Wigger Please is a documentary feature film chronicling the cultural stereotypes of white Americans embracing hip hop culture. Currently in production, the filmmakers are interviewing rappers, actors, artists and writers who have had their political or personal perspectives influenced by their experiences with hip hop or black culture. For information on the project, contact [email protected]
It's hard to come up with an ethnic slur that has less of a sting than "whitey."
A prevalent yet unsubstantiated Internet rumor passed along by Rush Limbaugh and others has it that Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, used this term at some point in a speech, and the Obama campaign is concerned enough to have posted an online rebuttal.
I've got to ask, though. Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term, "whitey"?
It has no ugly history and hints at no particular stereotypes. Like the term "honky," of which it is an even milder cousin, "whitey" resonates with frustration, not oppression -- a taunt, perhaps, but not a threat.
The only way white people can work up a snit over "whitey" is if they fail to see that context is everything in measuring the wallop of informal ethnic terms. This requires them to set up a false equivalence between prejudice -- making negative assumptions about people based solely on external characteristics, which all races and ethnicities are guilty of -- and racism -- prejudice in action.
It requires them to imagine that "whitey" marginalizes, diminishes and therefore harms them.
And if they're really that dumb, then I guess they deserve to be insulted.
No More Dap for Blacks
by Adam "DNA"
PUBLISHED: JUNE 12, 2008
Once, 125th street ran with the dull thud of black men giving each other fist pounds as they greeted each other in friendship. Now, all that can be heard is that regular city noise you generally hear in New York, and maybe some Reggae music.
“Me and my friends don’t even give each other pounds anymore,” said Darryl Wilkins, a 24 year old bank teller. “We just kind of nod at each other.”
Millions of white people saw presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama give his wife a fist pound before his victory speech last week, and decided to greet each other in a similar manner. As a result, black Americans across the country have eschewed the gesture in protest.
“What, I’m supposed to greet my homie the way Senator Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Hutchinson (R-TX) greet each other? I don’t think so,” Wilkins added as he shook his head.
Some black leaders are trying to preserve the pound, pointing to its long and fruitful association with the black community. The Rev. Al Sharpton has suggested the Federal Government institute a “dap tax” that white people would have to pay for using the gesture. The “dap tax,” Sharpton says, would be instituted in lieu of reparations for slavery.
“You can give each other dap, you just have to give us the dollars,” Sharpton told reporters at a press conference in front of a Gray’s Papaya yesterday, where he was scheduled to have lunch with Bill O’Reilly.
The Center for Disease Control issued a statement warning that the influx of amateur pound-giving could result in an epidemic of hand borne diseases.
“The knuckles are, in fact, the most germ-friendly part of the body,” said CDC spokesman Jeremy Fowler. “People who have just started giving each other dap should really be careful that they don’t end up getting very sick, and should consider partnering with a veteran.”
Unfortunately, now that black Americans no longer give each other dap, there are few experts around to teach whites how to perform the gesture safely. 45-year old Adina Washington, an assistant curator at the Museaum of Afro-Caribbean Blackness in Brooklyn, says it serves new dappers right if they hurt themselves.
“First Jazz, then rock and roll, and now this?” Washington said, pounding her desk for emphasis. “What’s next, colloquialisms like ‘word,’ or ‘bling bling?’ Next thing you know, white people will be doing the Soulja Boy.”
“DNA” is a guest contributor for Blackline. He posts regularly on his blog at TooSense.net.
I'm a member of the diversity council in my company - one of few white folks - and I'm often called on for my opinion. Now granted I've done over 10 years of diversity work, but why are you assuming the guys on the regional councils are naive?
I'm also a member of a diversity organization that holds an annual 4 day conference, and we always try to find a frame to discuss whiteness. Last year was most successful. Again, white folks are in the minority, so the four or five women launched a workshop we called, "Everything you ever wanted to know about white people, but were afraid to ask."
It was a hit. We were asked pertinent questions, not jabs, and the most interesting question, that actually stumped us, was "what about being White brings you joy?" Everything we named was either a class thing or was about avoiding what People of Color face all the time (being stalked in stores).
I think you are way too isolated as a white guy - WACAN is forming an on-line dialogue for folks who've attended the White Privilege Conference - there were 900 folks, and probably 300 or more white folks, and all of them that I met have done their own work and are savvy. You really have to reach out more to realize you aren't the only cool white person around.
