SALON

Race

Friday, Apr 6, 2001 3:22 AM UTC

Islam’s black slaves

The author of a book on the 1,400-year history of the other slave trade talks about the power of eunuchs, the Nation of Islam's falsehoods and the persistence of slavery today.

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Although slavery seems like an institution from a barbaric and uncivilized past, it survives today in both Sudan and Mauritania. The horrific details of the Atlantic slave trade — the ruthless slave traders who pillaged Africa, the millions of Africans who died on treacherous sea journeys to America, the resulting “peculiar institution” of cheap, brutalized labor that spawned the Civil War — weigh heavily on the American conscience. Another slave trade, however, the Islamic one, remains a mysterious aspect in the history of the black diaspora. Fourteen centuries old, this version of slavery spread throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, India and China. It is the legacy of this trade that continues to ravage Sudan and Mauritania today.

South African-born Ronald Segal is the author of 13 books including “The Anguish of India,” “The Americans” and “The Black Diaspora.” In his latest book, “Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora,” he offers one of the first historical accounts of the Islamic slave trade. Salon spoke with Segal by telephone from his home in London.

How did the Atlantic and Islamic slave trades differ?

The Atlantic slave trade exclusively used black slaves or agricultural labor on plantations. It started in a very small way in 1450 and ended in the middle of the 19th century. It was the basic labor supply for the plantations in the Americas since the indigenous people had been all but wiped out by a combination of imported diseases and forced labor. The number of slaves who landed alive in the Americas — it was an important aspect in the development of capitalism, so the numbers are fairly accurate and organized by merchant banks and investors with stock market quotations — was something like 10,600,000. Slaves became so cheap that it was more profitable to work them to death and buy new ones than to try to keep your labor supply alive. For example, some of the mortality rates in San Domingue — which became, after the only successful slave revolution in history, Haiti — were quite staggering.

Slaves in the Atlantic trade came to be kept and regarded as units of labor, not as people. This was almost formalized by categorizing slaves as “pieces of the Indies.” A male slave, able-bodied and in the prime of his life, was defined as a “piece of the Indies,” and the other slaves, the women and children, were defined as “pieces of pieces of the Indies.” That gives you an idea of how the exploitation of African slaves was rationalized in the West.

But not in Islam?

The slave trade in Islam was seriously different. It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we’re talking of 14 centuries rather than four.

Whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male. Very large numbers of slaves were used for domestic purposes. Concubinage was for those who could afford it and there was no disrepute attached to having women as sexual objects. In fact, they married them. Some harems could be enormous. One ruler had 14,000 concubines. In one respect, women slaves were a status symbol. I hate to say it this way, but it’s comparable to the way people in the West collect motorcars.

The male slaves were used for the more exacting physical jobs in homes and palaces: porters, messengers, doorkeepers. In various places, from Islamic Spain to Egypt to Libya, there were black slaves used as soldiers. In Morocco, there was a whole generation of black slaves who became the army of Morocco, in which the young boys were bought at the age of 10 or 11 and trained in horse handling and military skills of various kinds. Young female slaves were instructed in household crafts and were then provided with resources to buy a home and get married.

What about eunuchs?

Strictly speaking, in Islam, castration was against the law. I don’t think it was in the Koran, I think it was a hadith — a saying attributed to the prophets — which says he who castrates a slave will himself be castrated. But they got around this as people do. One contrivance was to buy already castrated slaves. Another was to employ those who were not Muslims to perform the operation. But then even these contrivances came to be abandoned and dealers would perform the operation themselves along the route. The mortality rates were absolutely huge.

To be technical, there was a crucial difference between white eunuchs and black eunuchs. White eunuchs were made by the removal of testicles. Black eunuchs were made by what was called “level with the abdomen.” Eunuchs were guardians of the harem [because] if they were castrated “level with the abdomen,” there was no risk of their damaging any of the property in the harem.

For reasons that are not altogether clear or explicit, they came to be used increasingly by rulers as counselors, advisors and tutors and, eventually, to actually run the holy places of Mecca and Medina, where they were treated with enormous respect. One can speculate on the motivation — if they were not sexually active or preoccupied they were more likely to be devoted and loyal or given to spiritual preoccupations instead of bodily ones.

Were there other types of white slaves in Islam?

Yes. The Atlantic trade didn’t deal with white slaves, but the Islamic trade dealt with large numbers of white slaves.

And in Islam black slaves were never used for the same purposes that they were used in America?

In the early stages of Islam, they were used in the American way. In southern Iraq and neighboring Iran they were put to work in large quantities to clear the salt crust for agriculture and plantation labor. But in the ninth century, a prophet arrived who instigated a rebellion among the black slaves, the Zanj, in the area. This rebellion was enormous. It destroyed much of the commercial shipping in the region and came close to capturing the city of Baghdad, then the greatest city of Islam. It was eventually crushed after quite a protracted period. The impact across Islam was enormous. There developed a reluctance to allow very large concentrations of slaves for plantation agriculture. That is a parenthetical reason for the overwhelmingly domestic nature of the Islamic trade.

Does the Koran specify how slaves should be treated?

The Koran is the key. The relationship between slave and master in Islam is a very different relationship from that between the American plantation laborer and owner. It was a much more personalized relationship and relatively benevolent. Everything here is relative — being a slave is being a slave and it shouldn’t be romanticized.

The institution of slavery is sanctioned in the Koran. To say that the Koran is in any way opposed to the institution of slavery would be wrong. It is never recommended, but it is influentially and explicitly benevolent in its attitude to the poor, the orphaned and slaves. And there is a specific injunction that to free a slave is an act of piety, which has its due reward in the other life.

Incidentally, what was absolutely outlawed in the Koran was to separate an infant or a young child from his mother.

Which was normal in America.

Right. There is a specific statement in the Koran that says that he who separates the child from his mother will himself be separated from his loved ones on the day of judgment.

Since it was an act of piety with immeasurable reward, the incidence of emancipation or enfranchisement was enormously more widespread in Islam than it was in the Western form of slavery. There wasn’t a complete separation of master from former slave. Usually, a patron and client relationship developed between slave and master. For example, in Mauritania today there are freed slaves called Haratin whose descendants still pay tribute to the family of the owner. Specifically in the Koran, the owner of a slave is enjoined to provide that slave with an opportunity to purchase his freedom.

