TORONTO, ONTARIO - In the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict in Florida, KGO-San Francisco's Brian Copeland produced a compelling hour of radio telling personal stories about being a black man in California:
Listen to mp3 of KGO - Brian Copeland on Race
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Politics: Cosby as the Role Model
TORONTO, ONTARIO - On inauguration day earlier this week, CBC Television's "The National" ran an interesting report by Leslie MacKinnon on how Hollywood had helped pave the way for Barack Obama, the first non-white person to be elected President of the United States. The report presented a variety of racial milestones from Jackie Robinson to an African-American president on 24. It did mention The Cosby Show, but I think it understated the influence of that sitcom and its role in making the election of Barack Obama possible.
Apparently The Jeffersons had been presenting a Black family on CBS since 1975, but I don't remember ever watching it, and its relatively anemic ratings probably mean I wasn't the only young person in that era that didn't. In contrast, in looking over the episode list in preparation for writing this entry, I must have seen almost all of the Cosby Shows. I distinctly remember that it was appointment television--if it was 8 pm on Thursday night, you tuned in NBC and you watched it. When upstart FOX placed "The Simpsons" against it for the 1990-1 season, there was some question, but Cosby generally won out across the country.
We didn't tune in because it the cast was made up entirely of Black people (in the days before African-American was the preferred term). As pointed out earlier this week, there simply weren't many Blacks in the community in which I was raised. We tuned in because it was funny. Bill Cosby and the rest of the cast were entertaining, and the scripts described family experiences that it seemed like anyone could have when children were growing up. There wasn't anything especially "Black" about it.
If anything, the presented fictional Huxtable family was higher class than most of the families that I was familiar with, being headed by doctor and clearly reasonably wealthy. That was the key to the impact of the Cosby Show. Where other portions of the media might have served to have whites feel in some way superior, the Cosby Show caused people like me to look up to Black people. Why wouldn't one want to raise children the way the Huxtables raised theirs? So, if one could view a Black people as role models for parenting or economic status, then why couldn't one view a Black person as a credible politician or world leader? The leap for a Cosby Show viewer was not that large.
That Bill Cosby and Barack Obama seem almost interchangeable in their commentaries about how to eliminate racial divides that exist in the United States is likely not a coincidence. The Cosby Show demonstrated how to live responsibly--in a way that no person would question--and Barack Obama's family has lived such a life for real. Do we not see Phylicia Rashād (Clair Huxtable) in Michelle Obama? Do we not see Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy) in Sasha Obama? One hopes that Malia will not behave like Tempestt Bledsoe (Vanessa) in the White House!
Barack Obama understood that he was elected on the shoulders of giants. It may not be fully appreciated that Bill Cosby is one of those giants.
Apparently The Jeffersons had been presenting a Black family on CBS since 1975, but I don't remember ever watching it, and its relatively anemic ratings probably mean I wasn't the only young person in that era that didn't. In contrast, in looking over the episode list in preparation for writing this entry, I must have seen almost all of the Cosby Shows. I distinctly remember that it was appointment television--if it was 8 pm on Thursday night, you tuned in NBC and you watched it. When upstart FOX placed "The Simpsons" against it for the 1990-1 season, there was some question, but Cosby generally won out across the country.
We didn't tune in because it the cast was made up entirely of Black people (in the days before African-American was the preferred term). As pointed out earlier this week, there simply weren't many Blacks in the community in which I was raised. We tuned in because it was funny. Bill Cosby and the rest of the cast were entertaining, and the scripts described family experiences that it seemed like anyone could have when children were growing up. There wasn't anything especially "Black" about it.
If anything, the presented fictional Huxtable family was higher class than most of the families that I was familiar with, being headed by doctor and clearly reasonably wealthy. That was the key to the impact of the Cosby Show. Where other portions of the media might have served to have whites feel in some way superior, the Cosby Show caused people like me to look up to Black people. Why wouldn't one want to raise children the way the Huxtables raised theirs? So, if one could view a Black people as role models for parenting or economic status, then why couldn't one view a Black person as a credible politician or world leader? The leap for a Cosby Show viewer was not that large.
