Black and White Americans Search for Authenticity. . . Separately, of Course

There is a considerable body of scholarly literature from a number of academic traditions addressing the concept of authenticity. This is not an appropriate space to parse the differences or in the ways intellectuals from different areas discuss authenticity, but the idea is relevant to the discussion of THIS WEEK’s events.

Chicago Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice thoughtfully addressed a topic that we tackled last week: Congressman Bobby Rush and would-be Senator Roland Burris’s allegations that failure to seat Burris as Obama’s successor in the Senate smacked of racism. The argument is leveled against members of the U.S. Senate (all of whom are now White), as well as Barack Obama and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, both of whom are African American and both of whom have argued that Burris should not be seated under these circumstances. Trice nicely captures a dynamic that we first formally identified in 2005 when she asks: “What does it mean to be authentically black?”

It is a question that surfaced in the 2002 and 2004 Democratic primary races between Artur Davis and Earl Hilliard in Alabama and between Cynthia McKinney and Denise Majette in Georgia in 2004. Most famously, the battle for major of Newark, New Jersey between Cory Booker and Sharpe James (2002), as documented in Marshall Curry's excellent film Street Fight, featured questions about whether a lighter skinned, ivy-league educated, Generation X African American could adequately represent the interests of “real” Black people.

Trice points out that this is not the first time Rush has implied that he is “Blacker” than his political opponents. When Barack Obama challenged Rush for his Congressional seat in the 2000 Democratic primary, a similar theme emerged. Trice implies what we argued last week: Rush is contributing to a racist view of African Americans with such rhetoric.

These questions of authenticity amount to a self-stereotyping that is particularly dangerous because, as Trice notes, it places African Americans – particularly Black men – in a box that was constructed by White supremacy. She cleverly asks why a (negative) image of Black men is not only reinforced but perpetuated by Black leaders when the behavior of the White men whose behavior has resulted in the current recession has not resulted in questions about the inherent nature of White men to be involved in harmful, criminal behavior.

The answer is revealed, in part, by a new piece of scholarship published in the journal Science. Dedicated TWIR reader Jessica Nelson brought to our attention a report of this piece by CNN, where the study’s authors claim, “there are still really a lot of negative associations with blacks.” Their proof: an experiment where Whites were placed in situations where explicitly and implicitly racist activity occurs. Results are consistent with our findings, as well as that of other researchers: participants underreport their own levels of racism.

Authenticity is, in short, the way that individuals consciously view themselves compared to who they really are. (If you do not think there is a difference, you are either very mindful and reflective, or, more likely, you are being inauthentic.)

To understand this, it is helpful to conceptualize a three-part hierarchy of thought (adapted from the work of Milton Rokeach) with “values” at the base and “attitudes” on top, with “beliefs” in the center. Values are farthest from our consciousness most of the time and, accordingly, are least susceptible to challenges and change. Attitudes are our conscious thoughts, which we allow to be challenged routinely. Even the most steadfast of our attitudes are more susceptible to change than our values. Between our values and our attitudes lie “beliefs.”

They key differentiation between attitudes on the one hand and values and beliefs on the other is consciousness. Stereotypes live at the belief level. Think about it: few people have core values that involve prejudice. Quite to the contrary, most humans share common core values such as justice, equality, fairness and honesty. At the (conscious) attitudinal level, fewer and fewer people express racial prejudice. So when experiments like the one reported THIS WEEK – or the ongoing Implicit Associations work at Harvard – find discriminatory behaviors and thoughts, they are being driven by information that is stored at the belief level, which is below our consciousness unless and until a stimulus triggers them.

We have found that our students are particularly resistant to understanding elements of thought that involve the subconscious. They believe that they are completely in charge of what they think all of the time – no one can fool them. But, of course, there is a multi-billion dollar industry (in the U.S. alone) that is predicated on being able to affect people’s behavior without them consciously processing information. It is called advertising. If a beer company said, “Look folks, if you drink our beer, you will probably be able to hang around with attractive people, and you will be more attractive yourself,” we would reject the message as absurd. Instead, the prompt us with images to that effect that activate desires that reside below our level of consciousness.

