Black History, White Apology: Proof Obama's America is not post-racial

Stephen Cobb, Executive Producer of Dare Not Walk Alone writes:

At the end of February I posted a video on YouTube titled "Black History, White Apology." Using footage from Dare Not Walk Alone, the two and a half minute video shows a special church service held in 2004 in which the church apologized to African Americans who had been turned away from the church in 1964 and arrested. Within a few weeks it had been viewed over 1,000 times and received more than two dozen comments. Sadly, some of those comments were deeply racist in nature. I deleted the worst of them but what you read there now is representative and some of it is quite depressing.

I posted the video because of the "apologies" offered last month by Rupert Murdoch and his New York Post relating to a cartoon published in that paper. The cartoon portrayed the architect of our government's proposed stimulus package as very black chimpanzee lying in a pool of blood, shot dead by a pair of white and arguably smug looking white police officers from NYPD.

Coming less than 30 days into first African American presidency of these United States, this cartoon was loudly condemned as offensive. Personally, as someone who voted for Barack Obama, I found it not only offensive but deeply distasteful and frankly very worrying. Apart from anything else, the trigger for the cartoon, an incident in which a woman's face was savagely ripped off by a chimpanzee, was not something that should have been made light of in any context; add in the history of NYPD race relations and the widely known history of "monkey" and "ape" as racial slurs, plus the fact that the president is both black and the architect of the stimulus package, and I think a joke about a police shooting of said architect, comparing him to an animal that violently attacked a woman, is clearly very, very wrong.

In this context, the apologies by the NY Post and Mr. Murdoch were very, very weak. In fact, I'd say they bordered on smug and insulting. But as I was reading through blog posts about the whole incident I realized a lot of people didn't "get" what was wrong with both the cartoon and the apologies. Indeed, there was a lot of talk about how the cartoon was not offensive because it refers to the writer of the stimulus package and the president didn't actually write the package and so: no offense, no foul, no apology needed.

It seems to me that people who think like that probably don't spend much time thinking about what it's like to live your life on the receiving end of pervasive, violent, and demeaning prejudice. I thought the apology video might put things in perspective. However, in the description of the YouTube video I did not reference the cartoon or draw any direct parallels between the church apology and the New York Post incident. I assumed the connections were fairly obvious. (I had already posted a separate clip "Why the New York Post cartoon was offensive" in which two of the women involved in the 1964 church integration incidents described how a deacon of the church called them "monkeys.")

Basically I wanted to show the world what a heartfelt apology from white Americans to black Americans looked like. Then the reactions started to pour in. They ranged from the electronic equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan cross burning to a vicious condemnation of the minister leading the church service because he appeared to be reading the words of apology (maybe the video was misleading--he was actually struggling not to choke up with emotion).

The comments continue to come in. While nobody can reasonably claim that YouTube is an accurate reflection of a nation's state of mind, it's clear from some of these comments that we have not yet reached the "post-racial" state of mind that some have posited. Particularly worrying to me is this sense that "white people have nothing to apologize for."

Here's how I see it. I'm white. My ancestors ruthlessly exploited the people and resources of Africa, Australia, and North America. The standard of living and quality of education that I enjoyed as a child flowed from the "benefits" of that exploitation. In a very real sense that gave me an unfair advantage in life. So yes, if you are black, I'd like to let you know I'm sorry that happened. I apologize for what my people did. And I make that apology regardless of whether or not any actual relative of mine did anything wrong.

Sure, my parents were hard working white people. But they lived in a society, the standard of living of which flowed in no small part from massive theft of property and exploitation of people, the "benefits" of which are obvious to anyone who cares to look, in countries as diverse as Britain, the United States, France, and Belgium. Many citizens of those countries have worked for generations to make the most of what they have, but you can't escape the fact that some of what they had was at one point stolen (like the hill my house sits on in upstate New York, taken by force from the original owners of this land).

Living in denial of how we got here will not help us achieve a better future for ourselves and our children, a future of which we are all equally worthy.
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Murdoch Apology: What a difference a few days/decades make

Today Rupert Murdoch of Newscorp, Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment, and a whole lot more, one of the richest men in the world, said this:

"As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me. Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended many people. Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted."

According to the BBC, Mr Murdoch said he had spoken to a number of people since the publication and that he could now "better understand the hurt this cartoon has caused". So maybe Mr. Murdoch is one of the more than 300 people who have watched the clip from Dare Not Walk Alone that I posted on YouTube and this blog a few days ago. The point of that clip was to educate. It seems Mr. Murdoch needed some education.

