Why hasn’t Paula Deen apologized?

Her racist past is bad, but her current cowardice is just as shocking -- though she says a statement is coming soon

Topics: Paula Deen, paula deen racism, paula deen apology, Racism, Editor's Picks,

Why hasn't Paula Deen apologized?Paula Deen (Credit: AP/Nick Ut)

Since the long-simmering revelations about Paula Deen’s history of casual, clueless racism broke earlier this week — her admission that “Yes, of course” she’d used racial epithets and cast African-American wait staff to represent “a certain era in America” for a wedding — the public response has ranged from outrage to mockery to disgusted lack of surprise to inevitable, trollish justifications.  Everyone, it seems, has a strong opinion about Paula Deen’s past behavior. Everyone but Deen, that is. The cholesterol-loving chef and Food Network star has been remarkably circumspect in the past few days – at precisely the moment the Georgia native should have been speaking out. And it’s her rigid retreat that’s added an extra and entirely unnecessary layer of ugliness to the debacle.

On Friday morning, Deen was scheduled to appear on the “Today” show, but at the last minute, Matt Lauer announced, “We just found out she’s a no-show.” He added that everything had seemed a go for an “an open and candid discussion, no holds barred” interview when he’d spoken to her Thursday, but now her representative had simply said she was “exhausted.”

Deen may well be “exhausted” after a week of intense scrutiny and criticism. And living as we do in poisonous, crackpot times, she may also have been threatened and feared for her safety if she showed up. But a last-minute cancellation and a flimsy excuse, via a representative, is no way to handle a situation in which you already look arrogant and out of touch.

The “Today” cancellation is just the latest of Deen’s exasperating missteps. On Thursday, Paula Deen Enterprises sent a statement to TMZ saying, “During a deposition where she swore to tell the truth, Ms. Deen recounted having used a racial epithet in the past, speaking largely about a time in American history which was quite different than today.” As TMZ helpfully points out, Deen has admitted using the word after she was robbed at gunpoint in ye olden tymes of 1986. 



The statement goes on to say that Deen “was born 60 years ago when America’s South had schools that were segregated, different bathrooms, different restaurants and Americans rode in different parts of the bus. This is not today. To be clear Ms. Deen does not find acceptable the use of this term under any circumstance by anyone nor condone any form of racism or discrimination.”

Reminder: Paula Deen is paying someone money to write this stuff. Where to begin with what’s wrong with this? Let’s start with the half-assed qualifier that she was born in the South in the 1940s. No doubt she grew up hearing racist terminology used so openly and commonly it didn’t register as racist; no doubt she has been exposed to a very romantic view of that “certain era” in history – you know, the one where you could still buy and sell human beings. That’s where she comes from. But if a person is truly interested in making amends – assuming here that Deen is – she shouldn’t be sloughing off her accountability by blaming her times or her geography. Context matters, but deflecting culpability should never be your first talking point.

And then for the kicker, to come up with, in the face of very serious evidence of an incredibly callous attitude and dehumanizing behavior, the mealy-mouthed statement that you don’t “condone racism”? Are you kidding me? Because you’re going to have to go pretty far into extremist nutbag territory to find someone who would publicly say, sure, “I totally condone racism. Racism, yep, all for it!”

Saying you don’t “condone” racism says nothing, proves nothing, does nothing. Instead it just suggests you don’t even know what racism is. Deen’s statement simply acknowledges that there was a time when people of color rode on a different section of the bus and at the time Deen didn’t really think much of it, but it’s not like that now and she wouldn’t approve of it if it were. In other words, it’s pure useless gibberish.

Deen is currently in the throes of a sexual and racial harassment lawsuit  brought by a former manager at her Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House who claims “numerous acts of violence, discrimination and racism,” so she’s likely being encouraged to say as little as possible beyond her lawyer’s declaration that “She is looking forward to her day in court.” But in the meantime, her reputation grows more tainted with every calculated statement of nonsense her representatives release.

Should Deen even summon up the gumption to take a crack at a genuine act of atonement, she could start by ditching the intermediaries and do the speaking in her own plain, direct voice. She could express the understanding that her words and attitudes were hurtful and demeaning. Sure, she could acknowledge that she didn’t understand that they were at the time, but the important thing is to show that she does now. And then she could offer a direct and tangible course of action for doing better in the future and working to enlighten others and diminish our stunning national glut of racial ignorance. What will ultimately be either the redemption or demise of Deen’s career isn’t the revelation that she’s been so insensitive in the past. It will be whether she continues to behave like such a coward right now.

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.

Featured Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • 1 of 11
  • Close
  • Fullscreen
  • Thumbnails

