. Giving her a backstory and a name after all this time is an empty, symbolic gesture.
Mammy, much like other characters created by some white writers during segregation, served a purpose.
She was propaganda, much like the character of Prissy and the other blacks who populated the novel and film, which was a grand, sweeping love story about Scarlett O’Hara and the dashing Rhett Butler.
Mammy helped spawn figurines like these items:
Mammy 2.0 Image from Ferris State Museum of Jim Crow Memorabilia
Mammy and Scarlet figurine. Perhaps A Celia and Minny figurine will be sold by Franklin Mint
Mammy banks for those who like to collect such things.
Mammy in a box
Mammy lamp. Not sold on HSN, but popular during segregation. Image from Ferris State Museum of Jim Crow Memorabilia
And Mammy from GWTW was an influence on ads like these:
Using actual African Americans to mock themselves in ads
Sanka Coffee Ad, featuring the sassy maid caricature
Other books and movie roles made room for stereotypical black Mammies:
Louise Beavers in Imitation of Life, touted as “the greatest screen role ever played by a colored actress”
Delilah (played by Louise Beavers) begging to stay in Imitation of Life, the 1934 film version
Viola Davis as Aibileen in film version of The Help and young actress as Mae Mobley
Aibileen and Minny having a ball in the kitchen, as the whitewashing of segregation via films returns
Viola Davis as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minny in the film The Help
Who’s afraid of the big bad “woof”
And also, highly offensive costume jewelry:
Black Mammy fashion accessories
Also from the article: “The first two-thirds of the 416-page “Ruth’s Journey” are in the third person, and the last portion is told in Ruth’s own dialect.”
Oh joy. With the last portion told in Mammy Ruth’s own dialect, I suppose cringe worthy (but Oscar nominated) lines much like The Help’s stereotypical “frying chicken tends to make you feel better about life” and “You is kind, you is smart, you is im-po-tent” will jump off the pages.
Opening dialogue (highlighted in yellow) for the character of Mammy from Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind:
Mammy’s book dialogue from the novel Gone With The Wind
It’ll be interesting to see how the book deals with Mammy’s dialogue, since she barely spoke English, just like many of the others in the original novel:
“Is y’all aimin’ ter go ter Mist’ Wynder’s? ‘Cause ef you is, you ain’ gwine git much supper,” said Jeems. Dey cook done died, an’ dey ain’ bought a new one. Dey got a fe’el hen’ cookie’, an’ de niggers tells me she is de wustest cook in de state.” The slave Jeems, from Chapter One of Gone With The Wind. Here’s how he’s initially described in the book: Jeems was their body servant and, like the dogs, accompanied them everywhere.
A little further on:
Brent turned in the saddle and called to the negro groom.
“Jeems!”
“Suh?”
“You heard what we were talking to Miss Scarlett about?”
“Nawsuh, Mist’ Brent! Huccome you think Ah be spyin’ on w’ite folks ?”
“Spying, my God! You darkies know everything that goes on. Why, you liar, I saw you with my own eyes sidle round the corner of the porch and squat in the cape jessamine bush by the wall. Now, did you hear us say anything that might have made Miss Scarlett mad–or hurt her feelings ?”
Thus appealed to, Jeems gave up further pretense of not having overheard the conversation and furrowed his black brow.
“Nawsuh, Ah din’ notice y’all say anything ter mek her mad. Look ter me lak she sho glad ter see you an’ sho had missed you, an’ she cheep along happy as a bird, tell ’bout de time y’all got ter talkin’ ’bout Mist’ Ashley an’ Miss Melly Hamilton gittin” mah’ied. Den she quiet down lak a bird w’en de hawk fly ober.”
(c) 1936 by Macmilan Publishing Company, a division of Macmillan, Inc. Copyright renewed 1964 by Stephens Mitchell and Trust Company of Georgia as Executors of Margaret Mitchell Marsh. Copyright renewed 1964 by Stephens Mitchell.
Also, I found this article from NPR. Some of the comments . . . well, I’ll let you decide for yourself as some posters wonder bemoan political correctness here . Just a few quotes from the comments section of the article:
“Frankly, I’ve always considered Mammy to be the best character in the entire story, and I think fondly of the warmth, wisdom, patience, and stability she represents.”
“To be honest, I’ve never understood why people take such a dismal view of the “Mammy” character in “Gone With the Wind”. For starters— by modern standards she’s obese. So what? Is it an insult to make a character look the way totally normal good people on the street look?
Is it degrading to show her as a slave? News flash: before the Civil War the south had slavery. Most of the slaves were black. I don’t think the black people who lived back then would have anything to be embarrassed about if we could speak with them today . . .”
“Only the politically correct would think that,”Mammy”, would even need to be rescued!”
This next excerpt is from an essay by Hubert H. McAlexander for The New Georgia Encyclopedia:
Representations of African Americans
The inherent racism of the novel is more difficult to defend. Characteristic of her generation of southerners is Mitchell’s unquestioning acceptance of the essential inferiority of African Americans, whom she presents, in a few distasteful instances, in nonhuman terms. Melded with that prejudice, contradictorily, is evidence of her great respect for some members of the race. Such a bifurcated vision is the very dilemma that Mississippi author William Faulkner wrestled with his entire writing career. In the novel Mitchell merely accepts the institution of slavery and fails to recognize the strength and courage of those who rebelled against their status as slaves.
What she presents well is an array of portraits of an unlettered African American peasantry, ranging from the nobility, shrewdness, loyalty, and affection of Mammy to the foolishness of Prissy. Like William Shakespeare, Mitchell has her fools among all classes. No one has yet criticized her portrayal of Honey Wilkes. Margaret Mitchell was proud of the fact that she had tried to convey accurately the speech of the old African Americans of her acquaintance without resorting to the entangled dialect of Joel Chandler Harris, and she reacted against all the stock figures, white and black, of the sentimental plantation novels that preceded Gone With the Wind.
Mitchell is most open to criticism in the last third of the novel. The narrative drive diminishes, returning only in fits and starts. Historical background is too often telegraphed, rather than blended, into the fabric of the novel. And Mitchell appears to succumb to a nightmare vision of white female purity under attack by black bestiality only to be saved by the Ku Klux Klan. The model here, which Mitchell halfway acknowledges in a letter, is Thomas Dixon’s racist novel The Clansman (1905), made into what is often regarded as the first masterpiece of American cinema, The Birth of a Nation, in 1915—both works lying solidly behind the reemergence of the Klan in the twentieth century.
Mitchell’s conflicted sensibility is apparent when she has Scarlett comment about one such incident, “Probably the girl hadn’t been raped after all. Probably she’d just been frightened silly.” And she has Scarlett deliberately and foolishly expose herself to danger, against all advice, by her stubborn drive through Shantytown, where the homeless and desperate have collected. And even though the black man’s assault upon her seems closer to a robbery than a rape attempt, still by introducing the situation of the imperiled white female threatened by the powerful black man and the resulting Klan vengeance, Mitchell’s novel invites the same criticism heaped on Dixon’s work.”
So exactly who benefits from this new and improved Mammy AKA Ruth? Cause it sure won’t be black people.
Ultimately it ends up being self-serving, much like The Help was (read this post for the quick version, or this one on how The Help came to be, among a group of southern friends and the one black friend who agreed to go along. Published interviews with Kathryn Stockett, Tate Taylor and Octavia Spencer reveal an early “agreement”).
Books such as The Help and Ruth’s Story are also partly the result of misplaced liberal guilt (which somehow tends to come back to “let’s write a book!” or “let’s do a movie!” using the very stereotypes that make one’s blood boil). Or cold hard, “let’s all make some cash.”
The reason I say that this was in the works during The Help’s reign on the book charts, is because the length of time it takes to write the thing and when a major publisher ends up releasing it. The Help came out in 2009, and slowly made its way up, so this was probably green lighted around that time.
But see, The Help had the backing of all those families who fondly remembered their very own “help.” After the curiosity wears off regarding what’s in the book, exactly how can “Ruth’s Story” be promoted?
I shudder to think of the taglines (and I’m being very sarcastic):
“Before “The Help” there was dear old Mammy. Now read her never before told story!”
Mammy wasn’t always this way:
Mammy from Gone With The Wind mouthing off. Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for the role
See how she went from a gentle slave with dreams, to a woman who gets to put the “sassy” in slavery!
Back in 2011 I wondered whose “voice” moviegoers would see on screen in this post:
Now I wonder what author Donald McCaig will do with Mammy Ruth’s “voice.” Will she be self-loathing and introverted to the point of being way too saintly and frustratingly docile like Aibileen from The Help and Delilah from Imitation of Life? Or will the reader see bits of her sharp tongued “sassiness” from GWTW in a young Ruth, large and in-charge from the get-go, with a “voice” that’s simply another loud mouthed caricature, much like Minny was in The Help, but one that’s so beloved in some writer’s minds that the caricature now represents a starting point from which Writing Black Characters 101 seems to be taught. Or will he lean towards William Styron’s Pulitzer Prize winning but demeaning and demented Nat Turner’s lyrically raw thoughts, where Nat lusts after a young white girl and shows revulsion for his own people and their plight.
Cover of the novel “The Confessions Of Nat Turner”
In her book Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007 Micki McElya writes, “so many white Americans have wished to live in a world in which African Americans are not angry over past and present injustices, a world in which white people were and are not complicit, in which the injustices themselves — of slavery, Jim Crow, and ongoing structural racism — seem not to exist at all.”
Professor Micki McElya has this statement that I often quote:
“If we are to reckon honestly with the history and continued legacies of slavery in the United States, we must confront the terrible depths of desire for the black mammy and the way it still drags at struggles for real democracy and social justice.”
This is part of the nostalgia for characters like Aibileen, Minny, and Constantine from The Help, and now the highly unneeded steaming pile of revisionism that will be known as Ruth’s Story.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to properly critique books like The Help or Ruth’s Story without reading them. So here’s hoping Donald McCaig is able to avoid stereotypes and make Ruth something other than she’s destined to become in Gone With The Wind.
For more on the history of why the black woman as Mammy keeps getting recycled, please see this post:
I guess I should start a brand new blog listing all the WTF articles and quotes from some well meaning folks who call themselves “Liberals”
Chalk this next gem up to a writer for The West View News. You see, James Lincoln Collier thought he’d put it out there. In his piece, he decides to come right out with what he believes those who viciously criticize President Barack Obama are really thinking, and perhaps saying in closed quarters.
“It is possible to draw only one conclusion: these far right voters hate Obama because he is black” - quote from the article by James Lincoln Collier of the West View News.
Yes, in order to put it all on the table and call a “spade a spade” Collier and the powers that be who approved the release of his article left the title intact. The result is that Collier’s piece isn’t what’s being focused on, but his inability to realize that he’s now done what he has accused others of doing.And there ain’t no backtracking from this.
You see, in order to get his point across, in order to show just how bigoted those who’ve been a thorn in Obama’s side since he was elected president really are, and those who’ve disrespected the man and his policies from day one . . . well, let me just take a quote from something Collier states to Don Lemon during his CNN interview:
“There are people who will pretend that they are talking about a politic matter but in fact behind it they’re driven by racism” – James Lincoln Collier
Dude, take a look at the headline you submitted. The argument can be made that you’ve done the same thing, except you’ve tried to soften the blow with a pro-Obama article. But the end doesn’t justify the means. If Gary Oldman can get blasted for his use of ethnic slurs to make his rambling, anti-PC point, then what makes you so special? Oh, silly me. It’s cuz you’re a “friend” to the black community. But see, back in the day some progressives called themselves “friends of the Negro.” A bit later in this post I’ll post some actual quotes from those who claimed to be liberal in a blast from the past.
Here are a few more “gems” from Collier’s interview with CNN:
“Racism exists in the United States, there’s no getting around it. You just have to listen to people talk when they think they’re not being overheard.”
“I think the point was, to get it across, that this is still an attitude in the United States. And clearly from the response, I expected there would be some response but not to the extent that there has been, and that makes it very clear to me that this is still a very emotional issue for the American people.”
Okay, so I think I need to put up some history on this post so that Collier and those who approved of the headline understand.
YOU DON’T GET A PASS ON USING THAT WORD FOR YOUR ATTENTION GRABBING HEADLINE BECAUSE YOU’RE A LIBERAL.
Especially since I originally thought Collier had a quote of some kind from someone who’d used it, or at least something more concrete than just his spin on how those on the far right really feel about Obama. But here’s the thing. While there may be something in print by a high ranking politician or a tape of some voter on the right using that phrase, where is it?
What I do now know is that someone on the left has just used a racial slur, in a very cheap way of proving his point. So just file Collier with the rest of the “liberals” who meant well or were trying to be funny, or “down” or whatever, like Lisa Lampanelli:
The Tweet Lampanelli will always regret
For more on Lampanelli’s twisted reasoning AKA excuses, see this post:
Ritchie Incognito was given “honorary” black man status by some African American players who thought he was a really cool guy. Here’s what he did with it:
“Mike Pouncey, Nigga! Fuck this shit!” can be heard at the start of the video:
Incognito considered black in Dolphins locker room
by Armando Salguero, Miami Herald 11/13
. . . Richie Incognito left Jonathan Martin a voice mail that, among other things, called Martin a “half-n—-r.” And Dolphins players of color, knowing of the voicemail, have expressed no problems with Incognito.
“I don’t have a problem with Richie,” Mike Wallace said. “I love Richie.”
“I don’t think Richie is a racist,” cornerback Brent Grimes said.
“Richie Incognito isn’t a racist,” tight end Michael Egnew said.
ESPN analyst and former Dolphins wide receiver Cris Carter has know Mike Pouncey since the player’s childhood. Today Carter said on air he recently spoke to Mike Pouncey and the center, who is Incognito’s friend, addressed race.
“They don’t feel as if he’s a racist, they don’t feel as if he picked on Jonathan repeatedly and bullied him, but if they could do it all over again there would be situations that they might change but they’re very, very comfortable with Richie,” Carter said.
“They think it’s sad, not only that Jonathan’s not on the football team, but also that Richie is being depicted as a bigot and as a racist.”
How is this possible?
Well, I’ve spoken to multiple people today about this and the explanation from all of them is that in the Dolphins locker room, Richie Incognito was considered a black guy. He was accepted by the black players. He was an honorary black man.
And Jonathan Martin, who is bi-racial, was not. Indeed, Martin was considered less black than Incognito.
“Richie is honorary,” one player who left the Dolphins this offseason told me today. “I don’t expect you to understand because you’re not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It’s about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you’ve experienced. A lot of things.”
Another example (not using the N word. but something equally offensive), this time from another “liberal” online mag. Notice the very bold “everyone else seems to be afraid to say it”. At the time the young actress being referenced was only nine years of age. NINE. And yet even a child isn’t spared:
The tweet that The Onion will always regret
Here’s the response that I submitted to the online Westview News site:
Another example of a “Friend to the black community”:
Paula Deen as “The Help”
Paula Deen singling out the “valued” employee she claims is as black as the background board
For more info, including the video link to Deen’s uncalled for statement about her employee, see this post:
In the next example of WTF were they thinking?, this ad was created to show how dogs are fed better than children. At least, that was their excuse for this utterly tasteless and tacky public service announcement that backfired. Unfortunately, the ad creators used a minority child as a stand in for a dog (possibly not realizing that down through history, many blacks, not just in America, but throughout the world were treated as if they were property and given scraps of food like pets).
I made a few screen grabs because I don’t know how long the video will be up on the UK Telegraph’s site:
Pulled South African ad that caused controversy worldwide. In this frame, the child gets to lick the finger of a rich woman as she ices a cake. Click the link below to see the full video
Scene from the video of a rich woman eating her dinner while the child (as a stand in for a dog) waits for scraps
Child waiting to be fed
Rich woman finally feeds her “pet”
Ah well, just file that video under “But their hearts were in the right place” or, “they meant well”
After enough public outcry the video was pulled. Here’s some of what was stated by the company when questioned on the ad:
“Both Ogilvy and Mather and Feed A Child apologised for any offence caused by the advertisement.
Alza Rautenbach, Feed a Child’s founder and spokesman, told South Africa’s Times it was “unfortunate” that what the charity had intended to be a strong statement against a social ill had turned into “a racial issue”.
“What if this advert changed a child’s life? What if this advert changed 3.5 million children’s lives? What if this was your child going to bed hungry tonight, and this advert can change that?” she said.
“The child was a character that the agency used. It wasn’t chosen for any specific reason – and yes, the idea was to use multiracial people, just as our country is. It doesn’t help to have an advert that is not representative.” - quote from Alza Rautenbach, Feed a Child’s founder and spokesman.
I’m glad they pulled the ad, but what jumps out at me from the quote is how the child actor is referred to as “it” instead of a he. “The child was a character that the agency used. It wasn’t chosen for any specific reason.”
Wow. I also noticed that their defense in trying to rationalize this thing is to pit hungry children versus a tacky ad that inadvertently resurrects historical racism and slavery. And guess what? Some of their defenders are also claiming the end justifies the means. I mean, how dare someone object to their using stereotypical imagery to get their point across!
Well, at least they sorta owned up to it and pulled the ad.
For those who are new to this site, this blog attempts to refute much of what was “beloved” in the novel The Help for far too many people. I recognized some of the sayings that were used in the book and that were included in the movie as stereotypical propaganda, the kind that claimed to be positive in the portrayal of African Americans but were in reality, truly degrading.
For example, take a look at this excerpt from an actual earlier version of screenplay The Help:
Early script of The Help describes Aibileen, hitting the trope of the black Mammy to a T.
And here’s what was changed:
Scenes from Dreamsworks script of The Help
Remember the description of Aibileen from both screenplays. What got deleted was “her expansive bosom.” And notice how Tate Taylor effs up royally when he tries to explain the character in an interview:
“Viola is just power. She’s just gonna bring such a truthfulness to this. The role of Aibileen, it be, it could go so awry.
It could be so cliché, you know the warm fuzzy big fat black woman that makes everything okay. It would just really cheapen the character, really cheapen the story. Stories like that have been told. Viola is being very brave in showing the true other side of these ladies are where they’re at home. The loss, the poverty, the loneliness, how tired they are and then her ability to swallow it up for the family the next day.
I don’t think Taylor truly gets it either. Having Viola Davis carry extra weight to play the character of the docile, asexual hermit Aibileen, having the character live alone (like Constantine) only to get up each morning to play the “strong black woman” who smothers Mae Mobley with love, and risks her life to help get the other maids to talk to “Miss Skeeter” so she can make everything okay, only she really has no life of her own except church and her job is the definition of a Mammy.
The Asexual, Solitary Mammy
And here’s a quote from Viola Davis bemoaning why she has to play “The Mammy”:
It’s a role she had to think about long and hard before accepting. “Of course I had trepidations,” she tells ESSENCE.
“Why do I have to play the mammy? But what do you do as an actor if one of the most multi-faceted and rich roles you’ve ever been given is a maid in 1962 Mississippi? Do you not take the role because you feel in some ways it’s not a good message to send to Black people?”
Minny is described in the final Dreamworks screenplay of The Help
And here a few of her Oscar winning lines that ironically, are as stereotypical as can be:
“Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life” – Minny Jackson, from the movie The Help
Uh, no. Especially since fried chicken paired with African Americans has been used as a caricature of the culture, especially during segregation, yet Tate Taylor and Kathryn Stockett dared to go there, and Octavia Spencer went ahead and said the line.
The pro-KKK classic film Birth of a Nation, where a black legislator is shown eating a piece of fried chicken
It’s Chicken Time! The stereotype of blacks loving chicken is resurrected in The Help. Note the stereotype of the bug eyed, dark as night black male
Old GE ad with the fried chicken and pickaninny stereotype. Black children were even used to further the stereotype of African Americans loving fried chicken
Somehow The Help escaped the fried chicken controversy, while Mary J Blige didn’t:
Mary J Blige Chicken loving Burger King commercial
“Minny don’t burn no chicken.” – Minny Jackson, from the movie The Help, reinforcing the tired stereotype of black people enthralled with fried chicken
“Eat my shit!” – Minny Jackson, from the movie The Help (a modern quip that could be compared to putting “Hasta La Vista” into a period piece)
For more on the character of Minny Jackson, see this post:
You know, I’m not sure what to think about Viola Davis’ new found loose tongue. Whereas Octavia Spencer acted (and still behaves) as if she can see no evil, hear no evil and will speak no evil regarding the revisionist history and downright stereotypical portrayals of blacks in The Help (both the book and the movie), Viola is now speaking up about the Mammyish roles she’s been offered and has ultimately done.
Aibileen gets to laugh while hiding out in the kitchen
“I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish,” she said. “A lot of lawyers or doctors who have names but absolutely no lives. You’re going to get your three or four scenes, you’re not going to be able to show what you can do. You’re going to get your little bitty paycheck, and then you’re going to be hungry for your next role, which is going to be absolutely the same. That’s the truth.” – quote from Viola Davis, still in denial because she fails to mention the biggest Mammy role of them all – Aibileen from The Help
Too bad Davis didn’t come clean before promoting The Help, thereby cementing on celluloid yet another docile, blindly loyal caricature of a black woman on screen.
Louise Beavers in Imitation of Life, touted as “the greatest screen role ever played by a colored actress”. Beavers portrayal of Delilah is a precursor to Aibileen
Mammyfied dialogue and dialect from the book and the movie:“You is smart, you is kind, you is important”
That night after supper, me and that cockroach stare each other down across the kitchen floor. He big, inch, inch an a half. He black. Blacker than me.Aibileen’s battle of wills with a cockroach, where she compares her skin color to a roach, one of the filthiest insects on the planet. (Pg 189)
That night I lay in bed thinking. I am so happy for Miss Skeeter. She starting her whole life over. Tears run down my temples into my ears, thinking about her walking down them big city avenues I seen on tee-vee with her long hair behind her. (Pg 437 Aibileen cries more tears over Skeeter escaping Jackson than she does in grief over her dead son, Treelore. The book has her near tears but not releasing them when she thinks about Treelore’s untimely death. This was changed for the movie).