--Nancy Arvold
DiversityInc partner and cofounder Luke Visconti responds:
Comparing average business white men to people who have sought out WACAN is apples and oranges.
Yes, I'm assuming a company that doesn't even apply for the DiversityInc Top 50 has low quality training and "diversity councils" with very little structure and business planning. That's based on my eight years of experience running the Top 50 competition, benchmarking hundreds of companies and presenting to hundreds of "diversity councils."
Most white people in corporate America have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to "diversity" and succumb to making statements that express ignorance to a degree that is detrimental (i.e. "it's all about parenting" or "those people don't value education").
Your mention of being "cool" is interesting. "Cool" has nothing to do with this. If you think you're "cool" and find yourself speaking in "vernacular" or shaking hands in any way but the (white) traditional way, you may want to think again.
Curious college choice pays off for Grandview High School grad
By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star
Josh Packwood got bounced around as a kid.
He had to move in with friends after his family was evicted. His father couldn’t speak or walk because of a motorcycle-train accident. His mother struggled. The family broke up.
But Packwood still had his choice of colleges when he graduated from Grandview High School in 2004. The Ivy League liked his academic excellence and SAT scores. Columbia University was one of several schools to offer him a scholarship.
Packwood had always wanted to live in New York, but instead of Columbia, he decided on Morehouse College in Atlanta.
A curious choice, considering Packwood is white.
On Sunday, though, Packwood will graduate as the 2008 valedictorian, the first white student to do so in the 141-year history of Morehouse, which has never counted more than a handful of white students among its enrollment of roughly 3,000.
“Absolutely no regrets,” Packwood, 22, said from his new office at Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street banking and securities firm where he started work last week.
“I wanted to get to New York someday, and here I am. I think I’ve always been the kind to take the path less traveled. Sure, at first I was known as the white kid on campus, but later on, I was just Josh. And the way I view the world now … I don’t think I could have ended up any better.”
The one thing that didn’t turn out good was that his father will not be present for Sunday’s graduation. He died in October, three days before Packwood’s final interview for a Rhodes Scholarship.
Packwood had just left the office of Anne Watts, associate vice president for academic affairs at Morehouse, when he got word of his father’s death.
He fell to the floor and cried. Watts, his Rhodes coach, pulled him back into her office and sat him down. She knew of his father’s disability and how much Packwood wanted his dad to see him walk across the graduation stage.
“After a while, he squared his shoulders and dried his tears,” Watts remembered. “Then he told me he had to go to Kansas City and take care of things for his father.
“He told me he had to go do what a man does.”
A history of success
Officials at Grandview High were not surprised to hear of Packwood’s college honors.
He is remembered there as a friendly, gifted student, fine athlete and champion debater who was always involved in school activities. He said his drive was due partly to having seen friends make bad choices and end up in trouble
“Everybody knew Josh, and everybody liked him,” said Joyce Caruthers, an academic counselor. “We are very proud of him. We’re not surprised at his success, but maybe a little surprised at his college choice.”
On one hand, some people were surprised Packwood chose Morehouse because he’s white. On the other hand, one Morehouse recruiter was surprised to learn Packwood wasn’t black.
Packwood had sent information to the all-men’s school and visited after learning about it from a girl he’d met in Kansas City. She attended nearby Spelman College, the women’s school.
Impressed with Packwood’s academic credentials, the recruiter invested heavily in phone calls and correspondence, trying to snag him from elite schools such as Columbia and Stanford.
But the two had never met. Finally, one day while Packwood was getting ready for a Grandview track meet, the recruiter called to make another pitch.
Packwood, speaking on his cell phone, thanked the man for calling but said he had to get on his shoes for an event.
“Well, don’t let a white kid dust you,” the recruiter jested.
Hmmm. Packwood asked the man to take another look at his application, particularly the “ethnicity” box.
“You do know I’m white, right?”
Dead silence.
But the recruiter told Packwood that he was the kind of student Morehouse wanted — whatever his race.
That exchange sealed the deal. Up to then, Packwood worried a bit that Morehouse viewed him as a “token white kid — someone they could steal way from the Ivy League.”