That Bill Cosby and Barack Obama seem almost interchangeable in their commentaries about how to eliminate racial divides that exist in the United States is likely not a coincidence. The Cosby Show demonstrated how to live responsibly--in a way that no person would question--and Barack Obama's family has lived such a life for real. Do we not see Phylicia Rashād (Clair Huxtable) in Michelle Obama? Do we not see Keshia Knight Pulliam (Rudy) in Sasha Obama? One hopes that Malia will not behave like Tempestt Bledsoe (Vanessa) in the White House!
Barack Obama understood that he was elected on the shoulders of giants. It may not be fully appreciated that Bill Cosby is one of those giants.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Education: Race and Washington D.C.
TORONTO, ONTARIO - As a white person that grew up in a substantially white suburb, it was difficult to truly relate to the significance of the events in Washington, D.C. today. Tens of thousands of African-Americans cried, wept, and cheered, saying that the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents and generations before had finally paid off in an African-American taking office in the most powerful and respected position in the country. They were intermixed with tens of thousands of people of other backgrounds who were equally excited by new president Barack Hussein Obama and his words heard around the world on this day.
Interestingly, Washington D.C. in a very real sense provided my first exposure to the realities of race in America. The number of African-Americans in my classes in elementary school and middle school could be counted on one hand. I had one elementary school teacher that was Black, but she never talked about her race; she was just our teacher (and a good one, at that). Asians and Latinos were more numerous, but again any substantive difference on the basis of race was never discussed.
In middle school, I had the opportunity to travel to the national Mathcounts competition in Washington D.C. For the first time, I saw an area in which literally half of the residents were African-American. I had never seen anything like it before, but it wasn't any different than seeing the Washington Monument--I had read and seen on television that large numbers of Black people existed, and now I had seen them in person.
One day, while riding Washington's Metro subway system, I was careless with my backpack. In approaching my seat, I moved such that the backpack was flung right into the face of a man in a suit on an adjacent seat. It hit him hard enough that it actually knocked his glasses off. As statistics would predict in Washington D.C., the man happened to be Black. I apologized; the man said he was okay and soon got off the subway. For the remainder of the trip, I was worried that I would forever be tagged as a racist because I had nearly injured a Black man on the Washington Metro. That such an act had nothing to do with racism was something that at the time I had no way to understand.
Eventually, I would have more significant interactions with African-Americans. In my undergraduate years, I had my first boss at a part-time job that happened to be Black. I had a roommate one summer who was a football player that happened to be Black. Each of them actually talked about what it meant to them to be of something other than the race of the majority, and I started to better understand the social context of race and what a day in which a non-white would become the President of the United States might mean.
Yet, I'm not certain that the blatant ignoring of race that occurs in Washington state was so bad from an educational perspective. I wasn't taught that people of "other" races were in any way different than I was, and my early experiences actually served to reinforce that idea--none of the African-Americans I met through high school seemed significantly different than anyone else around me. Some coverage of racial experience in high school instead of waiting until college probably would be wise, but the baseline experience--at least in a place like suburban Seattle--probably did more to prevent the genesis of a racist perspective than any formal instruction could have done.
Now, above all, it may be role modeling by President Obama that leads the way in educating young people about how African-Americans are not fundamentally different than anyone else.
Interestingly, Washington D.C. in a very real sense provided my first exposure to the realities of race in America. The number of African-Americans in my classes in elementary school and middle school could be counted on one hand. I had one elementary school teacher that was Black, but she never talked about her race; she was just our teacher (and a good one, at that). Asians and Latinos were more numerous, but again any substantive difference on the basis of race was never discussed.
In middle school, I had the opportunity to travel to the national Mathcounts competition in Washington D.C. For the first time, I saw an area in which literally half of the residents were African-American. I had never seen anything like it before, but it wasn't any different than seeing the Washington Monument--I had read and seen on television that large numbers of Black people existed, and now I had seen them in person.
One day, while riding Washington's Metro subway system, I was careless with my backpack. In approaching my seat, I moved such that the backpack was flung right into the face of a man in a suit on an adjacent seat. It hit him hard enough that it actually knocked his glasses off. As statistics would predict in Washington D.C., the man happened to be Black. I apologized; the man said he was okay and soon got off the subway. For the remainder of the trip, I was worried that I would forever be tagged as a racist because I had nearly injured a Black man on the Washington Metro. That such an act had nothing to do with racism was something that at the time I had no way to understand.