There would be a binding contract in which the slave would be provided with the opportunity to earn money for himself and pay in installments to his owner, which by practice, if not by law, became a gratuity. There were then two motivations for freeing your slave — a reward in heaven and money in this world.

Was slave ownership only for the rich, as it was in America?

Slave ownership was so widespread. Even small shopkeepers owned slaves. Paradoxically, although slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy because they weren’t free, they still stretched right across the economic hierarchy. It was not rare for slaves to become highly prized artists. There were academies that existed to teach young slave girls to play musical instruments. Any self-respecting merchant house would have a chamber orchestra.

Slaves became generals and black slaves became rulers. In the 16th century, a slave, Ambar, became first a general and then the ruler of a large Indian state.

I also thought it was fascinating that the child of a master by a slave was free.

Definitely. A child born fathered by his master was freed, since a child could not be the slave of his parents.

The great numbers of black female slaves must have ensured a great deal of miscegenation.

There’s no question about that. It is the major reason for the relatively small size of the black diaspora in Islam, though there were other reasons. A number of countries noted a low fertility rate among black women slaves. And not all women slaves used for domestic purposes had the opportunity to produce children.

The ultimate example of the distinction between the two trades is that in the greatest Islamic empire, the Ottoman Empire, after the sons of the first two sultans, no sultan mounted the throne who had not been born of a concubine. The Ottoman ruling family did not marry because they regarded the royal family as above any alliance. Occasionally, marriage would be used to ensure the loyalty of a Turkish tribe, but overwhelmingly the fertility of the Ottomans was through concubines.

Why could Islamic slaves assimilate into the surrounding society so more easily than American blacks could?

Here we get to a further dimension of the difference between the two trades. Slavery in the West, because it was so cruel and had become so disreputable, required some kind of excuse or extenuation — the idea of biological discrimination. Essentially, the concept of race developed and was popularized. The sort of pseudo-scientific view, in distinction from the pseudo-religious view, came about during the Victorian age, the 19th century, when you had Darwin’s theory of evolution. You could irresponsibly and intellectually dishonestly subscribe to the idea that certain races were inferior.

But the Koran, on the other hand, prohibits racism?

The Koran very explicitly attacks it. According to the Prophet, Islam comes to do away with these distinctions of tribe and nation and color. There is a strong argument made by Patricia Crone that, initially, Mohammed was most influential in a political rather than a religious sense. He supplanted this intertribal rivalry by uniting a large part of the Arabian people into a political unit, and, of course, it then became an imperial power.

Was there no stigma attached to being black in Islam?

Nothing is ever quite so simple. There did develop an attitude toward color. There were distinctions in market value and general consumer appreciation between one sort of black slave and another. Some of this was aesthetic. One tends to think that anyone who looks like one’s own people is more beautiful. For instance, the Ethiopians and the Nubians were highly favored because they had sharpish noses rather than flat noses and they were lighter colored. Clichés developed so that you had so-called Negro slaves for hard work and you had Ethiopians and Nubians for concubinage.

But this was never institutionalized. This is another key to the difference between the two empires. Of course, there were Islamic pseudo scientists in the Middle Ages who said differences of character and temperament were the consequences of climate — those who lived too far from the sun in the North had frigid temperaments, and those who were immediately beneath the sun were given to too much merriment and too little thought.

But in the context of the development of Islam it would have been a real break with tradition had it been institutionalized in law. This is important for the assimilation aspect too, because once you were freed, there was no discrimination in law against you.

They weren’t confined to an underclass after they were freed?

Many of them might have been, although the client/patron relationship was a sort of protection if you were in need — that is, if your previous owner was a true practicing Muslim. And there isn’t this history of separation. The nature of the Atlantic trade and therefore the survival of racism in the West has been one of segregation. In America, separation was the social clarion call and as bad in the Northern states as in the Southern. Generally, the geographical separation — the kind of separation in individual churches where blacks were seated in one part of the congregation and whites in another — produced this enormously creative black diaspora in America, as well as infinite suffering.

There wasn’t this separation in Islam. Whites didn’t push blacks off the pavement. They didn’t refuse to allow a black singer to sing in Constitution Hall. They didn’t forbid restaurants to serve them. I don’t think that there’s any disputing that slavery was a more benevolent institution in Islam than it was in the West.

Also, it is irrational to make the exclusive connection between slavery and color that existed in the West because there were white slaves in Islam in significant numbers.

In comparable numbers to black slaves?

With the enormous expansion of Islam and the conquests of huge territories, there were certainly large numbers of white slaves in the early periods. But, to be cautious, white slaves became increasingly more difficult and expensive to obtain. Black slaves became far more numerous than white ones. Certainly, when you get to the 19th century, which was the cruelest century, there were many more black slaves than white ones in Islam.

Beyond the tenets of the Koran, why was this so?

Western capitalism and the development of the attitude of viewing people as units of labor and not as people.

Was America so economically powerful because it exploited its cheap slave labor more brutally than any other leading empire — such as the Ottoman?

That’s a valid point but there are many other reasons for the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Although opinions may differ over the extent of the relationship between the Atlantic trade and the development of industrial capitalism, it is unarguable that the Atlantic slave trade was immensely profitable. The Industrial Revolution was closely related to the Atlantic trade in two major respects. First, many of the products of early British industrialization were directly related to the slave trade. But also, the families who grew rich as a result of the slave trade invested their profits in industrialization. This was a dual fruitfulness that the slave trade produced for the development of industrial capitalism.

The Islamic slave trade was not profitable?

It was profitable for the dealers. But it was nowhere near the kind of sophisticated business that it became in the Atlantic trade.

The Atlantic trade is a horrendous and fascinating story. Which is not to say that in Islam there weren’t tremendous cruelties involved, particularly in the 19th century when all inhibitions were discarded. Of course, it must also be said that the West, for all the horrors for which it was responsible, did also engender (not always for benign reasons) the movement against the international slave trade.

Was there an abolitionist movement in Islam?

