The Help

Last week I saw The Help. Before the movie even started I noticed something – the audience in the full theater was almost exclusively white, a total reversal of my experience last year when I saw For Colored Girls at a theater a few miles away.  That time I was the only white person there. So I wondered, what is it about this movie that draws white people, but not African Americans?  Was it the different location, or is there some other reason that The Help caters to white audiences?

Maybe you’re aware that the blogosphere has been in analysis-overdrive about this topic. One of the problems folks have with the novel/movie is that, like so many other stories that explore racial relations, The Help puts a white person in the role of savior, and depicts African Americans as unable to help themselves. I get that. It was all over The Blind Side, a movie in which almost every African American character was a criminal, and which downplayed the self-serving motivations of the Christian school that offered Michael Oher a chance. (Sure, he couldn’t read, but he could play football! What about the kids who can’t do either? Where are the white saviors then?)

Anyway, even though the movie version of The Help failed to deeply explore how African American resistance (and not white altruism) resulted in the great gains of the Civil Rights Movement, one might argue that the African American maids in The Help did have a voice and used it at great risk to themselves and their families, and that white allies, though not central in the struggle for racial equality, have always been important. My concern about The Help isn’t about the movie itself. The Help depicts racism during a particular time and place, and apart from a few frustratingly one-dimensional characters, depicts it fairly well. My problem is that it lets us white people off the hook in a few different ways. First, class is an issue. How many of us grew up with maids of any color?  Likely not many. Second, there’s geography. If you’re from the North (like I am), it’s easy to blame the South for our country’s racist past. But I think most problematic is that whites watching a movie like The Help can easily think, wow, that’s awful!  Things were terrible back then. I’m so glad it’s not like that any more! And the very same people who are appalled at the racism of the past might not be equally appalled at how racism manifests itself in the present. If fact, they might deny that racism still exists. It’s easy to sit in a comfy movie theater and pass judgment on those malicious racists of the past. It’s easy to feel compassion for the African Americans who suffered in this blatantly racist society. We might even shed a tear. It’s much harder to recognize how our own present day white privilege, whether we know it or not, works in our favor to perpetuate systems that keep racial inequity alive and well.

Don’t get me wrong. Books and movies like The Help, as depictions of American history, serve an important purpose, but only if we realize that, as Carter Godwin Woodson said back in 1933, “the conditions of today have been determined by what has taken place in the past.”* The racial segregation and oppression that we see in The Help was not a purely southern phenomenon, and did not disappear with the Civil Rights Movement. The racist policies of the past are directly related to the present, and the legacy of racism continues in our country in a myriad of ways. Our educational system is one of them. Go see The Help. It’s a good movie. Get angry. Cry if you want to (I did). But don’t for a minute think it lets us off the hook.

P.S. Here's a statement from The Association of Black Women Historians regarding The Help.  They point out the way that the story reinforces stereotypes and distorts both the history of the time and the experience of the African American domestic workers it tries to depict. Perhaps this helps explain why it's the white audiences that are flocking to the theater.  


http://www.abwh.org/images/pdf/TheHelp-Statement.pdf

*The Mis-Education of the Negro, p. 13.

Oprah, Foucault, and Coincidences

A long time ago I used to watch Oprah almost every day. I know, people make fun of the show’s combination of household tips and celebrity interviews interspersed with stories of horrific tragedy and the giving away of cars, and all held together by Oprah’s special brand of pop-psychology.  But once in a while I heard something on that show that stuck with me, and here’s one of those things. According to Oprah, there are no coincidences when it comes to human behavior. We behave in a certain way because we get something out of that behavior. So the woman who bemoans, “just my luck, I fell in love with a creep who stole all my money and had an affair with my Aunt Gertrude” chose that rotten boyfriend for a reason, because it met some unexamined need in her. It wasn’t a coincidence. 