Crucial to understanding authenticity is the notion of self-deception. We deceive ourselves when we refuse to reflect upon the gaps that exist between who we (really) are and who we think we are. When we self-deceive, we cannot feel at ease, which is why it is often those who demonstrate the highest levels of implicit prejudice who are the most adamant about their lack of racial resentment or animosity.

Our lives are filled with countless choices as we exercise free will. If we are not choosing authentically (basing our choices on what we know to be right and wrong, not what is easier or the way we wish it were), we are not really taking responsibility for the freedom that we have. We are deceiving ourselves and being inauthentic. Existentially-oriented psychologists differentiate between passive volition, where we allow ourselves permission to not challenge these inconsistencies (which is often a healthy mental state if not allowed to continue indefinitely) and active volition, where we engage in reflectivity that is designed to lead to higher levels of authenticity.

As we argue often in this space, we must embrace our racism -- collectively and individually -- so that we can work to dismantle the system that has socialized us into adopting racist beliefs. If we differentiate between racism (systemic preferences for Whites and the resulting beliefs consistent therewith among those socialized in such systems) and bigotry (the attitudinal-level hatred or preference for one race over another), we move much closer to authentically making progress toward more racial equality. To the extent that we collectively engage in inauthentic behavior, we at once prolong such progress, reinforce the beliefs that are the manifestation of a racist system, and perpetuate the beliefs that allow the inequality to continue.

On NBC's Meet the Press this morning, comedian and activist Bill Cosby and his coauthor, Dr. Alvin Pouissaint (Come On, People) discussed what Obama’s election might mean to Black Americans. When David Gregory asked Cosby what he expects of the new president, Cosby responded as follows:

I believe he's, he's asking us to be honest. I believe he's asking us to look around and see in all honesty what we can do and what makes sense as opposed to what will go into our pockets or make us feel good or who we can punish according to our religion. I think it's time for all of us to, to do things in terms of community, to stop worrying about what other people think of us and, and just go right on in and begin to talk to our youngsters about correct choices, to not be afraid to, to challenge them and be honest with them and, and, and to not be afraid to just stand and, and work with him and think that we're working with him to make change and choices and challenge.

What Cosby is referring to here, clearly, is that he believes Obama is asking us to be authentic. He is absolutely correct. In fact, later in the broadcast, there was discussion about Obama’s call to Black families to parent more mindfully (which is a major argument in Come On, People).

Gregory replayed the speech from last Father’s Day where Obama made the remarks:

If we're honest with ourselves, we'll admit that too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They've abandoned their responsibilities, they're acting like boys instead of men, and the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent houses. Half. A number that's doubled since we were children.

When Obama says “if we’re honest with ourselves,” it is the same as saying “if we’re being authentic.” He is asking us to examine the degree to which what we think we are doing matches what we are really doing. As Cosby asserts, Obama is asking all Americans to be authentic.
Yet both Barack Obama and Bill Cosby have been accused of being inauthenticly Black because they have not toed the line of the Baby Boomer generation Black leaders. Michael Eric Dyson has a thoughtful, controversial book that directly addresses Cosby’s admonitions to young Black males. Jesse Jackson was caught making derogatory comments about Obama because of this Father’s Day speech.



In the January 2009 “The Meaning of Life” (quite existential in its own right) issue of Esquire magazine, Jackson provides this somewhat cryptic comment in an expanded version of the monthly “What I’ve Learned” series: “People are screaming for the running back who scored the touchdown. But the lineman knows how he got there” (p. 108).

There is a suggestion that Obama (the running back) does not know how he got there. It is possible that the Jacksons and Rushes feel as if their contributions are simply not being recognized. It is possible that they are resentful for paving the way and not achieving the success or accolades they feel are due to them. And it is possible that they sincerely feel betrayed by the new generation of Black leaders – that they feel as if the identity politics that they (we believe correctly) recognize as crucial to the realization of the dream of equality is being eschewed in favor of a more “mainstream” (read, White) realpolitik. (Jackson includes a comment regarding the “cut [Obama's] nuts off” statement, as well.)