“I knew then they wanted me solely on my merits,” Packwood said.
Natural fit
Aside from the stares at the beginning of his freshman year, Packwood merged smoothly into Morehouse life. He wasn’t the school’s first white student; that person came in the mid-1960s, not long after James Meredith became the first black student at the University of Mississippi.
But black culture wasn’t new to Packwood. His mother had married a black man. He had black step-siblings. Grandview High had been 53 percent black his senior year.
Part of the Morehouse appeal was its rich history. Founded in 1867, just after the Civil War, it has been hailed as the nation’s premier draw for black students, and counts among its alumni such prominent names as Martin Luther King Jr.
Upon arrival there, Packwood jumped into campus life, becoming director of a mentoring program for alternative high school students. He became active in student government. He was voted president of his dormitory and vice president of the Morehouse Business Association.
Students liked him.
“And, of course, I was always asked to give the white perspective to class discussions,” he said.
Watts goes further. Anytime an issue of unfairness or injustice surfaced on campus, Packwood often jumped into the middle of it.
“He was never afraid to speak his mind,” she said. “And sometimes it was not a popular stance from a white student. But Josh had a way of pulling people away from staunch beliefs they had held many a day.
“So tenacious … so gifted. He was always a reminder to me of, ‘To whom much is given, much is required.’ ”
Watts met Packwood that first year. He showed up at her office one day and said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar.
Lots of students do, but she knows how long the odds against success can be, and she tells them: “Let’s look at something else.”
But Packwood’s file made her think he had a chance. Like most aspirants, he needed help with his essay. She gave him some pointers and sent him on his way.
He was back the next day.
“I found him sitting outside my office, with that smile of his … that infectious smile that I will never forget,” Watts said.
Despite his hard work to win the Rhodes Scholarship, Packwood decided to skip the final interview after his father died. But friends and family told him his father would have wanted him to go.
He did so, but fell just short.
“If not for him hurting as much as he was, I think he would have made it,” Watts said.
On the Morehouse Web site, school President Robert Franklin Jr. wrote this of Packwood:
“Josh Packwood is Morehouse. He happens to be Euro-American and brings much appreciated diversity to our campus.”
And of Packwood’s Rhodes quest and father’s death, Franklin wrote: “He had every reason to lose focus and abandon hope, but true forever to Morehouse tradition, he doubled his determination and represented us with great distinction.”
Packwood leaves Morehouse on Sunday with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average. His studies took him to China and the London School of Economics.
Now, he sits in a Wall Street office building high above the city he longed for, a world and years away from the pain of boyhood memories.
That curious college choice, though, will be with him for a while.
His brother, John Robert Packwood, a 2008 Grandview High graduate, is headed to Morehouse in the fall.
A changing landscape
Historically black colleges began to see their first white students shortly after the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schools.
But the numbers remained low until recent years, when some schools — because of affordability, programs and location — began to see jumps in white enrollment.
Lincoln University in Jefferson City, for example, is on the high end of that. In 2005, more than half of its 3,180 students were white (1,659), according to the United Negro College Fund. Closer to the norm are Grambling State University in Louisiana, with 5 percent white enrollment, and Tuskegee University in Alabama, with about 3 percent.
From Chris Faraone's Myspace Blog. Our boy is selling himself short when he says he's just "Pissing In America's Stream of Consciousness." This is on some next shit:
Name-Dropping (From Columbia Journalism Review May/June 2008)
The New York Times rarely refers to rock stars such as Alice Cooper, Moby, and Elton John by their birth names. With few exceptions, Vincent Furnier, Richard Melville Hall, and Reginald Dwight get free passes on their alter egos, as do the likes of American Idol icon Clay Aiken (Clayton Grissom) and anti-Christ superstar Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner).
For some reason, though, the unofficial guideline that once compelled former Times critic Donal Henahan to make subsequent reference to Iggy Pop and Sid Vicious as Mr. Pop and Mr. Vicious (instead of Mr. [James] Osterberg and Mr. [Simon John] Beverly, or even Pop and Vicious) does not apply, apparently, to hip-hop artists. At the Times, the penalty for being a rapper is twofold: you are routinely called out on your birth name (no matter how nerdy and ironic it might be), and you rarely are addressed as "Mr." This nominal double standard surfaces from time to time in hip-hop articles throughout the mainstream press, but due to the Times's extensive urban-music coverage and its eternal struggle with honorific conformity, rap handles seem to inspire more copy dilemmas there.
