Racist Snafu at the Oscars
Think about it! You have been tasked with making the final in a long list of star-studded presentations. You open the envelope and read a name of the woman who was just awarded “best actress,” not the title of the picture to be named “best picture.” Might it not occur to you to go to the emcee and say “there must be some mistake”? That didn’t happen on February 26, 2017. I want to posit why it may not have happened., “LaLa Land” was thought to be the “shoe-in,” so perhaps Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty reported what they thought the piece of paper had meant to say. Maybe they have been away from the4 bright lights too long and were genuinely befuddled.
Or maybe something much deeper and more insidious was at work. I’m not suggesting anything conspiratorial–that would be far-too calculated for what I believe happened. Since “LaLa Land” was the only truly “white” movie in the category, I have to wonder if part of the blatant mistake isn’t what Claudia Rankine writes about so often in her poems. It’s what I understand to be the banality of racism displayed by otherwise “liberal” white thinkers. Way back in 1963, the brilliant Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt published Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In this powerful book, Arendt argued that evil is simply a function of thoughtlessness, behaviors and words exhibited by ordinary people conforming to mass opinions. In Citizen: An American Lyric, Rankine forces us white liberals to recognize ourselves in her poetic characters who think or say or do this kind thoughtless things in relation to black people.
The film that was supposed to be announced as “best picture of 2017” was “Moonlight.” This movie is not just powerful or timely; it is unique in the single regard that there are no “white” people on the screen. This is a script where multitudes of audience members have no one with whom ti identify, no “touchstone” character to guide them in their responses to the larger story being portrayed. “Moonlight” falls, then, outside the comfort zone of most members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts as well. So, no matter what may have motivated its voting body to surprise the audience in the auditorium and across the country/world, those people should be credited for coloring (literally) outside the box. But, it needs to be said that making such a choice has to be categorized as a “surprise” vote speaks right back to Arendt’s theory about banality.
The most heinous part of what Dunaway and Beatty helped happen is this: Given the uniqueness of the moment in a time in American history when engrained racism could not be more blatantly obvious, the announcement about “Moonlight” should have been clean, so all of those associated with making this movie and all of us elated by its being chosen should have been able to rejoice directly, not “after the fact.” We still have “miles to go” in our journey out of our shameful history with black people and the Oscar awards didn’t put us an inch further along a path towards reparations. The last two letters in the acronym “snafu” most surely apply to the finale of the Oscar ceremony.
“Natural” Disasters
Traditionally, the phrase “natural disasters” refers to serious disruptions brought on by forces outside human control. Some call these “forces of nature” while others name them “acts of God.” Either way, we are assured that we had nothing to do with them. An easy list of such moments would include floods, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, tsunamis, lightning strikes. Perhaps there was a time in human evolution when such events truly were caused by forces beyond human prevention, but that no longer is the case. In the United States, one of the worst weather events in recent history was Hurricane Katrina. It was quickly labeled a “natural disaster” caused by a massive hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Seaboard. Even if we allow that the hurricane itself was a natural disruption, what happened to New Orleans and other parishes in Louisiana most certainly was not attributable to natural forces alone. In fact, as scientists and investigators from various areas of study analyzed what happened to New Orleans, it became clear that the devastation to that old city was not caused by the hurricane itself. It actually deflected at the last minute and hit the Gulf Coast with much less force than had been predicted by meteorologists originally. The devastation was caused by levees that could not hold in the face of the heavy rains and from water coming from the north of the city itself. These levees had been inspected years before the hurricane and glibly and falsely pronounced as being able to hold against natural forces. So the “disaster” that was played out on TV screens and in people’s lives for weeks was “caused” by human agencies and individuals who were unwilling to spend the money it would take to strengthen existing levees and build new ones that might actually defend residents from strong natural storms.
Or consider images seen more and more frequently as the planet warms alarmingly fast of tornadoes tearing through parts of this country and the larger world at seasons and with a strength not experienced in the past. Just a day or so ago, New Orleans itself was struck by a tornado that demolished scores of dwellings, many in the wards most devastated by the waters that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. So people who had only just restored something resembling the lives they lost in that earlier unnatural disaster now find themselves once again homeless and destitute. Or listen to veteran fire fighters in California and other places in the United States who appear on the nightly news saying in all their decades of fighting forest fires, (only some of which were ever “natural disasters” since many have been started by arsonists or careless people who toss a still-burning cigarette in the wrong brush pile), they have never seen anything like the one they are trying futilely to control at the moment. These catastrophes that are so expensive in terms of loss of trees needed to ward off a hotter and hotter atmosphere and of human property should no longer be referred to as “natural disasters.” Our own selfish behaviors are the real causes. Until we are willing to name them truthfully, we have little hope in getting legislatures to pass laws that might at least slow down the rate of atmospheric warming that will cause worse and worse events that may continue to be mis-labeled.
