What Can You Say?: America's National Conversation on Race 9780804774666

Citation preview

What Can You Say?

What Can You Say? America’s National Conversation on Race

John Hartigan Jr.

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hartigan, John, 1964– What can you say? : America’s national conversation on race / John Hartigan Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-6336-3 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Race relations. 2. Racism—United States. 3. Postracialism—United States. 4. Communication and culture—United States. 5. United States—Race relations—Press coverage. I. Title. e185.615.h325 2010 305.800973—dc22 2009049990 Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 11/13.5 Adobe Garamond Pro

For Beka for everything

Contents

Preface 1 From Gangsta Parties to the Postracial Promised Land: A Year of Race Stories

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1

2 Waking Up to Race with Imus in the Morning

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3 Narrating Nooses: Locating the Role of Race in Jena, LA

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4 “Race Doesn’t Matter”: Manic Glimpses of a Postracial Future

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5 Conversation Stoppers: Apologies All Around

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6 Our Unfinished Conversation

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Acknowledgments

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Notes

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Index

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Preface

THIS BOOK BEGAN

as a file folder on my desk in which I kept clippings of news stories about race. The idea was to keep on hand some current examples of how race matters today, which I could use to update my lectures or my writing. It quickly filled and then gave way to a series of similar folders, each labeled with a proliferation of titles—“race and health,” “workplace discrimination,” the “race gap” in education, and many more. I also subdivided these into “liberal” and “conservative” lines of argument and debate. These articles ranged from reports of particular incidents to coverage of new poll results on racial opinions and to recent findings from studies on discrimination. They also included excellent journalistic essays and critical commentaries that sharpened my thinking about race. Eventually, too, there were stories about coverage of race in events like senate races or other political campaigns. As the files grew, I began to see a broad stream of public discourse unfolding, a meandering current of commentary, reflections, and reporting. Then I started to think about the larger question of how we settle on which examples have the greatest bearing in telling us something substantive about how race matters today. Sometimes these thoughts were sparked by the glass-is-half-fullor-half-empty debates over whether racial disparities in this country are diminishing or remaining fairly constant. But also, I wondered about the representativeness of any one example or incident as they just kept occurring, sometimes in novel forms, sometimes as maddening repetitions of the same old stories. Which ones were most exemplary of the enduring significance of race? Eventually, I realized this question itself warranted a book. I set-

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tled on a framework as much out of practicality as based on an analytical rationale. I would take a year’s worth of stories and examine how they reflect the interpretive process by which Americans make sense of race. In terms of the rationale, I thought the value of this approach lay in trying to understand something about how we as Americans consume these stories, apart from their status as examples in arguments that race no longer matters or that it remains the bedrock problem in this country. But really, this decision was a practical one as well—the stories just never stopped coming. I settled on a year’s framework, in part, because there was no other way to get this project off my desk and into the light of day. As I write this preface, President Obama just reworked his criticism of the actions of the Cambridge police in “stupidly” arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in his own home. Gates figures prominently in the final chapter on this book, appropriately enough on the dynamics of apologies for racial incidents. This “new” story perfectly melds the elements of obviousness, ambiguity, and utter discrepancies that “racial” often entails. As well, it features remarkably well-cast characters—Gates, certainly, as a preeminent scholar who has incisively grappled with race; Sergeant James Crowley, a police expert on racial profiling; and, of course, our nation’s first African American president. Yet, in resisting the urge to add still another chapter, I hope I have settled on something else of value instead. This book is about our “national conversation on race,” the sprawling, unwieldy, often maddening means we have developed in the United States for discussing and evaluating what counts as “racial.” I focus on the underlying dynamics of American culture that shape this conversation more than on the particular topics that variously surface and then recede. That is, I attend to the rituals and taboos, the selective vision, and the stylized reactions that culture generates. We humans are culture-bound creatures, and as Americans we share an underlying culture that is far more powerful than our various crucial, poignant, and devastating divisions. This common culture is on display in this particularly curious cultural artifact—our “national conversation on race.” I hope that in having this underlying culture drawn to your attention you will

Preface

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find a way to think differently about race. Whether or not you do, I remain certain that this conversation is a long way from over. Inevitably perhaps, most writing on race is polemical. This stems from the fact that it is nearly impossible to have an entirely neutral stance about whether or how race matters. Race is clearly a political and polarizing issue; as well, the urgency and importance of racial matters compel us to take emphatic positions. At the same time, the polemics around race make it devilishly difficult to settle important questions, such as, when and how does race matter? My aim here is to present a view onto our racial polemics, via that oft-referenced “national conversation on race.” What I ask of the reader, then, is a bit of patience as you encounter on these pages voices and positions that are antithetical to your own views on race. The clash of liberal and conservative stances on race may be too powerful and passionate for you to suspend your own well-honed reactions, but my hope is that this book provides a means of stepping back from the fray to consider what might underlie all this turmoil.

1 From Gangsta Parties to the Postracial Promised Land A Year of Race Stories

THEIR FACES ARE CONFIDENT AND CONTENT, which makes the images all the more absurd and bizarre. White college kids at Clemson University, displayed on Facebook, are draped in black garb, hands duct-taped to forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor. The women are arrayed with huge hoop earrings, and two guys are wearing baseball caps—one of them scowls behind his dark shades. Other whites in the crowd sport red bandanas on their heads and gold “grills” on their teeth. They appear drunkenly awash in a sea of racial signifiers, seemingly oblivious to any lines they may be crossing. The “gangsta” theme party was held over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2007. What were they thinking? This wasn’t the only such party that weekend. A similarly themed event was hosted by white students at Tarleton State University near Fort Worth, Texas. Days later, law school students at the University of Connecticut threw a “Bullets and Bubbly” hip-hop party. And these were just the most recent in a series of such parties occurring on college campuses across the country over the past few years.¹ The emblems whites sported in each setting were the same—do-rags, gold chains, baggy pants, puff y coats, and dark shades. They flaunted bottles of malt liquor and flashed gang signs. Hadn’t they heard about the controversy months earlier when a fraternity at Johns Hopkins hosted a “Halloween in the Hood” party, or when the University of Colorado Ski and Snow-

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board Club had to cancel their “gangsta party” because of complaints about racial stereotyping? They must have also missed the stir over a similar frat party at Baylor or the cancelled “ghetto party” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Texas A&M. The pattern is remarkably similar in each setting. White kids adorn themselves with charged symbols from their media-saturated lives and parade about in gleeful amusement. Someone takes pictures and posts them online. The images circulate and protests follow, condemning white racism. And in each case, the whites who face the ordeal of public condemnation express a similar sense of confusion and deep regret. The apologies that follow each explosion of outrage convey a common sentiment. As a Clemson student explained on Charleston’s local WCSC TV news report on January 30, 2007, “We weren’t trying to be racial or anything.” Several Clemson students circulated a letter of apology stating, “We invited all races and types of people and never meant any racial harm.” But even if it was not an all-white affair, how could they think that such images are not “racial”? Their surprise and befuddlement over being caught up in a racial incident—a common feature of the stories in this book—reflect an increasing confusion over what is “racial” and how such assessments are made. These stories reflect the inevitability of being racial, the relentless significance of race, and the insufficiency of our cultural conventions to ever fully contain that significance. White students’ confusion in the wake of such parties is an indication that the conventions by which we decide something is racial are changing rapidly. In cultural terms, we rely on a set of social conventions to contain the riotous meaningfulness of race. But these expectations and assumptions—concerning who can say what about race, for instance, or, more crucially, what people must not say about race—are themselves in flux. This is partly because the line between public and private, which long maintained conventional notions about race, is rapidly shifting. Though national media, from Fox News to the Washington Post, reported these stories as a trend rattling college administrators and opening up a disturbing view onto racial aspects of campus life, the deeper story here is that the public sphere for talking about race has greatly expanded. Thanks to such social networking sites as Facebook—and critical Web sites like The Smoking Gun, where party pic-

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tures were posted after they were removed from Facebook—once private settings, like these parties, are thrust into public space, opening up new ground for talking about why and how race matters. Rather than simply revealing well-hidden forms of covert racism, this shift highlights the instability of conventions that mold Americans’ selective views of what counts as racial. Media race stories in the year that followed the Clemson party reflect a reconfiguring of race in the public sphere. Don Imus’s dramatic fall from his media throne is credited to an online posting of a video of his offending remarks about “nappy-headed hos.” The massive civilrights protest in Jena, Louisiana, resulted from the rise of the “black blogosphere,” which both circulated news of events in that tiny town and provided a medium for organizing protestors from across the nation. In retrospect, the gangsta parties can be seen as just the first wave in a long series of incidents in which Americans have confronted a host of new examples of the continuing impact and importance of race. Each has been marked by some combination of confusion and certainty, of outrage and obliviousness, as private or local moments have been examined intensely in a national framework. This shift in audience from private to public—thanks to the many new means for electronically circulating remarks and images—has provoked a change in how we talk about race. This shift in the spotlight has not so much revealed a hidden set of white opinions about race; rather, it has caught whites in awkward moments when they traffic in signifiers previously coded black—from Imus’s word choice to the symbols whites adorn themselves with in the gangsta parties—but that have come to permeate “mainstream” discourse in the United States. The white kids at these parties were playing with powerful symbols that have crossed bounded, racially segregated worlds to pervade American popular culture. Their use of these images—once free and easy—was drastically challenged, not simply by a “black community,” but by campus-wide mobilizations that decried their impact on the public sphere in general. But is this playing with hip-hop imagery—which feeds on Americans’ long romance with gangsters—inherently a racist act? Black students commenting on the parties were not entirely sure. Where some saw racism, others recognized a clumsy manipulation of

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pervasive, highly commodified images. Harold Hughes, a member of a black fraternity at Clemson, noted that white students “see this on MTV and BET, they think it is cool to portray hip-hop culture.”² But another student—Ranniece McDonald, a black junior quoted on Fox News on February 2, 2007—remarked, “they didn’t know that they were being racist. It’s really sad.” The uncertainty over their possible racial intent stems from the source of the imagery in question. The cultural realm of symbolic gestures and rituals presents a different kind of terrain for challenging race than that of affirmative action, job discrimination, or housing segregation. Partly because of legislative and judicial accomplishments stemming from the civil rights movement, Americans increasingly discuss race in terms of cultural matters. In these discussions, hip-hop claims a central role. Commenting on the apparent failure of Bill Clinton’s “national conversation on race” in the late 1990s, Jason Tanz, in Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America, asserts that “the conversation has not ended: instead, it has been coded into beats and rhymes. Many of the most important race-related discussions of the last two decades have concerned hip-hop music directly: anti-Semitic statements attributed to a member of the rap group Public Enemy in 1989; the 1992 controversy over ‘Cop Killer,’ a song by Ice-T . . . ; the criticism by presidential candidate Bill Clinton of Sister Souljah; the flap in 2001 over the rap CD made by Cornel West.” In each of these instances and more, Tanz writes, “white America’s” relation to hip-hop “shows us how the old racial verities of the 1960s and ’70s have transformed, and provide a fruitful avenue through which to examine a complicated and confusing new world.”³ In this new world, appearances can be disorienting: When a white kid drapes himself in gangsta apparel at a hip-hop theme party, is this kid racist or just someone who imbibes and idolizes aspects of this public image? Gangsta parties are a good jumping-off point for examining the complicated dynamics of race because the questions they raise do not have clear-cut answers. The white students addressing the news cameras convey this lack of clarity through their utter befuddlement that playing with stereotyped images from the much-hyped realm of gangsta rap could be considered offensive. An unidentified white student—only his

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hands were depicted on the screen because he feared harassment—explained to viewers on January 30, “We have a lot of theme parties where we just dress up and try to have fun. And we decided that we’d do a gangsta party.” On the same local WYFF TV news report in Greenville, South Carolina, a black student who attended the party described how the mood at the themed event quickly shifted when one guy showed up in blackface. “It escalated after those gentlemen came in. And, it just kinda turned . . . it was palpable, the emotion that was there. And people just left.” Would the party have caused a racial incident if those white guys who made the “minstrelsy” angle emphatic had not shown up?⁴ Like many such themed events today—such as “80s” and “90s” music parties or other stylized themes—it would have probably passed without notice. Whites taking up hip-hop imagery can alternately represent, as Tanz argues, an urge to overcome historical and current separations based on race or “a fantasy that equates garden-variety suburban alienation with the struggles of ghetto life.”⁵ These contrasting ways of interpreting the same gesture involve more than uncertainty regarding the individual beliefs and intentions of particular whites. They reflect changing conventions around “real” and “authentic” experience that are notably keyed to race but not entirely reducible to it.⁶ The indeterminacy stems from the possibility that such gestures may reflect not certain racial values and ideals but rather a fumbling effort to make sense of how and why race matters. Yet, even as what counts as racial today grows unclear, news stories depict “racial” incidents as fairly obvious and straightforward, encouraging people to participate in emphatic judgments about the contradictory and confusing aspects of race. In Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America, Bakari Kitwana reads whites’ interest in hip-hop as reflecting two seemingly antithetical aspects of American life today. One, not surprisingly, is the impact of black popular culture, but the other stems from the role whites play in producing and marketing hip-hop music. “The Black presence in popular culture,” Kitwana writes, “has changed the way Americans engage race, especially for a generation of young people who have lived their entire lives with such access.” The terms of popular cultural literacy now are often coded

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black. At the same time, “the white influence is so great in the hip-hop industry that it would be unnatural and odd, almost freakish, if the final product didn’t appeal to white youth” (emphasis in quoted material is mine unless otherwise indicated).⁷ Young whites are not just intensely subject to the marketing of this music, they recognize in it something uncannily familiar. This recognition reflects a generational fault line in the significance of race.⁸ In Kitwana’s view, “hip-hop is a framework, a culture that has brought young people together and provides a public space they can communicate within unrestricted by the old obstacles.”⁹ Clearly this is exhilarating but also greatly unsettling. One year after the party at Clemson, South Carolina returned to center stage in the nation’s conversation on race; Barack Obama’s major primary victory there, buoyed by young voters, seemed to herald the triumph of his campaign’s theme of transcending racial difference. Sounding much like Kitwana, Obama told the audience that night in late January—after a week of heated campaigning marked by a public battle over the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.—“It is a choice not between black and white, but a choice between the past and the future.” This gesture cued a shift in conventions governing public images of race. In that moment, South Carolina’s image was no longer primarily defined by fights over the Confederate flag or Strom Thurmond’s fierce defense of racial segregation. Instead, it seemed to stand for a dramatic new possibility of the nation’s first African American president. This is how our conversation on race goes: in fits and starts, with scenes that lurch suddenly from seeming hackneyed to appearing quite novel. The pop-cultural domain has become Americans’ preferred terrain to think about race because it offers just such images—familiar, yet capable of generating new meanings and implications, where scenes of shocking stupidity and offensiveness might be set in a different light, as audiences and frames of reference shift. These shifting scenes reveal how much we rely on cultural conventions to keep from appearing to be “racial.” Yet the instability of those conventions—as the line between public and private is redrawn, as generations change, shifting the frames of reference we bring to bear upon them—keeps supplying impressions to the contrary. We work at making sense of race using media stories because they are the most tangible and vivid. They are also the most

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confusing and changeable. How Americans make sense of race through this charged cultural material is the subject of this book. What Counts as Racial? Race is a fact of everyday American life. Wherever we turn, we see it on each other’s faces, and we typically sort ourselves by color where we live, work, and play. We do race when we socialize or consume, but usually in ways we hardly notice.¹⁰ Race is so routine for us we are largely unconscious of the pervasive conventions guiding our actions, words, and perceptions. Against the backdrop of these highly conventional and seemingly unremarkable ways of “doing” race, we label only a few notable events or encounters as “racial.” Of the myriad ways whites, blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other groups interact in this country, a mere handful of comments or actions are characterized as being about race. In these moments, the subtexts and assumptions we rely on to get through daily life with minimal confusion and stress jump front and center. Generally, such instances confirm what “everybody” already knew or believed about race. But there are moments, too, when describing a situation as “racial” highlights, rather, how much these shared conventions and meanings are shifting. Two primary ways of evaluating the significance of race stand out at this moment. First, there are the ways it creates disparate life chances, disadvantaging primarily blacks and Latinos through various forms of discriminatory practices (particularly in the spheres of housing, jobs, and access to credit), and, by extension, advantaging whites. This is the principal way, in terms of progress and policy, that we address—or alternately efface and ignore—race. But there is also another dimension to race, a cultural one that is not as clear cut and often more difficult to assess. Race, simply, is meaningful, and meaning, as we know, is often unruly and irresolute, barely constrained by intention or referentiality. Though we may strive to equate race singularly with issues of racism— which Americans widely accept to be a social and moral failing—we keep confronting the fact that the boisterous meaningfulness of race often makes it ambiguous and difficult to grasp. A few examples illustrate this predicament. Across the U.S. South, “Canadian” has recently emerged as a code

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word for black, surfacing in the talk of white sales clerks, the banter of white waitresses, and even in comments of a white Houston district attorney, who referred to black jurors as “some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant.”¹¹ This is just one instance of the many endlessly inventive ways that some whites find for skirting the conventions against racist speech in the United States by finding “code words” that mask their racial animus. The Racial Slur Database, an online reference source, offers many more examples, including derivations of “Canadian” into “Coonadian,” and “Canigger.” However, this same growing social awareness of or sensitivity to the potential significance of race has also led to people finding racial meanings even where they were not intended. “Niggardly,” for example—a word with Norwegian roots, meaning stingy—has been practically driven from public discourse because of its resonance with a certain racial epithet. More strikingly, the astronomical term “black hole” has even been rendered suspect. A recent discussion among Dallas County commissioners was abruptly halted when a white commissioner, Kenneth Mayfield, remarked that the county ticket collections agency “has become a black hole” because so much paperwork was being lost in the office.¹² Commissioner John Price and Judge Thomas Jones, both black, immediately expressed outrage over the comment and demanded an apology for his “racially insensitive analogy.” Mayfield’s protestations that the phrase had nothing to do with race fell on deaf ears. This form of heightened awareness to the potential for racial meanings is fundamental to how Bill Clinton’s use of “fairy tale” during the New Hampshire primary—in relation to Barack Obama’s purported stance in opposition to the Iraq war—could be seriously considered as a racial remark. These contrary glimpses of the significance of race—either masking racial hate with code words or anticipating finding it potentially in any utterance—frame some of the challenges we face in grasping what counts as racial today. These opposed orientations induce a state of “racial paranoia,” as characterized by John L. Jackson. This condition, Jackson explains in Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, emerges from the “ambiguous and nonfalsifiable sense of racial distrust at the heart of the new reality of race in America.”¹³ Jackson does not see this paranoia as race-specific; rather, it “delineates

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something essential about how all Americans confront social difference in their lives.”¹⁴ Indeed, this condition is schizophrenic as well. “We continue to commit to [race’s] social significance on many levels, but we seem to disavow that commitment at one and the same time. Race is real, but it isn’t. It explains social difference, but it couldn’t possibly. This kind of racial doublethink drives us all crazy, makes us so suspicious of one another, and fans the flames of racial paranoia. Nothing is innocent, and one bumps into conspirators everywhere.”¹⁵ That is, the meaningfulness of race is outstripping the social conventions Americans have devised to contend with its unruly potential. This is one of the reasons we find media stories about race to be so fascinating: they offer society-wide opportunities to debate and evaluate what counts as racial these days. But this effort is further complicated by increasing uncertainty over the role and extent of racism today. Is it still pervasive and unchanging, or is it finally gradually dissipating? The obvious way of framing this uncertainty is through the gap between the remarkable and impressive political ascendancy of Barack Obama and the enduring forms of racial inequality in housing, hiring, and health—on one side, an inspiring image; on the other, a source of infamy for this country. But so many instances and situations that might be characterized as reflecting racism fall in between these starkly contrasting representations. These are featured in Richard Ford’s The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. Ford examines accusations of racism from a quizzical stance, taking “an unsentimental look at such claims, defending those that deserve sympathy, scrutinizing those that deserve suspicion, and ridiculing those that deserve contempt.” He approaches claims of racism in major media stories by asking a set of basic questions: “When are complaints of prejudice valid and appropriate and when are they exaggerated, paranoid, or simply dishonest?”¹⁶ This stance regards charges of racism as rarely transparent and, at times, as potentially calculated. Ford’s work makes plain that, in confronting the possible role or presence of racism, we are increasingly called on to be savvy interpreters and analysts of how, when, and why race matters. My approach, which builds on the work of Jackson and Ford, examines the cultural conventions by which we evaluate potentially racial

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situations or meanings. These conventions—pervasive but largely unconscious formations—structure our assessments of what counts as race. They are on display in the medium by which Americans most avidly consume and debate racial matters—race stories in the news. Understanding what counts as racial today involves seeing through our racial paranoia as we grapple with conflicting claims about the relevance and prevalence of racism. By recognizing the role of cultural conventions in shaping our assumptions, perceptions, and experiences of the racial, we gain a critical purchase on this difficult task. “Racial,” in this moment, as Ford emphasizes, frequently involves “disagreement[s] over the interpretation of ambiguous facts and over contested goals.”¹⁷ Efforts to sort out conflicting, competing versions of events have typically given primary weight to the historical aspects of race. But, as Jackson argues (echoing both Tanz and Kitwana), we need to recognize that the current dynamics of racial meanings are not wholly defined by the past: “understanding race means disregarding almost everything we accepted about it prior to the 1960s.”¹⁸ Grasping how race matters today—as lines between public and private alter and as generations shift—requires recognizing how social decorum deeply conditions the ways we respond to and make sense of “racial” incidents. Making Sense of Race in the News Media stories about race are our consistent touchstone for understanding what counts as racial. We are ardent consumers of these morality tales, which typically feature people caught transgressing the social conventions we rely on to keep race from “coming up” in everyday life or routine circumstances. We often respond to these stories almost instantaneously with powerful, visceral sentiments about whether truth and justice have been served. But we are barely conscious of the welter of assumptions, experiences, and social precedents that condition our perceptions of these stories. We find it difficult to recognize the cultural patterns they represent because we are caught up in larger narratives about the significance of race in the United States that implicitly frame each story. These are not just news stories but fodder for important ar-

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guments in our society about whether “race still matters” or, conversely, “race is over.”¹⁹ My strategy for prying these stories out of their polemical narrative frames concerning the state of race relations in the United States is to position them somewhat differently—in the frame of a year’s worth of stories about race. Rather than asking what any one or two stories tell us about relative progress or stagnation on race matters, I use this somewhat arbitrary frame to examine both the power of conventions and their instability regarding the meaning of race. By taking a year of race stories—spanning roughly from Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2007 to the following one in 2008—it becomes apparent how selective our attention is to racial matters. The few stories that generate major news coverage are drawn from a huge pool of other race stories, which itself is a limited gleaning of a still larger set of potential stories about race that draw no media attention at all. In examining these stories, it also becomes apparent how much cultural work goes into producing and mediating them. These news items, after all, are hardly neutral, transparent accounts of events. Rather, they each reflect or conform to sets of assumptions and beliefs that we carry around about race.²⁰ These stories are then seized on by commentators, social scientists, and politicians to illustrate sweeping claims or make general points about whether race matters in this country. That is, not only do these stories present selective views of the racial world; we receive them in still more limited ways, to the extent that they conform to established narratives about the ways race matters. This array of stories is set off against another class of incidents that represent moments when our expectations are somewhat disrupted and disoriented. The stories that become media spectacles typically highlight certain instabilities in the meaning of race. These stories typically are identified as new installments in our “national conversation on race.” What Can You Say? features a series of such spectacles, stories that stand out both for the great deal of commentary they have generated and for the way they reflect our changing sensibilities regarding racial matters. These incidents, somewhat contradictorily, both reinforce and revise cultural precedents. But before proceeding to these various installments

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of our national conversation on race, it matters to see them first against a larger backdrop of incidents and events involving race that at least momentarily blipped across the national media radar. Placed in context by the following timeline, it is easy to grasp, first, the selective basis of race coverage—out of a plethora of possible stories, only a few are widely broadcast—and, second, the wider arrangement of social arenas in which racial dynamics play out in this country. Consider the highlights from a year’s worth of stories in the news (shown in the timeline). The stories in the timeline represent something of a kaleidoscopic view on how race matters; bringing any two or three news items into conjunction makes for a different outlook on the significance of race. When Don Imus made his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team, reporters contextualized these alongside recent remarks by other white male celebrities, such as Michael Richards and Mel Gibson. Strung together as such, they present a compelling case that racism remains a deep-seated condition in this country. But the clarity and coherence of this storyline is harder to maintain if you consider this year’s worth of stories at once, allowing the ambiguities, contradictions, and gaps between them to resonate. In this larger view, it becomes apparent that there are other ways of drawing connections between these incidents. Imus could also be put in context with the remarks by Isaiah Thomas asserting that it is all right for black men to make derogatory comments about black women, but not for white men to do so. This juxtaposition shifts the larger frame these stories can be made to illustrate—from the depth of racism to the role of racial “double standards” in American public discourse. For that matter, pairing more proximate stories, such as Obama’s Iowa victory on January 3, 2008, with Kelly Tilghman’s remarks about lynching Tiger Woods on January 4, disrupts narratives about a “postracial” future by asking, Which story is more revealing about the relative significance of race in this country? Another factor is often overlooked in the process of taking particular news stories as a basis for illustrating “the problem” of race in this country. These stories are generally exceptional: they are out-of-theordinary (and, hence, newsworthy) incidents that erupt from a backdrop of mundane, generally nonconflictual moments. Which instances—the

TIMELINE

Race Stories in the News, 2007–2008. 2007

L ATE JANUARY

Coinciding with MLK Day, white students at the University of Connecticut, Clemson University in South Carolina, and Tarleton State University in Texas throw “ghetto fabulous” parties, which feature blackface, fake teeth, and forty-ounce beers.

JANUARY 29

White students at Santa Clara University in California throw a “South of the Border” party, dressing as janitors, female gangsters, and pregnant women.

JANUARY 31

Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, in announcing his candidacy for the presidency, characterizes Senator Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

FEBRUARY 10

Senator Barack Obama announces his candidacy for the presidency in Springfield, Illinois.

FEBRUARY 23

Kenneth Eng writes a column titled “Why I Hate Blacks” in AsianWeek, generating protests.

FEBRUARY 28

The New York City Council passes a resolution symbolically banning the “n-word.” The resolution, according to sponsoring councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., is largely aimed at blacks who use the word among themselves.

APRIL 4

Don Imus refers to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “some nappy-headed hos.” Public outrage over this remark leads to his being fired from CBS Radio.

APRIL 11

North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper drops all charges against three white lacrosse players from Duke University, who had been accused of sexually assaulting a black woman. Cooper declares the players “innocent” and characterizes them as victims of a “tragic rush to accuse.”

MAY 2

A study finding racial bias in NBA officiating, with white referees calling fouls at a higher rate against black players than against white players, is widely reported.

MAY 5

White students at the University of Delaware throw a “South of the Border” party, dressing as janitors, gangsters, and pregnant women.

JUNE 12

Georgia’s supreme court overturns the conviction of Genarlow Wilson, a black man sentenced to ten years in prison without parole for having consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year-old girl when he was seventeen.

JUNE 28

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that schools cannot use race as a determining factor in trying to achieve desegregation. The ruling stresses that “racial classifi cations are simply too pernicious to permit any but the most exact connection between justification and classification.”

JULY 9

The NAACP symbolically buries the “n-word” in a ceremony featuring a horse-drawn carriage carrying a black-wreathed pine casket through the streets of Detroit.

AUGUST 3

USA Today reports “Michael Vick dogfighting case opens racial divide,” noting “Vick’s supporters are mostly black; his critics are mostly white.”

AUGUS T 13

Major papers report a study indicating a racial bias in strike calls by Major League Baseball umpires, with umpires calling more strikes for pitchers of their own race.

AUGUST 31

Comedian Eddie Griffin—nicknamed the King of Hip-Hop Stand-Up—has his performance abruptly terminated during a sold-out show for Black Enterprise’s fourteenth annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami. His microphone is turned off because he repeatedly uses the word “nigger.”

SEP TEMBER 11

Six whites are arrested for kidnapping a black woman, Megan Williams, holding her captive for a week in rural West Virginia, and beating, stabbing, and raping her repeatedly. Williams claims she was called “nigger” as she was stabbed and beaten, and that she was forced to eat rat and dog feces. Two years later, after all six whites are convicted on various charges, Williams recants her story as a hoax.

SEP TEMBER 18

Isaiah Thomas, Knicks’ coach and president, responds to sexual harrasment charges, including accusations that Thomas called a black woman a “bitch.” Thomas testifies that if a white man said that to a black woman, “it would have violated my code of conduct,” while allowing that a black man talking to a black woman the same way would not have offended him. “I do make a distinction,” he explains.

SEP TEMBER 19

Bill O’Reilly stirs up protests when, commenting on his dinner at a restaurant in Harlem, he remarks that he “couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s Restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks.”

SEP TEMBER 20

Approximately twenty thousand people gather in Jena, Louisiana, to protest racial disparities in the cases of six black males.

OC TOBER 5

John K. Tanner, chief of the voting rights section in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department, remarks on “the racial aspect” of American culture by suggesting that “our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.”

OC TOBER 25

Nobel Prize–winning biologist James Watson resigns as lab chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after protests over his remarks in an October 14 Sunday Times of London story questioning the strength of African intelligence.

NOVEMBER 13

The Pew Research Center releases a survey that finds 37% of African Americans agreeing with the statement that blacks “can no longer be thought of as a single race.”

DECEMBER 3

Don Imus returns to media, now on WABC-AM Radio in New York and RFD-TV.

DECEMBER 10

The U.S. Supreme Court addresses the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine convictions, which were generally more punitive for blacks, by upholding more lenient sentences imposed by judges who rejected federal sentencing guidelines as too severe.

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2008 JANUARY 3

Obama wins the Iowa caucus with 38% of the vote.

JANUARY 4

Kelly Tilghman jokes that fellow golfers should lynch Tiger Woods “in a back alley.” The Golf Channel reprimands her with a two-week suspension.

JANUARY 16

Radio & Records Inc. revokes talk show host Bob Grant’s Lifetime Achievement award, citing racial remarks he made in the 1990s.

JANUARY 18

David Seanor, editor of Golfweek, is fired for placing a noose on the cover of the January 19 issue, which featured several articles on Tilghman’s comments.

JANUARY 26

Obama wins South Carolina’s “first in the South” primary with 55% of the vote.

banal or the unusual—are more revealing about the relative and enduring importance of race? Sure, the dramatic ones seem more interesting, which is why people choose them as examples of these intuited larger issues. But are they the most reflective aspects of race? In selecting certain incidents as exemplary of racial situations in the United States, we generally are oblivious to the enormous amount of mediation that goes into constituting these stories, both in a literal sense of the massive editing process involved in broadcasting such spectacles and more broadly in terms of the cultural dynamics that shape our expectations for what counts as racial. Additionally, consider that these stories could as easily be paired with ones that suggest a more complex and perhaps even contradictory state of affairs regarding race in this country. Looking over the year’s worth of stories, from one Martin Luther King Jr. Day to the next, it is difficult to come up with a narrative that encompasses them all and still purports to say something sensible about the ways race matters in this country. This is partly why we settle on the convention of designating some stories as installments in our “national conversation on race”—a designation suggesting that these are potentially moments when the kaleidoscope of racial scenes is fixed long enough for us to get some clarity on these crucial matters.

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“National Conversation” Over the coming year I want to lead the American people in a great and unprecedented conversation about race. President Bill Clinton, commencement address at the University of California, San Diego, 1997

From the collection of racial incidents deemed newsworthy, a few stand out because they unfold in a more unruly and unpredictable manner—incidents that provoke discussion in addition to outrage or enthusiasm. We designate these events as part of our “national conversation on race.” More than just confirming stock beliefs, these are moments when assumptions about race are often jarred out of their comfortable setting in the background of cultural conventions that make our untroubled (and often barely conscious) navigation of social situations possible. Thrown into relief, these assumptions become subject to reflection, discussion, and commentary, carried out in parallel lines between media coverage and our commonplace social settings, where we tend to talk over big news stories with family, friends, coworkers, and sometimes strangers. The framing motif of a “national conversation” has a particular origin: it was first proposed by Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, and then formally initiated by former president Bill Clinton’s Initiative on Race—a concerted effort over fifteen months (launched in June 1997 and officially terminated in September 1998) to develop public forums where Americans could engage in serious discussions about race. In 1995, Guinier asserted, “we need a National Conversation on Race. We need new thinking and new approaches to race and racism that move beyond notions of intentional acts of bigotry and prejudice; beyond the claims of legal racial equality that rallied the civil rights movement in the 1960s; beyond the notion that racial preferences are the only or best way to remedy inequality; away from the claims based on individual guilt and individual innocence.” This notion she promoted—one that aimed to break “the great taboo” of race and that would be modeled on “looking at democracy as a well-conducted conversation”—reached fruition in Clinton’s Initiative on Race, which was led by civil rights activist and historian John Hope Franklin, who chaired the president’s advisory board on the Initiative.²¹

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Franklin led the board in hosting a series of “town meetings” across the country, convened in cities such as Boston, Phoenix, San Francisco, Denver, and College Park, Maryland. The goals of the Initiative, as summarized by Franklin, were ambitious: “to articulate his administration’s vision of racial conciliation; to help educate the nation about the facts surrounding the issue of race; to promote a constructive dialogue and confront and work through the difficult issues; to recruit and encourage leadership at all levels to help bridge racial divides; and to find, develop, and implement solutions in critical areas such as education, economic opportunity, housing, health care, crime, and the administration of justice.”²² Perhaps not surprisingly, the actual accomplishments of the Initiative appeared to have fallen far short of these aims. A principal hurdle was that the Initiative was subject to intense political criticism at its initiation. Part of this reflected partisan differences, with Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Ward Connerly expressing the view that the “conversation” was one-sided, excluding the voices, for instance, of critics of affirmative action (though Franklin studiously contested this criticism). But it was also criticized from the Left by scholars like Adolph Reed Jr., who characterized this “mass-media metaphor” as “just part of the fundamentally empty rhetoric of multiculturalism: diversity, mutual awareness, respect for difference, hearing different voices, and the like.”²³ Franklin, in turn, laid the blame for the Initiative’s limited success on the disinterest of the media. Clinton himself hoped the board and “its efforts would be more visible.” But as Franklin recounted in his autobiography, Mirror to America, “the board’s visibility depended on the willingness of the media to render it visible.” Franklin’s enduring frustration lay in his inability to engage the interests of editors across the country in the efforts represented by the Initiative. As Franklin explained, “the difficulties faced when anyone anywhere in America attempts a concerted effort to ameliorate the baleful results of centuries of de jure and de facto racism are profound. None of which is aided by an unfortunate short-sightedness on the part of the national press that too often forestalls rather than furthers the needed national conversation.”²⁴ It was not as though journalists were entirely disinterested, Franklin acknowledged—he concluded that “easily the most ambitious re-

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sponse to the president’s initiative on race was the New York Times’s series of articles, ‘How Race Is Lived in America,’”²⁵ which won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Rather, the difficulty was getting editors to recognize a news story in a public forum that seemed to lack drama and conflict. “From the outset,” Franklin laments, “it was clear that the media defined ‘conversation’ on race as a ‘debate.’ If there were no fireworks, that was clear evidence that nothing of importance was being accomplished.”²⁶ The expectations around “racial” stories were clearly, as they remain today, associated with clashes and disputes. In retrospect, this “conversation,” which seemed to end ignominiously in late 1998, was only just beginning.²⁷ In fact, it was arguably already well underway before Clinton tried to formalize it as a political enterprise. Charles Krauthammer asserted as much in heralding the conversation’s demise in Time, when he dourly concluded: “It managed to go nowhere.” “It is nonsense, first,” he opined, “to think that America suffers from a dearth of conversation about race. We can’t stop talking about race. Prop. 209, O. J., Piscataway, the gerrymandering cases, race and the death penalty, race and the law schools, race and the Oscars, race and baseball (black attendance is down): Is there an issue under the American sun that has not been given a racial cast?”²⁸ In this view, the “failure” lies in not engaging with these already ongoing dialogues in a variety of cultural arenas. Such is the attempt I make here by treating the “national conversation” not as a political artifact with a palpable half-life, but rather as an anthropological object that offers a view onto the fundamental cultural dynamics that undergird the ways Americans identify topics as racial. In this view, “racial” is an object informed by certain social conventions, then shaped, circulated, and consumed in a variety of cultural forms that both condense and respond to an array of social concerns and developments. Though the Initiative ran its course and was formally disbanded, the trope remained lively and active in public discourse, because it retains the power to frame the central task major media stories present us—to sift through and reassess the set of assumptions we hold about how and why race matters. The incidents recounted in this book were characterized as moments in this ongoing “national conversation” because they captured

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Americans’ attention by dramatizing some aspect of the changing ways race matters in this country.²⁹ Radio talk show host Don Imus opened his mouth early one spring morning and said “nappy-headed hos.” Before the sun set, a technology-driven chain reaction—including posted video clips, emails, and blogs—was set in play, generating a media frenzy that ended with Imus being vilified and fired. The following fall, Jena, a quiet lumber town in central Louisiana—home to scarcely three thousand people—became the epicenter of a national protest as upwards of twenty thousand people converged there, drawn by a powerful story about nooses and injustice, also circulated by way of emails and blogs. That winter, the nation fi xated on the surprise victory of a first-term African American senator over the presumptive Democratic front runner, Hillary Clinton, in the massively white state of Iowa. Meanwhile, in the background of these major stories ran a steady current of news items that percolated occasionally to the surface—incidents that hardly generated discussion because they were truncated by ritual apologies. These scattered moments serve as a counterpoint to the broader process of “conversation,” usefully suggesting or outlining some of its limits and snares. These incidents each feature elements that seem obviously racial in retrospect but that were not uniformly agreed to be so at the time. Don Imus strenuously argued that he “didn’t think of it as racial” when he made his comments that morning.³⁰ The nooses in the tree near the high school in Jena seem plainly racial, but the white kids who hung them insisted they were inspired by a scene from the TV series Lonesome Dove, featuring a struggle between rustlers and lawmen. You can take these assertions as simple denials of racism or as windows onto the nuanced process by which Americans make sense of race. This more nuanced reading is buttressed by the 2008 presidential primary race, where, in the face of equally obvious racial dimensions, the campaign of Barack Obama argued that the election was “not about race.” Flush with victory in the South Carolina primary in January 2008, Obama’s supporters chanted wildly, “race doesn’t matter”—a gesture that would be rendered ludicrous by the firestorm generated by video clips of sermons by his spiritual mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, just weeks later. Then there are instances where these conversations were sharply

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curtailed, typically by abrupt apologies, such as those offered by sportscaster Kelly Tilghman for a “joke” about lynching Tiger Woods; John K. Tanner of the Department of Justice for suggesting that minorities do not age the way white people do, because “they die first”; and Nobel Prize–winning biologist James Watson for suggesting that Africans are less intelligent than whites. All these incidents feature comments where the racial basis or character of the remarks were often not commonly recognized. This distance between the uncertain aspects of “racial” at the moment and the ways these incidents come later to stand commonsensically as racial points us again to the crucial role of culture in all this. A Cultural Perspective on Race in the United States As Tanz and Kitwana argue, the realm of culture is where we most actively engage questions of race today. A major problem this presents is that we generally do not have much understanding about how culture works. We are, of course, experts about our own culture, but that does not mean we are cognizant of the basic dynamics that drive and inform cultural processes, just as being able to drive a car does not make one an expert at repairing cars. The purpose of this book is to make plain the cultural dynamics shaping the way Americans interpret the significance of race in the public sphere. From a cultural perspective, one of the most perplexing aspects of this year’s worth of stories becomes intelligible. These incidents reveal how Americans’ conventional understandings of race are both rapidly changing and just as quickly being cemented in new forms that take on an air of obviousness. This is partly how culture works—it powerfully shapes people’s behaviors and beliefs, yet is continually changing and being reconfigured. Culture is a subtle but powerful accumulation of stories, rituals, and solutions to common problems. Culture operates through collections of events and images that form shared and accepted ways of looking at the world, establishing conventions that aim to contain the meaningfulness of something like race. Anthropologists characterize these conventions as “interpretive repertoires.”³¹ While such repertoires are generally shared, they can also clash with competing col-

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lections of experiences, images, and storylines. Typically, there are tensions and conflicts in any culture, particularly over meanings attached to common stories—whites and blacks, for instance, often have drastically different views of major news events, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or O. J. Simpson’s arrest in 2007. But these groups share a recognition that these stories touch on key ideals in American culture, such as equality and justice.³² These shifting expectations and perceptions about race may seem confusing or even contradictory. But that is the essence of culture: it combines all manner of contradictory elements and then provides people with the conceptual means for navigating these contradictions. We often talk about culture as if it represents a clearly defined set of values and meanings, but it is nothing so coherent or rational. The basic fact of culture is that it combines both shared perspectives and intense conflicts: people sometimes agree only about what it is they are fighting over. We deal with this complex condition through the central activity examined here in this book—telling stories and using meaningful language centered around compelling images. We sometimes find our “national conversation” on race confusing or frustrating because we do not realize how much it depends on cultural dynamics that have little to do with race specifically, but which are fundamental to how we make sense of the world. When anthropologists talk about culture, we typically do so in two distinct manners. The first concerns general aspects of culture, such as decorum and etiquette, that one can find in any social setting; the second involves a particular group’s cultural dynamics. In this book, I address these two different aspects of culture by first examining general matters of cultural form, then considering how they manifest distinctly in American culture.³³ The concept of cultural forms captures how this conversation is principally conducted through mediums of language that are hardly transparent and that each involve particular textures and torsions. Though we ably and expertly manipulate these cultural forms we have little awareness of how they, in turn, condition our sensibilities imperceptibly. The question of cultural form provides the principal organizing frame for this book. I do discuss these stories in roughly chronological order, but this arrangement also makes it easy to

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illustrate four basic cultural forms shaping these episodes. Each story is structured by a fundamental rhetorical form—remarks, narratives, arguments, and apologies. Don Imus’s situation reflects the privileged status we give remarks in our society to reveal when or whether race matters.³⁴ The intensity of how these remarks were debated shows that Americans are quite practiced at working with this particular linguistic form. Regardless of the specific answers we arrive at in such debates, what remains constant is our ready assumption that selected words or statements are an exemplary basis for evaluating whether or how race matters. The situation in Jena, in turn, highlights the fundamental role of narrative in establishing whether we recognize an incident as racial.³⁵ In contrast to remarks, which are fairly easily grasped as an “atom” of social life and individual sentiment, narratives are more complex and mutable cultural forms. But they are crucial to our recognition of racial matters in that, by connecting a set of events as an interrelated sequence of actions and reactions, they establish a series that can be construed as animated by racial motives or sentiments. Events in Jena show how we rely on certain narrative conventions to see “race” as an animating force in a series of events. But the story of the “Jena 6” also represents the way narrative frames can clash and be contrastingly deployed, either challenging or rearranging the presumably given order of events. Beyond remarks and narratives, we also rely on and are moved by arguments and forms of persuasion that lead us to conclude race indeed is present and active in some public setting or exchange.³⁶ In the January Democratic primary contests, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns accused the other of “playing the race card.” At the same time, both camps affirmed the notion that race had no place in their political debates. Journalists almost gleefully reported that race had been “injected” into the campaign in comments made by one side or the other, but they were at a loss in judging the competing arguments made by each candidate regarding which one was being truly racial. Over those four midwinter weeks a polemical contest unfolded in which both Clinton and Obama tried to persuade the larger public following these battles that race was an invidious and improper feature of their opponent’s arguments or assertions. These efforts at persuasion reflect a nuanced

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kind of cultural work that is critical to convincing people that a certain politician’s views or positions are in fact race based. Then there is the crucial matter of what happens after the racial basis of a remark, a narrative, or an argument has been established—the public ritual of apologizing for a breach of racial etiquette.³⁷ Somewhat in contrast to these other elements of cultural form, the topic of apologies opens up an evaluation of how well this “conversation” works and where or how it breaks down. In examining this particular cultural form—along with yet more difficult questions of how to frame racial comments pertaining to social problems, such as the differential mortality rates between whites and blacks that Tanner referenced—I look at apologies as offering a basis for some general reflections about how these discussions might be differently engaged and pursued. In presenting this general perspective on cultural form, I also examine how American culture has developed a distinctive take on race. The dominant trend in race scholarship today is towards specialized lines of inquiry that examine whiteness and blackness, for instance, as distinct racial formations or constructs. A case in point is my own research, which has been on the subject of whiteness.³⁸ But my work has also led me to recognize that there are cultural dynamics that crosscut racial lines and identities. These dynamics, importantly, involve more than race, which is why we often fail to notice their relevance to judgments about racial matters. My focus here is on the way that a key pair of categorical identities in American culture—individual and group—shape the ways we recognize and talk about situations as racial.³⁹ Americans invest the “individual” with enormous reverence and are somewhat ambivalent about its opposite term, “group.” As each of the following chapters show, our perceptions of whether we are talking about individuals or groups is fundamental to how we decide whether race matters in a particular remark, story, or argument. The interpretive work of deciding to regard another person primarily as an individual or as a member of a group is key to understanding how race operates in the United States, even though these categories ostensibly do not reference race at all. Additionally, the progression of stories here also suggests that Americans are becoming increasingly conscious of social conventions

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concerning racial speech. The Imus incident—with its varied disputes over racial double-standards for speaking roles in the United States—reflects this heightened attention to these conventions, sparked, perhaps, by the fact that they are growing unstable. This is evident, too, in the way conventions for reporting race stories—established with the rise of the “race beat” during the civil rights movement’s battles in the 1950s and 1960s—proved inadequate in the face of contests over racial meanings in Jena.⁴⁰ This predicament was further borne out by the befuddlement of reporters and candidates in the face of swirling accusations and countercharges about who was “playing the race card” during the Democratic primaries. Contests today over the “race card” evince a degree of cultural intricacy that proves challenging for journalists and readers alike. In the face of this greater complexity, and lacking greater analytical dexterity with such topics, Americans increasingly fall back on the comfort of social conventions, even as those conventions are becoming unhinged. Rather than confronting the need for greater precision and specificity in our assessments of how race matters in the public sphere, we tend instead to fixate on concerns over social decorum and matters of racial etiquette.⁴¹ That is, we seem more certain about public ruptures of decorum—distinguishing “inappropriate” from “appropriate” words and actions—than about specifying how and in what ways race matters today. We arguably spend more time debating the social conventions governing race in the public sphere than we devote to understanding when and why race continues to matter so powerfully. A key challenge for Americans confronting racial issues today is to come to grips with this overwhelming investment in decorum and etiquette to contain the excessive meaningfulness of race. This book, then, combines an attention to both general and particular cultural dimensions that form the ever-changing ground rules to our national conversation on race. My goals are to convey how social conventions shape our expectation of what differently raced people can say, to detail the ritual aspects of racial incidents, and to examine how our customary ways of narrating news stories and gossip shape our interpretation of events as racial or not. Americans are so culture-bound

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by certain expectations about what race means that we spend more time worrying about not transgressing racial etiquette than formulating new ways to think and talk about why race matters, in the manner first promoted by Lani Guinier. Advancing our conversation about race hinges on first recognizing and then challenging the cultural strictures on the ways we speak about and view race.