“You saying people think I got the black magic?” – Scene from the book, Page 24 where Minny and Aibileen morph into Amos ‘n Andy. See, Kathryn Stockett concocts a scene I call “Cocoa, Coochie, Clyde” where Aibileen believes she has the power (via prayer) to call down a venereal disease on the woman who ran off with her lothario of a husband Clyde. Even though the novel claims Aibileen and Minny are devout Christians, the book resurrects the stereotypical premise of blacks falling back on the black magic, as Aibileen wonders if members of her congregation think she’s got, and I quote “the black magic?”
And Miss Leefolt come home with her hair all teased up. She got a permanent and she smell like pneumonia (Pg 94 ) – Aibileen, practicing her fondness for malapropism. This type of word error was used to spread stereotypes about black vernacular which still persists to this day. See Amos n’Andy for more examples.
“Just pour some pneumonia in that garbage”…I jot it down, amending it to ammonia (Pg 84) –Skeeter correcting what Aibileen has told her
“Go ahead,” I say. “I ain’t afraid of no philosophy.” (Pg 311, Minny and Aibileen discuss Celia not seeing the “lines” between black and white)
Aibileen can say “philosophy” “congealed salad” “parliamentary” “conjugation””motorized rotunda” and “domesticized feline” yet can’t stop using “pneumonia” for “ammonia”. Yeahrighhhhtttt.
Between her grinning, simpering and cowering in the part of Aibileen, and Octavia Spencer’s “Minny don’t burn no fried chicken” sassy self, they “helped” usher in visions of the good ole days for those who fondly recalled their very own domestic help. Like Tate Taylor and Kathryn Stockett.
Aibileen and Minny having a ball in the kitchen, as the whitewashing of segregation via films returns
Viola as Aibileen and young actress as Mae Mobley
Had Viola bothered to read the entire book (more on that later), she would’ve seen where Aibileen wasn’t a noble character, but simply an ode to the antebellum south, or as Tate Taylor wistfully reveals in this quote:
“We just wanted to tell the truth. Tell the real story and get it right. Many times as southerners our stories have been handled, taken into hands that were outside the south that’s not always as we know it to be. So we just really want to tell the truth . . . (pause) the good and the bad.” –Screenwriter and director of The Help, Tate Taylor
The “truth” consists of misty water colored memories of happy black servants. Large, amiable women who are more than willing to provide love and affection to the white kids in their charge, but when they deal with individuals in their own community there’s no affection to be found. And Kathryn Stockett ignored her own research, where she states this in an audio interview:
“I think they were surprised that I was able, hopefully able to portray the love we felt for these woman and that you know, I assume that they felt for us . . .” (11:29 into the interview)
D.N.: When you interviewed people for the book, was there anything that stood out?
K.S.: What stood out was the emotion that white people had about the connection to their black maids.When I spoke to black people it was surprising to see how removed they were emotionally from those they worked for.
That was not always the case, but it was one of the dynamics that struck me. Sometimes it was a total disregard. It was just a job.
Yet Stockett and co. stuck with the antebellum created theory of blacks just loving their employers who oppressed them. And their children. So much so, that Stockett created three black Mammies who were driven by nothing but affection for the characters paired with them (Constantine with Skeeter, Aibileen with Mae Mobley and then Skeeter, Minny with Celia Foote)
Not once does Minny state in the novel that she loves her children. There’s no dialogue where Aibileen expresses affection for a small child other than Mae Mobley, even though Minny’s children, especially Kindra or Benny could sorely use daily affirmations on how they are also “smart, kind and important.”
Here’s how the book, and ultimately the movie frames Aibileen’s “character”:
“Viola is just power. She’s just gonna bring such a truthfulness to this. The role of Aibileen, it be, it could go so awry.
It could be so cliché, you know the warm fuzzy big fat black woman that makes everything okay. It would just really cheapen the character, really cheapen the story. Stories like that have been told. Viola is being very brave in showing the true other side of these ladies are where they’re at home. The loss, the poverty, the loneliness, how tired they are and then her ability to swallow it up for the family the next day.
I don’t think Taylor truly gets it either. Having Viola Davis carry extra weight to play the character of the docile, asexual hermit Aibileen, having the character live alone (like Constantine) only to get up each morning to play the “strong black woman” who smothers Mae Mobley with love, and risks her life to help get the other maids to talk to “Miss Skeeter” so she can make everything okay, only she really has no life of her own except church and her job is the definition of a Mammy.
More quotes by Viola Davis that confirm she knew the part of Aibileen was a Mammy role:
“I’m playing a maid, a black actress playing a maid in 2011 in Hollywood, is a lot of pressure. You don’t play a maid. That is something you don’t do.When you play a maid where a white woman has written a story and a white man is directing it, so there is no way that it’s gonna be. . . I’m essentially playing a Mammy.So I felt a lot of pressure. Absolutely. And then and of course pressure from the readers who all wanted Oprah to play the role. And saw her as being seventy years old and about two hundred and fifty pounds or you know, yeah, I felt a lot of pressure. But it’s like Tate says, if you work from that point of pressure and fear, your work is gonna crack. At some point you just have to leave it alone. And know that we have our own standard of excellence . . .”
Link: Atlanta Mom’s on The Movehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shc0mdT-0Cc (this was an audio interview that was up on YouTube, but the originators have since taken it down (gee, I wonder why?)
Look, I know life hasn’t been truly fair to either Viola or Octavia, and if you read enough of their interviews, it all comes down to the color of their skin. Or their age. Or their weight. The kind of roles both women believe they should’ve landed just haven’t been there. Each woman either wound up playing someone’s mother or the friend of the lead character. Now they hope to buck the trend with their new shows.
“a woman of color, of a certain age and a certain hue,” as she [Davis] says — in her new capacity. “I don’t see anyone on TV like me in a role like this. And you can’t even mention Halle Berry or Kerry Washington,” she told me, referring to two African-American stars with notably lighter skin.” – Quote from Viola Davis on her new ABC drama
Octavia Spencer goes from playing a “sassy” maid to a “scary bitch” in the new FOX series Red Band Society
Viola Davis, after publicly proclaiming she was ditching her wigs for natural hair, has flipped once again back to the wig for her TV series “How to Get Away With Murder.” Either way, she’s an attractive woman. They both are (Spencer and Davis). Too bad they don’t seem to believe it.
Viola Davis is the lead character in her very own ABC show
However, the time to speak up has come and gone. The power both women had to effect change and to educate the very people who thought they were doing something marvelous and earth shattering by backing The Help has come and gone. At some point I will do a blog post comparing The Help to 12 Years a Slave, which is something I truly think The Help aspired to be.
The problem is, the foundation of The Help was shaky and shady from the start. For more info on what I’m referring to, or “how a bunch of southern friends got together and planned how they’d break into Hollywood using black people, with “help” from their lone black friend, see these posts:
There’s also the revelation just below the lynching gaffe about Spencer being there when Taylor was adapting the book into a screen play. Taylor mentions having debates with Spencer, yet look at the first draft and second draft of the screenplay, where Taylor describes Aibileen and Minny as if he’s a pro at envisioning Mammy 101 on screen:
Early script of The Help describes Aibileen, hitting the trope of the black Mammy to a T.
Figurines, like black lawn jockies and hefty maids were popular accessories during segregation
Mammy Tobe and The Help. This cringe worthy scene was set up by a reader enamored by the book and . . . the black Mammy.
Minny is described in the final Dreamworks screenplay of The Help
Octavia Spencer was enlisted early on by both Stockett and Taylor to help “sell” the premise. One of her duties apparently involved combating any bad reviews of the novel:
Octavia Spencer speaks up for The Help. This is how the original post looked in February of 2009
Link: Califormia Literary Review
“Spencer says she understands why some people assume the story will dredge up antiquated mammy stereotypes because she jumped to similar conclusions when Stockett — who, yes, met Spencer through Taylor and is now a close friend — first showed her the manuscript.
“She had written it in a dialect,” Spencer says, “and [after] the very first line I was like: Oh, really?” But after reading the whole novel, Spencer found the characters nuanced.
And nuance is something Taylor says he was determined to bring to the film adaptation, which portrays African American women of the era who weren’t all docile and obedient.
“People insinuate African Americans were all victims until Lyndon Johnson,” he says. “And it’s not true. That isn’t depicted much in cinema.”
“That’s why this project is so refreshing,” Spencer says, jumping in. “The strength is there for the African American characters in the movie.”
Taylor and Spencer dive in to finish each other’s thoughts a lot, sometimes even completing sentences in unison. “He’s like a brother,” Spencer says at one point, noting that they were roommates for five years in L.A. until a few months ago, when she got her own place.”
And then Spencer ran interference whenever Stockett got public criticism. Note what Spencer says to a woman who asks about the insertion of real world events to frame The Help.
The National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Philadelphia convened on August 6, 2011. During a post-screening of the film The Help, a Q&A moderated by MSNBC’s Tamron Hall was held. Mr. James posted (items in bold are my doing):
“A woman in the audience took Stockett to task on the inclusion of sensitive historical moments in the book and her decision to weave them into the fabric of her fictitious story. (Stockett peppers the novel with real life news stories of the time: the murder of Medgar Evers, JFK’s assassination, for example.) But Spencer jumped in, reminding the woman (and everyone else in the audience) that The Help is not a non-fiction book and that it’s Stockett’s job as a fiction author to entertain, not give history lessons with her novel. “It’s your job as parents to teach your children about our history,” Spencer said. And before switching gears, Stockett quickly interjected, “I just made this shit up!” The entire crowd erupted in applause.”
Now recall what Spencer says. “It’s your job to teach your children about our history.” Yet Spencer was just fine with drumming up the age old stereotype of blacks and fried chicken.
Birth of a Nation movie poster
Scene from The Birth of a Nation, where a black legislator is eating a piece of fried chicken
It’s Chicken Time! The stereotype of blacks loving chicken is resurrected in The Help. Note the stereotype of the bug eyed, dark as night black male
Tate Taylor’s Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, “fried chicken”
And Spencer never corrected her “Friends” regarding the insertion of negative slurs like this one in the book:
“Plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump, but it’s not something the colored woman do. We’ve got kids to think about – Minny Jackson (Pg 311)
They are scared, looking at the back door every ten minutes, afraid they’ll get caught talking to me. Afraid they’ll be beaten like Louvenia’s grandson, or hell, bludgeoned in their front yard like Medgar Evers. (Skeeter, Pg 277)
And guess where that mis-information originated? Apparently from Stockett herself as she goes on to repeat the whole “Medgar Evers was bludgeoned” gaffe on several audio interviews.
In one audio interview Stockett even embellishes Evers death to claim:
“…1963 was a horrifying and momentous year in Mississippi’s history as well as the entire United States. It was… the fall of 62 when James Meredith was accepted into Ole Miss and in 1963 Medgar Evers the uh…who was with the NAACP he was bludgeoned to death on his front yard in front of his children.”
Stated at 8:34 minutes into a 10:31 interview with Steve Bertrand of Barnes and Noble’s Meet the Writers
And check out this interview with E! where Spencer jumps in to give Viola some assistance.
And there’s the time Ted Casablanca’s question unnerved Viola Davis, so Spencer jumped in:
“I’m notexactlysure where Davis was going with that one, but I assured herI wasn’t the only onewondering such thoughts.
Especially to young people who aren’t schooled in Civil Rights history, I said, “it sort of makes it look like it took a white author to get the job done.”
“Skeeter [Emma Stone's character] just wanted to be a great writer,” Viola explained, in defense. “And shehelpedthese women.
“But it is theblack womenwho risked their lives in this movie,” Davis finished.
At which point Spencer gave me one of thoseAnd your point is? looks, quickly followed by a huge smile.
“Like I said,” Viola added (smiling as well), “it’s a loaded question.”
But is it, really? Also, everybody, let’s get this question settled now, because I assure you it looks like Davis may very well be getting the Oscar for herHelpperformance.
So, the somewhat sticky issue ain’t goinganywhere.
Okay, so after playing the Mammy of Tate Taylor and Kathryn Stockett’s dreams, Viola Davis played a clairvoyant Mammy in the film Beautiful Creatures.
So while she now bemoans playing a doctor or a lawyer, at least they weren’t MAMMIES. Both Davis and Spencer were just fine with playing caricatures that black people have fought against for years. That being the stoic, loyal, manless Mammy who was Aibileen, a sweet but slow witted character more than eager to be lead by Skeeter but who couldn’t be bothered with the civil rights movement growing her own community (the movie tried to rectify this glaring error. And yet, even while Stockett admitted “I just made this shit up!” and Taylor claimed “I’m not qualified to make a movie about civil rights” misguided liberals who were eager to crown Stockett the next great southern writer and build Taylor up as some kind of insider regarding making movies with black characters (hopefully, the bomb he landed with Get On Up dispelled that myth) well, Taylor was awarded The Paul Selvin Award by the Writers Guild of America in 2013, even after the lynching comment and saying additional boneheaded shit like this:
“. . .Civil rights is just the backdrop. I’m not qualified to make a film about civil rights. People say to me: ‘Why wasn’t there a lynching? Why aren’t there houses burning down?’ But that’s not what this story is. For me, the most horrific moment in the film is the scene where the maid is sitting with her panties round her ankles in a three-by-three plywood bathroom, like a cat in a litter-box, while an impatient white woman is tapping her foot outside. If people need to see blood and gore and can’t see how horrific that is – well, I don’t have answer to that.”
Please note, The Paul Selvin Award is based on “that member whose script best embodies the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties which are indispensable to the survival of free writers everywhere and to whose defense Paul Selvin committed his professional life.”
“My key objective was togive this movie street credespecially within the African-American community, to represent themand not sugarcoat it,” said Taylor. – LA Times interview By NICOLE SPERLING
As for Viola Davis, she’s still in denial. Stories that focus on the resiliency of the domestics who marched along side Martin Luther King have yet to be written. What she starred in was a tale of three mammies, where each woman was separated from the black male. And where the book painted the real villain of that time period as black males and not the system of segregation that ensnared them. Minny’s husband was a violent abuser. Aibileen’s no where to be found husband was called “Crisco” by her, and she trained her son to call his father that, as per the novel. The slight backstory on Constantine was that her dark skinned lover left her after their child was born. Constantine gave up her only child because the girl looked white, in another poorly researched character trope that was inserted in the novel but wisely dropped for the movie.
Fredi Washington, an African American actress who could pass for white, but didn’t. Fredi starred in the 1934 film version of Imitation of Life.
“You know, I heard so many people who said: ‘Oh, “The Help,” I’m just so tired of these images. I’d rather see “Spider Man,” ’ ” she said, referring to the black community. But Hollywood, she said, wouldn’t see that preference as a sign that African-Americans were yearning “to see more complicated stories about black people. No, Hollywood is going to say, ‘They want to see “Spider Man.” ’ That’s the way it works.” – quote by Viola Davis
Hmm. Well, if Davis thinks the black community is sick of the images portrayed in works like The Help, then how’s that any different from her refusal to read the BS in the book, or rather the parts that clearly paint blacks as the “other”:
“If you didn’t object to the dialect, were there aspects of the book that did bother you?
Davis: The one thing I don’t embrace in any book about black women is I don’t embrace how the looks are described. I always erase that. I don’t care if it’s the greatest writer in the world. I know these black women. The first woman of beauty in my life was my Aunt Joyce, and she was over 300 pounds, and we thought she was Halle Berry to us.
Every time she came to visit, she would have these earrings, and these clothes and the beauty of her skin. We would all sit around her touching her hands and her face and her skin and she was beautiful. I didn’t see the bigness. I just have a different idea of how we look, the hues of our skin, how we exude sensuality and sexuality and how our hair looks. So I always just interpret that for myself. It’s like Chris Walken cuts out all the exclamation points, and the periods. I cut out all the descriptions.”
Now hear this: Real thugs don’t write cookbooks because they’re too busy, you know, being thugs.
The Thug who wasn’t there . . . I mean he wasn’t in the kitchen. It was just a publicity stunt
So when the you know what hit the fan and the duo behind the popular blog (and recent novel) were revealed to be two individuals who’d probably reach for their phone to call 911 in the presence of a real live thug, it didn’t sit well with some folks.
I’d never heard of Thug Kitchen or their blog until the controversy erupted. And I’ve read some of the blog posts around the internet that are calling them out on what they did. Unfortunately, just like the smoke screen that settled over The Help, a smoke screen that masked the real issues with the book and movie, the same thing appears to be happening with Thug Kitchen. So I thought I’d take a closer look and try to explain why its not the cursing (or cussin’ cuz that’s how a thug for life would say it) that’s the real issue.
People curse everyday, and no one has a copyright on curse words. In fact, had the creators of Thug Kitchen just stuck with using curse words, the stunt probably would’ve been embraced like one of the precursors to all this imho, the naughty nightie night book:
And also this cookbook by Zach Golden, which came out a full four years earlier and with a lot less ethnic flair:
And check out how similar Thug Kitchen is to Golden’s book:
But Golden’s “voice” for his cookbook isn’t overly imitating. Perhaps the makers of Thug Kitchen wanted to push the envelope even more, which turned their cookbook into a parody, something that can be a sore subject for many racial groups.
I’m even going to throw in Samuel L. Jackson’s often stated line: “I’m tired of these mothafuckin’ (fill in the blank with whatever you’re pissed about).” Because Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction is someone that endeared him to many people as a badass mofo.
After viewing the book promo for Thug Kitchen, it appears someone must have known that it was time to scale back.
But because the blog was already out there with a number of examples that set an image of who may have been behind all descriptions accompanying the recipes, Alea iacta est – the die is cast:
Ironically, if this much slang had been dropped into a novel with white characters, comments like “OMG, enough of the ghetto speak!” would abound. For an example, early comments on JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood Series will do. The threads are still up on Amazon.com
A few more examples from the blog:
No, it’s not simply about using curse words. But speaking of cursing, for whatever reason, some people have gotten so giddy about seeing or hearing curse words in certain places that it’s now become cutting edge in some quarters. I call it Shock and Awe over the use of curse words. I’m pretty sure my mom would just say that some people are just outta their damn minds.
In fact, its gotten downright annoying. Take for example, when a staffer with the Onion tweeted this:
The tweet that The Onion will always regret
Take note of the likes and retweets on an uncalled for comment regarding a then nine year old little girl. And also take note that it was tweeted during a highlight in this same nine year old’s life, when she’d been nominated for an Oscar.
Where the creators of Thug Kitchen ran into big trouble, is that their premeditated grab at fame added something Go the Fuck to Sleep and What the fuck should I make for Dinner? managed to avoid.
Which turned out to be the need to liberally sprinkle in “urban speak” in order to tie in their anonymous “thug” persona with their blog and their book. A few examples from the book:
And with celebrity endorsements like Jamie Oliver and Gwyneth Paltrow, they were well on their way to success.
But like far too many culture vultures, they didn’t know or perhaps thought they couldn’t ease up on all the slang.
The kind of slang that when you hear it spoken out loud by a co-worker, you already know its not coming from a place of admiration or respect, but mockery.
It’s no different that the ones who think they’re funny pretending to be Indians or someone overseas who answers a customer service line with an accent.
The thing is, the creators of the book didn’t need to go there so many times. Perhaps being a bit too greedy or green, take your pick, by laying on a bit too much “flava” somehow a number of loyal blog followers were fooled. Deliberately saving their reveal until their book tour,
Once it was known that the people dropping it were these two residents of Hollywood:
Uh . . . these are the creators of Thug Kitchen. No, this isn’t a joke or a bad dream. I mean, OMG! Lighten up! Can’t “you people” take a joke?
Rut-Ohhhh . . . there goes the neighborhood.
So, here are some of my reasons why they should’ve seen this coming:
1. Emulating and mocking the urban slang of an already maligned cultural group rarely ends well for those who appear to be doing it just to get paid. What they’ve done is made some early supporters, those who perhaps thought they were supporting someone who could use their help, now feel complicit since the ruse has been uncovered.
2. It’s pretty apparent that taking this thing on the road will bring out supporters who either want to talk about the recipes in the book, or those who want to see the creators put on the bravado persona from the book. Which would be a very bad idea (see my paragraph about the clueless co-worker)
But let’s face it, would the book have gained this much attention without some sort of unique marketing? Unfortunately for these two the “uniqueness” of their brand is uncomfortably close to pretending as if they’re some street wise, knowledge dropping hustler, which neither of them appear to be. I shudder to think how they “studied” and perhaps joked about what slang or phrases to put in the book and on their blog. Something tells me I wouldn’t have wanted to be a fly on the wall when all this was being planned out.
3. Never try to be Quentin Tarantino junior. Sure, his screenplay (Django Unchained) was nominated and won an Oscar. And his films like Jackie Brown and Pulp fiction are heavy on the slang and bad ass mofo’s. But don’t be fooled. Tarantino has his share of detractors, both black and white. Data mining another culture in order to cherry pick what to use in order to further one’s career has just as many casualties as success stories.
4. The word “thug” is problematic in this day and age, because too many men are labeled with it. These days the perception of a young man, especially a young black male as a “thug” can get them killed. So while the creators of the blog and book probably thought using the word was simply for kicks and giggles, for others it can be an unwarranted, negative stereotype. And while there are those who want to pretend that “thug” isn’t a code word these days for the N word, well, Richard Sherman may have said it best:
During a Wednesday press conference, Sherman was asked if “thug,” a word that was used often on message boards and social media to describe the Seahawks cornerback, bothers him more than any other term.
