Why We Need More Black Princesses: A Guest Post

Thank goodness for The Black Snob! She watches "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" so you don't have to. Here's a great post on an interesting aspect of "ROHA" -- and why we need more Black Princesses. 



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ROHA's Porsha Stewart is Perfect and I Love Her 
(But Let Me Explain)

By Danielle Belton


Normally, I don't have much in the way of interest for Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta. It's a silly, fun show full of cringe-inducing people and a few glamour-pusses flouncing around and twirling. But this season has piqued my interest, but for one reason and one reason alone -- granddaughter of a civil rights activist and wife of former pro-football star Kordell Stewart -- loveable ditz Porsha Stewart.



Porsha Stewart reacts to gifts at her fairy tale wedding.



Porsha is not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but I love her. And not ironically. I LOVE HER. And I'm publicly declaring it to be so! I would like to brush her weave and help her pick out outfits. But I love her specifically because she is the first time I've ever seen a black woman play the role of "Pretty, Pretty Pampered and Protected Princess" on television.

Black women historically get to be mules in both the media and real life. We get to be sapphires and jezebels and mammies and the best BFFs of the white hero with no lives of our own. We get to be video hoes. We get to be in the background. (Even though we're quite diverse, multidimensional and awesome.) But Porsha is essentially a pretty, pretty princess version of screwball Lucille Ball with Kordell as her slightly-controlling, but possibly harmless father-figure Ricky Ricardo.
And that is refreshing by virtue of it being both different and necessary. It's like a lesser version of what you get with Michelle Obama planting a garden at the White House. Typically the role of a black woman in the White House is cleaning it. Now it's running it. "Who cares if she doesn't practice law!" says all the black women tired of having to carry everything and be all things to all people all the time. You just want to see her dote on her kids, love her husband and run things with positivity and sophistication because YOU NEVER GET TO SEE THIS ON SUCH A LARGE SCALE.

She's on magazine covers! She's an icon! People admire her for her brains and beauty! Oh! Oooo! Me next! ME NEXT, PLEASE! Sez a generation of black women.

Once upon a time a white female friend of mine told me black women would grow to resent the pedestal if we got put on it and my response, on behalf of all black women was, "LEMME GET UP THERE AND SEE IF IT SUCKS AND THEN I'LL TELL YOU ABOUT IT."

Porsha is up there and there is where I want ... nay, need her to stay.

Black women don't always get the pedestal treatment, so when one of us gets up on there and gets to be the paragon of womanly virtue and perfection, you'll fight for that woman to stay up on there in hopes that other black women -- even you -- will be not just respected, but celebrated for your choices in education, career and family. Even if you're not deep like Nikki Giovanni.
So, in some ways, I'm fighting for silly Porsha because I love that she's just an innocent goofball and gets to be the innocent goofball because it's so rare to see that publicly -- a black woman trophy wife who is not broken or angry or bitter, but goofy and happy to be here. Happy to wear the dress. Happy to play house. Happy to be happy, bouncing around without a natural care in the world.

After episode whatever it was, when she was just trying on dresses for her husband's birthday party, it dawned on me I could watch Porsha twirl around in cocktail dresses all day, talking about having twins on command (as if science would allow such a thing, oh Porsha!) and thinking this child is too shallow to be real. Porsha -- trying and failing then kind of succeeding in babysitting. Porsha, being ordered to try wine instead of ordering a Sprite because mentally, she's still a kid and wine is GROWN PEOPLE DRANK. (Porsha is not grown.) Porsha's little feud with Kenya Moore that seems more harmless and high school-like than degrading and offensive like most black lady fights on reality TV. (Case in point: Team Stallion Booty versus Team Donkey Booty versus society wanting to poke out eyeballs.)

To Porsha, I say, never change. You HOLD ON to that little girl, child-like, innocent spirit inside of you and stay goofy and ... um ... mentally uncomplicated. If someone tells you that you need to be "deep" or "stand for something" tell them to SHUT UP. Your protest is by existing. Black people were brought to this country in chains to work for free. Every day you choose to wear a $1,000 dress while doing nothing is a damn protest against The Man. (This goes for all other black people who chose to do whatever they please with their lives post-Emancipation. Fall in love! Get married! Get educated! Drink champagne at noon! It's all a protest, people! Being free is a form of protest! So ... protest responsibly!)

Just because some black women might be intellectually incurious doesn't mean they should die horrible deaths or face dire fates and diminishing prospects. Everybody can't be (or has the capacity to be) Coretta Scott King, but you can honor her memory by being nice, not embarassing and finding other ways to represent Team Black Woman and her junior squad, Team Black Girl.
So I say, Lawd, let this child have this! I need it for her. And by her, I mean me. It's hard out here on these streets. Let's let some sister get the easy route, then pat her on the back for winning the genetic lottery that got her there. If it turns out the pedestal is wack, believe me, we'll let you know.

Do you agree? Disagree? If you disagree and think it's a bad look for any black woman to take a break from full-time battlemode to be a goofnugget on Bravo I respect your opinion, but you're also why WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS! I'm kidding, of course, but not kidding ...