One particularly disturbing aspect of Trice’s column is her report that Chip Saltsman, the chair of the Republican Party of Tennessee who is seeking chairmanship of the national Party, sent a CD with the racist song “Barack the Magic Negro” to supporters. Trice alerts us to the fact that

[i]n cinematic terms, the "Magic Negro," is a character who's just "white enough" in that he's neither violent, threatening nor hypersexual. His primary function is to save the white protagonist and assuage "white guilt." Think: Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith.

While it is, of course, perfectly appropriate for Whites to comment on and be critical of the policies of Black officials and the acceptability of Black candidates, Whites have absolutely no seat at the table for this discussion of Black authenticity. It is a symbolic extension of colonialism and White privilege for Whites to presume that there is any contribution to be made to this discussion.

Whites have their own issues of authenticity with which to struggle, and they are not unrelated to the belief that Black folks cannot sort out their own disagreements without assistance from Whites. It is a direct result of racism that Black folks are wrestling with these issues; recognizing that is a big step toward making sure that future generations of Black Americans do not find themselves having these same conversations.

Jillian Maynard Caliendo, a doctoral student at the Adler School of Professional Psychology contributed to this blog.



Note: Stephen will appear with Dawn Turner Trice at a forum entitled "Race and Politics in the Blogosphere" at North Central College's Koten Chapel at noon on Wednesday, January 14 as part of the College's Martin Luther King Week activities. For other appearances by Stephen and Charlton, bookmark the RaceProject.org "appearances" page, which is updated as new dates are confirmed.

Three Mexicans Walk Into a Bar. . .

Ok, that’s not the sort of racial humor we’re into, but we did decide to keep the blog super light THIS WEEK. After months and months of bringing you disturbing examples of American bigotry and racism, we offer some fun.

It’s important that we understand exactly why the items we include below are funny and why we are comfortable putting them forth in this space. First, while we are quite far from achieving racial equality or eliminating racial prejudice in America, there is certainly cause for celebration after white voters did not succumb to deep-seated resentment at the level that we expected on Election Day. So we’re giving ourselves permission to chill out a bit. A second (related) point is that we laugh with full knowledge that the ugly reality that undergirds each of these pieces is waiting for all of us on the other side of the joke. Barack Obama’s presidency will have a gigantic net favorable impact on race relations in America over the long term. But in the short term, there will be a level of psychological divisiveness with respect to race that we have not seen in decades.

Consider, for instance, this quote by Republican U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, who sought reelection this year. Because Georgia (wisely, we feel) requires a majority of votes for electoral victory (as opposed to a mere plurality), Chambliss will face Democrat Jim Martin in a runoff election next month. When asked on Fox News’s Hannity & Colmes (watch the clip below) why he wasn’t able to secure an outright majority on Election Day, Chambliss had this to say:

There was a high percentage of minority vote, and I am tickled to death that as many Georgians as did examined their right to vote. That’s what make our election process the envy of the whole free world, but we weren’t able to get enough of our folks out on Election Day.

All-righty then.

Chambliss could certainly have been referring to Republicans or simply to his own supporters when he referenced “our folks,” but given the proximity to his acknowledgement about the high number of minority voters in Georgia, it is clear that he was distinguishing “our folks” from minorities. We will certainly see much more of this “us versus them” mindset rise to the surface over the coming months. For our part, we will be examining the extent to which Whites strive to avoid or combat that tendency publicly. (Thanks to loyal TWIR reader Dr. Kevan Yenerall for forwarding this story to us.)




Daily Dose of Humor

Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart has not been afraid of highlighting race as an issue in the aftermath of Obama’s victory anymore than he was during the campaign. In the days since the election, The Daily Show crew has offered a number of hilarious takes on what it means to have the first Black president.