Once I started grad school there was no more time for Oprah. Sometimes it felt as if my head would explode with all the new ideas I was required to read and understand (or at least make believe I understood, although I’m pretty sure I didn’t fool anyone). I noticed that certain names kept popping up in my course readings, names of people I’d never heard of in all my years of watching Oprah (nor in all my years of undergraduate and graduate education, but that’s another story and it sort of proves the point that I hope I’ll make in a minute). Anyway, one of these people is a French guy named Foucault. Now, Foucault said a lot of pretty heavy stuff, and I wouldn’t presume to do justice to his ideas in this little blog. But he wrote a lot about power and about the relationship between power and knowledge. He questioned the things that people, especially people in certain fields of study, believe to be true, or accept as “scientific” – that’s what he meant by knowledge. Foucault said that power and knowledge (that stuff that everybody assumes is true about a given subject) are related. They need each other to survive. They feed each other, in a way. So, power is achieved and maintained by people’s believing some things, and not other things, to be true or scientific. Then that knowledge, those things that people generally accept to be true, grows into whole areas of study, whole industries that keep the original people who promoted them in power. Seems a little confusing, I know. But I think that, in a way, Foucault, like Oprah, is saying there are no coincidences.

Take ability tracking in schools, for example. You know, that’s where they separate kids according to ability level, in order to teach them more effectively. This is done between schools (smart kids go to a specialized high school, and everybody else goes to the neighborhood or the vocational school), and even more often within schools (smart kids take certain classes, and everyone else takes the other, easier classes). The commonly accepted knowledge about tracking is that it makes sense; it’s a smooth and efficient way to educate kids. This way the teachers can focus on the specific needs of each group, and everybody’s happy. The only problem is that there’s a ton of research out there that says it doesn’t work, at least not for the lower-tracked group.  The higher-tracked kids, however, do great, but that’s just a coincidence, right?  Well, let’s apply Foucault’s theory. First of all, power has been exercised. The people in charge of the school districts (did I mention that they’re mostly white?) decided a long time ago that tracking was the way to go. They created this knowledge, this discourse, about how to best educate kids. The knowledge (because it has all this power behind it) takes on a life of its own and becomes widely accepted as scientific fact.  But, in reality, the kids in the lower-academic schools or tracks (did I mention that in integrated school districts they’re mostly students of color?) receive a substandard education, and are more likely to drop out and wind up unemployed or involved in the criminal justice system. Ah, but that’s not all. The exercising of power in the decision to divide up our kids into smart and not-so-smart groups creates a problem – it seems some kids are being “left behind.” (Sorry I’m oversimplifying here.  I’m aware that tracking is not the only system that creates educational disparities, but it is one of them). Now we need another body of knowledge regarding what to do about this problem.  How do we educate these low-tracked kids?  Commissions are formed. Acts of Congress are passed. Standardized tests are created and administered. Special education teachers are trained and hired to write IEP’s. Teacher educators are hired to train the special education teachers. Books and articles are written, making money for publishers and providing jobs for academics. Etc., etc., etc. Not to mention that the mostly white middle and upper class kids who are receiving the better education will graduate, go on to college, and replace their parents in positions of power, where they will maintain the knowledge about ability tracking that got them the better education. Hence, the groups in power stay in power because the knowledge they create serves to keep them in power. It’s not a coincidence.

The whole idea of coincidences becomes its own sort of discourse, too – a widely believed truth that serves to maintain the present power structure. For instance, recently I was involved in a conversation that went something like this (paraphrased):

Person A: A new study says that white men with criminal records are more likely to be called back on job interviews that black men without criminal records.

Person B:  Why do you make everything about race?

Person A: Well, while the whole middle class has suffered in the recession, the African American middle class has been hit especially hard, being the first to be laid off when budget cuts require downsizing.

[In fact, the wealth gap between African Americans and whites has more than quadrupled in the past few decades.]  

Person B: That’s just a coincidence.  It’s not anyone’s fault, and it’s certainly not related to color. It’s simply about seniority. African Americans in professional positions get laid off first because they happened to be hired last.