Two Reasons Why Denzel Washington Won't Win Best Actor Oscar....and Thoughts on Why He Should

Denzel Washington deserves the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role from the Academy next week but he won't receive it.

Daniel Day-Lewis is likely to walk away with that award, for two reasons: 

1.  Day-Lewis' performance as America's 16th President is  poignant and forceful.
2. Academy voters will believe that our body politic at this juncture needs a larger-than-life cinematic characterization of a Commander-in-Chief who makes a strong, brave (if imperfect) stand against slavery and, tangentially, against racism.  

In short, a Best Actor Oscar to Day-Lewis's Lincoln will be sure to make whites in 2013 America feel good about themselves. 

This is the vanilla form of political expression that I anticipate the members of the Academy to engage in. 

But such a 'feel-good' vote, while not the least cynical, won't much lift the spirits of black Americans at this time.

More of us than not are experiencing dichotomies, challenges, and dashed hopes similar to those experienced by Washington's character, Whip Whitaker, a commercial airline pilot. We mostly admire Lincoln, of course.  But Whitaker's challenges are familiar, and....close.  His third-reel redemption is an immediate beacon, bright, complicated, hopeful.

Yes, I am aware that it is hard to ignore the historic synergy of "Lincoln' and Day-Lewis' depiction. I mean, really. 

After all,  Lincoln freed the slaves, and here we are now, commencing the second term of our nation's first black president.....who happened to have declared his intention to run six years ago in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln began is political career!

Won't it be so deliciously.....symbolic and synergistic to select Day-Lewis' portrayal of  'The Great Emancipator' as the 'best' leading male acting performance in all of American movies for 2012...the same year that 'we' re-elected a black president? 

Well, yes, if one lacks insight and courage -- and I mean 'insight' in the acting context and courage in the political context. In a terrific New York Times essay, Nelson George recently argued for more nuanced portrayals in Hollywood films of blacks and characters from other historically marginalized groups.  Washington's performance in 'Flight' is an excellent example of just such a role -- and of why such nuanced roles matter.

Washington's airline pilot, Whitaker, is a deeply flawed individual.  He's also a brave and heroic contemporary American.  He over-indulges on the personal pleasures (sex, drink, drugs).  He lies (to his ex-wife, to his son, to himself).   He also is sublimely self-confident in his professional skills, which comes in handy when the plane he's piloting experiences catastrophic equipment failure.  

The sequence in which Washington's character mentally wills and technically manipulates the failed plane to a nearly-safe landing is magnificent -- a perfect meshing of all the stunning technological wonders that are now at filmmakers' fingertips and of good old fashioned acting chops.

Later, after the story is officially grounded, and technical wizardry is no longer in the foreground, we are plunged into a human story that is as harrowing, draining, inspiring and authentically invigorating as the Civil War.

I know the story of the 16th President, almost by heart at this point.  I am awed and grateful for Abraham Lincoln's life and his devotion to humanitarian principles.  Yet the creative engine that fuels my forward motion comes most efficiently from real world examples -- individuals in the here and now who are capable of heroic acts of bravery, even if in a fictional context. The late-breaking revelations of creative liberties taken by Tony Kushner, author of the film, too, has cast a minor shadow over my admiration of the film "Lincoln."  (After I saw the film late last fall, I went on a Twitter tear about Kushner's excellent use of period language. "Pettifogging,' for example, is a word that should be invoked often by Beltway journalists covering the current Congress. What does it mean?  "Meanly petty.")

However if one is going to selectively call ''Creative License"  when presenting a fictionalized cinematic version of a well-known historic figure and moment, well, best the made up portions concern matters of wardrobe or menu items, not votes in Congress on the 13th Amendment, as Maureen Dowd at the Times argued.

Finally, I am sorry that I didn't write this post sooner. But my life of late is harrowing, inspiring, draining, and invigorating. I feel greater kinship to Whip Whitaker than I do President Lincoln, with all due respect to the Great Emancipator.

State of the Racial Union: Facts, Optics, Fear

 What connects this.....

....to this?

This:

The Persistence of Racial Resentment

[Emphasis added in boldface]

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

Tom Edsall on politics inside and outside of Washington.

Although there was plenty of discussion during the 2012 presidential campaign about the Hispanic vote and how intense black turnout would be, the press was preoccupied with the white vote: the white working class, white women and upscale whites.
Largely missing from daily news stories were references to research on how racial attitudes have changed under Obama, the nation’s first black president. In fact, there has been an interesting exploration of this subject among academics, but before getting to that, let’s look back at some election results.

In the 16 presidential elections between 1952 and 2012, only one Democratic candidate, Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, won a majority of the white vote. There have been nine Democratic presidential nominees who received a smaller percentage of the white vote than Obama did in 2008 (43 percent) and four who received less white support than Obama did in 2012 (39 percent).

