JESSE WILLIAMS’ BET SPEECH

“This award, this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families, the teachers, the students, that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do.
 

All right? It’s kind of basic mathematics:, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here, the more we will mobilize. Now this is also in particular for the black women, in particular, who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.

Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we are going to have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function and ours.

Now — I’ve got more, y’all. Yesterday would’ve been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday, so I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive-by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich. Tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712. Tell that to Eric Garner. Tell that to Sandra Bland. Tell that to Darrien Hunt.

Now the thing is though, all of us in here getting money, that alone isn’t going to stop this. All right? Now dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body, when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies.

There has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of. There has been no job we haven’t done, there’s been no tax they haven’t levied against us, and we’ve paid all of them. But freedom is somehow always conditional here. “You’re free,” they keep telling us. But she would’ve been alive if she hadn’t acted so… “free.”

Now, freedom is always coming in the hereafter. But, you know what though? The hereafter is a hustle. We want it now. And let’s get a couple of things straight, just a little side note: The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. That’s not our job, all right, stop with all that. If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression. If you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do. Sit down.

We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, yo, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind, while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil, black gold. Ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit. The thing is, though, the thing is that just because we’re magic, doesn’t mean we’re not real.”

Jesse Williams, receiving the BET Humanitarian Award, 2016

TWO MOVIES ABOUT SLAVERY: LINCOLN and DJANGO UNCHAINED

When I was a child, my mother told me the only reason my brother kept calling me names was because he could get a rise out of me. “If you ignore him,” she said, “he’ll stop.” She was right. So I learned it’s what I answer to that matters more than what you call me.

            I may not have seen Django Unchained if the movie had not generated such controversy. There was angry talk about the number of times “nigger” was used--somebody counted and said it was more than a hundred. Spike Lee said he wouldn’t see it because it would offend his ancestors. Others were outraged that Brunhilde (Kerry Washington’s character) was a “helpless female” needing rescue. (If she had been the proverbial “strong black woman” fighting to get her husband back, we would have complained about that as well.)

            I thought Django Unchained  was fun and funny.

            When I heard the contemporary music playing, I knew it was not a serious movie, so I relaxed. I’ve seen a couple of Quentin Tarantino movies and I was more disturbed by the prospect of his signature mayhem than I was about how many times “nigger” would be uttered.

            This movie is an ironic spoof of slavery. Beloved (1998) was a serious film treatment of slavery and nobody saw it. Tarantino knows what kind of movie puts butts in the seats: lots of big blasting guns, explosions, blood flowing freely, a damsel in distress, an invincible hero who has close calls, but whom we know will triumph in the end; and, with tongue firmly in cheek, anachronisms all over the place. In other words, Tarantino made a typical Hollywood adventure film. What was atypical is that it was set within slavery and the last man standing was black.              

          Yes, Tarantino mocked the travesty that was slavery, but he also showed the cruelty and absurdity of it. I much prefer that to having slavery being denied or lied about. And there were several moments of hilarity. The night riders who couldn’t see through their ineptly made hoods was a scream. The sadistic slaver who “owned” Brunhilde called his plantation “Candyland;” a silly parody of the pastoral names given to the estates of traders in human flesh. I hooted when, after all the whites around him were dead, Samuel Jackson’s character dropped his cane, straightened his back and stopped acting servile. I also laughed when Tarantino’s own character wound up as a hole in the ground, victim of one of the explosions. It was escapist, cathartic entertainment.

            The film Lincoln, on the other hand, is serious and can be faulted for ignoring important aspects of history pertinent to the story. I believe the movie has resonated with so many, as it did with me, because nearly 150 years ago the U.S. Congress was as sharply polarized as it is today, and along nearly the same lines. This is a movie for those who love the gamesmanship of politics. Unfortunately, by focusing solely on the white male elected officials who finally managed to make traffic in human lives illegal in the United States, Spielberg has denied agency to the many others who forced this political battle. This is particularly obvious and painful because those who are ignored, not even given the courtesy of a line of conversation, are those who are historically marginalized in this society that reserves power for wealthy white males.

            Briefly, these people are Quakers who were resisting slavery in the seventeenth century; abolitionists who labored for decades to change public opinion from acceptance of slavery to abhorrence for it. One of the most eloquent abolitionists, Frederick Douglass, met with President Lincoln to convince him to allow blacks to fight in the Union Army. Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University, said, “The 13th Amendment originated not with Lincoln but with a petition campaign early in 1864 organized by the Women’s National Loyal League, an organization of abolitionist feminists headed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.” To not even mention Douglass or the Women’s National Loyal League in this movie is inexcusable.

            However, I am pleased to see a serious, major American movie admit that the Civil War, this country’s most pivotal event, was fought over whether or not the U.S. would continue to hold other humans in bondage. For a very long time the country has been in denial about that.

           The capture, enslavement of, and commerce in the bodies of people of African descent went on for hundreds of years, and the fallout from that trauma continues to the present day. It will hound us and haunt us until we face it, talk about it and accept it as a tragic part of our history. Despite their flaws, these two popular movies, the latest of several Hollywood attempts to present that brutal experience on film, at least have the country talking about an enormous and critical subject that we usually avoid.