Initially, it was a source of great hostility that the West dared to intervene in Islamic affairs in contradiction to what was allowed by the Koran. But as Western influence, or modernism, became more and more [widespread], it became less fashionable as well as profitable in Islam to own slaves. And it became illegal over much of the area. The pressures against slavery were extremely great from Western powers. It was the moral issue. It became more scandalous because the conditions of procurement and transport became more and more horrendous.

Was it similar to the Atlantic trade in this respect?

Both slave trades wittingly and unwittingly encouraged warfare on a huge scale to provide the captives for the traders. In Islam, this was much less the case until the 19th century, when it became quite ghastly. The worst of the slavers were not Arabs but Afro-Arabs — they were as black as the people they were enslaving. The casualties involved in enslavement wars were absolutely unspeakable.

Where were the Afro-Arabs from?

The great dealers of the 19th century? Some of them carved empires for waging war and for providing large numbers of slaves. The point must be made that the worst, the most costly in their ravages, were the Afro-Arabs. They were themselves Africans. There is nothing peculiar to Africa about this, though — people are corrupted by circumstances and greed.

Why has slavery survived in Sudan and Mauritania?

The resurgence of fundamentalist Islam has a lot to do with slavery in both countries. Both describe themselves as Islamic states and pursue policies of Arab-Islamic religious law, but they are essentially exercises in the maintenance of control. Sudan is an imperial agglomeration of two countries — one part of black Africa, one part of North Africa. Involved in the war is a question of control and power. In Mauritania, the so-called white Moors represent a third of the population, another third are the Haratin — who are the descendants of freed slaves and largely black — and the last third are blacks still held in slavery.

Also, it is partly a reaction to the power differentials in the world at large. Islam was a civilization that for hundreds of years was arguably the central civilization of the world and certainly dwarfed the cultures and powers of a West that is now unquestionably supreme. So there is a sense of humiliation. In such a situation you get a backlash — a “return to the future through the past” sort of thing — a re-Islamization. There’s nothing in the Koran that says someone can come along and free your slave.

What interested you in the Nation of Islam?

I find it personally inexplicable that the adhesion to Islam within the Black Muslim movement is apparently indifferent to the survival of black slavery within Islam.

Louis Farrakhan doesn’t acknowledge what goes on in Sudan and Mauritania?

Does he want them to bring him the slaves as proof? I think it’s based on a crude self-defense mechanism not unrelated to those who feel it necessary to defend the conduct of the Israeli government regardless of what it does. The attitude is: “These are yours, you belong to them, they are part of your past and part of your history, and therefore how can you associate yourself with outsiders who attack them?”

But this isn’t about the survival of Islam — that’s not in question. You’re talking about two rogue states, which are condemned by Islamic countries, governments, preachers, writers. You become so much more credible if you show that you are altogether sensitive to suffering, that you are hostile to injustice across the board. If you become so selective that you can ignore outrages of this kind, well, how can you blame other people for ignoring outrages to you and your community?

Farrakhan is a very paradoxical thinker because he’s very, very intelligent, yet he makes statements that are so obviously stupid. It is incomprehensible that he doesn’t know that they are stupid. He knows how to manipulate the media. He does it on the basis of short-term gain, without realizing that it is long-term loss. You don’t build anything lasting on that basis.

Do Black Muslims hold to the classic tenets of Islam?

They break from the Koran immediately — if we’re talking functionally about their crude and open anti-Semitism. That is in complete conflict with the special relationship that Islam established, while the Prophet was alive, with Judaism and Christianity. There has been no long historical conflict between Jew and Muslim, though there has been a conflict since the crusades between Christian and Muslim.

There are exceptions, but overall Islam proved most hospitable, and certainly a great deal more so than Christianity, to the Jews. When the Jewish population was expelled in 1492 from Spain, Islam took in those Jews who couldn’t find havens in Christian countries. This isn’t to say there haven’t been tensions from time to time, but overall there is no comparison between the way Islam has behaved to Jews and the way Christianity has behaved to Jews.

On what basis does the Black Muslim movement usually attack Jews?

What I find most outrageous is that the leadership of the Black Muslim movement has judged it necessary and defensible to attack Jews on the basis — for which there is no historical foundation whatsoever — that they masterminded the slave trade, by which I think they mean specifically the Atlantic trade. And that is — not to put to fine a point on it or to be excessively elegant — unmistakable crap. Anyone who knows anything about the Atlantic trade knows that this is nonsense.

So why do you think they keep on about this?

I think that they are resentful — and I understand the resentment but not the form it has taken — that a great deal of fuss, an enormous amount of moral attention, is now paid to the Holocaust. And in my view, rightly so. The slave trade was the only comparable historical experience to the Holocaust — comparable but not identical. No one seems to pay remotely the same attention to or have the same sense of guilt about the slave trade as about the combination of racism in the Holocaust.

Now, that is a point that ought to be made. But you do not aggrandize one by belittling the other. On the contrary, you end up denying the importance of one by denying the importance of the other. Certainly you add nothing to your case by basing it on assertions that are so easy to confront and contradict.

Do you think the Nation of Islam came out of pure despair with America or from a loss of faith in Christianity?

They were explicably attracted by a sense or knowledge that there was no such history of specifically anti-black racism in Islam, as so conspicuously had existed for blacks in the West and, in particular, in the United States. Those who wished to believe in God or practiced some form of religion and were, as Louis Farrakhan was, disenchanted with Christianity were easily captivated by a religious alternative not all that far apart but distinctly different from Christianity.

Do you think the Nation of Islam has helped American blacks?

I have traveled widely in the United States and have visited communities in Michigan and Illinois. Secular black academics testify that in Black Muslim schools the emphasis placed on the history and dignity of blacks in Africa has had a marked effect on the reading ability of black children, who no longer feel disparaged and demoralized.

There is a great deal of truth in a man like Farrakhan’s indictment of some of the black middle class who flee the ghettos, for understandable reasons, but in the process think that they can turn their backs on those who are unable to buy new homes in these middle-class suburbs. There is a smugness there, and then there is the phenomenon of the black conservative, such as Clarence Thomas.