In 2012, Obama won 39 percent of the white electorate. Four decades earlier, in 1972, George McGovern received a record-setting low of the ballots cast by whites, 31 percent. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won 36 percent of the white vote; in 1980, Jimmy Carter got 33 percent; in 1984, Walter Mondale took 35 percent of the ballots cast by whites. As far back as 1956, Adlai Stevenson tied Obama’s 39 percent, and in 1952, Stevenson received 40 percent – both times running against Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two Democratic nominees from Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis in 1988 (40 percent) and John Kerry in 2004 (41 percent), got white margins only slightly higher than Obama’s in 2012 — and worse than Obama’s 43 percent in 2008. In other words, Obama’s track record with white voters is not very different from that of other Democratic candidates.

Ballots cast for House candidates provide another measure of white partisanship. These contests have been tracked in exit polls from 1980 onward. Between 1980 and 1992, the white vote for Democratic House candidates averaged 49.6 percent. It dropped sharply in 1994 when Newt Gingrich orchestrated the Republican take-over of the House, averaging just 42.7 percent from 1994 through 2004. White support for Democrats rose to an average of 46.7 percent in 2006 and 2008 as public disapproval of George W. Bush and of Republicans in Congress sharply increased.

How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term?

In the aftermath of Obama’s election, white support for Congressional Democrats collapsed to its lowest level in the history of House exit polling, 38 percent in 2010 —  at once driving and driven by the emerging Tea Party. In 2012, white Democratic support for House candidates remained weak at 39 percent.

Despite how controversial it has been to talk about race, researchers have gathered a substantial amount of information on the opinions of white American voters.

The political scientists Michael Tesler of Brown University and David O. Sears of UCLA have published several studies on this theme and they have also written a book, “Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America,” that analyzes changes in racial attitudes since Obama became the Democratic nominee in 2008.

In their  2010 paper, “President Obama and the Growing Polarization of Partisan Attachments by Racial Attitudes and Race,” Tesler and Sears argue that the

evidence strongly suggests that party attachments have become increasingly polarized by both racial attitudes and race as a result of Obama’s rise to prominence within the Democratic Party.

Specifically, Tesler and Sears found that voters high on a racial-resentment scale moved one notch toward intensification of partisanship within the Republican Party on a seven-point scale from strong Democrat through independent to strong Republican. To measure racial resentment, which Tesler and Sears describe as “subtle hostility towards African-Americans,” the authors used data from the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, an extensive collection of polling data maintained at the University of Chicago.

In the case of A.N.E.S. data, Tesler and Sears write:

The scale was constructed from how strongly respondents agreed or disagreed with the following assertions: 1) Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. 2) Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class. 3) Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. 4) It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

The General Social Survey included questions asking respondents to rate competing causes of racial discrimination and inequality:

The scale was constructed from responses to the following 4 items: 1) Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors. 2) A 3-category variable indicating whether respondents said lack of motivation is or is not a reason for racial inequality. 3) A 3-category variable indicating whether respondents said discrimination is or is not a reason for racial inequality. 4) A three-category variable indicating whether respondents rated whites more, less or equally hardworking than blacks on 7 point stereotype scales.

Supporting the Tesler-Sears findings, Josh Pasek, a professor in the communication studies department at the University of Michigan, Jon A. Krosnick, a political scientist at Stanford, and Trevor Tompson, the director of the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, use responses from three different surveys in their analysis of “The Impact of Anti-Black Racism on Approval of Barack Obama’s Job Performance and on Voting in the 2012 Presidential Election.”

Pasek and his collaborators found a statistically significant increase from 2008 to 2012 in “explicit anti-black attitudes” – a measure based on questions very similar those used by Tesler and Sears for their racial-resentment scale. The percentage of voters with explicit anti-black attitudes rose from 47.6 in 2008 and 47.3 percent in 2010 to 50.9 percent in 2012. 

Crucially, Pasek found that Republicans drove the change: “People who identified themselves as Republicans in 2012 expressed anti-Black attitudes more often than did Republican identifiers in 2008.”