2 Waking Up to Race with Imus in the Morning I think that America has spoken. Vivian Stringer, Rutgers University women’s basketball coach

A NEW ER A OF R ACIAL VIGILANCE regarding public speech was ushered in early on the morning of April 4, 2007. In the predawn darkness, Don Imus’s popular radio talk show was just underway. As usual for a weekday morning, the words Imus spoke in the studio, broadcast by CBS affiliates and simulcast on MSNBC, carried across the groggy nation, reaching an audience of close to two million early risers. It was hardly unusual, either, that his acerbic commentary quickly and fleetingly touched on race: this morning in reference to the previous night’s women’s basketball championship game between Rutgers and Tennessee. What made this broadcast different is that a young researcher for Media Matters for America—Ryan Chiachiere, who monitored Imus’s show daily for offensive comments—heard something he recognized would upset people who were not regular listeners to Imus in the Morning. Imus was talking basketball with the show’s executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, and Sid Rosenberg, a former Imus sports announcer. The three white men tittered over the intimidating appearance of the Rutgers team. “That’s some rough girls from Rutgers,” Imus offered. “Man, they got tattoos and—” McGuirk chimed in over Imus with, “Some hard-core hos,” to which Imus added, “That’s some nappyheaded hos there.” In contrast, Imus thought “The girls from Tennessee,

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they all look cute, you know.” McGuirk suggested this was “a Spike Lee thing. The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes,” referring to Lee’s film, School Daze, though Rosenberg mistakenly suggested the reference was to Do the Right Thing. Rosenberg added, “The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.” Chortling over their cleverness, the men moved on to other topics. Later that morning, when Chiachiere played this segment in a meeting at Media Matters, people quickly recognized the incendiary potential of the remarks.¹ By 6:00 p.m. the organization had issued a press release condemning the comments (“Imus Called Women’s Basketball Team ‘Nappy-Headed Hos’”) and posted a video clip of the segment both on its Web site and on YouTube. As Media Matters emailed their press release to several hundred journalists and civil rights groups, Imus’s downfall was set in motion. The media frenzy that followed was stunning, as was its dramatic outcome. Before he managed to apologize directly to the women’s team for his remarks, Imus was fired. How had such an influential media figure, who regularly hosted powerful politicians and prominent journalists, been brought down over two words? The simple answer can be summed up with two more words: race and gender. Journalist Gwen Ifill—herself a previous target of Imus’s racial animus—characterized his comment as “a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men.”² But there was more at work in this incident that riveted Americans for two weeks in the spring of 2007. This wasn’t just about Imus; it was a galvanizing moment when nettlesome questions about racial words and double standards were sharply framed. The Imus incident offers a glimpse into the media dynamics that provide us with “racial remarks” to purvey. In part, such media coverage is shaped by the political calculations of public figures like Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and by marketing decisions by advertisers and broadcast executives—crucial elements of how such episodes emerge and build momentum. If Jackson and Sharpton had not mobilized mass protests, it is unlikely that the show’s prime sponsors would have bailed on the program. As well, the new technologies of video capture and posting played an important role in how Imus’s words were

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avidly circulated, consumed, and criticized. His comments achieved a virtual life of their own that was scarcely impacted by his repeated apologies. But the controversy over his remarks also highlights something more elusive: the cultural process by which Americans decide on what counts as racial and evaluate the place of race in the public sphere. Our “national conversation” lighted upon Imus as part of an ever-evolving effort at making sense of how and why race matters in this country.³ “Those words, those words.” Michael Richards

The coverage devoted to Imus’s remarks reflects both our fascination with racial incidents and the uncertainty we face over how racial meanings are attributed to certain words and statements. This coverage also reveals a good deal about how Americans think through the changing meanings of race. Though these stories seem to unfold with a certain immediacy and raw impact, they are utterly dependent on an array of mediations—literally in terms of media coverage and somewhat more figuratively regarding the cultural forms and conventions that shape and condition our visceral responses. Media coverage of racial remarks by celebrities—fueled by the role of new technologies in redrawing the line between private and public speech—has become an established genre of reporting. But its status as a staple feature of news also rests on Americans’ sensibilities that such remarks reveal something important, not just about a particular public figure but about the character of the nation. In cultural terms, the central question in such moments is, what do these remarks reveal about America? The answer, of course, is hardly straightforward; it depends on the kind of cultural frames we establish, through this coverage and our subsequent conversations, to explain such remarks. What makes the uproar over Imus’s word choice interesting—in a way similar to that of comedian Michael Richards, months earlier—is that there were competing options for framing what was said. Initially, Imus’s remarks appeared to fit seamlessly with shocking comments by other white male celebrities. In this frame, the focus quickly shifted from questions about Imus’s apparent racial sensibilities to a wide-ranging inquiry into what his com-

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ments revealed about the depth and breadth of racism in the United States today. But as the coverage and conversation unfolded, another frame came into play, one that placed both Imus’s and Richards’s utterances alongside those of black rappers and comedians. As this latter frame developed, disquieting questions arose about the conventions that lead us to judge speech differently based on the race of the speaker. The intriguing matter is that this reassessment of race was sparked by factors unrelated to race, such as the rise of blogging and the use of cell phone video recorders. The Imus story initially captured Americans’ attention because it fit easily into an array of recent incidents involving white male public figures whose unguarded remarks had been the subjects of video captures and postings. The key touchstones were comments by politicians George Allen (former U.S. senator from Virginia) in August 2006 and Joe Biden (former U.S. senator from Delaware) in January 2007. Allen was publicly lambasted for using the term “macaca” to label an Indian American campaign worker for his opponent, and Biden was chastised for characterizing Democratic presidential candidate and fellow senator, Barack Obama, from Illinois, as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Some commentators reached back and placed Imus in context with references to Trent Lott and the racial controversy engendered by his comments in December 2002 at Strom Thurmond’s one-hundredth birthday party, championing Thurmond’s segregationist politics. Of these examples, only Biden’s stemmed from a formal political event, a press conference, where news is expected to be made. Allen’s remarks at an August 11, 2006, rally became a story after video footage was posted on YouTube by Jim Webb’s campaign, with mass-mailed links sent to journalists and campaign supporters. The posting soared to the top of the site’s “most viewed” list, and the next day it was reported as news in the Washington Post, the first of several dozen stories to follow in the course of a month. Lott’s remarks—that if “the country had followed our lead [in supporting Thurmond’s bid for the presidency in 1948], we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years”—were first publicized by bloggers, in particular Joshua Marshall (Talking Points Memo) and Atrios (Eschaton). The public criticism generated by

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these blogs, which characterized his remarks as racist, led Lott to resign his post as senate majority leader. Both Allen and Lott, addressing what they assumed to be a supportive, local audience, experienced the torsion of having their words broadcast—thanks to the rise of the Web—to a much wider public as examples of racist speech. Their words circulated in a broader public sphere than they initially imagined—to Americans, generally, rather than to select, partisan audiences. The most vivid prior incident, though, that framed Imus’s remarks was the outburst by Michael Richards in November 2006. These two moments became entwined, initially because of their apparent commonalities—both men argued that their utterances needed to be judged in a comedic framework; and both men came to stand, at least initially, as ciphers for the depth of white racism. Then, as each incident in turn prompted more comparative discussions about white and black word usage in the public sphere, they served to open up a much wider assessment of when and how race matters. Each case became another moment in our “national conversation” as the discussions shifted from clear collective condemnations of racism to reassessments of the conventions governing how we recognize the racial aspect of people’s speech. Richards’s rant became the subject of intense public scrutiny when he was caught live on a cell-phone video recording, as he lashed out at black audience members for heckling his stand-up routine at the renowned Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. The video captures roughly two and a half minutes of his furious tirade, which was proceeded by Richards’s threat that, since he is rich, he could have them all arrested if he felt like it. The video begins with him screaming, “Shut up! Fifty years ago we’d have had you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.” Then he pointed to a black audience member, shouting, “Throw his ass out! He’s a nigger,” repeating “He’s a nigger” over and over again. The tape ends with Richards saying, “You interrupted me, pal. That’s what you get for interrupting the white man.” At that point, the audience left the club en masse. But, as the crowd poured out, the story was just beginning to circulate, establishing a powerful frame that would still be orienting Americans’ conversations about race when Imus said “nappy-headed hos” the following spring.

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Was It Racist? The shocking footage of Richards’s meltdown quickly gained a huge national audience through its posting on TMZ.com and later on YouTube. The furor that followed was so intense that Richards, in quick succession, went on national television (the Late Show with David Letterman) to apologize for his remarks, hired a public relations expert “with deep contacts in the black community,” and then undertook some unspecified form of therapy “to manage his anger.” He later also appeared on Jesse Jackson’s nationally syndicated radio program, Keep Hope Alive, in order to apologize further.⁴ The problem with Richards’s apology— one that Imus similarly faced in trying to overcome the effects of his later remarks—was that it raised more concerns than it allayed. A wide range of commentators, comedians, hip-hop artists, and politicians panned his apology and publicly censured Richards’s outburst.⁵ Critics focused on Richards’s insistence that anger was the issue, instead of racism (“I’m not a racist,” he asserted on the Late Show on November 20, 2006; “that’s what’s so insane about this”), and that his racial comments were merely ancillary to the fact that he “lost his temper on stage.” Richards described being “shattered” and “busted up” by the incident, but consistently used remarkably passive language in describing his role in the affair. “The way this came through me was like a freight train,” he commented. On the Late Show, he disavowed being a racist but added, “and yet it’s said, it comes through, it fires out of me and even now, in the passion that’s here as I confront myself.” But fellow comedians, newspaper columnists, and other public figures insisted the problem was much simpler: at heart, he really was racist. The comedian Sinbad, who was in the club when the incident occurred, said of Richards’s apology, “That’s like me pulling a gun out and I shoot you a bunch of times and saying, ‘I’m not a killer, man. I can’t believe I shot you.’”⁶ Columnist Leonard Pitts wrote of the apology: “As a result, a pointed question is now being debated on the air, online, and in print: Is Michael Richards a racist? Let me save us all a lot of time: Yes.” Pitts added that what bothered him most about the discussion was that, “if so many of my white fellow Americans refuse to recognize racism when it is this blatant and unmistakable, what expectation can we have that they will do so when it is subtle and covert? In other words,

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when it is what it usually is.”⁷ The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also used both the remarks and the subsequent apologies as an opportunity to comment critically on the current state of affairs in “American culture.” Vicangelo Bulluck, director of the NAACP’s Hollywood office, stated, “Mr. Richards’ commentary was clearly racist and revealed racist thinking. His declaration that he ‘is not a racist’ is indicative of the type of denial that too often accompanies racist rhetoric.”⁸ The evidence for seeing Michael Richards as just a racist seemed quite strong, but that hardly settled the matter or quelled the intense discussion that continued long after Richards disappeared from the public sphere. If the only issue was whether Michael Richards is a racist, there would have been little more to say about this incident. But as his comments and apology circulated longer on the Web, the questions they raised grew deeper and more engaging. A variety of talk shows featured the remarks in order to pose broader questions about how reflective they were of the state of racism in America today. Then, surprisingly, as these moments of conversation developed, the subject of concern shifted from what middle-aged white men said to the speech of black youth. In contrast to the controversy over remarks by Lott and Allen, Richards (along with Imus, later) provoked an intense evaluation and policing of the public speech of young black men. What exactly was wrong, people increasingly asked, about white men using “nigger” and “ho” if young black men’s usage of the terms was such a pervasive aspect of U.S. popular culture? How such questions are posed and debated in a variety of public forums provides a window onto both the power of cultural conventions to shape what Americans regard as racial and the growing recognition of the power of culture—in the form of rituals and taboos, in particular—to shape our response to race. In the aftermath of incidents such as these involving Richards and Imus, people both glimpse and comment widely on the conventional aspects of race and the fact that these conventions are changing. Crossing the Line A key factor in how public debate about both Richards and Imus evolved is that comedians played such a central role in these conversa-

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tions. Because comedians’ reflections and comments were highlighted from the start—stemming from Richards’s and, to a lesser extent, Imus’s status as comics—Americans benefited from their fine-grained attention to arbitrary aspects of social conventions. Conventions are informal rules by which we address others and present ourselves in public. They govern and inform our interactions, principally around concerns of appropriate and inappropriate words, gestures, and actions. Conventions are not “set in stone,” though they seem that powerful. Rather, they are constantly calibrated in countless exchanges and encounters—affirmed, tested, and revised, generally with little conscious commentary. Comics play a particular social role in openly flouting conventions, by blurting out in public things we “know” we could or should never say. As well, comedy routines are a central forum that Americans rely on to talk about race. Who better to comment, then, on the significance of Richards’s or Imus’s racial transgressions? Critical comments about Richards’s remarks and apology quickly expanded beyond questions of racism and developed into broad public assessments of racial speech, particularly in relation to the use of “nigger.” Commentary ranged from comparative questions concerning when and by whom “nigger” is used in public to a concerted effort to ban use of the word entirely.⁹ Black comedians were most prominent in these assessments, because of the comedic context in which this incident occurred and the prevalence of the term in many comedians’ repertoires. Of these comics, Paul Mooney, who first gained notoriety by writing much of Richard Pryor’s material, judged the remarks primarily as a comic failure. “We have the right of freedom of speech. We have the right to be funny as comedians. I believe in that, and he just crossed the line. It wasn’t funny.” He explained further: “You can do racial jokes as long as there’s a funny, as long as there’s an out for me.”¹⁰ Mooney’s remarks importantly reflect comedians’ awareness of two sets of lines: those established by social conventions, which comics actively transgress in generating humor, and another set guiding what counts as “funny.”¹¹ The disquieting question with Richards was whether one set of lines could hold against the other, in the face of the inherently transgressive aspects of humor. As comedian Tony Figueroa lamented, “I fear that a Pandora’s box has been opened. Instead of just

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dealing with the individual solely responsible for the incident, they censor everyone. They drew a line that represents acceptability and said, ‘don’t cross it.’ You don’t do that with comedians because they will see it as a challenge and they will always have the last laugh in the end.”¹² Figueroa further invoked George Carlin’s commentary from his 1970s routine, “Seven Dirty Words,” arguing “they’re only words. It’s the context that counts.” The notion of context would be invoked time and again in a manner that shifted attention from the apparent content of racial remarks to the conventional aspects of how we judge them. Few words illustrate the power of racial meanings more clearly than the epithet Richards hurled at black audience members that night—“nigger.”¹³ Nor are there words much better for showing that cultural conventions and taboos fundamentally influence how we think about race. As sociologist Randall Kennedy asserts, “There is nothing necessarily wrong with a white person saying ‘nigger,’ just as there is nothing necessarily wrong with a black person saying it. What should matter is the context in which the word is spoken—the speaker’s aims, effects, alternatives. To condemn whites who use the N-word without regard to context is simply to make a fetish of nigger.”¹⁴ As public debates about Richards’s usage keyed in on this question of context, they not only displaced the issue of his individual racism, but shifted the discussion entirely to focus on the speech of black comedians, black rappers, and other entertainers. This shift gradually revealed that the crucial ground in making judgments about context in this case—that is, the domain of the public against a presumed private sphere—was in the process of changing dramatically. The very notion of “mainstream” discourse, with its various implicit demarcations of “racial,” increasingly was called into question by the Richards incident, through the recognition that the sphere of the “public” is expanding while its content is shifting. In the most literal sense, the domain of “public” speech is being greatly increased by the rise of video-recording phones that capture such remarks and the emergence of Web sites like YouTube, where such material can be posted. But, more broadly, there was also an acknowledgment, in comedian Mike Epps’s words, that “it’s amazing how mainstream this word has become.”¹⁵ The increasingly widespread broadcast of “nigger,” largely

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through the enormous popularity of hip-hop music and racial comedy routines, led commentators to take stock of a host of conventions regarding race that were subsequently appearing somewhat artificial, or at least no longer simply “common sense.” Attention to these conventions was at the center of an extensive three-part discussion, hosted by Black Entertainment Television and titled Hip-Hop vs. America, on January 9, 2008, which featured Chuck D and Michael Dyson arguing for recognizing and retaining the varied meanings of “nigger” while strictly maintaining a line against white people using the term. Countering their stance, Keith Boykin, author of the 2005 book Beyond the Down Low, asserted, “The problem is that you can’t stop white people from using the word if we use the word. We can’t tell the white community they’re wrong when we’re using it every damn day on the street.” In the face of the mainstream circulation of “nigger,” via the surging popularity of hip-hop, Boykin insisted on a single standard of usage across racial lines, asserting that “we have to be consistent about this. We can’t set the line in one place and then set it in a different place.” Rapper KRS-One, in an interview on National Public Radio on November 30, 2006, asserted a similar cross-racial assessment of the word’s usage. “According to hip-hop, in our rules, ‘nigger’ to me is not offensive at all. To me, in hip-hop, if somebody said something like—for instance, if Eminem had called us niggers, which he does, and himself, by the way, there would’ve been another rapper who would have stepped up and challenged him in rap. Meaning that, to me, if you’re a comedian and you’re using the word ‘nigger’ and you use it out of context, where other comedians are then saying, wait a minute, you crossed the line here on this issue.”¹⁶ KRS-One’s assessment renders the issue in conventional terms, as a matter of roles and characters, which are of crucial import to comedians who work with racially charged material.¹⁷ From another end of the racial spectrum, Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, was one of many white commentators arguing that what had really been transgressed were the conventions governing racial speaking roles. Commenting during the December 2006 program Skin-Deep: Racism in America—featuring a discussion, hosted by Paula Zahn, of the larger implications of Richards’s comedy-club breakdown—Taylor argued, “In effect, black people have told white people:

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Here is a word you may not use. We can use it, if we like, but you better not use it. And how have whites responded? They have said, ‘Yes, sir, we will not use this word.’” For Taylor, this situation amounted to a reversal of power roles in the racial landscape. “Now, whites are the ones who are very careful about what they say. They can’t risk offending blacks. What does this tell us, despite the fact that blacks can use words like ‘cracker’ and ‘honky’? I won’t be thrown off the set if I use those words. What does that say, really, about the racial power relationship in the United States?” Taylor’s question was answered on the show by Paula Rothenberg, author of the 2004 book White Privilege, who argued that to discuss power in this situation requires first coming to terms with the pervasiveness of white privilege. The concept of white privilege certainly explains a good deal about how race matters in the United States, but it does not adequately address how, in debates about such remarks, Americans are growing increasingly conscious of the conventions governing the designation of some speech as “racial” and some as not.¹⁸ The notion of a “double standard” served to articulate this heightened awareness that certain words may be judged as racial in one instance but not in another, largely dependent on the color of the speaker. Commentator Christopher Hitchens engaged the question of a double standard, though, by utterly dismissing “the pathetic complaint made by some white people that it’s unfair that blacks can use the word while they cannot.” But Hitchens simultaneously railed against the “taboo” now forming over “nigger” because it does little to diminish “the word’s power and pathology.” He further explained, “What we have now,” with the various efforts to ban the term, “is a taboo, which is something quite different from an agreement on etiquette.” Hitchens, here, echoes Kennedy, who similarly warns against making a cultural “fetish” or taboo out of “nigger”—but their suggestions run counter to prevailing opinions that urged doing exactly this in the wake of debates over what Richards and Imus had said. A taboo, simply, is one of the most basic cultural operations. Doubtless, taboos have great social value—the civility of public discourse rests upon them. However, as both Hitchens and Kennedy argue, taboos have a host of unintended effects. First among these is to make

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the prohibited object (and, consequently, the taboo itself) more pervasive and more powerful. In the Victorian era, taboos on sex were so pervasive that even table legs had to be draped, lest young boys might fall prey to lewd thoughts upon seeing them. Similarly, taboos concerning race heighten race’s meaningfulness. At the same time, taboos constrain the means for assessing racial aspects of situations—“racial” becomes something we operate on in terms of restoring violated decorum, rather than by trying to examine its component parts and functions. Complicating the situation is that taboos may gain in importance when people are faced with difficult issues and shifting or destabilizing conventions. Instead of offering a means to address or examine the processes and dimensions of racial thought and perception, people disturbed by situations involving race have a tendency to resort to a cultural resolution of barring their discussion; they treat such topics as contaminating forms of pollution.¹⁹ The enticing option of rendering the word “nigger” taboo is that— instead of grappling with its complexity or further questioning the conventions governing who may use “nigger” in public—we agree to ban the word entirely. A number of African American political leaders, led by Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, used the Richards incident to launch a national campaign to eradicate the term from public discourse. Jackson characterized the effort as “urging all to stop using the word ‘nigger.’ Whether it’s degrading or self-degradation, it’s still wrong. We’re challenging artists and companies to stop using the word. Hate speech should be rejected.”²⁰ The City Council of New York followed suit in support of this effort by voting on February 28, 2007 to ban all use of the term in what was characterized as “a symbolic crackdown on the widespread use of the term in hip-hop songs, in films, and on the city’s streets.”²¹ Strikingly, the resolution’s sponsor, Leroy G. Comrie Jr., declared that the ban was largely aimed at young blacks who use the word among themselves. Characterizing “nigger” as a means solely of “dehumanizing people,” Comrie specified that “it should not be used, especially in the manner young people are using it,”²² even though it was a white man’s usage that provoked the larger debate.²³ As was the case with a number of similar resolutions passed around the same time in a variety of com-

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munities, the crux of the issue was an expanding generational gap regarding racial meanings. Among legislators with experiences of the civil rights movement, the common sentiment was that black youths were targeted by these measures because they “don’t know their history.”²⁴ As Andrea McElroy—a councilwoman in Irvington, New Jersey who sponsored a like-minded ban—asserted, “I think it is basically incumbent upon us to remind them of the story of what the word meant to so many of our ancestors.”²⁵ A similar angst over the growing generational gap regarding the meaning of such charged symbols would emerge months later as Jena, Louisiana, burst into the news. This movement to ban the “n-word” culminated when the NAACP, during its annual convention that summer, symbolically buried the word in a mock funeral featuring a horse-drawn caisson, black roses, and a plywood casket. Though this gesture responded to Richards’s outburst, it also sought to address the issues later raised by the Imus incident, as noted by Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who declared, “we gather burying all the things that go with the n-word. We have to bury the ‘pimps’ and ‘hos’ that go with it. Die, n-word, and we don’t want to see you ’round here no more.”²⁶ For all the calculations about money and politics that factored into the outrage over Richards and Imus, why was the symbolic realm of culture the privileged ground for resolution? Because culture—in the form of conventions, taboos, and rituals, along with notions of pollution—has become the preferred terrain for handling racial uncertainty and anxiety. But does it have greater efficacy than economic sanctions (in the form of boycotts) or legislative solutions? That question took center stage in the public debate over what Imus said. Rituals of Race Imus, like Richards, facing a similarly incredulous public, found his efforts to apologize for his remarks did little to quell the frenzy. In fact, his apologies made things worse for him. His problems were multiple. First, his remarks had thrown into stark relief how much had changed in the United States and how uncomfortable Americans had become with a certain kind of public speech. Second, apologizing for

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making racial remarks has become so ritualized it was difficult for him to make much of an impact or be read as other than a white racist.²⁷ Finally, people just were not buying lines that had worked in the past. For example, Imus’s “good person” defense, which he progressively developed through each of several public apologies, sparked extensive conversations but won him little support. He did, however, in the process, manage to raise the question of a possible double standard regarding a white man saying “ho” and a black man saying it. This topic renewed attention to the racial conventions governing who can say what in public that had been stirred up by Richards. Imus’s first attempt to apologize was a terse, simple statement he made after the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP labeled his comments as racist and unacceptable on Thursday, April 5. He opened his Friday morning show by apologizing “for an insensitive and illconceived remark we made the other morning.” Imus characterized it as “completely inappropriate,” adding, “We can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we’re sorry.” Then he briskly moved on to the morning’s new topics, with little comprehension of how difficult it would be to close the racial breach he had opened. Nor did he realize that this apology would help catapult the remarks from “incident” to “news” over the weekend. That same morning, the National Association of Black Journalists characterized his comments as outrageous and disgusting, and the presidents of Rutgers University and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, in a joint statement, labeled his remarks as “unconscionable.” Over the weekend, Al Sharpton held a rally in New York and called for Imus’s resignation, while Jesse Jackson organized a picket at the Chicago offices of MSNBC. On Monday Imus tried again. This time he opened his show with both an apology and reflections on what he had learned from the incident. Looking grave and ruffled, he fumbled through an explanation of what he didn’t say in his previous effort to apologize. “I didn’t think it was necessary to offer any excuse, and I don’t think there is now. I didn’t think there was any need for me to put into any sort of context what happens on this program, ’cause I unwisely just assumed that everybody knows, and just as obviously they don’t. And I didn’t think it was im-

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portant to talk about what I do with my life, what my wife does with her life and who I am because, um . . .” His words and thoughts trailed off in befuddlement at the predicament he was facing. The very stylized conventions that made his show a forum for both high-minded political discussion and low-down abuse were crumbling. The charitable work he did on his ranch was clearly not serving as a mitigating factor for those who might judge his character based on his on-air behavior. He struggled on, though, offering up insight from the past few days. “What have I learned from this? . . . Here’s what I’ve learned. You can’t make fun of everybody because some people don’t deserve it.” He promised, too, that the “climate” on the show would change. He ended, simply, by saying, “I’m sorry I did that. I’m embarrassed that I did that. I did a bad thing. But I’m a good person.” Many whites respond to allegations of racism the same way Imus did—discounting the accusation by invoking the cultural category of the “good person.”²⁸ The reasons are several. Primarily, it reflects a deep, abiding faith in the individual as the key category in American culture. Rather than seeing each of us as, in some sense, embodying larger cultural beliefs and biases, Americans steadfastly insist on regarding the individual as a morally distinct and responsible entity.²⁹ For whites— who may readily recognize each other as individuals but tend to identify people of other races primarily as belonging to groups, the opposite category from individual³⁰—this amounts to an appeal to what sociologist Orlando Patterson calls the “authentic self.” The cultural logic is that, if I am morally good and I belong to this category, good person, then I could not be guilty of racism, because racists are bad persons. This way of thinking certainly can be seen as disingenuous in racial terms, in that it steadfastly ignores evidence to the contrary. But it can just as easily be seen as a reflection of the risk in being publicly branded by the highly stigmatized label “racist.” The powerful accusation “racist” can override deep or considered attention to what makes any particular comments appear racial to begin with.³¹ The “good person” defense was hardly adequate, though, in the face of the sustained critical assessment of Imus’s remarks. Eugene Robinson, a columnist for the Washington Post, posed the question succinctly: “What would possess nappy-headed radio host Don Imus to

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think ‘nappy-headed ho’ was an amusing way to describe the Rutgers University women’s basketball team? Why would it even occur to him to say such a thing even in private conversation, much less to millions of listeners on CBS Radio and the MSNBC cable network?”³² Robinson offered two answers to his own question, one basic and the other more elaborate: “The simple answer would be—all together now—racism.” But Robinson recognized, too, that a simple answer was insufficient because, just as with Richards, there was a bigger question here than whether this particular white man was racist or not. With Imus still “in full self-flagellation mode,” Robinson added, “I can accept that Imus doesn’t believe he is racist, but ‘nappy-headed hos’ had to come from somewhere.” Racism was not proving entirely sufficient for answering the larger question about where the phrase had come from and how such words had entered mainstream American language. Almost as if in reply, Imus appeared on Al Sharpton’s radio show, Keepin’ It Real, on April 9, to apologize further and to offer additional points in his defense. The studio was charged and edgy, crowded with reporters and photographers snapping pictures, while Sharpton kept a physical distance from his radioactive guest. Sharpton simply asked, “What is any possible reason you could feel that this kind of statement could be forgiven and overlooked?” “I don’t think it can be,” Imus gamely replied, but then he launched into an explanation with three main points. First, Imus insisted, his comments were meant and should be taken as a joke; second, he maintained that his remarks should be taken in “context,” specifically in terms of “a program that makes fun of everybody,” including himself. Imus thus put his remarks in the context of his role as a transgressive humorist or “shock jock” and a “serial insulter”: “I didn’t say it out of anger. We’re trying to be funny like we have for thirty years on this program.” Third, he argued the language he used came not from himself but from the “culture,” generally, and from “the black community,” in particular. “This phrase that I used, it originated in the black community. That didn’t give me a right to use it, but that is where it originated. Who calls who that and why? We need to know that. I need to know that.” The bigger questions Imus raised hung for a moment in the studio, poised to shift the discussion to this broader array of issues. At root, he

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argued, given these additional considerations, what he said was hardly racist and really even not certainly racial. “I’m just telling you what I thought,” Imus went on, “I didn’t think it was racial.” But this broader conversation slammed to a halt in the face of Sharpton’s incredulity and bemusement. “Let me get this right. You call these people nappyheaded hos but you wasn’t talking racial when you said ‘nappy.’ ‘Jigaboos and wannabees’ but you didn’t understand what you were saying. You just . . . what are you saying? You just blanked out?” Imus replied, “I didn’t say that. I said, I wasn’t thinking that . . . I’m not thinking that it’s a racial insult that is being uttered at somebody at the time. I’m thinking that it’s in the process of we’re trying to rap and be funny.” “Nappy is racial,” Sharpton explained. “Saying wannabes and jigaboos is racial.” But would this make Spike Lee’s use of “wannabes and jigaboos”—which Sid Rosenberg had referenced that morning—racial too, or racial in a different way? This question might have surfaced if things had gone differently that morning on Sharpton’s show. That it did not is partly attributable to the way Imus’s defense quickly crumbled and his efforts to apologize turned into a shouting match with other guests and callers. This was hardly Sharpton’s doing, though. Both Imus’s further comments and the larger social forces outside the broadcast booth mattered greatly. When Sharpton let Imus field phone calls from listeners, Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI) called to ask if he realized how much he had hurt black women. Exasperated and overwrought, Imus railed, “How do you assume I don’t understand that?” Then, quoting a country-and-western song, “God May Forgive You, But I Won’t,” he lashed out further, saying, “I can’t get any place with you people.” This succinct utterance—which encapsulates whites’ tendency to perceive blacks as belonging to a group rather than being distinct individuals— slammed the door on any further consideration of what Imus had to say that day. Dollars and Sense The bigger questions generated in the exchange between Sharpton and Imus quickly gained a larger audience, particularly for commen-

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tators who continued to ponder why and how Imus could not see his remarks as racial. This line of questioning consistently focused on the conventions that allowed Imus and his brand of humor to operate for so long in the public sphere without drawing widespread outrage.³³ Notably, for these commentators, the line that Imus so clearly transgressed concerning the racial was not as obvious in a retrospective glance at his comedic career. A variety of pundits noted that Imus’s style of humor has long featured insults, and his wide-ranging objects have included U.S. senators and presidential candidates (whom he routinely labeled as “idiots” and “morons”), religious and public figures (particularly Reverend Jerry Falwell and Cardinal Edward Egan), and even his own bosses at CBS (whom he characterized as “money-grubbing bastards”). Andrew Skerrit described his own early fascination with Imus in the 1980s: “I loved his irreverence and his rebellion. As he mellowed, I enjoyed the politics and culture on his show; I didn’t object to his equal opportunity bashing.”³⁴ Some of his insults were hard to categorize emphatically as “racial.” Was the insult racial or not when he referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as “pork chop butt,” or called New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson a “fat sissy,” or referred to Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell as “the guy from F Troop,” or labeled Colin Powell as “a weasel” or called the New York Knicks a group of “chest-thumping pimps”? Regardless, many listeners and participants on his show were able to delineate a distinct racial strand in this history of insults. Maxine Waters had little problem highlighting his extensive catalog of insults in a statement that called for Imus to be fired: “His show has been so audacious as to make statements such as: ‘Venus and Serena Williams were better suited for National Geographic than Playboy,’ ‘Female soccer players are juiced-up dykes,’ ‘Faggots play tennis,’ and said ‘Palestinians were stinking animals.’”³⁵ But how had such comments not become the focus of public protests? The answer is complex and involves the changing racial and gender demographics of corporate America, the shifting contours of “mainstream” discourse in the United States, and the crumbling conventions that governed racial humor until recently. In the first regard, consider the sharp financial calculations that led to Imus being fired and how those calculations were impacted by African Americans and women in

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the corporate world. Quite literally, Imus’s employers at CBS and the show’s sponsors took stock, minute by minute, of the way his apologies were playing before various constituencies. “It was a cost benefit analysis, not a moral analysis,” concluded Stanley Fish. “It was a business decision no more momentous or philosophically weighty than the decision to dismiss a salesman for not making quota.”³⁶ Importantly, these corporate decisions were influenced by African Americans and women who work within the media. The National Association of Black Journalists was the first to call for Imus to be fired, quickly followed by the National Organization of Women’s “Action Alert” encouraging members to flood CBS and NBC with protests. On April 10, NBC News president, Steve Capus, was deluged with employee complaints concerning Imus. As a senior producer characterized the situation, “we went out and created diversity in our newsrooms and we empowered employees to say what they think. And they’re telling us. It’s good for us and it’s good for the country.”³⁷ This increasing diversity, along with the increasing sense of empowerment among employees reflects a significant shift in the public sphere in the United States. Such changes led University of Maryland professor Sheri Parks to conclude that “what’s different about this firing compared to that of other insult jocks is that people internal to the organizations—women and African Americans at NBC and CBS—came forward and said, ‘I am in this organization, and I do not want to be associated with this kind of man.’”³⁸ As well, black employees at Sprint Nextel successfully lobbied the company’s CEO, Gary Forsee, to withdraw the corporation’s advertising. Jannette Dates, coeditor of Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media, pointed to the role played by black business leaders such as Kenneth Chenault, the CEO of American Express. Dates concluded: “this means that even though there has been this nasty hatefulness in media with comments like the ones from Imus, there has also been progress among this very group of black men and black women that has been treated so vilely. Now, we see some of them in positions of power with the means to end such hateful talk.”³⁹ Imus’s dominance as a public figure was clearly impacted by the power of these expanding constituencies within corporate America. But the demographics and politics of a changing America only explain the particular impact of all this on Imus himself. What mattered

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more was a cultural shift in the conventions governing racial humor and speech, which had operated in such a way that his style of “joking” went without much comment for many years.⁴⁰ As well, the shape and content of mainstream speech in the United States had altered significantly in recent years, reflecting the increased popularity of both hip-hop music and racial comedy routines. These two developments converged that early April morning. Imus’s claims—that he was trying to make a joke using language he had clumsily drawn from “the black community”—received almost as much of an airing as did his original remarks. The critical assessments that followed offer a number of insights into the conventions governing “racial” speech in U.S. public discourse today. Many Americans who listened to all this and were caught up in the drama were left to ponder the questions Imus raised before his firing: Have the rules of racial humor changed? And have we clarified our expectations for who can say what in racial terms? The answer lies in the way we selectively categorize only some remarks as racial. In part, this is because race is such a routinized aspect of American life that a great deal of its everyday workings pass without notice. But it is also because we have gradually assembled an array of conventions governing how and when we think race can either be funny or must be taken seriously in public. These amount to “rules” or “lines” that are neither fixed by statute nor established by law, and they certainly do not reflect a natural order of things. We all know that there are lines—ephemeral and elusive lines that may only become emphatic once crossed—governing what we can and cannot say in public. This is a cultural matter; people not raised in this country may not see them at all or feel them weighing against their public articulations. That makes these boundaries simultaneously insubstantial and immensely powerful. Indeed, as we see with both Richards and Imus, these lines materialize through the process of extensive commentary and discussion—usually after the fact, when these conventions have been breached. This process is part of what our “national conversation” attempts to elucidate. What stands out from the public evaluation of Imus’s remark is how clearly delineated the conventions were that allowed him, his audience, and his guests to compartmentalize the racial humor on Imus’s show. The “respectability” he garnered from interviewing the power-

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ful and privileged allowed them all to participate in his steady stream of disparaging and debasing language. These conventions crumbled, though, when Imus’s remarks were captured and posted for circulation in a much wider American public, opening up a critical reassessment of similar comments throughout his broadcast history. As if hearing both his remarks and his routine for the first time, Americans were appalled. Imus’s dexterity in manipulating these conventions dissipated and, as a satirist whose humor hinged on racist and sexist stereotypes, he could no longer distance himself from his own words. As comedian Larry Wilmore remarked, “You can’t just say, ‘So let’s talk about what’s happening to the economy this week, and up next, nappy-headed hos!’ People get confused.”⁴¹ In this sense, the compartmentalization collapsed and the targets of his humor appeared no longer abstract but painfully real and humanly vulnerable. A variety of observers commented that his dual roles—as radio shock jock and political purveyor interviewing presidential candidates and members of Congress—were no longer clearly separable. Given his guest list, which routinely featured powerful politicians and influential journalists, Imus was regarded first and foremost as a “media giant” with the ability to shape public opinion regarding the central players in national politics. As journalist Weston Kosova remarked, “The show became an influential salon for the politically connected. Powerful people tuned in to hear what other powerful people would say.”⁴² His “A-list” guests bequeathed an aura of seriousness and high-mindedness that let these very guests ignore the extent of his racial insults. As one guest, NBC chief White House correspondent David Gregory, related, “Imus was living in two worlds. There was the risqué, sexually offensive, sometimes racially offensive satire, and then there was this political salon about politics and books. Some of us tuned in to one part and tuned out the other. Whether I was numb to the humor that offended people or in denial, I don’t know.”⁴³ Columnist Frank Rich concluded that this amounted to a form of hypocrisy, and, regarding his own appearances on Imus’s show, stated that “among the hypocrites surrounding Imus, I’ll include myself.” Rich related, “Of course, I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews. Sometimes he even

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aimed invectives at me personally. I wasn’t seriously bothered by much of it, even when it was unfunny or made me wince, because I saw him as equally offensive to everyone.”⁴⁴ These comments make apparent that the cultural conventions allowing for this compartmentalization shifted rather suddenly, such that some of his guests could now see something they had largely ignored before. Equal Opportunity Offender or Total Humor Failure? The questions raised by these reflections on Imus’s career boiled down to whether his role as satirist and/or humorist allowed him a certain kind of transgressive license. If so, how did the “racial” judgment limit this license? Time and again, phrases such as “equally offensive” and “equal opportunity offender” appeared as characterizations of Imus in the wake of this incident. But these assessments were typically accompanied by acknowledgments that Imus had “crossed the line” this time in making an object of ridicule out of the women basketball players from Rutgers. Unlike his typical, white, male guests, these players were not powerful, and the tradition of ridiculing and demeaning black women, which his remarks channeled, received a very public review and censure. As columnist Bob Herbert summarized the problem, “People in positions of great power are the ones who define those who are relatively lacking in power. So when Don Imus, a very powerful radio personality, dropped his disgusting verbal bomb on the members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, he sent a powerful message across the airwaves: that the young women on the team (the black ones, at least) were crude, ugly, and genetically inferior, and that all of the women were whores.”⁴⁵ It was this disparity and this message that became the overwhelming focus of critical commentary, ratifying the conclusion that Imus, like Richards, had “a total sense of humor failure.”⁴⁶ Imus retorted, though, that he was “in character” at the time he spoke, leading us to the other conventions that worked to support his routine for so long. Imus was able to distance himself from much of his own material because it was framed in terms of a cast of characters on his show. About a half-dozen supporting cast members on Imus in the Morning, who both wrote material and performed certain character

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roles on the show, worked to frame the talk show as a comedy routine. Jacques Steinberg characterized this as a division of labor in which the show’s producer, Bernard McGuirk—who was fired, too, after this incident—provided an “illusion of deniability or distance” for Imus from the show’s racial content. Steinberg explained, “Only then can they express what he might want to say about blacks, Jews, gays, or women but perhaps feels he can’t, given his stature as an interviewer of the famous and important.”⁴⁷ But the other dimension of this distance is that the supporting cast members often performed satiric roles and impersonations that allowed them to appear as “in character.” These involved impersonations of very powerful figures, such as Jerry Falwell, Edward Kennedy, and Cardinal Edward Egan of New York. This type of distance—provided by pretending to be a character— is what comedians such as Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen mobilize when they perform their racial material. What collapsed, in this case, were the conventions that let Imus—and his listeners—maintain a distinction between his words and the individual who spoke them. Comedian Larry Wilmore assessed the failure of these conventions of distance by invoking a “racial formula”: “I have a mathematical equation for all of this. White guy plus black slang equals comedy. But here’s where the equation breaks down. White guy plus black slang minus common sense equals tragedy.”⁴⁸ Wilmore’s invocation of “common sense,” on one hand, gestures to the type of cultural knowledge that Imus seemed to lack at that moment when he said “nappy-headed hos.” But Wilmore’s assessment can also be read as an indication that the conventions shaping this “common sense” had shifted in such a way that the assumed knowledge had abruptly been reconfigured. In both cases, the designation of “racial” here rests upon an extensive array of cultural assessments, allowing commentators to analyze so precisely where Imus failed the humor test. This line of thinking raises an important question: if Imus had stuck to the rules and conventions both he and all of us seem now to know so well, would we even be having this conversation? The answer is probably no, suggesting not only how much we depend on all this racial material to be “subtext” or implicit, but also how much we rely on such “conversations” to establish and contest the rules governing what counts as racial.

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“Ho ho ho.” Santa Claus

When Imus was confronted with public attention to his use of “nappy-headed hos,” he worked desperately to shunt attention instead to its use among “the black community.” In returning to this issue, we pick up again a strand of the critical commentary linking Imus and Richards: the public evaluation of both incidents eventually expanded into a wider discussion of the conventions that govern how whites and blacks are judged racially in terms of the words they speak. But observers and commentators, at those moments, could hardly foresee that these very public chastisements for racial speech would lead to a tighter policing of the words that young black men use. Imus and Richards each demonstrated that words like “ho” and “nigger” were frequent enough features in mainstream entertainment media that white men were venturing back into a public use of language that had been foreclosed for a long time. The pervasive use of sexually derogatory terms in hip-hop became “mainstreamed” with the music that had grown so popular, especially among its largest consumers— young white men. As T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, author of the 2007 book Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women, observed, “Hip-hop gave Imus the language. He wouldn’t have known what a ‘ho’ was if it weren’t for rap records.”⁴⁹ That is largely because, as Carol Swain, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, noted, “The language from rappers and comedians has seeped into the culture to the point that Don Imus thought it was okay to call black women ‘hos.’”⁵⁰ Such observations fed the charge that, as with Richards’s use of “nigger,” a double standard was evident in the outrage over these remarks.⁵¹ Television talk-show host Paula Zahn, reprising her special focus on race and language in the wake of Richards’s tirade, returned to the issue of a double standard at work in the criticism of Imus. On CNN’s Paula Zahn Now on April 13, 2007, she noted that “he was brought down because he used racist and sexist words. Yet, that language is used daily by countless entertainers and ordinary people.” Another newscaster on this show, David Mattingly, reported that “a web search for the word ‘ho’ at one mainstream online store turns up more than 600 rap song

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titles. The word ‘nappy,’ slang for coarse, unkempt hair, turns up more than 130 song titles. That word, however, is even the name of a chain of hair salons.” Both Zahn and Mattingly were highlighting the way “racial,” in this incident, delimited a certain form or instance of word usage, raising questions concerning the conventions governing “mainstream” discourse in the United States. Since “ho” was so clearly part of mainstream speech, was the designation of “racial” contingent upon the race of the speaker? The question, as they phrased it, became “who can say what?” The answer, though, is hardly as succinctly rendered, since it involves the shifting and conflicting claims (and ascriptions) of ownership and propriety of words that mark both the user and the objects of designation in terms of race. Some claimed that it was Imus’s race rather than his word choice that proved damning. As Atlanta-based syndicated talk-show host Neal Boortz summed up the matter, the only reason Imus was in trouble was that he is white: “How dare a white man say that? If you can show me something that you’d never heard on urban radio, you’ve got an issue. If that’s not the case, then all you have is a case of stupidity.”⁵² Th is type of assessment echoed in wide-ranging charges of “hypocrisy” leveled against most of the influential figures in this incident—including CBS, whose media empire includes numerous hip-hop recordings that feature the very terms in question. The evaluation of speech increasingly keyed in on the disjuncture among particular individuals, their racial identities, and how the words they spoke either reproduced or disrupted the etiquette governing race and speech in the United States. Jonetta Rose Barras—a political analyst at the time for WAMU in Washington, DC, commenting in the Washington Post—regarded all the “sensational indignation” over Imus’s words as entirely “hypocritical” because “it cast African Americans principally as the victims of discrimination—and ignored the fact that they are the chief purveyors of the demeaning language being decried. It ignored the realities of how culture gets transmitted in contemporary society and the prominent role that African Americans play in that transfer. It failed to recognize the market forces at play. And it held blacks unaccountable for any of the damage, saddling whites with all the blame.”⁵³ In Barras’s assessment, the terms of evaluation require us to recognize the complex cultural dy-

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namics shaping our reception of such words, in order to come to terms with the deeply ensconced assumptions about how race defines speech roles in the public sphere. Such assessments require very broad reflections on how much the American mainstream has changed. Kelefa Sanneh, a music critic for the New York Times, observed, “As all but the most intemperate foes of hip-hop readily admit, this is not a debate about freedom of speech; most people agree that rappers have the right to say just about anything. This is, rather, a debate about hip-hop’s vexed position in the American mainstream.” In that light, Sanneh actually considered the charge of a “double standard” as an “understatement” that hardly addressed the cultural complexity of these shifting conventions. Sanneh continued, “Like MySpace users and politicians and reality-television stars and, yes, talk-radio hosts, rappers are trying to negotiate a culture in which the boundaries of public and private space keep changing, along with the multiplying standards that govern them. This means that mainstream culture is becoming less prim (or more crude, if you prefer), and it’s getting harder to keep the sordid stuff on the margins.”⁵⁴ As Sanneh’s comments highlight, these discussions about racial matters—featuring cultural operations of maintaining boundaries and standards of decorum linked to lines between “public” and “private” that may operate independent of race—are provoking a good deal of thought about these underlying dynamics. This attention to conventions and decorum became the overarching focus in the wake of Imus’s apologies to the women basketball players at Rutgers. Notably, Oprah Winfrey hosted a two-show special “town meeting” on the role of hip-hop music in popularizing terms such as “ho” in the larger public discourse. Less than two weeks after Imus was fired, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons—who appeared on the Winfrey special—promoted a ban on the words “bitch,” “ho,” and “nigger”⁵⁵ in “clean versions” of rap, characterizing the terms as “extreme curse words.”⁵⁶ This ban, and the heightened critical attention to word usage in hip-hop music and comedy routines, amounted to a cultural solution to the confusion of conventions that marked these racial incidents. That is, this word usage was to be treated strictly as a form of pollution, a transgression of the cultural etiquette regarding race, that could be contained without addressing any of the social or economic

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aspects of race. Indeed, a variety of commentators lamented that this “national conversation” was not close to addressing most of the powerful ways that racial inequality is reproduced in this country. Rather, the primary solution people turned to in confronting these transgressions of U.S. public discourse was to “clean up” the airwaves. This is a cultural solution that appears to have little effect on the economic and social aspects of race, as any number of commentators pointed out. But this cultural response, with its power to establish what counts as “racial” in language use, warrants much closer attention, because it is so influential in keeping “race” from coming into view so much of the time in American public discourse. What Was He Thinking? We weren’t really thinking about it, that’s obvious. Imus

Culture plays out between the unconscious and the hyperconscious. Culture gives us the fodder for both the quick, witty remark and the long explanation of why it may come off as offensive instead of humorous. The way we think about and make sense of race operates between these two modes of culture. Lately, we have developed a more active form of listening to race—a hyperconsciousness that reflects our awareness of both the conventions guiding how we talk about race and the fact that they are changing. This is what our ongoing “national conversation” is largely about. The conversation develops through moments such as those in which Richards’s and Imus’s comments were made, when the smooth running machinery of everyday life spits out a word or two that reveals, starkly, how much is changing, and how oblivious we are of the transformation, up until that moment that the conventions start to shift. These events are what we label as “racial.” More incidents followed later in the summer of 2007 as the conversation expanded from its initial epicenters. A broad audience listened closely to Isaiah Thomas explain, in testimony regarding the sexual harassment charges brought against him by Anucha Browne Sanders, that he makes a distinction between when white men label a black woman “bitch” and when black men do it. Thomas related that a white man

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using this epithet, “would have violated my code of conduct,” while he would not regard it as offensive if a black man did the same. This public commentary further fueled efforts by African Americans to police such words being used and similar distinctions being drawn by black men. The best example of this heightened racial vigilance came on August 31, during a sold-out show for Black Enterprise’s fourteenth annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami. Featured comedian Eddie Griffin— nicknamed the King of Hip-Hop Stand-Up—had his performance abruptly terminated when his microphone was turned off in the middle of his routine because he repeatedly used the word “nigger.” A line that was negligible for black comedians just a few months earlier had been crossed, and the sanctions were immediate and emphatic. Culture shapes our interest in drawing such lines, which in turn shapes the ways we think about race. We often talk about race as if it stemmed from the core problem of racism, but our thinking about race involves a good deal more. Race is also composed of rules and rituals, taboos and licenses, to which we give very little thought but which inform our perception of some words as racial. Of course, it is not just the words themselves we judge but the people who use them in certain kinds of contexts. Culture involves judgments about belonging and difference, and it inscribes boundaries between these two conditions. When we do race, we are both acting out and acting upon our own culture. Despite our best efforts to keep all this straight, lines continue to be crossed. In the process, our thinking about race—which we generally prefer not to think about—is highlighted in such a way that we start to wonder why or how we could ever have thought that way. What Are We Talking About? Basic Features of the “National Conversation” One of the most frequent comments made about the Imus incident, as with the one involving Richards, is that this episode was part of our “national conversation on race.” Sometimes this statement was made cynically or ironically, and sometimes sincerely or with uncertainty. The idea of such a conversation stems from former President Bill Clinton’s 1997 Initiative on Race, but the notion has long since taken on an active life of its own in the public sphere. It was there, ready and waiting, in

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the wake of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, which so disproportionately devastated the lives of poor African Americans. People quickly characterized the resulting heated debates as another stage in that national conversation. Similar characterizations were made regarding events in Jena, Louisiana, and Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. But the ready references beg the question, what kind of “conversation” is this? Simply put, it is a cultural conversation—the kind a people have among themselves over fundamental issues of identity and difference— concerning a basic question: what is the meaning of race? This conversational question meanders through current events, occasionally touching on the enduring significance of historical moments, and is continually renewed by changes, either subtle or abrupt, that make us question basic assumptions. The conversational character—in contrast to legislative efforts or formal debates—recognizes that this question cannot be resolved “once and for all.” It is an ongoing concern. As well, the notion of conversation implies that there are certain conventions and decorums, expectations about who can or will say what, and what topics are appropriate. Each of these aspects will be explored in depth in the subsequent chapters, but before proceeding it is worth specifying further some of the conversation’s characteristic features and dynamics. First, it is episodic and sporadic—it does not proceed in linear fashion. People expecting a rational argument or logical terms will find it confusing, but this characteristic is a commonplace of culture, which is composed of stories and images with powerful, at times unfixed, meanings, rather than a series of formal propositions. This conversation advances through the types of episodes depicted in this book. They may follow in quick succession, or there may well be a lull of weeks or months. Some episodes draw a huge audience, while others attract the attention of only a few people. But they commonly have the capacity to be linked to past and future episodes, to other stories that involve this central question about the significance of race. Another feature of this conversation is that it fixates on moments when certainties seem to be unsettled or overturned. Central topics largely feature moments of ambiguity; in response, commentators tend to recognize these as instances when certainties might be overturned. The discussion really gets rolling when clashing perceptions and expec-

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tations open up into a reassessment of the forms of cultural “common sense” we might be said to share. These instances also often prompt a reevaluation of past assessments concerning race. Imus and Richards were each easily characterized as racist, but that was just a starting point. Americans realized that the questions raised were larger than the particular incidents and that the basic concept of racism was not going to provide a sufficient answer. Certainly, racism explained it all for some people; at the same time, most of the commentary that followed pointed to an array of issues that reflected the complexity of race and were not easily reducible simply to racism. This points to a third characteristic of the conversation: it involves a fairly active, conscious process of making sense. When we refer to racial matters, it is easy to assume that this is all about “hard-wired” beliefs and biases. Explanations based on a framework focused on racism largely key in on the impulsive, almost reflexive aspect of racial perceptions and reactions. But the discussions of Imus and Richards suggest something different about these moments of conversation—that Americans gave a good deal of thought to the significance of what each of these white men said. This evaluation both derives from and further fuels a keen attention to the forms and conventions that guide Americans’ perceptions of what counts as race. Another important feature on display in the incidents covered in this book is that this conversation is evolving. Judgments brought to bear previously on Lott and Allen, and the criteria mobilized in those judgments, were further sharpened and honed on Richards and Imus. The problems and solutions are cast in sharper relief with each new episode and the scope of discussion seems to range further. Each round of race stories in the news contributes to a developing interpretive repertoire—somewhat like legal precedent—that shapes our ability to make sense of race in each subsequent instance. This evolving ability, though, also reflects the rapid mutation of racial meaning. Words become racialized every day, seemingly out of the blue, partly out of Americans’ preference to police and constrain racial meanings, as well as our keen ability to recognize them in their submerged form. This process can result in the extension of racial meaning to words like “fairy tale” and “black hole.”