“The reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s an accepted way of calling somebody the N-word now,” he said. “It’s like everybody else said the N-word and then they say ‘thug’ and that’s fine. It kind of takes me aback and it’s kind of disappointing because they know.
“What’s the definition of a thug? Really? Can a guy on a football field just talking to people [be a thug?] … There was a hockey game where they didn’t even play hockey! (Laughter from the media) They just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that and said, ‘Ah, man, I’m the thug? What’s going on here?'” (More laughter from the media). So I’m really disappointed in being called a thug,” he said.
Later, Sherman explained that the term was especially troubling given that it’s something he’s endured his whole life.
“I know some ‘thugs,’ and they know I’m the furthest thing from a thug,” Sherman said. “I’ve fought that my whole life, just coming from where I’m coming from. Just because you hear Compton (Calif.), you hear Watts, you hear cities like that, you just think ‘thug, he’s a gangster, he’s this, that, and the other,’ and then you hear Stanford, and they’re like, ‘oh man, that doesn’t even make sense, that’s an oxymoron.’
“You fight it for so long, and to have it come back up and people start to use it again, it’s frustrating.”
5. Breaking that fragile bond of trust between readers who supported the blog and book can cause questions on everything else. There was enough implied by the blog posts and now the book, that the creators were other than who they turned out to be. Which made for a sticky situation for not only some readers, but also the book stores that scheduled the duo’s in-store promos:
“Diesel books waded into the fray, posting an extensive explanation to their Facebook page saying, “The previously anonymous L.A. duo who created Thug Kitchen were booked for an event at our store well in advance of their surprise revelation, and believe us, we were surprised too. (Well, truth be told, some more than others.)”
They go on to encourage a dialogue around the issue:
DIESEL, A Bookstore believes in freedom of expression, and the authors of this cookbook have chosen their method of expression. Does the fact of their being white change their message? Is their language insultingly appropriated or just language many people use? Are you offended or do you think the humor is okay? We don’t have the final answer to these questions, though lately we’ve been talking about them with one another plenty. We invite you to come and have your say.”
6. Don’t believe the hype. Oh wait, it’s too late for that advice. I get the feeling that just like Marie Claire claimed Kendall Jenner’s cornrows had taken “bold braids to a new epic level” some were hoping Thug Kitchen would also take vegan recipes to a whole new epic level of awesomeness (eye-roll).
Staying with the whole “Braid-appropriation” thing, I seem to recall when Bo Derek starred in “10” the same shrieks of “how cool is that” happened. Somehow braids weren’t valid until she wore them, as if Africans and African Americans (both men and women AND children) weren’t already wearing them.
Unfortunately, a gimmick can only last so long. So it remains to be seen how long Thug Kitchen will still be the shit now that their true identities are known. At some point their true motive for all this will also be revealed. My guess would be money and exposure.
Let me also stress this. What they did is nothing new.
I’m not finished with this post, but I think I’ll attempt to tie in another glory seeker, as modern society appears to be going backwards instead of forward, all for the almighty dollar. This next bit of WTF-ery was created by a man who’s been dubbed “Africa’s most fearless theatre-maker” for his exploitative circus hiding under the guise of “Art”
For as Brett Bailey was quoted as saying “I’m creating a journey that’s embracing and immersive, in which you can be delighted and disturbed, but I’d like you to be disturbed more than anything.”
Edinburgh’s most controversial show: Exhibit B, a human zoo
South Africa’s fearless theatre-maker Brett Bailey has made a career out of tackling the most difficult aspects of race. His new show features black people in cages, in reference to real 19th-century human zoos – and even some of the performers are uneasy about it
I’ll try to limit this to ten items, but I’d like to discuss the S word (no, it’s not slavery). The word for today is SEGREGATION and much of what you see happening regarding race, like a cut that continues to bleed in America, comes from that time period.
We’ve become complacent people. Some readers won’t even know what I’m referring to, while others will take the head in the sand approach, acting like they’re just so “Sick of this PC crap.” And still others, like me, who’ve lived long enough to see how everything old appears to be new again for a whole ‘nother generation, and are not only mad, but mad as hell about it. Some of us forgot. And some didn’t even know. Like so many things, you get told to forgetwhen someone else deems it not relevant. Whether it’s on a larger scale like Ferguson, or an inappropriate parody that resurrects stereotypical imagery all in “fun,” here’s a run-down for those who just don’t know what all the fuss is about.
1.History repeats itself. I’d be surprised if the same people extolling the humor in Thug Kitchen wouldn’t be horrified over the antics of Amos ‘N Andy, but the similarities between these two creations are uncanny. Back during the 1920s and way, way before the internet, the two men in the photo below thrilled segregated Americans with a show that was broadcast over radio.
Writers and original performers of Amos and Andy
Lauded by some for their “uncanny” spot on mimicry of what they perceived to be African American vernacular and dialect, when criticism arose the pair were defended for the most part because their show was “humorous.” In other words, a large segment of white Americans enjoyed them (and some blacks), even those in the “progressive” north. It’s important to note that all this was during segregation, when using blacks and other minority groups for mockery in ads and both film, books and radio were the norm.
Advertisement for radio show of Amos ‘n Andy and Bob Hope. Take note of their vernacular “Yas Suh, friends” compared to fibber McGee and Molly, and also Bob Hope. Also notice how dark their faces are, as visual blackface was also the norm.
Because their show was so popular the creators/radio performers wore blackface to promote products. In the 1950s the show hired black actors to portray the characters
Back then there wasn’t much African Americans and those who objected to this type of mockery could do. Things were supposed to be better these days, especially since so many want to believe that we’re now in some sort of post -racial world (I guess it began once Obama was elected).
Fast forward to 2014, where the creators behind Thug Kitchen posted things like this on their vegan blog:
Faking the funk, example 1
The creators of Thug Kitchen. The only thing they won’t be able to do, unlike Amos ‘n Andy, is take their show on the road in actual blackface.
As expected, the duo behind Thug Kitchen have now done an about face, especially since most of the ground work has already been completed and their book is out (which was probably a major part of their goal). They’ve retreated from the larger than life persona that fueled their blog and debut cookbook, only dropping a curse word here and there to keep up appearances.
As they beat a hasty retreat from he who shall not be named AKA the Thug who never was, the question that remains is this: Without the imaginary “Thug” to fall back on, in a few yearswill anyone even give a flying fuck about these two?
2. Just how much did the publisher know and when did they know it? At some point Rondale books and their representatives had to know who they were dealing with, yet they still released the book. Now independent book stores are caught in the middle, some with little warning. So who okay’ed this thing while knowing that the creators were treading on a slippery slope?
Just what did they think would happen? Did they honestly believe that after the big reveal people would just laugh at their blatant mockery, and they’d continue to take questions from the audience or sign autographs with people congratulating them on a job well done? Especially the culture the duo decided to broadly imitate and mock?
“I be done seen everythang . . . when I see an elephant fly” – lyrics from the Disney classic Dumbo
No trip down parody lane would be complete without the crows from Dumbo. One was actually named Jim Crow
Sunflower does her shoe shine thing in this deleted scene from Disney’s Fantasia
Using actual African Americans to mock themselves in ads. Again, take note of the vernacular.
I don’t think the publishers or creators realized just how divisive their actions and product could become. And it shows a shameful ugliness that comes up every now and then in America, where the see no evil, hear no evil speak no evil crowd comes up againstthe very vocal and mad as hell “you can’t sweep this shit under the rug” protesters, and nobody wins.
4. The liberal you know turns out to be someone you really don’t know. The creators of Thug Kitchen are residents of LA. In response to one website on the building controversy they released a statement that said in part: “we were just having fun.”
On this blog I’ve listed a number of “liberals” who’ve come out with some smh, oh so “fun” public statements, which give one pause when they want to claim it’s all good.
The Tweet Lampanelli will always regret
But in the interest of showing the other side, I’ve included some of the public arguments defending Thug Kitchen:
“Perhaps I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but I’d like to reiterate that the point of this book is to get us to eat better and have a laugh while doing it. So instead of sheepishly subscribing to narrow-minded stereotypes, let’s refocus on the primary intention of Thug Kitchen: Eat some goddamn vegetables and get healthy. Besides, since when is web profanity reserved for one race and one race only? As a Japanese speaking half-Jew white girl who’s been writing the food blog Sh*t in a Bowl since 2008, I just can’t appreciate being told who can and cannot drop f-bombs.” – Marion Bernstein, from bustle.com
It’s not about dropping f-bombs. It’s about an entitled few who insist on using an already maligned culture to promote and profit off of. And Japanese bi-racialness isn’t the same as someone who can pass the brown paper bag test, which was a running joke during segregation. There’s no way to swap one person’s racial experience with another, yet there are some similar things that can occur with those of color (including some darker Japanese or other Asians looked down upon for having non-light skin). Additionally, to capitalize off African Americans its either done by revisionist history (spunky white girl leads a group of domestics who are cursed with the ebonic plague and also caricatured by their skin tone and weight) or by scaring voters (Reagan’s Welfare Queen tale, Obama’s really a Muslim, etc) or under the pretense of speaking in a dialect or “voice” that some will claim is humorous or “Pitch perfect”
The “pitch perfect” line was used to commend The Help, even though the book included offensive lines like this:
“Cat got on the porch this morning. Just about gave me a cadillac arrest” – Minny, from the novel The Help using her brand of malapropism for full WTF effect. The word she was searching for was “Cardiac”
“You saying people think I got the black magic?” Pg 24, Aibileen, from The Help after Minny confides in her that some in their church congregation believe Aibilene’s got a pipeline to God, after she appears to call down a venereal disease on her rival, Cocoa. It’s the “cootchie spoilt like a rotten oyster” scene that Octavia Spencer (who played Minny in the movie) and Kathryn Stockett took on the road while promoting the novel:
The spoilt cootchie reading, where Stockett voices Minny and Octavia Spencer does her best “What you talkin’ ’bout Willis?” expression.
“I do not agree the title automatically conjures bonafide or even reformed (ex) gang status; it is a parody, and the authors’ ethnicity might be important to some, but only if you force an author’s intent onto the work. It is clever, and if you object, don’t ask a site to cancel, but rather show up and debate it.” – Daniel Power, CEO of Brooklyn Based Powerhouse Arena in a reply to a poster on Gawker.com
It’s important to note that Powerhouse Arena had a dog in this fight, especially on the night in question. As far as his “if you force an author’s intent onto the work” I think the digital trail on their blog and their intro on Facebook spells out their intent. It’s looking more like a planned marketing strategy where those behind Thug Kitchen knew to conceal themselves, lest their book deal fall through. And something tells me someone else out there knows the full story. I just hope they’ll come forward. But I do agree that cancelling the Power event wasn’t the answer. Let those behind Thug Kitchen face the music since they’re all about “keeping it real.”
Wow. And apologists want to claim that it’s simply about dropping F bombs. The digital trail is there for all to see. Only some folks don’t wanna open their damn eyes.
The book also speaks clearly enough on their “intent.”
In an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons, this awkward looking meet and greet went on as planned. I’m not seeing too much diversity here.
As far as it being a parody, just who are they mocking in their parody?
Someone Irish? Italian? British? Hispanic?
Or none of the above.
For more info on the event and a longer version of the rationale given by Daniel Power, see this post on Gawker.com
5. When money is involved, turn a blind eye and maybe any criticism will all go away What’s amazing to me is how many people are willing to overlook the shadiness of all this. For almost two years the creators were more than happy to continue with their pseudo street hustler, slang slinging persona. Now that more scrutiny has been placed on them, it’s either no comment or they were only having “fun.”
Using African Americans, or for that matter, other minority groups for mockery and to generate money is nothing new. Take a look at some of these ads from the days of segregation. A common thread with all of them is the dialect attributed to the minority model or cartoon character.
This GE ad uses the stereotype of blacks and fried chicken, picturing a child.
Example of how the black male was used in advertising during segregation
Hires ad, “Yassuh . . .” Black males were also required to grovel and give service with a smile
Sanka Coffee Ad, featuring the sassy maid caricature
Riceland Rice ad from Ebony magazine. Scanned by Vieilles Annonces. Notice the former brand icon playing upon a stereotype of Asians.
6. The word Thug is being used as a get off free card. Whether deliberate or some simply being innocently clueless, there’s an attempt to claim all the hoopla is either about profanity or ownership of the word “Thug.” I’m not falling for it and neither should you. As long as people are arguing about the use of the word “Thug” then the real issues are being glossed over.
However, for all those who want to argue:
Trayvon Martin was killed on Feb 26th 2012. All during that year the debate was on, as some tried to justify his shooting by labeling him a Thug.
Geraldo Rivera went on Bill O’Reilly, attributing Martin’s clothing choice as part of the problem:
“I think what’s far more significant is what Trayvon Martin looked like on that night, Bill,” he said. “Aside from the fact that he’s dressed in that thug wear — look at the size of him, he’s not a little kid.” – Geraldo Rivera quote from the Bill O’Reilly show.
For this next example, I need to apologize beforehand. I’m not identifying the site, but it shouldn’t be hard to find:
Arnold Ahlert has an older piece on FrontPage Magazine.com titled “Framing Trayvon” which chronicles just how Martin was mistaken for both the rapper The Game and also another young man named Trayvon Martin:
“In an effort to right decades of racial wrongs, many conservatives have hastily embraced caricatures of Trayvon Martin, painting him as a vicious street thug who deserved his fate.”
Trayvon had incidents of misbehavior, but none as serious as Zimmerman, who was jailed for attacking a police officer. On the other hand, the anti-Trayvon literature, of which “The Game” email is representative, portray him as an of out-of-control gangster with a criminal record, who sold drugs and “had numerous run-ins with authorities (both at school and local police).” He is described as a “drug dealing … tattooed thug whose name on one of his Facebook profiles was ‘Wild Nigga’ [and] who ‘finds’ jewelry and burglary tools on the way to school.”
“The Game photo is far from the only fake image of Martin to have surfaced. One of those fakes was allegedly of Martin wearing “county orange” flipping off the camera with both hands, with his pants sagging down around his waist. The photo was posted on Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy.com, a conservative website. The young man in the picture was indeed of a Trayvon Martin, but it was another Trayvon Martin who is alive and well and whose relatives live in Savannah, GA. Twitchy.com issued an apology.”
I recall the Twitchy.com apology. I even listed it on this blog and the mistaken photo in question:
Twitchy media issues apology to Martin family for this erroneous photo. They’d initially claimed it was Trayvon. Red and black wording is mine
There was no hard research done on this. I simply typed in “Thug” and Trayvon Martin, and a number of previous articles (some truly scary in their negative speculation) pop up.
Thug Kitchen’s first post was in October of 2012. So, short of hiding under a rock during all the Trayvon Martin murder case and its media coverage, they had to know how the word was currently being used. Still, they chose to use it for their blog and also take on a persona that clearly played off the word. But hey, its a free country.
I just thought I’d share this for all those who want to shrug and claim its not that big a deal.
7.The “Well, I wouldn’t call it racism” excuse. Pair this with the “Well, I wouldn’t call it rape, exactly” or “Well, I wouldn’t call it murder” and you’ve got the idea. These days its a lot easier to just pretend such things don’t happen in America. No, this is the kind of stuff limited to third world countries, or, if you happen to be black, some message board comments will spam that we’re the sole cause of social decline in this country and anything we get is what we deserve.
A bit OT, but still useful:
Robert Townsend’s 1987 classic “Hollywood Shuffle” had a number of examples that still apply today:
An actor limited to stereotypical roles because of his ethnicity, dreams of making it big as a highly respected performer. As he makes his rounds, the film takes a satiric look at African American actors in Hollywood.
And Spike Lee’s 1989 classic “Do the Right Thing” also can be used a teaching tool:
On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
8. Humor is subjective. That’s why it’s best left to the pros. I’d never heard of the Thug Kitchen blog until this controversy. But after taking a look at their site, I can only wonder what they were thinking. Did it come across as funny? No, not particularly. Going from their very first post to the present day. the gag had run its course over two or three posts for me. But it appeared to have found a passionate audience. Only, just like the Quentin Tarrantino’s apparent fascination with the black culture and his liberal use of the N word in his exploitation movies, I gotta ask, who didn’t know the people behind the blog weren’t cool, but corny as hell?
Even in their email interviews they read like someone taking on a broad caricature. Hell, even their first Facebook post should’ve been a dead giveaway “Thug kitchen all up in this Facebook” Excuse me, What? WHAT?
“Ready to drop some nutritional knowledge on some fools.”
I dunno. why am I not laughing? I didn’t laugh the first time I read it, and not now, when using it in this post.
At a time like this, maybe Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas has the answer:
Henry Hill: You’re a pistol, you’re really funny. You’re really funny.
Tommy DeVito: You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?
Henry Hill: Just… you know, how you tell the story, what?
Tommy DeVito: No, no, I don’t know, you said it. How do I know? You said I’m funny. How the fuck am I funny, what the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what’s funny!
Early Aunt Jemima ads could be considered a parody:
Everybody’s favorite “Aunt”, Aunt Jemima, still “large and in charge” even today
Ladies and Aunt Jemima. Note how she “speaks”
There’s a reason why the brand now shies away from presenting the product like this, even though they could probably claim its protected under free speech. The main reasons? Because it’s offensive and highly stereotypical.
10. The Voice, which landed the duo a publishing deal
“The tone of voice was so different from everything else that I had read, and it was such a refreshing change, so I emailed them and pledged my love and hoped for a response.” Just a few weeks later, the team at Thug Kitchen contacted Postman to say that they were working on a book proposal, which arrived on Postman’s desk six months later. – Publisher’s Weekly quote by a representative of Rondale who signed the duo from Thug Kitchen
“Yeah, I mean, we understand where people are coming from. ‘Thug’ is a loaded word and it’s definitely gotten more loaded in the past year and a half in the news. But, we’ve always intended it – and used it as more of an attitude. It’s about being a [expletive].” – one half of the duo explains what they mean by “Thug” on the Rachel Ray show.
Excerpts from the article (some of the items in italics are my doing, because they’re important to take note of):
The Thug Kitchen collective is a group of people who intend to remain anonymous, and who strive to focus on spreading the good word about healthy cooking and food accessibility. On the website, they mention that “everyone deserves to feel a part of our country’s push toward a healthier diet, not just people with disposable income who speak a certain way.” The folks at the blog agreed to do an interview with The Daily Beast over email, in an effort to keep up the mystery behind the kitchen.
How did you come up with the idea to start Thug Kitchen?
We thought it was time for some real talk about some real fucking food. Since this is how we talk in the kitchen, the idea for the site just came naturally. Many cooking blogs make healthy eating seem like some expensive hobby and that just isn’t our scene.
What do you hope readers will gain from your recipes?
Straight kitchen knowledge. We want people talking about healthy eating who aren’t usually invited to that conversation. The recipes help people see that this shit isn’t as hard as you think. You don’t have to spend $40 and 4 hours every night just to have a nice dinner. We want to help your ass out.
Ah yes, the “voice”. Pre-packaged like a frozen dinner, older articles with the duo appear to show their evasiveness. And to quote the article “since this is how we talk in the kitchen” and taking them at their word,then what they’ve been doing is a full on parody. Which then begs the question, why?
Still in character, or caricature in order to sell their book, the duo behind Thug Kitchen use the word “dopest” Do I really have to explain that one?
It’s also important to point out that the individuals behind Thug Kitchen are reportedly in their late twenties.
And as far as their “voice” being so different as the Rondale rep claimed, there’s nothing “different” about taking on an exaggerated swagger or parody of one culture by another. It was done all the time during segregation. Hollywood even produced children’s cartoons to spread stereotypes:
Offensive cartoon depiction of black males and “shooting dice” called Prince chawmin
The Mammy Two shoes caricature from Tom and Jerry cartoon. The character was voiced by an African American, though her face was rarely shown. Notice the caricature of a heavy-set, dark in skin tone domestic.
More examples of those who capitalized on this sort of thing:
Article from the non-fiction book Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America. By Micki McElya
Back in 1923, when The United Daughters of the Confederacy wanted a national Mammy Monument in our nation’s capital, guess what they loved to do, in “homage” to the black women who raised them. That’s right. To take on their “voice”
The Daughters constructed memories of benign servitude through dialect performances, “epistolary blackface”(59) in which white women wrote in the voices of mammies, and, in a most spectacular effort, a nearly successful push to establish a national monument to the mammy to stand “in the shadow of Lincoln’s memorial” in Washington, DC
From a review of the book Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America. By Micki McElya Ms McElya is an Assistant Professor of History, University of Connecticut. She has a PhD in History, having graduated from NY University in 2003.
More recently, another book that is soon scheduled for release will revisit the character of Mammy from Gone With The Wind where another author attempts to write in her “voice”:
“The first two-thirds of the 416-page “Ruth’s Journey” are in the third person, and the last portion is told in Ruth’s own dialect.”
What the internet giveth, the internet can taketh away.
Yes, this modern miracle of technology also known as the “web” can quickly make a savvy individual or “collective” a star. Just look at the public faces reportedly behind Thug Kitchen. Aw, just look at those chagrining widdle faces thrown out to the public:
The public face of the “collective” or basically, who the brains behind this whole thing want people to believe are in charge
Uh-oh. My spidey senses are tingling again. Because I couldn’ve sworn I read somewhere this was a “collective” Let me see where I can go to get a bit more information.
First of all a “collective” means:
1.done by people acting as a group 2. a cooperative enterprise.
So far only two people have come forward. I dunno. Call it a hunch, but my guess is there are more involved.