In 2008, Pasek and his collaborators note, the proportion of people expressing anti-Black attitudes was 31 percent among Democrats, 49 percent among independents, and 71 percent among Republicans. By 2012, the numbers had gone up. “The proportion of people expressing anti-Black attitudes,” they write, “was 32 percent among Democrats, 48 percent among independents, and 79 percent among Republicans.”
At the moment, the population of the United States (314 million) is heading towards a majority-minority status in 2042.
The American electorate, on the other hand (126 million) is currently 72 percent white, based on the voters who cast ballots last November.
Obama’s ascendency to the presidency means that, on race, the Rubicon has been crossed (2008) and re-crossed (2012).
What are we to make of these developments? Is the country more or less racist? How can the percentage of people holding anti-black attitudes have increased from 2006 to 2008 at a time when Obama performed better among white voters than the two previous white Democratic nominees, and then again from 2008 to 2012 when Obama won a second term?
In fact, the shifts described by Tesler and Pasek are an integral aspect of the intensifying conservatism within the right wing of the Republican Party. Many voters voicing stronger anti-black affect were already Republican. Thus, in 2012, shifts in their attitudes, while they contributed to a 4 percentage point reduction in Obama’s white support, did not result in a Romney victory.
Some Republican strategists believe the party’s deepening conservatism is scaring away voters.
“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national governing party,” John Weaver, a consultant to the 2008 McCain campaign, said after Obama’s re-election. Mark McKinnon, an adviser to former President George W. Bush, made a similar point: “The party needs more tolerance, more diversity and a deeper appreciation for the concerns of the middle class.”
Not only is the right risking marginalization as its views on race have become more extreme, it is veering out of the mainstream on contraception and abortion, positions that fueled an 11 point gender gap in 2012 and a 13 point gap in 2008.
Given that a majority of the electorate will remain white for a number of years, the hurdle that the Republican Party faces is building the party’s white margins by 2 to 3 points. For Romney to have won, he needed 62 percent of the white vote, not the 59 percent he got.
Working directly against this goal is what Time Magazine recently described as the Republican “brand identity that has emerged from the stars of the conservative media ecosystem: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and others.”
It is not so much Latino and black voters that the Republican Party needs. To win the White House again, it must assuage the social conscience of mainstream, moderate white voters among whom an ethos of tolerance has become normal. These voters are concerned with fairness and diversity, even as they stand to the right of center. It is there that the upcoming political battles — on the gamut of issues from race to rights — will be fought.

Credits:
Op-ed by Tom Byrne Edsall,  New York Times, Feb, 6, 2013
Photo of Christopher Jordan Dorner via ChicagoNow, Feb. 8, 2013
Photo of President Obama skeet shooting, Pete Souza/White House, via the NYTimes, Feb. 2, 2013

UPDATED: Three Ways to Consider Tarantino's "Django Unchained"

Two weeks after it opened,  "Django Unchained" continues kicking up a windstorm of commentary, critiques and rants.  It has also earned more than $100 million at the domestic box office, not exactly small change for a spectacularly complicated film that opened at the height of the Christmas season.

I'd read the reviews in The New York Times and other outlets and sat it out, opting for a Christmas holiday free of blood-splatters.  During the film's first week, I followed and sometimes chimed in on the discussions that clogged my social media channels. Many of the writers, academics and media folks who are the core of my network expressed -- sometimes in heated language -- widely diverging opinions about the movie.  In summary:


-- Tarantino foolishly makes light of the horrors of slavery. (Susan Fales Hill.)
-- Tarantino delivered a liberating revenge fantasy, disturbing but legitimate (TaRessa Stovall.)
-- Tarantino wrongly suggests that an eye-for-an-eye philosophy would have been an acceptable antidote to slavery, i.e., slaves or former slaves killing whites in retribution. (William Jelani Cobb)
-- Tarantino is talented but woefully immature. (Me.)

Now that I've watched it, here are two points on the film, brief analysis on the buzz surrounding the film, and observations on the filmmaker's comments about how and why he made it. 

1) Story

"Django Unchained" is a love story wrapped in an action-packed revenge fantasy set against the backdrop of slavery in the Deep South and in the Southwest. 

Or is it?

As a postmodern, edgy action movie, it is wildly successful. As a love story it is weakened by excesses that Tarantino either didn't notice, failed to reign in, or willfully created. As a revenge fantasy-cum-commentary on racism, it succeeds moderately.   There are strained metaphors and over-long scenes that hamper the action  (Fales Hill, for example, quite astutely noted the 'hamfisted' inclusion a reference to Wagner's "The Ring Cycle,"  within the plot).  But the  biggest story deficit is that the film's spine -- it's core meaning -- isn't clear. Is it foremost a love story? A revenge fantasy? A buddy film? Tarantino's reputation as an enfant terrible of modern film auteurs springs from his ability to produce jarring, swift acts of violence, unexpected moments of tenderness, and black humor laced with creative explosions of colorfully profane language.

All are present here, but given the incendiary frame (slavery, the ultimate third-rail in American cultural politics), identifying the genuine point of the story is difficult. Tarantino's biggest weakness as a filmmaker (in my book) has long been his inability or unwillingness to honor the tradition of linear cinematic storytelling, i.e., plots that have clearly defined beginnings, mid-sections, and endings. His elliptical style, in which flashbacks and future developments pop up randomly, swing around and double back on each other, sometimes at a dizzying pace ("Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction") is used, I believe, as something of a dodge: He may indeed be capable of writing a linear narrative and simply elects not to. But as I view his catalog, Tarantino is more interested in encouraging incipient ADHD in the audience than in steadily building our investment in the characters, in cultivating a gradual, creeping tension as plot developments logically unfold. (No, I am neither inflexible or inherently opposed to 'non-traditional' storytelling tactics, I merely prefer the former method and Tarantino has yet to produce a film that  has this flow.)  The story within "Django Unchained" is obscured; it takes a back seat to the main theme that Tarantino is promoting -- blacks avenging the cruelties of slavery. That is not a 'story,' it is a political statement.