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët
    Kerascoët's lovely, delicate pen-and-watercolor art -- all intricate botanicals, big eyes and flowing hair -- gives this fairy story a deceptively pretty finish. You find out quickly, however, that these are the heartless and heedless fairies of folk legend, not the sentimental sprites beloved by the Victorians and Disney fans. A host of tiny hominid creatures must learn to survive in the forest after fleeing their former home -- a little girl who lies dead in the woods. The main character, Aurora, tries to organize the group into a community, but most of her cohort is too capricious, lazy and selfish to participate for long. There's no real moral to this story, which is refreshing in itself, beyond the perpetual lessons that life is hard and you have to be careful whom you trust. Never has ugly truth been given a prettier face.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science by Philippe Squarzoni
    Squarzoni is a French cartoonist who makes nonfiction graphic novels about contemporary issues and politics. While finishing up a book about France under Jacques Chirac, he realized that when it came to environmental policy, he didn't know what he was talking about. "Climate Changed" is the result of his efforts to understand what has been happening to the planet, a striking combination of memoir and data that ruminates on a notoriously elusive, difficult and even imponderable subject. Panels of talking heads dispensing information (or Squarzoni discussing the issues with his partner) are juxtaposed with detailed and meticulous yet lyrical scenes from the author's childhood, the countryside where he takes a holiday and a visit to New York. He uses his own unreachable past as a way to grasp the imminent transformation of the Earth. The result is both enlightening and unexpectedly moving.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Here by Richard McGuire
    A six-page version of this innovative work by a regular contributor to the New Yorker first appeared in RAW magazine 25 years ago. Each two-page spread depicts a single place, sometimes occupied by a corner of a room, over the course of 4 billion years. The oldest image is a blur of pink and purple gases; others depict hazmat-suited explorers from 300 years in the future. Inset images show the changing decor and inhabitants of the house throughout its existence: family photos, quarrels, kids in Halloween costumes, a woman reading a book, a cat walking across the floor. The cumulative effect is serene and ravishing, an intimation of the immensity of time and the wonder embodied in the humblest things.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer
    The legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist delivers his debut graphic novel at 85, a deliriously over-the-top blend of classic movie noir and melodrama that roams from chiaroscuro Bay City to Hollywood to a USO gig in the Pacific theater of World War II. There's a burnt-out drunk of a private eye, but the story is soon commandeered by a multigenerational collection of ferocious women, including a mysterious chanteuse who never speaks, a radio comedy writer who makes a childhood friend the butt of a hit series and a ruthless dame intent on making her whiny coward of a husband into a star. There are disguises, musical numbers and plenty of gunfights, but the drawing is the main attraction. Nobody convey's bodies in motion more thrillingly than Feiffer, whether they're dancing, running or duking it out. The kid has promise.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis
    This is a weird one, but in the nervy surreal way that word-playful novels like "A Clockwork Orange" or "Ulysses" are weird. The main character, a teenage schoolboy named Scarper Lee, lives in a world where it rains knives and people make their own parents, contraptions that can be anything from a tiny figurine stashable in a pocket to biomorphic boiler-like entities that seem to have escaped from Dr. Seuss' nightmares. Their homes are crammed with gadgets they call gods and instead of TV they watch a hulu-hoop-size wheel of repeating images that changes with the day of the week. They also know their own "death day," and Scarper's is coming up fast. Maybe that's why he runs off with the new girl at school, a real troublemaker, and the obscurely dysfunctional Castro, whose mother is a cageful of talking parakeets. A solid towline of teenage angst holds this manically inventive vision together, and proves that some graphic novels can rival the text-only kind at their own game.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    NOBROW 9: It's Oh So Quiet
    For each issue, the anthology magazine put out by this adventurous U.K.-based publisher of independent graphic design, illustration and comics gives 45 artists a four-color palette and a theme. In the ninth issue, the theme is silence, and the results are magnificent and full of surprises. The comics, each told in images only, range from atmospheric to trippy to jokey to melancholy to epic to creepy. But the two-page illustrations are even more powerful, even if it's not always easy to see how they pertain to the overall concept of silence. Well, except perhaps for the fact that so many of them left me utterly dumbstruck with visual delight.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Over Easy by Mimi Pond
    When Pond was a broke art student in the 1970s, she took a job at a neighborhood breakfast spot in Oakland, a place with good food, splendid coffee and an endlessly entertaining crew of short-order cooks, waitresses, dishwashers and regular customers. This graphic memoir, influenced by the work of Pond's friend, Alison Bechdel, captures the funky ethos of the time, when hippies, punks and disco aficionados mingled in a Bay Area at the height of its eccentricity. The staff of the Imperial Cafe were forever swapping wisecracks and hopping in and out of each other's beds, which makes them more or less like every restaurant team in history. There's an intoxicating esprit de corps to a well-run everyday joint like the Imperial Cafe, and never has the delight in being part of it been more winningly portrayed.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew
    You don't have to be a superhero fan to be utterly charmed by Yang and Liew's revival of a little-known character created in the 1940s by the cartoonist Chu Hing. This version of the Green Turtle, however, is rich in characterization, comedy and luscious period detail from the Chinatown of "San Incendio" (a ringer for San Francisco). Hank, son of a mild-mannered grocer, would like to follow in his father's footsteps, but his restless mother (the book's best character and drawn with masterful nuance by Liew) has other ideas after her thrilling encounter with a superhero. Yang's story effortlessly folds pathos into humor without stooping to either slapstick or cheap "darkness." This is that rare tribute that far surpasses the thing it celebrates.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Shoplifter by Michael Cho
    Corinna Park, former English major, works, unhappily, in a Toronto advertising agency. When the dissatisfaction of the past five years begins to oppress her, she lets off steam by pilfering magazines from a local convenience store. Cho's moody character study is as much about city life as it is about Corinna. He depicts her falling asleep in front of the TV in her condo, brooding on the subway, roaming the crowded streets after a budding romance goes awry. Like a great short story, this is a simple tale of a young woman figuring out how to get her life back, but if feels as if it contains so much of contemporary existence -- its comforts, its loneliness, its self-deceptions -- suspended in wintery amber.

    Ten spectacular graphic novels from 2014

    Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
    This collection of archetypal horror, fairy and ghost stories, all about young girls, comes lushly decked in Carroll's inky black, snowy white and blood-scarlet art. A young bride hears her predecessor's bones singing from under the floorboards, two friends make the mistake of pretending to summon the spirits of the dead, a family of orphaned siblings disappears one by one into the winter nights. Carroll's color-saturated images can be jagged, ornate and gruesome, but she also knows how to chill with absence, shadows and a single staring eye. Literary readers who cherish the work of Kelly Link or the late Angela Carter's collection, "The Bloody Chamber," will adore the violent beauty on these pages.

  • Recent Slide Shows

Comments

0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>