Black Liberal Guilt
The Daily Show’s Senior Black Correspondent Larry Wilmore is deadpan in his admission that not only are Whites and Blacks are “square,” but that the real lesson to be learned from Obama’s win is that interracial relationships benefit everyone. But when he turns his attention to the ways so many White progressives have allowed their concern for racial inequality to be manifest in condescension, he hits the proverbial nail quite uncomfortably on the head. Take a look:



Takin’ It to the Streets
Race Project research assistant Sidra Hamidi alerted us to this Daily Show tidbit from earlier in the week. Here, Stewart points out the unfortunate comparison made by CNN’s affable correspondent Jeanne Moos as she reported on Obama’s motorcade’s trip to Washington, DC. If McCain would have won the election, her reference to O.J. Simpson as the helicopter cameras followed the SUVs would not have caught our (or Stewart’s) attention. As it happens, however. . .
(The relevant section begins at about the 4:45 mark of this video.)



“But It’s Different”
If The Daily Show writers were quick to point their mocking little fingers at patronizing Whites through Larry Wilmore’s commentary (above), they were even more hostile (appropriately so, in our view) toward African Americans who voted to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples in California. The dynamic of “oppressee becoming oppressor” is not new, of course: ethnic minorities from Western Europe were among the most openly bigoted against Blacks in the first half of the 20th century as the former began to assimilate into the mainstream of American social and economic (if not yet political) life. After being granted suffrage, White women did not uniformly turn their attention toward rectifying the ills of racial oppression, and Black churches have long featured some of the most homophobic attitudes in America. The cruel reality of anti-gay bigotry is highlighted, though, by the suggestion that one of the reasons Proposition 8 passed was because of the increased turnout of African Americans to the polls so that they could signal a defeat of one form of oppression (electing the first Black president), only to participate in another. Watch here to see Stewart’s comic outrage:




Fear of a Black President (1980s version)

Finally, the folks at Gawker.com cleverly posted this video of Eddie Murphy from 1983 (you remember Delirious, right – the red leather suit?) joking about the first Black president (after he referred to Chicago’s first and still only Black mayor, Harold Washington, as “that boy”). Murphy joked (watch below) that Jesse Jackson could win because White people (who might even get drunk before heading to the polls) like to vote for the “wrong” person as a “goof.” Of course, as the folks at Gawker point out, a good piece of the “humor”in this bit is the reality of how many people would be interested in assassinating the first Black president. It’s a sobering thought, of course, but as is the case with all great comics (and Murphy in his prime was certainly among the greatest), we are encouraged to soothe our fears with a good laugh now and again.



Consider, also, this Richard Pryor skit about the first Black president. In it, he notes that one of his priorities is to have more Black quarterbacks in the NFL, as well as more Black coaches and team owners. While there has been a proliferation of Black NFL quarterbacks in the past decade and the number of Black head coaches has risen slowly (the 10th Black head coach in NFL history assumed control of his team last month), there are still no Black owners. Further, a report released THIS WEEK shows that the number of African American head coaches in Division I-A college football is at its lowest point in 15 years (only four of the 119 schools have a Black head coach; nearly half of the players are Black).



Perhaps the most prescient element in Pryor’s routine, though, is the suggestion that the first Black president will use that position to “court White women.” Not only does this humor strike hard against the now-unspoken concern, which runs back to the arrival of the first slave ships, that Black men are looking to “violate” White women (perhaps Chambliss would refer to them as “our White women?”), but it brings us full circle from the first comedic piece we posted (above), where Larry Wilmore joked that Obama’s victory was partly the result of Obama’s Black father having “hooked up” with a White woman. It also reminds us about how the Republican National Committee played on resentments of Black men being intimate with White women in its discraceful 2006 attack ad against Harold Ford, Jr. in his bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate from Tennessee. Click the photo below to view the ad.


Of course, at the end of Pryor’s piece, the president attacks a reporter for talking about his mama. We’re going to go out on a limb and advise you not hold your breath waiting for that to happen in Barack Obama’s White House.