Hmm.  It’s a coincidence that African Americans were hired in professional positions later than whites? Certainly nothing to do with discrimination in hiring there. And I guess it was a coincidence that for decades our government stopped African Americans from purchasing homes in middle class communities, which stopped them from acquiring wealth.  It’s a coincidence that the only housing available to them was in the urban areas, where their children received the substandard education that I talked about earlier. Gosh, it’s amazing how one group of people can suffer from so much bad luck!

All right, maybe I’m getting a little off-track.  Let me just end this by saying that I have to agree with Oprah and Foucault (but maybe not in that order). There are no coincidences.

On Being Human

It has all the makings of a bad joke – a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost walk into a bar… Being Human, my most recent TV addiction.  While the BBC version is far superior to the American, I have to admit that I watched both this past year. I found something so poignant about the story of these three friends, none of whom have chosen their current condition, finding each other and trying to live as normally and “humanly” as possible. Longing to be human is a common theme in literature and modern sci fi/horror stories; Pinocchio, the Frankenstein monster, Data, the Cylons, and Neo’s enemy “machines” are just a few examples of non-human entities wanting to be human, or at least wanting to emulate certain human qualities, such as love.  Even the Borg, in their quest for automaton perfection, relied on a very human-like queen to keep the collective running.  In many of these stories, it’s the humans that actually caused all the problems between themselves and the artificial intelligence they created, by maintaining their dominance through oppression.  (Trek fans will remember that even Data narrowly escaped becoming the progenitor of a new slave population in the episode titled, “The Measure of a Man.”)

Maybe you see where I’m going with this. Sadly, the world of fiction is not the only place wherein human status was sought by some and denied by others.  Historically, one did not have to be a cyborg, or a machine, or supernatural in any way to be denied human status. For example, the Atlantic slave trade was justified, and slavery was allowed to persist for centuries, based on the supposed belief by whites that slaves weren’t really human. An essay I read the other day reminded me of a scene from the miniseries, Roots, where the captain of the slave ship weakly suggests that the slaves be treated a bit better, since, they are, after all, human beings.  The first mate, responds, “Of course they’re human beings…and if we’re to profit from this enterprise we’d best convince them and everyone else that they’re dogs or mules, anything but human beings.”  (I searched youtube for a clip of this scene to no avail – if anyone can find it, or can post it, let me know.)  It was necessary for whites to convince themselves that slaves were some sort of subhuman species, that they didn’t have the same feelings, desires, needs, hopes, etc., that we normal white human beings had, in order to justify the horrors of slavery.

Once again we can shake our heads and say, how sad.  Boy, those people were crazy back then.  I’m so happy that I’m part of the enlightened 21^st century.  I think it’s interesting, though, that the being human theme persists in literature about race.  I see it in two of the most prevalent “antiracist” texts still used in classrooms today: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird.  Both are still read in my kids’ high school.  I’ve written before about the continuing debate about Huck – whether or not to leave the racial slur “nigger” in the text.  But what’s interesting to me is Huck’s gradual realization that Jim, the runaway slave, is actually a human being, with human emotions.  It’s this realization that prompts Huck to help Jim (albeit ineffectually) in the end. Mind you, never once does Huck view Jim as an equal, or as an adult, but at least he admits that he’s human. Of course, for Huck human meant white, and in order to justify saving Jim from slavery Huck tells himself that Jim is “white on the inside.”  I guess that was big stuff back in 1884.

Then there’s To Kill a Mockingbird.  Everybody loves that book/movie, and many would argue that Lee’s work has led many whites to realize the pain and devastation caused by racism. But what does the title mean? “It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,” Atticus tells his son, because, a white neighbor explains, “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”  Obviously there’s a metaphor at work here.  Who are the mockingbirds in the story, the innocents that “don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us”?  African Americans, of course!  Inexplicably, Lee chooses to compare African Americans to the little birdie that sings in the tree, not very bright, not good for much, but so entertaining with its sweet little song.  It’s enough to make Archie Bunker join the NAACP.