It is convenient to call all these current tragedies by the old, familiar term. But we hide our heads in this particular sand box at our own peril and, more significantly, at the peril of the planet we call home.
Marching
On Saturday, January 21, 2017, history was made in the United States and across the world. Several million people, mostly women and children of all shapes, colors, ages, conditions, took to our streets to send a message to the new administration in Washington, D.C. that we will not let the advances carved out over the past decade be swept away by the Orange Man. In my home town, Minneapolis, the women’s march organizers hoped for 20,000. By early afternoon, press were estimating 60,000 and on Sunday, the more or less official number stood at 100,000. My old friend of forty-six years and I were two of those marching in St. Paul, MN. We’d been advised not to try and take usual exits off the freeway because they would be closed off, so we got off at an exit just inside the St. Paul city limits and parked in a huge shopping mall’s lot that seemed fine with taking a passive but important role in the day’s protest. As we started making our way to the light rail line so we could take the Green Line train from our stop directly to the Capitol where the march would end up, we were immediately aware of scads of other people doing the same thing. Once on the platform, we made our way to a space just behind the safety yellow line and waited for the next train.
Four trains, each with seven big cars, arrived over the next forty minutes. As each stopped and opened doors in case some one wanted to get off, we were met with people packed in so tightly that I didn’t think we could get a piece of paper into the car. As the fifth train approached, I said to my friend “I’m going to be aggressive about getting on, so hang on and do what I do.” The doors slid open onto a similarly stuffed car and I said to the young people nearest to me “Can’t you scrunch a little more and let these two old ladies get on?” They did and we did.
As we all spilled out at the Capitol grounds, a helpful marshall told us not to bother going back to the origin of the march since it was already almost at the Capitol. So we walked with the ever-growing crowd till we saw the huge American flag carried by the march leader. We fell into step with what looked like the proverbial sea of people coming from all angles. Most signs were handmade and lots of people (including some of the many men present) wore the little pink knitted hats that dotted every gathering. One of my friends later told me one of her friends had knitted 20 hats to give to family and friends who were going to be marching. The signs spoke to virtually all the issues in danger of being erased or severely gutted by those taking the reins of power/control. And, though billed as a “women’s” march, I was delighted to see so many men, not all of whom were with a woman to whom they related personally. In fact, one of my favorite signs was the one held by a pleasant, middle-aged white man that read “Men of quality always support e-quality.” I thought to myself “A word-smith made that one.”
Of course there were oodles and oodles and oodles of children, some carrying their own home-made signs often with smiley faces or big bright suns as decoration. One new mother carrying her little baby girl in a back-pack sort of thing had sewn onto the back of the carry case this message: “Nasty Woman in Training.” Though I didn’t see this message at my rally, the one that declared “There are better cabinets at IKEA” seems inspired. And, sadly, true….
Though the sun wasn’t visible, projected rain held off so no one got wet. We all just walked in solidarity and with total positive energy. My friend kept saying “Look how courteous everyone is” as people helped new-comers meld into the crowd or made room for little children not to be squeezed by too many adults around them. This was the largest group of people I’ve every experienced in my 79 years, and it was wonderful to feel that every one of us agreed about the “big picture” we want for our country, no matter which smaller aspects of that picture might be a special focus for us. A few women had brought left-over Hillary signs–the light blue ones that read “STRONGER TOGETHER.” I felt that axiom tangibly as I snaked my way toward the Capitol stage where music and speakers waited to host a long and fierce rally.