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This national conversation is also wide-ranging and eclectic. Through much of the past few decades, when we talked about race in public we referred to discrimination and inequality. Though these are still fundamental to why race matters, they are no longer uniformly what people refer to when they talk about race. The plethora of subjects that can be counted as racial grows steadily. This, in turn, creates further uncertainty over what “racial” means. This confusion is amplified by the steadily eroding line between public and private speech. This erosion involves far more than race, but it is crucial to how “racial” remarks are generated and circulated. Words spoken in private—or in settings assumed to be removed from scrutiny—sound quite different on YouTube or TMZ.com. But the same goes for the forms of entertainment we consume, especially music; they seem so intimate and yet are steadily slipping into global markets, tossing back to us the strange reverb effects of hearing other people saying things they heard from us or quoting us out of context. Two crucial features of this conversation will bring this chapter to a close and direct us to the drama that unfolded later that summer in the backwoods of Louisiana. These features are somewhat harder to grasp, because they take us deeper into the operations of culture. But, in this, they are potentially the most important. First, our national conversation is, like any other cultural activity, selective. Of the many ways people of different races daily interact with or avoid each other, only a scant few are ever designated as racial. Culture gives us the templates from which we select, from the vast perceptual wash of experiences to which we are daily exposed, a few sounds, smells, sights, and moments of touch that we label as important and meaningful. So, too, this conversation guides us to describe as “racial” only a meager number of interactions from among the many and varied ways people of different colors interact. Finally, this discussion of race is part of other conversations on topics such as the importance of class, or patriotism, or regional identity, or whether history matters. The crucial but difficult point is that, in talking about race, we are often talking about multiple topics simultaneously that may, in a broader sense, seem to have little to do with race. But this interweaving is an important means by which we move in and out of this “national conversation.”

3 Narrating Nooses Locating the Role of Race in Jena, LA Jena is America. Reverend Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice

JUDGING A REMARK TO BE R ACIAL OR NOT, as in the case of Imus, is one thing, but deciding whether a particular situation is racial involves difficulties of another order of magnitude. What does it take to see race when it is not crystallized in a remark; when it, instead, is rather snugly burrowed into the routine of everyday life? The answer is, a narrative—the fundamental cultural form that links our attention to disparate moments or events, letting us see them as interrelated, unfolding according to a certain plot line that connects actors and acts, motives and meanings.¹ A primary dividing line for our selective attention to race falls between events that seem mundane and those that are volatile and marked by conflict.² The challenge in recognizing the “racial” aspect of certain situations does not arise from a lack of material or possibilities—racial pretenses, motives, and interests lurk throughout American society. The question, rather, is how we weigh their import and relevance in deciding what really is going on in a place like Jena, Louisiana. As a national news story, Jena abruptly jutted into Americans’ consciousness in the fall of 2007 as a stunning tale about powerful racism resurfacing in the Deep South, raising the awkward question of what, if anything, has really changed in the past few decades about how race matters in this country. On September 20, 2007, upwards of twenty

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thousand people from across the country were drawn by a very powerful story to the tiny rural town of Jena, Louisiana. The story was about injustice and at its core was a searing image of nooses swinging from the branches of a schoolyard tree—a “whites-only” tree in many accounts. The featured characters were six black teenagers charged with attempted murder for physically assaulting a white teen. These charges seemed outlandish, even more so because white teens who had similarly attacked a black youth in Jena mostly escaped punishment—only one was charged with a misdemeanor and subsequently received probation. But more than a compelling story drew all these people, mostly African Americans, to this corner of Louisiana, deep in the pine woods. For weeks prior to the rally, the “Afrosphere” or “black blogosphere” hummed with activity, which gelled into an unprecedented organizing effort, one that thrived without central political leaders.³ Bloggers who first began to connect up in responding to the Imus incident gradually established a network of tech-savvy, like-minded citizens who recognized racial dynamics that many white Americans were comfortable ignoring. They also were building an audience that was newly vigilant to how race surfaces in the public sphere, taking advantage of communication technologies that were opening new avenues of engagement and criticism related to race. All that was needed to make this potent mix of media and technology gel as an effective social force was a powerful narrative charged with racial symbolism. But was Jena really a story about race? If so, what did it say about America? Initial national media coverage framed the story in terms of a disturbing premise: that nothing has really changed despite the landmark achievements of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Americans—who might reasonably have believed that the thoroughgoing rebuke of racial comments by Imus, Richards, Biden, and Allen amounted to proof that our racial past no longer dominates and defines the public sphere—were confronted by a striking challenge. Events in Jena suggested, as many commentators stressed, that the days of Jim Crow and racial conflict centered in the Deep South had never truly ended.⁴ So many elements harkened back to the worst battles over civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s: African Americans rallying from across the nation to challenge a racial miscarriage of justice; an all-white jury finding a

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young black man guilty on questionable charges; discrepant sentencing practices for whites and blacks; and a case of arson at the high school. News coverage depicted the scene in Jena as if a time warp had opened in this remote burg, plunging the nation back into the fierce, bloody battles of those earlier years. On the eve of the massive rally in Jena, though, Reed Walters—the white district attorney of LaSalle Parish, who filed the charges against the young black men—held an outdoor press conference. Ringed by a dozen or more white law enforcement officers, Walters criticized how “this case has been portrayed by the news media as being about race. The fact that it takes place in a small southern town lends itself to that portrayal. But this case is not, and never has been, about race. It is about finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions. That is what it’s about.” Walters argued that depictions of the town and the case had been distorted because, as the nation turned its attention to this “small southern town,” Americans saw only a fraught racial past instead of a more muddled current moment. Walters’s assertions soon formed the center of an alternative assessment of events in Jena, one that regarded the racial interpretation of the initial story as a misrepresentation of events. In striking contrast to the Imus incident—when there was no counter explanation raised in the larger public sphere to explain his comments—coverage of Jena hived off an alternative reading of events that emphasized a disconnect between the charged image of the nooses and everything else that followed. This story is not about race, Walters and others maintained, because the nooses—found on the morning of September 1, 2006—had nothing to do with the subsequent arson at the high school (on the night of November 30, 2006) or the fight between white and black students on December 4, 2006. This counter story characterized key elements of the initial, race-based reading of events as a “myth” and regarded most of the media attention in the case as badly biased.⁵ As this alternative narrative about Jena matured, the string of incidents that formed the core elements of the first stories were reexamined and differently characterized by increasingly incredulous reporters. Challenging initial accounts that posited white racism as the singular

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force behind events in Jena, the counter narrative regarded the incidents as illustrating, instead, the impact of “black pathology.” This concept, as described by Ishmael Reed, associates social problems—crime, drug use, and teenage pregnancy—singularly with African Americans and defines this connection as the “real” reason why race matters in this country.⁶ In these two synoptic, antithetical views, the same series of incidents were construed in contrasting lights, and each perspective framed the central point that Jena had been called on to exemplify—the disproportionate rates of black male incarceration in this country—in sharply different terms. Not Black and White Americans are finely attuned consumers of race stories, since they are a common feature of both local and national news coverage. But we are largely unaware of the enormous amount of mediation that goes into generating and circulating these stories as news.⁷ As well, we are often oblivious to how tenuous racial narratives are—they rest upon aligning a sequence of events to a basic premise or explanatory principle, such as white racism. Our expectation that “racial” news stories are sensational and full of conflict—as with the Imus story—also makes it difficult to recognize and consider race as an aspect of slow-building institutional trends—such as the racially disproportionate rates of incarceration in this country.⁸ Or, perhaps more to the point, such long-term developments raise disquieting questions that play easily into an uncomfortable narrative about the way race matters, as suggested by the “black pathology” storyline.⁹ Jena became the next episode in our “national conversation” that fall because many of the crucial elements of a “racial” story fell into place, largely due to the diligent efforts of a few interested people. Whether these elements would hold together in the face of greater journalistic scrutiny and the active thinking about race that has come to characterize this conversation, was increasingly open to question in the days following this major rally. The racial dimension of events in Jena shifted in and out of view depending on how they were framed by these competing narratives. In the end, neither narrative has proved either entirely right or wrong; both

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are too limited a basis to explain or capture the importance of race in this tiny town. Instead of resolving which storyline is right, the coverage of Jena reveals how culturally conditioned we are to rely on narratives to focus our attention and to hone our ability to recognize the racial aspects of any particular situation. The facts, in this case, do not simply “speak for themselves” and they are hardly an emphatic basis for deciding which of these narratives is more accurate or true. Rather, the facts highlight the selective basis by which we recognize “racial” situations and the profound need for us to expand that basis of recognition if we are to keep up with the changing ways that race matters today. It is a commonplace in discussions about race to posit contrasting “white” and “black” views of events. But these two narrative frames— white racism and black pathology—are not racially exclusive ways of viewing the world. Though a majority of the proponents of the view that white racism explains what happened in Jena were African Americans, a number of whites, reflecting on the matter, were quite capable of recognizing and adhering to this perspective. In fact, Jena became a story about racism in America largely because of the efforts of two white men, as we shall see below. Similarly, there were black voices among the varied commentators promoting a view that this story was really about “black pathology.” These narrative orientations are not simple matters of racial reflex; they hinge on complex notions about the relevance of the past, the role of responsibility, and basic American assumptions about individuals and groups. Each of these cultural dimensions played a fundamental role in shaping how people came to view events in this small lumber town in vastly different ways. Primarily, these narratives differed in the relevance they attributed to history. From the white-racism perspective, the past was ever present, with certain actions and attitudes being continually repeated. On May 20, 2007, the Chicago Tribune—the first major newspaper to cover the story emerging in Jena—depicted residents as “confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.”¹⁰ Contrastingly, the skepticism of other commentators regarding this narrative was partly fueled by the view that the core problem represented in Jena—the disproportionate number of young black men in the criminal justice system—was an entirely contemporary matter and had little or nothing to do with the past history of white racism; that, in fact, the

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search for white racism distracted attention from the “real problem” represented in these differential rates of incarceration. Americans decide on the relative weight and import to give race, in part, based on the relevance they attribute to the past: from one angle, the past is seen as remote and unimportant in the current moment’s singularity in time; in the opposite view, history takes center stage as a motive force that continually molds the present. These contrasting views of the past shaped polarizing views of the key question in Jena: whether the nooses in the tree were either linked to or the motivating factor for the fights that followed months later. Other factors shaping how people made sense of Jena, beyond a deterministic pull of racial identity towards polarizing “white” and “black” views, are notions of responsibility and the all-important concern with individuals and groups. These aspects are combined in interesting ways in the opposed narratives, but they consistently illustrate the importance of cultural forms like narrative in shaping how Americans think about and recognize race. When attorney Reed Walters asserted at the press conference that the case against the six boys was “not about race,” he did so by arguing that it was instead about “finding justice for an innocent victim and holding people accountable for their actions.” The victim, Justin Barker, was a white individual who was attacked by a group of black teenagers. For Walters, what mattered was identifying and punishing the actions—the “choices,” as some commentators put it—made by these offenders. In sharp contrast, the protestors who assembled in Jena located responsibility in white racism, which to them explained why Walters treated blacks, as a group, differently than whites. Innocence and “victim” status for the blacks charged with the crime was predicated on seeing white racism as the motive force in these criminal charges. Interestingly, even though some effort was made to individualize the black youths accused in this crime—particularly Mychal Bell, who was improperly charged and tried as an adult—the overwhelming representation of these teens, by supporters and opponents, was as a group: the “Jena 6.” These respective designations—of an individual victim and a group of offenders—in turn then shaped how people responded to the racial interpretation of events in this remote corner of Louisiana. Race theorists and experts weighing Walters’s rejection of a racial

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interpretation might easily conclude this was a case of “white denial.” But “white denial”—or “black denial,” for that matter, which was invoked by African Americans who stressed the “black pathology” explanation for Jena—relies on race to explain why race matters, in a manner that becomes circular quite quickly. What is crucial in understanding Jena and the status this episode holds in our “national conversation” is to recognize, first, that cultural narratives shape our understanding of events even before we decide that a situation is or is not racial. These narratives both reflect and condition our sensibilities about the importance of the past, in ways that are not reducible to being understood as reflections of our own racial identities. As well, our reliance on the categories of individual and group to assign responsibility and agency plays a fundamental role in influencing whether we characterize a series of events as racial in nature. In the end, whether Jena was viewed as a racial situation hinged on how these cultural orientations—towards the relevance of the past and the value of individuals versus groups—shaped Americans’ interpretation of events. But, as with the Imus incident, these cultural elements were part of an array of additional media factors that were at work shaping these events into a news story. When Race Becomes the Story Once upon a time, the elements that make race a news story were much clearer. Race, as a category of news, emerged with the “race beat,” which covered the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. This involved a new approach to reporting, one that regarded forms of racial brutality and discrimination, which had largely gone without comment or notice from most white Americans, as newsworthy. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, authors of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, explain that this involved both “seeking out stories that were hard to find” and “seeing ordinary stories through a new racial prism.”¹¹ This prism allowed reporters, editors, and readers alike to recognize events in disparate places—often in remote, tiny southern towns, much like Jena—as fundamentally related and reflective of a larger pattern and problem. This interpretive framework was honed first by black reporters.

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“Even before it was clear that all the datelines, taken together, constituted a civil rights movement,” Roberts and Klibanoff recount, “it had become clear in the Negro press that the race story had developed into something constant and enduring. It had become the race beat, and the Negro press was staffing it seriously.”¹² But leaders of the emergent civil rights movement recognized that success hinged on engaging a much larger audience: “if the protests were to succeed,” Roberts and Klibanoff relate, “the mainstream press—the white press—would have to discover racial discrimination and write about it so candidly and so repeatedly that white Americans outside the South could no longer look the other way.”¹³ In this way, movement leaders and reporters became entwined in a mutual project of directing the nation’s attention to a set of problems that it had previously refused to recognize. This arrangement lasted until both the stories and incidents became more complicated as the 1960s progressed and climaxed in a wave of race riots and antiwar protests, effectively ending the race beat. The race beat, as constituted in this earlier era, involved a good deal of interpretive effort—on the part of both reporters and activists trying to attract media coverage—in order for race to become a story. But this interpretive work was hardly adequate to convey the increasingly multifaceted ways race mattered as the nation’s conflicts over civil rights moved from the legislative sphere back into the realm of everyday life. First, the wave of urban riots shattered the moral clarity of racial issues in the news; then the devastating but utterly routine conditions of inner-city life challenged the conventions that made race a story in the earlier period. The race beat’s approach to news—the clarity with which “good guys” and “bad guys,” and “right” and “wrong” were distinguished—was no longer sufficient. The power of this initial approach, however, left a lasting impact on how we recognize incidents and stories as racial today. Certainly, we continue to see race stories in the news on a frequent basis today. But the idea that journalistic and editorial resources—which grow scarcer by the day and face increasing, competing demands— should be devoted to the challenging task of making sense of race for viewers and readers is antiquated. Events in Jena made this plain. Who would be qualified to sort out the contrasting narrative frames for mak-

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ing sense of whether this situation was “racial,” as protestors insisted, or not, as District Attorney Walters and many residents—white and black—contended? This story, and the complex conflicts over how to interpret the role of race, makes it apparent how badly the country could use a modern equivalent of the race beat. But this story also illustrates that we could use a more developed critical attention to the various ways race becomes news today. Jena became a story that would grip the attention of the nation at large because of the efforts of two white men—Alan Bean, executive director of Friends of Justice, and Harold Witt of the Chicago Tribune. The incidents that were central to the story of Jena—the nooses, the assaults, and the arson incident—percolated on the news wire for months in accounts from the Associated Press, which generated seventy-four reports about the town between September 7, 2006, and October 12, 2007. But many of the initial reports were too sporadic and seemingly too local to amount to a racial story that would attract a broad audience. For that to happen, a great deal of work was required to weave the different strands of these stories together into one coherent, larger narrative—one that would make it stunningly clear that this was all about race. Bean and Witt made this effort and developed the narrative frame that succinctly depicted this story as “racial,” which, in turn, became an even larger tale about race in America. Bean’s role was fundamental—he constructed and then circulated the first timeline of events in Jena, which linked the nooses in the school’s courtyard to the two assaults that followed months later. Bean described how he pieced this narrative together: “I knew it was probably the kind of case the media could be talked into covering because it had so many spectacular features: the fire—something that was terribly significant that nobody was picking up—the nooses and the racial tension. I thought that if the story was framed properly and people could see the connective tissue they could see how one thing led to another.”¹⁴ Bean recognized simultaneously the presence of race in this setting and that most Americans would not be able see this racial dimension—unless the “spectacular features” were “framed properly.” Bean envisioned a certain kind of causal relationship emerging from the story that would link the nooses to a bigger story about racial disparity. But developing this causal

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aspect depended on leading people to “see the connective tissue” by getting the elements to align in a particular manner. Bean’s interpretive work should not be construed as artifice. Americans, across racial lines, are often resistant to seeing race as a factor in particular situations. Bean’s account shows the effort required to make the racial aspect of stories stand out in the news today. Bean describes a formula that applies in leading Americans to recognize the racial dimension of certain situations. But the selective aspects of his account—and all cultural products, like narratives, are selective in some way—and how they were criticized by subsequent efforts to narrate Jena, raise the question of whether this recipe for seeing race needs to be reworked or recalibrated to better frame the complex and changing ways race matters. For that matter, does the “racial” dimension Bean brings into view end up obscuring as much as it reveals about the workings of race in Jena? For Bean—and for Howard Witt too, as we will see—the ability to see race at work in Jena stemmed from previous experience with similar stories. The prior story for Bean was Tulia, a small town in the Texas panhandle where he and his family moved in the late 1990s. Bean and his wife, Nancy—both Baptist preachers—founded the nonprofit organization Friends of Justice in response to a string of drug busts and trials that shook this town of five thousand people in 1999. The operation, based on the work of an itinerant white narcotics agent, led to the arrests of thirty-nine black residents, over ten percent of the town’s African American population. These residents hardly fit the profile of drug dealers: they were mostly poor and unemployed or semi-employed. Furthermore, the agent in the case, Tom Coleman, was an utterly unreliable man who had taken no notes nor made any recordings to document his undercover work. The Beans tried—unsuccessfully at first—to draw attention to these cases by contacting the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Justice Department. As Nancy Bean related, “They basically told us, ‘So, poor black people are being mistreated by the criminal justice system. That’s not news.’”¹⁵ These responses underscore both the pervasive and routine aspects of racial disparities and the difficulty of making these disparities into a story that people will care about. The Beans continued their efforts and eventually found a journal-

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ist, Nate Blakeslee, with the Texas Observer, who turned these cases into a narrative that drew critical attention to the operations of justice in Tulia.¹⁶ Blakeslee’s reporting called attention to the fact that there were no witnesses to any of these alleged deals, other than Coleman himself, and that Coleman’s testimony was rife with inconsistencies. Blakeslee also pointed out that Coleman lied under oath regarding his personal arrest record. Coleman had been charged with theft in his previous lawenforcement job, which ended abruptly—as did similar stints as a deputy sheriff in Cochran County and in Pecos County—with Coleman bolting town, leaving thousands of dollars of unpaid bills in his wake. Just as importantly, though, Blakeslee put the Tulia arrests in the context of racial disparities in sentencing for drug crimes, both in Texas and nationally. Citing a report from Human Rights Watch, Blakeslee related “that the rate of admission to prison for black drug offenders in Texas is 19 times that of white drug offenders, and 38 of blacks sentenced to prison in Texas have been convicted of drug crimes. (Nationwide, meanwhile, blacks constituted just 16.9 of drug users in 1996, but accounted for 37.3 of drug arrests that year.)”¹⁷ These disparities framed the arrests in Tulia as part of a national problem of racism in the criminal justice system. That did not immediately make Tulia a national story, but Blakeslee’s narrative was powerful enough to attract the NAACP, who proceeded to place this little Texas town in a much brighter spotlight. The NAACP generated intense national media coverage of Tulia that led to articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time, along with features on 20/20 and 60 Minutes. This coverage, in turn, led the Texas Court of Appeals to order an evidentiary hearing in 2003, in which Coleman’s former wife testified about his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Additionally, Coleman, under oath, admitted to referring to blacks as “niggers,” and a previous law-enforcement employer characterized him as “dishonest, unreliable [and] a racist.” The hearing resulted in an agreement by the state’s special prosecutor to reverse the convictions for those arrested and tried in relation to Coleman’s testimony. Eventually, Texas governor Rick Perry was prompted to pardon thirty-five defendants from Tulia. In the wake of the pardons, an NAACP attorney, Vanita Gupta, commented, “Tulia has become a model for what’s wrong with the criminal justice system. It’s

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been so compelling nationally because of the story it tells.”¹⁸ In the wake of the impressive outcome in Tulia, Alan Bean decided to pursue other such stories, using Friends of Justice to create similar “media scandals around questionable prosecutions as they unfold.”¹⁹ The next story came into view when he was contacted by residents of Jena, Louisiana, in January 2007. Bean responded to the calls by visiting Jena, where he spoke with the defendants and their parents. Black residents assailed him with stories about the racial indignities of small-town southern life. From these discussions, and from reading the local reporting on events, Bean composed a narrative account that succinctly linked the nooses to the beating of Justin Barker three months later. In this account—a six-page outline of events—Bean also connects the nooses with a fire at Jena High School and “a stream of white-initiated racial violence [that] swept over the tiny community.” All these connections made the attack on Barker appear to be a defensive response by beleaguered blacks. Bean’s account described the town as engulfed by a “wave of hysteria” and “horror” over spreading “racial violence,” but the core of his focus was on the apparent disparities in how attacks by white and black males were treated by the local district attorney. The white youth who attacked a black teenager at a party largely escaped criminal prosecution, while “those [black students] allegedly responsible for the school fight are facing charges that could send them to prison for 100 years without parole” (original emphasis).²⁰ Bean then sent this narrative to reporters he felt would recognize its inherent import as a racial drama. One of those journalists was Howard Witt, who wrote the initial news report that would attract widespread interest in Jena. Like Bean, Witt’s ability to see the events in Jena as “racial” was informed, at least in part, by his previous experience with a similar story—the case of Shaquanda Cotton in Paris, Texas. Witt, a reporter with the Chicago Tribune for over twenty years, had served since 2003 as chief of its Houston-based southwest bureau and covered civil rights stories. In the spring of 2006, Witt investigated Cotton’s case: a fourteenyear-old black girl who was given an indeterminate sentence of up to seven years in a Texas Youth Commission prison for shoving a teacher’s aide at her high school. Cotton had no prior arrest record and had only

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been written up previously for minor infractions of school policies. Testimonies at her trial were conflicting, and both the aide, Cleda Brownfield, and Cotton suffered minor injuries from the altercation. Cotton was convicted of felony assault after the jury deliberated for less than ten minutes. Thanks in large part to Witt’s reporting, Cotton’s story came to emblematize racial discrimination in the Paris Independent School District. His first story on Paris—featuring Cotton as an example—reported that the U.S. Department of Education was investigating whether the district’s disciplinary practices discriminate against black students. This story was quickly picked up by a number of black bloggers and used to generate a rally for her cause, which brought hundreds of members of the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panthers to Paris, Texas. This protest, in turn, played a key role in winning an early release for Cotton, who served over a year of her sentence. But it took more than aggregate numbers and a keen sense of injustice to convince so many people outside of Paris to care about this situation. Witt fashioned a striking and disturbing “racial” lens for this story in the article’s lead, which referenced lynchings held at the Paris Fairgrounds—in 1893 and 1920—“where thousands of white spectators would gather to watch and cheer as black men were dragged onto a scaffold, scalded with hot irons and finally burned to death or hanged.”²¹ In choosing this image, Witt asserted that current practices revealed “the racist legacy of those lynchings is rebounding in a place that calls itself ‘the best small town in Texas’” and made a strong claim that history was fundamental to recognizing the racial aspect of this story. The article’s headline—“To Some in Paris, Sinister Past Is Back”—further emphasized that understanding Cotton’s case as racial involved properly grasping the lasting presence and influence of the past. Many white residents of Paris, though, were appalled at these suggestions and contested both this framing and whether Witt got the story of Paris and Shaquanda Cotton right. Local journalist Phillip Hamilton characterized Witt’s story as “a journalistic lynching,” “lashed with false statements, omitted facts, and inaccurate information” that misconstrued the ways race matters in Paris today.²² Whether or not this view

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of the past allowed him to properly understand the Shaquanda Cotton story, it clearly shaped the way that Witt developed his account of Jena. Following his receipt of Bean’s chronicle of events, Witt traveled to Jena where he spent three weeks investigating the story and conducting about sixty interviews. Most of the whites he contacted refused to talk to him about the case. The mayor and school superintendent tried to avoid him, and both the current and former principals at the high school refused to be interviewed. Teachers at the school were also unwilling to talk about events. But Witt relates in an interview that, “by contrast, most all of the black folks I approached in town were happy to talk to me.” The reporting that he generated drew from these conversations, though not primarily from the accounts of the “Jena Six families,” who he felt “had an ax to grind too, they were interested in spinning the story their way.” Additionally, he drew on his own observations of daily life in Jena and at the high school. “For instance, I sat outside that high school courtyard for a couple of days, because I wanted to see if it was true that white kids and black kids sat on different sides of the courtyard, and sure enough they absolutely do.”²³ The lead of Witt’s initial story compactly linked the nooses with subsequent events: “The trouble in Jena started with the nooses. Then it rumbled along the town’s jagged racial fault lines. Finally it exploded into months of violence between blacks and whites.” In this narrative, town residents “are confronting Old South racial demons many thought had long ago been put to rest.” Witt framed the discrepant versions of why the nooses were placed in the tree—in contrast to upset black parents and students, the white school superintendent considered them to be a “prank” that did not represent “a threat against anybody.” But he emphasized that “it was after the noose incident that the violent, racially charged events that are still convulsing Jena began.”²⁴ Thanks to Bean’s timeline and Witt’s reporting, the nooses became the central image and defining feature of the Jena story. They emblematized that this was a “racial” story. Even the counter narrative that arose as a challenge to the account assembled by Bean and Witt fixated on the nooses and made contesting their significance and relevance its singular focus. The question of what they symbolized, the intentions of the three

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white boys who placed them in the tree, and their influence on the subsequent course of events became the subject of heated debate as the massive protest rally drew intense attention to events in this remote corner of Louisiana. However their status would be settled in relation to Jena, the image of the nooses became emblazoned in America’s public sphere as a charged image of racial animus. This symbolic gesture was repeated in a widespread series of nooses hung in workplaces and public places across the country, apparently to intimidate blacks.²⁵ But whether the nooses in Jena brought Americans closer to recognizing the racial dimensions of events there would increasingly come into question. Directly following his story’s publication, Witt took the extra step of circulating it to black bloggers with whom he had become familiar following his coverage of the Cotton story. In much the same way as he was contacted by Bean, Witt forwarded his story to participants in the “Afrosphere.” “I just said, ‘here’s another story that you might be interested in.’ Well, that caused a very quick reaction because the Jena [case] had a lot of resonance too. A lot of people tended to get very upset when they heard about what was happening in Jena, and then the story took off instantly.” Witt chatacterized what happened next as a kind of funneling effect, whereby “like-minded people and people who are already well-positioned to have an impact on politics” take up and circulate a story, broadening its scope and accelerating its impact.²⁶ Witt subsequently reported in another news story that “this new African-American blogosphere, which scarcely even existed a year ago, now comprises hundreds of interlinked blogs and tens of thousands of followers who within a matter of a few weeks collected 222,000 petition signatures—and more than $130,000 in donations for legal fees—in support of six black Jena teenagers who are being prosecuted on felony and battery charges for beating a white student.”²⁷ As bloggers circulated the story, it became the subject of national radio discussion when talk-show host Michael Baisden made the cause of the Jena 6 a major focus of his afternoon show, Love, Lust & Lies.²⁸ Soon other black radio personalities, such as Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey, also were broadcasting their concerned commentaries on events in Jena. These developments led Witt to accurately predict before the massive rally in Jena that it would be an utterly unique occurrence: “this

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will be a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the ether of cyberspace, of a type that has never happened before in America—a collective national mass action grown from a grassroots word-of-mouth movement spread via internet blogs, e-mails, message boards and talk radio.”²⁹ On September 21, 2007, columnist Eugene Robinson remarked in the Washington Post that, while the events in Jena had “utterly failed to penetrate the national consciousness,” they were actively being taken up by bloggers and broadcast by talk-show hosts to largely black audiences.³⁰ In contrast, many whites only encountered the story when the major networks covered the rally itself, as the networks rushed to catch up with a story that threatened to outpace them. But the shock of the story’s powerful images and narrative seemed even greater for people who came to the story late—the idea that this could be happening in America today was deeply disconcerting. The Narrative Takes a Turn While the story gathered force in the black blogosphere and on “urban radio” and the day for the massive rally neared, news reporters began to ask more critical questions about the “racial” framework for narrating and explaining events in Jena. In the wake of the rally, this more critical reporting produced a somewhat different version of the story. The central elements remained unchanged but the initial “connective tissue” began dissolving, leading to somewhat different conclusions. As well, many new connections were being developed in a slew of editorials and other opinion pieces engendered by events in Jena. The key shift came with a report by Todd Lewan, of the Associated Press, on September 22 (two days after the rally), which was carried by a number of news outlets. Lewan’s account gave a fuller view of everyday life in Jena, but he also presented a wide range of residents’ perspectives on how the story had been covered in the media. Lewan’s opening reflected on the powerful initial narrative that had drawn so many people to Jena. “It’s got all the elements of a Delta blues ballad from the days of Jim Crow: hangman’s nooses dangling from a shade tree; a mysterious fire in the night; swift deliberations by a condemning, all-white jury.” But he had come to realize that the “tale of the ‘Jena Six’ . . . [was] not

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as simple as all that.” Lewan compiled “a more nuanced rendition of events” by conducting interviews with teachers, officials, and students at Jena High, as well as drawing from court testimony and from public statements by U.S. Attorney Donald Washington, who was reviewing the legal case for possible federal intervention. Residents, black and white, complained to Lewan “that in its repeated retelling—enhanced by omissions and alterations of fact—the story has taken on a life of its own.”³¹ In Lewan’s version of Jena, white residents condemned the noose hangings and black residents spoke against the jailed teens; many also disputed aspects of the long-circulating core story about how the nooses came to be in the tree and what impact, if any, their appearance had on subsequent events. Rather than depicting a town roiled by “months of violence between blacks and whites,” as Witt had first reported, or convulsed in a “wave of hysteria” over spreading “racial violence,” as Bean had initially characterized the situation, Jena residents who spoke with Lewan “interpreted the events of last year pretty much the same way: that a small minority of troublemakers, both black and white, got out of hand, and that the responses from authorities weren’t always on the mark.” There was plenty of criticism voiced for the double standard evident in the disparate charges brought against the white and black offenders. But the central theme was a challenge to the racial explanatory frame that was first brought to bear on the story. As one black resident, sixty-one-yearold Ben Reid, remarked, “this whole thing ain’t no downright, racial affair.”³² This view was underscored by U.S. Attorney Donald Washington’s assessment—announced the day before the rally in Jena—that “there was no connection between the September noose incident and December attack.” In the face of criticism—and a congressional hearing—for not pursuing hate crime charges against the white youths who hung the nooses, Washington insisted that there was no basis for assuming the events in Jena were connected: “We could not prove that, because the statements of the students themselves do not make any mention of nooses, of trees, of the ‘N’ word or any other words of racial hate.”³³ District Attorney Walters reached a similar conclusion after interviewing participants in the case and evaluating what charges to pursue in

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the beating of Justin Barker: “When this case was brought to me and during our investigation and during the trial, there was no such linkage ever suggested. The notion that there was an unbroken series of events that began with the hanging of the nooses and culminated in the attack at this school was never presented. This compact story line has only been suggested after the fact.” From the perspective of these attorneys (one black, one white, and both quoted in the same report), what had become the core image of Jena in media accounts—the version of events that condensed around the charged racial symbol and an assault that occurred four months later—was unfounded. The “connective tissue” was called into question. But Lewan’s detailed reporting hardly suggested that race was not a major aspect of life in Jena. Rather, he drew into view aspects of daily life that were disturbing in a different way than the sensational elements of the initial “compact storyline” that was now being challenged. Lewan’s details are not as photogenic as nooses because they are mundane; they barely drew attention at a time when the national media focused on the streets of this little burg. His alternative perspective on “racial” was challenging to frame, in contrast to the more dramatic imagery of the nooses. Lewan pointed out that “there are no black lawyers, no black doctors, and one black employee in the town’s half-dozen banks,” and that employee was an accountant, removed from public view. As well, he related how David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK, had triumphed in LaSalle Parish in his bid for state governor in 1991. Such facts, featured in a lead perhaps, might not have drawn the intense media attention that made Jena a story, but would they have provided a better frame than the nooses for understanding how race matters in Jena? Lewan quoted black residents who complained about slow police response times in their neighborhood—hardly a grievance unique to Jena. Members of one family voiced frustration over how their complaints about Mychal Bell’s various acts of vandalism did not draw much of a response from the police. “But as soon as he had a run-in with a white boy,” Huey Crockett related, “they came down on him like a hammer. That’s not right. If I call the police for an incident here, it may take them an hour, an hour and a half to get out here. But they’ll be right out in an instant if a white person calls them.”³⁴ This racial

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disparity, which is a pervasive fact of life in many predominantly black neighborhoods throughout the country, is perhaps a more telling story than the one featuring nooses and an overzealous white prosecutor. But lacking the charged symbolism, these routine conditions are not as easy to compose into a compelling national storyline. Arguably, the most pervasive and enduring forms of racial disparities in Jena were obscured by the sensational accounts. But without a compelling storyline, we would likely have never heard about anything happening in Jena. Myths in the Media This fuller picture of racial life in Jena, however, fell from view almost as quickly as it surfaced, because interest quickly focused, instead, on the suggestions that this was “no downright, racial affair.” Reporting on the case shifted gears into a more critical assessment of the earlier coverage, suggesting the initial “facts” of the case, instead, constituted a “myth.”³⁵ These counter narratives ranged from reports that trumpeted “distorted” details in the earliest account—which now required an effort to “sift fact from fiction in the case”—to an itemized list in an October 24, 2007, Christian Science Monitor article, “Media Myths About the Jena 6.” In these reports, “all the elements of a Delta blues ballad from the days of Jim Crow” were either reframed or contextualized in a way that assailed the “connective tissue” that was so persuasive in the early accounts of events in Jena. The notion that the tree at the center of this dispute was considered to be “white only” was challenged by some residents and teachers; the severity of the punishment of the white boys who hung the nooses was construed as far more substantive than initially reported; Mychal Bell was recast not as an honor student with no criminal record, but as a criminal already on probation for two counts of battery and a count of criminal damage to property; and the significance of the all-white jury was called into question when it was revealed that none of the black residents called for jury duty appeared in court that day. Even the number of nooses was challenged, as residents insisted there were two rather than three. But the most intense focus now turned towards the question of the motives of the white youths in hanging the nooses. The counter

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story that now circulated was that, rather than intending them as a racial gesture, the white boys’ inspiration for stringing up the nooses came from a recent episode of Lonesome Dove, featuring Texas Rangers battling rustlers in the Wild West. In this version of events, the symbolism of the nooses was not racial but rather coded as “cowboys and rustlers.” Craig Franklin, a reporter for the Jena Times who authored the “Media Myths” article in the Christian Science Monitor, claimed that the boys, who had been around livestock their whole lives, “didn’t have a clue what nooses mean to blacks” and had not considered them symbols of lynching. This claim, not surprisingly, was greeted in a polarized fashion by the people involved in the drama. Most seemed completely incredulous that such a level of ignorance of the historical import of lynching was possible in the rural South; but some considered it possible, if only because every other aspect of the initial story seemed to be coming unmoored around the time this view of the boys’ motives was suggested.³⁶ These contrasting receptions, in turn, led to completely contrary claims about whether this version of events had been confirmed by the police, the FBI, and the federal prosecutors who interviewed the white boys responsible for what was being alternately cast as a hate crime or a prank. Attorneys Washington and Walters believed that the hanging of these nooses was classifiable as a hate crime. Yet, because they did not prosecute this case—owing to the facts that the offenders were minors and that it was not clear that any current statute in Louisiana had been violated—the argument that the boys’ motives were not racial flourished. Does Jena Really Represent America? Beyond the disputed particulars of events in Jena, the larger question that generated a great deal of editorial reflection was whether and how events in this small town exemplified broader racial dynamics in the United States. Pundits and commentators shared a consensus that Jena had become another episodic moment in our ongoing national conversation about race. Surprisingly, though, this moment of conversation alighted on an “otherwise anonymous town of 3,000 people,” which became “a high-profile arena in the debate on racial bias in the judicial

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system.”³⁷ But beyond this point of agreement, opinions on Jena’s larger significance ranged widely. The primary competing frames—white racism and black pathology—variously surfaced in these discussions, but commentators also sensed that these were hardly adequate to account for the relevance of Jena to Americans’ understandings of how race matters. This sentiment hinged as much on discrepant perspectives on the importance of the past or the distinction between individuals and groups as they did on any particular understanding of race. A primary issue for journalists was how to make sense of the unmistakable resonances between the rally and the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s which had spawned the “race beat” initially. Some editorials saw a seamless continuation of those earlier struggles, such as one in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 23 called “We’ve Been Here Before” that insisted “the scene in Jena easily resembled Birmingham or Selma in the 1960s. So long ago, and yet not long enough.” Others, rather than seeing “today’s equivalent of Freedom Riders,”³⁸ drew distinctions. An editorial in the New York Post insisted instead that “Jena is not Selma, Ala., no matter how much the [Reverends Sharpton and Jackson] try to invoke memories of this civil-rights movement,” while acknowledging “that the raging revs this time have found a cause with genuine substance.”³⁹ One common thread of commentary saw change occurring via a generational passing of “the torch of the civil rights struggle”⁴⁰ to an up-and-coming cadre of youth who circulated details of the incident via the internet and text messaging. Sharpton himself acknowledged this shift, observing that “ten years ago this couldn’t have happened. You didn’t have the internet and you didn’t have the black blogs and you didn’t have national radio shows. Now we can talk to all of black America every day.”⁴¹ Foreign commentators, generally, considered Jena as quite representative of racial relations in the United States, and read the scene as “a national symbol of racial injustice,” as Gary Younge wrote on September 17, 2007, in the British newspaper the Guardian, under the title “Apart from the Noose, This Is an Everyday Story of Modern America.” But they also regarded Jena as “highlight[ing] America’s changing racial politics,”⁴² rather than simply reprising its racist past. Perhaps distance made it easier to see events in Jena in a broader contemporary frame.

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“The true outrage is not that this happened in Jena,” Younge opined, “but that similar things happen everywhere, every day in America, and almost nobody takes any notice.” Younge construed the narrative about a confrontation with “Old South racial demons” in Jena as actually obscuring the larger picture. The top five segregated cities in the United States, the Guardian piece pointed out, were all in the North: Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, and Newark; so, too, were the states with the highest rates of racial disparity in black and white incarceration, such as Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. The focus on Jena—due to the “insufficient subtlety” of the racism there— offered a distorted view of racial dynamics in the United States, because it recycled imagery of old battles in the Deep South, directing attention away from a more sinister dimension of race—one that did not fit established story lines or narratives about how and why race matters. The Economist also highlighted differences from the past as more telling than their points of resonance. This editorial regarded Jena as reflecting “America’s changing racial politics,” rather than a return of its haunted racial past. The significance of Jena, the editorial asserted, is that it revealed the emergence of “black America’s new political stars,” over and against “the shrinking relevance” of Sharpton and Jackson. Here, Barack Obama’s stance on events in Jena drew favorable reviews, in particular for his effort to characterize the situation “not as a matter of black and white,” but of “right and wrong.”⁴³ He was rebuked for this by Jackson, who characterized the rising politician as “acting like he’s white.”⁴⁴ This accusation of “acting white” drew widespread commentary in U.S. editorials as well. For example, it was depicted by the New York Post “as ugly as it is stupid.”⁴⁵ The other dimension commentators wrestled with in trying to assess the significance of Jena for the nation at large hinged on the highly charged categories of individual and group. Ruben Navarrette Jr., writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune, related how his first response in hearing about the nooses and the charges “was to side with those screaming for justice. There was always the chance that the case was all about race.” But as he took a “closer look,” Navarrette grew appalled at efforts to construe the Jena 6 as “victims.” “The real victim,” he wrote, “is Justin Barker,” echoing the interpretation of attorney Walters, who strictly

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saw the plight of an individual in the face of a group attack. Watching scenes of black college students chanting “I am the Jena 6,” Navarrette took exception: “Well, not if you’ve never been part of a mob-style beating you’re not. Those college students obviously made good decisions to get to where they are. The Jena 6 made a bad decision, and that’s why they are in trouble with the law.” Navarrette, too, took offense at Jackson’s accusation against Obama for “acting white.”⁴⁶ Jason Whitlock opined in the Kansas City Star that the “thousands of us, proud African-Americans” seeking justice in Jena, were both deluded and in denial. He took issue with the dynamics of group identification that seemed to be shaping black perceptions of why this case mattered. “There are undeniable racial and economic inequalities in our criminal justice system,” Whitlock acknowledged, “and from afar the ‘Jena Six’ rallies certainly looked and felt like the righteous protests of the 1960s. But the reality is Thursday’s protests are just another sign that we remain deeply locked in denial about the path we need to travel today for true American liberation, equality and power in the new millennium.” Pointing to U.S. attorney Washington’s conclusion that the nooses were not related to the assault at the center of all these narratives, Whitlock argued that the calls for compassion for Mychal Bell were misguided. He cast Bell in a more sordid light via his criminal record, noting that “you won’t hear about any of that because it doesn’t fit the picture we want to paint of Jena, this case, America and ourselves.” Whitlock, too, questioned why there was such an outpouring of concern for Bell after he was arrested rather than before, when he was being raised by a single mother. “We as black folk,” Whitlock charged, “need to question ourselves about why too many of us can only get energized to help our young people once they’re in harm’s way.” As illustration, he pointed to the long waiting list at Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Greater Kansas City, where one hundred or more black boys longed for this kind of preemptive attention.⁴⁷ In addition to nooses, high-profile politicians, and possibly misplaced compassion—all fundamental to reading Jena as a racial event— this little town’s representativeness depends on how effectively it symbolized the problem of racially discrepant rates of incarceration in the United States. But is there a racial cause behind these rates? The two

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dominant narratives in Jena—white racism and black pathology—were similarly mobilized as competing, opposite explanations for a “racial” dimension of these institutional trends. Though each explanation was featured in editorial commentary, a few notable accounts insisted that both explanations were far too simple for the task of assessing what made the prison situation “racial.” Opinion pieces placing a singular focus on white racism were widespread. The editorial board of USA Today remarked that “the case reads like a sequel to Harper Lee’s Southern Gothic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird,” because “prejudice and racism are the central themes of the Jena case, too.”⁴⁸ Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Amy Goodman, in a July 18, 2007, piece titled “It’s Still About Race in Jena, La.,” drew a connection with an earlier episode of the national conversation on race that also was based in Louisiana—the massive flooding in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. “There’s another hurricane that’s devastating the lives of [Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco’s] constituents: racism.” In these opinion pieces, the role of racism in Jena was underscored by parallels with an earlier era of racial violence, one that was, in its renewed currency, extrapolated to the nation at large. In the Washington Informer on September 20, Ron Walters summed up the situation: “The legal lynching of six young Black students by officials in Jena, Louisiana is not only a continuing manifestation of Southern injustice, it is a symptom of a vicious period in American history now in existence.”⁴⁹ Byron Williams, writing in the Huffington Post, in a September 20, 2007, op-ed titled “Old-fashioned Southern Justice in the Modern South,” characterized the situation as enduring proof of the “barbaric legacy of legally sanctioned injustice.” Williams, though, also argued that Jena serves as a “microcosm” of the problem of discrepant rates of racial incarceration in the United States. “Instead of calling them the ‘Jena 6’ perhaps the ‘American 6’ would be more appropriate.” Still, some pundits were troubled by the reductive simplicity of the white racism narrative and sought to frame the situation in broader terms. But efforts to enlarge the frame along these lines muddled the clarity of the story. “Injustice Is Bigger Than the ‘Jena 6,’” columnist Clarence Page reminded Americans.⁵⁰ For Page, the story from Louisiana was part of a larger moment and a broader news cycle, one that

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included the arrest of O. J. Simpson on charges of attempted burglary, kidnapping, and felonious assault, as well as the conviction of the prosecutor in the Duke University rape case, Mike Nifong, for criminal contempt in making false statements related to that case. This larger context was similarly invoked in an editorial by the Richmond Times Dispatch on September 21, 2007, suggesting that more than race was at work in how these similar stories of injustice developed. Since whites, too, were at times subject to injustice in racial situations, the equation of race with Jena seemed too simple. Page summarized this perspective by pointing out, “As demonstrated by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s fiasco with Tawana Brawley or the recent bogus Duke University rape case, unequal justice doesn’t always tilt against black folks or Latinos.”⁵¹ In particular, the charges against O. J. Simpson, just days before the rally in Jena, fueled a rather contrary editorial assessment of Jena in terms of black pathology—a reductive view that construed black criminality as the central concern.⁵² The most developed version of this narrative was spun by Heather MacDonald, first in an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News and then fleshed out further in City Journal. Notably, MacDonald did not make the case by drawing on claims that media coverage of the case had generated myths rather than facts. Instead, she began by assuming “the worst about Jena,” that the charges “were motivated by rank racism, and that the racial tensions in this town of 3,000 are exclusively the product of white animus against blacks.” Granted these assumptions, though, MacDonald argued that it does not follow “that this latest object of frenzy on the media’s racism beat is emblematic of America’s judicial system or the state of race relations today.” She rejected this effort to make Jena represent the larger problem of racial disparities in rates of incarceration specifically because, she insisted, white racism has nothing to do with the national situation. MacDonald mobilized an array of statistics to assert that the responsibility for racial disparities in rates of incarceration lies entirely with blacks rather than whites. “It is not racism that is putting black men in jail,” MacDonald argued, “It is their own behavior.” To buttress this claim, MacDonald pointed to data indicating that blacks commit

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higher rates of violent crime and also represent a disproportionate number of out-of-wedlock births. She also asserted that the effective role of affirmative action, both in academia and in corporate America, countervails against the relevance of Jena to problems in the nation at large. “The opportunities for blacks,” MacDonald claimed, “to roar ahead in the economy if they stay out of trouble, study, and apply themselves are legion, but the numbers taking advantage of these opportunities are not.” Similar to Jason Whitlock, MacDonald saw “black denial” as the root of the problem. “The Jena protestors will go home in denial of these truths. In fact, the purpose of such mass celebrations—and that is indeed what they are—is to make sure that attention stays far away from the actual problems holding blacks back.” The Jena rallies, she argued, “obscured” these larger facts. “These ecstatic festivals of racism-bashing are a crippling ritual in the codependency between absolution-seeking whites and angry blacks,” which brings us no closer to understanding the real reason why so many African Americans are in jail.⁵³ Commentators waving the same basic statistics on rates of incarceration and yet making antithetical points—that either white racism or black pathology is to blame—illustrate the principal power of cultural narratives to frame our recognition of what is “racial.” The extensive commentary on Jena chewed over many of the same items—the resonance with moments in the civil rights movement, the discrepant charges brought against white and black teens, and the appalling fact that our prison population is disproportionately black. But the conclusions reached on whether or not Jena’s situation was racial—and whether events there were emblematic of how race matters in the nation at large—hinged largely on which of the two narratives each observer felt best accounted for these elements. At first blush, this would leave us at an irresolvable impasse in coming to terms with the role of race in the United States. There is a way forward, but it requires holding these two opposed perspectives simultaneously, considering them as complementary rather than as antithetical. The best example of this approach is provided by Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard and author of The Ordeal of Integration. Patterson, in a September 30, 2007, opinion piece in the