Despite having sold several million discs and served as president of Def Jam Recordings under his alias, Jay-Z still gets pegged as Shawn Carter. The Times's David M. Halbfinger and Jeff Leeds did so in reporting on the Brooklyn rap entrepreneur's 2007 comeback, as did Los Angeles Times staff writer Richard Cromelin and the Boston Globe's Sarah Rodman. No hip-hop artist is immune—Wu-Tang Clan ringleader RZA (Robert Diggs), Queens heavyweight 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson), and urban mogul Diddy (Sean Combs) are all routinely birth-named in the mainstream press.
Sam Sifton, the Times's culture editor, says that while such decisions are handled on a case-by-case basis, rap artists often get special treatment. "There's a big difference between [Houston rapper] Bun B and Tony Bennett," Sifton says, referring to Bernard Freeman and Anthony Dominick Benedetto, respectively. "Tony Bennett took a stage name, which I think is a little different from taking an alias. Someone like Jay-Z can be Mr. Carter, certainly, or he can just be Jay-Z, but he's never going to be Mr. Z."
But is there a meaningful distinction between a "stage name" and an "alias"? That Sifton made an example of Jay-Z—rather than someone like, say, Ghostface Killah, whose chosen moniker is further outside the mainstream nomenclature—suggests that at the Times, at least, there is, and that rappers are in a class by themselves. Why else would a performer from beyond the rap realm, such as Alicia Keys—who took a stage name (or devised an alias) based on the instrument she plays—have never been outed as Alicia Augello-Cook? In Kelefa Sanneh's October 5, 2003, Times CD roundup, Outkast rappers André 3000 (André Benjamin) and Big Boi (Antwan Patton) got name-dropped, while Erykah Badu's birth name (Erica Wright) was never mentioned.
Even more confusing are articles that seem to follow no logic whatsoever: a December 3, 2006 Times profile on celebrity Sirius Radio hosts refers to rap personality Ludacris as Christopher Bridges (and as "Mr. Bridges" in subsequent references), but allows Eminem (Marshall Mathers), Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus), and Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) to use their stage names. On second reference, though, Bob Dylan is "Mr. Dylan," while Eminem remains Eminem; Snoop is only mentioned once, but judging by former Times treatments he would have been called "Snoop" or "Snoop Dogg" had his name come up again.
"If you look in our archives, which we famously refer to as our compendium of past errors, you'll see plenty of examples of us looking ridiculous," Sifton says. "One of the difficulties that the Times has in addressing contemporary culture, and certainly hip-hop culture, is that we risk looking stupid all the time."
Since it doesn't look like it will be abandoning honorifics any time soon, blanket uniformity might be the best bet for the Times to look less foolish, or at least more consistent. After all, if they can call Brian Warner "Mr. Manson," then surely America's finest newsrooms can honor Calvin Broadus as Mr. Dogg.
A piece today up on Idolator examines alternative rock radio and their love of white rappers. It's a relevant think piece thanks to the success of Flobot's subtle polemic "Handlebars", but the topic was examined a bit better a few years back by The Onion:
Unfamiliar names bubble up on the Billboard singles charts all the time. But usually those names are first encountered in the charts' lower reaches—not way up in the top 10, especially on a chart as slow-moving as Hot Modern Rock Tracks, and especially for a song that strays from the modern rock format. Which is part of why it was so intriguing to find "Handlebars" by the Flobots at No. 7 in only its third week on the chart. To give you an idea of how fast that rise is, the Raconteurs' "Salute Your Solution" reached the same spot in the same amount of time on the chart just a week before it. And that song had the benefit of being by an established band with a previous chart-topper, as well as an insta-release gimmick for its latest album that probably encouraged radio programmers to add the single quickly. Oh yeah, and the Raconteurs are a rock band through and through, tailor-made for the format, while the Flobots are a rap group.