But, I digress. The reason for this post is the nay-sayers who still claim they don’t understand why some people are upset.
So understand this. Yes, there is a digital trail. A BIG ONE.
It’s a shame I even need to do this. But some doubters have to be shown visual proof, because just having black folk say it is never enough. No, we not only need video and audio, but names, dates, screen grabs, and then maybe someone will still re-check our work for accuracy.
So here ya go, and welcome to THE VOICE:
Hello world . . . Thug Kitchen’s first post on Facebook. Full of all that “thuggie” attitude, or you know, simply full of it.
Remember this date, Oct 18, 2012, because the “aw shucks, we didn’t really do anything to warrant all this attention” comes into play in the article that put faces to the name:
Thug Life: A Behind-The-Scenes Look At The Masterminds Of Thug Kitchen
Article by Matt Ducor
It began the way millions of other people have made personal websites: with a Tumblr account. And so, Thug Kitchen was born in August 2012 and absolutely no one knew about it. The pair didn’t blast out an announcement over their personal social media channels–they didnt, and still don’t, have any. Thug Kitchen didn’t appear on Eater.com or The Huffington Post. They didn’t even send it to friends or family.
Thug Kitchen was discovered organically by a small number of people through web search and Tumblr. “We’d have ten people on the site at any given time and we’d be like, ‘that’s amazing! We have ten people on our site,'” recalls Holloway. By February of 2013, Thug Kitchen started getting noticed. Instead of seeing that ten viewers on the site at any given time, there were over a hundred. “‘Who did you tell?!'” Holloway remembers asking Davis. “I didnt tell anybody!” It turns out that someone had posted about the sites existence on the massive internet message board Reddit, which accounted for the traffic spike.
. . . Then, in early April, actress Gwyneth Paltrow included a link to Thug Kitchen in her GOOP newsletter, with no other commentary or explanation other than that This might be my favorite thing ever. A few weeks later, she mentioned the blog again during an appearance on The Rachael Ray Show.
The pair had no idea. “We didn’t talk to anybody from her camp, it was a total surprise,” says Davis. “And then traffic goes through the roof–Google analytics crashed!”
Journalist Matt Ducor got the ball rolling, only he didn’t ask any hard hitting questions. Which unfortunately, made the public face of the “collective” ill prepared for the outcry that came next.
But let’s start at the beginning (or at least what the public saw. What the pre-planning phase for all this consisted of, we’ll probably never know):
Creating a monster caricature one recipe at a time. The first Tumblr post
Sept 2012 one of the earlier tumblr posts in full caricature mode
“look up how much that minute maid shit got inside it. high-fructose corn syrup? naw, son I don’t play that.” – Sept 2012 quote from Tumblr
” . . . Last week I went to the hospital for a flu shot and the doc was all like “Whoa you healthy as fuck, son. Blood pressure is all normal and shit.” and I told him “Like I give a fuck.” and then I paid my co-payment like a fucking boss.” – Sept 16, 2012 quote, again in full digital blackface mode
“good nutrition ain’t just for a thug. . .
I know what you’re thinking, “man, that healthy pet food is mad expensive though” and then I’m gonna ask how much money you spent on your own food just this week alone? then ask if you give a fuck about your pet, because they can’t choose what they eat, you do. personally I’d rather be broke as fuck and have a healthy pet that loves me like cray. money ain’t shit next to that.
My dog is so fucking healthy that when we go to the vet, the vet pays me. real talk.” – Oct 2012 Tumblr
“I’M SO TIRED OF MOTHER FUCKERS asking “Where do you get your protein?” All you simple minded bastards better read up some.I eat shit like whole grains, beans, nuts, lentils, tempeh… I mean hell, where the fuck are YOU getting your protein? Black beans are one of my favorite protein sources for sure. The insoluble fiber these are packing keeps the body feeling full while holding calories down low. But hold up, this shit also has soluble fiber to regulate the fuck out of your glucose levels. So eat more black beans and sign some fucking autographs.” – March 2013 quote from at that time, the singular “Thug”
“No lie, it’s been a while since a thug has been in the kitchen. So I log into the tumblrverse today to check my shit, maybe dust off the dash and get some new content out. Son, I’ve got a TON of fucking messages (I’m going to try to reply to them all, I promise) and I’m seeing my shit posted all over the god damn place.
I’m glad all you healthy/sexy mother fuckers kept the kitchen warm while I was away. I’m officially back and stepping up my game. Seriously, all the love I’ve got from my followers makes me want to post the best content I can for you. Thug Kitchen undergoing reconstruction as of right now. I’m so fucking heated right now. Shit. – ? 2013 quote from whoever is portraying the singular “Thug”
Unlike what the duo revealed in the article that outted them, not only was there a very active Tumblr site, but a Facebook and Twitter page. And this early interview (March 2013) was also done in high gloss caricature:
You don’t often see the words “badass” and “vegan cooking” together in the same sentence (or even on the same website), but Dr. Thug is determined to change that. The pseudonymous doctor is the foul-mouthed nutrition buff behind the Thug Kitchen (Motto: “Eat Like You Give A F*ck”), the Internet’s newest (and possibly only) gangster vegan food blog.
Thug Kitchen’s website, Facebook page and Twitter feed all contain roughly equal parts nutrition facts, healthy recipes, gorgeous food photography and NSFW language. But beneath his thug demeanor, the doctor’s a nice (though still badass) guy who took a few minutes to have an email chat with the Daily Dot.
As the piece goes on, whoever did the interview lays it on even thicker:
“Don’t believe the hype. Yeah, learning new sh*t takes a f*cking minute. Expect some mistakes. You gotta burn a dish or two, it doesn’t just come together every time. Sh*t, I still f*ck dishes up, but those are the ones my readers don’t hear about. If you make something terrible, you f*cking remember why it came out terrible. Trust. And yeah, cooking does take time but don’t blow that sh*t out of proportion. I don’t spend more than 30-40 minutes cooking a meal and cleaning up. And leftovers mean you don’t have to do that every god damn day. Don’t try to figure out what you are going to make when you are already starving. Just plan your sh*t out.”
Finally:
“There are so many different ways to make a meal, if I don’t like something I find another way to cook it to change that sh*t up.I use to hate beets, but then one day I marinated them and threw them on the grill. F*cking love beets now. Eating them makes me feel like a grown-up. I will say as far as not letting something in my house, if anyone comes over here with fast food, they can sit outside on the curb and eat that sh*t. They also can’t use my bathroom.”
As more email interviews were published, One UK article proclaimed (pay close attention to the items in bold, which are my doing):
“It’s as if Samuel L Jackson went on a health kick and started a Tumblr. . .
Mystery is apparently one of the most-used ingredients in Thug Kitchen. The LA-based bloggers insist on anonymity, agreeing to be interviewed only via email. Despite the blog’s first-person voice, they tell me, “there are multiple cooks in the kitchen”. They are all vegan, with the exception of one omnivore, who eats “mostly vegan”.
So, here’s a bit more of the timeline on the inception of the “voice” of a collective thug (please note the liberal use of y’all and other slang to complete the transformation).
March 2013:
By this time Tumblr’s not enough, so the website and Facebook show:
“THERE’S SO MUCH GOD DAMN SPINACH in this shit even Popeye can’t hate. Yeah spinach makes you swoll as fuck, we know that. . . Everybody knows I ain’t even fucking playing when it comes to dick cancer, I gotta have my shit in tact . . . So quit that shit. You want to make this shit at home and tell Jamba Juice they can go fuck themselves by not paying for their high calorie sugary shit?”
April 2013:
“I thought we were cool… WHAT THE FUCK SPOON?”
“Well ain’t this some wild shit. Gwyneth Paltrow showing love for TK on Rachel Ray.”
Another interview is granted and “Thug” or his representative is in full digital blackface again (questions posed by the blog site are in italics):
If you’re really a thug, do you get clowned by homies? Because most people don’t associate a healthy diet with thugs.
“Nobody has ever clowned on me after they’ve had my food. If the food tastes good, people shut the fuck up with a quickness.”
Do you think people are going to make better choices when it comes watching what they eat due your site?
“I mean I’m here to entertain and drop some knowledge. If TK can help someone be more comfortable with eating healthy then shit, that’d be dope.
“Do you yourself follow healthy eating habits? No doubt. About ninety percent of my meals are plant-based but damn if I don’t love me some street tacos. It’s like anything else, moderation is key. It’s not a party if you do it every damn day, ya know?”
In the same interview more bullshit “knowledge” spews forth, such as: “Who says healthy people aren’t hard? Ask Mike Tyson about that shit.”
May 6, 2013
All the fresh herbs piled in here make this a choice dish for spring. If you know how to mash and chop, then this fucker is basically already made. YOU. GOT. THIS.
How much more proof do you need? And imo an apology is NOT ENOUGH
Bragging about their first digital blackface post
June 19,2013
“We haven’t forgotten about y’all, we’ve been busy as hell finishing up this beast of a cookbook. We’re almost done but we just realized we didn’t include a single goddamn recipe from our site. Matter of fact, EVERYTHING in the book is brand fucking new. So we thought we’ve gotta include at least ONE of our most popular site recipes in the book and we need YOUR help. Below are some of our most popular recipes. Vote for your fav in the comment section and we’ll include it in the book.
July, 2013
“Starting to feel like ninety one thousand damn degrees outside? We got you. Chill the fuck out with a big ass cup of this tropical treat. All you need are five fucking ingredients and a blender. You should be able to handle that shit even if it feels like the world is melting.”
“Oh, did y’all want some book updates? BOOM.” – quote from Facebook
“Y’all flooded our inbox asking for Thug Kitchen merch,” “I was saving this recipe for my upcoming cookbook but you guys said FUCK THAT.” “You might make some friends with this shit here.” “YOU EARNED THAT SHIT” “I will slap that shit out of your hand so quick you won’t know whatthefuck happened.” July 2013
The debut cookbook goal is attained:
“FALL 2014 – EXPECT THAT SHIT” – July 2013 quote
“Whether you let them read my recipe or not, that’s on you.” – quote from August 2013
“OR you can do how I do and build a double boiler like a fucking boss.” Also from August 2013
In celebration of their one year anniversary and in full caricature mode, this is posted, again in August of 2013:
“Today is Thug Kitchen’s one-year anniversary and we want to say thank you. Every day we are slammed with support from people all over the world sharing their appreciation, personal stories, and enthusiasm for good fucking food. It’s inspiring as fuck and to show our gratitude for y’all supporting us we want to give away some shitto help your ass in the kitchen. That’s right. IT’S OUR PARTY AND YOU GET THE FUCKING PRESENTS.How do you like that shit?”
“There were lots of other stories that were so good we’ll have to send y’all some shit even though we couldn’t post your drama.” Sept 2013 quote, both on Tumblr and the Thugkitchen.com site
“Set a timer if your ass is easily distracted like me . . . When the chili looks legit by your standards, add the lemon juice then taste that motherfucker. Depending on the brand of tomatoes you got, you might need to add some brown sugar to balance the taste out. Taste again and see if it needs more chili powder or salt. Throw in some cayenne pepper if you like that shit hot.” quote from Sept of 2013
“I know some of you might be looking at these directions thinkin WHOA THAT LOOKS COMPLICATED AS FUCK. Calm. Your. Shit.” – Tumblr quote, October 2013
“Alright, so you want something sweet, refreshing, and isn’t made by coca-cola? Son, agua fresca is the fucking JAM. Look, all the shit you need is:” – Tumblr, November 2013
“THE.FUCK.IS.THIS.SHIT. Frozen vegetables = vegan meal? Seeing this shit made me so mad that I came home and made acorn squash empanadas from scratch, and guess who ain’t gettin none? Fuck you too, Whole Foods. – November 2013 Tumblr and web site quote
Bogus ethnic “voice” reappears after a brief hiatus on Facebook:
“Damn y’all are quick on the email. ” “HOLY SHIT what kinda hate mail did y’all send to Facebook?” – November 2013 quote
“We haven’t forgotten about y’all, we’ve been busy as hell finishing up this beast of a cookbook. We’re almost done but we just realized we didn’t include a single goddamn recipe from our site. ” – June 2014 quote
Look, we know our website has been basic as hell but guess what? We updated that shit just for y’all. You wanted a search function? Go ahead, search your ass off. Want to bookmark recipes? – Sept 26, 2014 quote just before the shit hit the fan.
Now a mere shell of their former flavorful funky selves (eye-roll for the terrible pun I just made) here’s how they announced a new post:
“Here’s the recipe for Creamy Cauliflower Pasta straight from our book that we cooked up with Rachel Ray on Friday.
Want to enjoy creamy pasta without having to worry about the fucking cholesterol? Puréed cauliflower makes this sauce silky without any of that added bullshit that made you avoid creamy sauces for so long. Feel free to add some stuff like roasted asparagus, steamed broccoli or roasted red peppers to this dish to mix it up.” - October 2014 quote after the story broke
As one former fan of the duo/collective lamented, “it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.” (comment from Jezebel.com)
Fear not, all those faint of heart who still need their stereotypical “thug” fix. Some enterprising soul will swoop in to rescue them, much like a patron did with Paula Deen.
The cookbook may be burnt but money will still be made, just not the sum that could have been collected, son.
Actual quotes from posts that are on the Thug Kitchen site. Some quotes were also repeated on Facebook and Twitter. No, I’m not making this up.
Michelle Davis: We understand that running an anonymous blog may give a lot of people different ideas of who is running it.
Matt Holloway: When we created it, we weren’t trying to load our blog with a lot of personality like a lot of websites or food blogs. I personally find that really alienating, because when I’m cooking their food, I’m constantly comparing their life and their photos to my life and how my food looks. So, we didn’t really want it to be about personality.
Please notice that I said “we” as in not solely black people. But all those who are offended by the shenanigans played upon the public by a group of people who used a stereotype to its fullest extent, and in the process were rewarded for their efforts.
Understand too, that this was a few years in the making, so followers are to be expected. Don’t be disheartened if you happen to notice the book selling.
Books can be returned. And books, just like offensive promos can be utilized to show a digital trail of deceit. But most of all, nothing worthy and lasting can be built from premeditated, mockingly offensive caricature and deception.
People are buying the cook book for various reasons. While there are those truly interested in Vegan food and seek out recipes, some are new to Vegan food and wonder about the taste, nutritional benefit and authenticity of the recipes. Others don’t care about the controversy and don’t want to know about it. Some people endorse things just to spite others. There is also a denial component to this, where some very vocal defenders (see the screen grab I managed to get before it was deleted) have no clue (“even if it were racial just a little . . .”).
The only thing I’ve deleted on this screen grab are the names. It’s the attitudes that I’m primarily focused on:
“Even if it were racial just a little” and “lighten up” and “Seriously?”
Part of the shameful history of America is that during slavery and segregation, curiosity about black culture and even individuals were used for amusement and to profit off of.
Human Zoo inhabitants. A popular attraction back in the day, before people complained
Drawing of Stepin Fetchit, ironically from the Disney movie “Mother Goose from Hollywood”
From the Disney animated film Mothergoose from Hollywood, a caricature of Stepin Fetchit
Aunt Jemima mangles the english language, another popular stereotype regarding African Americans that persists today.
Dancing, wise cracking crows from Disney’s classic animated feature Dumbo. There’s one even named Jim Crow. The voices attempted to mimic the African American dialect.
The Publisher Knew
That’s right. The publisher and or representatives knew the duo/collective behind this ruse were white and that they’d taken on a street caricature to promote their recipes. And they probably knew the eventual reveal would cause controversy. So just remember that the next time you pick up a book and the publisher is Rodale. Remember the name, because respect is a two way street. And with this type of shit going to print, someone okay’d a continuation of digital blackface:
Using the imaginary “Thug” persona, the creators of Thug Kitchen try to spice up their recipes using digital blackface.
Digital blackface continues in print via the book for Thug Kitchen
Behold the words of Mary Ann Naples, senior v-p, publisher at Rodale, stated in this Publisher’s Weekly interview:
“We think their work speaks for itself—Thug Kitchen’s goal has always simply been to entertain [by] verbally abusing people into eating some goddamn vegetables.”
That’s right. All their “work” like the alter ego persona of a slang dropping, over the top kitchen creation known as Thug. The same imaginary narrator was used to give answers to interviews in full digital blackface. More info can be found by reading Naple’s glowing interview condoning what this “collective” did, by any means necessary. And don’t kid yourself. More people were involved in this fiasco. A quick internet search yielded a number of early interviews using the “Thug” persona as a spokesperson. And what was also telling was the amount of evasiveness involved:
“The writer or writers (its believed to be more like a crew) come from Los Angeles, but who they are exactly remains a mystery. Though we tried to who find out, Thug didn’t respond to our emails.”
“In addition to frequent swearing, anonymity had been a trademark of the blog since it launched in the fall of 2012. When I profiled Thug Kitchen last year for The Post’s Food section, all of our correspondence took place over e-mail.”
By mid-2013, the singular “thug” had become “we” and a collective:
“The Thug Kitchen collective is a group of people who intend to remain anonymous, and who strive to focus on spreading the good word about healthy cooking and food accessibility.”
And by 2014, their identities or basically, the individuals picked as the face of the “collective” had been revealed:
“It didn’t occur to us” to use our names, Davis said in a recent interview. “It wasn’t something we were sharing around, and when it got popular we just kept it the way it was because (anonymity) had clearly worked.”
So let this book be an example. Let it serve as a reminder that this:
Amos and Andy (blackface version) note the “Here we is again. Ain’t dat sumden!” which perpetuates the dialect stereotype
Writers and original performers of Amos ‘N Andy a still popular radio show that started in the late 1920s and continued until the 1960s, until protests took the show (with black performers by this this) off the air.
Is simply this:
Creating a monster caricature one recipe at a time
And simply more of the same. Amos ‘N Andy for a new generation.
In the captioned cartoon below, everything in the balloons and along the bottom of the screen are actual quotes from either the Thug Kitchen website (via recipe promos) Twitter, or Facebook
In their own words. Actual quotes from the creators of Thug Kitchen, from the numerous recipe promos used to mock African American vernacular. This is simply a new version of Amos ‘N Andy
This isn’t cool. And it’s not cutting edge. It’s actually a sad commentary on ambition by any means necessary.
The only way to send a message to Rodale and also the group behind Thug Kitchen is not just with outrage. Ignore them.
And what I mean by that, is do not endorse them, in any form or fashion. Please understand that there are a number of people (like Gwyneth Paltrow) who thought they were endorsing someone cool and the next big thing in media. Now that the truth is out there, the very celebrities this duo and others (again, if you think this was simply the work of two individuals, you’re mistaken. This took “friends” on twitter and blogs to put the word out) may covet in order to bolster what little credibility they have left, may ultimately end up shunning them.
The book is out now, so let it serve as yet another example to show the lengths some people will go in order to “make it.”
Instead of relying on their talent they took the quickest and shadiest route possible. In the end they simply repeated what many of their their forefathers have done.
And that’s use another culture as their “spokesperson” while capitalizing on an over the top rendition of that culture. Entitlement is a hell of a thing:
I’ve already gone over the use of the word Thug in a previous post. However, I will repeat it here because some folks continue to pretend as if they have amnesia.
In late Feb of 2012, Trayvon Martin was murdered. In May of that same year, Geraldo Rivera started a firestorm when he claimed Martin’s “thug” clothing may have contributed to his death. In support of Martin, Miami Heat players (including Lebron James) wore hoodies in support and solidarity. There were not only racial implications in Trayvon Martin’s murder, but America was divided. Even now, if you Google Trayvon Martin and “thug” sites and articles will pop up, where the teen’s name has been slurred with the word “thug.”
Thug Kitchen’s first post was in August of 2012. So while their PR spin has been this (item is bold is my doing):
“Holloway says for him, being a thug means “just not taking ourselves too F_________ seriously . . . It’s a personality. It’s an aggression.”
Yet they can’t keep their stories straight, because in another published interview, Holloway contradicts himself (item in bold is my doing):
“When we created it, we weren’t trying to load our blog with lots with personality like a lot of websites or food blogs. I personally find that really alienating . . . so we really didn’t want it to be about personality.”
At no time did this duo attempt to set the record straight that “Thug” didn’t exist. Someone even did interviews in character, knowing full well that if they didn’t hide their identities, the outcry could scare off major publishers. But it didn’t scare off Rodale, because all Rodale saw were dollar signs.
This is one of the best summations I’ve read on “identity” gate:
“They have not used a dialect particular to black culture, and yet they still intended from the very beginning to have the audience perceive the author of the work as black (and male) by their own anonymity and the association of the author with the word “Thug”.
(How would one go about making Thug Kitchen less racist? Go back in time and stop the authors from pretending to be black.)” – soycrates
But going back to 2012, because of all the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin murder, it’s inconceivable to me that in August of 2012, the creators of Thug Kitchen decided the word would somehow be “fun” for them to use. However, they did. But they took it a step further. They adopted an imaginary persona of a character simply known as “thug” who used over the top, outdated street vernacular. So understand, the use of “Thug” was premeditated in order for the duo to promo their alter ego.
The problem for them, regardless of a best selling book is the digital trail they left. Whether its Facebook, Twitter or their own site, the proof of them using digital blackface in their posts to promote their recipes is the real issue. I submit that they didn’t care about the usage of the word but that it fit into their overall plan to have this Amos ‘N Andy type character as a spokesperson.
Much like people no longer want to be associated with Amos ‘N Andy, as that new car shine and smell wears off of the duo behind Thug Kitchen, they will have no more gimmicks to fall back on. They’ve played their ultimate hand. There is no real life “Thug” in the kitchen.