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New York Times titled “Jena, O.J. and the Jailing of Black America,” juxtaposes these two narratives and shows that they are hardly incompatible, despite their contrasting orientations and assumptions. Patterson brings these dual views into conjunction by allowing that their contrary stances on the relevance of the past both have merit. The “miscarriage of justice” at the heart of the matter, Patterson writes, “tempts us to the view . . . that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations.” But placing this case in the larger context of national developments, he offers, “make[s] it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.” What tips the scales in favor of an emphasis on the uniqueness of the current moment, for Patterson, is the fact that current rates of incarceration—fifty percent of prisoners are black, even though African Americans comprise roughly thirteen percent of the population—“are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era.” We are confronting a set of forces, he argues, that are not reducible to white racism. In moving beyond white racism as an explanation, Patterson turns to consider the opposite narrative—black pathology. As did commentators like MacDonald and Whitlock, Patterson raises the possibility of “black denial” and black responsibility for this situation. “What’s odd,” he observes, “is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.” Patterson appreciates that blacks are stirred to action by events in Jena, but he also is concerned that this mobilization is misdirected, because it is guided by an assumption about race—the central role of white racism—that is not a sufficient explanation for why race matters. With this shift in focus, Patterson highlights the role of black criminality, noting “the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardship.” Patterson concludes that we need more than the concepts of racism and bias to explain the racial aspect of the disparities in prison populations. “These events point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women

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of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor.” In this shift in focus, “racial” additionally encompasses differential rates of out-of-wedlock birth: “some 70 percent of black babies,” he intones, “are born to single mothers.” The significance of black criminality as a dimension of discrepant incarceration rates, in Patterson’s view, was obscured exactly by the historical frame of the narrative being promoted and circulated among protestors in Jena. “Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial.” That is, this choice for narrating the story of Jena blinded them to other important aspects of how race matters today. Getting It Right A basic feature of humans is the urge to narrate. Culture both requires this of us and provides us with the fundamental tools for composing these neatly arranged explanations of why things happen a certain way. We cannot escape this requirement, though we may be more or less conscious of how certain assumptions and expectations shape the way we tell these stories. With race, preformed narrative views lead us to decide in advance whether a situation is “racial.” Patterson’s editorial commentary suggests that contrasting views can be reconciled, but is it possible to be certain about the role of race apart from what these narratives set us up to assume? This question was energetically pursued in the journalistic postmortem on media coverage of events in Jena. Of course, our ideal is that independent-minded people, such as reporters, are able to establish the facts in any given situation. But critical assessments of media coverage of Jena suggest that cultural narratives also influence the news accounts that we rely on in thinking about race. The claims by residents and some commentators that the media had either missed or misconstrued important facts provoked a substantive reassessment of journalists’ roles and responsibilities in covering racial situations. In a critical retrospective on the reportage, Raquel Christie, editorial assistant for the American Journalism Review, concludes bleakly that Jena represented “the death of the race beat”—that clearly

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delineated focus on certain kinds of events and stories in the United States that both speak to and require a developed understanding of how race matters in this country. Christie’s “independent assessment of the critics’ main arguments” concerning distortions in the media coverage “shows many of them to be largely true.” In particular, she points to the misreporting of Bell as having “no prior criminal record,” misrepresentations of Barker’s beating and injuries, and an overreliance on quotes from civil rights activists to explain the situation, while neglecting perspectives from local residents and officials. Based on these errors and oversights, Christie offers a withering assessment of the coverage.⁵⁴ Christie’s central criticism is that the national media did not pick up the story of Jena until after it had been thoroughly framed in the black blogosphere. This led journalists to privilege facts that “fit” an interpretive frame that was already in place: The story, instead, was the property of black bloggers and radio hosts, two local papers and activists. Only after they had interpreted it, only after they had dissected it, only after they had decided the right and the wrong of it—and dedicated a movement, the Afrospear, to it—only after big names like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson stepped into the fray last summer did the news media give it to us. And when the media got it, they often took it as it was told to them. They let the citizens do much of the journalism, instead of piecing it together themselves. They took Jena as a handout, not as an opportunity. They ignored the shades of gray, and kept what could have been the most complex, most challenging racial story, the one that would drive thousands to march and thousands to question the media and thousands to question the American justice system, black and white.⁵⁵

Christie laments that a more complex story lay in the “shades of gray” that were ignored in favor of a narrative that singularly fixated on white racism. Getting at that story, though, requires a great deal of interpretive work on the part of journalists—not just questioning whose view of events is accurate, but how certain details either fit or rub up against conventional assumptions about how race matters. Although Christie direly concludes that journalistic failings in Jena point to the “death of the race beat,” her assessment could just as easily be read as an outline of how to revive the “race beat” instead. The challenge lies in learning to

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recognize and report aspects of the story that do not fit established cultural narratives about race, then using these to develop a broader view onto how race matters. This view, in turn, involves acknowledging that the basis for designating and reporting a story as “racial” depends on analyzing how it does and does not fit established explanatory frames and narratives. This question of “fit” was the focus of similar critiques of media coverage that followed in the wake of the other major blemish for news reporting on race: the Duke University rape case. Also writing in the pages of American Journalism Review, Rachel Smolkin identifies a similar litany of problems in the reportage on the white members of the Duke lacrosse team who were accused of raping a black stripper: “sensational commentary, omissions, and inaccuracies.” She concluded that “too often, preconceptions—rather than the facts—dictated not only the tone of coverage but also its volume and prominence.”⁵⁶ She quotes Daniel Okrent, a former New York Times public editor, as acknowledging the coverage “conformed too well to too many preconceived notions of too many in the press: white over black, rich over poor, athletes over non-athletes, men over women, educated over non-educated. Wow. That’s a package of sins that really fit the preconceptions of a lot of us.” Certainly, these preconceptions squelched the significance of emerging, discordant facts in the case for weeks: Even after exculpatory evidence was circulated regarding the two rounds of DNA testing of the athletes that showed no match with evidence in the case, the New York Times continued to frame the story as a “disturbing historic script of the sexual abuse of black women,” privileging the weight of this country’s racial past in understanding current developments.⁵⁷ A striking aspect of Smolkin’s assessment is that the concern with “fit” can even overwhelm an attention to emerging facts in race coverage. The problem, as she construes it, is the power of prior cultural narratives to establish and dominate reporters’ perceptions of an unfolding story. “Perhaps the most complex lessons about the media coverage of the Duke case involves issues of narrative. Unquestionably, the media too readily ran with a simplistic storyline, sacrificing a search for truth. Not only were the accused innocent of rape, the allegations of racial taunts that received so much media attention appear to have been exag-

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gerated.” As a case in point, she quotes Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, who allows that “we fell into a stereotype of the Duke lacrosse players . . . and we were too quick to connect those dots.” Yet, he insists, “It was about race. . . . The narrative was properly about race, sex, and class. . . . We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.” As Smolkin asks, “If the facts were wrong, though, why explore the narrative at all? Is it fair to use the Duke lacrosse players to tell a larger story of athletes run wild?” The idea that “the narrative was right,” even though the facts indicated otherwise, suggests how deeply engrained these narratives are and that coming to terms with them is a prerequisite to understanding how Americans make sense of race. Thomas argues that the editorial or reportorial instinct that a story is “about race” can be accurate even if the explanatory approach, the narrative they bring to bear on it, is fundamentally distorting. Such an insistence leads us away from an arguably more useful recognition: that our interpretive options regarding race are largely established and limited by cultural narratives. Thomas’s stance similarly misses the possibility that the narrative conventions that we have relied on for aligning events to indicate whether they are “racial” may be changing. The ways race matters—or what makes a situation racial in the first place—are in the process of transforming, and we can no longer expect that previous race narratives will give us a reliable frame for comprehending more recent events. Insisting that a story is “about race”—including the assumptions then brought to bear, and a potentially outdated and/or limited narrative mobilized to establish the “connective tissue”—can easily lead editors, reporters, and commentators to miss important aspects of race. We expect that stories can be gotten “right” in the end, and for this we turn to reporters, who generally do an impressive job. But we often forget that journalists, too, are culture-bound and are profoundly guided by a sense of “fit” as they try to establish a set of relevant facts in a particular story. This powerful notion of “fit” reflects the influence of narrative frames to dominate our understandings of events, and journalists are not exempt from this influence. Expecting the facts to simply resolve the matter is simplistic, because we bring distinctive narratives to the task of gathering and interpreting these facts. Getting it right involves more than establishing facts—it requires

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gauging how our expectations are confirmed or confounded as we work to link and associate one fact with another. A great deal of the work Americans face in making sense of race lies in the effort to grapple with cultural assumptions and expectations of what is racial. Understanding how Americans make sense of race—grasping the constraining influence of reigning cultural narratives to limit recognition of the complexity, ambiguities, and, importantly, the novel or distinctive aspects of recent events—is a crucial additional component to the task of deciding when a situation is or is not “racial.” But the importance and continued prominence of race stories in the news suggests that grasping this additional aspect of making sense of race is quite necessary. Americans, like any people, rely on narratives to make sense of the “big picture” in which we locate our lives. With race, two narrative frames generally dominate: white racism and black pathology, two reductive, polemical stances on how race matters. The role of these frames is to identify the primary force that animates or explains a series of events in a causal sense. The initial story that shaped coverage of Jena was white racism but it was challenged (and for some actually replaced) by the competing narrative of black pathology. These are narratives that we rely on, certainly, to frame events, but also in our search for events to confirm the relevance and authority of these very narratives. These two narratives, in a sense, clashed in Jena, and in the end, neither is sufficient for explaining what happened there. If we learn anything from Jena, it is that our stock cultural narratives for understanding race are inadequate. Jena is a battle not just over facts or “getting it right,” but rather of competing narratives for explaining whether events there are “racial” in a way that speaks to the nation at large.⁵⁸ The problem of race is as much about the power and exclusivity of these competing narratives, which push against or challenge each other, as it is about racial perceptions and stereotypes. The dominant narratives of white racism and black pathology considerably predate events in Jena. They represent cultural modes of storytelling and provide the basis for first recognizing and then explaining what happened there. But they blind us to much about race in the process. Deep South states like Louisiana, with large black populations, feature less racial disparity in their prison systems

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than do states where blacks face the highest rates of incarceration, such as South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Vermont (the top four states), as well as Utah, Montana, and Colorado.⁵⁹ Yet the story “about race” that Jena seemed to tell suggested just the opposite. Our cultural reflexes that guide us in seeing race in this case are quite capable of deceiving us, even though they feel “right” and true. The question is whether Americans can find other ways to tell stories about race. The answer depends on whether we can first become a little less reliant on—or more circumspect about—the old ways of telling these stories.

4 “Race Doesn’t Matter” Manic Glimpses of a Postracial Future

THE ROOM WAS PACKED AND ELECTRIFIED. Obama supporters filled the downtown convention center in Columbia, South Carolina, on the evening of January 26, 2008, to celebrate a victory by a startlingly large margin that seemed to surprise everyone. Barack Obama was thanking the crowd, trumpeting their success. “The cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion,” he proclaimed, “were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina.” And the audience roared enthusiastically. If you watched only the televised version of the event, the preponderance of white faces arrayed behind him on the bleachers in back of the podium would more reflect the Obama campaign’s careful orchestration of racial visuals than either his successful voting coalition that packed the room or the demographics of this Democratic primary.¹ Other videos shot that night reveal a more diverse array of many-hued supporters waving the signs that called for “change we can believe in.” Obama summoned this more diverse group into view with his next sentence. “After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, the most delegates—” Cheering burst through his words and he happily paused a moment, then continued: “—and the most diverse coalition of Americans that we’ve seen in a long, long time.” Again, the crowd shouted joyfully, but this time a spontaneous

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chant took shape. “Race doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter.” These were not the words the crowd had been cued to chant earlier, “Yes we can, yes we can.” It was only a few voices at first, but the new chant quickly caught on. Obama seemed slightly surprised and bemused. “Race doesn’t matter, race doesn’t matter.” Their voices grew louder and more confident. Soon the packed room echoed with the sentiment, as Obama supporters shouted this declaration again and again: “Race doesn’t matter.” He waited, but they only got louder until he quieted them, continuing his speech, “You can see it in the faces here tonight. They are black and white, Latino and Asian and Native American,” as cheers erupted yet again. The impulsive chant was a cathartic response to the past four highly contentious weeks of the campaign, a period in which race had become a central topic of debate. It was a repudiation of a perceived effort by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to “inject” race into the political discourse regarding the respective qualities of each candidate. But the chant was more than a rejection of apparently illicit references to race in the previous weeks. At its core was a promise Obama seemed to embody early in the presidential primary season, when he pledged a new kind of politics to replace “old” partisan politics. Such pledges led commentators and supporters alike to imagine Obama’s campaign as “transcending race”—an image he did little to dispel. The fervor and conviction behind this chant suggested the impulses towards this view of race were deep and powerful.² At that moment, it was apparently easy to forget how the Don Imus incident and the events in Jena suggested a more circumspect view of whether race matters. As well, on this heady evening, it was probably incomprehensible for many how quickly this assertion about race would be utterly disproved, first as Obama’s “spiritual mentor,” Reverend Jeremiah Wright, introduced the phrase “God damn America” into U.S. public discourse; then as Clinton tried to sway a diminishing number of superdelegates to her cause by pointing out that “hard working, white Americans” gave her “a much broader base to build a winning coalition.” But we gain nothing if we look back at this moment with a smug sense of irony. Remember, the notion that “race doesn’t matter” sprung from the

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fact that a little-known, black freshman senator won an impressive victory over the presumptive front-runner in Iowa, which is ninety-four percent white. Sure, when West Virginia (ninety-five percent white) utterly rejected Obama three months later—favoring Clinton by a margin of almost forty percent—most everyone agreed again that race does in fact matter. But in between these two events, the meaning of race in the United States was thrown into question. And even though the consensus that it matters was reestablished emphatically by the primary results in West Virginia, Americans would again slide back into uncertainty over the significance of race as the presidential contest narrowed to a choice between Obama and McCain, with numerous commentators arguing over whether racism would deny Democrats the nation’s highest elected office. That is, even though race clearly mattered one way to white Appalachians in May, would it matter the same way in the nation at large that fall? The claim “race doesn’t matter” responded to the way race’s relevance fluctuated so wildly in January as Obama and Clinton traded victories and defeats in fiercely fought contests. Black voters clearly changed their estimation of the significance of race following Obama’s victory in Iowa on January 3. Perhaps white voters did, too, given the apparent emergence of the “Bradley effect” (white voters claiming to support the black candidate but then voting against him), which might have badly misled pollsters into mistakenly declaring Obama the likely victor in New Hampshire on January 8. None of this was clarified by voting on January 19 in Nevada, a state moved to an earlier position in the Democratic primaries in order to highlight and include minority voters. Then, the South Carolina primary capped off the month on January 26, with Bill Clinton accusing Obama of “playing the race card.” Rather than proving either that race does or does not matter, this string of primaries instead showed that the significance of race is highly unstable and volatile. In the face of its variable significance, Americans have constructed elaborate social conventions to contain race’s riotous possibilities. The political arena—illustrated particularly in the contests of January 2008—is certainly governed by such conventions, but it is also the realm where they are perhaps most severely tested.

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“This is a contact sport, politics.” Bill Clinton, October 18, 2006

This chapter follows the ebb and flow of contrary certainties about the significance of race in the early stage of the 2008 Democratic primary. The January portion of the campaign illustrates two points stressed throughout this book: that powerful cultural conventions guide our perceptions of “racial” and that those conventions are in flux, destabilized, in part, by the very events they are called on to frame and contain. But the focus shifts distinctly in this chapter, away from fairly easily recognized cultural forms for establishing the “racial”—remarks and narratives, which are fundamental to how we readily grasp the potential relevance of race—towards a more mutable and dynamic cultural form: arguments. The prior two forms clearly involve selective perspectives; with the act of persuasion, however, this selectivity is purposefully played. There are few social arenas where this is more apparent than the realm of politics, where calculated statements are deployed with deliberation to convince people of the possible significance of images, events, and candidates’ characteristics. Political discourse entails the active manipulation of symbols and sentiment in a way that makes it clear that “racial” is not often a simple, transparent characteristic of a remark or narrative. The previous chapter, on Jena, showed how our recognition of “racial” hinges on the narratives that we rely on to make sense of any series of events potentially linked to race. This chapter builds on that attention to narrative, because three principal narratives were in play in January 2008, each variously keyed to the notion of the “race card.” One narrative had Hillary Clinton playing the race card by trying to paint Barack Obama as the “black candidate,” in order to undermine his support among white voters. A counter narrative posited that, rather, it was Obama who was playing the race card by spinning Clinton’s statements for journalists in a way that made her appear racist, presumably also to peel away her supporters. Then a third storyline involved the Bradley effect, which posited a kind of duplicity on the part of white voters who, ever conscious of the social decorum around race, might be telling pollsters that they were supporting the black candidate while actually

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voting for the white one. But these narratives hinged on the explicit and implicit arguments made by each candidate to shore up contrasting versions of events. These contentious arguments produced a polemical contest over which candidate was being “racial.” The candidates’ arguments were powerful forces shaping the way pundits and analysts talked about the significance of race in these Democratic primaries. Certainly, journalists draw on a well-established knowledge base for determining the relevance of race in political campaigns.³ But candidates continually devise novel ways of signifying “racial” that destabilize or reconfigure past formulas. During the January primaries, the question commentators were most often called on to answer or that they chose to grapple with—whether a comment or assertion was “racial”—was influenced by the “spin” the respective campaigns brought into play. What we see in these four weeks of debate and discourse is that these arguments recognize social conventions regarding the presence or absence of race in political discussions—as evidenced by the claim that one candidate or another was “injecting race” into the contests.⁴ The various arguments play off the conventions for proper ways of addressing or raising “racial” matters, more than they reflect any particular “content” of remarks or statements linked to race. In the political arena, these cultural conventions are not merely constraining guidelines; they are actively engaged and manipulated. Picture sumo wrestlers, clashing in a tightly bound ring, where the combatants vie to push each other across the dohyo or ring. Similarly, these political combatants battled to force their opponent to rupture bounds of decorum around race. Of course, these forms of manipulation or “spin” were not consistently effective or entirely clairvoyant. Political statements are an intensely calculated cultural form, one that is also massively recalibrated in response to the success or failure of particular remarks or storylines about candidates.⁵ But campaigns must continually respond to unscripted moments or unanticipated responses, which potentially throw off these finely honed calculations and formulas. The concept of persuasion captures both of these dimensions of political discourse—the calculated and the unanticipated. Political persuasion always unfolds in a cultural terrain where previous arguments have either held sway

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or faltered. Perhaps nowhere is the trope of the “national conversation” more appropriate than in the polemics of political campaigns, which are perpetually responding to or drawing contrasts from previous positions and stances. Persuasion, too, involves the task of gaining advantage or deflecting disadvantage, which is a dynamic undertaking—one that actively strives to manipulate message and meaning, yet continually encounters changing circumstances or developments that make these efforts ineffective or even futile. Prelude to Iowa From this historically very long, costly, and closely fought primary season, I have chosen to examine the month of January—not for the relative clarity this portion of the season provides, but rather for its lack thereof. When we talk about race in this country we tend to fixate on what we imagine to be “defining moments,” events that appear to resolve the question of how race matters for the nation at large. But these are deceptive in that they are frequently more partial than we realize, and these events lead us to mistakenly assume the significance of race has been resolved, one way or another, as reflected in the chant in South Carolina, or in Obama’s eventual victory that fall. But too much reliance on “big stories” to establish the meaning of race—as commentators rushed to do again in the summer of 2008 and then in November— leads us to forget that its significance is far too unwieldy, distended, and ensconced to ever be so simply contained and settled, “once and for all.” We get a far different sense of how race matters if we ponder the indeterminacy of its meaning in the prelude to such moments, when the ambiguities around race rose to a crescendo in anticipation of some emphatic resolution, one way or the other, on how it matters. The chanted sentiment in South Carolina that “race doesn’t matter” responded not just to the prior four weeks of vigorous campaigning, but also to the excessive debate about race that swirled around Obama as he moved onto the national stage. Even before he announced his candidacy, there was plenty of public discussion about his racial significance. John McWhorter, writing in the New York Sun on September 21, 2006, went so far as to claim that it was primarily race that mattered in

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Obama’s rise in the public eye. McWhorter, the author of Self-Sabotage in Black America, asked readers “to imagine whether Mr. Obama would elicit this swooning buzz if he were white.” In answer to his own question—and expressing an opinion that would create a racial scandal when voiced months later by Geraldine Ferraro—McWhorter concluded, “The key factor that galvanizes people around the idea of Obama for president is, quite simply, that he is black.”⁶ The relevance of race could scarcely be more bluntly put. But the matter is hardly so simple, given that a number of African American public figures were, at the same time, questioning whether he is black at all. These assessments ran the gamut from asking whether Obama is “black enough” to a flat-out counter claim that he is actually white, or at least acts as if he is.⁷ The first set of questions surged in the immediate wake of Obama’s announcement of his candidacy in Illinois, on a day in February 2007 that conveniently—purposefully, some critics charged—kept him from attending the State of the Black Union conference in Hampton, Virginia. While key public figures at the conference, like Cornel West, took him to task not only for his absence but for his effort to align himself with the white “racist” president, Abraham Lincoln, others questioned his blackness altogether. West explained to the audience that, “He’s got large numbers of white brothers and sisters who have fears and anxieties and concerns, and he’s got to speak to them in such a way that he holds us at arm’s length.”⁸ The black blogosphere surged with comments like Larry Pinkney’s, on BlackCommentator.com, who put “black” in quotes in referencing Obama, asserting that “being biologically Black and on the cover of Ebony magazine” does not equate with black identity.⁹ These comments were, in turn, subject to countercriticism of the type offered by journalist Marjorie Valbrun, who related in the Washington Post, “As Sen. Barack Obama’s ‘blackness’ has increasingly been discussed on black-oriented radio shows, at political conferences and on Sunday morning news shows, I’ve grown more dismayed by the day.” But Valbrun’s counter point—that “we’re wasting time debating which of us are truly black”—was overwhelmed by the volume of critical questioning of Obama’s blackness.¹⁰ This open questioning of his black identity continued even after the election.¹¹

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The questions were not prompted solely by his absence at the State of the Black Union conference. Debra Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness, related on Salon.com how, when his candidacy first seemed imminent, she resisted appeals for her to write about Obama. Why? “I didn’t have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn’t black.” That is, she explained, he is not “politically and culturally black.” “Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, he steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden, and he gives white folks the plausible deniability of their unwillingness to embrace blacks in public life.”¹² But if he isn’t black, what race is he? Jesse Jackson criticized him for “acting like he’s white” when Obama did not actively rally to the cause of the Jena 6.¹³ Obama’s studied race-neutral response was enough for Jackson to question his racial identity altogether, and it further fueled public characterizations of him as “transcending” race. In addition to his remarks about Jena, which emphasized his concern with injustice there “regardless of race, wealth or circumstance,”¹⁴ Obama asserted that the debacle of government relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina reflected that “the administration was color-blind in its incompetence.”¹⁵ Such stances led commentators to frame Obama as a “postracial” candidate. The crux of this questioning of racial significance involved a basic uncertainty over whether his race, in this situation, was a disadvantage. In contrast to the long-standing assumption that being black was a disadvantage in a national election, two perceived forms of advantage seemed to emerge for Obama: one from not being black and one from not being white.¹⁶ In the first frame his advantage lies in not being black, to the extent that, as Dickerson asserted, he had not suffered the historical effects of discrimination, though he potentially benefited from their forms of redress. In the other frame, he is advantaged, as both McWhorter and later Ferraro argued, because not being white allows him to stand, in McWhorter’s words, as “a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land.”¹⁷ In either case, describing Obama as advantaged amounts to questioning his racial identity because historically, blackness has been largely equated with disadvantage. The idea that this equation

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may be even slightly destabilized was enough to provoke the widespread interrogation of racial identity that Obama’s rise to public prominence prompted. In the face of such disorienting questions, the power of conventions governing the discussion of race was invested with increasing importance by the respective candidates for the presidency in 2008. But these conventions themselves were about to be deeply challenged by the very candidates vying to affirm them. Conventional Wisdom, or the Power of Conventions One reason events in January were so dramatic is that they flew in the face of conventional wisdom.¹⁸ Not only was the presumed Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, upended, but in the Republican field the campaign of John McCain, which was declared “dead” in the fall by numerous pundits, suddenly whirled back to life. There is a great deal of established knowledge and opinion, based on precedent, pertaining to how race matters in electoral politics, particularly in relation to presidential campaigns.¹⁹ But that wealth of understanding seemed to complicate rather than clarify the significance of race in candidates’ comments and gestures during the first frenzied weeks of 2008. Previously, the meanings of race were so static as to permit the development of formulas purporting to explain its significance.²⁰ Yet the exchanges between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over possible or rejected racial meanings in certain statements indicated that the frames of reference for interpreting race had shifted sufficiently to throw those calculations off.²¹ A good example of where conventional wisdom stood regarding race in the closing days of 2007 is an exchange during the last Democratic debate prior to the voting in Iowa. Race was in the air, you could say, as the candidates gathered for the final debate of the year, with polls showing Obama gaining ground on Clinton in Iowa. Obama’s momentum led the Clinton campaign to consider more direct challenges to his electability.²² This strategy surfaced on December 12, the day before the debate. Billy Shaheen, the co-chairman of Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire, suggested that, in the fall, Republicans would try to discredit Obama based on his previous drug use, which he wrote about

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openly in his autobiography and had mentioned directly during a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire. Shaheen predicted Republican attacks would take the form of a series of questions: “It’ll be ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’”²³ The Obama campaign immediately cried foul over the remarks, with campaign manager David Plouffe issuing a critical statement calling Clinton forces to task for “recycling old news.” The statement did not, however, highlight the potential racial subtext of Shaheen’s comment. “Racial” lurked not necessarily in the question of drug use—a candidate’s previous or possible drug use had been the subject of much discussion in both Bill Clinton’s and George Bush’s first campaigns. But it lay rather in the further speculation that Obama had perhaps sold or given drugs to someone. Shaheen apologized that very evening, and, in an acknowledgment of the perceived risk of invoking race in this way, he resigned from the campaign the next day. As well, Clinton personally apologized to Obama for the remark when they informally spoke with each other at Washington’s Reagan National Airport on the way to the debates in Iowa.²⁴ But as several commentators cynically noted, each reported apology effectively reiterated the initial questions and suspicions.²⁵ Subtext or not, race was explicitly raised in the debate itself in a manner framed primarily in terms of conventions and decorum. Debate moderator, Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register, asked Joseph Biden an extended question. “Senator Biden,” she began, “you and your campaign have had a number of occasions to correct or clarify things you’ve said relating to race, including your remarks about Senator Obama being, quote, ‘clean and articulate’; your comment about Indians working at 7-Eleven; and recently to the Washington Post in which you spoke about race while describing disparities between schools in Washington, DC and Iowa.” Then the question: “Do these gaps or misunderstandings or however you would characterize them indicate you’re uncomfortable talking about race, or are people just being too sensitive?” Biden’s remark about Obama from earlier that year, referenced by Washburn, ignited the first media controversy of this incredibly long campaign, but its racial content is hardly apparent in her abbreviated

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rendition. In the press conference announcing his candidacy—days before Obama’s own announcement—Biden responded to a reporter’s question asking his opinion of Obama. He replied by characterizing Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy.” The implication of this statement—that a host of previous black public figures, from politicians to entertainers, were unclean and inarticulate—was actively critiqued by a variety of commentators. Lynette Clemetson, in a February 4, 2007, New York Times piece titled “The Racial Politics of Speaking Well,” remarked, “There are not enough column inches on this page to parse interpretations of each of Mr. Biden’s chosen adjectives.” Clemetson, here, actively performs a particular role journalists have assumed in reporting on election discourse—analyzing statements for implicit racial subtexts or messages—in this case by singling out the word “articulate.” Though the term is obviously complimentary and intended as a form of praise, its use by whites in reference to blacks belies a set of assumptions that this characteristic is unanticipated, even in a U.S. senator and the former president of the Harvard Law Review. Clemetson explains, “When whites use the word in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment.” Furthermore, “such a subtext is inherently offensive because it suggests that the recipient of the ‘compliment’ is notably different from other black people.” Eugene Robinson, in “An Inarticulate Kick-off ” in the Washington Post on February 2, 2007, pursued this line further. “I realize the word is intended as a compliment, but it’s being used to connote a lot more than the ability to express one’s thoughts clearly.” Specifically, more than just speaking ability, Robinson heard referenced “a whole range of cultural cues—dress, bearing, education, golf handicap. It’s being used to describe a black person who not only speaks white America’s language but is fluent in its body language as well.” Robinson concluded his task of making this subtext clear by asserting, “Articulate is really a shorthand way of describing a black person who isn’t too black—or rather, who comports with white America’s notion of how a black person should come across.” His column ended with a succinct purported translation of Biden’s remark: “Gee, he doesn’t sound black at all.” The interpretive task both Clemetson and Robinson undertook

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in commenting on Biden’s word choice is a commonplace of journalism—parsing possibly unstated racial content in politicians’ public or private remarks. This responsibility is an outgrowth of the evolution of racial discourse in relation to national politics. The broad contours of this development stem from the 1950s and 1960s, when, in the wake of the civil rights movement, race shifted from being an explicit subject of debate to something that could not be safely or easily invoked by white politicians. Perhaps no one better summarized this shift than the now-deceased Republican strategist, Lee Atwater, who played a crucial role in George H. W. Bush’s successful presidential campaign against Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988. Characterizing the Republican’s “southern strategy,” Atwater related, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger.’ That hurts you. So you say stuff like forced busing and states’ rights and all that stuff.”²⁶ As powerful conventions against racist speech formed and shaped public discourse in the United States, people created innovative ways of circumventing them while appearing to maintain them. Politicians—mostly Republicans—found that they could both stoke and mobilize white racial fears and resentments by deploying a series of “code words” that referenced race without transgressing the emerging decorum concerning racist speech in public discourse. Such words were also easily inflected by accompanying images or even location. Ronald Reagan, campaigning in 1980, intoned “states rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, and was widely criticized for the implicit racial message this sent. More notoriously, Atwater cemented George H. W. Bush’s victory with a campaign ad centering around a black convicted murderer, Willie Horton. Horton, furloughed through a program that was supported by Governor Dukakis, brutalized a white couple while on weekend release. Atwater’s boast, that he would make Willie Horton stand in as Dukakis’s running mate, proved quite accurate, as white voters were deeply impacted by this campaign tactic that ostensibly did not reference race at all. Political scientist Tali Mendelberg argues, though, that the effectiveness of the Horton ads was eventually undermined. Democrats like Jesse Jackson and, later, reporters covering the campaign, called atten-

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tion to the racial subtext in the widely circulated images of Horton. In The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, Mendelberg argues that race is often “absent from the surface of American electoral campaigns but very much present underneath.”²⁷ The success of the civil rights movement established “norms of racial equality” that now govern public speech. But, rather than defusing charged subjects related to race, these new conventions moved racial meanings into another register in the form of “implicit racial appeals.” As Mendelberg explains, “Race is perhaps the central social cleavage of American political life. Yet American society has committed itself to making race irrelevant. The tension between the existence of racial conflict and the inability to express it produces indirect forms of communication.”²⁸ The process by which this works is quite formulaic, according to Mendelberg. “Implicit racial appeals convey the same message as explicit racial appeals, but they replace the racial nouns and adjectives with more oblique references to race. They present an ostensibly racefree conservative position on an issue while incidentally alluding to racial stereotypes or to a perceived threat from African Americans.”²⁹ In the face of such strategic and sinisterly effective message production by politicians, reporters covering them have increasingly felt charged with the task of revealing this implicit content. But why? Partly, this sense of responsibility stems from journalists’ recognition of their own complicity in conveying such messages. The Willie Horton ads formally aired by the Bush campaign notably did not feature the convict’s face, but news coverage of the subject readily supplied images that made his race inescapably obvious. But more deeply, reporters policing politicians’ implicit racial messages participate in an assumption established through media coverage of civil rights protests and actions—that racist sentiment is newsworthy for what it reveals of people’s hidden motives. And, increasingly, such transgressions of decorum are deemed newsworthy in their own right, as with Don Imus. Importantly, too, this role also reflects journalists’ commitment to certain standards of public discourse that emerged in the civil rights era, which not only inveigh against openly racist expressions but also valorize repudiations of these outbursts. This latter dimension, Mendelberg notes, also represents the princi-

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pal means for blunting the effectiveness of implicit racial appeals: render them explicit, as Clemetson and Robinson did, by “making clear that race is the subject of this message.”³⁰ Journalists, as well, commonly follow another strategy suggested by Mendelberg: “The other way to render the message explicit is to point out that it steps outside the bounds of the norm of racial equality and thus acceptability.” This approach is evident in the question Washburn posed to Biden regarding his “articulate” comment about Obama. But it is hard to parse Biden’s quote as an implicit racial message designed to tap white resentment while “adhering to the norms of racial equality,” in Mendelberg’s formula. Nor does it obviously reflect a case of what Mendelberg calls “racial priming,” a rhetorical tactic that generates “an increase in the effect of racial stereotypes, fears, and resentment, leading to increased opposition to racial policies and to greater support for the candidate who conveys the message.”³¹ Biden suffered rather than benefited from his comment, after all. But if recent stories about race in the news have indicated anything, it is that there is an audience ready to purvey remarks for their potential racial content. Interestingly, while Washburn’s question suggests a certain consistency in journalistic vigilance on race, it also reflects as much a shift in the way such queries are formulated—away from a direct interrogation of racism and towards a concern with “comfort levels” related to race. She asked whether the quotes “indicate you’re uncomfortable talking about race, or are people just being too sensitive?” This question is primarily about decorum rather than about racism or racial beliefs. Biden was visibly ruffled by the question and struggled at first in formulating a reply. But he hit his stride once he settled into the “good person” defense. Certainly, he offered, “I may have phrased those things wrongly.” He recognized the terms of evaluation concerned conventions governing what could and could not be said or even implied about race. He also affirmed the civil rights movement, citing it as why “I got involved in politics,” and also laid claim to “the overwhelming majority— over 95 percent—of the vote of minorities in my state.” He gained surety and vehemence as he elaborated this response. “It may be possible,” Biden allowed, “because I speak so bluntly, the people misunderstand. But”—and here he provided a litany of his service in matters pertaining

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to civil rights, concluding with: “My credentials are as good as anyone who’s ever run for the president of the United States on civil rights.” His rousing finish provoked enthusiastic shouts of “Hear, hear!” from Senators Christopher Dodd and Hillary Clinton. As well, Obama asked to be allowed “to provide some testimony, as they say in the church”—invoking laughter from the audience—“that Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America.” It was a remarkable moment for a couple of reasons: mainly, because it showed a shared and enthusiastic support among the candidates for maintaining the “norms of racial equality” that would become so severely tested in the weeks to come. It was striking, too, for what commentators labeled the act of “racial absolution” Obama performed for the man he would eventually select as his running mate. Did this gesture underscore people’s belief that Obama represented a “postracial” candidate offering to “transcend” race? If so, it was an act that required more of a reproduction of racial stereotypes—the black man testifying in church—than transcendence. Reporter Ben Smith, in his December 13, 2007, Politico.com blog titled “Obama Absolves Biden,” identified this as a “classic moment in a racial dynamic that nobody’s thought, or written, about more than Obama—the way in which members of minorities are constantly appealed to for that kind of affirmation by white people who don’t want to be perceived as racist.” In this gesture, Smith read a different kind of implicit racial meaning—one that is not necessarily rooted in racism; one that challenges the formulas around race in political discourse posited by Mendelberg. That is: “supporting Obama offers white people an absolution from the notion that they’re racist.” Here was a radically different register of implicit racial meanings, and whether journalists and commentators would analyze them as effectively—or whether they were racial meanings that actually advantaged the black candidate—would be closely questioned in the days ahead. “This is new.” Bob Herbert, January 5, 2008

This image of racial transcendence conjured by Obama was amplified and seemingly confirmed by his impressive victory in the Iowa

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caucus. Obama’s gesture of “racial absolution” was duly rewarded with a large margin of votes over John Edwards and third-place finisher Hillary Clinton. As is their charge, journalists sought to explain the significance of Obama’s win, and the most trumpeted conclusion was one that fueled the chanted sentiments less than a month later at his victory party in South Carolina: race doesn’t matter. Kirk Johnson, writing in the New York Times on January 6, declared that the Iowa vote heralded “a transformative era in 2008.” He explained, “There’s no doubt that for one night, in one state, Americans dramatically changed the subject. Race didn’t matter—even though Mr. Obama was an AfricanAmerican running in a nearly all-white state—but talk of unity and common ground did, as Mr. Obama galvanized his supporters by promising to toss historical and political division aside.”³² The idea Johnson expressed was one widely promoted by commentators. The fact that so many whites had voted for a black man suggested that race—in terms of racism and bigotry—had lost or was losing its significance. Unity replaced racial divisions in Obama’s vision, as Johnson underscored in quoting his victory speech: “We are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come.” David Brooks’s January 4, 2008, column in the New York Times, titled “The Two Earthquakes,” similarly heralded the importance of the Iowa results. “This is a huge moment. It’s one of those times when a movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic became a reality and took on political substance.” In Brooks’s estimation, the import of the moment lay in the ability of this African American candidate to channel the central current of American culture. Confidently, he concluded, “Whatever their political affiliations, Americans are going to feel good about the Obama victory, which is a story of youth, possibility and unity through diversity—the primordial themes of the American experience. And Americans are not going to want to see this stopped. When an African-American man is leading a juggernaut to the White House, do you want to be the one to stand up and say No?” Brooks’s colleague, Bob Herbert, wrote with thunderous certainty that we had experienced something without precedent. “The historians can put aside their reference material. This is new. America has never seen anything like the Barack Obama phenomenon.” White voters, he

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concluded, expressed the urge “desperately to turn the page on the bitter politics and serial disasters of the past twenty years. That they have gravitated to a black candidate to carry out this task is—to use a term I heard for the first time this week—momentous.”³³ But did the gravitational pull exerted by this black man really suggest that race did not matter or indicate that the significance of race was shifting? While the significance of race was changing, it was also, in the process, growing more nuanced and complex. Race was not going away; rather, it was being resignified—the way we talk about and recognize it altered after Iowa. Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect offered a closer reading of this resignification. Listening to Obama’s victory speech, Meyerson heard something interesting—a change in the way race is referenced by “code words.” When Obama characterized the Iowa victory as “a memorable moment when America ceased to be red and blue,” Meyerson argued that “he also really meant ‘black and white.’” Meyerson continued: “The divisions in Washington that he rails against are real, but they are also code, Obama-code, for that greater division that has always defined us as a nation. Obama is our first leading national political figure to speak in racial code not to signal racism and without actually saying anything racist, but to signal racial transcendence without actually saying we’re transcending racism.” Meyerson identified the shift in racial meaning that would remain illusive but central in the weeks ahead, one that would increasingly generate suspicions, particularly in the Clinton camp, that this notion of “transcendence” obscured a pernicious form of racial advantage.³⁴ Shooting Up Race I don’t think either of us want to inject race or gender into this campaign. Hillary Clinton, January 13, 2008

The notion that Iowa changed everything was turned on its head less than a week later when Clinton came from far behind in the polls to seize a surprise victory in New Hampshire. On the eve of the primary, surveys showed Obama riding a strong “bounce” from Iowa and leading in the polls, surging towards another win. What caused this stunning reversal? That question occupied political analysts, pollsters,

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and journalists for days. Their efforts were complicated by the powerful “spins” the respective campaigns put on the results, but their deliberations led quickly to the subject of race. The possible racial dimension came into view in two frames or scenes simultaneously. The first was an explicit exchange between Obama and Clinton that played out over several days in the media, and the other was the apparent discrepancy between what white voters told pollsters about their preferences and what the final tally reflected. While both candidates were more than willing to talk about the exchange, the possible discrepancy—known as the Bradley effect—was a disturbing possibility that neither wanted to acknowledge. The starkness with which race burst into view in New Hampshire suggested that earlier reports of its demise missed something important, which would appear to materialize the next day in Clinton’s developing criticisms of Obama. Reeling from her loss in Iowa, Clinton and her husband, Bill, came out swinging in the Granite State, and the target of their blows was Obama. Very quickly, too, the tenor of their criticisms (or the race of their object of attack) soon generated the suspicion that race not only still mattered, but that it could still be played to great effect in reversing the presumed import of Iowa. The first salvo was launched in the candidates’ debate on January 5, 2008 in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Clintons decided to challenge Obama for that “candidate of change mantle,” and her opening came in an exchange early in the debate. Clinton, while countering a response by John Edwards, shifted her focus to Obama. “Making change,” she asserted, “is not about what you believe. It’s not about a speech you make. It is about hard work.” After listing her efforts and accomplishments in regard to health care, Clinton concluded, “So, you know, I think it’s clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change. And we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered.” Obama had no reply during the debate to the implied accusation that his campaign’s central motif—“hope”— was somehow false. But he incorporated a retort into his stump speech. “How have we made progress in this country?” Obama asked. “Did John F. Kennedy look at the moon and say, ‘Ah, it’s too far. We can’t do that. We need a reality check’?” He continued, referencing “Dr. King, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial: ‘You know, this dream

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thing, it’s a false hope. We can’t expect equality.’” Journalists sensed a good story, and soon Clinton was prompted about the exchange on January 7 by Major Garrett for Fox News. Garrett parsed Obama’s comment for Clinton and asked if she would reply. Clinton answered by pointing “to the fact that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before that had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.” Had she said something “racial”? Bloggers sensed something odd or off in her juxtapostion of Johnson with King, and by that evening the remark was featured in a story on Politico.com by Carrie Brown, titled “Clinton, Obama Spar over Hope.” Sensing a potential problem for herself, Clinton that same evening tried to elaborate on the matter and clarify her meaning. Allowing that King “gave a speech that was one of the most beautifully, profoundly important speeches ever delivered in America,” she again, though, highlighted Johnson’s role, stressing that “the dream couldn’t be realized until it was legally permissible for people of all races and colors and backgrounds to be recognized as citizens.” The apparent clarification did little to quell a fomentation of disquiet among African Americans who heard the comment as an unfair belittling of the centrality of King’s accomplishments. Maybe little more would have come from the remarks if they had not been immediately followed by her husband’s scathing criticism of the media for what he felt to be a lack of critical attention to Obama’s claims about opposing the war in Iraq. Bill Clinton summed up his critical points that same night with one succinct phrase: “This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” In the aftermath, “fairy tale” would tenuously, and perhaps only temporarily, register in the American lexicon as a racial remark.³⁵ The initial assertion that either of the Clintons’ comments was racial was posited by a prominent Democratic superdelegate, Donna Brazile, who studiously maintained a stance of neutrality throughout the primaries. Appearing that night with talk-radio host Bill Bennett on CNN’s The Situation Room, Brazile was prompted by anchor

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Wolf Blitzer—after he played a clip of Bill Clinton’s comment—for her thoughts on Clinton “lashing out against the Obama campaign.” Replying first that “it sounds like sour grapes coming from the former commander in chief,” Brazile then added, “For him to go after Obama using ‘fairy tale,’ calling him a ‘kid,’ as he did last week, it’s an insult. And I tell you, as an African American, I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.” Blitzer followed up. “But tell me why, as an African American, Donna, you feel that the President’s comments weren’t appropriate?” Brazile answered by first asserting that if Bill Bennett had said “some of the things Bill Clinton is saying,” she would have told him to “shut his mouth because he is not speaking in the right tone.” And “tone” summed it all up for her. “I think his tone, I think calling Barack Obama a ‘kid’”—again drawing a connection with an earlier Clinton remark—“he’s a United States senator.” She concluded that “to launch the kind of attacks on Obama is just out of character for Bill Clinton.” The debate over the potential racial aspect of the Clintons’ comments was underway. Rapidly the comments were generating outrage on black talk radio shows, black blogs, and cable television.³⁶ The apparent diminishing of King’s role in the civil rights movement, paired with the perceived dismissal of Obama’s campaign as a “fairy tale,” had a powerful effect on many African Americans. The Obama campaign was not adverse to cultivating and encouraging this response, characterizing the remarks as raising serious questions about Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obama spokeswoman Candice Tolliver remarked, “There’s a groundswell of reaction to these comments—and not just these latest comments but really a pattern, or a series of comments that we’ve heard for several months.” Where Brazile had seen a racial connection between two remarks by Bill Clinton, Tolliver painted a larger picture. “Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?”³⁷ That suggestion would, in turn, prompt a concerted counterattack from Clinton forces. But first, one more comment came into play. Two days after Bill Clinton lashed out against the media’s “soft” coverage of Obama, the news on January 10 was still filled with glowing reports concerning Hillary Clinton’s remarkable come-from-behind victory in the New Hampshire primary. But amidst the positive take her

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supporters were spinning from the results, the campaign still strove to maintain a critical posture towards Obama. On that same day, one major Clinton supporter, Andrew Cuomo, state attorney general for New York, appeared to criticize Obama during a radio interview with Fred Dicker of the New York Post. Trying to convey the close-up view voters had been offered of the candidates so far, Cuomo said, “It’s not a TVcrazed race. Frankly you can’t buy your way into it. You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.” Was this characterization somehow racial? The reported comments set bloggers rushing to their dictionaries to check on the racial connotations of “shuck and jive.” Eric Kleefeld, on Talking Points Memo, consulted Joan Houston Hall’s Dictionary of American Regional English to point out that the phrase, meaning “to be deceptive or evasive,” is “especially frequent among black speakers.”³⁸ Ben Smith consulted Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang and reported that the source “attributes [the phrase] to a specifically African American— though not racist—origin.”³⁹ Similarly, after Cuomo quickly tried to clarify that he used the phrase “as a synonym for ‘bob and weave,’ Pam Spaulding posted an etymological reference to clarify that the original phrase had nothing to do with boxing. “To ‘shuck and jive’ originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards.”⁴⁰ As Kleefeld opined, Cuomo had just “given the Hillary campaign a real headache.” By the next day, Friday, January 11, the Clintons were in damagecontrol mode. As Carl Hulse and Patrick Healy reported in the New York Times, “The Clinton campaign moved Friday to try to quell a potentially damaging backlash over recent comments by Bill and Hillary Clinton that have drawn criticism from African-Americans just as the presidential primary campaign reached Southern states with significant blocs of black voters.”⁴¹ The first sustained maneuver was conducted by Bill Clinton, who went on a series of black talk-radio shows over several days—starting with Al Sharpton’s, then in following days talking with Steve Harvey, Mark Thompson, as well as Tom Joyner—to clarify that his remarks were not meant racially. “He put together a great

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campaign,” Clinton told Sharpton. “It’s clearly not a fairy tale, it’s real.” Meanwhile, campaigning in East Los Angeles, Hillary Clinton opened a second front. In response to a question by reporter Eloise Harper for ABC News about the “fairy tale” and Martin Luther King comments, Clinton replied, “it’s regrettable because both of these accusations are baseless and divisive and any fair reading of what both of us said would be clear and I think it’s regrettable that these are being in a way used to try to divide people in our country during this election and I’m not going to have any part of it. I personally find it offensive.” Clinton implied “racial” by challenging Obama’s implications of “racial,” in arguing that her comments were being “used.” Marc Ambinder reported that evening on Atlantic.com, “the Clinton campaign has accused the Obama campaign of artificially ginning up the controversy. Clinton aides seized on reports that an Obama press aide, in response to a research query from a prominent activist, included remarks by the Clintons in a compilation of racially insensitive remarks.”⁴² This compilation, soon to be labeled the “race memo,” was posted on the Huffington Post the next day.⁴³ The memo simply featured five sets of quotes excerpted from media coverage, organized with the subtitles “Shuck and Jive,” “Martin Luther King/Lyndon Johnson Comparison,” “Nelson Mandela” (a remark by Bill on January 7, 2008, that appeared to valorize his wife over Mandela, characterizing her as “the one person I know who would never blink, who would never turn back”), “Drug Use,” and finally, “Fairy Tale.” The memo also listed the name of the Obama campaign’s South Carolina press secretary, Amaya Smith. Sam Stein, reporting on the memo, noted that “the Obama camp did not return repeated requests for comments.” He concluded, “the document provides an indication that, in private, the Obama campaign is seeking to capitalize on the view—and push the narrative—that the Clintons are using race-related issues for political leverage. In public, the Obama campaign has denied that they are trying to propagate such a perception, noting that the document never was sent to the press.” The question of whether the Clintons’ statements or the Obama campaign’s reactions were “racial”—and what advantage or disadvantage lay with “racial”—was quickly shifting into questions of who was spinning