Eventually, I would have more significant interactions with African-Americans. In my undergraduate years, I had my first boss at a part-time job that happened to be Black. I had a roommate one summer who was a football player that happened to be Black. Each of them actually talked about what it meant to them to be of something other than the race of the majority, and I started to better understand the social context of race and what a day in which a non-white would become the President of the United States might mean.
Yet, I'm not certain that the blatant ignoring of race that occurs in Washington state was so bad from an educational perspective. I wasn't taught that people of "other" races were in any way different than I was, and my early experiences actually served to reinforce that idea--none of the African-Americans I met through high school seemed significantly different than anyone else around me. Some coverage of racial experience in high school instead of waiting until college probably would be wise, but the baseline experience--at least in a place like suburban Seattle--probably did more to prevent the genesis of a racist perspective than any formal instruction could have done.
Now, above all, it may be role modeling by President Obama that leads the way in educating young people about how African-Americans are not fundamentally different than anyone else.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Radio Pick: Race on Radio Lab
TEMPE, ARIZONA - This week's radio pick of the week comes from Radio Lab, the one-hour show on scientific topics from WNYC and NPR. This week's show dealt with race, describing that there is some limited connection between genetics and race and what that all might mean for society in a 59-minute show.
Listen to MP3 of Radio Lab "Race"
Listen to MP3 of Radio Lab "Race"
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Politics: A Post-Racial Era?
TORONTO, ONTARIO - In looking through the exit poll data from the 2008 Presidential election, one thing stands out. While Barack Obama won or tied amongst men, women, independents, all income levels (if taken in $50,000 steps), all education levels, new and repeat voters, all racial and ethnic groups except whites, all religious affiliations except protestants, and all age groups except those 65 and older, for most of these categories, the vote was reasonably close. The only major categories in which Obama won more than 70% of the demographic were Democrats, self-identified liberals, and African-Americans. It's hard to make the statement that this was a post-racial election when only one in every twenty African-Americans voted for any candidate other than Barack Obama.
It's nothing new for the Democrats to receive a disproportionate percentage of the African-American vote. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both received 80% or better of that demographic. It's not correct to say that Obama won the election on the basis of his margin amongst this group that makes up only 13% of voters--he would have lost only about a percent of his overall vote if he had only polled as well as Al Gore. It is true that the 95% figure is unprecedented--African-Americans as a group were more likely to vote for Obama than self-identified Democrats.
What this underscores is not that race explicitly mattered in this election--it's really impossible to say if it did, as it was hard to divorce Obama's bi-racial background from his overall appeal to all voters, and I haven't seen a poll that has tried. The importance of the election is not that it was different racially in itself, but that the election of person with African-American background presents the opportunity for future change. Just as John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was an issue in the 1960, it has not been a significant issue for Catholics ever since--many voters did not even know that John Kerry, for example, was Catholic. Now that Barack Obama has been elected and the barrier has been broken, it might be possible for race to become a non-issue in future elections.
Unfortunately, the racial divide in the United States seems to be much deeper than religious divides, so it will take much greater effort for the race of a candidate to become a non-issue. Race is different than some other interpersonal divides like religion and sexual orientation because it cannot be hidden. Unless it has been buried in my history books, Catholics did not suffer from death threats as a result of John F. Kennedy's election. African-Americans have gotten them as a result of Barack Obama's.
The most widely-distributed article running around summarizing the issue was written by Jesse Washington of the Associated Press. It describes incidents from Georgia to Maine to Idaho of threats being made on Obama himself or local African-Americans being investigated by the Secret Service or the FBI. The bottom line was stated by hate crime monitor Mark Potok: There is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Hope, of course, comes from the likelihood that many of the people that currently feel that way are going to come to the realization that with an African-American president, pretty much everything they know is actually going to be the same, and nothing is going to be stolen from them. For all the rhetoric about change from the Obama campaign, when all is said and done, there likely won't be all that much change, and what changes do occur might well benefit the person holding racist views.
There is really only one way to get over fear about differences between people of whatever nature--interaction. The best way is one-on-one interaction, which will never happen with the President of the United States. However, the more people see the Obama family--as they did on 60 Minutes on Sunday--the more they are going to realize that the Obamas are essentially as "normal" as can be.
The election of Barack Obama in and of itself doesn't usher in a post-racial era. What it does do is provide the opportunity to move in that direction. It is a step, not an end unto itself.
