Forums on race and the media are a lot like presidential debates. Full of hot air? Certified yawners? Venues for breathless intellectualizing? Well, yes and no. Ostensibly, each hopes to separate fact from fiction and to get to the nitty-gritty. Debates provide televised platforms for presidential wannabes to say why they deserve your vote and their opponents don’t. Similarly, race-and-the-media forums hope to extricate truth from mythologized pop cultural assertions: Are blacks genetically predisposed to criminality? Is every Asian mathematically inclined? Are whites inherently superior?
Neither venue is particularly suited to accomplishing its objectives. Top questions of the day can’t be answered via carefully calibrated debates full of scripted talking points, nor in two-hour informational free-for-alls. If we’re lucky, what’s debated and discussed will spill forth into public consciousness and spark some corrective actions—for instance, candidates offering tax-reducing legislation or a newspaper publisher promising fairer coverage of minority communities.
Ultimately the value of a recent race-and-the-media forum at UNLV will rise or fall on what comes from it. Nothing wrong with dialogue for dialogue’s sake, I guess. But the forum’s organizers, the Las Vegas Local Organizing Committee of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, need the discussion to transcend Room 205 on the second floor of the student union. That is if the goal is to stimulate change (which I suspect this is true, judging from the sincerity of the organizers and the impassioned commentary from the more than two dozen guests). Herewith are some of my observations:
Defending Don Imus?
“I actually laughed when he said what he did,” said Clarence “Verbal E” Long, one half of hip-hop group The Chapter. He’s referring to the radio shock jock calling the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hoes.” “I think there was an overreaction in the media. And because of that overreaction, it opened the door for the media to blame Imus’ language on hip-hop. Many people in hip-hop are in a glass house throwing stones. Imus had a right to say what he said, even if we disagreed with it. He shouldn’t have been fired.”
UNLV film graduate and hip-hop artist Brandon Greene said Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly’s comments about the normality he experienced in a Harlem soul food restaurant were far more dangerous because O’Reilly shapes culture and perceptions. Millions take what he says as gospel.
60 minutes on Jena 6
A considerable amount of time—maybe it only seemed like 60 minutes—was spent on the Jena 6 case. Was it racially motivated? Near-universal agreement among the participants. Did the media overplay it? Mixed feelings. Some said we didn’t know enough about the case; others thought it got too much burn. Could the whole thing have been avoided? One man said yes. He saw the ordeal as an after-affect of assimilation.
“Why don’t we get our own tree? Blacks were better off when we were segregated.”
Can of worms opened.
Nearly everyone took turns gently (and not so gently) critiquing his premise. Said one woman: “It wasn’t about the black students wanting to sit under a tree. It wasn’t about the tree. This was about racism.” It was also about injustice in the criminal justice system, the South’s legacy of separatism, the demonization of young Black men, the morality of retaliation and dozens other items that deserve their own forums.
Most enlightening observation
Andreas Hale, editor-in-chief of hiphopdx.com, said professional wrestling has trafficked in racist stereotypes for years but has escaped Imus-like backlash. He’s right. Hillbilly Jim. Kamala the Uganda giant. Slick, a pimp turned manager. The communist Iron Sheik. The Guerrero Brothers, mischievous Hispanic dudes that “lie, cheat and steal.” Tajiri, a Japanese wrestler who can’t speak English and smiles like a buffoon. Characters have also included gangsters, metal heads and smarmy Middle Easterners. Not to mention a steady stream of dumbed down, sexed-up females. When’s someone going to bring pro wrestling to task?
Racism will be televised—or YouTubed
Clips were shown of: Ex-Seinfeld star Michael Richards tirade at the L.A. Comedy Club; Fox News anchor encouraging Whites to have babies (to keep pace with Hispanics); conservative columnist/blogger Michelle Malkin ridiculing misogyny and violence in rap; O’Reilly’s restaurant and Imus’ Rutgers’ comments; sports commentator Billy Packer’s use of the term “fag out;” lynchings; Ku Klux Klan marches; anti-Klan rallies and an interview with West Virginia sex assault and batter victim Megan Williams.
Sad to say, but organizers had a bevy of incidents to choose from. YouTube offers a trove: of former Virginia Sen. George Allen calling a rival campaign staffer a “macaca”; bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman and hotel heiress Paris Hilton using the word “nigger”; Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden joking about seeing lots of Indian Americans in Dunkin Donuts and 7-Elevens.
Enough talk. What’s the plan?
Suggestions included: stop listening to hip-hop. Turn off the television and radio. Take personal inventory. Look for coded language (i.e. urban = black or minority.) Long asked me what I thought. Thanks for the platform.
My three cents: diversify your media consumption. Research media companies—ownership can clue you in to their philosophical and political bents. Write letters to the editor. Post comments at the end of newspaper, magazine and television stories on the Internet. Call your local paper with calls asking for fair coverage of urban issues—the bad stuff and the good. E-mail reporters with story critiques and story ideas. Whatever you do, don’t be silent. Closed mouths don’t get heard.
Damon Hodge joined Las Vegas Weekly, in 2001. His specialties include hard-news stories, music reviews, pop culture commentary and occasional forays into social advocacy journalism. Hodge has won numerous awards from the Nevada Press Association. Email him at [email protected]