The shock will be that the imaginary creation was more popular than the real life creators. And as the realization slowly dawns on them, perhaps they’ll even attempt to resurrect this persona.
But it’s a bad parody of an already maligned culture, and the imaginary thug has been exposed. Two 29 year old opportunists who looked at another culture as their meal ticket. However, they’re not being embraced by that culture. There will be no TI or Little Wayne cooking in the kitchen alongside this duo, because they both mocked and maligned us. That’s not to say the PR machine the duo won’t try to line up a B, C, or even D list black celebrity. Maybe Stacy Dash or Jimmy “Dynamite” Walker. It’s been known to happen, as it was back in segregation with Amos ‘N Andy.*
It has to be the culture that they mocked, the celebrities in the black culture who won’t co-sign on to this so that the creators can hold up their cookbook and claim, “see, it can’t be all bad. Look who’s posing with us.”
Turn your back on them. And over time, more people will realize just how corny and effed up all this is.
I’m glad to finally know your first name. I realize due to your age, your identity had to be protected. I hope as time goes on you’ll be able to process what happened and move forward, not letting this terrible assault define who you are, and who you will be as you become an adult. Let me first express my sincere condolences over your mother’s death.
And please know that as someone who grew up during the transition from Segregation and Jim Crow laws to the signing of the Civil Rights Law, where scenes like the ones below were common:
Scenes from the 1960s, police and African American woman protester
Police and black women during the 1960s
Female protester being removed during peaceful march in the 1960s
Child waving American flag has it brutally yanked away
Scene two of Child waving American Flag and his confrontation with police
How it began for the young boy holding the American flag. I wonder where he is today?
Just like I wondered, and still wonder what happened to that child (now a grown man) in the photos above, I wonder how you will fare after all that you’ve gone through:
Scene from an assault in a South Carolina School. Officer Fields uses a head lock and things go from bad to worse.
What you experienced was an assault, pure and simple. I’m sure others will continue to try to justify it, even adult educators, grown folks who SHOULD KNOW BETTER. I’ve gone to and also taught in public schools. As a child I was pegged as a troublemaker, simply because of the sibling who came before me. However, I was my own person, and in time those same educators who singled me out (publicly, mind you) with the expectation that I would disrupt their class by telling the whole class that I would, found out it didn’t happen.
It’s also important that I state, during my time as a student in America’s public school system, corporal punishment was allowed. Some principals had wooden paddles for just such an occasion. I’ve seen my share of male teachers manhandling both male and female students. Back when I was in school, it was allowed. But that didn’t make it right. I can also recall a substitute teacher warning the entire class that if we went home and told our parents it would be his word against ours. So we were threatened in order to remain silent. Even when that same teacher was assigned to my girl’s gym class, and he continued to place his hands on students. This time his hands went on female students, just because. For far too long the word of an adult has trumped a young person’s, even when that adult is dead wrong.
And that’s what this all boils down to. What happened to you wasn’t right.
It wasn’t condoned in the 1960s, and now as we look back on those old photos, many people both white and black will agree that violent treatment by police has nothing to do with “protect and serve.” Now, possibly because of your case, school resource officers will no longer be routinely used as bouncers for some schools, because that’s not what they are there for.
Please also know Shakara, that your case brought back memories I had of my own trauma while in school and also the times I grew up in. You see, it wasn’t always police who committed violence on black women. Sometimes it was another American:
Hosed to stop a peaceful demonstration by a fireman.
Photo by Charles Moore. Two African American women being attacked. Note the bat in the man’s hand while another man in the background pummels a woman with his fists.
Maybe the administrators of your school have forgotten the type of violence that our forefathers and mothers had perpetrated on them. Otherwise, how could those who spoke out in support of what Officer Fields did, condone the same kind of brutality in a place of learning?
I agree that the punishment did not fit the crime, and for that, I apologize. I apologize because there are educators out there who would not have allowed you to be physically extracted from your chair and thrown across the room for simply saying no. I also noticed that during the assault, you were silent. I kept hoping that after the assault the two other adults in the room would inquire if you were alright, that they’d wonder if you were hurt. I cannot fathom how the three men in the room (Officer Fields included) could not inquire if you’d been hurt, especially since your fall involved a metal chair and a hard floor.
In this pet loving society, I agree with your lawyer’s statement in the LA Times article. If this had been a dog extracted and thrown about, more people would be up in arms. So if we wouldn’t allow this type of force for an animal, why would it be okay to subject a young adult to this level of violence?
Many people may not realize that for some of us, we live in whole ‘nother America. An America where a cop can switch from being professional to “Mister Slam” in a heartbeat, even when the situation doesn’t warrant it.
I must return again to the other adults who were in your classroom, the two gentlemen who stood by and let the officer manhandle you. I’m pretty sure if they had it to do over again, they’d choose a different means. At least that’s what I hope.
And I also hope that the charges are dismissed against you and also the brave teen named Niya Kenny, who spoke up on your behalf and also filmed (and encouraged others in the class to film) your attack:
Niya Kenny spoke up and was arrested for it.
“I had never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl,” Kenny said. “A big man, like 300 pounds of full muscle. I was like ‘no way, no way.’ You can’t do nothing like that to a little girl. I’m talking about she’s like 5’6″.”
Kenny filmed part of the altercation on her phone. The six-second clip shows Fields dragging the student out of a chair and forcing her to the ground.
“I was screaming ‘What the f, what the f is this really happening?’ I was praying out loud for the girl,” says Kenny. “I just couldn’t believe this was happening I was just crying and he said, since you have so much to say you are coming too. I just put my hands behind my back.”
Quotes and Excerpt from JET.com article by BY SHANTELL E. JAMISON
I’m going to step away from the computer now, because this whole thing is painful for me, as a black woman. It’s painful to see the excuses being used to justify what happened, and how a young person like yourself is being used as a scapegoat for a failed school policy. It’s painful to read the reasons some people are using to justify the violence you experienced, by claiming its prevalent in the black culture, and that we somehow deserve to have violence used upon us.
So all I’ll say for now is, this blog post will be continued . . .
Why am I not surprised by the divisive rhetoric coming out of the mouth of the current GOP frontrunner?
Well, I’ve seen and read about this type of politician before. Someone who wants to win by any means necessary, and if that means once again whipping up the fears of conservatives, then so be it. While some want to call Donald Trump a Facist along the lines of Mussolini, or even compare him to Germany’s Hitler, America had a number of home grown politicians who’d used this tactic before, and were successful at it.
Dixiecrat George Wallace was one such politician. Like Trump, Wallace started out being a moderate (old school term) on the issue of race. For purposes of this post, a “Dixiecrat” was a southern Democrat during the civil rights era. A “progressive” was someone considered liberal in their political views on race and social issues. A moderate wasn’t a progressive, but someone whose political views were not so far to the left, but not so far to the right either. However, once old moderate George Wallace got his butt handed to him after an election, that’s when he changed his tune and reportedly said this:
“Well boys, no other son-of-a-bitch will ever outnigger me again.”
True to his word, George put his plan into action. Since the man he lost the governor’s race to had been backed by the Klu Klux Klan, George became every black person’s nightmare, and the far right’s savior.
Wallace was a charismatic, fiery speaker. Back in the day, he WAS Donald Trump, in that once the camera’s rolled, he put on quite a show.
“. . . . he would use words when he would be talking to the audience, and he would call Frank Johnson a bald-faced, scalawaggin’, carpetbaggin’, no-good, no-account, integratin’ liar. And the people, when he would first start that phrase, they would start screaming and yelling because they had heard about it before. They had heard it over and over, and they would just scream to the point that they would drown him out completely, beating chairs against the floor, knocking their hats against the knees, and screaming and hollering and clapping, until Wallace would just give them time to saying anything, get completely relaxed”
Sound familiar? How about Trump’s need to label his detractors and anyone he doesn’t like as a “loser” among other choice terms. Those who support Trump are eating this up, probably never realizing that back in the day, segregationists used this same tactic to get elected, under the guise of “telling it like it is.”
Playing upon the racial fears of many in their base, integration and equality (and also race-mixing) and oh, crime, as if the only crime in America came from black people (another myth that continues to this day) Trump has offended women, Hispanics, Muslims, African Americans, and probably members of his base who realize his ego and mouth will not be contained.
From the CNN article (items in bold are my doing):
“According to FBI statistics, of the 2,451 homicides of black people in 2014, 90% were committed by black people, while 8% of the offenders were white.
That sort of racial disparity isn’t uncommon: Of the 3,021 homicides of white people in 2014, 82% were committed by white people, while 15% of the offenders were black. The figures Trump retweeted inaccurately stated that 81% of white homicide victims are killed by blacks.
The Justice Department maintains a Bureau of Justice Statistics, though its figures don’t match those Trump retweeted. The FBI’s uniform crime statistics lag by a year — with 2014 numbers only recently becoming available — and no federal government agency has produced such figures for 2015.”
I should also add that the “source”listed on Trump’s retweet doesn’t even exist. There’s no Crime Statistics Bureau, but then, not having the factsnever stopped Trump before. From his take on Mexico sending over criminals and rapists, to claiming to view thousands of Muslims cheering on 9/11, Donald Trump has proven that he will do anything and say anything outlandish, as long as it will get him what he wants. And right now he wants to be on the news 24/7, and oh, to win his party’s nomination.
Here’s George Wallace in 1963, dramatically posing for the still cameras and TV cameras, in order to block the entrance of the University of Alabama from two black students who’d enrolled at the school, even though he’d already agreed over the phone with President Kennedy that the students could enter (George didn’t want to look “weak” for his constituents, so here’s his reality show moment) :
Former Governor of Alabama, George Wallace (middle, wearing the suit) blocking the entrance to The University of Alabama. Photo from history.com
Both Donald Trump and George Wallace, in his time, appealed to a conservative base of blue collar voters. As in Wallace’s day, some say the majority of Trump’s supporters are also less educated and lower income whites.
“Several pundits have pointed out the parallels between Trump’s run and Wallace’s unsuccessful 1972 candidacy. Both men were widely perceived as potentially dangerous demagogues as they emerged amid a crowded primary field by speaking in politically incorrect terms about “the other.” ”
“Wallace made them feel visible and important; they knew he was their champion, and that he would tell the government in Washington that they didn’t like the way they were being treated.”
But Trump’s supporters aren’t just conservatives. There are a smattering of people of color who support him, and I’m willing to bet, quite of few disgruntled Democrats.
The other politicians vying with Trump for the Republican vote aren’t immune from saying stupid and racially insensitive shit. Jeb Bush summoned up the often mentioned “Free stuff” in a woeful attempt to explain why some African Americans vote Democrat. It’s amazing how someone can speak up so forcefully for Hispanics and turn around and offend another ethnic group with insulting theories. But again, its nothing new.
Ronald Reagan used the “Welfare Queen” story as his fear factor card in order to whip up the conservative base. I’ll get more into that a bit later, and how the Welfare Queen myth continues to be utilized in some form or fashion to this day.
There’s also the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988. The ad was promoted by the National Security PAC, not the Bush/Quayle campaign:
This is going to be a long post, so I’ll be back periodically to update it.
After the success of The Help, I figured it was only a matter of time before some other enterprising author wanted their own happy slave, happy domestic narrative. Since audiences howled with laughter at Minny’s antics in the book and the film (gaining former comedienne and now full time actress Octavia Spencer a best supporting actress Oscar), Spencer’s now landed a slew of new films where she simply plays a variation of Minny.
Ah, Minny. From cracking jokes, to loudly grumbling about her employer (still in comedic form), in short, the character of Minny is an updated Mammy from Gone With Wind for a new generation. A few of Minny’s smh WTF lines:
Frying chicken quote from the novel
The line above was actually changed in the screenplay and in the film to read, “Frying chicken tend to make you feel better about life” as if cooking this bird to a golden crisp is therapeutic.
The end result seems to be that with the popularity of The Help, other recent publications sought to find their very own “Happy Darkie,” only this time its in children’s literature.
Troubling Trends; Happy Slaves and Revising History in Children’s Lit
First up, a book that attempts to tell the story of President George Washington’s chef, a slave named Hercules. A Birthday Cake for George Washington is a story told in the first person “voice” of Hercules’ daughter Delia. The story line revolves around Hercules’ attempt to bake a cake for Washington’s birthday, and high jinks ensue when there’s not enough sugar for the cake (insert eye-roll here). Lest you think that this should have been a heart-warming “it’stake your daughter to work day!” tale, its important to remember that the book was based on real people who were slaves.
Cue the social media outrage over revisionist history for children. Once the you know what hit the fan, Scholastic defended the book here
The end result was that over the weekend, Scholastic Books pulled this newly released children’s novel. Here’s a quote from their statement:
“We do not believe this title meets the standards of appropriate presentation of information to younger children, despite the positive intentions and beliefs of the author, editor and illustrator.”
And . . .
“While we have great respect for the integrity and scholarship of the author, illustrator, and editor, we believe that, without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn.”
This couldn’t have happened without the combined efforts of a diverse group of voices. I saw the hashtag #slaverywithasmile on Twitter. There were Facebook discussions, and bloggers like Debbie Reese, a Nambe Pueblo Indian have compiled links on this book and others that included smiling Indians here:
Of course there were those who claimed that getting the book pulled was censure and bordered on bullying. One dissenting comment wondered why slaves weren’t afforded the right to smile, as this poster was truly angry over criticism of the author’s interpretation of the Hercules’ time with George Washington.
So I will say this again. SLAVES HAD TO SMILE. They smiled even when they were unhappy.
They smiled so as not to displease their “Master” and “Mistress” of the plantation. If you were under the total control of another human being, just how happy would you be?
And the practice of making sure blacks showed those pearly whites, even under duress, continued long after slavery and into segregation. I’d dare to say that a more recent example could be the Sandra Bland case, where she was stopped by an officer, but didn’t “Smile” or behave in a humble matter he thought she should have, and things escalated.
I like @Ebonyteach’s explanation that the outrage over the novel was not “bullying” or censure, but “reclaiming our narratives” HELL YES.
Before all this happened, author Ramin Ganeshram spoke up in defense of her book:
“Yet, the discussion and criticism of the book has, instead, been focused on the literal face value of the characters. How could they smile? How could they be anything but unrelentingly miserable? How could they be proud to bake a cake for George Washington? The answers to those questions are complex because human nature is complex. Bizarrely and yes, disturbingly, there were some enslaved people who had a better quality of life than others and “close” relationships with those who enslaved them. But they were smart enough to use those “advantages” to improve their lives.
It is the historical record—not my opinion—that shows that enslaved people who received “status” positions were proud of these positions—and made use of the “perks” of those positions. It is what illustrator Vanessa Brantley-Newton calls out in her artist’s note as informing her decision to depict those in A Birthday Cake For George Washington as happy and prideful people.”
Here’s a link to Ramin Ganeshram’s complete counterargument in favor of her creation:
The author goes into how many years of research she’d done to tell this tale, only she neglected to mention that if Hercules was so happy, why’d he run away?*
I mean, why bother with facts when you’re trying to tell the heart-warming tale of a slave who is just so darn thrilled to bake a damn cake, that he scowls at his child and breaks into a smile when the white massa comes on the scene. Oh, and when its time for a picture to be taken for the cover of this book.
Years of research, and yet the author decides to ignore the fact that of the emotions slaves were granted the ability to show, number one was (drumroll) . . . to smile. The happy slave narrative is one of the most enduring and shameful myths that will probably never die. Not when “Jim” from Huck Finn is still a favorite, and The Help made some people feel all warm and fuzzy about their very own domestics.
So you see, author Ramin Ganeshram simply continued to promote the smiling slave (and during segregation, it was the happy black domestic) narrative:
Ferris State University. Artist’s depiction of Uncle Tom’s Cabin book cover, complete with smiling, oh so happy darkies (check out how they all appear to be the same shade of dark brown).
The “Happy” darkie myth of Aunt Jemima
Mammy banks for those who like to collect such things. And they’re smiling!
This GE ad uses the stereotype of blacks and fried chicken, picturing a smiling child.
Louise Beavers, the early screen prototype for Stockett’s Aibileen Clark. This is a studio publicity shot.
1950s bigoted advertising, for of all things, blacks and fried chicken. This is just one of the many ways African Americans were used as symbols of mockery during segregation. Oh, and PLEASE note the grotesque smile.
Luzianne coffee and chicory image from the Ferris State Jim Crow Museum
Sunflower, the stereotypical centaurette from Disney’s Fantasia, happy to be of service. Kindra from The Help is another stereotypical depiction of a black child
From the Disney animated film Mothergoose from Hollywood, a caricature of Stepin Fetchit and the studio promotional photo of Stepin.
Smiling Aunt Jemima clone. This actress needed to smile in order to portray the character of Aunt Jemima in the flesh.
Actor James Baskins plays Uncle Remus, from Disney’s Song of The South. Notice the smile.
So, where did the Happy darkie, or darky, myth originate?
“According to Amy Kaplan’s “Nation, Region, and Empire” (Columbia History of the American Novel [New York: Columbia U P, 1991]: 240-266), the “plantation tradition” that romanticized slavery was invented by Thomas Nelson Page. Page’s In Ole Virginia (1887) was “a collection of dialect stories narrated by a faithful ex-slave who reminisces nostalgically about ‘dem good ole times'” (244).
As Kenneth Warren explains the function of the tradition in Black and White Strangers, “The happy-go-lucky darky images of the antebellum South could be contrasted favorably to the images of impoverished, potentially dangerous blacks of post-Reconstruction. Such contrasts were staples of plantation fiction and minstrelsy, both of which were going strong through the 1890s. The needs fulfilled by these images were not solely racial: ‘For many white audiences the black African was the creature of a pre-industrial life style with a pre-industrial appetite,’ allowing whites to indulge their nostalgia for a lifestyle that was no longer available to them as they congregated in urban centers. The promise of black America was an assurance that old ways andold pleasures were recuperable. Of course the old ways were beyond recovery” (119).”
Pairing blacks with food and making it seem as though we get so excited about our meals that it’s actually comical, continues to dog the black culture in America.
Chicken ad
Mary J Blige’s infamous Chicken loving Burger King commercial
Slaves weren’t the only ones who had to smile. During segregation, black actors won roles based on how well white audiences liked them. This generally meant they had to . . . wait for it . . . SMILE.
Publicity still for Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, long considered the greatest American Tap dancer
To be continued. I’m searching for more articles and quotes on this. For addition smiles, see Uncle Ben (Uncle Ben’s Rice)
Uncle Ben, now distinguished looking and a permanent sales image for Uncle Ben’s Rice
and Rastus (Creme of Wheat) with Aunt Jemima, still large and in charge, and smiling on local supermarket shelves.
If you’ve read The Help and just love it because its so darn heart warming how that spunky white girl led those humorous maids into activism, then listen up. Because current events in this country ironically mirror some of what really happened back then, and what race relations were actually about. And just like I was a witness to history, you’re a witness now.
So in thirty, or maybe forty years when some ambitious author (and his or her inner circle of friends) decides to co-op Black Lives Matter to tell the tale of a spunky white girl (or guy) who spurred a group of humorous black people into action, see it for what it is.
Complete and utter BULLSHIT.
A dark and tragic history between blacks and law enforcement:
“If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality.” – US Senator
If you think this is a modern day quote to describe the rash of shootings of people of color by law enforcement, you’d be wrong. This is a quote from the 60s, during the civil rights era, where some politicians and law enforcement used rhetoric to justify assaults and murders of African Americans by unlawful “officers.”
See the photo below, on the lynching of Rubin Stacy (some reports spell Stacy’s first name as Reuben) in Florida, at the hands of some residents and with the support of local law enforcement.
“But Deputy Clark still wasn’t satisfied. If the onlookers wanted to witness the lynching, he said, they must become part of it. So he told the 15 or 20 white people present to shoot the black man as he swayed from the tree limb. Clark began passing around his handgun.
The woman who related this eyewitness account 53 years later, shot at the black man, as did her husband.
Many people missed with their shots, the bullets slamming into the pine tree. But 17 bullets hit their mark. And that`s why, the woman explained, the lips of everyone who witnessed the lynching have been sealed ever since. Who wanted to admit being part of a lynch mob?”
The Lynching of Rubin Stacy in Florida. This was “entertainment” for some bigots. Note the little girl and woman who don’t appear to be shocked or appalled.
The link for the US Senator’s quote can be found below, but I’m still checking on the name of the senator, as I believe names should go with quotes.
A quote from Chief Todd Axtell, describing Minnesota protests over the shooting death of Philando Castile: “protestors turned into criminals”:
“This is the first time in my 28 years we have observed this level of violence toward our public servants,” Axtell said. “It’s really a disgrace.”
The chief said the protesters “turned into criminals. I am absolutely disgusted, [and] I am not going to tolerate it. … I just can’t believe this occurred. This is just something that doesn’t happen in St. Paul.”
Screenshot of tweet made by former tea party favorite and ex-congressman Joe Walsh:
“I do blame people on social media with their hatred toward police,” he [Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick] said. While pointing out that last night’s Dallas protest was peaceful, Patrick said, “I do blame former Black Lives Matter protests.”
Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s advice to black people and to NCAAP Director Hilary Shelton:
“So, you know what I think? I think that if you really want, if African Americans really want to bring the country together and have good racial relations, they have to distance themselves from Black Lives Matter. Am I wrong?”
“White Americans despise this crew. And if black Americans don’t understand that, we’re just going to grow further apart.”
And here’s a quote on the phrase “Black Lives Matter” from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Sunday:
“Giuliani claims when people use the phrase “black lives matter,” it’s “inherently racist.”