Being that they're on the Modern Rock chart and nowhere to be seen on the hip-hop/R&B charts, the Flobots are pretty obviously not peers of, say, Rick Ross. They're not a crew of MCs, but rather a hip-hop band in The Roots mold—two rappers backed by live musicians—and they're from Denver. And "Handlebars" sounds, well... about like you'd probably expect a white (mostly white?) hip-hop band from Denver to sound like. The verses feature a stiff but slightly impressive double-time flow, and the song builds to an intense crescendo, as the lyric's seemingly innocent theme becomes gradually more sinister and, in a vague, wishy washy way, politically conscious. It's not hard to see why the 'twist' of the song has hooked radio listeners so quickly, even if it sounds like a really toothless cover of an unreleased Rage Against The Machine song to these ears. "Handlebars" first appeared on an independent EP in 2005, and was re-released on the band's major-label debut Fight With Tools over six months ago, which makes the song's very recent, very rapid ascendance even more surprising.
The meteoric rise of the Flobots gives me a good opportunity to talk about alt-rock radio's strange, unpredictable relationship with hip-hop, and the queasy race issues that go along with it. If alternative rock is at all still counter-culture enough to be considered an "alternative" to anything, it's hip-hop and its influence in pop and R&B, which has become increasingly pervasive over the past two decades. And outside of the "everything but rap and country" demographic that may or may not be comprised mainly of strawmen, odds are most of the people listening to rock radio like at least some hip-hop. So it becomes more of a question of what kind of rap they want to hear alongside their guitar-toting favorites, and how much of it they'll tolerate.
Modern rock radio has frequently shown love to songs that feature rapping, and to artists of color, but rarely at the same time. The notable exception to that rule is the aforementioned Rage ATM, whose '90s hits to this day remain a format staple, reliably dispensing fist-pumping anger like a cash machine every afternoon. But they were a racially diverse band that played hard rock with hip-hop elements. More traditional hip-hop acts have had a much spottier history. Outkast's "Hey Ya!" hit No. 16 on Modern Rock at the peak of its word-conquering ubiquity, but that was, of course, a guitar-driven pop song that just happened to be by one half of a veteran rap group. Cypress Hill, the Latino rap group beloved by every white pot smoker I knew in high school, who headlined Lollapalooza and whose "Insane In The Brain" got as much play on Alternative Nation as on Yo! MTV Raps, only hit the Modern Rock chart with later singles that deliberately catered to the format: "(Rock) Superstar" and the Clash-sampling "What's Your Number?" Few hip-hop acts were ever as popular with white rock fans as Public Enemy, but Chuck D only achieved rock airplay with his comically vapid guest appearance on Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing." And there were a number of more recent rap hits that I'd heard on rock stations here and there, and was surprised to find no Modern Rock history for whatsoever: Jay-Z's "99 Problems," The Roots' "The Seed 2.0," even the Gym Class Heroes' "Cupid's Chokehold."
Otherwise, the history of rapping on rock radio is lily white. The Beastie Boys became mainstays of alternative radio in the early '90s, just as they were becoming irrelevant to hip hop audiences. Eminem scraped the lower reaches of the Modern Rock top 20 with three of his biggest hits. Funky honkies like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 311, Cake, and Beck have all had long careers full of popular singles with and without rapping, while one-hit wonders like Crazy Town, the post-House of Pain Everlast, and the N.W.A.-covering Dynamite Hack have dropped rhymes on rock airwaves from time to time. The Barenaked Ladies and the Butthole Surfers both scored their only Modern Rock No. 1's ("One Week" and "Pepper," respectively) with songs that featured rapped verses.
Active rock stations have always allowed much less hip-hop influence to seep in, save for the most aggressive rap-rock hybrids like Limp Bizkit, most of whom went out of fashion years ago. And as I mentioned in my last column, even rap-metal survivors like Kid Rock and Linkin Park have stripped the staccato rhymes out of most of their recent hits, while Anthony Kiedis has aged, horrifyingly, into a balladeer. In general, alt-rock radio is more reliant on guitar rock now than at any point since the mid-'90s, right before ska-punk, "electronica," the swing revival, and McG videos came along and made things garishly bright, bouncy, and self-consciously eclectic. You might still hear "Paul Revere" or Sublime every hour on the hour on most alt-rock stations, but new hits from breaking artists generally tend to fall somewhere along the grunge/emo/nu-metal axis.