It's nothing new for the Democrats to receive a disproportionate percentage of the African-American vote. Bill Clinton and Al Gore both received 80% or better of that demographic. It's not correct to say that Obama won the election on the basis of his margin amongst this group that makes up only 13% of voters--he would have lost only about a percent of his overall vote if he had only polled as well as Al Gore. It is true that the 95% figure is unprecedented--African-Americans as a group were more likely to vote for Obama than self-identified Democrats.
What this underscores is not that race explicitly mattered in this election--it's really impossible to say if it did, as it was hard to divorce Obama's bi-racial background from his overall appeal to all voters, and I haven't seen a poll that has tried. The importance of the election is not that it was different racially in itself, but that the election of person with African-American background presents the opportunity for future change. Just as John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was an issue in the 1960, it has not been a significant issue for Catholics ever since--many voters did not even know that John Kerry, for example, was Catholic. Now that Barack Obama has been elected and the barrier has been broken, it might be possible for race to become a non-issue in future elections.
Unfortunately, the racial divide in the United States seems to be much deeper than religious divides, so it will take much greater effort for the race of a candidate to become a non-issue. Race is different than some other interpersonal divides like religion and sexual orientation because it cannot be hidden. Unless it has been buried in my history books, Catholics did not suffer from death threats as a result of John F. Kennedy's election. African-Americans have gotten them as a result of Barack Obama's.
The most widely-distributed article running around summarizing the issue was written by Jesse Washington of the Associated Press. It describes incidents from Georgia to Maine to Idaho of threats being made on Obama himself or local African-Americans being investigated by the Secret Service or the FBI. The bottom line was stated by hate crime monitor Mark Potok: There is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Hope, of course, comes from the likelihood that many of the people that currently feel that way are going to come to the realization that with an African-American president, pretty much everything they know is actually going to be the same, and nothing is going to be stolen from them. For all the rhetoric about change from the Obama campaign, when all is said and done, there likely won't be all that much change, and what changes do occur might well benefit the person holding racist views.
There is really only one way to get over fear about differences between people of whatever nature--interaction. The best way is one-on-one interaction, which will never happen with the President of the United States. However, the more people see the Obama family--as they did on 60 Minutes on Sunday--the more they are going to realize that the Obamas are essentially as "normal" as can be.
The election of Barack Obama in and of itself doesn't usher in a post-racial era. What it does do is provide the opportunity to move in that direction. It is a step, not an end unto itself.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Margin Notes: Mutts, Women, Fox and Coupland
TORONTO, ONTARIO - I found it interesting that Canadian commentators have seemed to take more notice of US President-Elect Barack Obama referring to "mutts like me" during his press conference on Friday. By invoking the concept of a mutt, or a dog of mixed or indeterminate breed, Obama may have been trying to move toward a truly post-racial view. Almost all Americans are mutts of some kind, even if they identify with a race. It's rather hard to deny I'm Caucasian, for example, but when I once tried to articulate the various nationalities of my ancestors a friend in college summed it up by saying "okay, you're a mutt." If the United States can adopt a "mutt" identity much as Mexico has adopted a "mestizo" identity, perhaps it can move beyond racial distinctions someday. Of course, there is an alternate etymology of the word--if we're all mutts, it could mean we're all muttonheads.
* * * * * *
The 24-seat New Hampshire Senate now features 13 women, making it the first legislative body in the United States to have a female majority. As notable as this might be, no less than former President Bill Clinton pointed out that even New Hampshire has not achieved the level of female representation as Rwanda, where the parliament is 56% women. That's right, Rwanda leads the United States of America (and Canada, for that matter).
* * * * * *
If you'd like to learn more about the Masked Avengers who pranked Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the final week of the campaign, check out this week's C'est la vie from CBC Radio One. This program provides weekly insight into francophone Canada for anglophones, and this week's show is especially amusing. Listen to the show to hear them compare their various pranks, including Britney Spears, Bill Gates, and Jacques Chirac as well as Palin. The contrast between Gates and the other pranks was particularly revealing.
* * * * * *
The cable television network may be a different story, but I actually had a hard time detecting any bias in the Fox News web site during the campaign. They tended to provide a raw live feed of the debates that had no commentary whatsoever, and their news stories--as opposed to their commentaries--actually used quite balanced and accurate word choices. On election night, I noted the headline "Momentum Builds" and text clearly describing excitement amongst Democrats after Pennsylvania was called for Obama. Could it be that their on-line staff takes a different attitude than their on-air staff?