“Black lives matter, white lives matter, Asian lives matter, Hispanic lives matter,” he said. “That’s anti-American and it’s racist. Of course black lives matter, and they matter greatly,” he said. “But when you focus in on 1 percent of less than 1 percent of the murder that’s going on in America and you make it a national thing, and all of you in the media make it much bigger than the black kid who’s getting killed in Chicago every 14 hours, you treat it disproportionately.”
Update: Here’s a NY Times Op-Ed piece responding to Giuliani’s statements:
“In 1999, when Mr. Giuliani was New York’s tough-on-crime mayor, Amadou Diallo reached for his wallet and was cut down in a hail of police bullets. Patrick Dorismond was minding his own business on a Manhattan street in 2000 when Mr. Giuliani’s undercover officers confronted him and shot him dead. In one of the disgraceful acts of his or any mayoralty, Mr. Giuliani smeared the victim’s reputation and released part of his juvenile police record, as if to suggest that he deserved to be murdered.”
While Black Lives Matter is an activist group, the term “Black Lives Matter” is now a popular phrase being used by other groups. Some might argue that its also a movement that now uses the phrase to justify protests. And with any movement, there will be growing pains.
But if you want to know what the organization called Black Lives Matter is about, then check out their site, and take a look at their mission statement:
We Affirm that All Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.
What I also continue to see is a need for some people to link anything being done to shed light on the inequitable treatment of people of color under law enforcement (some, not all) and our system of justice, as “thugs” “criminals” etc. and to bring up an affiliation with Black Lives Matter. In other words, BLM gets all the blame for any wrongdoing by others, but none of the credit for expanding awareness in not only this country, but worldwide.
The protests against the recent shooting of two black males, held in Dallas, Texas were organized by a group called The Next Generation Action Network not Black Lives Matter.
Read the official statement on the shootings by Minister Dominique Alexander, President and Founder of The Next Generation Action Network using the link below:
Also mentioned as an organizer by Time magazine and other journals is Reverend Jeff Hood, that’s why I’m listing a link to the articles quoting him. However I’m still trying to verify if he was indeed an organizer, or simply a vocal participant. It’s also telling that several news outlets decided to interview Hoodand not Alexander:
And let me state on a personal level, the killings in Dallas were a hate crime, imho, based on the information released on the suspect. I also believe mental health played a key role in these tragic and unjust assassinations. More information will come out on the killer’s state of mind, but from what I’ve read, this man had deep seated issues.
My condolences go out to the officers family and friends, just as my condolences go out to the loved ones of shooting victims Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.
For this post I figured my real time experience of living during the civil rights movement could shed some light on the need by some politicians and others to call those who protest as part of the problem, not the solution. Gotta love those “excited utterances” of people like Rush Limbaugh and Joe Walsh, as they play to their fan base and claim to speak for “real America.”
Protests in America are nothing new. Protests and police assaults were prevalent during the 1968 Democratic convention:
“One 1968 memory remains indelible 40 years later. Throughout that week I had been a guest commentator on NBC’s “Today” show, broadcasting live from Chicago. Early Friday morning, a few hours after the convention ended, I took the elevator to the lobby of the Conrad Hilton Hotel, where I had been staying, to head for the studio. As the elevator doors opened, I saw huddled before me a group of young McCarthy volunteers. They had been bludgeoned by Chicago police, and sat there with their arms around each other and their backs against the wall, bloody and sobbing, consoling one another. I don’t know what I said on the “Today” show that morning. I do remember that I was filled with a furious rage. Just thinking of it now makes me angry all over again.”
In the 1970s, anti-war protests resulted in the tragic shootings of four Kent State Students:
“They’re the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.” – Governor Rhodes, during the 1970 anti-war protest at Kent State
Iconic photo showing the death and agony after the Kent State shootings
“Eventually seventy-seven guardsmen advanced on the protesters with armed rifles and bayonets. Protesters continued to throw things at the soldiers. Twenty-nine of the soldiers, purportedly fearing for their lives, eventually opened fire. The gunfire lasted just thirteen seconds, although some witnesses contended that it lasted more than one minute. The troops fired a total of sixty-seven shots. When the firing ended, nine students lay wounded, and four other students had been killed. Two of the students who died actually had not participated in the protests.
These shootings helped convince the U.S. public that the anti-war protesters were not just hippies, drug addicts, or promoters of free love. They also included middle and upper-class people, as well as educated people.”
And history keeps repeating itself. Here’s more of what Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick stated after a sniper killed and wounded Dallas police officers:
“Too many in the general public who aren’t criminals but have a big mouth are creating situations like we saw last night,” an emotional Patrick said during an interview with Fox News on Friday. He later added, “All those protesters last night, they ran the other way expecting the men and women in blue to turn around and protect them—what hypocrites!”
Surprisingly, Patrick had issued another statement initially that called for unity (that was before he went on Fox News and issued his own “excited utterances”):
Patrick may not understand how his “excited utterance” has it roots of blaming protesters from days gone by, but I think one of the best explanations regarding law enforcement and racial protests come from author Michelle Alexander:
“The rhetoric of ‘law and order’ was first mobilized in the late 1950s as Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights activists used direct-action tactics in an effort to force reluctant Southern States to desegregate public facilities. Southern governors and law enforcement officials often characterized these tactics as criminal and argued that the rise of the Civil Rights Movement was indicative of a breakdown of law and order. Support of civil rights legislation was derided by Southern conservatives as merely ‘rewarding lawbreakers.’
For more than a decade – from the mid 1950s until the late 1960s – conservatives systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime.”― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr’s famous “Letter from a Bimingham Jail” (items in bold are my doing):
“When you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society … when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) … then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait….” His letter is a passionate indictment of American society for permitting racism to continue. But it ends in hope: “I have no despair about the future…. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation because the goal of America is freedom”
While many now think of Martin Luther King Jr. as a martyr and champion of Civil Rights, take a look at how some pro-segregationists thought of him back in the day:
See the link below where Martin Luther King Jr was called “der Dark Führer” as this article that linked King’s work on behalf of equal rights with Hitler. Also notice what’s said about his clothing:
Snide article on King, calling him “Der Dark Fuehrer” from a scan of The Clarion Ledger, 1963. The scan is from the site footnote.com
“The reality is that, in his time, the man we honor today with a national holiday was divisive; to many, he was a troublemaker, to force the social change we now all celebrate,” Johnson said. “When Dr. King arrived in many of the same cities for which a major street is now named for him, the mayor and the police commissioner viewed his visit with dread and couldn’t wait for him to leave.”
“For his efforts, the man we honor with a national holiday and a national monument, alongside Washington and Lincoln, was the target of racist insults, bricks, bottles, numerous death threats, a knife in the chest in Harlem in 1958, and finally, an assassin’s bullet in Memphis in 1968” – Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson
How about the college students who staged sit-ins, or women and children who joined in to march and protest for freedom? Surely they were fairly treated. No . . . they weren’t. Children were arrested, and many were attacked by dogs and sprayed with water from fire hoses:
Children of Birmingham, Alabama march for freedom and are led to jail in 1963
“In the spring of 1963, activists in Birmingham, Alabama launched one of the most influential campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement: Project C, better known as The Birmingham Campaign. It would be the beginning of a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall and boycotts on downtown merchants to protest segregation laws in the city.
Over the next couple months, the peaceful demonstrations would be met with violent attacks using high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on men, women and children alike — producing some of the most iconic and troubling images of the Civil Rights Movement. President John F. Kennedy would later say, “The events in Birmingham… have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.” It is considered one of the major turning points in the Civil Rights Movement and the “beginning of the end” of a centuries-long struggle for freedom.”
Scenes from the 1960s, police and African American woman protester
1963 Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth sit-in protesters (and college students) are pelted with condiments.
Black teens hosed to stop a peaceful demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama 1963
The Dogs of War are unleashed upon a black teen in Birmingham
What does recent data show on this issue?
The Washington Post‘s Kimbriell Kelly speaks about the data the newspaper has collected on police shootings over the past two years. More than 500 people have been fatally shot by police in 2016.
MARTIN: What are some of the trends that we see? For example, many – race is obviously often an element here. Are black people more likely to be shot by the police than white people are?
KELLY: The answer is yes. If you look at the rate, blacks were 2.5 times more likely to be killed by officers than whites. And in 2016, half of the victims were white and half were minorities.
In the wake of such a fragile relationship between some police officers and communities of color, my question has to do with whether it’s compliance that’s needed, or are some looking for a return to the subservience of segregation?
Now look at the officer’s left knee, and how he’s kneeling on the man’s head. Look at the officer’s right thigh by the man’s mouth, as if to silence any speech. What would’ve happened if he’d uttered the words “I can’t breathe?”
I know a lot of people are talking about the other photo with the regally silent and strong black woman standing before several police officers:
Photo by Jonathan Bachman for Reuters_2016 Protest in Baton Rouge
But that’s not the one that spoke to me, personally. It’s the one with the black man’s eyes showing a myriad of emotions (to me).
The battle for equality continues. Because we’re shown that there is inequity, not just with our system of law enforcement and courts, but in other areas as well. And far too often, the victim is put on trial, as if they are responsible for their own murder.
It doesn’t help matters when the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, can get away with tweeting flat our bogus graphics with made up statistics like this one:
Now hear this: The Crime Statistics Bureau of San Francisco DOES NOT EXIST
Everything old is new again:
Police Brutality in the black community isn’t new. This protest is from the 1960s
Same child waving American flag has it brutally yanked away by a police officer
Scene two of Child waving American Flag and his confrontation with police
For the purpose of this post, I’m using the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter”
A recent example that contradicts “All Lives Matter,” occurred after the fatal shooting of Diamond Reynold’s fianceé Philando Castile. This is what Reynolds and her child went through (items in bold are my doing):
“According to Reynolds, “nobody checked his pulse” in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Instead, Reynolds said, she was placed in the back of a police car as other officers “soothed” the officer who fired on Castile. “They pulled him over to the side and they began to calm him down and tell him that it was OK and he would get through this,” Reynolds said.
In the video streamed on Facebook Wednesday night, Reynolds could be seen in the back of a police car, saying she has been handcuffed.
“They took me to jail,” Reynolds said Thursday. “They didn’t feed us. They didn’t give us water. They took everything from me. They put me in a room and separated me from my child. … They treated me like a prisoner. They treated me like I did this to me, and I didn’t, they did this to us.”
Reynolds said she was not informed that Castile had died until 3 a.m. and was not brought home until two hours after that.”
This is how a woman and her four year old daughter, who’d just seen their loved one shot were treated. And as Philando Castile’s life was slipping away, the tape shows the officer still at the driver’s side window with his gun drawn and trained on the occupants of the car. Occupants that consist of a dying man, and a woman and a child.
Perhaps the trial will show how the other officer on the passenger side of the car radioed for an ambulance, and how a valiant fight was waged to save Philando’s life.
Because what I saw on the video was a need to immediately arrest Diamond and to separate her from her child. I don’t know how long it took for someone to perform CPR on Philando Castile. Hopefully, how a grieving woman and her child were treated in the aftermath of the shooting will be reviewed, and changes will be made.
This isn’t the only recent encounter where a lack of empathy was shown as a black man lay dying. Remember the businessman turned volunteer reserve deputy 73 year old Robert Bates, who was carrying a taser and a loaded gun, but instead of using his taser he pulled out his gun and shot the suspect? Look at how his deed was initially played down, even after the dying man, Eric Courtney Harris, screamed that he’d been shot.
‘Oh! I shot him! I’m sorry!” Bates said, per the video of the shooting.
What was the response by other officer at the scene?
“Harris, who is bleeding, calls out, too. He’s losing his breath, he says. An officer yells back at him.
“You f**king ran! Shut the f**k up!” he yells. “F**k your breath,” he said.”
He is running, he is running, stop. Stop right here. Stop right here. Stop right here. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. (police officer in car, jumps out, gives chase)
Stop right here. Stop right here. (police officer)
All right… (Eric Harris)
I need you to roll on your stomach… (police officer)
Stop fighting… (female police officer)
Now…
No.
Oh, I shot him. I’m sorry.… (Robert Bates)
Oh shit. Oh shit maybe stop it.
He is running I’m sorry stop….
Stop fighting… (female police officer)
What the fucking breath….fucker… (police officer)
Oh, he shot me! He shot me! He shot me! (Eric Harris)
You guys going to fucking hear me? (unknown officer)
You fucking ran. Shut the fuck up. (unknown police officer)
Oh God! (Eric Harris)
Oh, he shot me. I didn’t do shit. He shot me man. Oh, my god. (Eric Harris)
You didn’t do shit. You didn’t do shit – you hear me? (unknown police officer)
Once Reserve officer Bates shot Eric Harris, here’s what another deputy testified to. Notice how fearful they were of also getting shot by Bates:
‘I almost got killed,’ deputy says
“I almost got killed,” Vaca said, his voice cracking. “It makes me emotional. Inches to my right and I would have been killed.” Vaca and another deputy testified they observed Bates in his patrol vehicle nodding off a few minutes before the takedown order was given.
Deputy Michael Heisten said Bates gave a statement to investigators and claimed to have been in situations like this before. He meant to use nonlethal force as he had in the past, the statement said, according to Heisten.
“Based on his record how often had Bates been in a situation involving a fleeing felon?” Gray asked.
Fifty year old Walter Scott was shot at 8 times and felled by 5 bullets as he ran from police officer Michael T. Slager. After Scott was down on the ground, Slager handcuffs him, and no medical aid is rendered by either officer. Notice how Scott’s head looks like its face down in the grass.
In his defense, Officer Slater used the “I felt threatened” defense, which has been used by several shooters as a get out of jail free card (not just police officers) like George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. And Michael Dunn, the Florida man who shot and killed teenager Jordan Davis over loud music. There’s also Theodore Wafer, the homeowner who shot Renisha McBride to death as she knocked on his front door and stood on his porch in the early hours of November 2014. Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown also stated he felt threatened. In May of this year, Slager was charged with obstruction of justice.
“The obstruction of justice charge stems from Mr. Slager’s telling state investigators that Mr. Scott was moving toward him when he fired.
Mr. Slager knowingly misled investigators “by falsely stating that he fired his weapon at Scott while Scott was coming forward at him with a Taser,” the indictment said, when in fact, as the officer “then well knew, he repeatedly fired his weapon at Scott when Scott was running away from him.”
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” he said, as officers restrained him.
Garner said it 8 times as he was being restrained on the ground.
“This was not a chance meeting on the street. It was a product of a police strategy to crack down on the sort of disorder that, to the police, Mr. Garner represented. Handcuffed and motionless on the ground, he did not receive immediate aid, and the apparent lapses in protocol prompted a state inquiry. The first official police report on his death failed to note the key detail that vaulted the fatal arrest into the national consciousness: that a police officer had wrapped his arm around Mr. Garner’s neck.
“. . .Without video of his final struggle, Mr. Garner’s death may have attracted little notice or uproar. Without seeing it, the world would not have known exactly how he died.
The video images were cited in the final autopsy report as one of the factors that led the city medical examiner to conclude that the chokehold and chest compression by the police caused Mr. Garner’s death. Absent the video, many in the Police Department would have gone on believing his death to have been solely caused by his health problems: obesity, asthma and hypertensive cardiovascular disease. The autopsy report, which is confidential, was provided by a person close to Mr. Garner’s family.
“We didn’t know anything about a chokehold or hands to the neck until the video came out,” said a former senior police official with direct knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his access to confidential department information. “We found out when everyone else did.”
Donald Trump has just proclaimed himself “The law and order candidate.”
Which is in line with his “Make America Great Again” motto, or what some, including myself reads as, “Make America Hate Again.”
I’ve already mentioned his bogus tweet with fictitious crime stats that was not only offensive but dead wrong. Couple that with his divisive rhetoric on Muslims and Mexicans (note to Trump, some families consist of both black and Hispanic, or even black, white and Hispanic, like mine. Trying to get elected by pointing at a racial or ethnic group as the cause of what ails America won’t cut it). Oh, and Trump’s observations on women are cringeworthy. So I’m sorry, I can’t get on board with Donald Trump. He’s taking too many cues from the past, and his “law and order” proclamation is playing into the republican fear factor card. It’s something that was used during years gone by, and especially during segregation.
As CNN political analyst David Gergen pointed out, Barry Goldwater used “law and order” in the 60s. Richard Nixon used it, and so did Ronald Reagan.
Now Donald Trump, the man who had good things to say about Saddam Hussein, Putin and even North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, vows he’ll be tough on crime. All I know is, that’s a real motley crew Donald’s put together as his role models.
But, I digress . . . going back to Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter, there’s a sharp contrast between how a man who’d murdered nine people was apprehended, and the way a domestic violence call goes horribly wrong:
Cops bought Dylann Roof Burger King after his calm arrest: report
“After about 16 hours on the run, the admitted mass murderer complained to cops arresting him in Shelby, N.C., that he was hungry, so police got him food from the nearby fast food joint, according to an account of his arrest in The Charlotte Observer.”
“At least five Shelby police officers, guns drawn, surrounded the black Hyundai sedan that had pulled off the highway on Thursday morning.
The skinny, blonddriver, though, lowered his window and calmly handed over his driver’s license.
“I’m Dylann Roof,” he said.
The 21-year-old had been on the run through the Carolinas for about 16 hours – ever since authorities say he slaughtered nine members of a prayer group inside a historic black church in Charleston.
Shelby police Chief Jeff Ledford told the Observer on Friday that authorities found a .45-caliber handgun in Roof’s car.”
Back in 2015, this unsuspecting rookie cop took a suspect at his word, and was fatally shot:
In 2015, Robert Smith (on the right) shot police officer Tyler Stewart (hand up, left corner) and then killed himself.
“You don’t have any weapons in your pockets, or anything like that?” Flagstaff Police Officer Tyler Stewart, 24, asks 28-year-old Robert Smith as they step outside Smith’s Clay Avenue home at 1:30 p.m. Dec. 27 to talk, according to the video released by the Flagstaff Police Department on Tuesday.
Stewart was equipped with a police body camera, which caught the whole interaction on tape. The released video, which is nearly 14 minutes long, shows until the point that Smith pulls his gun on the officer.
Smith, hands deep in the pockets of his winter coat, replies, “No, sir, I’m just cold.”
Taking Smith at his word, Stewart quizzes him about the spat with his girlfriend, a three-minute segment of the video shows.
. . . after hearing Smith’s side of the story, Stewart asks, “You mind if I just pat down your pockets real quick? You don’t have anything in here?”
Smith says, “No, this is my smokes,” as Stewart runs his hand over the left pocket.
When the unsuspecting officer moves toward the right pocket, Smith whips out a .22-caliber revolver and takes aim at Stewart.
The video shows Stewart raising his hands in a desperate attempt to shield himself, but then cuts out.
Smith unloaded on the doomed cop at point-blank range, striking him with five rounds as a sixth sailed into the house behind him, according to the Arizona Republic.
He then fired a fatal shot into his own head using Stewart’s service pistol.
First, let me say to Donald Shirley’s family: You have my sincere respect and gratitude. What you’re experiencing right now (attempts at silencing and downright ignoring your criticism by some in the media) is routine when Hollywood falls in love with these kinds of stories. In the push to show how liberal the industry is, mistakes get made, people get hurt, and black voices are once again, not valued). Your family is just the latest.
I downloaded the script for The Green Book, and I’ve researched what the principal creators have had to say (through their public interviews)
I also have my own red flags that I use to spot whether writers fall into this trap:
Getting the audience or readers to feel sorry for the black character(s), (sometimes by stereotypical scenes or a Magic Negro appearance)
Rehabilitation of the racist white character in a fairly short period of time (before the novels end or movie finale).
Glossing over the imbalance of power that still weighs in the white character’s favor (tale is usually told from their perspective even if the premise claims otherwise).
Including Octavia Spencer and fried chickengate. Yes, you read that correctly. Because just like Octavia had no problem uttering the lines ““Frying chicken make you tend to feel better about life” – Minny Jackson, from the movie The Help and “Minny don’t burn no chicken.” – Minny Jackson, from the movie The Help
Spencer apparently goes on to co-sign the Kentucky Fried chicken scene from The Green Book, as per Peter Farrelly: “In regards to the now-infamous fried chicken scene, he said, “The fried-chicken-eating scene — that one had me worrying. It’s great, but I thought, Could people be bothered by that? Could it be seen as racist?”
According to Farrelly, he had nothing to fear.
“When she was in the editing room with me, Octavia was howling, and it just gave me such encouragement.”
So, they wrote it, filmed it, and after the fact Octavia Spencer was their go to black person to validate it.
Now, let me just say this, lest any reader thinks I’ve got it out for Spencer. I happen to think (and I’ve said it on this site several times) that Spencer is talented and attractive. But after my extensive research on The Help and Spencer’s participation before the book and movie came out, please excuse my side-eye at this scenario. Yeah, I’ll just stick with that.
Spencer also starred in the aptly titled “Chicken Party” short film written and directed by Tate Taylor (director of The Help):
Tate Taylor’s Chicken Party, starring Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney and of all things, “fried chicken”
That’s why I wouldn’t expect her to offer any resistance. More likely she’ll defend to the end. For more info, please see these posts on this site:
The screenplay for The Green Book was written by Nick Vallelonga (Tony Lip’s son), Brian Currie and Peter Farrelly (names are in the same order that the screenplay lists)
Here’s some of what Nick Vallelonga stated about the story’s creation:
“I knew that one day I would make a film about it and so I did extensive research, including interviewing my father and Dr. Shirley about all of it. When I was finally ready to write the script, I told the story to a good friend, Brian Hayes Currie, to see if he wanted to write it with me.”
