Teaching Tool: The Advantages and Limitations of a Race-Themed Political Cartoon

Humor can be an effective vehicle for delivering a serious message. Whether it is in the form of satire, parody or simple ridicule, the most powerful statements are sometimes delivered in a way that makes us laugh before we think.

On the RaceProject Facebook page THIS WEEK, we reposted (from a tweet from SocProf) a link to a book review that contains a political cartoon by Barry Deutsch titled "A Concise History of Black-White Relations in the United States." It is a simple, six-panel strip that conveys a clear, accurate message of contemporary misunderstandings about White privilege and progressive strategies for achieving racial justice. But, as we note in this space every week, these issues are never as simple as they seem. We offer a "concise" analysis of the advantages and limitations of using this cartoon in the classroom to help students understand the complex history of Black-White relations in the United States.


Advantages

The primary advantage of using humor is that it can be disarming. More and more teachers are using clips from Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show or The Colbert Report to stimulate conversation about current events. Students like to laugh, and they appreciate when teachers deviate from the course readings. So the first advantage is that a comic strip can get students to pay attention and to be engaged.

Substantively, there are several advantages, as well. The strip is an accurate overview of American history in this regard: Slavery was a way for Whites to gain advantage disproportionate to what they could have without it (panes 1 through 3), African Americans fought hard for legal emancipation and won it (pane 4), Whites feel guilty about slavery and the history of oppression and are (genuinely) sorry about it (pane 5), and many Whites are reluctant to support any effort to rectify those past wrongs that involves violation of the meritocracy principle (pane 6).

The final pane actually contains two narratives. The first centers on the refusal to embrace approaches that involve a perceived disadvantage to Whites, but the smaller image and print in the lower right-hand corner of the pane invokes the idea that Whites' view these issues as being individualistic rather than systemic. The White character says "[I]f I got up here myself, why can't you?," even though it was only a few panes ago (seconds in the time that it takes someone to read the strip) that he 1) clearly does not get up there himself (panes 1 through 4) and 2) acknowledges as much with his apology (pane 5). This friction between fact and myth is an advantage in the classroom because it forces students to confront the reasons behind the character's social amnesia and the degree to which it accurately reflects the reality of Black-White relations in the United States today.

Limitations

For all its benefits, Deutsch would likely admit that there are dangers to this. After all, part of the reason that the humor works is that it is patently silly to believe that such a simple story can accurately capture the nuance of 400 years of history. By titling the strip "A Concise History. . ." the artist is giving us a wink, acknowledging that while there is nothing substantively astray here overall, it is a deliberate, recognized oversimplification.

That oversimplification will be recognized by sophisticated, thoughtful readers, but it may be lost on folks who do not have a strong knowledge base with respect to the complexities of race relations in America. If one believes, for instance, that "racism" ended with the signing of the landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s, that Brown v. the Board of Education integrated public schools in the U.S., and that affirmative action means quotas, this cartoon is unlikely to be an effective tool to combat those inaccuracies.

The "problem" is not solvable because the core of the limitation is also central to the strip's advantages. That is, by allowing individual characters to stand in for power systems, the artist is able to simply and effectively capture the reality of race relations while he intentionally fundamentally misrepresents the problem in a way that is likely to perpetuate it.

As is indicated in the final exchange in pane 6, Deutsch clearly understands that Whites' insistence on personalization is foolish because it decontextualizes the issue. The White character is the foil because he either refuses to or is unable to recognize that he has benefited from racism and continues to do so by opposing an action that would help to make things more fair (helping the Black man whom he used to gain his advantage). Because the strip accelerates history, the same characters appear in all six panes to reflect a time period, which, in reality, spans generations. White students will likely (and appropriately) note that while they may be the White character in the final pane, their situation is different because unlike the character, they were not present in the first four panes (the familiar "I never owned a slave" defense). They might argue that they arrived in the fifth pane, in fact, which shows that their entire lives have been spent feeling guilty about and "apologizing" for America's racist history.

The truth, of course, is that Whites who are living today have very much been present in those first few panes in some ways. While there has not been formal slavery of African Americans (of the kind depicted by the ball and chain) in our lifetime, Whites as a group are provided a "lift up" on the backs of persons of color. But that lift is not visible, it is not universally true on an individual basis, it is certainly not literal, and most Whites do not feel as if such a statement is accurate at all. Indeed, it takes a lot of reading, thinking and guidance for most Whites to understand the power and pervasiveness of the relatively invisible concept of White privilege. It is likely impossible for that story to be understood through a "concise" narrative of any kind.

The Black character in the strip is sympathetic; the White character is not. In the meta-narrative of race relations, this is probably fair, but at the individual level, it certainly is not. Individual White people have not, on the whole, acted in ways that are detrimental to Blacks. They do not consciously refuse to accept responsibility for their privilege and, it should be noted, are not directly responsible for that privilege the way that the White character in the strip is. In short, while the White character in the strip was aware of what he was doing when he took advantage of privilege and then adds insult to injury by not rectifying the situation once he realized it was inappropriate, the lived experiences of White individuals in America today cannot be captured by that dynamic.

There is a great deal of defensiveness on the part of Whites to any suggestion to the contrary, and this strip may evoke those feelings in Whites who encounter it. As those who are involved in the struggle for social justice know all too well, cutting through folks' defenses is a fundamental step toward consciousness raising.

The Verdict

We think that the advantages of this strip outweigh the limitations for college-age students (adults), which is the population with which we work. Because it can stimulate discussion and help to generate the type of analysis that we briefly offer here, we think it is a good way to explore some of the underlying constructs that hide below the surface of our contemporary political discourse on race.

On the other hand, we would be concerned about this strip being included in learning materials without the benefit critical discussion led by someone who has a sophisticated understanding of these issues. Under those circumstances, there is danger of misunderstanding the artist's intent and of a perpetuation of myths about the centrality of individualism in race relations in America.

As always, we look forward to your thoughts. What is the overall usefulness of a cartoon like this to help students to understand concepts such as White privilege, systemic power and hegemony? We especially want to hear from elementary school teachers and secondary education teachers: Is this appropriate for your classes? What advantages and limitations are these contexts?

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.