It is outrageous that American democracy doesn’t function for the objectives that it is almost perpetually enunciating. If you start looking at statistics on the disproportionate numbers of blacks executed, of young blacks in prison — all these undeniable abuses of the system make people very angry. The problem occurs when this anger becomes irrational. Because it is such an obvious series of abuses, the anger doesn’t need to be irrational. In fact, the only way it can be effectual is to be rational.

Suzy Hansen, a former editor at Salon, is an editor at the New York Observer. More Suzy Hansen.

Monday, May 14, 2012 12:00 AM UTC

Whitewashing, a history

From "Tiffany's" to "Khan," we look at Hollywood's illustrious tradition of casting white actors in non-white roles SLIDE SHOW

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The extraordinary box office success of "The Hunger Games" has launched a heated discussion of Hollywood's peculiar habit of casting white actors in nonwhite roles. Why does this happen? We decided to turn to a very important studio chief for answers -- channeled here by comedian (and "Daily Show" correspondent) Aasif Mandvi.

All I have to say is that whitewashing has been going on since as long as Hollywood has existed — it’s a tradition — and rather than non-white people complaining about it, they should embrace it. It will make going to the movies so much easier and more fun. But there are just a few things you need to understand.

First, stop watching movies as ethnic people and start watching them as white people. There’s nothing that white people like more than seeing other white people in movies and on television. When you go to the movies with your ethnic “judgment” eyes, you miss my point. Watch as a white person, and suddenly your outrage turns to understanding and laughter.

Take a minute to walk to your limousine in my Gucci shoes, and you’ll realize that I’m just trying to make people smile. Mickey Rooney with buckteeth and a crazy accent in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”? It’s so much funnier than finding a real Chinese actor just talking like himself. Then you’d have to get a screenwriter to actually write genuinely funny lines for that character. You get so much more comedy bang with buckteeth and a funny accent. I mean, it made me laugh. Many people, including myself, were also convinced that Charlton Heston truly was a Mexican/Native American/Egyptian/Ape who talked to God. And I think I convinced a lot of Asians that Genghis Khan really did look like John Wayne back in the ’60s. “Short Circuit” was one of my biggest hit movies and I was completely convinced that Fisher Stevens was Indian. Who knew he was a Jewish guy from New York? That accent was spot on!

My point is, I’m not the bad guy. I’m just the rich guy. When you look at it through my studio executive lens, you understand how important it is that both white people and non-white people believe that Indians, Asians, Mexicans and Arabs are truly just white people in brown makeup. I don’t like thinking that way. I just don’t have the luxury not to. I’m a businessman. White people spend more money on shit than anyone else. (Except on fast food, which is mostly blacks and Mexicans … at least that’s what I have heard. I’m a vegan.) So hey, non-Caucasians, stop buying tacos and start buying Cadillacs.

White people are also cheaper to light than dark-skinned people, and just so you know, you the moviegoer end up paying for that extra cost. Sometimes it’s just too unbelievable to cast an ethnic actor. I turned away a lovely Indian actress once who auditioned for the role of a hobbit. I mean there are no Indian hobbits. Audiences would never believe that.

Now, look: I am trying to do the right thing. America has changed and Hollywood should attempt to portray a truer depiction of the ethnic diversity that makes up this country. The fact that many television shows now hire a certain percentage of non-white actors is a step in the right direction, right? I am even prepared to make a deal with you ethnic people out there. Every time you let me cast a non-Caucasian character with a Caucasian actor, I will give you two or three non-white actors in smaller supporting roles. Why not lead roles? Because I’m trying to make a living here. I have spent a lot of time and money throughout history convincing everyone that white is normal. I have even convinced non-white people that white is better, prettier, smarter, stronger, and that only white people can truly be the heroes. Everyone has bought into it, and now you want me to just abandon all my hard work? OK, I will make an exception for some of you non-whites: If you are a hot Latina, you can be the lead. Why? Because white guys want to fuck Jennifer Lopez.

Here are a few more key elements to remember when watching a movie the way white people have been programmed to react. Laugh at the funny accents, because they are funny. Ignore the source material; I’m making movies, I don’t give a shit about staying true to your comic books. And … hold on! Why the fuck is Idris Elba playing a Norse God!?

To view a slide show of Hollywood’s egregious moments in white-washing, click on the link below — and share your own most memorable moments in the comments. (Slide show by Max Rivlin-Nadler)

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Aasif Mandvi is an actor and writer who appears as a correspondent on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." He also co wrote and stars in the film "Today's Special" and will be appearing this summer in the films "Premium Rush" and "Ruby Sparks." More Aasif Mandvi.

Saturday, May 12, 2012 10:00 PM UTC

Black politics, reinvented

Across the country, polished African-American outsiders are upsetting the political machine. An expert explains how

By Cory Booker (Credit: AP/Julio Cortez)

Cory Booker’s failed 2002 campaign for mayor of Newark heralded a new type of black politician. Booker was an outsider with Ivy-league credentials who was trying to unseat a veteran urban politician who had made a name for himself during the civil rights movement. Like other “new black politicians,” Booker’s appeal granted him entry to the political world and helped him circumvent long-standing black democratic machines. But what does this process, which has been repeated everywhere from Washington to Alabama, tell us about our country’s changing attitude towards race — and politics?

In her new book, “The New Black Politician,” Andra Gillespie follows the career of Cory Booker, from his start as a lawyer and community organizer through his successful run for mayor and his reelection, in order to illustrate what separates the new generation of black politicians from other black leaders before them. These new black politicians seek to create the same multicultural coalition that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency, but many lose their black support and fade from the political scene.

Salon spoke with Gillespie about racial electability, Cory Booker’s senate prospects, and what black politicians have in common with Will Smith and Tyler Perry.

How have new black politicians used what you call “elite displacement” to win elected office?

It’s a theory that’s transferable to other minorities as well, be they racial or religious — basically, groups that have experienced stereotyping in the past and have been marginalized because of these stereotypes. Elite displacement is what happens when an older generation of politicians who have largely come to power despite the stereotypes levied at them have a new generation of leaders, who are more assimilated into mainstream culture and who don’t necessarily wear the same type of ethnic or racial veneer as their predecessors, now running against them — particularly in cities where the majority is from that same racial group. What I’m interested in is how these young politicians break through. They normally have not been socialized within the institutions in that community. They’re outsiders to that community, and they’re trying to figure out a way to break into politics when all the traditional paths to power have been shut off.