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whom more effectively and which campaign stood most to benefit from any of these competing charges and storylines. That is, which camp’s persuasive arguments would define the frame: Obama’s, by asserting there was a pattern here, or Clinton’s, by taking offense and asserting that all this outrage had been stirred up by their opponents? The answer to the question of who benefited from any of this seemed to lie in South Carolina, which held its primary near the end of January. In a striking development following Iowa, black voters in South Carolina were shifting from backing Clinton to supporting Obama. As early as January 7, polls indicated Clinton’s previous double-digit lead in the state had been entirely reversed, with Obama now drawing fifty percent of black voters to thirty percent for Clinton. Many reporters attributed this shift to Obama’s “triumph in Iowa, which was seen as providing reassurance to black voters still skeptical of his ability to win over white voters.”⁴⁴ This shift led to an intense debate within the Clinton campaign over how much effort they would make to compete in South Carolina. Despite the shift in black voters’ sentiments, Clinton still retained many prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus as supporters, including Representative John Lewis of Georgia. Her victory in New Hampshire emboldened the campaign to fight for a win in South Carolina, but the dustup over the remarks had raised a new problem in that state. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, was reported on January 11 to be considering rescinding his officially neutral stance on the primary, because he was upset over the Clintons’ comments. “We have to be very, very careful about how we speak about that era in American politics,” Clyburn intoned. In particular, he took Bill Clinton to task, noting that the “fairy tale” comment “could very well be insulting to some of us.”⁴⁵ That Sunday morning, on Meet the Press, Hillary renewed her effort to depict the Obama campaign as injecting race into the contest. Host Tim Russert opened his discussion with Hillary Clinton by sharing with viewers a glimpse of the media coverage in South Carolina, in advance of the primary there at the end of January. “When we arrived in South Carolina yesterday,” Russert declared, “this was the State newspa-

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per, and the headlines agree to this. And let me share it with you and our viewers: ‘Clinton Camp Hits Obama, Attacks “Painful” for Black Voters,’ ‘Many in State Offended by Criticism of Obama,’ and ‘Remarks About Martin Luther King.’” Russert then recounted the litany of remarks—in addition to “false hopes” and “fairy tale,” he added the charge that Clinton surrogates had earlier tried to paint Obama as Muslim and a drug dealer—and crisply asked Clinton, “What is all this about?” Nonplussed, Clinton asserted that “there’s not one shred of truth in what you’ve just read” and then retorted that “a lot of people have been, you know, given information or an impression that is absolutely false.” These examples were all “an unfair and unwarranted attempt to, you know, misinterpret and mischaracterize what I’ve said.” Then she laid the blame entirely on Obama. “Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign is deliberately distorting this.” She added, too, “I don’t think either of us want to inject race or gender in this campaign. We are running as individuals.” Russert gave little credence to Clinton’s charges—he asked her later if she believed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her was still active—and he turned to a list of decidedly neutral, influential Democrats, such as Brazile and Clyburn, who were criticizing the racial aspects of the Clintons’ remarks. Clinton, much like Don Imus months before, chalked these criticisms up to the notion that her comments were taken “out of context” and mischaracterized. Again she returned to the assertion that this was only in the news because of Obama. “This is an unfortunate storyline,” she again charged, “that the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully. They’ve been putting out talking points, they’ve been making this, they’ve been telling people in a very selective way what the facts are. And I’m glad to have the opportunity to set the facts straight.” This charge was a centerpiece in reporters’ coverage of the interview, and it generated sufficient attention that Obama felt compelled to refute it. That Sunday afternoon, in a conference call with reporters, Obama responded to Clinton’s accusation that his campaign was “deliberately distorting this.” “Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson,” he offered. “I didn’t make the statement. I haven’t remarked on it. And she, I think,

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offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King’s role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act. She is free to explain that. But the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.” There would be no racial absolution for Clinton of the type bestowed upon Biden. Calculating Racial Advantage That same afternoon (January 13), another link was added to the chain of Clinton comments, this time in South Carolina, and this time by a prominent black Clinton ally, Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television. Speaking at a rally for Clinton in Columbia, Johnson grappled with the race issue head-on. “To me, as an AfricanAmerican,” Johnson said, parrying Brazile’s earlier invocation of that identity as a basis for taking Bill Clinton to task, “I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood—and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book—when they have been involved.” The Clinton campaign, recognizing a potential problem, quickly issued a statement saying that Johnson was referring to Obama’s organizing work and that to read “drug use” into the remarks would be simply “irresponsible and incorrect.” But the allusion was already alive and fueling the story that their campaign was trying to keep active the association between Obama, drugs, and race. By Monday, January 14, race was the story of the Democratic campaign. “After staying on the sidelines in the first year of the campaign,” Adam Nagourney reported in the New York Times, “race and to a lesser extent gender have burst into the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest, thrusting Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into the middle of a sharp-edged social and political debate that transcends their candidacies.” Interestingly, this situation appeared to disadvantage both campaigns, which, Nagourney noted, “spent much of the day shadow-boxing on an issue that advisors to both of them described as volatile.”⁴⁶ Journalists in the major papers and magazines like Time and the New Republic weighed in on how the Democratic

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campaign appeared now to be singularly “about race,” a development that rattled Democrats widely. Speculation ran the gamut from which candidate might be advantaged by this development or how this could undercut Democrats’ chances in the fall, to whether any of these remarks were somehow calculated or who was most negatively impacted by this storyline. Largely, Obama was construed as the loser, because, as Joe Klein noted, blogging for Time, “a good part of the subconscious exhilaration of white voters has been the postracial nature of Obama’s campaign. The color of his skin became an afterthought in Iowa.”⁴⁷ Marjorie Valbrun, in a Washington Post piece titled “Will They Play the Race Card?” concurred and opined that Clinton had decided to “go straight for Obama’s jugular. Race, whether used subtly or as a blunt weapon, will undoubtedly be a factor.”⁴⁸ By Tuesday morning, with the Democratic debate in Nevada looming that evening, the consensus among pundits and analysts could be summed up in the headline of a story by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: “A Race About Race.” Also in the Washington Post, Lois Romano observed, “Race has always been an uncomfortable but inescapable part of America’s political landscape, but not since the 1960s has it been injected into the presidential campaign so early, so fast and furiously—and by Democrats using it against each other. The strangeness of it goes even further, with the spectacle of black surrogates being deployed by the Clinton camp to lob criticism at a black presidential candidate.” But the certainty that this campaign was now “about race” butted up against the more difficult question of exactly how or whether any of these comments were necessarily “racial.” The distinction in the contrasting interpretive options involved whether any of these statements reflected intentional design to gain momentary or long-term advantage in the campaign. The tried-and-true concepts or interpretive techniques that reporters relied on in making this assessment in the past—“the race card” or “race-baiting”—seemed to fit poorly with the changing political dynamics. With so much collective wisdom and historical knowledge at their command, one might think that they ought to have been able to render a clear verdict on how or whether any of this was, at root,

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“racial.” But that judgment appeared inseparable from the question of which campaign’s “spin” on who was to blame for this turn of events was more credible. Perhaps not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton was most frequently accused of being, in the words of columnist Eugene Robinson, “so aggressive in keeping the race issue alive.”⁴⁹ Wesley Pruden, in the Washington Times, concurred, charging her with race-baiting, but with a twist. “This is not your grandfather’s race-baiting.” He contrasted Clinton’s use of race with that of white politicians in the past. “Race-baiting was simpler in the old days. Everybody understood what was an insult or not, whether by the early George Wallace, the late Orval Faubus, or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Now a lot of explanation, argument and counterargument, is necessary to plumb where anyone was actually insulted, dissed, or affronted.” He added, “[The Clintons] might have to call in Trent Lott and Don Imus for tips.”⁵⁰ Robinson raised a different accusation: “Is it possible that accusing Obama and his campaign of playing the race card might create doubt in the minds of the moderate, independent white voters who now seem so enamored of the young, black senator?” The questions hinged, in part, on whether any of this had been intentionally wrought by Clinton. What if, instead, as her advisor argued, she had clumsily “stumbled into [a discussion of race] through a series of tactical responses to Obama?”⁵¹ Ben Smith, writing for Politico.com, pondered this possibility and concluded: “It’s possible to hold one of two theories about Hillary: She’s a perfectly-calculated political operator with every utterance planned; or she’s an occasionally clumsy, sometimes tone-deaf politician who’s better at homework than improvisation. You can’t have it both ways. Though we in the press have often abetted the former theory, the last few weeks do seem to tend toward the latter.”⁵² But a reader quickly objected to this either/or proposition, arguing that “Hillary doesn’t have to be perfectly calculating or an especially gaffe-prone politician to produce the recent litany of racially charged statements. All you need is a textbook national political campaign looking for every strategic advantage, unconcerned about boundaries of decorum.”⁵³ In this analysis, Clinton plays on the meaningfulness of race, trusting its unruliness to be disruptive, rather than invoking any particular meaning or implication.

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But such calculations, in turn, hinged on whether Obama had actually been advantaged or disadvantaged by all this back-and-forth. Another view held that it was Clinton who had been damaged by having the image that she was a calculating racist surface just before the South Carolina primary. In yet another more subtle way, she was disadvantaged by how Obama avoided saying anything about race, which shifted the burden of being “racial” back onto her. After all, as Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post suggested on January 8, the morning of the New Hampshire primary, this was a moment when “it is beginning to seem, possibly for the first time in history, that it is better to be black.”⁵⁴ Even the possibility of such a shift in the schema of advantage and disadvantage regarding racial identity threw many formulations into confusion. Amidst this maelstrom of competing interpretive options, another view held that the Clinton campaign was right about Obama “playing the race card,” but in a more difficult-to-attribute manner than their current accusations suggested. In an article on Politico.com titled “The Race Card Has Been Dealt,” Roger Smith argued that “the card” had been on the table for some time already and “all that matters now is who plays it best.”⁵⁵ In Smith’s view, Obama had used it in Iowa, by promoting the notion “that a vote for him is an act of personal and national redemption.” This version of the card operated in the subtext of Obama’s stump speech. “We are one nation, we are one people, and our time for change has come,” Smith quoted Obama. “And then he says: ‘There are folks all over the planet watching what we are doing.’” Such a statement may seem innocuous and far from the charge of “divisive” that Clinton had lobbed. But, Smith explained, “Translation: By voting for Barack Obama, you can prove to yourself, the nation and the world that you are not racist and that America has become a better place, a place decent enough to elect a black person to the presidency.” Smith continued, “To the Clinton campaign, this is grossly unfair. When it is accused of playing the race card, it says Obama plays the race card everyday.” In the face of these competing theories, one point seems apparent: the old formulas based on assumptions about the advantages and disadvantages of race were no longer on the mark. If everybody can be construed as “playing the race card,” then the concept has lost much of whatever critical insight it once offered. But there was little else to replace it for

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pundits scrambling to account for or even identify with surety the “racial” dimension of these arguments and counterarguments. Restoring Decorum, Graciously Confounding their efforts was that, while Clinton could be paired with remarks that journalists alternately characterized as “racially tinged” or “racial innuendo,” Obama seemed to be making every effort to avoid talking about race, even though his campaign could be viewed as historic in racial terms. Speaking to several hundred congregants at the Pentecostal Temple Church of God, in Florence, South Carolina, in advance of the Nevada debate, Obama talked of making history, but specifically not in terms of race. “I know everybody is focused on racial history,” he told the audience. “That’s not what I’m talking about. We can make history by being, for the first time in a very long time, a grass-roots movement of people of all colors.” Yet, members of his campaign engaged avidly with the race issue, most notably with chief strategist David Axelrod insisting that Robert Johnson’s remarks were linked to Shaheen’s earlier invocation of Obama’s drug use. All while Obama purposefully strove to stay away from the fray. On that Monday, Obama went so far as to call for a “truce” over the race issue. In a news conference in Reno, Nevada, where he was campaigning in advance of the next debate (Tuesday, January 15) and the upcoming primary on Saturday, January 19, Obama announced that he was “concerned about the tenor the campaign has taken in the last couple of days.” Noting his disagreements with Clinton and Edwards, he asserted, “We all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights,” upholding, much as he had in the Iowa debate, the norm of racial equality. “They’re good people,” he insisted, adding “I don’t want the campaign in this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat back and forth that we lose sight of why all of us are doing this.” It seemed a gracious gesture, but later that night a key Clinton supporter accused him of duplicity, apparently trying to keep the issue alive that she had just appeared to dismiss. Appearing on CNN that same Monday evening, New York Congressman Charles Rangel, the highest-ranking African American in

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Congress and a vehement Clinton supporter, asserted that Obama had orchestrated the entire dustup over race. “How race got into this thing is because Obama said ‘race.’” In particular, he pointed to Obama’s characterizing Clinton’s comments about King as “ill-advised.” “For them to somehow suggest that we’re injecting race as a consequence of a statement she made . . . is pretty hard to figure out.” He added that, for Obama “to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid.” “He said that injects race,” Rangel continued. “Why,” he asked rhetorically, “because he’s [King] black?” In a disarmingly confiding gesture, he then added, “But it gets to the point you can’t say anything if it involves someone black that it’s not going to be saying that it’s racist. And that’s unfortunate, because Obama’s such an articulate candidate.” Before Rangel finished, he added, “to have it mired down with the interjection of race . . . it sure doesn’t help him, and it doesn’t help Hillary, and it doesn’t help the country.” In less than a minute, Rangel had both channeled the ghost of Biden’s recently-ended candidacy, by labeling Obama “articulate,” and reiterated an argument that Clinton supporters had begun developing over the weekend. While Clinton, like Obama, was looking to establish a truce on the race issue, her supporters were formulating two new, overlapping lines of argument. Geraldine Ferraro covered the first, complaining to reporters that “as soon as anybody from the Clinton campaign opens their mouth in a way that could make it seem as if they were talking about race, it will be distorted. The spin will be put on it that they are talking about race. The Obama campaign is appealing to their base and their base is the African-American community. What they are trying to do is move voters from Clinton by distorting things. What have they got to lose?”⁵⁶ Simultaneously, Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, made a remark that generated even wider circulation than Ferraro’s, contrasting the acceptability of sexist remarks with quickly disavowed racist remarks. “With women, you can get away with it. With race, you can hardly say anything at all.”⁵⁷ Just as the whole controversy seemed to be almost contained, the debate was taken up again, but this time with a broader set of questions over racial assumptions concerning public speaking roles and the comparative question of how racism measured up against sexism. Together

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these two contentions purported to shift the discussion towards a question that had predominated in the earlier Imus affair: who can say what about race in public? Would there be no resolution to this matter, only additional layers of campaign spin? The situation had developed to the point that the rhetorical or polemical effects of “racial” arguably overwhelmed its use as an objective characterization. Individuals in the Face of “Tribal Warfare” Was there anything more than campaign spin to any of these assertions? The matter was examined in the Tuesday night debate in Nevada, featuring Tim Russert as one of the moderators, along with Brian Williams and Natalie Morales from NBC. Williams opened by observing that it was Martin Luther King’s birthday. “Race was one of the issues we expected to discuss here tonight. Our sponsors expected it of us. No one, however, expected it to be quite so prominent in this race as it has been over the last ten days.” The first question Williams asked went to Clinton: “How did we get here?” Clinton replied economically, “Well, I think what’s most important is that Senator Obama and I agree completely that, you know, neither race nor gender should be a part of this campaign.” It was a remarkable statement, not for what it seemed to assert about the days following Iowa, but for the belief it conveyed that race was something that could simply be excluded, ruled “out of bounds,” by simple declaration. The candidates were gathered on a stage together in Las Vegas because the Democratic National Committee had selected Nevada “to add racial, as well as regional, diversity to the first contests.”⁵⁸ With blacks and Latinos each comprising fifteen percent of Democratic voters, and Asians accounting for three percent, the party envisioned Nevada as showcasing voting blocs it aimed to win in November. Yet here was the apparent frontrunner of the Democratic campaign insisting that race should have nothing to do with anything related to the highly-contested election. It was not an answer to the question, but rather a demonstration of what a politician traditionally does when confronting “racial” issues: try to keep the situation from getting out of control. But the frenzied theorizing about which campaign was respon-

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sible for “injecting race” into the campaign belied another possibility: that “racial” was more out of control than it was subject to strategic or tactical manipulation. That is, the potential significance of race was overwhelming the tactical and strategic calculations of the competing camps. Obama responded similarly to Clinton in the face of this unruly play of meaning. For his part, when asked about the matter, he again affirmed, as he had in Iowa, the norm of racial equality, and recognized each of his fellow candidates as sharing in that compact. “What I am absolutely convinced,” he told the audience that night, “is that everybody here is committed to racial equality,” again affirming the norms that Mendelberg identified. It was a generous, inclusive gesture. But Clinton would do him one better, when she later asserted, “But I know that Senator Obama and I share a very strong commitment to making sure this campaign is about us as individuals.” On the one hand, this seemed absurdly commonsensical; on the other hand, it flew in the face of how she would characterize the historical aspect of the campaign the next day in an appearance in South Carolina: “I never thought we would see the day when an African American and a woman were competing for the presidency of the United States.” Why does the notion of individual come into play in this effort to foreclose a certain kind of attention to race? The primary categorical opposition in American culture, between individuals and groups, is fundamental to how Americans think about race.⁵⁹ Generally speaking, people who are primarily racialized in this country—such as blacks, Latinos, and Asians—are typically characterized as belonging to or representing various “communities”—that is, groups. Whites, on the other hand, generally maintain an unmarked racial identity and are regarded as individuals. There is a tension in this claim that I hope is apparent. “Whites,” obviously, are a group, too. But the central feature of racial dynamics in the United States is the assumption that whites are not racially defined. This is evident in Clinton’s remark—“between an African American and a woman”—in which she remains racially unmarked while Obama is clearly characterized in terms of race. Unmarked identities are powerful and privileged because the criteria they implicitly entail never have to be mentioned and are assumed to be natural.⁶⁰ This happens with whiteness a great deal—whites in politics and popular culture are rarely

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identified in terms of their race. None of the other candidates—John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John Edwards, or Hillary Clinton—were identified as “white candidates” or characterized as representing the “white community.” Barack Obama, though, is incessantly identified as “African American.” This play of marked and unmarked racial identities is important to understanding that Americans were ready to see the campaign as “about race” once it prominently featured an African American, but would be utterly unwilling to characterize a political contest featuring only white candidates as being “racial” in any way. This is the crux of understanding the selective ways of recognizing “racial.” Shelby Steele captured this well in discussing the issue of race in relation to Obama. He argued that Obama had “to achieve visibility as an individual, to in fact become an individual rather than a racial cipher” (original emphasis).⁶¹ For Obama, Steele insisted, this entailed the almost impossible task of running away from race just at a moment when his race was being imagined as a newfound advantage. This point was hardly lost on Obama, who observed the contrasting racial assumptions about who counts as an individual during his early college years at Occidental. In Dreams of My Father, he describes, first, how he “stumbled upon one of the well-kept secrets about black people: most of us weren’t interested in revolt; that most of us were tired of thinking about race.”⁶² Then he pointed to the contrasting condition of white people, who did not have to think about race, because “only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals.”⁶³ This contrast that Obama discerns was evident in the clash between Clinton and Obama over who would be able to occupy this crucial category (individual ) in a contest characterized as “tribal warfare” over “identity politics” among the Democrats.⁶⁴ Both candidates—Clinton, too, despite her gestures—faced long odds in this effort to escape from their defining group identities. David Brooks observed as much in a New York Times column on January 15 titled “The Identity Trap,” in which he accused both of “competing to play the victim. They are both accusing each other of insensitivity. They are both deliberately misinterpreting each other’s comments in order to

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imply that the other is morally retrograde.” In this he saw a certain torsion as “rhetorical devices,” developed “when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment,” were turned towards other disadvantaged groups. “Clinton’s fallback position is that neither she nor Obama should be judged as representative of their out-groups. They should be judged as individuals.” Fine, he allowed, “but the entire theory of identity politics was that we are not mere individuals. We carry the perspective of our group consciousness.” Brooks continued, charging, “Even in this moment of stress, Clinton wants to have it both ways. She wants to be emblematic of her gender and liberated from race and gender politics.” As a case in point, he referred to Clinton’s initial statement to Russert on Meet the Press, reprised Tuesday night in Nevada: “You have a woman running to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling. I don’t think either of us wants to inject race or gender in this campaign. We’re running as individuals.” To this, Brooks concluded, “What we have here is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel: the bonfire of the multicultural vanities.” But it was Obama that night on whom this torsion between group and individual identity worked most powerfully during the debate, as he faced somewhat sharper questions about race than did she. And the potential answers all weighed against seeing him as a person whose individuality might allow him to achieve escape velocity from the markings of race. First, there was the pesky issue of the memo. Russert pursued the line of questioning that the Clinton campaign had been trying to jump-start for several days. “Senator Obama, Senator Clinton on Sunday told me that the Obama campaign had been pushing this storyline. And, true enough, your press secretary in South Carolina—four pages of alleged comments made by the Clinton people about the issue of race.” The statement was stark, in that it took seriously a line of interpretation that drastically altered the previous frameworks for understanding what “racial” means. So, was it true after all—the Obama campaign was the force behind the story connecting the dots? “In hindsight,” Russert continued, “do you regret pushing this story?” Obama replied, “Well, not only in hindsight, but going forward. I think that, as Hillary said, our supporters, our staff, get overzealous. They start saying things that I would not say. And it is my responsibility to make sure that we’re setting a clear tone in our campaign, and I take

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that responsibility very seriously, which is why I spoke out yesterday and sent a message in case people were not clear that what we want to do is make sure that we focus on the issues.” In a swift and emphatic gesture, Obama disavowed his campaign’s concerted effort to help reporters (and voters) recognize a “connective tissue” of potential racial meanings in Clinton’s comments, while he also seemed to rule the topic again out of bounds with his affirmation that “we focus on the issues.” Seemingly, one “racial” narrative (that Obama’s camp was playing the race card), was acknowledged and then dismissed.⁶⁵ But Russert had two more questions for Obama, pointing in turn towards the other two narratives around race. Russert’s next question raised a possibility that put Clinton’s “spin” in a rather different light: “Do you believe this is a deliberate attempt to marginalize you as the black candidate?” Obama rejected the notion out of hand, stating, “I think what happened in Iowa is a testimony to the fact that the American public is willing to judge people on the basis of who can best deliver the kinds of changes that they’re so desperately looking for.” Obama graciously appeared to deflate or reject this racial narrative as well. But there was one last hurdle. Russert said, “In New Hampshire, your polling was much higher than the actual vote result. Do you believe, in the privacy of the voting booth, people used race as an issue?” The Obama camp may have been enthused about questions concerning the “racial” aspect of Clinton’s campaign, but they were rather leery of this other potential racial development, one that juxtaposed the “verdict” of one vastly white state for another, New Hampshire instead of Iowa. The Bradley Effect What really happened in New Hampshire? The morning after the primary presented commentators and analysts with an uncomfortable question. Media accounts in the run-up to the voting painted Obama as the likely winner, based on polling that showed him leading, on average, with a nine percentage point advantage. Yet, when the votes were tallied on January 8, Clinton had won with thirty-nine percent to thirty-six percent for Obama. What had happened? Since the same polls accurately predicted John McCain’s margin of victory, pollsters searched for

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a feature that might identify the difference they had overlooked between the two races.⁶⁶ The most obvious distinction involved the feature that so many of the same commentators were convinced had been proven by the Iowa results not to matter—race. Alongside the perturbing comments by the Clintons and the racial animus they could imply, the discrepancy between forecasts and actual results suggested something racial at work, as well—the Bradley effect. This concept refers to a phenomenon in opinion research that first surfaced in Tom Bradley’s unsuccessful 1982 campaign for the governorship of California. Bradley, then mayor of Los Angeles, was the first African American to run for this post and the clear front-runner in all polls leading up to the election. But on Election Day he was defeated by more than fifty thousand votes. The term was coined then to convey white voters’ tendency to tell pollsters one thing about their preference for a black candidate and then express a contrary preference in the voting booth. A similar discrepancy surfaced during the Virginia governor’s race in 1989, when Democrat Doug Wilder carried a nine point lead in the polls up to the election, then squeaked out a win by less than one percent. But was race at the root of the discrepancy between polls and final tallies in New Hampshire?⁶⁷ No less an authority than Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, concluded something major had gone wrong in the polling. “The failure of the New Hampshire pre-election surveys to mirror the outcome of the Democratic race,” he wrote in the New York Times, “is one of the most significant miscues in modern polling history.” What made the discrepancy glaring is that “these same pollsters did a superb job on the Republican side.” The problem was strictly “specific to Mrs. Clinton versus Mr. Obama.” He acknowledged that latedeciding voters went for Clinton, but only by three percent, a margin “too narrow to explain the wide lead for Mr. Obama that kept showing up in pre-election polls.” That left only “race, which to my mind was a key reason the polls got New Hampshire so wrong.” In frank terms, he chalked the misreading up to “the longstanding pattern of pre-election polls overstating support for black candidates among white voters, particularly white voters who are poor.”⁶⁸ But there were other ways of viewing this miscalled vote that did not involve race at all. Prime among these involved the gender ques-

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tion. Perhaps Obama had offended many women voters with his offhand characterization of Clinton as “likeable enough” in the debate just three days before the election. An even more likely factor, in this view, was Clinton’s much-commented-on emotional moment on the eve of voting. In response to a woman’s question about how she dealt with the grueling rigors of the campaign trail, Clinton teared up in a show of sentiment that many viewers—especially women—found quite compelling and moving.⁶⁹ Notably, Clinton won women voters in New Hampshire by twelve percentage points, even though preelection polls showed Obama splitting female voters evenly. Certainly gender was a likely factor, particularly so for the seventeen percent of voters who only made up their minds in the day before the election. There were other technical aspects that possibly factored into the discrepancy between polls and the actual vote. One involved the “likely voter” model, which may have overcounted potential voters based on the enthusiasm of Obama’s supporters in the wake of the Iowa triumph.⁷⁰ As well, independent voters may have shifted at the last minute to take part in the Republican primary, possibly diverting votes from Obama.⁷¹ Even the fact that New Hampshire balloting—in contrast to previous contests—listed candidates’ names in alphabetical order may have been a factor, with some experts attributing a first-place listing (Clinton, in this case) to be a three percentage point advantage.⁷² Besides, why would the Bradley effect only surface in New Hampshire, when polls tracked Obama lopping away Clinton’s thirty point lead in the fall to clearly take a considerable lead in December? Especially given that Iowa is just as white as New Hampshire. The degree to which these possibilities all became inseparable from “spin” was captured by Noam Scheiber, blogging for the New Republic on January 9, who raised the possibility of “the Bradley-effect effect.” Scheiber suggested that intensive media commentary on the possible racial dimensions of the discrepancy between polls and final voting tallies spun off or induced an additional series of racial effects. “You have to wonder about the effect of all the talking heads complaining that Obama lost because white voters opposed him on racial grounds, then lied to pollsters about it. Amid all this talk, will previously supportive African Americans suddenly get squeamish? Will downscale whites suddenly get defensive? Will they react against being lectured to by the

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national media?” This array of potential impacts of media speculations about the possible role of race suggests an echo chamber, where cause and effect become unmoored. The interesting additional possibility Scheiber raised is that this “effect effect” was an advantage for Obama: “the Bradley-effect effect actually benefits Obama. Is it so crazy to think working class voters will react to the racism charge by going out of their way to prove it false?” In this vortex, it was possible to hold a view that “could see Obama benefiting when the media tells them they’re racist.” Scheiber’s take matters not so much for the particular claim he made but rather for his recognition that analysts’ assessments of race had the potential to change the way race operated or mattered. The very notion of a “Bradley effect” had the potential to impact voters’ decisions while journalists were both trying to anticipate and to report on such decisions. Seemingly fi xed understandings of race were rendered tenuous by the various ways “racial” could be seen to have significance. For that matter, the narrative implied by the Bradley effect had the power to shape how people analyzed and received polling data in New Hampshire. Additionally, whereas the Bradley effect, at least for a moment, raised the possibility that there could be a substantive basis for reappraising the role of race in this contest, the suggestion that it entailed a series of rhetorical effects or persuasive impacts, too, undercut the apparent objectivity of this determination of “racial.” Then, when this “effect” did not surface in Nevada, or South Carolina, or Virginia, or Wisconsin, or Missouri, the belief that it could explain and finally contain the possible meanings and dimensions of “racial” dimmed—only to rise again in Pennsylvania. This fluctuation around the possible presence of the Bradley effect opens into a wider set of issues involving statistical analysis of survey data pertaining to racial attitudes, which received a fuller hearing in the summer campaign and which I will examine in detail in this book’s concluding chapter. “The Obama campaign is wrong.” Howard Wolfson, January 19, 2008

Just how muddled the question of whether any aspect of these contests was truly “racial” would be was illustrated in the brief but intense battle for Nevada. The truce affirmed in the Nevada debate was

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short-lived. There seemed to be little doubt that Obama and Clinton were hurt by the charged exchanges. A CNN national poll just after the debate showed that support for both had dropped over the previous week, though more so for Clinton (down seven points to forty-two percent) than for Obama, whose numbers fell by only three points to thirty-three percent. But the lead of the report was that “Clinton has lost a large amount of support among African-Americans, with a majority of black Democrats supporting Senator Obama.”⁷³ In the previous October, Clinton held a twenty-four percentage point advantage over Obama among black Democrats nationwide; now that was reversed, with Obama leading by twenty-eight percentage points. Much would later be made of the way black voters rallied to Obama and a certain stratum of whites flocked to Clinton. “Demography Is King,” David Brooks trumpeted in his April 29 column in the New York Times when these trends become apparent. But the opposite point pertained at this moment in mid-January. Indeed, polling in New York State on January 22 showed black voters sticking with Clinton, by roughly fifty percent to twenty percent. More strikingly, living in Clinton’s home state also powerfully shaped black voters’ opinions of Obama’s viability in the fall, in that seventy-five percent felt Clinton was more likely to win the general election, while a meager eleven percent felt Obama’s chances were better. The campaigns stormed through Nevada, but the caucus vote there—held on a Saturday, with low voter turnout expected and no track record as an election-year story—drew little national attention. Polling was sparse ahead of the caucus but seemed to suggest a tight threeway race. Despite the lack of media attention, the stakes were clearly high and the campaigns all hit hard. As Patrick Coolican reported on Politico.com, “The contest in Nevada has featured disingenuous advertising, attacks based on flimsy evidence, faux-outraged surrogates and pitching of insubstantial stories.”⁷⁴ Among the latter was apparently an effort by the Clinton forces to cite “news reports” of voter intimidation that turned out to be generated by the campaign itself. As well, there were incidents of anonymous robocalls criticizing Obama for taking special interest money, while invoking his rarely used middle name, Hussein, four times in each call.⁷⁵ Obama supporters struck back at Clinton, most notably with an

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ad in Spanish from Unite Here (the parent organization of the Culinary Workers Union, which was supporting Obama), suggesting, “Hillary Clinton does not represent our people.” More striking, as John Dickerson reported for Slate, “Obama’s campaign manager in turn threw out some very charged coded language about efforts by the Clintons to suppress the vote. ‘It is a sad day when Democrats start trying to suppress the vote of other Democrats,’ he said of push polls, robo-calls, and what he called ‘old-style say anything or do anything to win’ Clinton politics.” These charges all seemed directed toward potential voters in South Carolina, as Dickerson noted: “Democratic strategists have long argued that there’s no better way to ensure turnout of the black vote than if there’s a hint that someone is trying to suppress their participation.”⁷⁶ And when the dust settled and all the votes were tallied, the situation became still more muddied. “Clinton defeats Obama in Nevada,” the New York Times declared on January 19—along with all the other major media coverage of the vote—with Hillary edging out Barack by fifty-one percent to fortyfive percent, and Edwards a distant third-place finisher. The next day Politico.com was still characterizing this as a “convincing victory” for Clinton, with similar storylines continuing in other major news coverage. It would take some time before it was recognized that Obama actually took more national delegates than Clinton (thirteen to twelve) because of the way they were awarded proportionally by voting in each district. In a pattern that was to repeat, Obama forces won the delegate count even if the actual votes were close to even or against them. But on election night, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson was insisting “the Obama campaign is wrong” in claiming that they had won the delegate count. “I am not a racist.” Bill Clinton, August 4, 2008

The animosity stoked by conflicts over voting in Nevada simmered further in the lead up to the vote in South Carolina. This despite a brief interlude, both in advance of and on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when the remaining candidates each vied to stand out in their affirma-

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tion of the norms of racial equality. The Sunday just before the national holiday, Clinton and Obama each attended and spoke at black church services—Clinton at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem; Obama from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta, where King himself used to preach. The fact that the electorate in South Carolina was anticipated to be up to sixty percent black, as estimated by Democratic state party officials, appeared quite consequential in the selection of these speaking engagements. As Jeff Zeleny reported in the New York Times, “The battle for the Democratic nomination has occasionally been imbued with racial arguments and overtones, leading all candidates last week to call for a truce. But even as Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton attended separate church services on Sunday, race remained a strong undercurrent.” Zeleny observed that Obama’s choice was most unusual, in that “he was doing something Sunday that he has rarely done in his months of campaigning for the presidency. He was appearing before a black audience, and he was speaking about race.”⁷⁷ But Obama’s words could as easily be construed as pointing, once again, to a postracial future. “Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for president, with charges and countercharges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.”⁷⁸ He was not talking about race as much as renewing his and the other candidates’ apparent consensus that, ostensibly, race had no place in this momentous campaign. The next day, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards appeared together on the steps of the state capitol in South Carolina. They gathered to honor King on a sharply cold day, before an overflowing crowd that spilled out onto the surrounding plaza. Clinton offered praise for her fellow candidates during her remarks. “We have come so far together,” she said. “Barack Obama, an extraordinary young African-American man with so much to contribute. John Edwards, a son of the South—in fact, a son of South Carolina. And a woman—all of us running for president of the United States of America.” Zeleny, also covering this event, observed: “With those words, supporters of Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator,

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lifted their blue signs in the air, even as disapproving murmurs spread through the crowd at Mrs. Clinton’s reference to her rival as ‘young.’”⁷⁹ The crowd was keenly attentive to the possible racial aspect in Clinton’s words and tone. It would not be long before the Clinton campaign was again fending off accusations that they were manipulating racial sentiments and animosities. The Clinton campaign, which faced an uphill battle in South Carolina, devised a fairly simple line of attack. As Ben Smith reported for Politico.com, “The campaign has settled on a new strategy: Turn Bill loose.”⁸⁰ The Clintons’ decision reflected their confidence in the efficacy of Bill’s political dexterity and his enduring popularity among Democrats. The Obama camp, for its part, anticipated this approach, given Bill’s active role in Nevada, and they preemptively signaled their intention to blunt his effectiveness. In an interview Monday, January 21, on ABC’s Good Morning America, Obama criticized Bill’s role in the campaign, opining that “his advocacy on behalf of his wife is pretty troubling.” Though Bill’s intended lines of attack were clear and sharp—to raise questions simultaneously about Obama’s qualifications for office while also criticizing the media’s coverage of Obama—Smith noted a potential problem that first surfaced in New Hampshire. “News media accounts,” Smith wrote, “suggested Clinton was becoming unhinged at the prospect of his wife’s defeat. Inside her campaign, there were some who feared the media was right.” Into the contentious setting of South Carolina, where racial meanings were already alive and active, would it be best to have this potentially “unhinged” white man charged with the task of attacking the “young” black senator? Combustion occurred almost immediately. By Wednesday, Clinton was already defending himself, as Katherine Q. Seelye reported in the New York Times, “against accusations that he and his wife had injected the issue of race into the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina, and he accused Senator Barack Obama of Illinois of putting out a ‘hit job’ on him.”⁸¹ Bill had spent the morning trying to leaven the racial potential in the contest, telling an audience in Charleston that, “as far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender. They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender—that’s why people tell me Hillary

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doesn’t have a chance of winning here.”⁸² This allusion conveniently ignored the fact that over sixty percent of the Democratic electorate was female, which presumably offered Hillary as much of a potential advantage. Reporters were quite alive to the potential racial dimension, regarding these remarks as “unusually direct comments . . . on the possible role of race in the election.”⁸³ Reporter Jessica Yellin, for CNN, raised the matter later in the day with Clinton, by way of some earlier comments by former South Carolina Democratic party chairman Dick Harpootlian. Yellin caught Bill Clinton following a town hall meeting and asked him about Harpootlian’s characterization of “some of the tactics used in this campaign as reprehensible and reminiscent of Lee Atwater.” What followed provided the fodder for the next morning’s headlines about “a dirty game of racial division.”⁸⁴ His face reddening, his voice rising, Bill insisted that Obama had “put out a hit job on me,” and “this is crazy.” He then invoked Hillary’s key supporters who had “marched with Martin Luther King and risked their lives, John Lewis and Reverend Andrew Young. They both said that Hillary was right and the people who attacked her were wrong, and that she did not play the race card, but they did.” Reporters had plenty to work with from just these comments alone—they posited, for instance, a potential racial connotation to “hit job” and were all over yet another accusation about the “race card.” But Bill still had more to say. “There is a fact here—this is almost like once you accuse somebody of racism or bigotry,” echoing both Rangel and Ferraro, “the facts become irrelevant. There are facts here.” Then he wrapped up by broaching yet another sinister force in all this alleged manipulation of race—the media itself. “You’re asking me about this, and you sat through this whole meeting. Not one single soul asked about any of this. And they never do. They are feeding you this because they know this is what you want to cover. This is what you live for. But this hurts the people of South Carolina.” On a roll, Clinton drove his theme further. “And what they care about is not going to be in the news coverage tonight because you don’t care about it. What you care about is this. And the Obama people know that. So they just spin you up on this and you go happily along.” As his handlers tried to break off the exchange and lead him to the exit, he

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added “shame on you” as his parting offering. Though his remarks were widely broadcast, engendering lively debate over whether Clinton himself was arguably playing the “race card,” very little discussion followed of his criticism of the media’s alleged role in generating all this significance for race.⁸⁵ The scene made a tough challenge harder for the Clintons. Though Hillary herself was avoiding mentioning Obama in her appearances, the image of her husband’s finger-wagging accusations about the race card was hard to contain. As well, the Clinton campaign suddenly decided to pull radio ads implying that Obama was a devotee of Ronald Reagan. Shailah Murray and Alec MacGillis reported for the Washington Post that the “campaign has stopped a radio spot that suggested that Obama was a closet Republican who supported former president Ronald Reagan and the ideas of the 1994 revolt that swept the GOP to control of both chambers of Congress.”⁸⁶ The Obama campaign’s rejoinder—an ad charging, “She’ll say anything and change nothing”—seemed to be damaging her cause. But that paled in comparison with the apparent impact of Bill’s outburst. Soon there were varied reports of how black voters in South Carolina were “saying they feel confused, angry, and betrayed,” by the former president’s remarks. Darryl Fears, in a January 25 article titled “Black America Feels the Sting of Ex-President’s Comments,” in the Washington Post, pointed out that such feeling expanded well beyond South Carolina. He quoted a long-time Clinton supporter as saying that the comments “made me think he’s been playing us all this time.” Such comments “are echoing across black America—on blogs, Web chats and talk radio, where Clinton is being attacked as never before.” “The tone of some of the things he said just crossed a line,” suggested David Bositis, chief researcher for “a black think tank,” the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Strikingly, such critical reflections were accompanied by a developed rethinking of what Clinton had ever done to earn black political support. Notably, Fears pointed to a column by Sharon Toomer, managing editor of BlackandBrownNews.com, who reframed the Clinton legacy in terms of the crime control act he signed into law that led to a drastic spike in rates of black incarceration, as well as his failure to act to stop the genocide in Rwanda or the spread of AIDS in Africa. Still, Fears could also find black supporters of Clinton, who de-

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fended his remarks as “appropriate in the hard-fought New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.” Such contrasting notions of what is appropriate in terms of race raise the question, yet again, of the powerful role conventions play in governing our perceptions of “racial” words and arguments.⁸⁷ For all their fiercely fought and highly calculated endeavors to pin their opponent with the charge of being “racial,” the struggle between Obama and Clinton over race in January was largely inconclusive.⁸⁸ Returning to the image of the sumo wrestlers, neither contender was able to push the other across the boundary of the dohyo, in terms of the decorums regarding race. This is probably because, for all their staged efforts to do so, race was so volatile a topic that neither side could deploy it without being similarly linked by association to its excessive signification. This is apparent, first, via a backward glance at other primaries in South Carolina and then by considering how poorly the “founder” of the “national conversation on race” fared in this battleground state in 2008. In one regard, the exchanges between Democrats in South Carolina could seem quite mild. After all, this is the state that set the standard for “dirty” politics when the reeling Bush campaign in the 2000 primaries benefited from a vicious rumor-mongering campaign against his leading opponent, John McCain. In “The Anatomy of a Smear Campaign,” former McCain campaign manager Richard H. Davis characterized Bush supporters’ efforts there as a “textbook example” of hardball political tactics. These featured anonymous “push polling” phone calls suggesting that the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi child was actually his own illegitimate black child, one allegedly sired with a black prostitute.⁸⁹ Rumors also circulated suggesting that McCain was gay and cheating on his drug-addicted wife. These tactics were quite effective in reversing the tide of McCain’s nineteen-point victory just days earlier in New Hampshire, with a major defeat in South Carolina. In comparison, the suggestion that another candidate played the “race card” may seem mild. But the seriousness with which this accusation and its perceived impact were regarded is a strong indication that the public, explicit references to race had breached powerful conventions that most people wanted to maintain. That Obama was seen as less culpable of such breaches arguably

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powered him to a decisive victory in South Carolina. A Zogby poll on the twenty-third of January indicated he was riding a substantial nineteenpoint lead over Clinton, but the final margin was actually far wider, with Obama drawing over fifty-five percent of the vote to Clinton’s twentysix percent. But Bill was not done with South Carolina. Even before the results were tallied, he was pointing out to reporters, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in ’84 and ’88. And he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama’s run a good campaign here.” Rapidly, he again stood accused of, as William Kristol suggested, “playing the race card and doing so clumsily.”⁹⁰ Was this a conscious attempt on Clinton’s part, as many charged, to “paint Obama as the black candidate”?⁹¹ Or was it perhaps an even more sinister gesture? Jackson’s many primary victories also included the Michigan caucus in 1988, which temporarily propelled him to front-runner status. But apparently the powerful possibility that Jackson might actually take the nomination proved to be his downfall, driving white voters to his opponent en masse; he never won another primary contest. Perhaps this is what Bill Clinton was thinking, almost in anticipation of national polls that showed Obama taking the lead for the first time over Hillary Clinton at the end of January. Furthermore, Bill Clinton failed to mention that he himself was also propelled to the nomination by his own triumph in South Carolina in 1992, an acknowledgment that might well have blunted his purported racial meaning. Such an oversight does seem unfair coming from the man who once laid claim to guiding the country through a “national conversation on race.”⁹² But perhaps it also speaks to an irreducible indeterminacy in statements about race—indeed, even the inevitability of being racial—which we can glimpse as well in Obama’s victory speech in South Carolina. “Our Time” Addressing his triumphant rally in South Carolina, Obama opened with a round of “thank yous” to his wife, his daughters, and the people of South Carolina. Then he launched into his speech. “You know, over two weeks ago we saw the people of Iowa proclaim that our time for change has come.” It was almost an innocuous phrase by then—one

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that he had used since announcing his candidacy in January, 2007— this notion of it being “our time,” though it rang to such great effect in his victory speech in Iowa. Commentators characterized this phrase, “our time,” as a gesture towards “transcending race.” But not everyone listening in on Obama in South Carolina heard it that way. The weeks ahead turned brutal for Hillary Clinton. Despite Clinton’s winning the high-profile states on February 4, or Super Tuesday, Obama’s dominance in the smaller caucus states left the two candidates practically tied in terms of delegates. Then he churned out eleven straight convincing victories, from Virginia and Maryland to Wisconsin and Washington State. Next there was Texas on March 4, which Clinton narrowly won in terms of votes, though Obama netted more delegates. Three days later, Geraldine Ferraro told the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, California, that, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”⁹³ The sentiment had certainly been expressed before (by John McWhorter, for instance), but this time the Obama campaign saw the words as presenting an opening, characterizing them as “divisive” and “outrageous.” Days later, publicly repudiated by Clinton, Ferraro resigned from her position on the campaign’s finance committee. In a parting shot, she accused the Obama camp of having “twisted” her remarks, echoing Charles Rangel by adding, “any time you say anything to anybody about the Obama campaign, it immediately becomes a racist attack.”⁹⁴ In Ferraro’s assertions, one can certainly glimpse aspects of the conventions governing both how we notice and talk about race. But one can also see here how well those conventions previously worked for whites, who could easily not notice the racial advantages that accrued to them from being unmarked. Now white Clinton supporters were stammering and livid at their inability to criticize Obama without being drawn in by the powerful racial gravity that has long adhered to blackness. Ferraro was not alone in this feeling of consternation. As she would reveal weeks later, in an op-ed in the Boston Globe on May 30, 2008, “people have been stopping me to express the sentiment: if you’re white you cannot open your mouth without being accused of being a racist.”

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The assertion stretched the heightened scrutiny some whites faced in regard to race to the point of absurdity. But she had more to say about these “Reagan Democrats” stopping her to talk now. “It’s not racism that’s driving them, it’s racial resentment,” uncannily echoing Obama’s own words in his now-famous speech on race in Philadelphia. Yet she veered from his assessment in an unusual manner. That resentment, Ferraro explained, “is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory ‘Our Time Has Come’ they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.”⁹⁵ It would be hard to find a more open expression of racial inclusivity than Obama’s comments that night, that “this election . . . is not about black versus white,” or that he did not “see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina,” and then his rejection of “the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can’t join together and work together.” But much of what he said that night did not register with whites who only heard “our time” as a “frightening” gesture excluding them. It is simply remarkable what they did not hear and stunning what they listened to instead. Nothing could better illustrate a fundamental fact of how we designate “racial” in this country—we do so selectively, guided largely by conventions that try to contain the unruly significance of race. But the very meaningfulness of race, at the same time, continually renders such efforts at containment vain and desperate. “Our time” meant one thing in Iowa, where commentators heard “racial transcendence,” and just the opposite in South Carolina, where it channeled “racial resentment,” though each time it was spoken by the same man. What Is the Race Card? In the early 1990s I conducted fieldwork in Detroit, Michigan. The “natives” I primarily studied were poor whites (“hillbillies,” by selfdesignation) living in the inner city of Detroit.⁹⁶ I was interested in how they made sense of race. There, I found that race mattered in lots of ways, but one of the categories these “natives” had for its importance was when people “make something out of it.” A mundane phrase, as all truly telling cultural items are. This phrase conveys an important perspec-

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tive on judgments of “racial”: such statements may not reflect an interior belief or an intent carefully masked as “subtext” by social niceties; they may just as well reflect a willingness to hear race in a remark like “fairy tale,” or an intense interest in discerning it in a comparison between a president and an activist. What we often miss in our frenzied efforts to analyze “racial” is this state of watchfulness that can “make something” of race in powerful ways, almost regardless of context. Another thing we overlook, too, is that race is simply meaningful. And what we know about meaning is that it endlessly eludes or exceeds our intentions and aims. There is something irreducibly uncontrollable about meaning, and that certainly is true of the ways race was significant in these few intense, midwinter weeks. The notion “hillbillies” in Detroit convey about “making something out of it,” in regard to race, is frequently captured in the phrase “race card,” which was so frequently referenced in these four midwinter weeks. But is this concept really adequate for the task of analyzing the ways race mattered in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary contest? Journalists and commentators did an admirable job of taking “race card” accusations seriously while maintaining an incredulous stance towards the accuser. In doing so, they effectively drew on the history of racial rhetoric and arguments to evaluate how these charges fit in a continuum of U.S. politics. From this retrospective angle, it is worth noting that our assumptions about who typically plays the “race card” have evolved quite a bit. In Tali Mendelberg’s 2001 account of the Bush vs. Dukakis campaign, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality, the “card” is played by white politicians, directed at white voters. Compare that to Richard Ford’s 2008 book, also titled The Race Card. The subtitle is revealing: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. The players now are viewed as black, and their audiences may be alternately black or white. This shift in understanding of how race is “played” is useful, in that we no longer see it as the purview of one race or another—for that matter, there are shifting forms of advantage and disadvantage to race.⁹⁷ But if we only settle for Ford’s account, we risk assuming that it is people like Obama who are the sole players, when it is also people like the Clintons and their real or imag-

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ined audiences. Obama encouraged his audience to look for things that cross racial lines and that we hold in common; the ability to use persuasive strategies and tactics to “play the race card” is one of those things. And what of Obama’s adoring supporters in South Carolina? Returning, briefly, to the chant that rose up from the ranks in his victory party in South Carolina, this phrase warrants a bit closer consideration. In the end, perhaps it was not “wrong” so much as it was “abbreviated,” as are so many expressions and statements in our media discourse. Clearly, it is not the case, simply, that “race doesn’t matter.” But maybe this statement is just in need of an addendum. We can be more precise by elaborating it a little further to read: “race doesn’t matter . . . in quite the ways it used to, or that it will in the not too distant future.”