2) Artistry

Other reviewers -- film scholars and smart movie-goers alike -- have correctly identified the film's obvious homage to the "Spaghetti Westerns" of Sergio Leone.  Unmentioned, though, is its liberal borrowing of motifs from a host of other films and filmmakers, including Hitchcock, John Ford,  Gordon Parks, Mel Brooks, and in a fleeting reference, David O. Selznick. Taken individually, the references to Leone, Hitchcock, Parks, and to Brooks are not problematic.  Collectively though, they diminish the opportunity for a truly original film that might have been enhanced by deploying fewer (or by a more subtle deployment) of references to past films or other genres. As it is, the driving artistic feature of "Django' is that it is a mash-up, however slick, visceral and humorously drawn the total sum of its parts.

There are liberal doses of Peckinpah in the grisly images of spurting blood and rending limbs; reminders of Parks in the many shots of  Django's quick-draw skills and bad-ass lines of dialog; hints of Ford in the back-lit, sillhouettes or heroic shots of Jamie Foxx's Django swaggering away from the camera framed by looming mountain ranges;  big splashes of Hitchock in Django's intense, tunnel vision focus on rescuing Kerry Washington's Broomhilda, a character who serves as the proverbial 'McGuffin' -- that item or person identified by the Master of Suspense as the driving momentum of a plot (really, Broomhilda in "Django' may as well have been a mysterious uranium formula, a la Cary Grant's and Ingrid Bergman's 'McGuffin' in 'Notorious"). The scene in which the Klansmen -- led by Don Johnson's character --  disagree over their hoods is an updating of the bandit's 'beans for dinner' scene in "Blazing Saddles" -- unexpected, hilarious and decidedly un-PC.

And the appearance, mid-way through the second reel, of the word "Mississippi" in all-caps, slowly crawling (or is it 'wiping?') majestically across the screen from right-frame to left-frame, indicating the protagonist's traveling into the Deep South is clearly a reference to Selznick's "Gone With the Wind." Much has been made of the possibility that Tarantino is attempting with "Django' to reap a kind of cinematic payback upon that epic film and presumably other 'Golden Age of Hollywood"  tales of the Old South in which blacks were portrayed as simpletons and victims. This may be the case and Tarantino and modern directors are of course welcome to update that hoary genre at will. Yet, while "Django" is indeed a 'fun,' moderately cathartic revenge fantasy-take on slavery, it is also ultimately a fairly cold-hearted film, unlike "Gone with the Wind." Tarantino is tremendously talented, and I enjoy his films -- within limits. I do though eagerly await the moment when his output begins to show signs of genuine maturity, artistically and in the ability to explore the human condition with a stronger emphasis on compassion rather than cynicism. At least in "Django,' Tarantino has improved on a basic skill of mainstream film auteurs -- constructing mis en scene that is visually arresting, if ultimately in need of editing.

3) Buzz, Criticism, Tarantino's Comments: 


UPDATE:
After I posted this column, news emerged that a merchandising company had teamed up with the Weinstein Company, producer of "Django Unchained," to manufacture and sell 'action-figure' dolls based on the characters in the film.  My thoughts on that development were rounded up by columnist Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute, along with comments from other journalists and cultural critics.

As I said up top, lots of very smart people are chattering about "Django Unchained," with most of the heat apparently arising from Tarantino's decision to take on slavery. Part of the challenge -- and I say this with all due respect to my peers! -- is that academic experts in black studies are not necessarily experts on film, while film scholars are not usually known for their expertise on black American history. Thus, we've had a huge amount of teeth-gnashing in the media ecosystem about "Django Unchained," but not very much in the way of genuinely useful analysis.

Even so, a common  point of contention is the violence and surfeit of images showing Washington's character being whipped and of another slave character being ripped apart by dogs after attempting to escape.  These scenes are upsetting, although, yes, they are meant to be and they should be.  What is objectionable is Tarantino's decision to return to them gratuitously in the second and in the final reel.  The fact that the characters use the word 'nigger' with abandon does not bother me -- it is, after all, a story that unfolds in a era when that word was widely used.  What does rankle me is what appears to be the author's insistence that he deserves a pass on his continued appropriation on black pain (as we have endured it throughout the brutal physical abuse of the antebellum era and in the deep psychological and emotional scarring that has accumulated in the decades since thanks to Jim Crow laws, and more recently, persistent, low-grade racism that permeates American institutions including corporations, the law, and education.) Also, Tarantino does not get a 'ghetto-pass,' just because he grew up among blacks in Southern California, or because his mom 'dated Wilt Chamberlain," as he recently disclosed in an interview. I don't abide anyone using the word 'nigger' in conversation in my presence; and while Tarantino's film characters are obviously fictional, it is not acceptable that he apparently believes that he has earned a license to continuously deploy that word and that he seems to have the impression that by doing so he is diminishing its power.  I argued nearly a decade ago that there was something sick about the proliferation of the phrase 'ghetto-fabulous' in popular media and culture and this appropriation of the word 'nigger' by Tarantino or other artists -- black and white, truth be told -- is in the same category of outsized entitlement and general Dumb Assery.