* * * * * *
Film-maker Spike Lee's interviews on election night were especially amusing. To any question, his answer would be "Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. Obama, Obama. Next question?" It reminded me of a commentary by CBC Radio One's then-Sunday Morning host Ian Brown during a certain trial in Santa Monica, California in 1994--"O.J., O.J., O.J. O.J., O.J. O.J., O.J in my car. O.J., O.J. on the wall..."
* * * * * *
Apparently Canada is feeling so worried about revisionism in the United States that we're now getting defensive about the War of 1812, which just in case you've forgotten, Britain won. Author Douglas Coupland is concerned about "creeping revisionism" surrounding the War of 1812, and has dedicated a new monument in Toronto to specifically tweak US revisionists. Perhaps Coupland is on to something--read the Wikipedia article on the War of 1812, which currently describes the conflict as a draw. In terms of territory, this is accurate, but generally when a nation sets out to take over territory and fails to do so, this is considered a loss, not a draw.
* * * * * *
This week, what I believe to be the last physical reminder that I lived in Massachusetts, save for photographs by a Cambridge-based photographer on my walls, disappeared as a Market Basket-branded carton of cotton swabs finally ran out, three years after I left Boston. I tended to frequent the downscale Market Basket while living in New England, never feeling fully comfortable about Star Market and successor Shaw's--the irony is that now that I live in a place with many downscale markets like No Frills, Price Chopper, and Food4Less, I most often shop at Loblaw's, which is more like Shaw's than Market Basket.
* * * * * *
The 24-seat New Hampshire Senate now features 13 women, making it the first legislative body in the United States to have a female majority. As notable as this might be, no less than former President Bill Clinton pointed out that even New Hampshire has not achieved the level of female representation as Rwanda, where the parliament is 56% women. That's right, Rwanda leads the United States of America (and Canada, for that matter).
* * * * * *
If you'd like to learn more about the Masked Avengers who pranked Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin during the final week of the campaign, check out this week's C'est la vie from CBC Radio One. This program provides weekly insight into francophone Canada for anglophones, and this week's show is especially amusing. Listen to the show to hear them compare their various pranks, including Britney Spears, Bill Gates, and Jacques Chirac as well as Palin. The contrast between Gates and the other pranks was particularly revealing.
* * * * * *
The cable television network may be a different story, but I actually had a hard time detecting any bias in the Fox News web site during the campaign. They tended to provide a raw live feed of the debates that had no commentary whatsoever, and their news stories--as opposed to their commentaries--actually used quite balanced and accurate word choices. On election night, I noted the headline "Momentum Builds" and text clearly describing excitement amongst Democrats after Pennsylvania was called for Obama. Could it be that their on-line staff takes a different attitude than their on-air staff?
* * * * * *
Film-maker Spike Lee's interviews on election night were especially amusing. To any question, his answer would be "Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. Obama, Obama. Next question?" It reminded me of a commentary by CBC Radio One's then-Sunday Morning host Ian Brown during a certain trial in Santa Monica, California in 1994--"O.J., O.J., O.J. O.J., O.J. O.J., O.J in my car. O.J., O.J. on the wall..."
* * * * * *
Apparently Canada is feeling so worried about revisionism in the United States that we're now getting defensive about the War of 1812, which just in case you've forgotten, Britain won. Author Douglas Coupland is concerned about "creeping revisionism" surrounding the War of 1812, and has dedicated a new monument in Toronto to specifically tweak US revisionists. Perhaps Coupland is on to something--read the Wikipedia article on the War of 1812, which currently describes the conflict as a draw. In terms of territory, this is accurate, but generally when a nation sets out to take over territory and fails to do so, this is considered a loss, not a draw.
* * * * * *
This week, what I believe to be the last physical reminder that I lived in Massachusetts, save for photographs by a Cambridge-based photographer on my walls, disappeared as a Market Basket-branded carton of cotton swabs finally ran out, three years after I left Boston. I tended to frequent the downscale Market Basket while living in New England, never feeling fully comfortable about Star Market and successor Shaw's--the irony is that now that I live in a place with many downscale markets like No Frills, Price Chopper, and Food4Less, I most often shop at Loblaw's, which is more like Shaw's than Market Basket.
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