These two examples are from texts written by whites (and still, arguably, the most popular “multicultural” texts out there…hmm…coincidence?). I could give lots of literary examples of how the withholding of human status has wounded the psyche of people of color.  The theme permeates the realistic and fictional slave narrative, both historical and present day. Bigger Thomas, the main character in Richard Wright’s Native Son, is viewed by himself and others more as a monster than a real human being. Walter Dean Myers follows up on this theme in Monster, the story of an African American teen on trial for murder.  Sherman Alexie’s protagonist in The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian has 42 teeth, “ten teeth past human.”  And for a really devastating read about a teenage girl fighting for humanness, there’s Push: A Novel, by Sapphire. 

So, I’m not sure where all this leaves us.  I guess what I want to stress is that when we think about race and racism, it’s important to remember that recognizing people as human, both legally and emotionally, is something that whites gave themselves the authority to do centuries ago.  It’s part of white privilege. And, like all aspects of racism, it can’t be changed until it is faced.  It’s the human thing to do.

Good People

Good People: I’ve heard that expression used many times to describe many people. The neighbors who take your mail inside when you’re on vacation are good people. The mom who drives your son home from soccer practice because your younger child is sick is good people. The teacher who enters your daughter’s name in a district drawing contest, the sales clerk who gives you the discount even though the coupon has expired, the friends who help you move (again) – these are all examples of good people. 

Good people help each other out. They care about the welfare of others. They give of themselves unselfishly for a greater cause. Right? The person who runs the bake sale, the car wash, or spearheads a charity collection – good people, through and through. But is outward activity what makes a person good? Can someone with racist attitudes still be a good person? Maybe racism is a cultural thing, to be excused or at least explained with the words, “that’s just the way they grew up. They’re still good people on the inside.”

A few cases in point:  Remember To Kill a Mockingbird, that classic of children’s literature that kids have been reading in school for decades?  Or maybe you remember the movie, with the amazing Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch.  Remember how he bucks the white, blatantly racist, status quo by defending Tom Robinson, an African American who’s falsely accused of raping a white woman (the story is set in the South during the 1930s, when apparently the accusation itself was a death sentence)? Well, something about good ole’ Atticus jumped out at me during a recent re-reading of the novel. Tatum says there are three states of being regarding racism – you’re either actively racist, passively racist, or anti-racist. As much as Atticus Finch fought the racist legal system of his day, putting the safety of his own children on the line, he was, in my opinion, passively racist. What does that mean? The passive racist doesn’t go about spewing racial slurs or telling racist jokes. The passive racist is silent, maybe doesn’t approve of racist behavior, but doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t confront the racist. I think of the passive racist as sort of a racism enabler. Now, one might argue that Atticus was fighting racism by defending Tom Robinson, and I guess, in part, that’s true (although the text makes it clear that Atticus was assigned the case – he had no choice in the matter). What bothered me was that throughout the novel Atticus excuses the racism of his community to his children. “No matter how bitter things get,” he tells his daughter, Scout, “they’re still our friends, and this is still our home.”  As a result of this conversation, and following her father’s instructions, the next day Scout fails to confront the racism of a schoolmate, walking away from a fight for the first time in her life.  Later in the story, Atticus tells Scout that their neighbors are “entitled to full respect for their [racist] opinions.” Even more troubling is Atticus’ attempt to define the term “nigger-lover” to Scout, telling her it’s “‘just one of those terms that don’t mean anything—like snot-nose. It’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves.’”  Huh? Snot-nose? That’s a watered down explanation if I ever heard one. I was so frustrated when I read this! I wanted more from Atticus. I wanted him to say, “Hey, you freaking racists!  Get a grip!”  Okay, maybe that’s a little strong, and certainly it would have been culturally out of place. But at least he could have told his daughter that people who use that term are racist, and that we must do everything we can, short of physical violence, to show them how wrong that kind of thinking is. But, alas, Atticus never confronts racism head-on, not even in his polite, southern-gentlemanly way. To him, his community is filled with good people who just have an unfortunate opinion about something.