My friend and I didn’t stay till the end since we knew the same positive delays on the light rail would happen when all of us who had taken it to get to the site would need to take it back to our cars or neighborhoods. As we were sitting down in a virtually empty car going away from the uplifting event, we strategized about how we’d use the train system the next time we wanted to march against some attempt to pull back support for the people and programs that embrace diversity, acceptance, and life. We know there will be those other times as the next four years pass, slowly and often painfully. But if a tiny percentage of the energy and resistance I witnessed in St. Paul Saturday can be harnessed into local and national movements in support of what all of us there believe in, we will prevent large-scale erasure of the idea of democracy that got us on our feet, into our modes of transportation, and out into those late January streets.
I’m Back
In the 1970’s, the university where I was teaching hosted a program for several summers that was designed to bring bright black students who would be seniors sand who were interested in graduate study to our campus. They would conduct research with faculty mentors for several weeks, make a final presentation to the entire group, and return to their schools having a better idea of what graduate work might entail. When Leroy Gardner, the man who ran this program, asked me if I would work with a young woman who was an English major, I agreed. Between doing that and meeting her, I fretted about what she’d make of my obvious Southern background since I am white and she was black. Leroy told me to remember what I’d recently learned about the paralytic nature of the guilt I felt as a white person growing up in Alabama in the 1940s and 50s.
At the appointed time, I welcomed to my office Preselfannie Whitfield, who had just completed her sophomore year at Jackson State College in Mississippi. I knew about Jackson State because that was where white police had maced protesting students, killing several, just days after a similar tragedy had taken place at Kent State University, a predominantly white school in Ohio. Of course, there was just one tiny mention of the atrocity at Jackson State and endless news reports about Kent State. Preselfannie recognized my geographical roots the moment I said hello, but seemed determined to stay focused on getting my help in choosing a writer on whom to work for the precious time she had in Minnesota. I no longer remember which white woman writer I suggested, but I remember clearly just how hard Preselfannie worked and what a solid final paper she wrote.
The next spring, Leroy called me again to say he had decided to bend the rule that stipulated that a student could enroll in his program only once: Preselfannie had reapplied as she was entering her senior year. She wanted to work with me on the African American author, Gloria Naylor. I knew Naylor’s novels and had even taught her powerful short story collection, The Women of Brewster Place. This time I jumped at the chance to watch the young scholar spread her wings. I was amazed by the maturity that had taken place in the year between my initial contact. The person in my office the second summer knew exactly what her thesis would be, which critics she already was familiar with, and what she wanted from me as her mentor. To my delight, she told me she intended to make telephone contact with Naylor so that she could include her own words in her essay. Persevering in this idea, she eventually had a long interview with the author. Her essay was chosen as one of the four outstanding research projects that would be shared at the concluding banquet. As Preselfannie stood before her audience composed primarily of people in the sciences or engineering, telling them why fiction by a black woman was worth their consideration, I felt as proud as I can remember ever feeling.
Since then, Preselfannie Whitfield has become Preselfannie Whitfield McDaniels, given birth to and helped rear two sons, gotten a Ph.D., been awarded tenure at her alma mater where she teaches a wide range of literature courses, and published her first book. Our contact these days comes in an exchange of holiday cards/letters in December. When I saw an envelope with Preselfannie’s address label, I eagerly opened it, sure I’d hear about her family and her own progress. Instead, I got her deep concerns about what the November election will mean over the next four very long years.
Like me, she had not been able to compose the usual message to friends and family members. In fact, in my case, I have not written a single sharable word since November 8th. Instead I’ve considered doing one of the following: baying at the moon, rending my garments, ululating, never cutting my hair until after he is gone from the White House. But one of Preselfannie’s sentences has galvanized me and here I am, determined not to let him silence me any longer. That sentence said she had been waiting to get my blog after the election because she figured I’d have some words that could be helpful to her as she coped with her own stunned reactions. So this blog is specially for Preselfannie.
My promise to myself for 2017 is to write words here at least once a month, and to stop giving the Orange Man so much of my energy, energy much better spent doing almost anything else. It is better spent remaining in solidarity with people organizing in their own neighborhoods to stop police violence against people of color or people whose religious or sexual expressions are considered “different”; it is better spent joining the inspiring individuals from so many walks of life who will keep vigilance at Standing Rock in North Dakota, no matter the weather; it is supporting artists in all media who realize it is time to make their art speak to the issues of the day; it is applauding the athletes who refuse to remain silent when they understand how to utilize their platforms to offer support to those who continue to be held back by virtue of who they are. Resistance and fierceness and a clear-eyed refusal to normalize the present political climate: those are my watchwords.