The Week(s) in Race
It’s been a couple of weeks of race in high profile, thanks mostly to Michael Richards’s inability to either handle hecklers or distinguish boundaries. I’d love to believe that a positive dialogue can actually arise from discussions of the incident. I’m encouraged in that slender hope by the fact Richards is planning to appear on Rev. Jesse Jackson’s radio show. I’m far less encouraged to learn that the gentlemen that Richards berated have a lawyer and made public their request for a personal apology and “maybe some money.”*
But it was the end of a story, or more accurately the story of the spiking of a story, that has most engaged me, and that is OJ Simpson and the “If I Did It” interview and book deal.
To the issue itself, I fell both ways at different times. I believe freedom of the press begins with the person that owns the press, so even in my initial disgust never entertained even for a moment the thought they should be censored. It just struck me as ridiculously poor taste. The more I thought about it, however, the more interested I was in seeing it go ahead.
Why would somebody do something like “If I Did It”? It cracks me up that somebody, apparently, actually asked OJ this question. I mean, why the hell do you think? He has a civil judgment against him that was set as large as it is to insure he could never make enough money to pay it off. He sold his Heisman trophies and every other damn thing he owned, and has only an NFL pension and his home. Of course he did it because someone was willing to pay. Regan? I’ve decided to take at face value her explanation of needing to find closure, even if only vicarious, after a history of spousal abuse. (And, just because there is another why out there in this case, let us harbor no notion that Murdoch made a moral decision to cut the project, as a man with no morals can do no such thing – it was just business.)
But, my reason for wanting to see it done was different. I wanted to see old wounds torn open.
I’m not sure if the OJ Verdict is quite one of the slam-duck “where were you” moments of my generation, but for me it ranks with the Rodney King verdict (standing in front of my tiny b/w TV in my dorm room saying “all hell is gonna break loose now”), the first bombing of Baghdad (playing Ultima III on a friends NES), and the first shuttle explosion (wandering the halls while cutting class in eighth grade). The OJ verdict arrived a few months after I moved to Seattle. I was working for my uncle at the time, installing framed artwork for commercial clients, and was hanging marine-themed prints in the common building of a large condo complex. The complex’s cleaning and maintenance staff were all on break together, watching the judgment read on TV, and it wasn’t until my “you gotta be fucking kidding me” was drowned out by applause and cheers that I realized I was the only white person in the room.
I remember being stunned, and keeping my trap shut. I couldn’t understand how anybody could cheer this verdict. I knew, obviously, that folks were pissed off by the Rodney King verdict, and rightfully so, (though I didn’t understand yet the complex issues that a prominent black man married to a white woman raised in the black community, especially among sisters), but I couldn’t see how letting this asshole walk proved anything. Still, I had no intention of starting a public debate on the issue.
And that, to me, seems the wound that needs tearing open, because I believe we left things unsaid that are festering just below the surface. Beginning with the slow Bronco freeway roll, the OJ case drove a wedge between women’s advocates and minority advocates, creating a rift that took years to heal. But, it did, because progressive activists have to work together, have to talk to each other. The rest of us didn’t really do that. The civil case came along later and brought a measure of justice, but I think the whole case left a feeling of “them colored folks is crazy” rolling about in white folks’ heads.
Now, before anyone gets all riled up, don’t think I’m asking for black folks to explain themselves to white folks, as though white folk approval is somehow necessary or ever desirable, because that isn’t it. I wanted to revisit the OJ story because we were afraid to talk about it in the aftermath before, or maybe we were just tired of it, and I feel like there was something to be gained, another slender hope that black folks could admit they were a bit ghoulish in cheering the freedom of a double-murderer, and white folks could admit that they were taking a little too much glee in waiting for a famous and accomplished black man to be strung up, and we could all admit we still don’t understand each other.
I feel like, watching Richards, that what welled up from him was, in Jackson’s words, deep-seated. And, I believe that it is things like this, a lingering frustration over not being able to understand the other side, and being afraid or unable to talk about it, that create that pressure of hate and pus building up. And I don’t believe we are necessarily aware that they are there. Richards sure seems shocked as hell.
These are all slim hopes, I know. That a pseudo-confession or a comic’s latent racial hostility spewing forth could become productive focal points of discussion, that we can overcome our own fears and intellectual laziness, emotional sensitivities. But, I’m gonna keep hoping.
Just like OJ will keep looking for the real killer.
* - In three separate accounts that I read today, this type of wording was used – maybe some money, the possibility of money – and I think it’s a little sick in the head. The “maybe” makes it clear they are fishing, clearly have no legal basis to demand money. It makes them sound like punks, to be perfectly honest. Richards damn well better apologize to them face-to-face, but he damn well better not give them any money. Think of the precedent – an artist, a performer offends you, and you are awarded damages. Yes, in this case Richards just went off, but it casts a chill over any kind of controversial art. Give them their money back for the price of the show tickets, ok, maybe, but I’d draw a firm line beyond that.