In the article Currie gets in touch with Farrelly, and Vallelonga states:
“I had been waiting my whole life to get this film made and was always planning to direct it myself, most likely as a small indie film. But when I met Pete, something clicked. Brian had pitched it to him, but Pete also wanted to hear the story from my perspective, so I told him everything, poured my heart out. It was very emotional for all three of us, a story about fathers and family, a story about changing minds and hearts.”
“With Pete’s heartfelt reaction, I knew immediately that I was safe in handing him my father’s story. We agreed right then and there that the three of us would write and produce, and Pete would direct.”
So, based on this interview its clear that the tale is about Tony Lip and its from his perspective. Okay, I get that. Point blank, Don Shirley is a means to an end, imho.
At least Shirley’s genius on the piano was kept intact. For more on Donald Shirley, please read this article:
Here’s an article from Indie Wire written by Tambay Obenson that goes more in depth into how Shirley’s character was presented:
“The “Magical Negro” archetype is typically rooted in a white screenwriter’s ignorance of any genuine African-American experience. He’s typically patient, sometimes wise, and usually has some sort of magical power. His ultimate function is to help the white protagonist overcome some major character flaw.
In the case of “Green Book,” Shirley is only allowed to hint at his family history, with minor references to an estranged brother we never meet. His only real communication is with Mortensen’s demonstrably racist — though, we are led to believe — big-hearted Tony Lip, whom he hires as his driver and bodyguard while embarking on a tour through southern states in the early 1960s.”
Obenson goes on to state “Mortensen’s Lip, on the other hand, is given a full, complex life – a family, including a concerned wife, with children, a father, brothers, former employers, and more. Ali’s steely Shirley helps Lip become an improved version of himself, while Shirley himself remains a mystery all the way through the credits; he’s little more than a specter, designed to help Vallelonga negotiate his prejudices.”
Reading of the full article is a must, in addition to the comments. Same old, same old. People who wanna have the warm and fuzzies over the film are coming at Mr. Obenson.
Ah, I know it well. I’ve got comments on this site and have been in several internet and twitter arguments over the “truth” and “beauty” of The Help.
May I suggest this post for those who need to get WOKE?
After downloading and reading the The Green Book script several times, I gotta agree with Mr. Obenson. To any new readers of this site, I’m old enough to recall the 1960s and segregation. And while today’s audience may not know of Donald Shirley, in my household the piano was front and center, as my mom insisted that all her children take classical piano lessons.
So classical music is in my blood. And jazz.
Talented African American musicians like Donald Shirley were pretty much standard listening, just like
Now, let me introduce the virtuouso himself, Don Shirley. Here’s a snipet from a documentary on Dr. Shirley:
I suspect this is the fiesty side of Donald Shirley that the film didn’t show very much. Notice how Dr. Shirley proudly displays a picture of his family, mentioning all his brothers as “Dr.” Now please remember that when reading the bullshit excuse Peter Farrelly gives about Shirley being estranged from his family (or so he claims, which is contrary to what the family states. Of course Farrelly’s version is the one far too many moviegoers are taking as the gospel truth)
Here’s a clip of Don Shirley playing live:
Pianist Don Shirley passed away in 2013. I’ve included a link to his full obituary. I’ve also highlighted the names listed as next of kin:
Donald Shirley, a Pianist With His Own Genre, Dies at 86
Donald Shirley, a pianist and composer who gathered classical music with jazz and other forms of popular music under a singular umbrella after being discouraged from pursuing a classical career because he was black, died on April 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.
. . . He is survived by a brother, Maurice, and a half-sister, Edwina Shirley Nalchawee.
I didn’t do any hard core research. Just checked out the online obit listed by the NY Times, dated 4/29/2013. See, there’s this thing called the internet. And should you wish to find someone, a search can be done.
Now, here’s writer/director Peter Farrelly’s response where he throws an intern or maybe an assistant under the bus:
“We were under the impression there weren’t a lot of family members, but in the last month we’ve found out that there are family members. I feel bad about that, I wish we could have done more. To be honest, the people looking into it just didn’t find them—they screwed up.” – quote by Peter Farrelly from Newsweek Magazine
“They have a right to their opinion, but when we went down that road, we looked into the heirs of Don Shirley, and unfortunately it wasn’t the family. The heirs were friends,” the director told Variety. “When we found out about the family, we tried to embrace them, and they’re not having it right now, and it’s very disappointing.”
“I don’t think it would have changed the movie at all,” Farrelly continued, “This is a movie about a two month period in these men’s lives. It’s not about him and his family. It really isn’t.”
Hmm. Well I guess one can’t argue with that. I mean, when all three men sat down to discuss the story, Vallelonga states:
“It was very emotional for all three of us, a story about fathers and family, a story about changing minds and hearts.”
There’s that pesky word “family” again. So if “family” is mentioned as being so important, why wasn’t Don Shirley’s family included at some point, ya know, BEFORE the final script was done?
The direct answer comes once again from Farrelly: “The truth of the matter is, the story came from Tony Lip’s side.”
And remember this quote from the LA Times: “We agreed right then and there that the three of us would write and produce, and Pete would direct.”
This was their baby, and no one else (like the Shirley family) could dare come in to possibly alter their vision.
In addition Peter Farrelly admits this: “I don’t want to lead people to believe that every word is true—it isn’t.”
I spotted “True Story” and “Truth” in far too many articles on The Green Book that gave me a sense of deja vu. Because I’d seen the same thing occur when I researched what was being spun about The Help. And to a lesser degree, The Blind Side.
I found an excellent article that goes into this very subject from the Chicago Tribune, by writer Nina Metz:
“Though the film has been marketed as the true and definitive version of how these two men processed issues of race and racism in America, it’s filtered only through the prism of the Vallelonga family memories. (All three of the screenwriters are white.)
And many of us in the media have helped to solidify the movie’s marketing. Here’s Time magazine, for example: “According to Vallelonga, everything depicted in the film ‘Green Book’ happened in real life.”
Yes! Thank you Nina Metz. Many folks (of various races) have been complaining about this tactic for far too long.
In The Blind Side, the movie takes liberties with Michael Oher’s real life experience of playing football. His real life athletic school days are stripped in order to have cute scenes where not only Sandra Bullock’s character teaches him that protecting the quarterback is like protecting her family, but her grammar school aged son can be the “brains” of the operation when colleges come to call.
It’s my understanding that the way he was portrayed in the movie didn’t sit well with the real Michael Oher, and I don’t blame him. He’s penned his own account about his time with the Tuohy family, but the movie is already out there, and for better or for worse, this is how his character will remain on film and possibly thought of by those who’ve viewed the movie.
NPR.Org has this review of the movie:
“John Lee Hancock’s julep-sweet screenplay pretty much turns the book’s measured account of Oher’s story into a feel-good fantasy for white liberals. The film doesn’t spend much time delving into big-picture questions, and it’s content to trade in stereotypes when the camera wanders to the less affluent side of the Tennessee tracks.
But as ever in Hollywood, the based-on-a-true-story defense will probably provide a certain amount of cover. Hancock’s only aiming for a crowd pleaser, and by not challenging the established playbook for inspirational sports dramas, he’s no doubt got one.”
Here’s a Washington Post article on what Michale Oher has to say about his depiction in the movie:
Oher has long said his character in the 2009 Sandra Bullock movie was inaccurate and not just because his character in the movie is portrayed as a rather simple-minded kid. Oher takes particular issue with the film’s depiction of him as a football novice until he was taken in by the Tuohy family, who is credited in the film as shaping Oher into the Ole Miss player who became a first-round draft pick in 2009.
“I always knew how to play football growing up,” Oher said (via Yahoo Sports) ahead of his 2013 Super Bowl with the Ravens. “Playing football is what got me to this point.”
Oher’s ex-teammates on the Ravens have also stood up for him, including Kelechi Osemele who attested Oher, the actual person, is not the same man Hollywood imagined.
“He’s nothing like that,” Osemele said in a 2013 article posted to the team’s Web site called “The Real Michael Oher.”
“I can’t even imagine Mike being like the guy that they portrayed on the movie,” Osemele continued.
Former teammate Matt Birk agreed.
“This may come as a shock, but they tend to embellish things in Hollywood,” he said. “Real life Mike Oher is better.”
I’d advise readers to also check out the comments section of the Washington Post article, as, true to form, some posters miss Oher’s point and gloss over his frustation.
It has to be hard on Oher to be confused with the depiction of the slow but endearing character of the film, but then, like The Help and The Green Book,, the film was meant to hit that sweet spot for white audiences.
The Green Book screenplay reads as if its a son’s love letter to his late father. So please don’t try to tell me that Donald Shirley’s character got his due. He didn’t.
The Don Shirley in the video is nothing like what the screenplay portrays. I’m not saying Dr. Shirley didn’t act dignified and uptight on occasion. But the script has him behaving that way far too many times, when Shirley doesn’t appear to be a man to suffer fools lightly, no matter who they are.
Erasing Shirley’s family by having the character simply stating: “I have a brother somewhere. We used to get together once in a while. . .but it got more and more difficult to keep in touch. That’s the curse of being a musician–you’re always on the road, like a carnival worker, or a criminal. It took a toll on my marriage as well” is all kinds of wrong.
Oh, and there’s one more paragraph that glosses over his ex-wife and marriage:
Two paragraphs on Shirley’s family and wife does not a “buddy” movie make, not after reading all the attention given to Tony Lip and his relatives in the screenplay. Later on Tony Lip suggests that Shirley contact his estranged brother. Apparently the same one who has called the film “a symphony of lies.” And what about Shirley’s love life? The screenplay mentions Shirley’s tryst with a white male, then clumsily drops it, as the screenplay returns once more to Tony.
Yet again, I’m reminded that this isn’t about Don Shirley. It’s about Tony Vallelonga, as written by his son. And its part comedy, part drama.
To wrap this up, for those who don’t plan on seeing the movie, please download the screenplay. I quite enjoy the written word, as opposed to being swayed by a performance that can mask a movie’s flaws.
I truly wish Mahershala Ali all the best. I remember enjoying his storyline (with his superpowered child Isabelle) on The 4400. Ali didn’t have to, but he reached out and called the Shirley family:
“I got a call from Mahershala Ali, a very, very respectful phone call, from him personally. He called me and my Uncle Maurice in which he apologized profusely if there had been any offense,” said Edwin. “What he said was, ‘If I have offended you, I am so, so terribly sorry. I did the best I could with the material I had. I was not aware that there were close relatives with whom I could have consulted to add some nuance to the character.’”
I’m sorry to say that this is par for the course. Black characters are used far too often for that peep show factor, but their backstories are dropped for character development and focus on a white protagonist. Damn. And they even took the name The Green Book.
For more on The real Green Book, please read this post:
In the article by Variety there’s also Peter Farrelly’s admission and subsequent apology about flashing his penis on several movie sets in the 1990s. No. Just. No.
Readers, while many of you may have no recollection of life under segregation, please understand that you’re getting a disturbing example of it from none other than Donald Trump, the president of the United States.
Sometimes a picture can cut to the heart of the matter in this discussion? debate? denial? regarding the intent of “Go back to __________” and its terrible history in America. Since I grew up during segregation I’ve had the insult directed my way. Still, I recognize that this is now a “tactic/strategy” being used to fire up Trump’s base by framing four minority congresswomen as the “other” and that one should “love this country or leave it” (this coming from the same man who used a bone spur in his foot to avoid the draft, as well his constant criticisms of the US both before and after he took office. More on Trump’s record of complaints are chronicled later in this post).
But lest anyone thinks Trump didn’t know what he was doing or wasn’t familiar with the meaning of “Go back to ___________” I present visuals to show that people of certain age know exactly what they mean when using it.
Racism and Xenophobia today:
“Go back to _________”
“I Can’t Breathe” – a plea that went ignored in the death of Eric Garner
“Violence broke out Friday night as a large crowd of white nationalists marched through the University of Virginia (UVA) campus carrying tiki torches and chanting “you will not replace us.”
“The white-nationalist protesters are in Charlottesville for the “Unite the Right” rally on Saturday, where officials expect between 2,000 to 6,000 people to attend the protest against the removal of the Lee statue from the city’s Emancipation Park, according to the Daily Progress, a newspaper in Charlottesville”
Heather Heyer, the anti-racism activist killed at the Charlottesville white nationalist protests, died as a result of blunt-force injury to the chest, according to a medical report.
Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, died after a car drove into a crowd of counterprotesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally being held in the Virginia town on August 12.
Nineteen other protesters were injured after being hit by the vehicle.
Lakeview NY 1962 sign advocating that black homeowners move to another community. Please note that the message states: This Community could become another GHETTO. You owe it to YOUR FAMILY to buy in another Community.
The kick seen ’round the world. Alex Wilson is attacked by a mob and the world finally sees what African Americans were subjected to. Please note the brick in the attacker’s left hand.
How did the nation get into this throwback ideology from the dark days of segregation and fear? Why from the current occupant of the White House:
Trump used the age old “Why don’t they go back” even though three of the members of congress were born in the US and the fourth became a naturalized citizen of this country in her teens. Somehow I don’t think he knew they were all from the US prior to sending out the tweet.
The targeted Democratic House members are Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts:
In an attempt to tamp down the firestorm that he started, Trump has again tried to cover himself using patriotism as an excuse for his lack of class, knowledge of history and the stupid, racist shit he says and tweets. Please remember how awful he was and continues to be to the late Senator John McCain and the row he had with the Gold star family of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in action in 2004. Also, Trump and his minions are singling out Rep. Ilhan Omar, presumably because she was originally born in Somalia and has the audacity to have her own opinions. However, his new spin on “Go back to _________” is flawed. His suggestion? demand? command? order? that people love this country by not criticizing it goes against the principles and laws America was founded on. I also cringe at this man telling females and people of color (remember he used this same argument on those who kneeled during the National Athem) how they should behave and speak.
Trump now claims he’ll “try to stop” the “Send her back” chant in any future propaganda rallies he holds,* but he’s done this sleazy bait and switch far too many times. And yes, Trump has the freedom to say whatever he chooses. But we also have the freedom to rebuke him when he believes bigotry can be used to his advantage.
*Updated to add that Trump has reversed course (no surprise) probably after someone expressed anger at him throwing his supporters under the bus (which is routine for him):
“After distancing himself from chants of “send her back” aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, the president pivoted to calling his supporters at a North Carolina rally “incredible people.”
Trump has said four Democratic congresswomen including Omar — the only one born abroad — should “go back” to unspecified countries if they don’t like the U.S. Trump on Thursday said he disagreed with the chants that broke out at the Wednesday-night rally. On Friday, he returned to criticizing Omar, saying “She’s lucky to be where she is.”
Asked about his professed unhappiness with the rally chants, Trump said: “No, you know what I’m unhappy with — the fact that a congresswoman can hate our country.”
Prior to the above switch (which is on videotape) Trump stated:
“I disagree with it by the way. It was quite a chant. I felt a little bit badly about it. And I started speaking very quickly. But it started out rather fast, as you probably know.” – Trump’s response when asked why he didn’t stop the chant of “Send her back”
“Mr. Trump said that he “was not happy” with the chant and that he had tried to cut it off, a claim contradicted by video of the event. Asked why he did not stop the chant, Mr. Trump said, “I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.”
In fact, as the crowd roared “send her back,” Mr. Trump looked around and seemed to bask in the enthusiastic refrain.
“I was not happy with it,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday at the White House. “I disagree with it.”
Mr. Trump’s effort to distance himself from his own campaign rally reflected the misgivings of his allies. Republicans pleaded privately with the White House on Thursday to avoid allowing the party to be tied to the message embraced by the crowd in Greenville, N.C., even as they declined to criticize Mr. Trump.”
Trump also omits that at the same rally Laura Trump urged the crowd with a call and response of “If you don’t love our country . . . ” urging the crowd to respond. They did with the word “LEAVE”
“Before Trump spoke, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump led the crowd in a joint expression of disdain for the lawmakers.
“If you don’t love our country, the president said it, you can …” she said, allowing the crowd to finish the sentence.
This falls squarely in Trump’s lap and all those who are silent in the Republic party and also those who condoned Trump’s “Go Back” tweet.
The same man who claims he doesn’t have “a racist bone in his body” gambled on using a racist phrase as a political tactic. Now that there is blowback worldwide, he’s trying to weasel his way out of a situation he created. Unlike Rep. Omar, who ended up apologizing for her tweet, Trump will not and has never truly apologized for any of his verbal or tweeted transgressions (like re-tweeting this lie about African American crime statistics. Hint – there is no San Francisco Crime Statistics Bureau), another example of Donald Trump using a known stereotype about a minority group:
While Trump rehashes what he feels Rep. Omar has stated that shows her lack of love and loyalty for America, what about the vile things he’s stated without any proof?
Just recently Trump made a digusting claim about Rep. Omar and a member of her family. Again, he used a tactic where he drops unsubstantiated BS for his base, then tries to act as if he “heard” it from the imaginary “some people.” Trump’s verbal and tweeted transgressions are many. He claimed to have seen Muslims in America celebrating during 9/11 on television, yet no such footage has ever been found. Remember, the key here is that Trump claimed Muslims in the US were celebrating an attack on this country. He claimed in a tweet that Obama had “tapped” his office in Trump tower without any proof or even an apology after his tweet could not be verified.
His greatest “hits” include:
Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics-a tough subject-must be discussed.
June 3, 2016 “I’ve been treated very unfairly by this judge. Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage. I’m building a wall, OK? I’m building a wall. I am going to do very well with the Hispanics, the Mexicans,” Trump said in an interview with CNN on June 3, explaining his attacks on the judge presiding over the Trump University lawsuit.
His Obama birth certificate stunt, his “very fine people” statement that equated Neo-Nazis with those who opposed them:
“President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included “some very fine people,” while expressing sympathy for their demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It was a strikingly different message from the prepared statement he had delivered on Monday, and a reversion to his initial response over the weekend.”
“The “Unite the Right” rally that sparked the violence in Charlottesville featured several leading names in the white-nationalist alt-right movement, and also attracted people displaying Nazi symbols. As they walked down the street, the white-nationalist protesters chanted “blood and soil,” the English translation of a Nazi slogan. One of the men seen marching with the fascist group American Vanguard, James A. Fields, is charged with deliberately ramming a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.”
Yusef Salaam was 15 years old when Donald Trump demanded his execution for a crime he did not commit.
Nearly three decades before the rambunctious billionaire began his run for president – before he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, for the expulsion of all undocumented migrants, before he branded Mexicans as “rapists” and was accused of mocking the disabled – Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York following a horrific rape case in which five teenagers were wrongly convicted.
Declaring during his presidential candidacy in June of 2015, Trump issued his much-quoted summary of immigrants:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. [sic] They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
“It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all South and Latin America, and it’s coming, probably, probably, from the Middle East. But we don’t know, because we have no protection, and we have no competence and we don’t know what’s happening.”
“Trump, of course, has also faced charges of anti-Semitism. During the campaign, he tweeted an image of his opponent Hillary Clinton over a bed of money. Clinton was pictured beside a six-pointed star calling her corrupt. It was an image created by someone online who had a history of producing anti-Semitic images — but Trump spent several days arguing that the star was meant to be a sheriff’s star.”
“While Barack Obama was president, Trump declared that political correctness had led the United States to lose “all sense of direction or purpose.” That “our country and our ‘leaders’ are getting dumber all the time.” That the country had become “stupid.” That the country had never looked “weaker or more pathetic.”
In 2000, when New York was considering expanding Native American casinos in the Catskill Mountains, a series of TV, newspaper and radio ads popped up in the state accusing the Mohawk Indian tribe of having long criminal records and ties to the mob. The ads showed pictures of cocaine lines and syringes and asked: “Are these the new neighbors we want?”
As far as the public knew, the ads were sponsored by a newly formed group called the Institute for Law and Safety. The group claimed that it was funded by 12,000 “grass-roots, pro-family” donors.
But in reality, it was bankrolled by Trump’s casino company. [Roger] Stone asked a friend to pose as the group’s leader, but Stone designed the ads and Trump signed off on them. “Roger, this could be good!” Trump scrawled on a proof of the ad with the cocaine lines and syringes, according to documents first reported last month by the Los Angeles Times. Another ad warned of the ills that casino gambling would bring to the community: “increased crime, broken families, bankruptcies, and in the case of the Mohawks, violence.” Trump paid more than $1 million for the campaign.
Trump and Stone never reported the ad spending as a lobbying effort, as state law required, and acknowledged their role only after regulators launched an investigation. In a deposition, Stone told regulators that the only reason the organization was set up was to hide Trump’s involvement because a “pro-family” group would have more credibility with the public. The state lobbying commission imposed its largest-ever civil penalty — a $250,000 fine — and Trump and his associates agreed to issue a public apology.
So, to review, Donald Trump resurrected the old racist trope of “Go back to __________” which was historically used against not just those of African decent, Hispanic or Chinese, but also those of the Jewish faith, Muslims, Catholics as well as the Irish, Polish and Italians. The racial/ethnic/religious examples I’ve listed are not all-inclusive, but the phrase is a quick way of getting a point across that an individual is not welcome, for whatever reason.
In an attempt to defend Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham stated:
“They are American citizens. They won an election. Take on their policies,” Graham advised.
Then Graham alleged:
“We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel. They hate our own country,” Graham said, referring to Ocasio-Cortez by her initials.
But knowing that, the president should “aim higher,” he said.
During a news conference on Monday, Trump indicated he believed that Graham was advising him to wait and take aim at more powerful Democrats.
“I disagree with Lindsey. These are congresswomen. What am I supposed to do, just wait for senators?” the president said. “He said ‘aim higher, shoot higher.’ What am I going to do, wait until we get somebody else in a higher position, a higher office?”
WASHINGTON – Shelley Jackson was 7 years old the first time she heard it.