5 Conversation Stoppers Apologies All Around The truth is that America is in big trouble, and the so-called national dialogue about race long ago became a collective act of masturbatory narcissism for whites and blacks alike. David Samuels, New Republic, October 22, 2008

SO, ON THE WHOLE, how well does this “national conversation” work? That Americans actively discuss and think about race in a variety of venues is certainly good. But there are a host of factors that make this conversation rather circular and befuddling. Some of these aspects are likely constant, but perhaps some may be susceptible to tinkering if we develop a critical perspective on their operation. The least susceptible to major change is the most fundamental—the cultural dimension, which has been examined in detail in these pages. Conventional notions gird our sensibilities about who can say what when and on what topics. Social expectations concerning what counts as “racial” generally condition our understandings of and responses to moments in this conversation well before we clearly formulate an individual take on such matters. This is the nature of culture, though. The cultural forms by which we recognize “racial” matters—remarks, narratives, and arguments—delimit both our interpretations of such moments and the ways we respond, and that is very difficult to come to terms with, let alone change. But there are other aspects of this “conversation” that perhaps bear the potential to heighten and sharpen our collective understanding of how and why race matters. These are not as intractable as cultural conditioning, but they still present substantive hurdles to the notion that this conversation may be a means by which Americans can eventually

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come to terms with the significance of race. One problem is that this conversation is really only infrequently “national” in scope or depth. Certainly, there are incidents that do reach the attention of most Americans. But far more often, “racial” incidents surface mainly in particular social arenas—the realms of sports or politics, for instance, or in local municipal or regional forums—that have a far more limited audience.¹ Such stories, which are featured in this chapter, may “blip” on the national radar, but hardly stand out from the dense background of media saturation coverage of entertainment and popular culture. Another limiting factor is that the appearance or perception of “racial” aspects of speech or thought is largely sensationalized and played up for its transgressive aspect—as a contaminating rupture of social decorum. These stories that make the news and the commentaries that accompany them are frequently not about race as much as they are about the social conventions concerning race. The obvious problem with this is that the “racial” rarely opens up into a ground of introspection and critical engagement. That is, in this conversation we are as often “doing” or reproducing race as we are discussing it in some reflective manner. All this makes the task of deepening this “conversation” difficult, but the challenge that stands out most starkly is an aspect that may be most susceptible to being altered. What frequently makes the conversation grind to a halt is how people respond when their words are framed and interrogated as “racial.” They apologize, usually profusely and sometimes, as we will see in this chapter, pathetically. There are two problems with this response. The most obvious is evident in the critical commentary following Don Imus’s and Michael Richards’s apologies for their remarks—such gestures are often cynically construed and rejected as mere “rituals.” They are, indeed, typically formulaic and can only be evaluated in the notoriously difficult terrain of “sincerity.”² But the bigger problem is that apologies generally strive to end the matter, and frequently are seen as doing so (except in more extreme cases where someone is fired or otherwise cast out from the public realm). That is, the point of an apology is to end the discussion and establish immediate closure over a queasy-making, disturbing rupture of social conventions designed to keep race from “coming up” in public discourse.

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Of all the problems in how the national conversation plays out, the role of the apology may be the most amenable to change. Unlike culture broadly, this may be something that we can actually alter, in terms of our expectations and responses when we either encounter or hear about racial remarks. There are obvious perils and pitfalls with trying to do something more than apologize, as the first two incidents I will relate in this chapter illustrate. The first, involving sportscaster Kelly Tilghman, highlights the difficulty of even representing the problem that provoked her apology in the first place, indicating why it is difficult to expect anything more than an expression of regret in such situations. The second incident—featuring social and political commentator Bill O’Reilly— fleshes out this difficulty further by examining a somewhat similar moment when O’Reilly tried to discuss white racism, only to end up being castigated for being a white racist. Taken together, these two incidents suggest that a primary challenge in expecting anything more out of this conversation is found in the severe reactions most discussions of race engender, especially those that take up the awkward matter of representing the problem of white racism. The second half of this chapter looks closely at the mechanics of two apologies and the grillings with which they were greeted. The first features remarks by a careerist in the Department of Justice, John Tanner, which were thoroughly aired and interrogated in a public hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary. The second involves comments that effectively ended the career of Nobel Prize–winning biologist James Watson. Interestingly, Watson was offered an opportunity, months later, to explain and reflect on the thoughts behind his comments in an interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. This exchange, though admittedly unusual, offers a potential example for how to differently respond to apologies while keeping the conversation about how and why race matters ongoing. Gates provides a model—whether or not it is easily emulated—for how to engage with the racial aspects of public discourse in a manner that allows a better understanding of the thinking and sentiment that animates such statements. After all, this is the important subject to pursue—racial thinking—rather than striving primarily to preserve racial decorum.

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“Lynch him in a back alley.” Kelly Tilghman

After more than a year of such careful attention to race in U.S. public discourse, and the numerous, varied protests that followed apparently racial comments, you have to wonder how it was so easy for Kelly Tilghman to make that joke on January 4, 2008. It is particularly hard to grasp with such a heightened awareness pervading public discourse on the enduring symbolic charge that images or references to lynching still carry, as framed by the events in Jena, Louisiana. Yet there she was, agreeing with her Golf Channel broadcast partner, Nick Faldo, that upand-coming golfers had no chance of beating Tiger Woods unless, she suggested, they “gang up [on him] for awhile.” To which she added, laughing, “Lynch him in a back alley.” The hour was late, approaching 11:00 p.m. on the East Coast, and the audience for this recap at the conclusion of four hours of live coverage of round two of the Mercedes-Benz Championship—on the Plantation Course in Maui, Hawaii—was small. She and Faldo chuckled and moved on. The broadcast scene was described by members of the Golfweek magazine staff, who covered and then later became ensnared themselves in this controversy: “Golf Channel producers rolled their eyes, but it never registered that the word ‘lynch’ in connection with the world’s most prominent black athlete might ignite controversy.”³ Only “a limited number of complaints” drifted in to the Golf Channel, and Tilghman duly apologized, both to Tiger Woods—whom she considers to be a friend—and to viewers during the final round broadcast, acknowledging having “used some poorly chosen words.” Pundits were still freshly spinning the “transcending race” narratives in the wake of Obama’s upset win in Iowa the night before when Tilghman’s less-than-two-second joke began to percolate into broader U.S. public discourse on January 4. A post by Scott Hamilton on Golfweek.com the next day suggested that Tilghman’s comments should be logged under the category, “what was she thinking?” Then a posting by Roy S. Johnson, editor of Men’s Fitness, on Yahoo.com on January 8 characterized the remark as “unconscionable” and “punishable,” even while acknowledging that he had not seen a clip of the broadcast. The

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next day Al Sharpton was vilifying Tilghman on CNN, after mistakenly referring to “him” in a press release on her comments. Less than two hours after that broadcast, the Golf Channel announced that it was suspending Tilghman for two weeks without pay. Eliott McLaughlin, reporting for CNN, noted that the suspension had not mollified Sharpton. “In events resembling the prelude to the fall of radio host Don Imus, Sharpton appears to be marshaling his forces for a fight with the Golf Channel.”⁴ But in contrast to that earlier incident, Tilghman’s “poorly chosen words” “caused barely a blip” for the network’s advertisers and sponsors, according to Tom Knapp, a vice president at the Golf Channel. Knapp noted that not only had advertisers stayed constant in their support of the network, but since the suspension was announced, email comments shifted to being “overwhelmingly positive towards Kelly.”⁵ In a matter of days, the story seemed to have run its course and would have passed from the realm of public discourse, until someone decided to engage the larger problem plastered over by Tilghman’s apparently successful apology. The story roared back to life in less than a week when the editorial staff at Golfweek magazine decided the incident warranted further discussion, and they made Tilghman’s remarks the feature of their subsequent issue on January 19. In the magazine’s cover story, “Kelly Tilghman Saga,” Scott Hamilton observed that “Tilghman’s remark escaped golf’s biodome and slipped into the mainstream where it is fair game to everyone with a microphone or a computer.” An accompanying editorial characterized the remarks as a “slip of the tongue” and “an innocent mistake” that was being judged much more harshly “outside the microcosm of golf,” where “the public isn’t so forgiving.” A column by Jeff Rude invoked the “good person” defense for Tilghman, characterizing her as “extremely nice,” allowing, though, that, at that instant, “she was a nice person who spoke before she thought and ended up with a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.” Finally, a further article, “Duke Family Defends Tilghman,” by Beth Ann Baldry, paraded comments from her former teammates from her college years playing for the Blue Devils from 1988 to 1991, quoting a LPGA player and past roommate of Tilghman’s, Jean Bartholomew, saying “I think she was trying to be witty and funny and didn’t think before she said that.” Bartholomew

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insisted, “That’s not her at all.” This extensive coverage was capped off with a cover image featuring a noose and the title, “Caught in a Noose: Tilghman Slips Up, and the Golf Channel Can’t Wiggle Free.” The noose stands out, backlit, against an amorphous, swirling, multihued but largely purple background. The response to the cover was far more immediate and severe than that generated by Tilghman’s “joke.” This time, though, the clamor of outrage was strongest within professional golf’s “biodome.” The lead voice was that of PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, whose judgment appeared to be crucial in the subsequent decision by Turnstile Publishing (the magazine’s parent company) to fire Dave Seanor from his job as editor at Golfweek, even before the official publishing date of the issue.⁶ Finchem, in a statement, reminded the public that “what Kelly said was inappropriate and unfortunate,” but his fury was focused on the fact the magazine was continuing to generate negative coverage of golf. The cover, Finchem stated, was “outrageous and irresponsible. It smacks of tabloid journalism. It was a naked attempt to inflame and keep alive an incident that was heading to an appropriate conclusion.” The operative terms here are “inappropriate” and “appropriate,” which cast the matter singularly as an issue of decorum and convention, with little room to discuss what it was about the image and remarks that drew people’s attention in the first place. The dominance of these terms suggests that as long as the primary mode of reacting to racial remarks is to take offense, it will remain difficult to do more than just let apologies stand as the only and final response to such moments. “Race is a tough discussion in this game. It raises sensitivities.” Jeff Babineau, new editor of Golfweek, January 19, 2008

Condemnations of the cover abounded but none went much beyond faulting the image as “inappropriate.” Barack Obama issued a statement concluding that it showed “a lack of sensitivity to some of the profound historical and racial issues that are involved here and are obviously significant.” Jason Sobel, ESPN.com’s golf editor, wrote, “Simply put, the cover is classless. We can debate for eternity whether it was

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offensive, childish, journalistically irresponsible or all three, but it is difficult to argue that the cover-image selection wasn’t in poor taste.”⁷ The most pervasive assessment largely followed Finchem’s accusation that the choice of image reflected pure sensationalism in an effort to sell newsstand copies. Notably, though, the magazine is ninety-nine percent subscriber driven, which suggests that this was not simply an effort to sell more issues. Both Seanor and his replacement as editor, Jeff Babineau, stressed this point in their efforts to respond to the negative criticisms. They each also sought, in their public comments, to convey that the decision had hardly been whimsical; rather, it resulted from a deliberative and vigorous dialogue among the editorial staff.⁸ That it was an all-white staff presumably limited the scope of those dialogues. But Seanor went to great lengths to convey the rationale behind the selection of what he characterized as an “arresting image,” one he imagined would represent the problem of race and golf without reproducing it. Seanor disavowed that the cover was intended to be “racially provocative.” Instead, he insisted, “We chose it because it was an image we thought would draw attention to an issue we thought deserved some intelligent dialogue.”⁹ The dialogue Seanor envisioned would examine the racially insular dynamics of the golf world. “Look at the executive suites at the PGA Tour, or the USGA, or the PGA of America,” Seanor said in an interview with Associated Press golf writer Doug Ferguson.¹⁰ “There are very, very few people of color there. This is a situation in golf where there needs to be more dialogue.” The problem, Seanor noted, is that “when you get more dialogue, people don’t want to hear it, and they brush it under the rug. This is a source of a lot of pushback,” he lamented. By way of illustration, Seanor underscored that “most people who are objecting to it—within the golf industry—are saying this episode was just about over. I think it’s indicative of how, when you bring race and golf in the same sentence, everyone recoils.” In this version of events, the reaction to the image was animated by a desire to end this episode of the “conversation,” rather than let it expand into a broader focus on how race matters in the world of golf. But, as Sobel asked in his ESPN commentary about the cover, “at any point did they feel they were helping the situation by employing one of the most powerful symbols of racism?”

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William P. Kupper, president of Turnstile Publishing, in a press release announcing his decision to pull the issue, apologized but explained, “We were trying to convey the controversial issue with a strong and provocative graphic image.” That image—used to illustrate both the major story in golf that week and the larger racial environment that Tilghman’s remark arguably illuminated—was deemed offensive, assuring that the articles and editorials on the initial remarks would not circulate in the broader public domain. The “intelligent dialogue” Seanor envisioned was replaced, instead, with heated, vehement condemnations, with the result that it is arguably more difficult now to have or imagine such conversations taking place. Instead of making race accessible as a topic of discussion, Tilghman’s apology and the response to the Golfweek cover combined to foreclose any further conversation around this charged issue. What critics of the cover largely neglected to do was offer a suggestion for how else to represent this topic. The ease with which people take offense at the image increases the difficulty of finding and agreeing on adequate ways to represent or refer to the problem. The challenge here is long-standing in popular culture: how to engage and criticize the ways people “do” race without reproducing its powerful, deep-seated meanings. This predicament might well be characterized as the “Archie Bunker dilemma”—in reference to the enormously popular TV bigot whose role was to illustrate the stupidity of racism. But this is an ongoing dilemma, particularly poignant for comedians who deal with race like Dave Chappelle, who abandoned some of his routines ridiculing racism because they seemed to invoke too much pleasure on the part of whites in his audience.¹¹ In the Golfweek case, the conundrum might be framed by considering what, if anything, set this cover apart from all the other nooses that were showing up around the United States. In the wake of coverage of events in Jena, dozens of nooses appeared in workplaces and schools, confronting African Americans with graphic suggestions that the country’s worst episodes of racial violence were far from entirely past. The nooses—typically crude and poorly made—were gestures either at asserting notions of white supremacy or inducing a state of racial anxiety and fear. Does anything differentiate the Golfweek cover from such graphic gestures? For that matter,

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what differentiates the cover image from the news photos of the found nooses? These questions aim to take seriously the reasons for criticizing the image while additionally cautioning against too hastily condemning the editorial decision. In Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory, Jonathan Markovitz frames this problem of representation in terms of the inability to ever completely contain or control references to lynching, or to ever escape what he considers to be its irreducible metaphoric dimensions. As Markovitz asserts, “our understanding of lynchings are circumscribed by discursive battles in the past and present. These battles are of utmost importance for contemporary racial projects that are often enacted as battles over discursive terrain.”¹² His contemporary examples feature Clarence Thomas’s invocation of a “high-tech lynching” during the confirmation hearings for his nomination to the Supreme Court, but could well have included the recent similar characterization by Kwame Kilpatrick (Detroit’s disgraced former mayor) of a “lynch mob mentality” as he was forced to resign from office while facing numerous felony charges for corruption.¹³ Representing or referencing lynching, Markovitz concludes, “is fraught with difficulties, and even the best-intentioned invocations can be put to dangerous uses.”¹⁴ In the face of such perilous, riotous forms of signification, it is understandable how it seems preferable to just let apologies stand and then move along.¹⁵ But the cover did something—awkwardly, granted—that the apology did not: it brought to the surface of public discourse an image that arguably lay behind Tilghman’s remarks and that will likely remain active in the American racial imaginary, even if it is successfully banished from public view. As well, in contrast to the sportscaster’s apology, which sought to bring closure to any further discussion, the cover was designed to focus attention on the problems that would not go away after the brief sensation over Tilghman’s joke faded. The value of the Golfweek cover is that it additionally raises the question of what to do in the wake of an apparently successful public apology. Do we accept it and move on, asserting a primary concern with maintaining social decorum and upholding conventions of polite society? Or do we develop means of pursuing, beyond the person in question and the particular statement, the deeper aspects of race that, for a moment, have flashed into the light

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of day in an accessible manner? As tempting as it may be to assume the latter option is preferable, the case of Dave Seanor’s choice of imagery suggests that such a course will be chosen less frequently. For that matter, after all this talk about race, we may be entering a phase of this conversation when it will be increasingly difficult to talk about what lies behind the words and sentiments, as is suggested by an incident involving Bill O’Reilly and a discussion of white racism. Intelligent Dialogue I like that soul food. I had the meatloaf special. Bill O’Reilly, September 19, 2007

On Wednesday, September 19, the day before the massive rally in Jena, Bill O’Reilly devoted the second hour of his program, Westwood One’s The Radio Factor, to a meandering discussion of race. Dutifully, meanwhile, someone at Media Matters was listening attentively for “provocative statements” to document and then publicize. The immediate prompt was the recent arrest of O. J. Simpson in Nevada on burglary charges. But O’Reilly was interested in developing a much broader reflection on race matters, one that emerged from his reflections on how the country had changed between Simpson’s first and second arrests. His guest that day was Juan Williams (National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor), who was on the program to talk about his new book, Enough: The Phony Leaders, DeadEnd Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It. O’Reilly opened the show with a ten-minute monologue framed around comedian Dennis Miller’s suggestion that there would be race riots across the country if Simpson was convicted. O’Reilly argued that Miller was wrong. What interested O’Reilly was how people’s thinking about race, he sensed, had changed in the intervening years. The key shift he detected was away from “racebased” judgments and perceptions towards something more nuanced. What did not make the news from O’Reilly’s monologue were his reflections on white racism in the types of neighborhoods he had grown up in, or the role of the “white media” in perpetuating racial stereotypes. No particular attention was given either to his reflections about his white

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grandmother’s prejudiced perceptions of blacks. O’Reilly brought up his grandmother and what he characterized as her “irrational fear” of black people—much like Obama would a few months later in his speech on race in Philadelphia. O’Reilly’s loosely focused aim was to speak back to that fear and to dislodge it from its misplaced fi xation on the menacing figures of gangsta rap. This aim led him to ask a broadly reflective question: “How did we get to this point?” As he mulled this question, he acknowledged, “I don’t think there’s a black American who hasn’t had a personal insult that they’ve had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don’t think there’s one in the country. So you’ve got to accept that as being the truth.” This truth, he acknowledged in turn, fueled the politics of protest, as represented by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. But O’Reilly further suggested that black Americans are “getting away from the Sharptons and Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture.” Apropos of this shift, he brought up his recent dinner with Al Sharpton in Harlem. The scene he related was fascinating: the two dined at the famous Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem, with O’Reilly treating Sharpton in appreciation for having recently appeared on his television show. O’Reilly had the meatloaf special, coconut shrimp, and iced tea, all of which “was great” he said, giving Sylvia’s a stellar on-air review. Of his dinner guest, O’Reilly insisted that Sharpton “is a very, very interesting guy.” “I had a great time,” he added, “and all the people up there were tremendously respectful . . . everybody was very nice.” Then came the remark that would be featured on Friday afternoon in the Media Matters press release that turned these comments into a brief media event. “And I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia’s restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship [sic].” As a media spectacle, it was an oddly muted one. On Monday, five days after O’Reilly made the remarks, they were first broadcast on CNN, partly in response to the buzz they generated in the blogosphere over the weekend. Stories followed on the CBS Early Show and ABC News, and in the Chicago Sun Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Louisville Courier-Journal, following the ruckus stirred up by the Me-

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dia Matters press release from the Friday before. Tuesday’s segment of CNN’s American Morning featured cohost Kiran Chetry asking CNN contributor Roland Martin, “Is this going to be one of those Don Imus moments?” O’Reilly responded, in turn, by accusing CNN of trying to boost its ratings at his expense. CNN’s Rick Sanchez, who led the major afternoon coverage of O’Reilly’s remarks, felt compelled to deny that the network was motivated by this aim. But journalists attended to the “scoring points” angle, such as Paul Farhi, writing in the Washington Post, who observed that Tuesday’s episode of The O’Reilly Factor on Fox “drew more than three times as many viewers as the Sanchez-hosted Out in the Open.”¹⁶ As major papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times took up the incident, the coverage broadened into a wider question about what else O’Reilly had said and how people felt about his remarks. The well-worn grooves into which this story fit—allowing people interviewed on the street to easily recognize and comment on what was wrong with O’Reilly’s remarks—make it somewhat difficult to stop and ask, why was this story construed as newsworthy at all? This question highlights the dense combination of obvious and nonobvious elements that shape news stories related to race in the United States. Primarily, this media moment displays a series of reflexes that Americans have developed regarding “racial” aspects of the public sphere. These reflexes were fashioned in the 1950s and 1960s, as accounts of the battles for civil rights challenged the fabric of the taken-for-granted textures of everyday life in the United States. These instincts concerning the proper and improper forms of addressing and representing race in public were further honed through the subsequent decades as challenges to racism in its various manifestations became a commonplace feature of popular culture. This social conditioning regarding coverage of race both contributes to and reflects a collective knowledge concerning the “racial”—we can hear it and recognize it even in the implications of a favorable remark or compliment, like O’Reilly’s. This development is neatly encapsulated in the negative public reaction to Joe Biden’s characterization of Barack Obama as “articulate.” Biden’s utterance was immediately broadcast and panned by an array of journalists and commentators, who regarded this compliment as newsworthy because of its racial connotations. That same response informed

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attention to O’Reilly’s effort to say something positive about the state of race relations in this country. But what is interesting here is that this certainty about what makes such comments news squelches the rest of what O’Reilly had to say about race that day. Indeed, our reflexes about “racial” remarks may have reached a point where what we know already may inhibit us from learning or recognizing something about the changing dynamics of race in this country. In this regard, what may be more notable than “newsworthy” about O’Reilly’s comment is the conversation he was trying to have that day in September. In order to think critically about how this extensive and heightened coverage of race may have become distorting, it is again worth looking closely at the process by which these remarks became a news story. And, as with the case of Don Imus, that process began with a Media Matters press release. O’Reilly had said a good deal more than just the highlighted comment, both during that broadcast and in his past on-air comments. But the press release reflected our overarching investment in establishing precedent in relation to racial remarks, rather than considering context as a mitigating factor. First and foremost in the Media Matters list of precedents was his comment to Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, in response to Senator Biden’s characterization of Barack Obama as “articulate,” that “now we can’t even say you’re articulate? We can’t even give you guys compliments because they may be taken as condescension?” The list also highlighted his assertion that “all Muslims between the ages of 16 and 45” should be subject to search at airports; and his conclusion that “many of the poor in New Orleans” failed to evacuate prior to Hurricane Katrina because they were “drugaddicted” and “weren’t going to get turned off from their source.”¹⁷ What is striking about the items on this list is that they work in concert to reveal a pattern that is not evident in the few seconds Media Matters selected from the thirty-five-minute dialogue between O’Reilly and Williams on race. But just as interesting is that they leave a good deal unstated; the work that this alignment of comments does is not specified or characterized in the press release. That is, there is no charge that O’Reilly or his remarks are “racist” or “racial,” rather that they are simply “provocative statements about race.” What goes without saying here is very important—an assessment of how and why these words re-

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flect pernicious racial thinking—and what is stated largely asserts that the problem is that O’Reilly has ruptured a public decorum regarding statements about race. This gap between what is obviously and not obviously “provocative” about O’Reilly’s comments is sealed over by near-seamless techniques of editing and commentary that are the basis for broadcasting these remarks. As with Imus, the case made against O’Reilly was assembled from his own words, but this time neither Sharpton nor Jackson was accusing him of being racist or calling for him to be fired. A cynical view might assume that Sharpton, in particular, was reticent on the matter of racism since he was O’Reilly’s dinner guest on the night in question. But a more interesting view draws into focus a competing interpretive option. What if, instead of racism, O’Reilly’s comments had simply revealed ignorance? And what if his central purpose in that conversation had exactly been both to reveal and criticize white racial ignorance broadly? What if he had intentionally used his own perceptions to illustrate that ignorance and to talk about “what white America doesn’t know”? O’Reilly, amidst the coverage, was insisting that anyone who heard the broadcast “and is fair minded will tell you this was an intelligent conversation about race.” His complaint was not just that his words had been taken out of context, but that selective editing had entirely skewed the point he was making: that white ignorance of black America is a problem and needs to be countered. “Some whites fear blacks based on irrational notions,” O’Reilly said in an interview in the Washington Post. “They’re afraid to go into Sylvia’s, they’re afraid to go to Harlem. But there’s nothing different in Sylvia’s than any other place in the U.S.”¹⁸ In another interview, with the Associated Press, O’Reilly explained that “if you listened to the full hour, it was a criticism of racism on the part of white Americans who are ignorant.” He concluded, too, that “anyone who would be offended by that conversation would have to be looking to be offended.”¹⁹ So why, instead, was O’Reilly coming across as both ignorant and racist? The answer, in part, involves a key contrast between O’Reilly’s comments and those of Imus and Tilghman: this was not a slip of the tongue or an effort at humor; this was part of a characterization of the

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problem of white racial thinking. News coverage of “racial” remarks is driven largely by the assumption that they are, in and of themselves, revealing, either of individual character or, as in the more extended discussions we have seen earlier in this book, of the extent of racism (unintentionally displayed) in white Americans’ psyches. This is what leads them to be deemed newsworthy. What made the O’Reilly story different—and why it failed to unfold as “one of those Don Imus moments”—was that, as with Seanor’s choice of the noose for a cover image—he was trying to both depict and discuss the problem of white racism directly. His remarks were not easily construed as representative, to the extent that he himself was trying to represent the problem. For that matter, Juan Williams argued, “The point of the whole exchange was to defeat corrupt, untrue and racist images of real black people.”²⁰ The coverage of O’Reilly’s remarks eventually faltered and dissolved for a variety of reasons, but perhaps most notably because he did not apologize. In the wake of this somewhat inconsequential news event, what are we left with in terms of understanding how Americans make sense of race? In the end, perhaps just his words. “There’s no difference.” Bill O’Reilly

O’Reilly said a lot in a short time. The status of his comments as an example of a “racial” incident becomes even more muddled when you consider what else he had to say. First, there was what he said immediately following the excerpted quote by Media Matters. Right after saying, “I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship,” he continued: “It was the same, and that’s really what this society’s all about now here in the U.S.A. There’s no difference. There’s no difference.” Many readers could, I am sure, reel off a list of problems with this statement, even in this slightly widened context. But two aspects are worth highlighting and, interestingly, they are somewhat contradictory. First, he starts with an assumption that race would make a difference—that black-owned businesses with a primarily black clientele would be somehow less than white-run establishments; secondly, he avows emphatically that there is no difference at

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all—that whites and blacks, in this case, had achieved a degree of commonality that alleviates the expectation of something “racial” happening. Which is more offensive or insensitive? For that matter, what was O’Reilly’s greater crime: harboring such expectations or assumptions in the first place, or making an object out of them in an on-air conversation where he aimed to make the point that whites were largely ignorant about race? After talking about dinner at Sylvia’s, he then described, in similar terms, going to an Anita Baker concert at Radio City Music Hall. “The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedos, and this is what white America doesn’t know, particularly people who don’t have a lot of interactions with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twist, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.” To this, Juan Williams replied, “Oh, and it’s just so awful. It’s just so awful because, I mean, it’s literally the sewer come to the surface, and now people take it that the sewer is that whole story.” “That’s right, that’s right,” O’Reilly animatedly affirmed. “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’” And there he was, neatly splayed between his dinner with Al Sharpton and, backlit by a set of expectations he knew first-hand that white Americans like him held regarding black America, the editing blade wielded by the folks at Media Matters. It was a moment when both his conditioning and the larger problem of white ignorance were there on view, and he was trying, clumsily perhaps, to talk about it without reproducing it all over again. What heightened O’Reilly’s predicament was the cultural terrain he was traversing: the domain of food. For all the criticism his remarks may have warranted, O’Reilly managed to draw into view and comment on a fundamental way that Americans “do” race. Anthropologist Bonnie Urciuoli explains that one of the ways Americans think about race is by maintaining “ethnicity” as a parallel concept and discourse.²¹ This allows for a variety of forms of mediation between the defining poles of whiteness and blackness, most evident in the shifting, ambivalent designation of “honorary whites” applied to ambiguously racialized people.²² “Ethnicity,” for whites, identifies or recognizes communities and families as “people like us”—as in restaurants that are safely exotic without being threatening or neighborhoods that are excitingly different for

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tourists without being dangerous. In contrast, people who are racialized in dominant discourses are construed or perceived as being out of control, dirty, and dangerous. Ethnicity, Urciuoli argues, involves achieving a certain kind of escape velocity from race—jettisoning the markings of being dangerous and threatening, but without entirely achieving the unmarked condition of whiteness. That is, “ethnicity” designates safe forms of difference—easily consumable in the form of ethnic festivals or reified in various forms of nostalgia for the “old neighborhood”— against which racial difference continues to stand as threatening, contaminated, and unmentionable. This dynamic relation between ethnicizing and racializing is quite tangible in the realm of food. Americans speak with ease and unselfconsciousness about “ethnic food” but would be loath to ever characterize something as “race food.” And this lacuna marks the place of “soul food” in the American culinary landscape. Is it “ethnic food” in the way Mexican, Chinese, or Thai food is (French, notably, isn’t ethnic food; it is, rather, “high class”), drawing white tourists from the suburbs to urban neighborhoods? In my hometown of Detroit, at least, whites still flock to an inner-city neighborhood that bills itself as “Mexican Town,” but are repelled at the notion of dining in any of the city’s fine soul-food restaurants. And that is exactly what O’Reilly was trying to talk about. “It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb,” O’Reilly told his guest, Juan Williams. “In the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn’t any craziness at all.” In a nutshell, O’Reilly roughly identified and criticized a crucial means by which whites keep race going in this country—viewing “soul food” and “ethnic food” differently—while he gestured at disrupting the parallel discourses of “race” and “ethnicity” as mutually informing means of marking difference in this country. The question—unposed in the coverage but hopefully apparent now—is one that we might expect to come increasingly into focus in future moments of race talk in the public sphere: how do we balance a sense of offense at what a particular statement reveals about an individual’s racial sensibilities over and against the effort it reflects to objectify and criticize the operations of racial thinking? We can raise this question here, in part, because O’Reilly did not apologize. In fact, he posted an audio

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recording of his comments on his Web site and asked people to listen to what he said and judge for themselves. In all likelihood, this openness—and the very different orientation of his remarks—are what resulted in a different outcome for O’Reilly in comparison with Imus. But O’Reilly’s case remains unusual. The far more common outcome from a “racial” remark is the apology, which we turn to in the second half of this chapter. Being Correct or Being Right “Just the math is such as that.” John Tanner

In the course of a busy, drama-filled year, John K. Tanner’s remarks before the National Latino Congreso at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles on October 5, 2007, did not cause much of a stir. Tanner’s comments regarding racial health disparities made much the same circuit as the other remarks discussed in this book—first a posting on YouTube, courtesy of the Brad Blog and Talking Points Memo; then a brief reference in Al Kamen’s “In the Loop” column in the Washington Post, alongside several other gossipy items, such as a mention that federal agents prosecuting disgraced Democrat fundraiser Norman Hsu reported that their seizure of his assets included “180 bottles of pricey wine . . . and a saxophone believed to have been autographed by President Clinton.”²³ The quote from Tanner came to the attention of Senator Barack Obama, who was in the process of pressuring attorney general–designate Michael Mukasey—in advance of his confirmation hearing before the Senate—to address what Obama characterized as “a systematic failure by the Department of Justice to exhibit any significant commitment to upholding civil rights.” The problems Obama cited ranged “from attempts in Georgia to enact a voter identification requirement to the Jena 6 case in Louisiana to concerns that minorities have been steered into high-cost loans.”²⁴ Tanner, as chief of the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, came to emblematize these problems, both for his influential role in relation to the

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Georgia voter-ID law and for his remarks characterizing its potential impact as negligible and nondiscriminatory. What had Tanner said? During a panel workshop titled “It’s Not Over: Defending the Right to Vote Against Disenfranchising Tactics,” Tanner was discussing the impact of laws requiring voters to show some form of photo identification before they vote. “I think it all boils down to a discrete, factual question,” he told the audience: “who has the ID and who doesn’t? And I think that it’s probably true that, among those who don’t, it’s primarily elderly persons. And that’s a shame. You know, creating problems for elderly persons is just not good under any circumstance. Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect, because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first. There’s inequities in health care. There are a variety of inequities in this country, and so anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities—just the math is such as that.” Tanner’s words were not so shocking or offensive that they jarred the workshop audience. He continued with his presentation without a ripple of consternation from the attendees, and that might have been it, if his presentation had not been videotaped and the stark assessment, “they die first,” had not been captured and propelled into circulation in the public discourse. Tanner’s expression of concern over racial health disparities or the inequities facing seniors in this country were barely deemed newsworthy; even the soundbite version was scarcely scandalous enough to generate headlines, at least not initially. The remarks were referenced more than two weeks later in a story on page twenty-seven of the “A” section of the Sunday, October 21, New York Times, reporting that Obama had written to Peter Keisler, acting attorney general at the Department of Justice, requesting that Tanner be removed from his position. Obama characterized the comments as “patently erroneous, offensive, and dangerous, and they are especially troubling coming from the federal official charged with protecting voting rights in this country.” Tanner declined the chance to be interviewed for that story, but a Justice Department spokesman, Erik Albin, insisted Tanner’s statement had been “grossly misconstrued,” adding that “nothing in his comments deviated from his

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firm commitment to enforce the law.” But Tanner and his remarks were gradually gelling into a charged touchstone in the long-running partisan contest over who votes in this country. Tanner’s words offered Democrats—who had clashed with the Bush administration over voting rights and access to the polls for several years—a point of entry into the implacable façade of bureaucratic propriety that encased Republican efforts to make “voter fraud” a national issue. Tanner gave Democrats a target that ruptured the veneer of legalistic rationality and propriety to Republicans’ zealous promotion of legislation that would likely make it more difficult, indirectly, for poor minorities to vote. Tanner’s comments became political fodder, which would be expended in an ongoing battle between congressional Democrats and Bush appointees in the Department of Justice. And after that fodder was spent, Tanner would be compelled to quietly leave his post, after years in the voting rights section, for a position in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. The interesting aspect of Tanner’s story, though, is not the political contest to which it contributed, but rather the drama involving his apology, which provides a perspective on why apologies do so little to advance discussions of “racial” matters. “I certainly had bad tone and clumsiness.” John Tanner

The Committee on the Judiciary’s oversight hearing on the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, held on October 30, had been scheduled before Tanner opened his mouth in Los Angeles. As the hearing’s panel chairman, Jerry Nadler (D-NY), noted, it was “one in a series of hearings on the voting rights section and on the Civil Rights Division, and would’ve occurred regardless of any statements he [Tanner] made.”²⁵ The hearings were ongoing because Democrats were engaged in a protracted effort to counteract laws such as the Georgia Voter ID Act, which appeared to be aimed at disenfranchising minority voters. As Nadler underscored in his introductory remarks, “We have received numerous reports over the years

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that the section is not living up to its mandate. And that politics has, as it has in other parts of the department, intruded into the decisionmaking process, sometimes at the expense of the very people the Voting Rights Act was intended to protect. We need to get to the bottom of these allegations.” But even Nadler was quick to underscore that what Tanner had said was a pressing concern of the hearing. These comments, Nadler noted, demonstrate “a lack of understanding of the mission with which the section is entrusted” and “call to question his fitness to head this important section.” Tanner used his opening statement to do what he could to blunt the impact of this concentrated attention on his remarks at the National Latino Congreso. He related that he had already apologized for his comments, adding, “My explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way, which I deeply regret.” He then narrated for the panel his “career of devotion to enforcing federal laws designed to assure fair and equal access to the ballot,” which began as a teenager in Alabama in the 1960s, mobilizing for voting rights. He described working for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, taking blacks in Birmingham to register to vote. He joined the voting section in 1976 but left in 1995 to prosecute criminal violations of civil rights law, which included serving as a member of the National Church Arson Task Force. After returning to the section in 2002 and becoming chief in 2005, Tanner explained, he zealously used the Voting Rights Act to “block discrimination in Alabama, Georgia, and Texas. I reached out to African American groups to seize new opportunities to protect the rights of African Americans, and to other groups protected by our statutes.” In his capacity as chief, he told the assembled congressmen, “I am blessed to be in this position, which enables me to continue to work towards realizing the vision of a just society I embraced over forty years ago in Birmingham, and to help this nation realize its own vision of equal voting rights for all.” But the concerns and interests of Democrats on the panel were hardly blunted by this rousing account of advocacy for voting rights on behalf of the nation’s minorities. The initial round of questioning, led by Nadler and committee chairman John Conyers, focused primarily on Tanner’s role in the dis-

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puted Georgia voter-ID law. Specifically, Nadler keyed in on Tanner’s decision to overrule the opinion of staffers—detailed in a leaked fiftyone-page memo—that the law should not have been cleared by the department because of its potentially racially discriminatory impact. (Indeed, the law was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.) Then Conyers—after acknowledging that the presence of Tanner’s wife and daughter (seated directly behind him) would compel an air of civility in the hearing—lit into him over his failure to pursue complaints from Ohioans who had been denied the opportunity to vote in the 2004 presidential election. Addressing the discrepancy between Democrats’ criticisms and Tanner’s glowing assessment of the work of the voting section, Conyers remarked, “We called this hearing because we are gravely disturbed about the ineffectiveness and about the activities that have gone on with the voter section. And the voter section chief comes to us this morning to tell us he’s never been more proud of the voter rights section and its accomplishments.” And yet with every controversial issue the Democrats raised concerning his decisions as section chief, Tanner time and again turned towards narrow, technical matters regarding his purportedly steadfast adherence and allegiance to the letter of the law pertaining to voting rights. The apparent success of his dogged and sincerely expressed defense of his advocacy for civil rights in voting seemed, then, to enhance the significance of his comments in Los Angeles. Following Conyers’s exasperated exchange with Tanner, it was time for Artur Davis (D-AL) to pose questions, and he began by returning to Tanner’s apology. “I’m not one hundred percent sure,” Davis confided in a finely measured, almost quiet voice, “what you are apologizing for. I’m not sure if you’re apologizing for how people read the statements, or if you’re apologizing for making them. So I want to give you some chance to be more specific about that.” Davis then read, for the record, Tanner’s words in Los Angeles: “Our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die first.” Then he asked, “Is that an accurate statement?” Tanner, his hands clasped together, rapping gently on the table top, and looking appropriately woeful, replied, “It is a sad fact that—” Davis interrupted and then repeated his question as to

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whether it was an accurate statement. Tanner’s speech slowed into ever more measured and careful articulations. Tanner: I believe that . . . the census data shows . . . that life expectancy, in Georgia anyway, which is what I was addressing, is lower for African Americans— Davis [interrupting]: Well, you don’t say that. You say that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do. Is that accurate? Tanner [dolefully]: It was a very clumsy statement. Davis: Is it an accurate statement? Tanner: I believe that I’ve said Mr. Davis . . . I may not completely understand the question. Davis: The question is, is it accurate that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do? Tanner: The statistical data indicate that life expectancy is lower for minorities— Davis [cutting him off ]: Then you say, ‘They die first.’ Who is the ‘they’?

Tanner breathed deeply and sighed, sliding his fingers back and forth across the table, and replied, “I was . . . addressing . . . the sad . . . fact that . . . the inequities . . . in this country are such . . . and I know that I’m not an expert on all of those inequities—” That was enough for Davis, who jumped in to lecture Tanner about his home state of Alabama, where the percentage of elderly voters among minorities (forty percent) is higher than among whites. “So if you look at the statistics,” Davis patiently stressed, “instead of stereotypes, elderly blacks are more likely to vote than elderly whites.” Then Davis asked Tanner about other comments of his that had drawn critical attention, such as his opinion that blacks were more likely to go to check-cashing businesses in Georgia, with the implied suggestion that this would indicate that they would not have problems presenting photo IDs at the polls. While Davis posed this further question, two black staffers sitting behind Davis smiled and seemed to savor Tanner’s palpable, rising sense of distress. “In address-

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ing the Georgia—” Tanner started to say, before Davis cut him off, saying, “Now don’t give me a long answer. I don’t have the time. Did you make the comment?” After acknowledging that he had, indeed, “made a comment about that,” Davis attacked. Davis: This is the point, Mr. Tanner, that I think we want to drive home. Do you have any statistics about how many blacks visit check-cashing businesses, versus the number of whites who do? Tanner: I do not have any with me, but I believe that the statistics on the number of un-banked persons, by race, here in the United States, would be available— Davis: Do you know those numbers? Tanner: I do not know those numbers. Davis: Well, this is the problem. Once again, you engaged in an analysis without knowing the numbers. And the point, Mr. Tanner, is that you’re a policy maker, sir. You are encharged with enforcing the voting rights laws in the country. And if you are not fully informed about things that you are talking about and pontificating about—if you are basing your conclusions on stereotypes and generalizations, that raises the question in the minds of some of us whether or not you are the person best positioned to make these choices.

Davis’s five-minute allotment for questioning expired, but Tanner’s ordeal was just beginning. Another Democrat, Keith Ellison, from Minnesota, soon took up where Davis left off. Departing from the softly cadenced but persistent questioning by Davis, Ellison engaged Tanner with sharp, staccato bursts of interrogatives. “Exactly what are you apologizing for?” Ellison asked, the words bursting bluntly into the air. “I hurt people,” Tanner, fully chastised, answered with miserably woeful eyes cast upwards towards his examiner. Ellison: How did you hurt them? JT: The reactions of people to my statements, which were very contrary to what I was trying to communicate.

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Ellison: So are you apologizing because of the reaction people had to your statements? JT: I caused that reaction . . . certainly not intentionally. I made clumsy statements— Ellison: So what was clumsy about what you said? JT: I believe that . . . What I was thinking was that— Ellison: No. What was clumsy about what you said?

“I was addressing,” Tanner replied with a labored, slow, studied articulation of each word, “a narrow issue of the statistics needed to show a violation of federal law in a very clumsy tone . . . the tenor of my remarks—” Ellison: So you’re apologizing for your tone? JT: I am apologizing that my tone caused this. Ellison: So the problem is the tone?

A long, painful silence followed, which Tanner finally filled by answering, “I certainly had a bad tone and clumsiness.” Ellison: Is it true that minorities die soon, so that the Voter-ID laws just don’t affect older people of color the same way they do other people? JT: I never ever meant to suggest— Ellison: I don’t know what you’re apologizing for. You say that you’re right, but your tone was wrong. I don’t know what you’re saying you’re sorry for. Could you please help me understand, if you’re claiming that you’re statistically correct, why are you apologizing? Are you just trying to curry favor? JT: I’m not. I feel that if I make remarks that people misinterpret— Ellison: So people misinterpreted what you said? JT: I apologize for that—

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Ellison: Now wait a minute, you said . . . I’m sorry, did people misinterpret what you said? JT: I believe I said it in a way that did not communicate effectively. Ellison [reads the quote, then asks]: Is that true? JT: I think that it is clumsily stated— Ellison: Is it true? JT: People age in the same way— Ellison: Right. My dad’s eighty. He’s black.

At this point, staffers sitting behind Ellison, both white and black, snickered and grinned. Meanwhile, Tanner’s wife held steady her grimaced expression and his daughter uncomfortably fidgeted and wrung her hands. JT: Absolutely. And I don’t mean to suggest that there are not elderly people or that they— Ellison: What does it matter . . . what do the statistics matter to the individual voter? JT: It matters not at all to the individual voter. Ellison: So your statement was also irrelevant? Is that true? JT: The statement was addressing a specific assertion related to law enforcement— Ellison: But basically your statement that “minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do” has no relevance to whether an individual VoterID bill should apply to minorities or seniors, isn’t that right? It just doesn’t matter. So if it doesn’t matter, why are you making the point? JT: I was . . . trying to . . . address how I ran . . . the presumption that I made— Ellison: Right, presumptions. Presumptions, which is similar to the word, assumptions, right?

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JT: Right— Ellison: Which is similar to the concept of stereotypes. JT: I had assumed— Ellison: Right!

Ellison’s five minutes also expired, but he had arrived at the point towards which his inquiries had been driving: Tanner’s admission that allowed for the association of his words and thoughts with the influence of stereotypes. Reporting on the hearing in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank observed, “There is nothing quite so abject, profuse and groveling as an apology offered by a man who fears he is about to lose his job. But even Tanner’s ritualistic self-abasement did not put Democrats on the subcommittee in a forgiving mood.”²⁶ Indeed, his repeated apologies only seemed to fuel the zeal with which his examiners pushed him to expand on or explain his now notorious comments. But for all the political heat and light directed at Tanner’s statement, for all the concentrated attention that the public hearing generated, very little insight was gained into what he meant or what he was trying to say. The grilling of Tanner illustrates a crucial point about our “national conversation”—apologies can be absolutely detrimental to the process of making sense of race, because of what they forestall in terms of a deeper analysis of how race matters and for the way they primarily direct attention towards the propriety (or impropriety)—the “tone”—of what was said or intended. That is, they keep us focused on breaches of etiquette rather than on examining the social and intellectual logics that shape and generate racial thinking. At the very least, Tanner’s ordeal emblematizes the failure of apologies as a means of responding to racial incidents. But more importantly, perhaps, this painful spectacle illustrates or suggests ways to move beyond the apology and towards a more insightful engagement with the ways race matters. First and foremost, the public hearing makes plain that our primary attention to race in the public sphere is framed and delimited by concerns with social convention or etiquette, which provide the criteria by which “racial” remarks or situations are recognized and evaluated.²⁷

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Even in a political arena—where matters of policy and fact might be assumed to be preeminent—social decorum rules. Democrats on the panel were animated by such concerns as they developed and pursued a singular focus on what Tanner had said. Tanner’s responses are a yet more obvious indication that matters of etiquette dominate in discussing race in public. The fact that he apologized profusely and repeatedly—along with the things for which he was apologizing—underscores that concerns over etiquette were preeminent: he was sorry for his “bad tone” and “clumsiness” in speaking and the “reaction” engendered by his remarks. These matters of social decorum distract from matters of statistical analysis and data related to policy formation, as well as from the issue of how numbers and data are produced and are to be critiqued. In addition to the discomforting scene of Tanner’s debasement—Milbank observed that “it’s hard to imagine what more the committee members could have done to humiliate this witness”—it is this inability to effectively draw attention to the matters of fact that makes this scene so striking. While Democrats interrogated Tanner as an individual—seeking to have him confess to harboring or being motivated by racial stereotypes—they did very little to examine either the sources of Tanner’s comments or the logic that framed them. They bandied about “they die first” for what it revealed about Tanner and not for what it exposed regarding the larger concerns of the panel: the Bush administration’s rationale for targeting voter fraud, and the even bigger problem of the administration’s approach and appeals to African Americans. Davis came close when he queried Tanner, “is it accurate that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do?” But the opening Tanner offered—noting “that life expectancy is lower for minorities”—went unexploited. Instead, Davis tried to rebut Tanner with statistics on elderly voters in Alabama, which was, at best, somewhat beside the point. Tanner was right, of course. The average life expectancy for whites in the United States is about seven years longer than for African Americans. Also, Tanner knew that he was right—“it’s a sad fact that inequities in this country are such.” But he sensed that facts did not matter. He responded to being implicitly charged with stating an uncomfortable demographic fact that had apparently ruptured the decorum of

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political correctness. For that matter, the charged session was not even able to establish a consensus that Tanner was wrong in factual terms. Republican Steve King, of Iowa, used his time for questions to challenge the Democrats’ interrogation on exactly this ground. “I think it’s important to note,” King lectured his fellow committee members and the assembled audience, “that if a statement is made publicly and is supported by the facts, then the subject comes down to, was it insensitive or wasn’t it.” Asserting that this was the case with Tanner’s statement, he further opined that, “We often are debating things beyond the facts. And sometimes a person is criticized for a factual statement, but there’s not opposing documentation of another group of data that would rebut that, and that seems to be what I’m missing here.” In his formulation, the Democrats had raised a stir over the propriety of Tanner’s remarks (whether they were simply “insensitive”) without getting at the question they most sharply posed to him: was the statement—and by inference his analysis of the impact of legislation on voting—accurate? That the accuracy of Tanner’s statement was not examined in depth is unfortunate because in addition to being right, Tanner was also wrong, both in how he phrased this statistical fact—“they die first”— and in how he interpreted this U.S. demographic reality. But in this error he was hardly alone, for his thinking here encapsulated the rationale shaping key aspects of the Bush administration’s approach to African Americans. As with any fact or set of facts, interpretation always matters, and this is especially the case with statistics. This glaring statistical fact about racial disparities in life expectancy is not primarily a reflection of the aging process, but rather of the precariousness of life in its earliest stages for African Americans. The lower average life expectancy is primarily a function of the higher rates of death in childhood and young adulthood for blacks. Tanner acknowledged, in response to Ellison’s questioning, that there is no apparent racial difference in how people age. But the panel’s questioners were not able to expose Tanner’s misinterpretation of this demographic disparity. Subsequently, they were unable to assail a broader misuse of this fact by members of the Bush administration, first in their long-running efforts to promote the privatization of Social Security and then by downplaying the negative impact of their pursuit of legislation to prevent voter fraud.