Moreover, I find Tarantino's insistence that the gleeful depictions of over the top violence that he often highlights in his film are 'fun' to be terribly ill-considered.  Even Clint Eastwood -- who rightly caught lots of hell for the splatter-fests that distinguished his "Dirty Harry' films of the '70s and '80s -- eventually gave up the argument that such violence didn't have any negative impact on our national consciousness.  Eastwood grew out of such displays, likely in no small part because as he matured to fatherhood and grandfather-hood he could no longer justify producing films with the potential to negatively inform the behavior of individuals within his off-spring's cohort.

On January 2, Terry Gross, the veteran host of  NPR's "Fresh Air" published a riveting interview with Tarantino.  I am always rooting for artists, even those who produce high profile work that garners lots of press, generates high heat but which is often stubbornly flawed.  Tarantino, as I've said, is genuinely talented, and I root for his success. Yet his response to one of Gross's questions was very troubling: Gross asked if Tarantino ever considers the the possibility that the violence and brutality in his films may have any connection to or influence over the mass shootings that have increased in the U.S. in the past decade, in particular, the recent horror of 20 dead children and six dead teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Tarantino replies that he is 'annoyed' by such a question, and that even asking it is, 'insulting to the memory' of those who died at Sandy Hook Elementary.

If I were writing a script about a public figure who produces mass media designed to resonate with millions of viewers.....but who also denies that his product has lasting influence on any audience members, I would include a version of this interview.  It would take place in the beginning of the third reel, at the crucial moment when the protagonist finally receives profound enlightenment, matures, and finds the strength and maturity needed to infuse his mission with clarity of vision, the bright light of hope, and the beauty of compassion.

Must-See History: James Baldwin in San Francisco, 1963

Last week a silly "debate' over Olympic champion gymnast Gabby Douglas' hair dominated social media. Fortunately, by the weekend, the same social media network that so often exasperates me coughed up an unexpected jewel:

A 1963 documentary, "Take This Hammer,' featuring James Baldwin in San Francisco.

A Facebook friend, Darryl Cox, put the link on my Wall after I'd posted a story on gang violence in SF that I'd read in The San Francisco Chronicle. Cox, who had worked in city government in San Francisco decades ago, is an excellent source of contemporary black history on "the Paris of the West."

Cox told me that "Take This Hammer" had only aired once in San Francisco, in 1963, and that it had upset the powers that be in my hometown.

I watched it for the first time last week, on August 3 -- coincidentally, one day after what would have been Baldwin's 88th birthday.

It was produced by KQED on behalf of National Education Television, predecessor of WNET in New York.

In it, Baldwin is an expert interrogator of his subjects, black residents of San Francisco. He is physically small but armed with an alarmingly direct gaze, a fearsome intellect, and a sharp way of drawing out his subjects. The producer or director also made the wise decision to cut in excerpts of Baldwin talking directly to the camera, seated in what appears to be a tidy apartment, smoking, wearing a natty white shirt and neck-kerchief, and succinctly, somewhat dispassionately deconstructing his findings.

Among several pungent comments and observations by Baldwin, during the 44 minute long documentary:

-- "There will be a Negro president of this country, but he won't be president of the same nation we are sitting in now."

-- "The Liberal can't be safe and heroic too."

-- You cannot pretend you're not despised if you are."

I am greatly moved by this documentary. For starters, Baldwin is a literary and journalistic hero of mine. Second, as anyone who has read my opinion-writing during the past decade probably knows, I was born in San Francisco in 1963.

Growing up there, I felt a thrill of endless possibilities -- much as the techie-hipsters and financiers who currently throng its streets likely experience -- a pervasive sense of optimism aided in no small part by the city's spectacular vistas, cozy layout, sophisticated understatement. (Though a journalist friend, Tim Golden, once told me that he found the city and some of its denizens a mite 'precious' for his liking.)

My family was middle-class, we lived for a time in subsidized housing on Potrero Hill, then Bernal Heights, then in a tidy house on the West or 'ocean' side of the city, which my Mom bought. I attended well-funded public schools in the Sunset District and went to church camp in Sonoma County every summer. Only when I reached my mid-20s and entered the workforce in earnest did it occur to me that my race or gender might be features that could slow my professional development and possibly dampen my chances for a successful career. As a 1963 resident tells Baldwin in "Take this Hammer," no blacks had to fear a Bull Connor or a Klansman chasing them down the city's hilly inclines. But one might just be 'killed with a pencil," instead, in the city's corporate or retail workforce. My adult family-members all worked in government agencies, which offered job security and enforced meritocracy. There were few immediate role models for me as I made my entree to private industry -- the news business -- during and after college.

I outline that dynamic in greater detail in my current book, and acknowledge that the media business in the Bay Area -- such as it was in the 1980s when I came of age -- was and is a unique animal within the overall workforce in San Francisco. And now, of course, the media industry has been all but subsumed by the tech industry, and the population of black residents has been diminishing steadily since the early 1980s. Are native blacks who remain being employed at these shiny new enterprises? What do you think?