What elite displacement describes is the practice by which these young African-American politicians try to circumvent the black political establishment to reach office for the first time. What they take advantage of is their access to mainstream institutions and culture, and they use that as their calling card. They may not get the support of the older black congressman, the city council, or the local political bosses, but they have access to mainstream media and their friends who have money, and they use that to amass a resource that can overwhelm the existing structure of the black political community.

Part of the reason they get so much interest and their story is so compelling is because people think of these older black politicians in terms of stereotypes. They are viewed as corrupt, ineffective, criminal and incompetent — not quite up for technocratic leadership. And this younger group of politicians, because they bring the right qualifications and pedigree to the table, fit the bill. They fit the archetype of what white audiences want to see black leaders look like, which would be very well-spoken, not talking about race all the time, and having credentials from the right schools, and that gives them a certain cache which makes their story very compelling. It helps them get on television and helps them attract volunteers to come from outside the communities to help them out. In my book, I explore the consequences of this strategy. It’s very hard for young black politicians to develop a deep connection to their constituency. Does their strategy help them build a broader base of support? Does it help them win over some of their critics, who will still hold on to some positions of power? And what does this portend for long-term governance?

One of the things in African-American communities that should be noted is that there are tons of problems. African-American representation of those communities have not ameliorated those problems. In the 40 years of black government in Newark and similar cities, you still see high rates of unemployment, high dropout rates and very paltry health indicators. The idea that putting blacks in power will act as a panacea, will help blacks improve their physical and emotional health standing, is not really true. The subsequent question becomes: Are these new black leaders the magic bullet to gain on the progress of political equality that was achieved in the 1960s?

How are civil rights leaders — the politicians who emerged from the civil rights movements — limited in their ability to govern and seek higher office?

Part of this has to do with the moment that they were elected to office. They were elected because of demographic changes in the communities in which they lived. As early as the 1930s, there was a mass exodus of whites from the cities to the suburbs because of deindustrialization, but it was hastened by the riots in 1967. The white and black middle class left, leaving a city that was predominantly African-American. So the demographics of the city gave the opportunity for a black politician to win elected office. But there were other things that happened. Just because blacks were able to win positions in the city doesn’t necessarily mean that blacks in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s were going to be able to win statewide office. There’s no state in the United States that is majority African-American. It creates a very hostile environment for blacks to be able to run for higher office. On top of it, there is evidence to suggest that even when blacks have held positions of power or leadership, they haven’t always been taken seriously. Earlier generations couldn’t do what President Obama has done. You can look at members of Congress who couldn’t even get their hair cut in the capitol, couldn’t eat at the dining hall where all members of congress were allowed to eat. There was still a caste system that wouldn’t even let them dream of being president.

What is a “black political entrepreneur”? Which politicians embody this term?

A black political entrepreneur is a type of young black politician who is most likely to use elite displacement. They are the type of politician who is de-racialized and who doesn’t have demonstrable ties to the black political establishment. They would be the type of person who would not be a child of the civil rights movement and wouldn’t be the mentee of a civil rights politician. We’re not talking about Jesse Jackson Jr. or anyone who inherited their political role. A black political entrepreneur is different from other types of black politicians because they have very progressive political ambitions. They are clearly itching to run for higher office. You can look at them and say, “That’s a senator, or a governor, or maybe even another president.” Black political entrepreneurs are the ones who take the most risks when running for office. They usually try to challenge older black politicians for power when most others would argue that it’s ill-advised. If you contrast Cory Booker with former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford Jr. , for instance, Harold Ford Jr. inherited a congressional seat. Black political entrepreneurs challenge strong incumbents for power instead of waiting their turn.

You compare black political entrepreneurs to Will Smith and civil rights politicians to Tyler Perry.

I’m not talking about ambition. I’m talking about crossover appeal, the degree to which people are de-racialized, and where their power comes from. Will Smith built his acting career as someone who started off in hip-hop but never had a hard edge. He was, arguably, on the cornier end of the hip-hop spectrum. When he moved into Hollywood and became an A-list star, everyone knew he was African-American, but he wasn’t cast as a black actor. He was a comedic actor, an action hero. He was somebody who wasn’t threatening and whom everybody loved. And because of that, he was able to build this amazingly successful Hollywood career.

Tyler Perry, on the other hand, is somebody who, if you look at his net worth, has done better than Will Smith, but who has been unabashedly black in terms of self-presentation and the types of projects that he’s chosen. Today, people pay attention to him in Hollywood because he was the highest-grossing actor in Hollywood last year. But he’s made that money almost solely in the African-American community. He’s been able to be successful in this niche market, and people take him seriously because he’s made a lot of money, but he’s still on the margins. The fact that he’s based in Atlanta and that he’s regularly panned by movie critics proves he’s not fully mainstream. He needs to be contended and dealt with because you cannot deny his success. There are black people who have problems with how he presents his characters. People think Madea is a stereotype and that his television show is also a stereotype. Will Smith and Tyler Perry are very powerful in their own right, but they get their currency from very different sectors of the American public, and that helps to contribute to their persona.

You provide some examples in the book of where, while vigorously campaigning against the incumbent, new black politicians end up reinforcing some negative stereotypes. 

If you look at how the story usually gets framed in the media when the black political entrepreneur runs against the black incumbent, it’s usually cast in stark terms. Good versus Evil. It also gets cast as the anachronistic civil rights warrior going against a fresh person who doesn’t wear race on their sleeve. Given some of the stereotypes that exist of blacks in terms of their intelligence and corruption — and sometimes admittedly, the connection of some of these incumbents to corruption and incompetency — it ends up reinforcing stereotypes of the average black leader. The stereotype is that they should not be trusted, that they can’t lead. New black politicians continually reinforce the stereotype because they keep talking about the incumbents in those terms.