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Tanner was hardly a conservative ideologue. He had served in the voting rights section under the Clinton administration as well, and as his biography suggests, he was animated (at least to some degree) by a larger sense of social justice. But his success in rising through the ranks at the Department of Justice probably reflected an ability to adhere to the prevailing logic of whichever political party was ascendant. This is arguably reflected in his adoption of a line of reasoning pursued early on by the Bush administration regarding questions of a racial differential in aging. After all, Tanner was merely parroting a line that Bush had spoken long before him. “African American males die sooner than other males do,” Bush explained in 2005 in a closed meeting of black community leaders, as he was trying to persuade them that they would benefit from his effort to privatize Social Security. This fact, he stressed, “means the system is inherently unfair to a certain group of people.”²⁸ If blacks do not live as long as white people do, he reasoned, drawing on a 2001 Heritage Foundation study called “Strengthening Social Security,” they cannot expect to collect their fair share of Social Security, making privatization appear to be the logical option. Like Tanner, Bush was wrong too, as Paul Krugman explained in a column critiquing this argument in the New York Times.²⁹ But, of course, Bush’s misstatements were not vetted before a House committee hearing. After pointing to the misinterpretation of high infant mortality as equivalent to differential aging processes, Krugman focused on how Bush misconstrued economic interests. Since Social Security benefits are progressive, paying more to low-income workers than to highincome workers, and since it is also an important disability program, African Americans, on average, benefit from the arrangement. But the deeper problem with Bush’s line of argument, Krugman noted, lies in “exploiting the tragedy of high black mortality for political gain instead of treating it as a problem that we should solve.” As Krugman observed, the persistent racial gap in life expectancy is not a brute fact of nature or “given,” but rather a function of social conditions such as poverty, lack of access to equal medical care, exposure to high rates of pollution, and crime. His starting point, though, was to assail the Bush administration in terms of “the fundamental dishonesty of their sales pitch” regarding their misreading of racial demographics. However, this was not the kind

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of target drawn into sharp relief by the Democrats’ questioning during the committee hearing. Instead, they were content to treat Tanner’s statements primarily as “offensive” and “insensitive.” This focus contributes to the impression that it is better not to talk about race—and certainly not racial differentials in mortality—at all, rather than risk social debasement and one’s professional standing. For all that this case suggests about the superfluousness of apologies to the kind of developed, engaging conversation on race that Lani Guinier envisioned long ago, it also highlights how our efforts to inquire or delve more deeply into racial matters—to pose and answer the critical question, where do such remarks come from?—are, often as not, fumbling and unfocused. In drawing this chapter to a close, I turn to another public spectacle from 2007, one that, initially, seemed as ineffectual and regrettable as Tanner’s moment in the spotlight. But the story of what eminent biologist James Watson had to say after his apology and how he was prodded into exploring his thinking further, provides a glimpse of the kind of work that will be required if our conversations about race are to become more revealing and insightful. “If I said what I was quoted as saying, I can only admit that I am bewildered by it.” James Watson

In October 2007, James Watson was preparing for a book tour in England for his just-released memoir, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, when he granted an interview with a former protégée, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, which was published in the Sunday Times of London.³⁰ The article opens with Hunt-Grubbe recalling her initial meeting with Watson in 1996 and then relates his affectionate, enthusiastic reception upon her return to Long Island that fall to discuss Watson’s life and work. She characterizes his new book as “an inflammatory epilogue with eye-popping theories that will, undoubtedly, leave ethicists choking with disbelief,” and then recounts some of the more sensational dustups in his heralded career. Most of the controversies Watson generated have involved gender, and accusations of sexism have hounded him since he revealed in 1968 having used the data of

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a female colleague (Rosalind Franklin), without her knowledge, in developing his Nobel Prize–winning work on DNA. But race—perhaps not surprisingly—also surfaced occasionally. Hunt-Grubbe referenced a characterization of Watson in the journal Science—“To many in the scientific community, Watson has long been something of a wild man, and his colleagues tend to hold their collective breath whenever he veers from the script.” By way of illustration, Hunt-Grubbe pointed to his comments at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000, suggesting a link exists between skin color and sex drive. Then she summarized his current thinking about race. He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really,” and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of color, because “there are many people of color who are talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level.”

Hunt-Grubbe then quotes from Watson’s new book: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.” She then observes of such charged remarks, spoken and written, that “his comments, although seemingly unguarded, are always calculated. Not maliciously, but with the mischievous air of a great mind hoping to be challenged.” The challenges came fast and furiously. A great deal of outrage was generated in England in response to the article, and the Science Museum in London, where Watson was scheduled to kick off his tour that Wednesday (October 17), cancelled the sold-out appearance. A spokesman for the museum explained simply that Watson’s remarks had gone “beyond the point of acceptable debate.” London Mayor Ken Livingstone added that “such ignorant comments are utterly offensive and give succor to the most backwards in our society.”³¹ Watson tried to quell the fury, first in an editorial piece in the

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Independent and then with a public statement at the Royal Society that Thursday, disavowing his comments. But the damage was done. On Friday he abruptly canceled a string of speaking engagements and returned home after finding out that he had been suspended from his position as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the prestigious institution where he had served as both director and president during his thirty-five-year tenure. Within days, Watson formally resigned from the laboratory, allowing that he was “overdue” to pass along this leadership role, but that the circumstances of his retirement “are not those I could ever have anticipated or desired.” The Federation of American Scientists further castigated Watson for promoting “personal prejudices that are racist, vicious, and unsupported by science.” The story seemed to end with that, almost as quickly as it began, but there was one more surge of public interest in Watson. In early December, 2007, deCODE Genetics, of Iceland, announced that an analysis of Watson’s DNA—he had placed his genome information online, in the interest of stimulating genetic research—revealed that “16 of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent.”³² This story made the rounds, played up as an ironic “sequel to his utterly inappropriate comments about Africans,” a spin offered by deCODE Genetics’ chief executive, Kari Stefansson.³³ As for Watson’s view of this revelation, he refused to comment further, leaving one of his agents, Fraser Seitel, to repeat Watson’s earlier apologies and to reassert that “he doesn’t have a recollection” of having spoken the words attributed to him by his former protégée.³⁴ “He had uttered the unutterable.” Henry Louis Gates

As with John Tanner, the initial public discussion of Watson focused on matters of etiquette, with his remarks characterized as “offensive” and outside of “acceptable debate”—accusations leading to countercharges that scientists were being unjustly persecuted in terms of “political correctness.”³⁵ There was also an effort to assess Watson’s remarks according to the precedents established by the likes of Michael Richards and Don Imus—that is, as a form of “personal prejudice” re-

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flecting a much larger substratum of social belief. Writing in USA Today, Shery McCarthy argued, “the frothy outrage masks the reality that many people share Watson’s belief in the inherent intellectual inferiority of blacks, though they refrain from expressing these thoughts because it is socially unacceptable to do so.”³⁶ But the coverage of Watson also reflected a sense that the significance of his statements carried well beyond matters of belief—personal or widely shared—and extended into a realm similar to that opened by Tanner’s comments: knowledge claims about race. What Watson had said both related to his role as a research scientist and encapsulated an extensive intellectual history involving claims about a racial differential in intelligence. Another feature in USA Today, for instance, helpfully explained that “Watson’s recent remarks carry troubling historical baggage” because they echo “statements made by those involved decades ago in eugenics, the ‘science’ of improving humanity that found a haven at Cold Spring Harbor.” In this frame, Watson’s previous sensational remarks—like the suggestion that genetic engineering could be used “to make all girls pretty”—were read not just as instances of personal prejudice but as evidence of a line of thinking long discredited politically and scientifically that, evidently, continues to percolate not far below the surface of the public sphere.³⁷ But for all the heightened awareness that this was also a scientific matter, involving evidence, proofs, and research, much of the professional criticism of Watson seemed fi xated, as with Tanner, on the impropriety of his remarks, rather than directly critiquing the basis for his claims. An editorial in the journal Nature, for instance, chastised Watson for his “track record in making distasteful remarks,” asserting that “his views have finally been deemed beyond the pale.”³⁸ This “outburst,” the editorial insists, “demonstrates a sheer unacceptable offensiveness,” which lends “succor and comfort to racists around the globe.” Yet the only specific problem cited with the comments is that it would make the work of geneticists, who are “engaged in the sensitive task of unraveling differences between the world’s population groups,” more difficult. “Crass comments by Nobel laureates undermine our very ability to debate such issues, and thus damage science itself.” But the editorial devoted no effort to explaining why or how his statements were wrong, only underscoring that they were “unpalatable views” that Watson had

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“retracted” and for which he apologized. Still, as with Tanner, there was more behind his words that needed to be engaged; this more developed attention, though, was forestalled by this fi xation on, and criticism in terms of, etiquette. In many ways, Watson’s apology provided a terrible apparent resolution of this spectacle. First, it short-circuited a larger public airing and assessment of the basis for his initial comments—continuing research efforts to demonstrate that there are genetically-based racial differences in intelligence. Secondly, it masked the fact that little in his thinking had actually changed or even been directly challenged since he made the original statement. In light of these two factors, the profuse, publicly tendered apology was depicted in some circles as an act of martyrdom in the face of rampant public outrage over an “inconvenient truth.” In this regard, Watson’s apology served to confirm that his only “crime” was largely a breach of etiquette, rather than asserting a contentious stance regarding disputable knowledge claims. This spin derived from the rather slippery and somewhat ambiguous aspects of how exactly Watson had apologized. Watson’s apology came in two stages. The initial gesture strove to carefully clarify what he felt to be a misunderstanding regarding demonstrable claims versus spurious conclusions or speculations linked to the genetics of intelligence. As the wave of scandal first began to crest, Watson responded with an editorial piece on October 19 in the Independent, which opened with an assertion that science was in the business of generating controversy.³⁹ “The pursuit of discovery, of knowledge,” he reminded the public, “is often uncomfortable and disconcerting.” He apologized for the “reaction” to his statements, which left him “bewildered,” and specified that, “to those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief.” But then Watson quickly asserted that “genetics is so important” because it will lead us to an understanding of fundamental differences between people. “One in three people looking for a job in temporary employment bureaus in Los Angeles is a psychopath or a sociopath,” he

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declared, and underscored his expectation that genetics would eventually provide a means to identify those people. “Genetics can be cruel,” he reminded his readers, “but science is not here to make us feel good.” And he reiterated his stance that we should not assume “that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated” are equal. “The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.” He concluded by stressing that “to question this is not to give in to racism.” In a public event that evening at the Royal Society, though, he apologized again, this time by thoroughly and simply disavowing anything he had said on the matter. He described being “mortified” by his quoted statements and claimed, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said.” He added, “I can certainly understand why people reading those words have reacted in the ways they have.” This left reporters scrambling to determine whether he was claiming to have been misquoted. Watson dodged the matter, leaving his publicist later to field the question. “You have the statement,” Kate Farquhar-Thomson told reporters; “that’s it, I am afraid.” And the Sunday Times stood by its account that Watson had been quoted accurately. What circulated, then, in the U.S. coverage of the apology was a complete renunciation of “offensive and unreasonable remarks” by Watson, which resonated perfectly with the quotes from fellow scientists condemning him as a racist.⁴⁰ Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, commented in the Los Angeles Times that he concurred with Watson’s “undoubtedly painful decision to retire in the aftermath of a racist statement he made that was both profoundly offensive and utterly unsupported by scientific evidence.”⁴¹ The Chicago Tribune, in an article titled “Peers Horrified by Famed Scientist’s Race Remarks,” quoted Robert Strenberg, a researcher at Tufts University who studies race and IQ, characterizing the remarks as “racist and most regrettable”; while geneticist Rick Kittles, at the University of Chicago, labeled it “an ignorant statement by an intelligent man.”⁴² All of which created the impression that this controversy had been resolved by Watson’s acknowledging and apologizing for making a racist remark. But that was not an accurate impression.

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The second apology, in fact, generated a kind of counter public discourse in which Watson was not only defended but lionized, specifically for the views he steadfastly reasserted in his first apology. Because the second apology was so widely trumpeted—and because this counter public was primarily formed online—the depth and persistence of a set of claims that Watson was right about what he said, regardless of whether or not it was “crass,” went largely unnoticed and, importantly, these claims went unchallenged. “Everything Watson got in trouble for saying was entirely correct!” posted Jason Malloy on the Gene Expression Web site.⁴³ Malloy’s thirty-page posting features statistics, data, and comparative findings on IQ in Africa, drawn from sixty-five psychometric intelligence studies, largely collected in books by Richard Lynn, such as Race Diff erences in Intelligence and IQ & Global Inequality. Malloy’s post, in turn, features prominently in a post on Slate by William Saletan—their chief national correspondent—which opens by summarizing the media accounts denouncing Watson and discrediting the notion of racial differences in IQ. “I wish these assurances were true,” Saletan states, but, he grimly and bluntly concludes, “They aren’t.”⁴⁴ Surveying a similar range of IQ studies, Saletan warns readers, “It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.” Nor was this counter discourse merely confined to online discussions and blogging. The controversy opened a door for J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen—notorious and largely dismissed researchers who have long promoted the view that racial differences in intelligence exist between blacks and whites—to publish in an academic journal summaries of their demonized but ongoing research on IQ.⁴⁵ In Medical Hypotheses, they rebutted geneticists’ condemnation of Watson, asserting that “the unjustified ill treatment meted out to Watson therefore requires setting the record straight about the current state of the evidence on intelligence, race, and genetics.”⁴⁶ They then proceeded, in the name of “racial realism,” to summarize copious studies on race differences in brain size, transracial adoption studies, and purported racial differences in intelligence. Performing what Sandra Soo-Jin Lee characterizes as “the courage to race”—“a leitmotiv in the emerging discourse on race and genetics”—Rushton and Jensen’s assertions here easily meld into an

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increasingly dense background of racialization of medical and genetic research, appearing as a seemingly “politically unmotivated claim on truth that genetic differences among racially identified populations not only exist, but are functionally important, with potentially significant effects on human health.”⁴⁷ But the spread and sophistication of such claims increasingly pass under the radar of mainstream coverage, along with its assurances to the general public that such thinking and research is unsupported by science. “It’s a can of worms for us.” Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Is there a better way to respond to such incidents? Is there a more insightful way to engage both the instance and the sources of racial thinking? There is no general, one-size-fits-all response to such questions. But, as with every other incident related in this book, the examples in this chapter offer glimpses not just of how these events are structured and unfold but also of how they might be altered and approached differently in the future. Such is the case with the way Henry Louis Gates, director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, responded to Watson’s comments. On March 17, 2008, a few months after the incident, when the dust had settled from the controversy, Gates revisited the matter by sitting down with Watson to ask him what he had been thinking when he spoke. Gates’s interest in Watson was hardly sparked by the controversy alone; he had held an abiding admiration for the biologist since reading The Double Helix as a high school senior in 1968. His esteem for Watson was further stoked when they first met in 1978, following a lecture Gates delivered for alumni of Clare College at the University of Cambridge. For this 2008 conversation, they arranged to meet in Watson’s office in Cold Spring Harbor, NY, and spoke for over an hour on a range of topics involving race, science, and intelligence, but each subject stemmed in some way from Watson’s reported comments in October. This interview was recorded on video and posted online at TheRoot.com. Gates also wrote an essay reflecting on his extended ex-

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change with Watson, which was posted alongside the video and accompanied by a partial transcript of the interview. “I’m not a monster,” Watson told Gates, “and yet, if you look at them [the quotes] at their face value, I seem to be nasty.” “But Dr. Watson,” Gates asked, “where in the world did those words come from?” Watson’s reply was quite literal, noting that one sentence had come from his book, “and the other two sentences, I talked to her for eight hours. When I read the [quotes], I had no memory whatsoever of ever saying them. Because if I’d said anything like that, it was so inappropriate!” When asked whether he was indeed “gloomy” about the future of Africa, Watson said no, “not if we educate them.” In particular, he remarked, “You can’t tell me that Ethiopians are stupid. Jesus, so they test very low on IQ, but I know enough of them—they’re bright.” Ranging further on the subject of IQ, he speculated on whether “genes for all kinds of Jewish intelligence” would be found, and then noted hopefully that “there was a difference between the Scotch and Irish, and it suddenly disappeared. . . . A ten-point difference can disappear pretty fast.” Gates asked Watson about his comments on the relationship between skin color and libido, but Watson insisted, “The remark I was telling was a joke.” Watson did relate, though, that “I was watching the basketball game yesterday. And I’m just trying to say, you dominate.” Gates: Oh, you mean black people? Watson: Yes. Gates: In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a basketball kind of type. But could that be genetic, the dominance you described in the NBA yesterday? Watson: I don’t know what it’s due to. Because we haven’t found genes. You know, genes depending on what sort of types of muscles, slow twitch, fast twitch. I don’t think it’s going to change things much. White runners will still try to beat black runners. And they’ll largely lose.

Gates replied by talking about his father’s views on basketball. “Every time he passes a basketball court of black boys, young black men, he will say, ‘If we study calculus like we study basketball, we would be run-

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ning MIT.’ So to him, it’s not genetic. It’s the fact that we’re in basketball laboratories instead of math laboratories, all of our lives.” Watson responded, “Yes, and that’s bad. Black kids have got to get different aspirations.” “Right,” answered Gates. “But even you said, ‘You dominate us.’ You see what I mean? We have this image of being dominant as natural athletes.” “Well,” said Watson, “one of my rules in my books is, take courses where you can get good grades.” In his essay reflecting on the interview, Gates related the following: “‘Well?’ one of my friends asked later. ‘Is he a racist?’” Mulling that question, Gates answered, “I don’t think James Watson is a racist. But I do think he is a racialist—that is, he believes that certain observable traits or forms of behavior among groups of human beings might, indeed, have a biological basis in the code that scientists, eventually, may be able to ascertain, that the ‘gene’ is some mythically neutral space and what it purportedly ‘measures’ or ‘determines’ is independent of environmental factors, variables and influences.” It’s an interesting conclusion, one that suggests the matter of belief looms large and shapes the kind of confidence one has towards understanding genetics and its potential to explain human difference. The crux of this “crucial” difference in Gates’s view—between racist and racialist—lies in the naiveté this accomplished biologist demonstrates regarding the social and cultural impact of claims about race and the possibility of its basis in biology. “James Watson is not the garden-variety racist as he has been caricatured by the press and bloggers,” Gates concluded; yet, “I did leave Cold Spring Harbor convinced that Dr. Watson believes that many forms of behavior—such as ‘Jewish intelligence’ and the basketball prowess of black men—could, possibly, be traced to genetic differences among human beings, although no such connection has been made, and will probably never be made on any firm scientific basis, it seems to me.” Belief in this potential of genetics to explain race is what led Gates to label Watson a “racialist,” because Gates recognized an important gap here between the certainties about race professed by racists and the kinds of connections Watson imagines one day might close the gap between what we know and do not know about genes and human behavior.⁴⁸ Still, being a “racialist” was certainly cause for serious concern in Gates’s mind. “It was ultimately chilling to me,” Gates acknowledged,

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“when he remarked, with what seemed to me to be monumental naivete, that ‘if they find genes for all kinds of Jewish intelligence, I don’t think it’s going to affect me in the slightest,’ especially when we couple that sort of remark with his passionate belief that ‘everyone should be judged as individuals.’ No one should be judged by a term like ‘black.’” The savvy of Gates’s reading lies in not seizing upon either of these statements as revealing of the truth about James Watson, but rather showing how they coexist in the same intelligent human being. The problem, he recognizes, is that Watson can slip so easily between these and never confront the dangers implied in the possibilities entailed by statements about “Jewish intelligence.” The contrast Gates draws into view is between a fixed belief and a disposition to reach for or draw certain conclusions. The easy judgment, as was demonstrated in the media coverage of Watson’s remarks, is to conclude he is a racist, based on his remarks, and be done with him. The more difficult task that Gates takes up here is to listen carefully, not to parse Watson’s words for “inappropriate” thoughts, but instead to follow his thinking, appraising both the connections and associations it features and, importantly, noting its blind spots and ignorances. Gates, too, is specific about the problem with Watson’s formulations. “Watson’s error is that he associates individual genetic differences (which, of course, do in fact exist), with ethnic variation (which is sociocultural and highly malleable).” That is, Gates delineates as distinct domains (the social and the inheritable) what Watson too quickly collapses into one. In each of these regards, Gates is able to frame important concerns linked to Watson’s worldview without reducing the scientist to a caricature. Gates’s approach can be considered a model of how to engage comments like Watson’s. Gates does allow that “in the end, visions that are racialist may end up doing the same work of those that are racist.” But the distinction is potentially useful in offering a way to think about such remarks that affords a view onto the larger process of thought behind the simple, telling remark.⁴⁹

6 Our Unfinished Conversation

THE CENTR AL QUESTION POSED in this book is quite basic: How do we know when something is racial? Certainly, there are moments when it is obvious, but these are increasingly dwarfed by the number of times when the racial aspects of a remark, a story, or an argument are not clear. The challenge of making this discernment effectively will likely grow in the years ahead as we move from relying on a set of interpretive frameworks and assumptions primarily informed by the history of racial dynamics, towards yet-to-be-assembled frames for recognizing and assessing the meaning of race in less certain contexts. The surety of discerning racial intent or content in words and incidents derives from the emphatic contours of race in the social and political landscape. But as these contours warp and distort, the analytical work race requires will grow more sophisticated, requiring greater specificity and an acknowledgment of, or at least a tolerance for, a wider range of possibilities. If the stories assembled and examined here do not make that case sufficiently, then just consider the heated debates about race in the 2008 election. The biggest story from the year following the one detailed on these pages was, of course, Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House. And the biggest question about that presidential campaign was whether it was going to be “about race.” That the matter now seems largely settled by the election’s outcome—commentators quickly con-

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cluded that race did not matter in the end—makes it easy to forget how entirely uncertain at the time Americans were about this major question. This is one of the distinctive effects of our conversation: once a consensus forms around a remark or incident being “racial,” we quickly forget that it was ever ambiguous and subject to intense questioning. But the great difficulty experts faced at the time in answering this basic question indicates that the central terms and grounds for making such assessments continue to be in flux. For the most part, the answer seemed to fall under the purview of pollsters, who relied on increasingly subtle and clever techniques of polling to ascertain whether or how race would matter to voters. Survey researchers scoured reams of data on Americans’ likely voting preferences for any signs that racism or racial sentiment would derail one of the most impressively organized, efficient, and well-funded presidential campaigns in history. There were plenty of hints and suggestions that the outcome could, in the end, be characterized as a “racial” judgment. Indications abounded that race-based animosity—the “racial resentment” that Obama discussed in his speech on race in Philadelphia following the controversy over Reverend Wright’s “God damn America” remarks—was an active feature in some whites’ decision-making processes. But was there evidence that this sentiment would be a factor in the election’s outcome? For that matter, what about the racial motivations of minorities? While blacks were clearly animated by the thought of electing the first African American president, would they vote in sufficient numbers to offset anxious white independent voters who might break for McCain? And would Latinos prove or disprove the notion promoted earlier in the year by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, that they would not vote for a black candidate? In the face of these uncertainties, statisticians and survey researchers grappled with how to measure the impact and relevance of racial thinking. Political psychologists generally see “racial” as a set of unconscious beliefs, anxieties, or motivations that can be triggered or manipulated by certain code words or primed with racial images.¹ The premise— one that informs public and political discourses as well—is that race is something “submerged,” encompassing a range of sentiments, beliefs, and assumptions that Americans typically express or address only

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through euphemism and innuendo. The surmise is that the conventions of public discourse prevailing against open expression of racist sentiment bury these views deep in the psyche of whites. From this stance, as well, reporters monitored whether race had “crept” into the campaign as a result of one or the other candidate’s “playing the race card.”² But there was little consensus or even certainty.³ Would Americans express different preferences in the privacy of the voting booth than they had shared with reporters?⁴ This question was hard to answer because pollsters and reporters alike fretted over the possible impact of the “Bradley effect.”⁵ Most challenging, though, was the gradual recognition that “racial” might entail a fragmentary and contradictory range of possible effects; it might not be the unified force or power it had long appeared to be. Research on race in the social sciences over the last two decades has been deeply guided by Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s conceptualization of “racial formation.” The foundation of this influential concept is its formulation “of race as an autonomous field of social conflict, political organization, and cultural/ideological meaning.”⁶ Importantly, too, this conceptualization prioritized the realm of meaning as fundamental to grasping this social field. “Racial categories and the meaning of race,” Omi and Winant explained, “are given concrete expression by the specific relations and historical context in which they are embedded.”⁷ Noting that “racial meanings have varied tremendously over time and between different societies,” they emphasized that the primary analytical task is “to understand race as an unstable and ‘ decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly transformed by political struggle” (original emphasis).⁸ This form of attention to such a molten phenomenon was facilitated by two additional framing statements. One involved the larger context of the nation—“the structuring of collective political action on the terrain of the state.” The second framing assumption was arguably of greater import: the assertion that this approach “should treat race in the United States as a fundamental organizing principle of social relationships” (original emphasis).⁹ Yet these assumptions about the autonomy of race and its fundamental, unitary status as a social phenomenon are called into question by events in 2008—not just the election of Barack Obama, but the profound shift that occurred in both racial analysis and dynamics leading up to that event. Polling prior to the election revealed a political and cultural land-

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scape that certainly resembled the terrain of “complex social meaning” identified by Omi and Winant. There was no end of anecdotal evidence and polling data that suggested racial influences and dynamics. But the conclusion that emerged from analysis of all this data is that race no longer resembled the irreducible axis it once had been. As John Harwood reported in the New York Times, “some observers say racial attitudes have diminished as an independent force, fading into the broader fabric of cultural concerns that shape voters’ choices like religion, abortion, and gun control.”¹⁰ Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center and one of the country’s most preeminent pollsters, concluded in an interview with Gwen Ifill that, though race is “clearly there” in the data, “it’s not a dominant factor.” Rather, in his judgment, race had been reduced to “a second-tier factor for Obama.” Kohut elaborated by pointing out that “race gets tied up in political polarization and economic issues. And it’s always there, but it’s not there the way it once was.”¹¹ This development can best be understood by recognizing the impossibility of answering, in yes or no terms, the simple question of whether this election was “about race.” The difficulty in answering this question was most pronounced when racial sentiment was demonstrated to be an ambiguous entity, in that its effects and relevance were hardly clear. This is perhaps best illustrated in the emergence of an unusual political entity: “racists for Obama.” Reporter Ben Smith described this novel social group as “white voters with negative views of African-Americans” who were throwing their support behind Obama. The first polling data that revealed these voters was generated by a major survey (the Big Ten Battleground Poll, on September 18) undertaken when McCain was leading in national polls. One of the questions in the survey, designed to reveal potential racist sentiment, asked whites whether they agreed with the statement, “African-Americans often use race as an excuse to justify wrongdoing.” Roughly one in five whites agreed, but about a quarter of these whites indicated they were voting for Obama. Commenting on the poll, Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, did not find this result to be paradoxical. Rather, “this result is reasonable if you believe that race is not as monolithic an eff ect as we might easily assume.”¹² A similar result emerged from a poll taken about the same time,

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one that drew far more attention in the national media. The survey, conducted by AP-Yahoo, “was designed to dig deep into one of the most sensitive subjects in American politics: racial attitudes and their effect on how people will vote in an election.” Part of this design also involved asking questions that could ferret out submerged racist sentiment. Two key questions asked whether respondents agreed with the following statements: “Irish, Italians, Jews, and other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up; blacks should do the same without special favors”; and, “It’s really a matter of some people just not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites.” Strikingly, forty-two percent of white Democrats agreed with the first statement and twenty-eight percent with the second, prompting the conclusion that racial animus would likely influence the election’s outcome. What drew little comment, though, was that the majority of these white Democrats (sixty-one percent on the first question and fiftysix percent on the second) were supporting Obama. That is, even though they may have been prone to racial perceptions, they were still intent on voting for the black candidate. This reflects, as Franklin concluded concerning the other poll, that race is losing its unity and coherence as a social phenomenon. The AP-Yahoo poll drew a great deal of attention, with its central finding prominently framed as the indication “that Obama’s support would be as much as six percentage points higher if there were no white racial prejudice.”¹³ Little attention was paid to the poll’s finding that just about as many respondents (eight percent) were “more likely” to vote for Obama because of his race as were “less likely” to vote for him for the same reason. This latter finding, though, was replicated in a Gallup survey conducted a few weeks later. Gallup researchers concluded, “Obama’s Race May Be as Much a Plus as a Minus,” based on the fact that nine percent of registered voters related that “the candidate’s race” made them “more likely to vote for him,” while only six percent reported that they were “less likely to vote for him” because of his race.¹⁴ Notably, these figures remained very close when respondents were disaggregated by race, with whites almost as likely to vote for Obama (six percent) than to vote against him (seven percent) based on his racial identity. Perhaps even more important, though, for trying to assess the significance

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of race is that both surveys found that, for roughly eighty-five percent of respondents, the candidate’s race made no difference at all to voters. With all survey data, though, the crucial question is whether these findings are an accurate reflection of respondents’ true sentiments and beliefs. After all, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that people are not entirely honest or straightforward in surveys. Not surprisingly, this subject received a great deal of attention in the 2008 election, most concentrated around questions about the notorious Bradley effect.¹⁵ This purported phenomenon—of whites misleading pollsters regarding their intention to vote for a black candidate—appeared to surface early in the primaries, when the polling failed to catch the late-breaking wave of support for Clinton in New Hampshire and mistakenly forecast an Obama victory. Queasy pollsters and political strategists anxiously waited for it to surface again throughout the summer and the early fall, inducing a looming uncertainty over the significance of race. But Obama consistently outperformed his projected performance in polls throughout the rest of the primaries, and the fact that the Bradley effect was not repeated led a variety of pollsters to reassess conventional wisdom about its significance.¹⁶ There was plenty of additional fodder to support a critical reassessment of the Bradley effect. The primary impetus was a paper by Daniel Hopkins at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Hopkins addressed the primary problem with assertions about the effect—that it was based on one or two unique electoral events—by analyzing all races for governor and the U.S. Senate between 1989 and 2006.¹⁷ Hopkins found that the effect may well have existed up until about a decade ago—black candidates polled three percent higher than they finished, up through 1998. But in the subsequent decade, black candidates actually finished slightly higher than they polled, by three-tenths of a percent. Doubts about the Bradley effect were further fueled by a systematic analysis of Obama’s polling numbers in conjunction with actual results in the thirty-one states in which at least three separate polls were released within two weeks of the state’s primary or caucus.¹⁸ The finding was that Obama outperformed polling estimates by 3.3 percent. Impressively, this figure was twice as high in the South, where he bettered his polling estimates by more than seven percent—a possible reflection of

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a “reverse Bradley effect,” with black voters perhaps being reluctant to disclose their support for the black candidate. The conclusion that the Bradley effect is a “theory in search of data” was further underscored as people took a closer look at the event that sparked the concept.¹⁹ In this regard, Blair Levin, who worked on the Bradley campaign in 1982, wrote an influential op-ed in the New York Times, seeking to correct the historical record by pointing out that “an unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated.”²⁰ It was not voters that misled pollsters, but rather a flawed model of the likely voting population. The case was settled when Obama was elected and his margin of victory turned out to have been accurately figured by polling. “All the ominous predictions,” Kate Zernike reported for the New York Times, “all the fretting about hidden votes and closeted racists frustrating a victory for the nation’s first African-American president came down to this: the so-called Bradley effect did not exist.”²¹ According to Zernike, Mark Blumenthal, editor of Pollster.com, concluded, “the unambiguous answer is that there was no Bradley effect.” Race was indeed reported as a factor in how seventeen percent of the people voted, but as Zernike observed, “race turned out to be less of an issue than predicted even three months ago, when twice that percentage in a CNN poll said it would be at least a small factor in their vote.” The bigger finding was that Americans are quick to ascribe racial motives to others, often mistakenly. This was revealed in the disconnect between respondents who claimed to know people who would not vote for Obama because of his race and the meager numbers of voters for whom this was clearly true. As well, Zernike noted, “Obama supporters were more likely than McCain voters to say they knew someone who was not supporting Mr. Obama because he is black. McCain backers were more likely than Obama supporters to say they know someone who was supporting him because he is black.” Zernike then quoted Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, who remarked, “It says something about race and culture that we were more likely to attribute racial motivations to people who disagree with us than to people who agree with us.” This fundamental misperception held by Americans raises an important question about the massive amount of survey research on race.

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What impact do these findings from 2008 have on the immense storehouse of data on, and the conventional wisdom about, the role race plays in the minds and actions of voters? One view could be that 2008 overturns all the previous models, requiring pollsters, political psychologists, and commentators to start over in formulating assessments about the significance of race. Or maybe this entire effort could now be scrapped. But what really changed that fall when Americans elected the first black president of the United States? How deeply and profoundly was the country altered by this event? Certainly the manifold predicates of racial thinking—segregated housing, workplace and hiring discrimination, inequality in access to capital and credit, and differential health circumstances—were unchanged by this event. But in terms of political discourse and popular culture, the impact was profound and potentially transformative. So did—or will—Obama’s victory transform Americans’ racial thinking? One way of answering is to return to the fundamental role of the categories individual and group in American culture.²² On November 4, 2008, a majority of Americans ratified the view that Obama is an individual, rather than primarily being identified with a group—African Americans. The evidence was there in the survey data, particularly an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll just before the election that showed eighty percent of whites felt that he would not “favor the interests of blacks over other Americans.” That is, he would not be bound by group interests or identity. It was also evidenced in a New York Times poll in early September that found almost seventy percent of Americans expressed the view that Obama shares their values, a higher score than his opponent, John McCain, received. Clearly, whites could look at him and see a shared sense of identity, one that transcended the cultural boundary demarcating blackness from everything else. But these perceptions, it has to be stressed, are only views regarding one man, which is exactly how the campaign presented Obama. His strategists knew full well, as Cornell Belcher, a pollster for Obama, explained, that “it would be difficult for an African-American to be elected president in this country. However, it is not difficult for an extraordinary individual who happens to be African-American to be elected president.”²³ Suspecting that McCain’s troops “were going to try to make Barack Obama the other,” as staffer Daniel Carol remarked,

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Obama’s campaign countered by posing him as someone personable and distinctive, through direct modes of address to the camera in commercials with pictures of his white grandparents in the background.²⁴ “He had to be an incredibly individuated figure,” Belcher further explained, and that was clearly the result Obama achieved. It worked, in that Obama was indeed perceived as an individual rather than as representing a group. Framed in these terms, the question quickly is transformed into what impact this individual accomplishment will have on the great mass of racial folklore and cultural conditioning that leads whites, perhaps still, to view blacks primarily in terms of the group category rather than as individuals. Surely, we can anticipate that Obama’s example will go a long way towards reconfiguring this cultural perception, but how far is difficult to estimate at this point. For that reason, it is safer to assume that the data on “racial” has not been refuted; rather, it will need to be recalibrated. How much and to what extent will his example impact the deep cultural conditioning that Obama was able to overcome in presenting himself as a unique individual to the American public? This is how questions of race need increasingly to be posed, and in doing so it will be helpful to recognize that this “conversation” remains ongoing; far from being a political artifact or an overworn metaphor, it remains a prevailing means by which Americans formulate and test their understandings of the larger significance of race in the country at large. In this conversation, polling data and social science formulations are just another part of the story. In the End I hope this book, with its detailed examination of one year’s worth of stories about race, will serve as a reminder of the enormous amount of work Americans pour into making sense of race. These stories, as part of the public culture, have an uncertain but generally brief half-life. Some will stand out longer than others—Don Imus for instance—if they come to form part of the repertoire that commentators rely on to explain other such stories. But the totality of the year’s worth of stories, in all its density, nuance, and complexity, will quickly be forgotten.

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Even as I finish these pages, it is becoming difficult to keep in mind the range of fluctuations in how “racial” was assessed in these particular stories. For that matter, it is a challenge to hold in view the enormous amount of mediation these stories required and entailed, as well as the huge amount of commentary they generated and the shifting forms of certainty and uncertainty that accompanied each incident in the news. My aim, in the end, is not to preserve these stories themselves so much as to use them to illustrate the complex interpretive work Americans direct towards understanding “racial” incidents. The biggest challenge to achieving this aim is that as the “national conversation” tosses up certain dominant stories, such as Obama’s election, we quickly lose sight of one of the conversation’s crucial characteristics. We forget how much uncertainty we have about race and how much ambiguity it often entails. That is, we disregard or overlook how thoroughly unsettled all this was before its apparent resolution in a defining event that promised to reflect a new consensus on how race matters. Consider how, in the wake of Obama’s victory, the months of uncertainty over how race would matter in the election seemed to dissolve, replaced by an utter confidence that the final results revealed the truth about race in America. As well, interpretive takes on his victory often assumed that it had established something fixed or definite about the meaning of race, “going forward.” But this survey of a year’s worth of this “national conversation” shows exactly the opposite—the significance of race is open-ended and changing. The election was one story among many that all share a similar feature—cultural dynamics that make us forget how much we relied on them in the first place to clarify what had previously been ambiguous or unsettled about race. The crucial matter, in thinking ahead to future stories and what they will purportedly reveal about race matters, is to keep in mind these long stretches of time when the certainty of race is unfixed and molten, waiting to be formulated in a tangible manner by a disturbing remark, a vivid story, or a powerful argument.

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK REQUIRED THE SUPPORT

of wonderful colleagues and students, who reliably offered insightful comments or asked great questions. In particular, I am enormously grateful to my primary interlocutors, John Hoberman and Deborah Bolnick, who each additionally set such marvelous examples through the quality and depth of their own research and writing on race. As well, I am deeply appreciative of the valuable feedback from Katie Stewart (who first suggested to me that I had a book on my hands), Sam Wilson (who kept directing interesting tidbits my way), Janet Davis, Sam Gosling, Douglas Biow, and other participants in the Humanities Institute Faculty Seminar in 2008, and also Kamran Ali, Polly Strong, and Ward Keeler. I also want to extend my gratitude to some of the wonderful, insightful graduate students in the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Texas at Austin, particularly Amanda Morrison, Scott Webel, Jenny Carlson, Ken MacLeish, Mathangi Krishnamurthy, Alysia Childs, Emily Lynch, Hafeez Jamali, and Abdul Chang. In particular, I want to thank Naomi Reed and Amy Brown for conversations about frat parties and “gangsta” drag. I am grateful, also, to Ron Eglash for giving me the opportunity to present an early summary of all this in a public forum at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Overall, I am perhaps most grateful to Susan Harding for teaching me to follow the news as an anthropologist. Finally, many thanks to Kate Wahl for seeing this project through, to Jennifer Hele for her editorial expertise and patience, to Joa Suorez for all of her help in getting this manuscript into shape, to Jane Hill for her reviewer’s comments, and to Laurie Schlesinger for her excellent copyediting. Thank you all, tremendously!

Notes

Notes to Chapter 1 1. This list includes the University of Texas School of Law; Trinity College; Whitman College; Washington University; the University of Virginia; Clemson; Willamette University; Texas A&M University; the University of Connecticut School of Law; Stetson University; the University of Chicago; Cornell University; Swarthmore College; Emory University; MIT; Macalester College; Johns Hopkins University; Dartmouth College; the University of Louisville; William Jewell College; Oklahoma State University; Auburn University; the University of California, Irvine; Syracuse University; Tarleton State; and the Universities of Colorado, Tennessee, Arizona, Alabama, Illinois, Delaware, and Mississippi (compiled by Tim Wise). 2. Reported in Susanne Schafer, “Clemson University Probes Racist Party,” Washington Post, January 30, 2007. 3. Jason Tanz, Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America (New York: Bloomsburg USA, 2007), xii. 4. The widespread assumption that these whites were all engaged in blackface stems from the history of such cultural borrowings in the United States. See Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), and John Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture (New York: Tarcher, 2007). But the fact that so many of the partygoers, including black students, mainly played with particular symbolic items without emphasizing their racial significance suggests that maybe something additional was at work here. 5. Tanz, Other People’s Property, xii. 6. See John L. Jackson’s discussion of the dialectic between “sincerity” and “authenticity” in Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 7. Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 48. 8. For a broader discussion of the matter, see the chapter “Generational Divide,”

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in Gwen Ifi ll, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama (New York: Doubleday, 2009). 9. Kitwana, White Kids, 78. 10. This notion of “doing” race stems from the recognition that racial identities are not simple functions of phenotype, but rather performances that involve an array of cultural items (from behaviors to apparel) that we both appraise and generate on a daily basis. John L. Jackson developed this form of analysis in Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Additionally, I provide an extensive discussion of the performance model of racial analysis in Race in the 21st Century: Ethnographic Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 11. Graeme Hamilton, “In the U.S. South, Is Canadian a New Racial Slur?” National Post, January 24, 2008. 12. “Dallas County Officials Spar over ‘Black Hole’ Comment,” Dallas Morning News, July 9, 2008. 13. John L. Jackson, Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (New York: Basic Civitas, 2008), xiv. 14. Ibid., 7. 15. Ibid., 11. 16. Richard Ford’s The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 31. 17. Ibid., 339. 18. Jackson, Racial Paranoia, 11. 19. See Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994), and David Roediger, Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), for a discussion of “race is over” arguments. 20. On the racial textures and assumptions informing news coverage, see Catherine Squires, Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America (Albany: State University Press of New York, 2007); Carol Stabile, White Victims, Black Villains: Gender, Race, and Crime News in U.S. Culture (London: Routledge, 2006); Don Heider, White News: Why Local News Programs Don’t Cover People of Color (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2000); and William McGowan, Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001). 21. Lani Guinier, “Democracy’s Conversation,” The Nation, January 23, 1995, 85–87. 22. John Hope Franklin, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 364. 23. Adolph Reed Jr., “Yackety-Yak About Race,” The Progressive, December 1, 1997. 24. Franklin, Mirror to America, 377. 25. Ibid., 379.

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26. Ibid., 373. 27. For a further perspective on the place of this initiative in the history of U.S. public discourse on race, see Claire Kim, “Clinton’s Race Initiative: Recasting the American Dilemma,” Polity 33, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 175–197. 28. Charles Krauthammer, Time, December 22, 1997, 22. 29. Anthropologist Jane Hill, similarly analyzing media spectacles over racial “gaffes” by celebrities like Michael Richards or politicians like Trent Lott, characterizes such moments as “moral panics.” Her use of this concept emphasizes that such moments are “profoundly unsettling for many White Americans.” In my view, these are rather moments of fascination and spectacle because they prompt dialogues across racial lines. See Jane Hill, The Everyday Language of White Racism (New York: WileyBlackwell, 2008), 92. 30. Quoted on Al Sharpton’s radio show, The Rev. Al Sharpton Show, April 9, 2007. 31. This concept has been widely invoked in analyses of racial discourse. In particular, see Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 32. I examine these dynamics in Race in the 21st Century: Ethnographic Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 33. For other examples of this approach, see Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson, eds., Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Shepard Forman, ed., Diagnosing America: Anthropology and Public Engagement (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). 34. Remarks are a type of speech act that gain prominence in both media reporting and ethnographic analysis. See Joel Sherzer, Speech Play and Verbal Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). For a somewhat different take on their use in representing racial ideologies, see the chapter on “gaffes” in Hill, Everyday Language. 35. The pervasive role of narrative in organizing human understandings of the world is difficult to overemphasize. As Hayden White explains, “To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself.” “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” in On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1. 36. In Roland Barthes’s commentary on “the old rhetoric,” argumenta is defined as a collection of persuasive techniques and gestures that involve a fundamental “duplicity: that of a ‘reasoning’ (‘any form of public reasoning’ says one rhetor) which is impure, easily dramatizable, which participates both in the intellectual and in the fictional, in the logical and the narrative.” Notably, argumenta operates in parallel with exemplum, which forms the background for this book’s undertaking. See Barthes, The Semiotic Challenge (Hill & Wang: New York, 1988), 57. 37. Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn offers an insightful analysis of this development in Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the

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Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Norton, 2001). “Attempting to address the conundrum of race under integration in significant part through etiquette, Americans became deeply mired in a set of assumptions and practices from which it was increasingly difficult to extricate themselves” (6). 38. See Racial Situations: Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); and Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 39. The vast majority of anthropological, sociological, and historical accounts of American culture stress that this categorical tension is the key feature of our culture. The basis for the claims I’m making here draw most closely from Hervé Varenne, “Collective Representation in American Anthropological Conversations: Individual and Culture,” Current Antropology 25, no. 3 (1984); Louis Dumont, “‘The Individual’ in Two Types of Society,” Contributions to Indian Sociology 8 (1965); Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Hervé Varenne, Symbolizing America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); and Richard Handler, Critics Against Culture: Anthropological Observers of Mass Society (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005). For an excellent anthropological analysis of categorical identities in the United States, see Constance Perrin’s Belonging in America: Reading Between the Lines (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). 40. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Vintage, 2007). 41. In addition to Lasch-Quinn’s Race Experts, see my discussion of the broader cultural dynamics shaping racial etiquette today in Odd Tribes( 18–20,8 8– 99).

Notes to Chapter 2 1. This monitoring process was described in reports by Weston Kosova (“The Power That Was,” Newsweek, April 23, 2007) and by Brooks Barnes (“Behind the Fall of Imus, a Digital Brush Fire,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2007). 2. Gwen Ifi ll, “Trash Talk Radio,” New York Times, April 10, 2007. 3. “The biggest cliché of the debate so far is the constant reiteration that this will be a moment for a national ‘conversation’ about race and sex and culture. Do people really want to have this conversation, or just talk about having it?” Frank Rich, “Everybody Hates Don Imus,” New York Times, April 16, 2007. 4. Solvej Schou, “Michael Richards Hires PR Expert,” Associated Press, November 23, 2006. 5. Among the copious invocations of dialogue, see Raina Kelley, “Let’s Talk About Race,” Newsweek, December 4, 2006, 42. Kelley notes, “To use Michael Richards’ Laugh Factory meltdown as an occasion to discuss one of the most tangled and solemn issues in American life is a little like unleashing the Powell Doctrine on a Brownie troop, but pop-culture moments often provide us with opportunities to talk

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about things that don’t otherwise get talked about outside think tanks or university seminars.” 6. Quoted on Anderson Cooper’s 360 Degrees, CNN, November 22, 2006. 7. Leonard Pitts, “Michael Richards’ Meltdown: If Not Racism, Then What?” Miami Herald, November 24, 2006. 8. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), “Comedian’s Comments Are Indicative of Deeper Racism in America,” press release, November 22, 2006. 9. Aldore Collier, “Black Leaders Unite in Call to End Use of the ‘N’ Word,” Jet, December 11, 2006, 6. 10. Greta Van Susteren, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Fox News Channel, November 22, 2006. 11. See Joel Sherzer, Speech Play and Verbal Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), and Robin R. Means Coleman, African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). 12. Tony Figueroa, “Thoughts on Michael Richards from a Fellow Stand-Up Comic,” blog entry posted December 7, 2006. 13. Public discussions of this word are mirrored by an academic one as well. See Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002); and Jabari Asim, The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why (New York: Mariner Books, 2008). The title of Asim’s book reflects the intense concern with establishing conventions over who can say what and how these conventions reflect decisions about when speech is considered racial or not. 14. Kennedy, Nigger, 39. 15. Collier, “Black Leaders Unite,” 6. Tom Brokaw similarly observed, “The use of language across the racial spectrum, and across the political spectrum, and across the cultural spectrum, has been, in any way you want to describe it, debased to a certain degree. The words that you hear used commonly on the street, or in the air, or on the radio, or in rap lyrics, are the words that in the worst days of segregation in the country, in the worst segregated parts of this country, you would not hear on the radio. Now you hear them commonly.” Quoted in Bob Herbert, “Signs of Infection,” New York Times, April 16, 2007. 16. Farai Chideya, “When the ‘N Word’ Is Part of a Routine,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, November 30, 2006. 17. On the notion of distance between the comic as an individual and a character, see the discussions of Sacha Baron Cohen’s work in Richard Howells, “‘Is It Because I Is Black?’ Race, Humor and the Polysemiology of Ali G,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 26, no. 2 (2006). 18. On the partial aspect of any particular debate on race in U.S. public discourse, see Carl Gutierrez-Jones, Critical Race Narratives: A Study of Race, Rhetoric, and Injury (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

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19. On taboo, pollution, and hygiene, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo (London: Pelican Books, 1966); Jonas Frykrnan and Ovar Lofgren, Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle Class Life (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987); and John Hartigan, Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 20. Collier, “Black Leaders Unite,” 6. 21. Ed Pilkington, “New York City Council Bans Use of the N-Word,” Guardian, March 1, 2007. 22. Charisse Jones, “Slur Has No Place in NYC, Resolution Says,” USA Today, February 28, 2007. 23. Anahad O’Connor, “In Bid to Ban Racial Slur, Blacks Are on Both Sides,” New York Times, February 25, 2007. 24. Avis Thomas-Lester, “Movement Ignites Passions in Churches, Campuses and Beyond,” Washington Post, May 2, 2007. 25. O’Connor, “In Bid to Ban Racial Slur.” 26. Jonnelle Marte and Andy Henion, “Banished: Thousands Say ‘Good Riddance’ to N-Word,” Detroit News, July 10, 2007. 27. I have drawn the term “rituals of race” from Alessandra Lorini’s excellent study of how public rituals served as a central medium for exploring the possibility of racial democracy in the nineteenth century. See Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999). 28. Lynne Duke, “What Is Revealed by a Crack in the ‘Good Person’ Facade,” Washington Post, April 11, 2007. 29. See Michele Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 30. I examine these dynamics more fully in “What Are You Laughing At? Assessing the ‘Racial’ in U.S. Public Discourse,” Transforming Anthropology 17, no. 1: 4–19. 31. Duke, “What Is Revealed.” 32. Eugene Robinson, “Misogyny in the Morning,” Washington Post, April 10, 2007. 33. On humor’s reliance on such conventions, as well as its powerful role in maintaining them, see Moira Smith, “Humor, Unlaughter, and Boundary Maintenance,” Journal of American Folklore 122 (484): 148–171, and John Carty and Yasmine Musharbash, “You’ve Got to Be Joking: Assessing the Analytical Value of Humour and Laughter in Contemporary Anthropology,” Anthropological Forum 18, no. 3: 209–217. 34. Andrew Skerritt, “Look at the Person, Not the Skin Color,” St. Petersburg Times, April 15, 2007. 35. Maxine Waters, “Rep Waters Blasts Don Imus for His Racial Remarks,” press release, April 10, 2007. 36. Stanley Fish, “Why Was Imus Fired? Just Do the Math,” blog in New York Times, April 22, 2007.

