I’m a suburban white boy. I grew up without any minorities anywhere near where I lived. My parents emphasized that we were supposed to judge how we treat people based on how they act, not what they look like. My father was a good, decent man who treated everybody who came into his orbit fairly.
My father also campaigned vigorously for Gov. Wallace for President when I was a child and LOVED Ronald Reagan. My mother is descended from transplanted Europeans (French and German) and the Lakota they married.
So, as you can guess, I have a complicated relationship with the issue of race.
I think I’ve resolved this problem, as I’ve detailed in the past, by becoming a devout misanthrope. Start with a baseline expecting to be disappointed by everybody, then there is nowhere to go but up.
Like a lot of white boys of a certain age, I LOVE the blues. There is a certain frisson, a certain self-satisfaction, that many of us got from being “open minded” and embracing old blues and rhythm-and-blues music. We LOVED black people, were proud of how WE supported the work of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and others when they had gone past their time within their own communities, when the music business no longer needed to bleed the market for “race records”. While one can appreciate that the Rolling Stones and other English bands had championed the blues revival of the late sixties, early seventies out of a genuine appreciation for the ART of that music, we must face that much of it was the thrill that we got from embracing the “primitive”. The same thing happened not long ago with the neo-primitive movement in the late nineties, the growth of Fat Possum Records and the whole idea that pose mattered more than musical prowess, that bands like Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were nothing more than an updated version of the Stones, faux primitivism, white boys aping their idea of juke joint musicians.
We won’t talk about this stuff. We won’t face our complicated history of dealing with our racial differences, our exploitation of each other, ESPECIALLY not the exploitation of black bodies, black creativity, black art, black heart and blood and … black EXPERIENCE.
I’m so fucking sick of the differences, and the exploitation. It would be so easy to say “fuck you” to our entire culture.
Take the outrage being expressed over the latest season of Survivor in many places. I can see where those concerns are coming from. It’s dangerous to risk opening these wounds, as so much evil has been built on these separations. I’m with Heather Havrilesky when it comes to THIS little moment in low pop culture, and no it’s NOT all that different from the way the music business suckled these differences dry:
So, let’s summarize, shall we? The white people grab the most loot, some of it out of the hands of members of one of the other tribes, sum it up as “kicking ass,” then squander the pilfered loot, blame one another, and the two hottest tribe members pair up. Next week, we can only assume the hot couple will sharpen some sticks and gang up on the big one named Piggy. Is this really “Survivor,” or some kind of ominous fable depicting the rise and fall of Western civilization?
But of course, it’s incredibly racist to say so, isn’t it? And God forbid we declare the white team a bunch of greedy honkies. Right? Because if we made similar statements about the African-American team, we’d sound just like Rush Limbaugh. Or am I allowed to generalize about white people, since I’m white, just like the Asians and African-Americans and Hispanics on the show generalize about their own races? What are the rules again? Almost immediately we’re anxious to extract ourselves from this sticky mess, pretend to be above it, pretend it’s just a TV show pandering for ratings, pretend that it’s irrelevant or crass or nasty, but most of all, we, in all of our enlightened glory, are utterly above such small-minded pap.
Or are we? However crass and deplorable “Survivor’s” new season may seem, no matter how many times we’re told that the editors or producers or the host is pumping up the hype or straining to tell stories about race, let’s just review what they’re actually doing: merely separating groups by race. You might remember that process from your own life, you know, when you refused to shop at the Mexican grocery store right around the corner, opting for the Vons more than a mile away, or when you neglected to give a second glance to any of that bargain-priced property on the black side of town? As Americans, we separate ourselves by race all the time — this is what makes Stephen Colbert’s repeated assertion that he doesn’t see race so funny: Everyone sees race, and not only that, we act on it, despite our best intentions. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us more enlightened; it just keeps us all in the dark. […]
“Survivor: Cook Islands” may not be some groundbreaking social experiment, but it is interesting, and anyone who says otherwise is taking pains to sidestep the stickiness of it all. Sure, there’ll still be the same old boring physical challenges and repetitive puzzles to solve, and the same old conflicts between individuals with clashing personalities — it’s just a reality show, after all, one that’s been around for years now. And yes, viewers at home will jump to conclusions about black people and white people and Asians based on everything they see — but they’re doing that anyway, aren’t they? What reality show hasn’t created its own Omarosa, either through casting directors in search of serious personality disorders and racial stereotypes or through merciless editing? By comparison, “Survivor’s” premise seems relatively benign. Merely opening up the question of race doesn’t encourage racism, and it doesn’t make people any more racist than they already are. Like Hurricane Katrina, it exposes those attitudes, assumptions and misconceptions that lurk beneath the surface. It’s not always pretty, of course, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t benefit from taking a closer look.
We are ruled by a political party that exploits racial hatred with relish, yet it is a TV show that garners outrage. We’re so disconnected from the idea that we can use politics to engage with each other that it is only by arguing about TV or music that we can even deal with these problems. While our complicated history of running away from our country’s exploitation of blacks is something that we eagerly avoid, so many in our country, including African Americans, fan the flames of hatred toward illegal immigrants, toward Latin Americans, toward Muslim Americans. We pass along these un-dealt-with issues into new imprecations, new hatreds.
It’s so damned hard to write about this without sounding sanctimonious, without owning up to the way that our culture soaks into all of us. As someone who enjoyed the advantages of of being my father’s son, while NOT having grown up in my mother’s reservation, it feels a little WRONG to even raise these issues. Who the hell am I, someone who hasn’t paid the price for this history? When I went through my recent unemployment, the little “ins” that my pasty-faced, college-educated life gave me to survive my brush with economic oblivion leave me feeling a little hypocritical TALKING about this.
However, it’s the lack of talking that is killing us.
Who knows? Are we too far gone to find common ground, to be honest about these problems?
I don’t know. Let me know what you think. As it is music that has informed so much of my understanding of the American experience, I’ll leave you with a random ten:
- “Tell Me Baby” – Allison Moorer
- “Party on Your Pussy” – Red Hot Chili Peppers
- “Convict” – Queensrhÿche
- “Salesman” – Stan Ridgeway
- “How To Be Invisible” – Kate Bush
- “Angels of Deception” – The The
- “Laura Palmer’s Theme” – Angelo Badalamenti
- “Don’t Blame Me” – Hound Dog Taylor
- “Ziggy Stardust” – David Bowie
- This Wheel’s On Fire” – Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees
BONUS: “Hallelujah” – Allison Moorer
