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Heron and Harmonic Spectrum 7 by C & R Driver-Burgess Via Flickr: This old bird flew past me very slowly then stopped atop the waterside sculpture for a while, taking in the last rays of the sun.

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"Me Too!": The Flawed Arbiter of Equality

Viewing Racism as a Line not to cross, and thus, not be Racist is something I have talked about before.

Viewing "Racist" as a Line allows for some overlooked issues:

Racist people can now move their personal "Racist Line" to something that allows them to not view themselves as Racist, and thus, continue whatever harmful behavior they see fit.

It ignores the fact that we are all Racist, even if it is to widely varying degrees of belief, thoughts and action.

"Is it Racist?" side-steps the real question of "what harm is coming from our Racism?" because we never get past the first question.

So it is not surprising that the same thoughts are expressed when Nick Cannon dressed in white-face to portray a stereotypical "White Person".

Enter Nick Cannon

Black Actor Nick Cannon has come under fire for creating a stereotypically "white" character for comedic purposes.

And of course, Supporters and Detractors continue to focus their statements on the question of "Is it Racist?" - as if deciding this unimportant question will help anything.

Detractors

Detractors of Nick Cannon's actions come from the understandable perspective of "If we can't do it, why can they?". I believe this, on its face, is a reasonable question to ask, and an even better one to try to answer honestly.

Supporters

Supporters of Nick Cannon's actions focus on White Privilege as an excuse to give Nick Cannon a kind of Consolation Privilege to perform in Whiteface. The comedian in me wants to support this. The comedian in me wants to say "Hey White People, if you want to take on lower pay and higher incarceration rates, you can dress in Black Face all you want!"

Funny? Yes. A genuine proposal for redress? No. This kind of proposal, while hilarious, makes me think of two men in the parking lot deciding what area of the body one man can punch the other one as retribution for having an affair with his wife. This will not end well.

So, is it Racist?

The answer is Yes. YES. It is racist.

If we've finally gotten past that incredibly easy question, we can now continue on to a more fruitful, much more complex question "How does this Racism affect us?"

"Do the Most Good"

My brother once talked about a magazine article from the 1970's he had read about the Harlem Globetrotters. A reporter had made a stinging observation to one of the team that the majority of the audience was White; that tickets were priced outside of an affordable range of many of the Black community they claimed to be a part of. The reporter asked how they could think they weren't fulfilling White people's stereotypes of the Flashy Black Basketball Player.

The response that followed took the reporter aback. The player acknowledged the imperfect nature of his role in race relations. That being said, he countered that this was probably the only interaction many of these White people would ever have with a Black person. To show someone who played valiantly on the court, who sought to bring joy and laughter to their faces, and in doing so, give them a more positive view of even one Black person was making progress in ways that scolding, lecturing and protests could not. In his words, he was "doing the most good" now.

The Harlem Globetrotters were imperfect diplomats who helped knock down the constructs that so much of the White community had built up in their minds. I'd like to think that the Harlem Globetrotters made a difference, even if it was not ideal.

Where we Want to Go

Ideally, dressing up in a costume to represent someone who is not your Race would not have any social stigma. Indeed, people in other countries who do not have a history of slavery, oppression and racial discordance look at Blackface through a much more benign lens than here in the U.S. - and for good reason.

But there it is again - Context. Whiteface simply does not have the initial context that Blackface does here in the U.S. Forget privilege. The context of Blackface calls to and fosters a portrayal of a minority group that perpetuates harmful stereotypes.

Whiteface can easily be argued to also cause harm, but the kind of harm done by Nick Cannon's Whiteface seems to mostly be relegated to hurting the feelings of White people whose approach to Equality focuses mainly on the mantra of "Me Too!"

The "Me Too!" Approach to Equality

Equality is a terrible term. It's not your fault. Really. Equality only really makes sense when we are solving for 'X' in an algebra problem; where we know all the givens and have set all the variables in a universe that contains no extenuating circumstances.

In the real world, Equality is a ubiquitous bastard. At best, it's a poorly-built and extremely loose guideline, and at worst it is a complete farce. It's inconsistent nature stems from the fact that there is always more to the story.

If I was to tell you about how a woman was publicly scolded for drinking, but the man drinking next to her wasn't, you would rightly be up in arms about the inequalities of Women and Men. As would I.

If later, I was to tell you that the reason the woman was scolded was because she was 8 months pregnant, the issue would change significantly. Never mind the fact that scolding is an idiotic past-time from people who should probably mind their own business. Nevertheless, the point of this incredibly [unnecessary] example is that [obviously] context matters. Context makes the path to Equality far too nebulous to nail down like a math problem, and certainly too nebulous to adopt a "Me Too!" approach.

In the case of Whiteface, when we assess the damage done we are assessing one of hurting people's feelings who think the reverse of the scenario is unacceptable. It hurts them to see a loss of their Practical Freedoms; and they are without that Practical Freedom. Make no mistake, a White person dressing in Blackface risks a lot. Not just public backlash, but actually being ostracized, excluded, possibly even being fired. Loss of Practical Freedoms is understandably sad, and can feel unjust. It's true. And for that, you have my sympathy.

Upon reflection however, it would be a much longer reach to assume that Nick Cannon's Whiteface comedy would have the same effect that Blackface comedy has historically had (and continues to have). There will be no black employers who will see this and create a negative stereotype of all White people. There will be no Good Ol' Boy meetings amongst the Black Elites In Power that confirm each other's narrow point-of-view, as they had never had any real contact with the exotic White person before. There won't be Gangs of Black people who are now more likely to go beat up one of them White boys because their culture is so different from the White man. There won't even be the slightest move in that direction.

In contrast, some people might actually think it's funny, White, Black, whoever, and their lack of outrage will go further in race relations than any "Me Too!" treatise in our minds on "How Freedom Works".

In short, there will be little-to-no contribution to any underlying and pervasively systemic power dynamic that keeps the White man down.

So,

Is it Racist? Yes.

Is everyone Racist to some degree? Yes.

Does this incident cause more harm than good? Extremely doubtful.

What should we do about it? Try to see the big picture and figure out what kind of world we want to live in, rather than adhere to a flawed sense of what Equality is.

In the end,

My goal would be, not to live in a world where we scold each other for anything we find "offensive on principle", and instead, to live in a world where we can see context and tolerate the little things; because that first world is just annoying as hell.

#racism #white-face #blackface