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37. Weston Kosova, “The Power That Was,” Newsweek, April 23, 2007. 38. Nick Madigan and David Zurawik, “Dismissal May Signal Change: Women, Blacks Instrumental in Imus’s Firing,” Baltimore Sun, April 14, 2007. 39. Ibid. 40. Leon Rappaport, Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Humor (London: Praeger, 2005). 41. Quoted in Randy Kennedy, “Hey, That’s (Not) Funny,” New York Times, April 15, 2007. 42. Kosova, “The Power That Was.” 43. Ibid. 44. Frank Rich, “Everyone Hates Don Imus,” New York Times, April 15, 2007. 45. Bob Herbert, “Signs of Infection,” New York Times, April 17, 2007. 46. Andrew Gumbel, “Kramer’s Sense of Humor Failure,” The Independent, November 22, 2006. 47. Jacques Steinberg, “This Time, the Shock Jock’s Sidekick Couldn’t Shield the Boss,” New York Times, April 12, 2007. 48. Kosova, “The Power That Was.” 49. Rashod Ollison, “Imus Incident Shines Spotlight on Hip-Hop,” Baltimore Sun, April 13, 2007. 50. Rob Woollard, “Shock-Jock Racism Uproar Throws Spotlight on Rappers,” Yahoo News, April 16, 2007. 51. Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson (president and founder of BOND, Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny) commented, “A growing number of white Americans feel as though they are forced to wear a politically correct muzzle when it comes to discussing race issues. Whites are growing increasingly frustrated about being labeled ‘racist’ whenever they disagree with blacks. Black people cannot continue using this word, yet label others as ‘racists’ when they do the same in a fit of anger, as Michael Richards did. By not allowing whites to express themselves, it only drives the problem underground and forces people to keep these emotions bottled up—in essence, the politically correct culture is helping to create people like Michael Richards.” “Black Culture to Blame for Fueling Seinfeld Co-Star’s Racial Tirade, Says Rev. Peterson,” U.S. Newswire, Los Angeles, November 22, 2006. 52. Phil Kloer, “Radio Host Imus Suspended over Racial Remarks,” Austin American-Statesman, April 10, 2007. 53. Jonetta Rose Barras, “We’re Our Own Worst Imuses,” Washington Post, April 15, 2007. 54. Kelefa Sanneh, “Don’t Blame Hip-Hop,” New York Times, April 25, 2007. 55. Interestingly, “nappy” was not included on this list, nor was any mention made of the way this incident partially reprised the dustup in 1998 when white third-grade teacher Ruth Sherman was publicly chastised for reading the highly acclaimed book, Nappy Hair (Carolivia Herron, 1998), to her black and Latino students.

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56. Marcus Franklin, “Russell Simmons: 3 Epithets Should Be Banned from ‘Clean’ Rap Music,” Associated Press Financial Wire, April 23, 2007.

Notes to Chapter 3 1. On the role of narrative analysis in cultural theory, see Kathleen Stewart, A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an ‘Other’ America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 2. Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 3. Howard Witt, “Blogs Help Drive Jena Protest,” Chicago Tribune, September 18, 2007. 4. “The ropes inaugurated a narrative of conflict and small-town justice in the Deep South known today as the case of the Jena Six, a story populated by a disconcerting number of stock characters from the late Jim Crow era.” Steve Coll, “Disparities,” New Yorker, October 8, 2007. 5. Craig Franklin, “Media Myths About the Jena 6,” Christian Science Monitor, October 24, 2007. 6. Ishmael Reed, “The Black Pathology Biz,” The Nation, November 20, 1989, 597–598. 7. There is simply an enormous literature on race and media that I rely upon throughout this book to ground my analysis. Prominent works include John Fiske, Media Matters: Race and Gender in U.S. Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Sasha Torres et al., Living Color: Race and Television in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Darnell M. Hunt, Channeling Blackness: Studies on Television and Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); and Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 8. Sasha Torres, Black, White, and in Color: Television and Black Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Alan Nadel, Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Fred J. MacDonald, Blacks and White TV: African Americans in Television Since 1948, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1992). 9. “Black pathology” entered and profoundly transformed U.S. racial discourse in the 1960s with Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on the black family, which attributed a variety of forms of racial inequality to black domestic failings. The narrative frame Moynihan formulated remains an active storyline about how race matters. 10. Howard Witt, “Racial Demons Rear Heads,” Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2007. 11. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 196.

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12. Ibid., 76. 13. Ibid., 10. 14. Quoted in Raquel Christie, “Double Whammy,” American Journalism Review 30, no. 1 (February 2008): 16–25. 15. Quoted in Ken Gewertz, “The Beans of Tulia, Texas,” Harvard University Gazette, April 27, 2006. 16. “The Color of Justice,” Texas Observer, June 23, 2000. 17. Nate Blakeslee, “Color of Justice: An Undercover Drug Bust Opens Old Wounds in Tulia, Texas,” Austin Chronicle, July 28, 2000. 18. Greg Cunningham, “Perry Pardons 35 in Tulia Case,” The Amarillo Globe-News, August 23, 2003. 19. Raquel Christie, “Double Whammy.” 20. “Friends of Justice Jena Narrative,” posted on friendsofjustice.wordpress.com. 21. Howard Witt, “To Some in Paris, Sinister Past Is Back,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 2007. 22. “Truth Gets in the Way of Tribune Story,” Paris News, March 18, 2007. 23. “Interview: Howard Witt,” by Reggie Royston, the Maynard Institute (http:// www.mije.org), January 23, 2008. 24. Witt, “Racial Demons Rear Heads.” 25. Paul Vitello, “Few Answers About Nooses, but Much Talk of Jim Crow,” New York Times, October 21, 2007; Paul Vitello, New York Times, “This Halloween, Man in Noose Wins a Reprieve,” October 27, 2007; and Peter Applebome, “Racial Crisis? Or Just Rope in the Hands of Fools?” New York Times, October 14, 2007. 26. Royston, “Interview: Howard Witt.” 27. Witt, “Blogs Help Drive.” 28. Baisden established a Web site that was central to coordinating the rally. See Daryl Fears, “Protestors to Converge on Louisiana Town,” Washington Post, September 20, 2007. 29. Witt, “Blogs Help Drive.” 30. CNN made coverage of “trends in the blogosphere” part of the story; see “What’s the Buzz . . . on Jena 6?” September 28, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/ exchange/blogs/umbria/. 31. Associated Press, “Black and White Becomes Gray in La. Town,” ABC News, September 22, 2007. 32. Ibid. 33. “U.S. Attorney: Nooses, Beatings at Jena High Not Related,” CNN, September 19, 2007. 34. Associated Press, “Black and White.” 35. Franklin, “Media Myths.” 36. The notion of a generational gap regarding the significance of race seemed to gain credence throughout this year’s worth of stories. The idea that young people—

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black and white—are largely unaware of racial history and symbolism in this country was a central premise of the efforts to ban the use of “nigger” following Michael Richards’s tirade. 37. Richard Jones, “Thousands Protest the Arrest of 6 Blacks in Jena, La.,” New York Times, September 21, 2007. 38. Editorial, “The Jena 6,” New York Post, September 23, 2007. 39. Ibid. 40. Jones, “Thousands Protest.” 41. Quoted in Witt, “Blogs Help Drive.” 42. “Race, Justice and Jena: Black Leadership in the United States,” Economist, September 29, 2007. 43. Ibid. 44. Reported on ABC News, September 19, 2007. 45. Editorial, “The Jena 6,” New York Post, September 23, 2007. 46. Ruben Navarrette Jr., “Everyone Likes to Play the Victim,” San Diego UnionTribune, September 23, 2007. 47. Jason Whitlock, “Lessons from Jena, La.,” Kansas City Star, September 20, 2007. 48. Editorial, USA Today, September 18, 2007. 49. Ron Walters, “Jena 6: Erase This National Disgrace,” Washington Informer, September 20, 2007. 50. Clarence Page, “Injustice Is Bigger Than the ‘Jena 6,’” Baltimore Sun, September 25, 2007. 51. Ibid. 52. Editorial, Richmond Times Dispatch, September 21, 2007. 53. Heather MacDonald, “The Jena Dodge: Demonstrators and the Media Avoid the Stubborn Truth of Black Social Breakdown,” City Journal, September 24, 2007. 54. Raquel Christie, “Double Whammy.” 55. Ibid., 19. 56. “Justice Delayed,” American Journalism Review 29, no. 4 (September 2007). Also see Robyn Wiegman et al., “In the Afterlife of the Duke Case,” Social Text 25, no. 4 (2007): 93. 57. Lynne Duke, “The Duke Case’s Cruel Truth,” Washington Post, May 23, 2006. 58. John Mellencamp wrote a song about the incident, titled “Jena,” but he explained, “The story is not, strictly speaking, about the town of Jena or this specific incident but of racism in America” (quoted on his Web site, http://www.mellencamp .com). The chorus is: “Oh oh oh Jena, take your nooses down.” 59. Steve Coll, “Disparities,” New Yorker, October 8, 2007.

Notes to Chapter 4 1. “Even the sea of diverse but mostly white faces standing behind Obama on risers at his campaign events—a tableau that is carefully arranged by Obama campaign

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aides—serves as a form of third-party authentication.” Jason Zengerle, “The Message Keeper: How David Axelrod Learned to Conquer Race,” New Republic, November 5, 2008. 2. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, recalls this moment: “It was liberating—South Carolina voters had exorcised, at least for one election, the notion that their state could not move beyond race.” David Plouffe, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory (New York: Viking, 2009), 163. 3. Arlene Notoro Morgan, Keith Woods, and Alice Pifer, The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); also, Catherine R. Squires, Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007). 4. As an example, Lois Romano reported in the Washington Post, “Race has always been an uncomfortable but inescapable part of America’s political landscape, but not since the 1960s has it been injected into the presidential campaign so early, so fast and furiously—and by Democrats using it against each other.” This situation, Romano noted, was “supremely ironic” because “the first seriously viable black presidential candidate has largely avoided discussions of race, while the white candidate whose husband was affectionately called the ‘first black president’ is being assailed by critics for using race as a negative touchstone in the campaign.” “The Racial Row That’s Dividing Democrats,” January 15, 2008. 5. For a fuller account of how this process worked in the 2008 campaigns for the presidency, see Plouffe, Audacity to Win, and Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election (New York: Viking, 2009). 6. John McWhorter, “The Color of His Skin,” New York Sun, September 21, 2006. 7. Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates, “Is Obama Black Enough?” Time, February 1, 2007. 8. Quoted in “Black and White,” Newsweek, July 16, 2007. 9. Larry Pinkney, BlackCommentator.com, February 15, 2007. 10. Marjorie Valbrun, “Black Like Me?” Washington Post, February 16, 2007. 11. Marie Arana, “He’s Not Black,” Washington Post, November 30, 2008. 12. Debra Dickerson, “Colorblind,” Salon.com, January 22, 2007. 13. Tobin Harshaw, “Obama, Jackson and Jena,” New York Times, September 20, 2007. 14. Written statement from Barack Obama, September 20, 2007. 15. Greg Simmons, “‘Acting White’ Is No Political Time-Bomb for Jackson,” Fox News, September 24, 2007. 16. There were a variety of attempts to formulate a calculus of Obama’s racial advantages and disadvantages. Anne Applebaum opined in the Washington Post after Iowa, “It is beginning to seem, possibly for the first time in history, that it is better to be black.” “Isn’t it,” she asked, “actually an enormous advantage?” (“The Color of an Advantage,” January 8, 2007). 17. McWhorter, “Color of His Skin.”

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18. Mark Leibovich, “A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom,” New York Times, March 9, 2007; also, Jeff Rutenberg, “For Political Analysts, Ground Keeps Shifting,” New York Times, February 7, 2008. 19. Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainspring of American Politics (New York: New Press, 1997); David O. Sears, James Sidanius, and Lawrence Bobo, Racialized Politics: The Debate About Racism in America, 1st ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Matthew J. Streb, The New Electoral Politics of Race (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002); Howard Winant, The New Politics of Race: Globalism, Diff erence, Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 20. Janny Scott, “What Politicians Say When They Talk About Race,” New York Times, March 23, 2008. 21. Mark Schone, “What Role Did Race Play with White Democrats,” Salon.com, June 3, 2008, and John Judis, “The Big Race: Obama and the Psychology of the Color Barrier,” New Republic, May 28, 2008. 22. Betsy Reed, “Race to the Bottom,” The Nation, May 1, 2008. For other excellent accounts of Clinton’s campaign strategy regarding Obama, see Joshua Green, “The Front-Runner’s Fall,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2008; Jackie Calmes, “Clinton’s Road to Second Place,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2008; and Rick Klein, “What Went Wrong? How Hillary Lost,” ABC News, June 3, 2008. 23. Alec MacGillis, “Clinton N.H. Official Warns Obama Will Be Attacked on Drug Use,” Washington Post, December 12, 2007. 24. Plouffe, Audacity to Win, 119–120. 25. Katherine Q. Seelye, “Apologies from the Heart (of Darkness),” New York Times, December 14, 2007. 26. Quoted in Bob Herbert, “Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant,” New York Times, October 6, 2005. 27. Tali Mendelberg, The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xi. 28. Ibid., 7. 29. Ibid., 9. 30. Ibid., 10. 31. Ibid., 11. 32. Kirk Johnson, “We Agreed to Agree, and Forgot to Notice,” New York Times, January 6, 2008. 33. Bob Herbert, “The Obama Phenomenon,” New York Times, January 5, 2008. 34. Harold Meyerson, “Iowa’s Verdict,” American Prospect, January 4, 2008. 35. Obama revealed that he doubted these words were “racial” in a postmortem interview on the campaign with David Balz and Haynes Johnson, who relate: “He said he thought some criticisms of Clinton had been unfair. ‘I think when he said this is a fairy tale about my position on Iraq, I think he was factually wrong, but I don’t think

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he was playing the race card.’” Obama stressed, “I don’t think there was anything racial about it,” even though “some African Americans took offense.” Additionally, civilrights leader John Lewis, whose shift in support from Hillary Clinton to Obama was a significant moment in the primaries, also contested the notion that there was a “racial” dimension to her comments. Lewis relates, “Sometimes I think he was misunderstood, and she was misunderstood. I’m not sure whether the American people, or the media, read that stuff about racism right. That stuff about King was horrible, awful bullshit. I understood from day one what she was saying there about President Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr: that it took [both of them] to see that the voting rights legislation was passed” (Balz and Johnson, Battle for America, 167–168). 36. See posts by Ben Smith on Politico.com: “Race in the Race,” January 11, 2008; “Bill on the ‘Fairy Tale,’” January 11, 2008; “Damping Down the Race Issue,” January 12, 2008; and “More Black Radio for Bill,” January 14, 2008. 37. Ben Smith, “Racial Tensions Roil Democratic Primary,” Politico.com, January 11, 2008. 38. Eric Kleefeld, “Hillary Supporter Andrew Cuomo on Her NH Win,” TalkingPointsMemo.com, January 10, 2008. 39. Ben Smith, “Dept. of Word Choice,” Politico.com, January 10, 2008. 40. Pam Spaulding, “Andrew Cuomo on Obama,” Pamshouseblend.com, January 10, 2007. 41. Carl Hulse and Patrick Healy, “Bill Clinton Tries to Tamp Down ‘Fairy-Tale’ Remark About Obama,” New York Times, January 11, 2008. 42. Marc Ambinder, “The Crucible of Race,” Atlantic.com, January 11, 2008. 43. “Read Obama Campaign Memo on Clintons’ Politicizing of Race,” The Huffing ton Post, January 12, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/12/obama -camps-memo-on-clin_n_81205.html. The status and importance of this memo was widely debated online in blogs such as the following, which offer an impressive compilation of relevant material (provided with a partisan spin, of course): McCamy Taylor, “Putting All the Race Cards on the Table: ‘The Race Memo,’” democraticunderground .com, April 26, 2008. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az =view_all&address=132x5692877. 44. Carl Hulse, “Civil Rights Tone Prompts Talk of an Endorsement,” New York Times, January 11, 2008. 45. Ibid. 46. Adam Nagourney, “Race and Gender Are Issues in Tense Day for Democrats,” New York Times, January 14, 2008. 47. Joe Klein, “Race Wobble,” Time.com, January 12, 2008. 48. Marjorie Valbrun, “Will They Play the Race Card?” Washington Post, January 13, 2008. 49. Eugene Robinson, “A Hand the Clintons Aren’t Showing,” Washington Post, January 15, 2008.

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50. Wesley Pruden, “Taking a Switch to the Candidates,” Washington Times, January 15, 2008. 51. Reported in Weisman and Kornblut, “As Candidates Agree, Aides Keep Sparring,” Washington Post, January 15, 2008. 52. Ben Smith, “Thoughts on Forethought,” Politico.com, January 13, 2008. 53. Ben Smith, “Having It Both Ways,” Politico.com, January 14, 2008. 54. Anne Applebaum, “The Color of an Advantage,” Washington Post, January 8, 2008. Columnist Leonard Pitts later offered a contrasting opinion: “Obama: Being Black Confers No Advantage,” Miami Herald, April 20, 2008. 55. Roger Smith, “The Race Card Has Been Dealt,” Politico.com, January 15, 2008. 56. Nagourney, “Race and Gender.” 57. David Crary, “Sexism, Racism: Which Is More Taboo?” Washington Post, January 14, 2008. 58. David Kuhn, “The Entrance Polls: Why Clinton Won Nevada,” Politico.com, January 20, 2008. 59. For a thoroughgoing development of this perspective, see Hartigan, “What Are You Laughing At? Assessing the ‘Racial’ in U.S. Public Discourse,” Transforming Anthropology 17, no. 1 (2009). 60. Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 61. Shelby Steele, Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can’t Win (New York: Free Press, 2007), 134. Steele develops this argument throughout his inaptly named book; see pages 9, 94, and 118. 62. Barack Obama, Dreams of My Father (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 98. 63. Ibid., 100. 64. Michael Barone, “The Democratic Tribes at War,” RealClearPolitics.com, April 5, 2008. 65. Carrie Brown, “Obama ‘Unhappy’ with Racial Memo,” Politico.com, January 16, 2008. 66. Howard Kurtz, “In Calling the Race, the Media Miss by a Mile,” Washington Post, January 5, 2008. 67. Eugene Robinson, “On the Lookout for the ‘Bradley Effect,’” Washington Post, January 11, 2008. 68. Andre Kohut, “Getting It Wrong,” New York Times, January 10, 2008. 69. Ben Smith, “Raw Emotion Turns Tide for Clinton,” Politico.com, January 9, 2008. 70. Jon Cohen and Jennifer Agiesta, “Polls Were Right About McCain but Missed the Call on Clinton’s Primary Win,” Washington Post, January 9, 2008; and Steinberg and Elder, “Analyzing the New Hampshire Surprise,” New York Times, January 10, 2008.

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71. This aspect was highlighted in Plouffe’s “Primer on How to Lose a Sure Thing,” in Audacity to Win, 152. 72. Janet Elder, “How the Polls Were Off,” New York Times, January 9, 2008. 73. Paul Steinhauser, “Poll: Obama Makes Big Gains Among Black Voters,” CNN .com, January 19, 2008. 74. Patrick Coolican, “Democrats Toughen Up,” Politico.com, January 19, 2008. 75. Ben Smith, “Robocall Trashes ‘Barack Hussein Obama,’” Politico.com, January 19, 2008. 76. John Dickerson, “Hillary Hatches a Win,” Slate.com, January 19, 2008. 77. Jeff Zeleny, “On Eve of King Holiday, Race Dominates Campaign,” New York Times, January 21, 2008. 78. Jeff Zeleny, “Democratic Rivals Remember Dr. King,” New York Times, January 21, 2008. 79. Ibid. 80. Ben Smith, “Clinton Plan: Let Bill Lash Out,” Politico.com, January 21, 2008. 81. Katherine Q. Seelye, “Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue,” New York Times, January 24, 2008. 82. Ibid. 83. Associated Press, “Bill Clinton Says Race, Gender to Decide SC Vote,” USA Today, January 24, 2008. 84. CBS News, January 23, 2008. 85. Seelye, “Bill Clinton Accuses.” 86. Shailah Murray and Alec MacGillis, “Clinton, Obama Back Off Attacks,” Washington Post, January 25, 2008. 87. Congressman James Clyburn accused Bill Clinton of “using code words that most of us in the South can recognize when we hear that stuff.” Peter Baker, “The Long Road to a Clinton Exit,” New York Times, June 8, 2008. 88. One phrase often used to characterize the clash between Clinton and Obama was “verbal missteps on race.” In particular, see Balz and Kornblut, “Clinton, Obama Distance Selves from Talk of Race,” Washington Post, January 16, 2008. 89. Richard H. Davis, “The Anatomy of a Smear Campaign,” Boston Globe, March 21, 2004. 90. William Kristol, “Desperate Husband,” New York Times, January 28, 2008. 91. Ibid. Kristol insisted, “Clinton’s comment alludes to one thing, and to one thing only: Jackson and Obama are both black candidates.” Plouffe comments, “Bill Clinton took a lot of heat from the press over the course of the campaign, and from time to time I thought he got a raw deal. But this gaffe was hard to explain away. Empirical evidence showed voters throughout the country had a strong reaction to it. They thought it was low road politics.” Plouffe, Audacity to Win, 161. 92. Bill Clinton kept refighting the battle of South Carolina in the media over the following months. In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America on March 18,

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2008, Clinton accused the Obama camp of putting “a bizarre spin” on his comparison of Obama’s victory there to that of Jesse Jackson, saying, “They made up a race story out of that.” He insisted that Hillary’s campaign did not “play a race card. We had some played against us, but we didn’t play any” (quoted in Julie Bosman, “Bill Clinton Says Critics Distorted Remarks About Obama, New York Times, March 18, 2008). He continued this line of argument on through April, stating in a radio phone interview on WHYY in Philadelphia on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary,” I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along.” He asserted that “you’ve got to really go some to play the race card with me. My office is in Harlem, and Harlem voted for Hillary, by the way” (quoted in Kate Phillips, “More Finger Wagging from the Miffed Bill Clinton,” New York Times, April 23, 2008). Then, thinking the microphone was turned off, he finished by saying, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that” (quoted in Todd Purdum, “The Comeback Id,” Vanity Fair, July 2008). 93. Jayson Jones, “Obama Campaign Criticizes Ferraro’s Comments,” The Caucus Blog, New York Times, March 11, 2008. 94. Ibid. 95. Geraldine Ferraro, “Healing the Wounds of Democrats’ Sexism,” Boston Globe, May 30, 2008. 96. John Hartigan, Racial Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 97. Also see Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), and Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Race Card: White Guilt, Black Resentment, and the Assault on Truth and Justice (Rocklin, CA: Prima Lifestyles, 1997).

Notes to Chapter 5 1. Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartman use “arenas” to characterize the distinct zones in which racial identities are constructed and contested. These sites are where “social actors make claims, define one another, jockey for position, eliminate or initiate competition, exercise or pursue power, and engage in other activities that encourage or discourage, create or transform, and reproduce or ignore [racial] identities.” Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2007), 170. 2. John L. Jackson, Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 3. “Tilghman: Defining a News Story,” Golfweek, January 19, 2008. 4. Eliott McLaughlin, CNN, January 10, 2008. 5. “PGA Tour Execs Peeved About Golfweek’s Inflammatory Cover,” SportsBusi nessDaily.com, January 17, 2008. 6. “Golfweek Cover Featuring Noose Raises Ire of PGA Tour Commissioner,” ESPN.com, January 17, 2008.

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7. Jason Sobel, “Golfweek Cover More Damaging Than Original Cover,” ESPN .com, January 17, 2008. 8. Doug Ferguson, “Editor Surprised by ‘Enormity’ of Reaction to Noose on Mag Cover,” Associated Press, January 18, 2008. 9. “Golfweek Cover Featuring Nooses,” ESPN.com. 10. Ferguson, “Editor Surprised.” 11. William Jelani Cobb, The Devil and Dave Chappelle, and Other Essays (New York: Basic Books, 2007). 12. Jonathan Markovitz, Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 146. 13. News Hits Staff, “The Mayor Who Cried Lynch Mob,” Metro Times, March 12, 2008. 14. Markovitz, Legacies of Lynching, 141. 15. See also Cynthia Skove Nevels, Lynching to Belong: Claiming Whiteness Through Racial Violence (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007). 16. Paul Farhi, “Fox’s Bill O’Reilly Says His Stereotypes Taken Out of Context,” Washington Post, September 27, 2007. 17. Media Matters, “O’Reilly Surprised ‘There Was No Difference’ Between Harlem Restaurant and Other New York Restaurants,” press release, September 21, 2007. 18. Farhi, “Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.” 19. Susan James, “O’Reilly Said Media Reaction ‘Fabricated Racial Controversy,’” ABC News, September 26, 2007. 20. Juan Williams, “What Bill O’Reilly Really Told Me,” Time, September 28, 2007. 21. Bonnie Urciuoli, Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). 22. I examine these dynamics in Race in the 21st Century: Ethnographic Approaches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 23. Al Kamen, “And Now We Return to ‘Dead Men Suffer No Bias,’” Washington Post, October 12, 2007. 24. “Obama Calls on Mukasey to Address Racial Discrimination, Protecting Civil Rights,” press release, obama.senate.com, October 17, 2007. 25. The account presented here is derived from a video webcast of the hearing, available on the Web site of the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives. http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_103007_3.html. 26. Dana Milbank, “Mr. Tanner, Unforgiven,” Washington Post, October 31, 2007. 27. In addition to earlier discussions of the dynamics of racial etiquette in this book, also see my extensive treatment of this subject in Odd Tribes: Toward a Cultural Analysis of White People (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 28. Paul Krugman, “Little Black Lies,” New York Times, January 28, 2005. 29. Ibid.

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30. Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, “The Elementary DNA of Dr Watson,” Sunday Times, October 14, 2007. 31. Associated Press, “DNA Pioneer’s Lecture Canceled After Comments on Race,” CBC News, October 18, 2007. 32. Jonathan Leake, “DNA Pioneer Watson Is Blacker Than He Thought,” Sunday Times, December 9, 2007. 33. John Schwartz, “DNA Pioneer’s Genome Blurs Race Lines,” New York Times, December 12, 2007. 34. Ibid. 35. Colin Blakemore, “We Must Not Silence Scientists,” Sunday Times, October 21, 2007. 36. Shery McCarthy, “Blinded by Prejudice,” USA Today, December 12, 2007. 37. Andrea Pitzer, “Controversial Comments Taint Watson’s Legacy,” USA Today, November 21, 2007. 38. “Watson’s Folly,” Nature 449, no. 25 (October 2007): 948. 39. James Watson, “To Question Genetic Intelligence Is Not Racism,” Independent, October 19, 2007. 40. Laura Blue, “The Mortification of James Watson,” Time, October 19, 2007. 41. Thomas Maugh, “DNA Pioneer Quits over Uproar on Racial Remarks,” Los Angeles Times, October 26, 2007. 42. Jeremy Manier, “Peers Horrified by Famed Scientist’s Race Remarks,” Chicago Tribune, October 19, 2007. 43. Jason Malloy, “James Watson Tells the Inconvenient Truth: Faces the Consequences,” October 31, 2007, http://www.scienceblogs.com/gnxp/. 44. William Saletan, “Created Equal: Race, Genes, and Intelligence,” Slate.com, November 28, 2008. 45. There is an enormous amount of scholarly criticism of both Rushton and Jensen for selective use of evidence, misrepresentations of others’ research findings, and dubious methods in their own research. See Alexander Alland, Race in Mind: Race, IQ, and Other Racisms (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), and Jefferson Fish, ed., Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001). For a summary of the contrary popular and scholarly receptions of Rushton’s claims about race and intelligence, see John Hoberman, Darwin’s Athletes: How Sports Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 46. J. Phillipe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen, “James Watson’s Most Inconvenient Truth: Race Realism and the Moralistic Fallacy,” Medical Hypotheses 71 (2008): 629– 640. 47. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, “Racial Realism and the Discourse of Responsibility for Health Disparities in a Genomic Age,” in Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, ed. Koenig

Notes to Chapters 5 and 6

213

et al. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 347. On this crucial issue of how to represent racial difference in the realm of health, see Steven Epstein’s excellent overview, Inclusion: The Politics of Diff erence in Medical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 48. On this distinction, see Paul Gilroy’s critique of “raciology” in Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color-Line (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 49. Gates, of course, later took center stage in the nation’s conversation on race when he was arrested in July 2009 at his residence in Cambridge by a white policeman, Sergeant James Crowley. The enormous amount of commentary on the incident, generated over eleven days of near-constant coverage, shows that this conversation continues to be engaging. Arguably, one of the key features that made this a “teachable moment,” as Gates described it, is that neither Crowley nor Gates apologized for their actions. This led to the famous “Beer summit,” where the two men met, drank, and conversed with President Obama. The fact that Obama staged such a reencounter, and the intense fascination the scene held for Americans, is a clear indicator that this conversation is yet evolving. Obama remarked that he found himself “fascinated by the fascination.”

Notes to Chapter 6 1. For an excellent discussion of this disciplinary perspective, see John Judis, “The Big Race: Obama and the Psychology of the Color Barrier,” New Republic, May 28, 2008. 2. Anne Kornblut, “Issue of Race Creeps into Campaign,” Washington Post, October 12, 2008. 3. Patrick Healy, “Race Remains Campaign Issue, but Not a Clear One,” New York Times, October 13, 2008. 4. Adam Nagourney, “In Voting Booth, Race May Play a Bigger Role,” New York Times, October 15, 2008. 5. Kate Zernike, “Do Polls Lie About Race?” New York Times, October 12, 2008. 6. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1986), 52. 7. Ibid., 60. 8. Ibid., 68. 9. Ibid., 66. 10. John Harwood, “Levels of White Support for Obama a Surprise,” New York Times, November 3, 2008. 11. “Impact of Race on Election Remains an Unknown Factor,” McNeil/Lehrer Newshour, October 22, 2008. 12. Ben Smith, “Racists for Obama,” Politico.com, October 18, 2008.

214

Notes to Chapter 6

13. CBS News, “Will Prejudice Trump Economy for Voters?” September 20, 2008. 14. Frank Newport, “Obama’s Race May Be as Much a Plus as a Minus,” Gallup .com, October 9, 2008. 15. See, for example, Ellen Gamerman, “When Voters Lie,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2008; Zernike, “Do Polls Lie?” 16. Kate Zernike, “For Pollsters, the Racial Effect That Wasn’t,” New York Times, November 6, 2008. 17. Daniel Hopkins, “No More Wilder Effect, Never a Whitman Effect: When and Why Polls Mislead About Black and Female Candidates,” Journal of Politics 71 (2009): 761– 781. Accessible at: http://people.iq.harvard.edu/~dhopkins/wilder13.pdf. 18. Nate Silver, “The Persistent Myth of the Bradley Effect,” FiveThirtyEight.com, August 11, 2008. 19. V. Lance Tarrance Jr., “The Bradley Effect—Selective Memory,” RealClear Politics.com, October 13, 2008; James Taranto, “Men Behaving Bradley: Is the ‘Wilder Effect’ the Result of Pro-Black Bias?” Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2008. 20. Blair Levin, “What Bradley Effect?” New York Times, October 19, 2008. 21. Zernike, “For Pollsters.” 22. In so doing, I draw on the example of Hervé Varenne, who made the case that analyzing American culture should not hinge on statistical analyses and survey data that aim to “produce a probabilistic statement about the relative frequency of a trait within a specified population.” Rather, the analysis must hinge on demonstrating the linkages and associations people generate in relation to key concepts, like individual and group. See Hervé Varenne, “Creating America,” in Symbolizing America, ed. Hervé Varenne (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986). 23. Quoted in Adam Nagourney, Jim Rutenberg, and Jeff Zeleny, “Near-Flawless Run Is Credited in Victory,” New York Times, November 5, 2008. 24. Ibid.

Index

“Acting white,” 79–80 Affirmative action, 4, 18, 83 Allen, George, 30–31, 56, 59 Ambiguity, 7–8, 10, 55, 89, 156, 175, 183, 185, 188, 191 Ambinder, Marc, 112 American Civil Liberties Union, 67 American culture, 22, 24, 33, 41, 106, 122, 189, 198n39, 214n22 Anthropologists, 19, 21–22, 156 Apologies, 2, 20–21, 23–24, 29, 33, 39–40, 45, 52, 141–181 Argument, 23–24, 94– 95, 113, 117, 119–120, 131, 135, 139, 141, 170 Asian Americans, 7, 92, 121–122, 138 Asim, Jabari, 199n13 Associated Press, 66, 147, 154 Atwater, Lee, 102 Axelrod, David, 119 Baisden, Michael, 72 Barker, Justin, 63, 69, 75, 79, 86 Barras, Jonetta Rose, 51–52 Barthes, Roland, 197n36 Bean, Alan, 66– 67, 69, 71– 72, 74 Belcher, Cornell, 189–190 Bell, Mychal, 63, 75– 76, 80 Biden, Joseph, 13, 30, 59, 100–105, 115, 120, 152–153 Black blogosphere, 3, 59, 72– 73, 78, 86, 97, 110, 151

Black comedians, 30, 35, 54 Black community, 3, 32, 42, 46, 50, 170 “Black hole,” 8, 56 Black male incarceration, 61– 63, 79–85, 90 Black pathology, 61– 62, 64, 78, 81–84, 89, 202n9 Black voters, 93, 111, 113–114, 129, 188 Blackness, 24, 97– 98, 137, 156, 189 Blakeslee, Nate, 68 Blitzer, Wolf, 110 Boortz, Neal, 51 Boykin, Keith, 36 Bradley effect, 93, 108, 125–128, 184, 187– 188 Bradley, Tom, 126 Brawley, Tawana, 82 Brazile, Donna, 109–110, 114 Brooks, David, 106, 123–124, 129 Brokaw, Tom, 199n15 “Canadian,”7 –8 Carlin, George, 35 CBS, 27, 42, 44–45, 151, 188 Chappelle, Dave, 148 Charleston, South Carolina, 2, 132 Chenault, Kenneth, 45 Chiachiere, Ryan, 27–28 Chicago Tribune, 62, 66, 69, 176 Christie, Raquel, 85–87 Chuck D, 36

216

Index

Civil rights movement, 4, 17, 25, 39, 59, 64– 65, 78, 83, 102–104 Clemetson, Lynette, 101 Clemson, South Carolina, 1–4, 6 Clinton, Bill, 4, 8, 17, 54, 93, 100, 109– 111, 113, 115, 133, 136 Clinton, Hillary, 20, 92, 94, 105, 107, 110–113, 115, 117, 120, 123–125, 130, 132–134, 136–137, 183 Clinton’s Initiative on Race, 17–19, 54 Clyburn, James E., 113–114 CNN, 50, 109, 119, 129, 133, 145, 151–152, 188 “Code words,” 8, 102, 107, 183 Cohen, Sacha Baron, 49 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 173, 178 Collins, Francis, 176 Columbia, South Carolina, 105 Comedians, 33–35 “Common sense,” 36, 49, 56 Comrie, Leroy G., Jr., 38 “Connective tissue,” 66– 67, 73, 75– 76, 88, 125 Connerly, Ward, 18 Consuming race stories, 7, 10, 19, 29, 57, 61 Context, 34–36, 40, 42, 54, 57, 68, 82, 84, 114, 139, 153–155, 182, 184 Conyers, John, 161–162 Cotton, Shaquanda, 69– 70 Crowley, James, 213n49 Cultural conventions, 2, 6, 9–10, 17, 33, 35, 48, 94– 95 Cultural dynamics, 16, 19, 21–22, 24, 191 Cultural form, 19, 22–24, 29, 58, 63, 94– 95,1 41 Cultural narratives, 64, 83, 85, 87–89 Cultural patterns, 10 Cultural precedents, 10–11, 56, 153, 173 Cultural solutions, 52–53 Cuomo, Andrew, 111

Davis, Richard H., 135 Decorum, 10, 22, 25, 38, 52, 55, 94– 95, 100, 102–104, 117, 119, 135, 142–143, 146, 149, 154, 168 Deep South, 58–59, 79, 89 Democratic National Committee, 121 Department of Justice, 21, 158–160, 170 Dickerson, Debra, 98 Discrimination, 3–4, 51, 64– 65, 70, 98, 161, 189 Dodd, Christopher, 105 Dohyo ring, 95, 135 Double standards, 12, 25, 28, 37, 40, 50, 52, 74 Dreams of My Father, 124 Dukakis, Michael, 102, 139 Duke lacrosse team, 13, 87–88 Dyson, Michael, 36

Dates, Jannette, 45 Davis, Artur, 162–164

Gangsters/gangstas, 3–5, 151 Gates, Henry Louis, 143, 178–180, 213n49

Editors, 18–19, 64, 88 Edwards, John, 106, 108, 119, 123, 130– 131 Ellison, Keith, 164–167 Eminem, 36 Epps, Mike, 35 Etiquette, 22, 24–26, 37, 51–52, 167–168, 173, 175, 198n37 Everyday life, 10, 53, 58, 65, 73, 152 Exemplary stories, 16, 23 Facebook, 1–3 “Fairy tale,” 8, 56, 109–110, 112–114, 139 Faubus, Orval, 117 Ferraro, Geraldine, 97– 98, 120, 133, 137–138 Finchem, Tim, 146 Fish, Stanley, 45 Ford, Richard, 9–10 Forsee, Gary, 45 Franklin, Craig, 77 Franklin, John Hope, 17–19

Index

Gender, 28, 44, 107, 114–115, 121, 124, 126–127, 131–132, 171 Generational divide, 6, 39, 78 Georgia Voter ID Act, 160, 162 Gingrich, Newt, 18 Golf Channel, 144–146 Good person defense, 40–41, 44, 104, 145 Griffin, Eddie, 54 Group identity, 24, 41–43, 62– 64, 78–80, 122–124, 189–190 Guinier, Lani, 17, 26, 171 Guiliani, Rudolph, 123 Hamilton, Scott, 145 Harpootlian, Dick, 133 Harvey, Steve, 72, 111 Herbert, Bob, 48, 106 Heritage Foundation, 170 Hill, Jane, 197n29 Hip-hop, 1, 3– 6, 32, 36, 38, 46, 50–52, 54 Hitchens, Christopher, 37 Hopkins, Daniel, 187 Horton, Willie, 102–103 House Committee on the Judiciary, 143, 160 Huckabee, Mike, 123 Hunt-Grubbe, Charlotte, 171–172 Hurricane Katrina, 22, 55, 81, 98, 153 Ifill, Gwen, 28, 185 Implicit racial appeals, 101–105 Imus, Don, 3, 12, 20, 23, 25–57, 117, 128, 142–143, 145, 152–153, 155, 173, 190 Individual, 24, 41–43, 62– 64, 78–80, 114, 121–124, 141, 168, 181, 189–190 Intelligence, 172, 174–175, 177–178, 181 Interpretive repertoires, 21, 34, 56 Iowa, 12, 20, 90– 91, 93, 96, 99, 100, 105–108, 113, 116, 118–119, 121–122, 125–127, 136–138, 144, 169 Jackson, Jesse, 28, 32, 40, 78–80, 85–86, 98, 102 Jackson, John L., 8–10

217

Jena 6, 23, 63, 72, 76, 79–81, 98, 158 Jena, Louisiana, 3, 20, 23, 25, 39, 55, 58– 90, 92, 94, 98, 144, 148, 150, 158 Jensen, Arthur, 177 Jim Crow, 59, 73, 76, 84 Johnson, Robert, 115 Joke, 21, 34, 42, 46, 144, 146, 149, 179 Journalists, 18, 23, 25, 28, 30, 47, 69, 78, 85–86, 88, 94– 95, 101, 103–105, 109, 115, 119, 128, 139, 152 Joyner, Tom, 72, 111 Keep Hope Alive, 32 Kennedy, Randal, 35, 37 Kilpatrick, Carolyn, 43 Kilpatrick, Kwame, 39, 149 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 6, 108–110, 112, 114–115, 133 King, Stephen, 169 Kittles, Rick, 176 Kitwana, Bakari, 5– 6, 10, 21 Kohut, Andrew, 126, 185 Krauthammer, Charles, 19 Kristol, William, 136, 209n91 KRS-One, 36 Krugman, Paul, 170 Late Show with David Letterman, 32 Latinos, 7, 82, 92, 121–122, 138 Laugh Factory, 31 Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin, 177 Lee, Spike, 28, 43 Levin, Blair, 188 Lewan, Todd, 73– 74 Lewis, John, 113, 133 Lorini, Alessandra, 200 Lott, Trent, 30–31, 56, 117 Lynn, Richard, 177 “Macaca,” 30 MacDonald, Heather, 82–84 Mainstream speech and discourse, 3, 30, 35–36, 42, 44, 46, 50–52, 65, 101, 145, 178

218 Index

Making sense, 5, 7, 10, 20, 22, 53, 56, 78, 88–89, 94, 155 Markovitz, Jonathan, 149 Marshall, Joshua, 30 Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 1–2, 11, 16, 121, 130 McGurik, Bernard, 27–28, 49 McWhorter, John, 96– 98, 137 Media Matters, 27–28, 150–151, 153, 155–156 Mediation, 16, 29, 61, 156, 191 Mellencamp, John, 204n58 Mendelberg, Tali, 102–105, 122, 139 Milbank, Dana, 167–168 Mooney, Paul, 34 MSNBC, 27, 40, 42 Mukasey, Michael, 158 Myerson, Harold, 107 MySpace, 52 “N-word,” 35, 39 NAACP, 33, 39–40, 67– 68 Nadler, Jerry, 160–162 “Nappy,” 3, 20, 27–28, 31, 41–43, 47, 49– 51, 201n55 Narrative, 10–12, 16, 23–24, 58– 69, 71, 73, 76, 79–89, 94– 95, 125, 128, 141, 144 National Association of Black Journalists, 40, 45 National Collegiate Athletic Association, 40 National Latino Congreso, 158, 161 National Organization of Women, 45 National Public Radio, 36, 150 National media, 2, 12, 59, 68, 75, 86, 128, 186 Navarrette, Ruben, 79–80 Nevada primary, 93, 116, 119, 121, 124, 128–130,1 32 New Hampshire primary, 8, 93, 99–100, 107–108, 110, 113, 118, 125–127, 132, 135, 187 New York Times, 19, 52, 68, 84, 87, 101,

106, 111, 115, 123, 126, 129–132, 152, 159, 170, 185, 188–189 News stories, 1, 5, 10, 12, 17, 25, 61, 152 Nifong, Mike, 82 “Niggardly,” 8 “Nigger,” 8, 31, 33–38, 50, 52, 54, 68, 102 Obama, Barack, 6, 9, 8– 9, 12, 20, 23, 30, 55,7 9–80,9 1–140,1 51–153,1 58–159, 182–191 Omi, Michael, 184 O’Reilly, Bill, 143, 150–158 Page, Clarence, 81–82 Paris, Texas, 69– 71 Parks, Sheri, 45 Patterson, Orlando, 41, 83–85 Performing race, 7, 54, 48–49, 177, 196n10 Persuasion, forms of, 23, 94– 96 “Pimps,” 39, 44, 50 Pitts, Leonard, 32 Plouffe, David, 100, 209n91 Political correctness, 8, 169, 173 Pollsters, 93– 94, 107–108, 125–129, 135–136,1 83–185 Pollution, 38–39, 52 Popular culture, 3, 5, 33, 142, 148, 152, 189 Post-racial, 12, 116, 131 Pryor, Richard, 34 Public and private, 2, 6, 10, 52, 57 Public discourse, 8, 12, 19, 37–38, 46, 52–53, 92, 102–103, 142–145, 149, 159, 177, 184 Public space, 3, 6 Public sphere, 2–3, 21, 25, 29, 31, 33, 44–45, 52, 54, 59– 60, 72, 152, 157, 167, 174 Race beat, 25, 64– 66, 78, 85–86 “Race card,” 9, 23, 25, 93– 94, 103, 116–118,1 25,1 33–136, 138–140 “Racial,” 2, 5, 7, 19, 21, 37–38, 46, 48–49,

Index

51, 53, 57–58, 61– 62, 67, 69– 71, 73, 75, 81, 85, 87–89, 94– 95, 100, 109, 112, 118–119, 121–125, 128, 135, 138–139, 141–142, 152–153, 155–156, 158, 160, 167, 183–184, 190–191 Racial absolution, 105–106, 115 Racial formation, 184–185 Racial inequality, 9, 53 Racial resentment, 102, 104, 138, 183 Rangel, Charles, 119–120, 133, 137 Reagan, Ronald, 102, 134 Reed, Adolph, Jr., 18 Reed, Ishmael, 61 Remarks, 23, 28–35, 37, 40, 44, 46, 50, 57, 94 Reno, Nevada, 119 Rich, Frank, 47–48 Richards, Michael, 12, 29–40, 42, 46, 48, 50, 53–54, 56, 59, 142, 173 Rituals, 4, 20–21, 24–25, 33, 39–40, 54, 83, 142, 167, 200n27 Roberts, Gene, 64– 65 Robinson, Eugene, 41–42, 73, 101, 104, 117 Romney, Mitt, 123 Rothenberg, Paula, 37 Rushton, J. Phillippe, 177 Russert, Tim, 113, 121, 124–125 Rutgers women’s basketball team, 12, 27– 28, 42, 48, 52 Sanneh, Kelefa, 52 Santa Claus, 50 Seanor, David, 146–148, 150, 155 Segregation, 4, 6, 30 Selective perceptions, 3, 11–12, 46, 57–58, 62, 67, 94, 123, 138, 154 Shaheen, Billy, 99 Sharpley-Whiting, Denean, 50 Sharpton, Al, 28, 40, 42–43, 78– 80, 82, 85–86, 111–112, 117, 145, 151, 154, 156 Sherman, Ruth, 201n55 Silverman, Sarah, 49

219

Simmons, Russell, 52 Simpson, O. J., 19, 22, 82, 84, 150 Sister Souljah, 4 Smith, Ben, 105, 111–112, 117–118, 132, 185 Smith, Roger, 118 Smolkin, Rachel, 87–88 Social arenas, 12, 19, 94, 142, 210n1 Soul food, 150, 157 South Carolina, 5– 6, 20, 91, 93, 96 South Carolina primary, 105, 112–113, 115, 118–119, 122, 124, 130–138, 140 Spin, 94– 95, 108, 111–112, 117, 120–121, 125, 127, 133, 144, 173, 175 State of the Black Union, 97– 98 Steele, Shelby, 123 Stereotyping, 2, 4, 47, 88–89, 103–105, 150, 163–164, 167–168 Survey research, 107, 126, 128, 183, 185–189, 191 Swain, Carol, 50 Sylvia’s Restaurant, 15, 151, 154, 156 Taboos, 17, 33, 35, 37–38, 54 Talking Points Memo, 30, 111, 158 Tanner, John K., 21, 24, 143, 158–171, 173–175 Tanz, Jason, 4–5, 10, 21 Taylor, Jared, 36–37 Thomas, Clarence, 149 Thomas, Isiah, 12, 53 Tilghman, Kelly, 12, 21, 143–146, 148–149, 154 Tolliver, Candice, 110 Transgression, 10, 23, 34, 36, 42, 44, 48, 52–53,1 02–103,1 42 Tulia, Texas, 67– 69 Urciuoli, Bonnie, 156–157 U.S. Department of Education, 70 U.S. Supreme Court, 149 Valbrun, Marjorie, 97, 116 Varenne, Herve, 214n22

220

Index

Video, recordings and postings, 3, 20, 28, 30–31, 35, 91, 159, 178–179 Wallace, George, 117 Walters, Reed, 60– 63, 66, 74, 77, 79 Washburn, Carolyn, 100, 104 Washington, Donald, 74, 77, 80 Washington Post, 30, 41, 51, 68, 73, 97, 134, 152, 154, 158, 167 Waters, Maxine, 38, 44 Watson, James, 15, 21, 143, 171–181 Web sites, 2, 28, 31, 33, 35, 50, 134, 158, 177 Webb, Jim, 30 West, Cornel, 4, 97 White denial, 64 White, Hayden, 197n35 White racism, 2, 31, 60– 63, 78, 81–86, 89, 143, 150, 155

White voters, 93– 94, 102, 106, 108, 113, 116–117, 136, 139, 185 Whiteness, 24, 122, 156–157 Whitlock, Jason, 80, 83–84 Wilder, Doug, 126 Williams, Juan, 150, 155, 157 Wilmore, Larry, 47, 49 Winant, Howard, 184 Wisconsin, 90, 128, 137 Witt, Howard, 66– 67, 70– 72, 74 Wolfson, Howard, 130 Woods, Tiger, 12, 21, 144 Wright, Jeremiah, Reverend, 20, 92, 183 “You people,” 43 YouTube, 28, 30, 32, 35, 57, 158 Zahn, Paula, 36, 50–51