The clip shows two black women who, as young girls, accompanied a white woman to First United Methodist Church in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 describing their experience: The white deacon barred the door and said to the white woman "You're welcome to come in but your little monkeys can't."

That reference to monkeys was clearly racial and intended to hurt and demean. White bystanders shouted other racial slurs at the young girls. Several black adults who attempted to enter the same church were arrested and taken away by police. An apology for that incident came 40 years later when the church held a special service to personally apologize to those who were turned away. It took Mr. Murdoch about 4 days. There has indeed been much progress, but personally I think we still have a long way to go.

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When Words Are Weighed Down By History: Should we make light?

The controversy surrounding the New York Post's chimpanzee cartoon brought to mind a moment in the film, so I decided to post it here.


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Happy New Year!

Dare Not Walk Alone wishes everyone a great 2009, and sends out a huge Thank You to all who supported the film in 2008. Your emails, comments, blog posts, ticket and DVD purchases, all were much appreciated.

2009 is going to be an historic year. The inauguration on the 20th of this month will be a landmark in the ongoing struggle for a truly equality in the world. But let us not forget that the struggle continues. We are nowhere near achieving the "post-racial society" that some commentators are talking about. We agree with Michael Fauntroy on this:

Those who see America as "post-racial" may well be guilty of prematurely hoisting the "mission accomplished" banner. They should be aware of some unfortunate truths that still frame the world in which many Americans still live. For example, African Americans comprise nearly half of the 2.4 million people incarcerated in the United States, but make up but 12 percent of the total population. African Americans also suffer from disproportionately high school dropout and poverty rates.

So, at the start of this new year, let us take heart from all that was so bravely accomplished in the past (remember, January 1 also marks the anniversary of emancipation, 146 years ago this year). A lot of progress was made in 2008. Let us dedicate ourselves to achieving even more in 2009.

Young Women Pick Race Issues As Top Obama Priority

Yes! This is what we call good news:

"A survey of young woman for YWCA USA finds most of them want the Obama administration to make civil rights and racial justice a top priority"

KCTV Kansas City

Dare Not Walk Alone: More images from 1964

Andrew Young being attacked by white segregationists during a night march to the historic slave market in St. Augustine.

DNWA Mini-College Tour a Big Hit: Race + politics = lively classes!

Jeremy just got back from events at Mercyhurst College and Notre Dame University. Both went really well. There were over 200 students at one of the screenings. He did several classroom visits and conducted Question & Answer sessions after each screening, receiving a lot of thanks and encouragement.

(If you would like to book the film on your campus or want to get in touch with Jeremy for an interview please email speaker@dnwa.info.)

There's no doubt that the topic of race in American politics is a hot one right now, on news networks as well as on campuses, even as the two presidential campaigns steer clear of the subject (which we totally get, I mean neither Obama or McCain want to bring this up, at least not directly).

But if we have learned anything from the four years we have spent working on the Dare Not Walk Alone project it is that what people say in public and what they think in private can be very different when the topic is race. And don't you get this feeling that many Americans are holding their breath over this election? They are just hoping that race does not play a role in the outcome. We want to believe we are past that. But we're just not sure.

We know a lot of Obama supporters are worried that the Bradley-effect may still be very real. ("Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in the polls--the Bradley effect refers a voter tendency to tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate but on election day they vote for his/her white opponent."--Wikipedia)

Pundits and so-called experts appearing all over TV this weekend kept saying the Bradley effect is a thing of the past. But they obviously haven't spent much time living and working in North Florida, where you will find a lot of white people are still angry over the forced desgregation of their once "separate but equal" communities.

We think the reason Jeremy is earning the respect of students at these campus events is that he is an expert. If you spend five years of your life making a documentary about racial issues in American society you've defiintely earned that title. We think folks like CNN, CBS, NBC and BBC America should be talking to Jeremy, not political pundits. And they should be showing clips from Dare Not Walk Alone, where you can almost feel the hatred of white Americans back in 1964, Americans who actively opposed equal rights, with bats and chains and boots. (Those civil rights marches weren't awareness building exercises like a rally for the environment--there was, as Commissioner Errol Jones so wryly points out "opposition.")

And 1964 was not that long ago when you think that some of the white kids attacking blacks on the beaches of Florida back then are just turning 60 this year. As Jeremy's brilliant interview with James Brock in the film makes clear, many of those people are not apologetic for the role they played. But very few of them are as honest with the public as Mr. Brock was with Jeremy in that interview.
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