Another example – remember the Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino, of a few years back?  Eastwood plays a character that is so over the top racist that it’s actually funny (at least it was to the all white audience in the suburban theater where I saw the movie). I won’t go into any detail here, but, of course, the Eastwood character, who might be described as “a racist with a heart of gold,” winds up redeeming himself in the end. I remember being a bit disturbed by that. Was this movie trying to say that it’s possible to be completely hateful on the outside and still be a good person on the inside?  Can a lifetime of racism really be swept away by one sacrificial act at the end of one’s life?

People are complicated, I know, and to suggest that they are either all good or all bad is simplistic and fatuous. I know people who are good in lots of ways, people who would do anything to help a friend in need, people who are very religious, but who, truth be told, harbor racist attitudes. I’m not suggesting that we write them off as evil and have nothing further to do with them. I’m not even suggesting that we call them “racist” to their faces – as I said in my very first blog post, calling names never helped anyone. But, if we really care about these good people, I am suggesting that a conversation is in order. I tried to explore this idea in The R Word (there it is!) through Rachel’s eyes, as she grapples with the racism she sees in the good people (friends, family, neighbors) around her. “What do you think we are, monsters?” Rachel’s grandmother asks. No, they aren’t monsters. In many ways they’re very good people, just like the good people I bet many of us know. But that does not excuse them of racism, nor does it excuse us from holding them accountable. 

Is Race Like a Cookie?

I admit it, I like food. Holidays, to me, are excuses to cook and eat. Some of my closest and most wonderful friendships revolve around food, and I can't help feeling (unfair though it may be) that people who don't relish food the way we do are suspect. As that great philosopher, Jack Black, said in School of Rock (years before eating was "discovered" in Eat, Pray, Love) "I like to eat.  Is that such a crime?"  

Along with appreciating actual food, I also enjoy the use of food as a metaphor for all kinds of stuff.  Life is like a box of chocolates, for instance.  In The R Word (my young adult novel, and yes, I am going to find a way to mention it in all of my posts from now on) I use food as a metaphor all over the place, and for decades people have been using food as a metaphor for race relations in the U.S.  It used to be said, for example, that American society was a melting pot, where all races would eventually melt together.  After a while that idea went out of fashion because it implied total assimilation.  Race is more like a salad, it was then decided, where all the vegetables lay around next to each other, the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes coexisting in a kind of raw food bliss.  That didn't exactly work either, though, because it implied a "separate but equal" mentality.  Oh, thought someone else (I don't know who), race is like a stew, where the ingredients blend together and give each other flavor,  but still remain true to their essence.  I've always liked that one.

Yesterday I had occasion to watch a friend eat one of those delicious black and white cookies pictured above.  I used to love those cookies back in New York -- I have a memory of buying them in the subway, but I'm not sure now if that really happened or if I'm making it up.  Anyway, wouldn't you know that this morning I came across an article about the problem with the "black/white binary" in critical race theory.  The author argues that seeing race as a black/white thing leaves out all the other people that have experienced racism, such as Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.  I have to admit that I'm guilty of thinking about race as a binary; you might even notice this in The R Word (you know, my young adult novel).  I'm not sure why, but I do tend to think about racism mostly in terms of black and white, even though I understand that people from many groups have and still do experience racism, and even though I've read some great books that explore racism from different perspectives (among them Kira Kira, The Absolute Diary of a Part Time Indian, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and, most recently, The Woman Warrior).  I'm not sure why I give in to black/white binary ideas about race so readily, but I think it might have to do with where and when I'm from. My very unscholarly observation is that when I was growing up in Queens there was sort of an assumed, mostly unspoken racial hierarchy.  Whites were on top, of course, and African Americans were on the bottom.  Hispanics and Asians flittered around somewhere in between, and I never thought about Native Americans at all. Like I said, this is not a scholarly assertion with supporting evidence, except for the fact that over the years my old neighborhood and the surrounding area have allowed access to Asians and Hispanics, but not to African Americans.  Not that there isn't racism against these groups (whites from that area talk about the "Asian Invasion," for example), but the fact remains that Asians and Latinos were allowed to buy property in the area, while African Americans were not.  Also, lots of whites still live there, which tells me that white flight has not been as big an issue there as it has been in other parts of New York (areas that were once white but are now almost completely African American).  So while I'm not denying that many groups have and still do experience discrimination, I do believe that black/white binary thinking about race exists for a reason. There's something to it, or at least there was when I was growing up in the northeast. I need to think more about this.