Major Overhaul of RaceProject.org

Many of you have already heard via Facebook or a direct email from one of us (or both of us – sorry if that was you!), but we want to be sure that everyone is aware of the massive revisions that have been made to the website home of The Project on Race in Political Communication. The full list of updates is too lengthy to print here, but it includes:

• a greatly expanded “resources” page
• detailed information about booking one or both of us for an appearance
• an updated “press room” with links to our print and broadcast appearances and an updated “studies and data” page with links to our publications and scholarly presentations
• more biographical information than you can imagine (or want) for each of us
• a video archive of some classic and contemporary clips relating to race and politics
• some nifty bells and whistles like the addition of a RaceProject “favicon” so that when you bookmark or navigate to RaceProject.org or TWIR, you’ll see the RaceProject logo in the navigation tab and address bar of your browser. (Look up now – is it there? If not, you may have to clear your cache and restart your browser to get the full effect.)

Please be sure to bookmark or favorite RaceProject.org so that you remember to check back for updates. As always, the best way to stay updated is to join our Facebook Group and maintain your email subscription or RSS feed to TWIR.

Can't Beat This "View"

The women from ABC’s “The View” are on our radar again THIS WEEK (we have commented on their discussions previously). The timely bloggers are all over this, and most of them have it right on. For more, we suggest you read Carmen Dixon’s astute take at Black Voices, as well as the reader comments from Jonathan Adams’s post at Race Wire (as always, some comments are more sophisticated than others).



This is all a response to an episode two weeks ago (see video below) where Rev. Jesse Jackson was caught criticizing Barack Obama’s campaign rhetoric toward African Americans (has he been dining with Ralph Nader or what?!). A few days after the tape was aired on Fox News, reports surfaced that on a different part of the tape, Jackson used the n-word (not directed at Obama) – a word he has vociferously condemned throughout the latter part of his career.



We will try to add a bit to this conversation.

What’s most interesting to us is Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s adamant statement that we “live in one world,” with Whoopi Goldberg responding vehemently that we do not. This is an excellent illustration of the unfortunate legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the eyes of white Americans. We believe that Hasselbeck, like most white Americans today, is sincere when she indicates that she wishes for one world. Hasselbeck is not a bigot; she is, however, racist, but like most whites (progressive or conservative), refuses to admit it. Goldberg used the word “understand” multiple times during the exchange.

What Goldberg may fail to understand – and what Hasselbeck certainly fails to acknowledge – is that it is very, very difficult for whites to understand systemic racism. Whites have lived in a world where their skin color has not been perceived as a negative characteristic. Stereotypes of whites have not served to keep them in disproportionate poverty, and to lead to disproportionate levels of illiteracy, incarceration or unemployment. In short, race really doesn’t matter to whites, and they believe (like nearly everyone) that it shouldn’t matter.

Hasselbeck’s tears were real, and they are of real concern, not because she has a huge audience for her ignorance every weekday, but because she represents the feelings of many white Americans, whether they subscribe to the rest of her conservative political views or not.

We are bound by the limits of our consciousness, and without the lived experience that being a racial minority provides, combined with our broader culture’s incessant focus on the American myth of individualism and equal opportunity, it truly is very difficult for whites to understand.

This is reflected in a recent CNN story that an Obama presidency could make things worse for African Americans. The story (with extensive quotes from RaceProject friend Dr. Andra Gillespie), notes that Obama’s election (and we would argue, his nomination, irrespective of whether he goes on to win) will serve as a signal to white Americans that the barriers of systemic racism have been exaggerated.

If we consider this in combination with a New York Times / CBS poll that was released last week, which showed that Obama’s candidacy is not closing the racial divide, we can envision an Obama administration that will likely attempt to address systemic racism with policies, but will have to work hard to overcome the attitudinal barriers that have been (and will be) solidified by the historic occasion.

That’s okay with us. For those who think that public policy cannot move social justice forward, we need only look at the historic Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case, which failed to integrate public schools (our schools are more racially segregated now than they were in 1954), but effectively provided “mainstream” (white) legitimacy to a movement that would bring about meaningful change for African Americans.

It is clear that electing Obama would not be a solution to racial inequality, but it may, over time, help Elisabeth Hasselbeck to figure out why a lot of African Americans are okay with saying the n-word, even though they do not want whites to say it.

For more on the “n-word” issue, watch our public debate, or visit Stephen’s YouTube channel.

Thanks to loyal readers Sunny Sunbir and Dr. Michele Ramsey for helpful tips as we constructed this week’s blog.