In the early 1970s, Ms. Jackson was among a group of 40 black children who were bused from one side of Los Angeles to integrate a majority-white school across town. One day, a playground squabble ended in a white classmate telling her to go back to Africa.
“There has always been this xenophobia, fear of the other,” Mr. Kiewe said, “the foreigner, the person who looks different. It has hit different minorities for many decades.”
It was there in 1882, when the Chinese Exclusion Act sought to curb the number of Chinese workers and families entering the United States to find day-labor work, from building railroads to doing laundry. And it was there in the 1840s, when anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States led to the creation of a nativist political party designed to weed out foreign influence.
One of the prime examples of the “go back” sentiment has roots in the American Colonization Society, a white-led organization that sought to send freed slaves back to Africa. Fodei Batty, an assistant professor of political science at Quinnipiac University, wrote in a 2016 Washington Post analysis that some freed slaves went willingly because they were “disillusioned with the prospects of racial equality in America,” while others who wanted to stay argued that the effort to resettle slaves was a thinly veiled way to purge the United States of black people.
“It doesn’t concern me because many people agree with me,” Mr. Trump said. “All I’m saying is that if they want to leave they can leave. It doesn’t say leave forever.”
“He gets us. He’s not a politician, and he’s got a backbone,” said 59-year-old Susan Misey of New Castle County, Del., a retired public-school teacher who said she was attending her first campaign rally. “He’s not afraid to say what he thinks. And what he says is what the rest of us are thinking.”
Update: The clerk was fired after a video of this encounter was posted on the internet.
#IStandWithIlhan
Dozens of British politicians and 14,000 supporters signed a letter of solidarity addressed to the four Democratic congresswomen who have found themselves at the center of a fierce political storm.
“We are disgusted by Donald Trump’s attack on you. His blatant, unashamed racism has appalled people around the world,” the letter stated. “Thank you for showing the world that America can still provide leadership to be proud of, even when the White House has abdicated that role.”
“Those people in North Carolina, that stadium was packed,” Trump said. “It was a record crowd and I could’ve filled it 10 times, as you know. Those are incredible people, those are incredible patriots. But I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, ‘I’m going to be the president’s nightmare.’ She’s going to be the president’s nightmare. She’s lucky to be where she is, let me tell you. And the things she has said are a disgrace to our country.”
Trump’s Attempt to spin “Go Back to_________” into “You Can Leave”
Possibly more palatable? agreeable? acceptable? to supporters of Trump who just can’t bring themselves to utter the word “racist” concerning his tweets and continued attacks on “The Squad” specifically Rep. Omar, the spin has begun on using “You can leave” in place of his original racist trope of “Go back to _______”
You see, whenever Trump shows his true colors, sycophants fall all over themselves to defend him, to claim to know what he really meant to say, etc. etc. etc.
Trump will also try some patronizing self preservation (A$AP Rocky comes to mind) so he can point to interceding in a way to make up for “Go back to _______” AKA “You Can Leave” in an attempt to stay on the good side of the people of color who support him and Republicans who are somewhat concerned with Trump’s words of late.
If it worked once, why not follow the same formula? Well, be careful what you wish for, or in this case, who you appropriate.
If you haven’t already heard about the uproar over the new book “American Dirt” then prepare yourself (WTF is with that title? If the book had been about black people, there would be hell to pay). This time an author has “studied” Mexicans and many in publishing have gobbled up another un-authentic voice while proclaiming that it IS an authentic voice, thus putting their stamp of approval on it. Sorry, I can’t help but recall how the creators of Amos ‘n Andy claimed they knew “Negroes”:
The Pittsburgh Press Jul 28,1929 article on Amos ‘n Andy
It took author Jeanine Cummins all of four years:
“Cummins researched and wrote the book over a span of four years. She drew on the work of Valeria Luiselli, Luis Alberto Urrea and others to learn about Mexico and the struggles of migrants. She took trips to Mexico and interviewed people on both sides of the border. She spoke to scholars and lawyers, activists and migrants in shelters, and families separated at the border.”
This shit is way past tiresome. Thankfully, unlike when The Help was released to near universal acclaim and without any real scrutiny, American Dirt won’t get off that easy.
First, I thought I’d show how cookie cutter publishing can be when it comes to POC in the pages. Check out the birds:
So as not to offend, racially ambiguous bird art continues to rule covers when minorities or sensitive subjects are involved.
Remind you of anything? Well, my first thought was of The Help’s Disney-esque birdie cover, meant for that coveted reader base (white people) who some publishers swear won’t read anything with a POC on the actual cover (unless that POC is Oprah).
US book cover for The Help
Yet another obscure cover for The Help.
This is the cover that was used over in England that they dared not put on the US version:
UK Cover of the Help AKA the cover they dared not put on US bookshelves
I’ll return to the copycat covers in a moment. Next up is marketing.
Here’s the tasteless marketing done for American Dirt:
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. The table centerpieces are supposed to resemble barbed wire.
Publishing bigwigs enjoying a meal, oblivious and utterly clueless to how demeaning the faux barbed wire centerpieces look.
And someone took a screenshot of the book’s author squealing excitedly about it:
Now, I have a whole post up on how HSN had a tasteless The Help themed collaboration to sell cook ware by Emeril and dresses to evoke the segregated time period and to capitalize off the book and upcoming film’s popularity. Here’s the link to a few flashbacks:
HSN product tie in for The Help. Emeril’s pots and pans were on sale, but thankfully no maids uniforms were part of this misguided promo for the film.
Yes, this is what the HSN on-air personalities were giddy over selling. And how did this tie in with the movie? Well, they were black maids! DUH. And domestics need pots right?
Emeril’s Pots and pans inspired by The Help
For more cringe inducing info on what some in charge of making more money off THE HELP were up to:
This may be what’s in store for American Dirt, brought to you by the clueless people hyping this book, since its soon to be a movie.
And really, there are no words for the level of disconnect author Jeanine Cummins has, as this screenshot shows Cummins? admiring her nails in this tweet because . . . wait for it . . . they match her book cover:
OMG. I think I get it. I mean, for all of Cummins’ life she’s identified with being white and all that comes with it. Only, this could have been a teachable moment. Cummins could’ve let her fans know that totally cute painted nails are no substitute for the very real suffering and discrimination Mexican immigrants face. “You Guys! Hispanic culture, my new found culture isn’t a trend or a twitter moment. Please educate yourselves” – Jeanine
Okay, clearly the author wouldn’t state something like that. But I’m guessing some of her old tweets are being deleted with a quickness.
Here’s what one reviewer had to say about the novel:
Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature
” . . . A self-professed gabacha, Jeanine Cummins, wrote a book that sucks. Big time.
Her obra de caca belongs to the great American tradition of doing the following:
Appropriating genius works by people of color
Slapping a coat of mayonesa on them to make palatable to taste buds estados-unidenses and
Repackaging them for mass racially “colorblind” consumption.
Rather than look us in the eye, many gabachos prefer to look down their noses at us. Rather than face that we are their moral and intellectual equals, they happily pity us. Pity is what inspires their sweet tooth for Mexican pain, a craving many of them hide. This denial motivates their spending habits, resulting in a preference for trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf. To satisfy this demand, Cummins tossed together American Dirt, a “road thriller” that wears an I’m-giving-a-voice-to-the-voiceless-masses merkin.”
And Ms. Gurba’s blood boiled at this:
“The first time Jeanine and I ever talked on the phone,” the publisher gushed, “she said migrants at the Mexican border were being portrayed as a ‘faceless brown mass.’ She said she wanted to give these people a face.”
Wow. Sorta like what Kathryn Stockett had Skeeter say to win over an editor named Elaine Stein in The Help:
“I’d like to write this showing the point of view of the help. The colored women down here.” Skeeter tries to picture Constantine’s face, and then Aibileen’s before continuing. “They raise a white child and then twenty years later the child becomes the employer. It’s that irony, that we love them and they love us, yet . . .we don’t even allow them to use the toilet in the house.”
“Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.”
Finally Miss Stein asks, “So you want to show a side that’s never been examined before.”
“Yes. Because no one ever talks about it. No one talks about anything down here.”
Read more about Skeeter selling her book idea to Elaine Stein here:
It’s been reported that Amy Einhorn was the publisher gushing over Cummins wish to “give these people a face.” I’m searching for a link to verify that, but if its true, then Einhorn has gone back to the same well which proved bountiful for Stockett’s The Help.
And imho the stories of POC are simply a means to an end, yet again. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t more books coming down the pipeline in this same vein.
How about birdies flying over the Great Wall of China?
The Wall – The story of a courageous dissident, whose story is wonderfully watered down for your reading enjoyment. Random Chinese words included.
Or birdies flying over WWII Germany? Or flying over Iran?
Dear Ms. Kapoor (mis-spelling is intentional)
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we must pass on this book. We already have one like it coming out later this month by an author who has studied your culture and we feel the public will be much more comfortable reading this type of subject filtered through her lens. We wish you much success (not really). – Cordially, Most of American Publishing
Readers, I think you get my point.
I’ve listed just a few of the similarities between American Dirt and The Help. You see, this is considered winning a formula. RINSE. REPEAT.
Publishers will readily sign a non-minority to write about the minority experience and stamp it as authentic, even if the story is fiction and has major flaws.
The Help had a whopper of an error, where Kathryn Stockett claimed Medgar Evers had been “bludgeoned in his front yard” in three separate audio interviews. This error actually made it into the first pressing of the book on page 277, as Skeeter thinks:
Medgar Evers error on Pg 277 of the hard cover edition
Here’s the paperback version with the error:
Error on Evers in the Paperback version of The Help
Links to Kathryn Stockett’s audio gaffes on Medgar Evers death:
How is it that the author and the editors didn’t catch this inaccuracy before the book was published? (I have a few guesses as to why, but I’ll just leave it at that).
I’ve got a bounty of links both pro and con of the novel American Dirt, which I will post as I continue to update this, but let me also say, that while author Jeanine Cummins is now reclaiming her hispanic side, she professed to be white in 2016 (not a white hispanic).
“I am white. The grandmother I shared with Julie and Robin was Puerto Rican, and their father is half Lebanese. But in every practical way, my family is mostly white. I’ll never know the impotent rage of being profiled, or encounter institutionalized hurdles to success because of my skin or hair or name. But I care about race and equality. And it’s imperative for white people to join the conversation about racism. Discomfort is the least of our obligations.”
Now, its not up to me to judge Cummins finally embracing her hispanic ancestry. But time and social media have a habit of shedding light on cultural appropriation, even if its your own.
And oh, feigning reluctance is also out of the Kathryn Stockett response playbook:
“Cummins has repeatedly expressed her reluctance to write about Mexico and the immigrant experience. She writes in the author’s note that she worried her privilege would make her “blind to certain truths,” that she might get things wrong. And in a New York Times profile last Monday, she told an interviewer, “I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell this story.”
“I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it,” Cummins said in a note at the end of the novel, her fourth book. “But then I thought, if you’re a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge? So I began.”
“Reluctant” blasts from the past from Kathryn Stockett:
“And the truth is, I’m still nervous. I’ll never know what it really felt like to be in the shoes of those black women who worked in the white homes of the South during the 1960s and I hope that no one thinks I presume to know that. But I had to try. I wanted the story to be told. I hope I got some of it right.”
“. . . On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn’t think anybody was going to read it. Had I known it was going to be so widely disseminated I probably wouldn’t have written it in the type of language that I did.”
Interview with John Barber for Saturday’s Globe and Mail
“I’m still waiting for the jack-in-the-box to pop,” she says, “for somebody to corner me and say everything I say in my own head – that I had no right to do this.”
In fact, some have done that, accusing the author of the very contemporary sin of cultural appropriation. But when it comes, Stockett says, the criticism is sometimes a relief. “I do wish that people talked about the subject of race, especially in the South,” she says. “It’s just a really hard and uncomfortable topic.”
At the end of The Help, Kathryn Stockett, who admits her grandparents still practiced segregation years after the Civil Rights Act (Stockett was born in 1969) opines:
“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.” – Howell Raines quote referenced by Kathryn Stockett
Ya know, its like Déjà vu.
BUZZFEED has a breakdown on the controversy surrounding the book’s portrayal of Mexican refugees:
It’s important to remember that in publishing, people work hand in hand to make a book a hit. Per The New Republic’s article by ALEX SHEPHARD titled “How Not to Write a Book Review” –
“Hype for the book began building as soon as it was bought by Flatiron for a seven-figure advance in 2018. A movie deal, involving the producers of The Mule and the writer of Blood Diamond, followed a year later. The book was hailed by John Grisham and Stephen King as a perfect thriller, and in the lead-up to its publication there were profiles of Cummins in the usual newspapers and glossy magazines, heralding the year’s first blockbuster novel.”
“The marketing campaign worked. On Tuesday, the book’s publication day, Oprah Winfrey announced that American Dirt had been selected for her coveted Book Club, guaranteeing it would become a bestseller.
However, even a book reviewer can have second thoughts and wonder aloud:
“I was sure I was the wrong person to review this book. I could never speak to the accuracy of the book’s representation of Mexican culture or the plights of migrants; I have never been Mexican or a migrant . . .” – Lauren Groff
“Perhaps this book is an act of cultural imperialism; at the same time, weeks after finishing it, the novel remains alive in me. When I think of the migrants at the border, suffering and desperate, I think of Lydia and Luca, and feel something close to bodily pain. “American Dirt” was written with good intentions, and like all deeply felt books, it calls its imagined ghosts into the reader’s real flesh.” – Lauren Groff
Excerpts from Lauren Groff’s review of American Dirt, titled ‘American Dirt’ Plunges Readers Into the Border Crisis.
Yeah. Because you know, like Groff, when I feel the need to ever think of real people suffering, my thoughts ultimately turn to FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.
Perhaps that’s why I don’t get all starry eyed over celebrity reviews like this:
“American Dirt is an extraordinary piece of work, a perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other. I defy anyone to read the first seven pages of this book and not finish it. The prose is immaculate, and the story never lets up. This book will be an important voice in the discussion about immigration and los migrantes; it certainly puts the lie to the idea that we are being besieged by ‘bad hombres.’ On a micro scale―the story scale, where I like to live―it’s one hell of a novel about a good woman on the run with her beautiful boy. It’s marvelous.”
―Stephen King
King waded into the 2020 version of #Oscars so white, stating this on twitter recently:
And continued his thoughts with a second tweet “That said I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong.”
Backlash soon followed. Ava Duvernay expressed dismay and disappointment to “see a tweet from someone you admire that is so backward and ignorant you want to go back to bed.”
Michael Harriot of The ROOT pulled no punches in responding to King:
“The conflation of “diversity” with a lack of quality is a long-standing argument made by white males who are afraid of losing their privilege. Anyone who doesn’t consider diversity in art is probably making shitty art… Or stealing it from black people.”
“I bet he’s at home listening to a rock riff created by the Beatles when they “discovered” blues, eating a gourmet taco made by a lily-white chef, underneath a Picasso “inspired” by African art, talmbout: “Diversity doesn’t matter, only quality. White people have SOME NERVE!”
“As a white man whose sensibilities are baked into the dominant culture, he DOESN’T have to consider diversity… OTHER artists do. I read Stephen King’s books knowing that nary a character will resemble me. He NEVER has to consider that when he consumes art.”
Ultimately King attempted to clarify his remarks. So pardon me if I’m skeptical of his glowing review of American Dirt, especially King’s line about “The prose is immaculate.”
A few examples of that “immaculate prose”:
“Soledad retracts her dangling legs and folds them beneath her, shifting her spine and shoulders into a stretched position, and Lydia sees, even in this minor animation of the girl’s body, how the danger rattles off her relentlessly.”
“Her presence is a vivid throb of color . . . An accident of biology.”
“She wears an intense scowl in failing effort to suppress that calamitous beauty.”
Unfortunately, in The Help Kathryn Stockett could only write about a character being attractive if they were closer to white looking. Characters like Yule May Crookle (notice the last name, its an inside joke I’m guessing, as this character ends up being a thief. The last name was changed for the movie). Yule May has the docile Aibileen noting: “Yule May easy to recognize from the back cause she got such good hair, smooth, no nap to it. I hear she educated, went through most a college.”
But Stockett sure goes all out in describing how black the maids are, and their weight (items in bold are my doing):
I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup a coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice to see the kids grown up fine. (Aibileen Pg 91)
“He black. Blacker than me.” (Pg 189) Aibileen, comparing her complexion to a roach
“I told Shirley Boon her ass won’t fit on no stool at Woolworth’s anyway.” Minny (Pg 217)
“We was all surprised Constantine would go and… get herself in a family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby come out white. Even though the father was black as me.” Aibileen to Skeeter (Pg 358)
Pascagoula is described as tiny as a child, not five feet tall, and black as night (Pg 59) –Skeeter
Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums(Pg 65) – Skeeter
I clear my throat, produce a nervous smile. Minny doesn’t smile back. She is fat and short and strong. Her skin is blacker than Aibileen’s by ten shades, and shiny and taut, like a pair of new patent shoes. – Skeeter’s first impression of Minny (Pg 164)
If you can stomach reading more insulting quotes from the book, please see this post:
And let me also state that it doesn’t surprise me that folks like Oprah and Gayle King endorsedAmerican Dirt. Actress Octavia Spencer went on a book tour with Kathryn Stockett endorsingThe Help, giving live readings of one of the most insulting passages in the book, the “Spoilt Cootchie” scene. You see, Aibileen somehow cast down a venereal disease on her rival via the power of prayer. And black magic.
Read the whole sordid scene here, with historical references showing how bigots continually linked blacks and “venereal diseases”:
In the early 1930s writer Fannie Hurst employed writer Zora Neale Hurston as her secretary and they were well known friends. Close enough that Hurst gave Hurston this backhanded compliment (note the sly use of the word “Spade”):
“A brilliantly facile spade has turned over rich new earth.” – preface to Hurston’s first novel Jonah’s Gurd Vine.
Robert Hemenway, author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, Vine Press 1977 points out Hurst seems incessantly aware of race in her interactions with Hurston. – Introduction xliv Imitation of Life by Fannie Hurst and Daniel Itzkovitz
Hurston was a strong supporter of Hurst’s blockbuster best seller Imitation of Life. It’s reported that Hurston, for a time even convinced Langston Hughes to promote the novel.
But after Hughes got wind of what African American critics pointed out were the issues with the black maid Delilah’s depiction, Langston Hughes completely revised his early support, so much so that he wrote a play that was a parody, called “Limitations of Life” with the black and white roles reversed.
Excerpts from the novel Imitation of Life:
“Honey Chile, I’ll work for anything you is willin’ to pay, and not take more’n mah share of your time for my young un, ef I kin get her and me a good roof over our heads. Didn’t your maw always tell you a nigger woman was mos’ reliable when she had chillun taggin’ at her apron strings? I needs a home for us honey. . .” (the maid Delilah selling her skills to prospective employer Bea in the 1933 novel Imitation of Life)
“Oh Lawd! Oh Lawd! Saw a brown spider webbing downward this mornin’ and know’d mah chile was a ‘comin home brown – Oh Lawd!” (The maid Delilah wailing when her daughter Peola rejects being black)
Delilah degrades her ex-husband in the book, calling him a “white nigger.”
She’s also described like this in the book ( in typical mammy fashion):
“the enormously buxom figure of a woman with a round black face that shone above an Alps of bosom.”
“The heavy cheeks, shellacked eyes, bright, round and crammed with vitality, huge upholstery of lips that caught you like a pair of divans into the luxury of laughter.”
Sort of like:
Ladies and Aunt Jemima. Note how she “speaks”
Mammy and Minny, together at last. This image is from racismstillexisttumblr.com
The face of mammy two shoes from Tom and Jerry is finally revealed!
“By many accounts, Cummins, a white woman with a Puerto Rican grandmother, fucked it up. And by “many accounts,” I mean many brown-faced accounts.
The publishing industry increased the fuckery by rewarding Cummins with a seven-figure contract. Seattle writer Jen Soriano justly tweeted that Cummins should donate some of that windfall to immigration rights groups.
But the most important takeaway of the Pineda article is in the middle, a quote from Gurba. “We’re perfectly competent and perfectly capable of telling stories” but “gatekeepers do not allow us inside, but they will let in somebody who wants to usurp our voice.”
Voices like Cummins’s are elevated and rewarded with fat contracts because a white publishing industry catering to white readers, anoints through its white lens a novel that is, in the publisher’s words, “IT in capital letters.” High-profile white writers are invited to review it for high-profile publications, and the (white) snowball gains momentum, while brown writers are sidelined, their words ignored.
I don’t read books based on Oprah’s recommendation or any other celebrity endorsement. When I was in school, inculcating individual critical thinking skills by gathering information from a wealth of sources was the norm. And even when garnering those sources, a system of checks and balances while also citing reputable source(s) was required.
Having an inquiring mind, challenging the status quo, taking things beyond face value, listening and mulling over information before responding . . . that’s what was prized both by my parents and in school. The need to know WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and have an ability to recite or impart this information accurately to others.
Maybe that’s why I’m keen to watch the impeachment telecasts on multiple channels (CNN, MSNBC and FOX).
So in compiling documents for this post, I didn’t just look at what others had to say about Jeanine Cummins’ novel, but at the author herself, her publishing company (Flatiron books), who makes up her publishing company, who worked with her on editing/polishing the book, Cummins’ social media presence, and the novel itself. This process is fluid and subject to revision . . .
That being said, Oprah and Gayle King effed up recommending American Dust. Will either woman be big enough to admit her mistake? Hmmm. Stay tuned.
Since this post is getting very long, I will have a part two up shortly.