In the meantime, anybody want a cookie?

A New Twist on School Inequity

Educational inequity is nothing new.  In 1896 the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson  declared "separate but equal" schools were legal. Of course, schools were never equal, and finally, in 1954, through Brown v. Board of Education, the Court ruled that school segregation was illegal.  Hence, bussing came into being; in order to create racially integrated schools kids had to be bussed from different neighborhoods, since those neighborhoods were (and in many cases still are) segregated.  And we all lived happily every after, right?  Not exactly.  Through a series of more recent court decisions, bussing and the integration it ensured was no longer deemed mandatory, and, the saying goes, geography now does the work that the Jim Crow laws once did.  Racially segregated neighborhoods once again result in racially segregated public schools. Back to separate.  But are they equal?  


No.  Because of the way we fund (or in some cases, fail to fund) public education, poorer areas (mostly urban but some rural, too) have less money to spend on education, so their schools have fewer resources.  A pivotal scene in my young adult novel, The R Word, explores this inequity when the characters in the novel visit each others' schools.  Rachel, the white protagonist, is shocked and shamed to discover that her new friends' mostly African American, urban school is not so nice compared to her suburban school.  You see, she's always taken her school for granted -- it's just a "regular" public school, she's always thought.  I wrote that scene several years ago, and the sad fact is that school funding is more of an issue now than ever.  The slashing of state budgets around the country is hitting public schools everywhere, and especially hard hit are the already under-resourced urban schools. Well that's sad, you might be thinking, but what can you do?  We all have to tighten our belts in this rough economy.


As my mother used to say, one thing leads to another.  All this tightening of belts is leading to more and more privatization of public schools.  That means that private corporations running charter schools are taking over low-achieving urban public schools.  Governor Christie of NJ is proposing this, and, like educational inequity, it's nothing new.  It was done in Philly and other place years ago, with mixed results.  But did you know that in some places, like New York, privately run charter schools exist in the same building as the publicly run school?  And since the private corporations use private funds for these public charter schools (charter schools are free, public schools -- parents do not pay tuition), there's more money and more resources to be had. 


So now we have the odd situation of unequal schools housed in the same building.  As NAACP president Ben Jealous describes, "Classrooms with peeling paint and insufficient resources sit on one side, while new computers, smartboards and up-to-date textbooks line the other. One group of students is taught in hallways and cramped basements, while others under the same roof make use of fully functional classrooms."*  What does this have to do with racial inequity?  Are these schools racially segregated?  Not necessarily.  Most charter schools in urban areas accept kids through a lottery system.  However, we do need to ask ourselves a few questions.  Why were the urban schools failing in the first place?  Do we value public education, and, if so, why do we fund our schools unequally?  Why do we depend on private, profit-making corporations to education some, but not others, of our children? Why do urban kids need to "get lucky" through a lottery system in order to receive a decent education?  The answers to those questions have everything to do with race and social class.  Because one thing leads to another.


*http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/article_a030e282-9377-11e0-9028-001cc4c03286.html#.TfTSwYxPX4U

It's Not About Race!

