Ishmael Reed on Roseanne Barr

I was surprised when Ishmael Reed, writer and poet who taught writing at UC Berkley, wrote in a recent article posted on counterpunch.com, "Once in a while, I ran into a student who tried to get a rise out of me by writing a racist story or making a racist comment. I’d instruct the class that they could write all of the racist stories that they desired as long as they were fresh and original. That would usually end these clumsy efforts."

I don't know why it surprised me. Politically, the University of Oregon a few blocks from me might be the poor man's Berkley, and there are racist students there. There are some who I suspect consider "political correctness" to be phony, so they imagine that casual racism is a sign of sincerity.

Reed mentioned one case:

...I suspect that he, like many White students, who were raised in California towns, some of which were former Sun Down Towns, and like-minded people whom I have encountered Europe, Asia, and Africa, received all of his ideas about race from American film and television. Though ideologues might view Hollywood as “liberal,” the industry has produced a lot of films in which Blacks and Browns are dealt vigilante justice. One of the favorite genres is that of a detective who has to surrender his badge for using excessive force whereupon he’s free to go on a rampage of cracking heads. The much-admired film, “Crash” justifies police brutality and stop-and-frisk sexual molestation. 

...

But I find the hand-wringing from members of the Fourth Estate, the very ones who exhibit stereotypes of Blacks to hundreds of countries, to be hypocritical. Given the segregated media, most of the comments about Roseanne’s outburst were dominated by White pundits and reporters. On one panel, a smug Rich Lowry of The National Review became the judge of what constituted White Supremacy, when the magazine where he works was founded by an Anglo-Irish White supremacist. The few Blacks who were allowed on TV were preaching to what James Baldwin called “The Chorus of Innocents,” who, in his The Fire Next Time, were offered redemption. Mara Gay of The New York Times editorial board preached redemption as a possible deliverance for Ms. Barr and the next morning, Eugene Robinson, one of the token minority members of “Morning Joe,” used the same word.

Of course, Baldwin got tired of redeeming people and ridiculed “The Chorus of Innocents” in his best novel, Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone. He was deemed ungrateful by his former patrons, and Mario Puzo was chosen to do the Times’s hatchet job on the book, maybe because Baldwin’s Italians are more complex than his.

MSNBC, which did a lot of sanctimonious hectoring of Roseanne has a series called “Lockup” in which viewers are invited to gawk at prisoners who are exhibited like animals in a zoo. Maybe that’s where Roseanne Barr got her ideas.

Read the article here:

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/06/01/the-segregated-media-says-its-all-roseannes-fault/