The sentiments expressed by the city's black residents who were interviewed by Baldwin in '63 -- particularly the young adult males who are frustrated over being shut out of the workforce -- are devastating....and familiar. I have watched this documentary three times since Darryl Cox shared it with me.

I am still processing "Take this Hammer" and will probably write about it again.

For now, I hope you find the time to watch it in full: I love my hometown but I hope you can forgive me if I am also a bit cynical about its legendary reputation as a citadel of social and economic egalitarianism.

"Take This Hammer" lives, by the way, at the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, which is housed at my alma mater, San Francisco State University. I believe it deserves a home, too, at the Paley Center in New York. Then again, as a black SF native and a Baldwin adherent, I am not exactly impartial about its historic significance.

Oh, and a viewing tip: Disable the captioning feature before watching.

Skyfalling off the Fiscal Cliff? Let's Blame Mommy!

Among many riveting elements to Javier Bardem's performance as "Mister Silva," the newest Bond villain, one stands out:  His resemblance to Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

The actor presents a powerful and coldly seductive figure in his role as 007's enemy. He is tanned, well-coiffed, handsomely turned out in tailored suits. His demeanor is silkily cruel, bemused, proudly debauched -- a decidedly Boehner-esque air.

"Mister Silva" is furious at a woman he refers to as "Mommy,' the head of the British Secret Service portrayed by Dame Judy Dench. There is little exposition in the film as to the exact source of his animosity toward Dench's character. Yet we begin to get the picture during a creepy, remarkable scene with Daniel Craig's Bond in which "Mister Silva" says that "M' has been a 'bad Mommy."  (The subtext during their exchange is chilling and perverse. In that sequence Bond is, in Mister Silva's twisted mind, a surrogate for 'M' aka "Mommy.")

This scene provides a glimpse at the full scope of Mister Silva's emotional turmoil.  As the plot unfolds, it is clear that Mister Silva believes that his future prospects have been crimped and that he blames Mommy.  The high-level cyber skills that he gained over the years in the line of duty are now focused laser-like on making Mommy pay.

I won't spoil it for those who haven't yet seen "Skyfall,' the spectacular fresh installment in the classic action-movie franchise.  But by the time the final credits rolled, the parallel was evident to me:
Mister Silva, a wickedly well-connected 'solopreneur,' is engaged in all-out sabotaging of Mommy,  hellbent on destroying  'M',  and her institutional counterpart, the British government.  We don't learn if Mister Silva's hatred of Mommy is misplaced or if it is a kind of psychological transference but it is clear that it has driven him to acting-out on an epic scale.

As is the case with Mister Silva, I suspect strongly that Boehner and his co-horts in the House have Mommy Issues.  Time and time again they have attempted to take us over the cliff in their overwhelming push to destroy the President, the Mommy figure in their Washington drama.

Early this year, some political reporters finally caught on to the sabotaging behavior of Boehner and his caucus; in August, the floodgates opened after Michael Grunwald's terrific book The New New Deal published.  Grunwald's research revealed the depraved depths of the Republican members' fury toward the president and the lengths at which they were prepared to go to destroy Barack Obama's agenda:

In early January [2009], the House Republican leadership team held a retreat an an Annapolis inn. Pete Sessions, the new campaign chair, opened his presentation with the political equivalent of an existential question: 'If the Purpose of the Majority is to Govern....What is Our Purpose?' Not to govern, that was for sure. His next slide provided the answer:  'The Purpose of the Minority is to Become the Majority.'  ....[snip]

Grunwald continues:

House Republicans were now an insurgency -- an 'entrepreneurial insurgency,' House Leader John Boehner declared -- and Sessions thought they could learn from the disruptive tactics of the Taliban. The key to success in this asymmetrical warfare, he argued, was to 'change the mindset of the [Republican] Conference to one of 'offense,' to take the fight to the enemy.


Well then. The blood-lust to destroy President Obama extended to undertaking 'Taliban tactics.' You have to be emotionally tone deaf not to think that there is much more beneath the surface of such a strategy.

As we also know, Boehner often betrays hints of Mommy Issues in settings not immediately tied to the President. He is famously weepy, choking up at the drop of a gavel. I am not saying that 'real men shouldn't cry.' I am pointing out that Boehner's blubberings during mentions of his youth as a working-class kid always have seemed to me weird and unhealthy -- a sign of unresolved personal issues of a kind that you'd hope a top elected official would have worked through by the time he reaches the apex of government leadership.  It makes it impossible to not conclude that President Obama --  the cool, fair-minded and somewhat effete leading authority figure of our American republic --  was during his first term sabotaged and under-mined by Boehner and a bunch of grown-up babies.

Now the re-election of President Obama has likely cast Boehner and his crew into paroxysms of fear, denial, anger and all the related stages of grief.  We await more messy fallout, even while we understand that the math is no longer in their favor:  Between America's fast-changing ethnic demographics that will likely result in many conservative House members being shown the door in the coming years, to the current party makeup of Congress, all the tears in the world aren't likely to get the GOP members any closer to their destructive end game.