Admitting My Own Racism

Today, when I walked into the locker room at the Y after my exercise, I entered a tense scene. A Y staffer had just admonished a woman for spanking her daughter. The staffer said another woman in the locker room had been upset by the spanking and reported her to the staff. The little girl (who looked to be about five years old) was sniffling. Her mother was outraged that someone had reported her for disciplining her child and she loudly demanded of the woman who reported her.

"Are you telling me how I should discipline my child when she's misbehaving and talking back?"

The other woman quietly responded, "Perhaps you should not do it in a public place. There are other children here and they were upset by it."

"I have to punish her when she does something, not wait two hours and say, 'Now I'm going to punish you for what you did earlier.'"

The conversation went on in this vein for a couple of minutes. I did not get involved, although my heart was engaged. Why? Because the mother defending her actions was definitely not white; she wasn't African-American, but her skin was as brown as mine. The woman who reported her was white. I wanted to tell the brown woman that she did not have to explain herself to that nosy white woman who was undoubtedly acting out of her perceived white privilege and authority. Would she have reported a white woman for spanking her child, I asked myself indignantly.

After I gathered my things and left. I thought about my reaction.

My first thought was that I don't believe in disciplining children in front of others. I did spank my child when he was very young, largely because that's how I was reared, except that we got whippings with belts and switches. However, I never did it in front of anyone. I was interested in teaching him, not humiliating him.

Because I changed my mind about corporeal punishment a long time ago, my second thought was,  "I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I had seen the mother hitting her child." By the time my son was a tall, sturdy six-year-old, it occurred to me that in order for my spankings to have any meaning, any force, I'd have to hit him really hard with something other than my hand. Once in a rage, I hit him with my umbrella. He looked so hurt by my anger that I was flooded with shame. It occurred to me that using physical force on a child is an attempt to break the child's spirit. That was not my intent. I wanted my son to reach his full potential, so I never hit him again. Instead, I figured out what meant the most to him and deprived him of that when I felt discipline was necessary. Fortunately, I was blessed with an extraordinary child who rarely required restraints, even as a teenager.

My next thought was that if I had seen the mother spanking her child and been disturbed by it, I would not have interfered unless I thought the child's limbs or life were in danger. Why? Because the relationship between a parent and child is unique (even siblings have distinct relationships with each parent) and it is built from birth forward, not on one incident. I wouldn't think of telling someone else how to discipline their child even if I knew all the details of their relationship, which of course, you never do.

Finally, I did not witness the actual spanking, so I have no idea of the severity of it, or how long it went on. I walked in just in time to receive a lesson about my knee-jerk racist thoughts. My initial reaction was based solely on the skin color of the participants. Thankfully, I am conscious enough to check myself when I have racist thoughts, and more important, not to act on them.

Real Tragedy Never Ends...

In his novel, No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer said, "Real tragedy never ends; it goes on hopelessly forever. Achebe was referring to a situation in Nigeria, but he could as easily been talking about racism in the U.S.

In a Black History Month special, I spoke to the Bartholomew County Library in Columbus, Indiana. My talk was promoted as "From The Help's Point of View." (For my thoughts on The Help, see another blog entry.) I am writing here about a discussion on race, that perennially taboo subject, in a "mixed" group--meaning blacks and whites in the same room. I am actually weary of talking about The Help, but the book/movie has obviously hit a nerve in America; two nerves, actually, one black, one white. Despite enormous progress, the U.S. is still a racially divided nation. It's just that the division is now no longer socially acceptable or legally viable.

Most blacks know that the vast majority of whites never want to talk about racism, so like them, I have often tiptoed around racial issues or broached them in a way designed not to offend delicate white sensibilities. In the words of one audience member, "We have swept racism under the rug for so long that the carpet has become too lumpy to walk on."

I decided to do a little cleaning under the rug; to invite a candid discussion. The audience was small enough (about fifty people) and mixed enough (about ten blacks, one self-identified gay man, a Hispanic family and the remainder white) so that we could have a discussion and easily see who was speaking.

I began by declaring that we are all the same, but perceive things differently because of the circumstances of our births and our particular experiences. I then asked how many people there had worked as domestic help--about four hands went up, one of them white. I asked how many had employed domestic help—about twenty hands went up, two of them black.

I shared with the audience that most blacks saw The Help, both novel and movie as a sanitized version of what actually happened in Mississippi in the 1960s. At the time, blacks were being killed and mercilessly beaten for trying to register to vote, among other things. I also pointed out that despite the title, the book was Skeeter’s story, not the story of the help. Skeeter is the one who triumphs in the end. We don’t know what happens to the black women she leaves behind, yet the tremendous popularity of this book is an indication that most readers find this storyline quite satisfying. Several members of last night’s audience agreed that it was an inspiring book because Skeeter had helped the black women fight back.