In her book, Colormute, Mica Pollock talks about dilemmas we face regarding the way we think about race.  For example, she says, "Race Doesn't Matter, but It Does."  In the high school that she researched, Pollock found that race was either talked about too casually, among students, or not at all in public, by teachers. Both were problematic because too easy talk about race took attention away from the serious analysis needed to determine race's roll in students' education. On the other hand, Pollock claims that teachers and staff were colormute, not colorblind, because they did see race (it was impossible not to) but chose not to talk about it with the students (they did talk about it with each other). This approach was damaging because, Pollock says, "The adult habit of deleting race labels from most discussions of 'discipline' actually left the question of race's relevance just festering within all student-adult conflicts" (46).  In other words, the issue of race was there, everybody knew it was there, but the adults didn't want to admit that it was there, probably due to the fear of being called The R Word (racist).

I've just finished reading Richard Wright's modern classic, Native Son.  Devastating!  The main character, Bigger Thomas, seems to have no redeeming qualities.  Throughout the story he's followed, haunted, by images of whiteness -- snow falling, a white cat, a blind woman dressed in white.  The story takes place during the Jim Crow era, when oppression of blacks by whites was stark, in-your-face, brutal.  Bigger is oppressed to the point where he doesn't feel human.  Squalid but expensive living conditions in apartments owned by rich whites, lack of work, poor education, social segregation, and the shame and anger of  continual "othering" by the white population take their toll on Bigger and convince him deep within that he is less than human.  He feels like a monster, so he begins to act like a monster, and like a trapped monster, at that.  (Caveat for those who read YA fiction -- I recommend Walter Dean Myers' MONSTER as a companion to Native Son.)  Anyway, Bigger, feeling no connection to the human race, kills two women to save himself from falling into the hands of whites. His capture and subsequent trial are fascinating, as the prosecuting attorney vacillates between the "it's all about race" and "it's not about race" arguments.  "Your Honor," he says, "I regret that the defense has raised the viperous issue of race and class hate in this trial." Read:  this is a murder trial.  This person killed and must be punished.  It's not about race, it's about human decency and responsibility! Next paragraph: "Every decent white man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!" (408, 409).  Hmm, kinda sounds like for this guy it is about race after all.

Now, back to present day.  A good friend of mine mentioned that she was reading Sharon M. Draper's YA novel, Tears of a Tiger for a grad class.  It's the story of the aftermath of the accidental drinking and driving death of a high school basketball star.  So, it's about death, guilt, identity, relationships, etc.  All of the main characters are African American, attending an urban school, while some of the teachers and counselors are white.  When my friend analyzed the role of race in the novel she was warned by her prof to be careful not to come across as racist in her paper.  Did my friend write, "These characters are all losers because they are black!"  Of course not -- that would be racist!  She simply pointed out some obvious elements of the story that dealt with race -- the white teachers' low expectations toward the black students, the African American dad's desire to be accepted by whites in his business dealings, the belief of the white counselors that "Black kids are tougher that white kids.  They'll get through this," etc.  These were obvious points in the text, clearly there to stimulate readers' thinking and conversations about racism.  But this grad school prof (a conservative, Christian, white, woman, btw) insisted that this novel was not about race and should not be construed that way.  "Be careful," she warned my friend.  "You don't want to come across as racist in your paper."  In this prof's eyes, I guess, Tears of a Tiger is a story about kids who "happened to be black." (It always cracks me up when white people say stuff like this.  They'll say, "I went to dinner with my friend who happens to be black."  I picture that person falling out of bed in the morning, looking in the mirror, and saying, "Wow-- I happen to be black!").

So, being colormute, whether because of fear or something else, is nothing new.  Confusion about the role of race in human relations is nothing new (as Wright illustrated in 1940).  Failure to recognize the role of race in a book that clearly explores the subject is nothing new, either, but is sad for the missed opportunity it represents. Talking about race does not make one racist and not talking about race does not make racial tensions or inequities go away.