The consequence of this is twofold. In these minority communities — places where the black political entrepreneur is usually not needed — you will see the black constituencies rally around the incumbent because they believe the attacker is racially motivated or that the fight has a classist tinge to it. They are very resistant to having their leaders attacked.

Usually the younger black politician has something very valuable to offer their community. But eventually this notion that “this person is so much better than other black leaders” ends up being constraining for the black political entrepreneur. He or she gets held to incredibly high expectations. It becomes about how fast they can commit to change. And it reinforces the idea of the black political entrepreneur as a “magical black person,” as a black superhero. And the black superhero is the foil to the black villain — instead of transcending stereotypes, we end up reinforcing them. I think the notion of the black political entrepreneur as a black superhero who is going to save inner-city communities from blight and destruction ends up reifying this notion that normal black people are too stupid to run their communities and hold office. This ends up hurting everybody. If the black political entrepreneur can’t turn a community around very quickly, then it ends up looking bad for him, and it ends up reinforcing the idea that black people cannot govern themselves.

Do you see a backlash against black political entrepreneurs happening? I think of Adrian Fenty losing his reelection race for Mayor of D.C. 

Absolutely. What’s really interesting about de-racialization theory, which underlies a lot of my work, is the strategy of black politicians reaching out beyond the black community to try to create a multiracial electoral coalition. People have always been concerned about the multiracial coalition falling apart because you can’t help but avoid race. We saw that happen with David Dinkins in New York City. Dealing with the Crown Heights riots and the Big Apple boycott, we see what would be a traditionally democratic voting bloc fall apart over race. One of the underlying assumptions of de-racialization is that black voters support black politicians. That’s a little harder to untangle when you have black-on-black elections where blacks are running against one another. And the assumption is that the two black candidates split the black vote, and the de-racialized new politician makes it up with the non-black vote.

What we’ve seen with Booker’s first mayoral race and Adrian Fenty’s loss is that you can lose enough of the black vote to lose an election. It’s a question of what the sweet spot is. Black political entrepreneurs should be comfortable not winning over some blacks. It’s just a question of how many black votes you lose. In Adrian Fenty’s case, he lost too much of the African-American vote. It then becomes a question of why. It wasn’t because of his technocratic leadership, because by all accounts he was a great leader. He left D.C. in better shape in 2010 than when he received it in 2006. He underestimated the extent to which style would be important and the extent to which people had a problem with Michelle Rhee. Style becomes really important. People don’t think that it should be important, but it is.

Black political entrepreneurs have national political ambitions. You can afford to lose some of the black vote, but if you alienate too much of it, you can lose a statewide election, which is what happened with Arthur Davis’s senate campaign in Tennessee in 2006. Black political entrepreneurs, at the end of the day, are still very very dependent on black votes. You can’t alienate the black voters, even when you disagree with them, and you can’t come off as disrespecting them or condescending to them. Especially if they would have been sympathetic and voted for you, if only you hadn’t disrespected them.

It strikes me that these politicians are setting themselves up for disappointment by promising so much change and progress during their campaigns. 

I don’t know if you’re setting yourself up for failure, but I would warn black political entrepreneurs to tone down on the messianic rhetoric and to try to separate themselves from it, because it puts undue pressure on them. One of the things that I wanted to do in the conclusion of the book is to address the aspiring Cory Booker’s out there. I want them to understand that there are consequences, both positive and negative, for every type of political decision one makes. I’m not here to tell anybody, “No.” If you’re running against somebody who you truly think is incompetent, then you should point that out. But you should definitely be more circumspect in how you criticize them, and you should do it in the most respectful way. Booker learned that between his two campaigns. They toned down the stupid rhetoric a lot between the elections because they realized how much it harmed them.

Another thing I would tell budding Cory Bookers is to really assess the resources they have at their disposal. There are people who want to be black political entrepreneurs but who don’t really have access to the Stanford and Yale and Oxford alumni directories the way Booker does. They might not have friends in high places. They might not have the same fundraising capacity. It might not make sense to use the elite displacement election strategy if you don’t have the resources. Booker could overcome a lot of the negative externalities that come with elite displacement because he had this very, very deep base in mainstream culture. If other people don’t have that, because they didn’t go to Yale or Harvard, then you might want to cultivate a different sort of persona.

Where does Cory Booker go from here?

This is my observation: At one point, it looked like people were toying around with the idea of running him for governor. But, based on the decision last year to create the Federal PAC, I surmise that now they’re looking more at Frank Lautenberg’s senate seat. I think that’s a great idea. I think Booker would be a great senator. He could have the potential, with some longevity, to have a huge impact on the Senate. He could be Ted Kennedy-esque. As long as New Jersey residents are comfortable with both of their senators not being white (and hopefully no one brings that up or reminds them of it), then that’s actually really cool. If Cory were sitting with me right now and asked me, “Andra, what should I do?” I would tell him to go run for the Senate, without hesitation.

 

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Max Rivlin-Nadler is an editorial fellow at Salon. More Max Rivlin-Nadler.

Thursday, May 10, 2012 8:28 PM UTC

Why protesters curse cops

New stats about the NYPD's racist tactics show why some Occupiers chant "F*** the police."

By (Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly)

Attitudes toward the police are the source of innumerable disagreements and divisions between those who’ve participated in Occupy-related actions in the past half year. From Oakland, Calif., to New York “Fuck the Police” marches regularly snake through the streets, while in early encampments chants of “We are the 99%, and so are you!” would ring out invitingly to surrounding police officers. (Unsurprisingly, anti-police sentiment increasingly outweighed support for police as more and more Occupy participants felt the jab of billy clubs and the sting of tear gas.)

It’s beyond the purview of these paragraphs to explain the many reasons someone might take to the streets and shout “fuck the police!” However, as a new report from the New York Civil Liberties Union confirms, the consistently racist practices of the NYPD should make fierce anti-police sentiments understandable, even for those who find such an attitude unpalatable.

Using the NYPD’s own statistics, the NYCLU report highlights what they describe as a “two-tiered” policing system, in which black and Latino New Yorkers receive very different treatment from whites. Perhaps the most shocking finding of all: There were more stops of African-American young men in 2011 than there are African-American men living in the city — and nine out of 10 of those stopped had committed no crime.