But it was the end of a story, or more accurately the story of the spiking of a story, that has most engaged me, and that is OJ Simpson and the “If I Did It” interview and book deal.
To the issue itself, I fell both ways at different times. I believe freedom of the press begins with the person that owns the press, so even in my initial disgust never entertained even for a moment the thought they should be censored. It just struck me as ridiculously poor taste. The more I thought about it, however, the more interested I was in seeing it go ahead.
Why would somebody do something like “If I Did It”? It cracks me up that somebody, apparently, actually asked OJ this question. I mean, why the hell do you think? He has a civil judgment against him that was set as large as it is to insure he could never make enough money to pay it off. He sold his Heisman trophies and every other damn thing he owned, and has only an NFL pension and his home. Of course he did it because someone was willing to pay. Regan? I’ve decided to take at face value her explanation of needing to find closure, even if only vicarious, after a history of spousal abuse. (And, just because there is another why out there in this case, let us harbor no notion that Murdoch made a moral decision to cut the project, as a man with no morals can do no such thing – it was just business.)
But, my reason for wanting to see it done was different. I wanted to see old wounds torn open.
I’m not sure if the OJ Verdict is quite one of the slam-duck “where were you” moments of my generation, but for me it ranks with the Rodney King verdict (standing in front of my tiny b/w TV in my dorm room saying “all hell is gonna break loose now”), the first bombing of Baghdad (playing Ultima III on a friends NES), and the first shuttle explosion (wandering the halls while cutting class in eighth grade). The OJ verdict arrived a few months after I moved to Seattle. I was working for my uncle at the time, installing framed artwork for commercial clients, and was hanging marine-themed prints in the common building of a large condo complex. The complex’s cleaning and maintenance staff were all on break together, watching the judgment read on TV, and it wasn’t until my “you gotta be fucking kidding me” was drowned out by applause and cheers that I realized I was the only white person in the room.
I remember being stunned, and keeping my trap shut. I couldn’t understand how anybody could cheer this verdict. I knew, obviously, that folks were pissed off by the Rodney King verdict, and rightfully so, (though I didn’t understand yet the complex issues that a prominent black man married to a white woman raised in the black community, especially among sisters), but I couldn’t see how letting this asshole walk proved anything. Still, I had no intention of starting a public debate on the issue.
And that, to me, seems the wound that needs tearing open, because I believe we left things unsaid that are festering just below the surface. Beginning with the slow Bronco freeway roll, the OJ case drove a wedge between women’s advocates and minority advocates, creating a rift that took years to heal. But, it did, because progressive activists have to work together, have to talk to each other. The rest of us didn’t really do that. The civil case came along later and brought a measure of justice, but I think the whole case left a feeling of “them colored folks is crazy” rolling about in white folks’ heads.
Now, before anyone gets all riled up, don’t think I’m asking for black folks to explain themselves to white folks, as though white folk approval is somehow necessary or ever desirable, because that isn’t it. I wanted to revisit the OJ story because we were afraid to talk about it in the aftermath before, or maybe we were just tired of it, and I feel like there was something to be gained, another slender hope that black folks could admit they were a bit ghoulish in cheering the freedom of a double-murderer, and white folks could admit that they were taking a little too much glee in waiting for a famous and accomplished black man to be strung up, and we could all admit we still don’t understand each other.
I feel like, watching Richards, that what welled up from him was, in Jackson’s words, deep-seated. And, I believe that it is things like this, a lingering frustration over not being able to understand the other side, and being afraid or unable to talk about it, that create that pressure of hate and pus building up. And I don’t believe we are necessarily aware that they are there. Richards sure seems shocked as hell.
These are all slim hopes, I know. That a pseudo-confession or a comic’s latent racial hostility spewing forth could become productive focal points of discussion, that we can overcome our own fears and intellectual laziness, emotional sensitivities. But, I’m gonna keep hoping.
Just like OJ will keep looking for the real killer.
* - In three separate accounts that I read today, this type of wording was used – maybe some money, the possibility of money – and I think it’s a little sick in the head. The “maybe” makes it clear they are fishing, clearly have no legal basis to demand money. It makes them sound like punks, to be perfectly honest. Richards damn well better apologize to them face-to-face, but he damn well better not give them any money. Think of the precedent – an artist, a performer offends you, and you are awarded damages. Yes, in this case Richards just went off, but it casts a chill over any kind of controversial art. Give them their money back for the price of the show tickets, ok, maybe, but I’d draw a firm line beyond that.
posted by JJisafool at 7:23 PM
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