I discovered that many whites felt that by reading and enjoying The Help, they now better understand blacks and have taken a step toward improved race relations. They did not want to hear that this “lovely, moving story” is barely credible. In their keen disappointment that I did not see it the same way, they accused me of making “too much” of a work of fiction; after all, one woman said, “It’s not a documentary.” My response was that millions of book sales and a popular movie had made much of The Help. I am merely trying to understand why this not-particularly-profound work of fiction has struck such a chord. The discussion went on from there even including the “N” words—nigger and Negro.

I don't expect that any hearts or minds were changed, but we talked openly about racial misconceptions and the world did not explode. A bit of dust was cleared from under the carpet, but it's still plenty lumpy.

Here are some of the memorable exchanges.

A woman expressed her disappointment in my talk because she had come expecting to hear an "uplifting" story about how I went from being a maid to a successful writer.

Another woman thought I was exceptionally brave to speak the truth about racism to a largely white audience, although she lamented she could tell it didn't do any good.

When I was asked what Indiana was like while I was growing up in the forties and fifties, I responded, "It was as racist and segregated as anyplace below the Mason-Dixon line, except that there were no signs that said White and Colored." A woman on the front row who appeared younger than I am, felt privileged to interrupt me by shouting, "That's not true!" I asked if she was disputing the accuracy of my experience. She said I was misrepresenting Indiana. In order to disprove what I'd said, she told us a story. When she was a child her parents took the family to a Howard Johnsons somewhere in Indiana. There was a sign on the door that said No Negroes Allowed. When her parents saw the sign, they put the family back in the car and drove away. This should have been an ironically funny story, except that she was using it to "prove" that not all whites were racists because her parents weren't. Such are the distorted lenses through which race is viewed in America.

Another exchange occurred when someone admonished me for talking about racism when things are so much better now. Then another member of the audience shared his experience of a month ago. He is a corporate exec who was calling on a client in Martinsville, Indiana when the building in which they were meeting was surrounded by Klan members in full regalia.

The fact that he lived to tell the tale is an indication that things are indeed better now.

Ethnic Identification

With a view toward dividing the country into black and white and pretending that no other ethnic identities exist, laws were passed during the formation of the U.S that isolated people of African descent by placing us outside the "mainstream." Everybody else, unless whites said no, was white and presumably a part of the mainstream. These laws and the unwritten customs that accompanied them operated to maintain the myth of white supremacy. They also made black the embodiment of all that is bad/evil/wrong, and of course white the opposite. Other "obvious ethnics" (see W. Kamau Bell's comic turn on this term) resent this black-white division with good reason.

One result of lumping all Europeans into the "white" category is that many of them no longer have any notion of their ethnic origins. And, in California I've observed that many could care less as more and more people ignore ethnic boundaries. I know one young man who is the product of an Italian-American mother and Mexican-American father. His wife is the product of a father who is Greek-American and a mother who is Korean-American. They have two children. How do we classify them? And, who cares?

At some point we may even stop using that ridiculous appellation, "bi-racial," usually reserved only for the offspring of one white parent and one obviously ethnic parent. Unless, of course, that offspring becomes the first black president of the United States.

At this point, as global interaction on every level increases, I think ethnic identification will become far less significant than it has been. That won't happen anytime soon, but things are certainly moving in that direction.

and, there are other indications

Jack Bass writes in the N.Y. Times that even in the South blacks and whites are cooperating--witness the congressional seats in Louisana and Mississippi that had been Republican for 30 years that were recently taken by Democrats.

The American Way of Racism is Fading

An article in The Washington Post yesterday reports that Obama campaign workers have encountered racism. Is anybody surprised at this?

This report is certainly disturbing, but also not at all surprising. What I am surprised by is that there hasn't been more of this kind of thing. When economic times are tough as they are now, people become angry and frustrated. It has been the custom to take out this frustration on "others," that is the people who are "different" from them.

Obama represents not only the black "others" who have been this country's traditional scapegoats, but his Muslim name also makes him a "representative" of our new enemies, the Muslim "others."

I understand why Obama doesn't want this stuff publicized because that could set up a mob contagion and create an atmosphere where this kind of behavior is considered acceptable.

Having volunteered in the Obama campaign in my home state of Indiana, I have been pleasantly shocked by the overwhelming numbers of people who support him in this state that is not known for being particularly enlightened or well-educated.

The American way of racism is fading, and when Obama becomes president I believe his popularity will increase among those who are currently unable to see past his color.

Of course, there will also be those who will cling to their anger and resentment because that's what defines who they are.

Obama's speech on race

Thank you, Barack Obama. If I weren't already supporting you, I'd be forced to support you after hearing your speech yesterday.

Your speech served as a reminder of why you will make an excellent president, and of how you operate far above the usual political sound bites. You were honest, compassionate, direct, and eloquent.

You are the kind of person this country needs as president, and even if people are convinced otherwise, at least you will have elevated the discourse so that whoever is elected will have to operate on a higher level than if you had not been involved.

Despite the prevailing inclination of politicians and pundits to focus on our worst aspects, to spotlight our mistakes and flaws, you insist upon appealing to the better angels of our nature. This insistence will not go unrewarded because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Whatever the outcome of this presidential campaign, I know that you are and will be a powerful influence in this country and the world for many years to come.