In nearly half of New York’s 76 police precincts, black and Latino New Yorkers accounted for more than 90 percent of those stopped; in almost all precincts black and Latinos accounted for more than half of stops. Furthermore, frisks, which are only supposed to take place if police suspect someone is carrying a weapon, occurred far more often if the person stopped was black or Latino, even though white people were found more often to be carrying weapons. The report also notes that despite the 600 percent increase in stop-and-frisks under Mayor Bloomberg, the number of guns recovered has not increased proportionately.

“This cannot stand. Real people’s lives are in the balance. Whole generations of boys and girls are growing up afraid of the very people that are supposed to be keeping them safe,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU, told press on Wednesday.

Is it a surprise, then, that in a march of 5,000 predominantly non-white New Yorkers organized to call for justice for the murdered Trayvon Martin, with Occupy support, that chants moved smoothly from “We are Trayvon Martin!” to “Fuck the Police!”? The greater surprise should perhaps be why more people don’t feel angry at the NYPD. Of course, many will continue to disagree with anti-police marches. However, when statistics on policing show what the NYCLU’s Lieberman called “a tale of two cities,” disagreements should only arise over tactics to redress this system; it seems there’s an overwhelming case for fury at the police.

In a statement, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne defended police practices, saying that “stops save lives” and that New York has this year seen a record low for murders. He said that it is “the safest big city in America,” which prompts the question: safe for whom? When vast swaths of New York’s population live in constant fear of being harassed by a well-armed, uniformed gang — and that this fear is largely contingent on a person’s skin color — this strikes me as the sort of safety I have no interest in maintaining.

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Natasha Lennard covers the Occupy movement for Salon. A British-born, Brooklyn-based journalist, she has been covering Occupy Wall Street since before the first sleeping bag was unrolled in Zuccotti Park. One of the first journalists arrested at an Occupy action, she has managed to enrage Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You can follow her on Twitter (@natashalennard), and email her any Occupy updates/videos/ideas to natasha.lennard@gmail.com More Natasha Lennard.

Thursday, May 3, 2012 3:33 PM UTC

Ashton Kutcher’s brownface fail

The actor's racist ad is pulled -- but what's left isn't much better

By Ashton Kutcher

Somewhere, Charlie Sheen is laughing and saying, “At least I never did that.” This week, we learned what’s even less funny than Ashton Kutcher: Ashton Kutcher in brownface.

In an ill-advised Popchips ad spoofing online dating that launched Wednesday, the “Two and a Half Men” star appeared as a variety of love-hungry “World Wide Lovers” vying for your affection. In a spectacular display of racial tone-deafness, one of them included “Raj.” Raj, all darkened skin and heavy accent, is “a Bollywood producer looking for the most delicious thing on the planet.” He’s looking for something “Kardashian hot … I would give that dog a bone.” He brags that he once won a milking contest, and he does a little dance that will haunt your nightmares.

Shockaroonie, some people found this offensive. The ad went the wrong kind of viral, with a social media explosion of negative feedback. It’s not that comedy with a racial element is always wrong wrong wrong. The Jewish Hank Azaria is currently in his third decade of playing the Indian Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on “The Simpsons,” and nobody seems to be outraged about this. Kutcher’s incredibly unnuanced performance isn’t that, though. On his blog, writer Anil Dash explains it perfectly –  “a fake-Indian outfit and voice” constitute “the entire punchline” of the clip. And, as he eloquently put it, “I can’t imagine I have to explain this to anyone in 2012, but if you find yourself putting brown makeup on a white person in 2012 so they can do a bad ‘funny’ accent in order to sell potato chips, you are on the wrong course. Make some different decisions.”

And so that’s what Popchips is trying to do. On Wednesday, in a “message from Keith” on the company’s website, its founder, CEO and foe of proper capitalization Keith Belling wrote, “we received a lot feedback about the dating campaign parody we launched today and appreciate everyone who took the time to share their point of view. our team worked hard to create a light-hearted parody featuring a variety of characters that was meant to provide a few laughs. we did not intend to offend anyone. i take full responsibility and apologize to anyone we offended.” That’s a constructive, self-aware response to a potential public relations disaster. (Kutcher, who in recent months has been tainted by his hasty Twitter support for Penn State coach Joe Paterno and a divorce that featured rumors of unprotected extramarital sex, has so far had no comment on the problematic ad campaign.)

It’s a positive thing that Popchips understood its mistake and made an immediate effort to rectify it by pulling the ad. That step forward is mitigated somewhat, though, by the a large number of “get over yourself” responses on Anil Dash’s blog. We’ve still got much work we need to do in this country around issues of stereotypes and sensitivity, folks.

You don’t have to look any further than the entire Popchips campaign to see what I mean. Its remaining “World Wide Lovers” include the stoner Brit “Nigel,” who’s “seeking higher planes of consciousness” (GET IT????), the effeminate German “Darl” — a swishy riff on openly gay designer Karl Lagerfeld — and the dumb redneck “Swordfish.” In the end, there’s also regular old, newly single Kutcher, who describes the other guys in the club as a “freak show.” Hey, geniuses at Popchips – you’re still perpetuating gross generalizations. Also: They’re not funny. It’s a great big snack-loving country. Being cool about brown people – and gay people, and people others would call “white trash” – shouldn’t be such a crunch.

 

 

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Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Sunday, Apr 29, 2012 9:00 PM UTC

Your brain on white people

Neuroscience shows the media's overwhelming whiteness really is changing our minds. But we can change them back VIDEO

By

It simply isn’t true that there are no folks of color in the new HBO series “Girls,” in which young, attractive white women try to find their way in the post-9/11 Big Apple. For example, in the last minute of the very first episode, a homeless black guy talks to our quirky, spunky heroine, Hannah.  “Why don’t you smile?” he says to her. “Does your heart hurt? Oh, girl, when I look at you, I just want to say Hellloooo, New York!”

Hello, New York, indeed. This isn’t the first time TV pushed millions of immigrants and people of color to the margins of one of the most diverse cities in the world. Hello, Woody Allen! Hello, “Seinfeld”! Hello, “Friends” and “Sex and the City”! If “Girls” can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere. Of course, the rest of TV has been overwhelmingly white, too. Ever since “Father Knows Best” and “Wagon Train,” the medium has long presented a whitewashed version of the way we live.