Matthew Yglesias of Slate recently invoked another cinematic figure to encapsulate this new reality:

Remember the famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones faces off against a guy who unsheathes a scimitar and wows the audience with his fancy swordsmanship--only to get shot in the chest by Indy? The swordsman—that’s House Speaker John Boehner right now on the Bush tax cuts. Whether it’s out of deference to the office, eagerness to have an interesting story to write about, or plain gullibility, every congressional reporter in town is now dutifully reporting on his negotiating strategy. But this fight is over. Boehner has brought a knife to a gunfight, only nobody seems to have told anyone in the conservative movement.

I can only imagine how Boehner and his crew reacted to the now-famous video clip of the president's tearful address to his campaign workers in Chicago in the hours after winning re-election:  Despite all the manipulations, tantrums, episodes of holding their breath until they turned beet red or Democrats passed out, Boehner and his crew had not toppled the President. And not only did President Obama prevail on Nov. 6, he had the nerve to turn up in Chicago,  that den of socialist iniquity, to laud the over-entitled Next Gen minions who had, with their digital sleights of hand and shady statistical hoodwink-ery, helped re-elect him. And in a final insult, the President actually shed tears as he addressed his troops. The outrage:  Tears and emotional button-pushing have been the handiest arrows in Boehner's quiver and now here was the President using them!

It is worth pointing out (and not only because I support POTUS and the policies he is attempting to save and/or implement) that the President's emotional moment in front of that campaign staff seemed to me a healthy emotional expression: He was likely exhausted, relieved and genuinely touched by knowing that the young workers who had devoted nearly two years to the effort had succeeded.  It stands in marked contrast to Boehner's weepy outbursts; I am not being cruel to say again that they strongly hint at the presence of something that is unresolved and eating at Boehner's insides.

Before now, the stubborn obstruction from Boehner & Company struck me as purely political and rooted in a craven devotion to the corporations who fund their campaigns.  Racism, too,  is probably baked into their obstruction.  Yet now, thanks to Mister Silver, I see that the Blame Mommy factor appeared to be the strongest impetus in their insane quest.

Now that President Obama is ensconced for another term, it will be fascinating to see if Boehner continues a scorched earth campaign or if he and his caucus at last seek appropriate help for whatever really ails them. We sincerely hope against hope that they don't suffer the same fate as Mister Silva: Ultimately self-destructing but leaving Bond and Mother England ready to fight another day. 

The Only Presidential Debate Schott I Want to Hear

That Frank Bruni got the drop on me with a New York Times Sunday column outlining his Wish List for the presidential debate: President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, the GOP nominee for the presidency, should emphasize during tonight's televised debate the idea that more Americans must be willing to sacrifice.

At The Nation and other partisan news outlets, similar requests/demands have since been posted, too.

Here is my fervent wish for what the incumbent Democratic candidate and Governor Mitt Romney spend time on in tonight's debate:

How about a robust back and forth over the achievement and graduation rate gap that exists between black and Latino boys in public schools and their white counterparts?

The Schott Foundation recently released a big report on black and Latino boys and graduation rates at public secondary schools in the United States.  Quite dramatically it is titled "The Urgency of Now," and it looks at graduation rates for these populations in all fifty states.  Its findings were reported by NPR and other major news outlets, which means that it should not have escaped the education policy folks in the Obama and Romney camps.

So will this topic emerge in tonight's debate?  Or will both candidates stick to spewing boilerplate language about student loan debts in higher education? About the need for our education systems to remain 'competitive' in the global landscape?

If the conversation excludes early child development, primary and secondary schools in America, it will be next to worthless.  On this I am nonpartisan.

Last week the American Federation of Children - a Michelle Rhee-friendly, charter school oriented advocacy group --  sent a note to debate organizers and to Jim Lehrer of PBS, who is scheduled to moderate.  It reads in part:

After the economy, education ranks as a top priority for voters, and in particular, Latino voters. As president, how would you ensure that all children – regardless of their parent’s income or ZIP code – are afforded the opportunity to attend a quality school?


The jacked up status of America's public primary and secondary educational system is the one area where I can usually find common ground with conservatives. More honesty?  I am exhausted on too many levels by the Administration's stasis on this topic.  I was touched when President Obama said he felt as if Trayvon Martin could have been his own son.  But what if anything does he feel about the millions of young black men -- POTUS lookalikes or no -- who are being consigned to the prison-pipeline thanks to failing public schools in America?

I live in the real world. It is a place where my son (born of college-educated, middle-class African-American parents) struggles daily, even within a public school system that is one of the best in the nation.  For a few reasons, I can't at this time outline the many contradictions, nuances, benefits and drawbacks of this. But even with my resources and know-how, the challenges are many; these challenges also are rooted in systems, values and economic realities that often prove to be beyond my capacity to ameliorate.

 Until our political 'leaders' make a sincere effort to find solutions to long-standing economic, cultural and political factors that enable this growing graduation rate disparity, it won't change.  A good way to start, at least, would be to acknowledge during these debates that we have a problem, and that the future of our republic is tied inextricably to resolving them -- or not.