That might be why some “Girls” writers take exception to their show being singled out for criticism. Here’s what writer Leslie Arfin tweeted in response to criticisms: “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.” (“Precious,” the 2009 film about a mentally and sexually abused teenager, featured a predominantly black cast.)

Why shouldn’t Arfin and creator Lena Durham be able to re-create their own private girl-world on screen? What responsibility do show runners have to represent diversity? Does it even matter? How do our brains respond when people of color are invisible or stereotyped on TV?

This is where science can help. I co-edited a book called “Are We Born Racist?,” which features new insights from psychology and neuroscience about what happens in our nervous systems when we encounter people of different races. And we found that decades of studies say yes, the racial vision of “Girls” does matter. For example, a series of four 2009 studies found that people who watched shows that featured negative nonverbal behavior toward blacks became more prejudiced themselves, as measured by tests of implicit bias — this was especially true when viewers didn’t recognize the behavior as negative. It seems that TV can indeed subconsciously induce racism.

So how can show runners correct for that? The research is overwhelmingly clear: job one is to confront the fact that racial difference exists. The new science of racism reveals that our brains do indeed seem to react negatively to people of different races — exposure of just milliseconds to a black face can cause white folks’ amygdalae to light up with fear.

Colorblindness doesn’t work because we never stop spotting differences in our environment.  Our brains are designed to do that; that’s how we survived on the savannah 50,000 years ago, and it’s how we survive in the globalized urban jungles of the 21st century. It takes an effort of will to cover your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears and shout, “Nah nah nah I’m not listening,” when confronted with racial difference. And doing that is what psychologists call “non-survival behavior,” something that belongs in the same category as smoking cigarettes and riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

The antidote to subconscious bias is not political correctness — shoehorning in a quirky, spunky black BFF for the girls will just annoy black viewers, instead of making the world a better place. Rather, the best cure for what ails shows like “Girls” is a dose of thoughtfulness, self-awareness and courageous originality.

The good news is that our brains get used to difference; in most situations, exposure to people of different races reduces prejudice. That’s a good reason for TV and movies to at least make an effort to show our cities in all their diversity. But that’s not all. As researchers have developed new and creative ways to induce racial nightmares in brain scanners, they’ve found that the prefrontal cortex — that’s the newest, most human part of the brain, the one responsible for long-term planning and intentional thought — is able to tell the oldest, least human part of the brain, the amygdala, to calm down. In other words, people can outthink and unlearn subconscious prejudice.

Some folks seem to think, as my colleague, UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton writes, that “unconscious biases reveal ‘the real you’ — how you really feel about X or Y group despite your best, superficial efforts to hide it.” Some interpret this idea to mean that saying whatever ugly thing enters our heads is simply being honest. We don’t want to suppress our true savage nature, do we? We don’t want to sweep it under the rug, do we?

No, we don’t. And we should also be honest about how racially homogenous our social networks tend to be — if the quirky, spunky frenemies in “Girls” are all white, that’s just realistic, I agree. But shows like “Girls” improve when they implicitly and explicitly recognize that there are people in the world who aren’t like the protagonists, and that sometimes we all say stupid things.  So instead of being defensive, as Arfin was in her tweet, what if we just took knee-jerk bias for granted — and then also took it for granted that people can grow and correct for prejudice? What if we just, you know… had faith in each other?

“The assumption that prejudice and egalitarianism is an all-or-none proposition (i.e., one is either prejudiced, or one is egalitarian) makes the possibility that one may think or do something stereotypical very threatening, precisely because it would reveal one’s true nature,” Mendoza-Denton argues. But when we consciously condemn racism, that act of the prefrontal cortex is just as authentic and meaningful as the unconscious impulses we find in the amygdala. In fact, I’d argue that intentionally rejecting racism reveals the very essence of our humanity.

The trick is, quite simply, to acknowledge race and racism, and to talk about it. Many white parents avoid the subject like the plague — in one notorious instance, parents pulled out children en masse from a study when they learned it would entail talking about race. But this strategy doesn’t produce colorblind citizens. It creates shows like “Girls,” “Seinfeld” and “Sex in the City.” It perpetuates a society that historically has pretended to be entirely Anglo-Saxon.

In fact, many, many studies find that children whose parents talk with them about race ultimately become less prejudiced. Talking is how we become conscious of subconscious biases — bias against anyone or anything, not just people of different races. All this science stuff sounds high-minded and earnest, doesn’t it? Is it even possible to apply these insights to a TV show without wrecking its entertainment value? Is it possible to depict racially insular and casually prejudiced white people in a way that doesn’t promote insularity and prejudice, as “Girls” does?

“Mad Men” does it (for gender as well as race). The non-quirky, non-spunky main characters are all white, but race haunts the show, in ways that are mostly lost on the chain-smoking ad executives it depicts. The difference between “Mad Men” and “Girls” is simply that “Mad Men” sees its characters with a combination of compassionate objectivity and ruthless historical perspective. That’s the result of artistic integrity, not political correctness.

Take this video, for example. It’s easy to chuckle at the character, Pete Campbell. But as you watch this clip, think about the nuances involved in this interaction — the ways Pete and Hollis struggle to communicate across profound differences in social power.

And by the way, HBO has done it before. “The Sopranos” was a show about Italian-American mobsters who must, as with any modern line of employment, work with people different from themselves. In this scene, we see the crew discussing some workplace diversity issues, wiseguy-style.

It’s raw, racist and honest. But it’s more than that. The writing is also smart, self-aware and grounded in the real world. This kind of writing does not see moral seriousness and entertainment as a trade-off, an either-or. It’s a both-and.

“Girls” is actually a pretty good show; it made me laugh, it made me sigh. But the bloggers are right to ask for it to be smarter and better. It’s something we should always be asking of ourselves.

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Jeremy Adam Smith is Web Editor at the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center and the author or coeditor of four books, most recently "Are We Born Racist?" and "Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood." More Jeremy Adam Smith.

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