Without getting into a Sasha Frere-Jones-style debate about whether rock radio was better when it was a melting pot of racial diversity (or, at least, mostly white folks with diverse influences), there definitely appears to have been a tidal shift. And I'd previously assumed that there wouldn't be any significant rap crossover to Modern Rock happening in the foreseeable future, especially with the face of underground hip-hop increasingly turning toward hipster-friendly party rap along the lines of Spank Rock rather than the conscious rap that has historically connected more with white rock fans. In a way, the earnest, vaguely jam band-ish Flobots feel like a throwback to a strain of indie rap that's been on the wane since the beginning of the decade. Time will tell whether "Handlebars" sticks on the chart and yields follow-up hits, though. They may end up as just a brief, unusual blip on the Modern Rock landscape like Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae MC whose "King Without A Crown" peaked two years ago at No. 7—the same spot currently occupied by "Handlebars."
From the alternative paper in Richmond, VA. This is a profile of the white dude that wrote for Chappelle and the Chris Rock Show. He's now a writer for SNL, but you can see him on the "I Know Black People" game show by clicking below and going to Spike TV's website.
Live from New York
Behind the scenes of “Saturday Night Live” with Richmond-raised comedy writer Bryan Tucker.
by Brent Baldwin
Submerged in a festive swarm of “Saturday Night Live” writers — a mix of balding 40-somethings and fresh-faced young hipsters with toothpick-thin girlfriends — Bryan Tucker bounds down the stairwell from the writers’ room on the ninth floor of NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center to the eighth floor of studio 8H. Strangely enough, the person leading the charge is Jonah Hill, chunky young star of “Superbad,” just one of many celebrities hanging out backstage tonight.
...
The unseen workings of “SNL” are controlled chaos, the result of painstaking detail and hours of writing and rewriting. For Tucker, the funny white kid from the suburbs of Brandermill with a knack for riffing on hip-hop culture, it’s the pinnacle. Since moving to New York in 1997, Tucker, 36, has gone from unknown stand-up comic to a hardworking comedy writer. He’s worked for such shows as “Late Show With David Letterman,” “The Chris Rock Show,” “Mad TV” and “Chappelle’s Show,” where he solidified his reputation as the white chocolate of comedy.
...
Tucker was able to sell enough jokes to quit temping and focus on his comedy, including his stand-up routine. He learned how to apply for more television writing jobs from other stand-ups. He got an even bigger break in 1999 when he was offered a job on HBO’s “The Chris Rock Show.”
It was the perfect environment for a young comedic writer. Rock — at the height of his fame — treated his writers well, taking them to baseball games and movie premieres; they’d even occasionally hang out with Bill Cosby. Even more important, he let the writers produce their sketches and control every aspect: casting, design, production, even sitting in the editing room.
“You took all the credit or all the blame, which was empowering and good,” Tucker says, who also learned to shoot and edit material during his two seasons there. “I had no idea how great I had it on that show because it was my first job.”
Tucker got a jolt of encouragement when his first big sketch aired. It was called “Daddy Still Has a Flattop,” a parody of the old ABC After School Specials.
“Chris [Rock] wanted to hire black writers on the show, and the head writer was black. But what he cared about the most was making it funny. He loved Woody Allen, surreal humor, and he wanted to bring that to a black audience,” Tucker says. “Mostly he said, ‘Don’t try to write black, just write it funny and it will be black because I’m doing it.’ That was a good lesson for me early on.”
Little did Tucker know that this job was the first step in his becoming known as a white guy who could write for black comedians. The irony isn’t lost on him.
“I came from Brandermill, suburban Richmond, so it wasn’t like I had a lot of black culture around me,” he says. “It was just watching it from the periphery and I was a fan [of hip-hop culture]. It was more about making things funny and not being scared of black culture than it was being a part of it.”
...
Tucker quickly struck comedy gold again when he began writing for the out-of-left-field Comedy Central smash hit “Chappelle’s Show.” Dave Chappelle and his former writing partner, Neal Brennan, wrote 80 percent of the material. Tucker knew Brennan from doing stand-up around New York City and began to send in jokes to the show on a freelance basis. He was hired midway through the second season, one of only two full-time writers the show ever hired. He also began appearing in sketches.
The industry took notice after the astronomical DVD sales of “Chappelle’s Show” — it eventually became one of the biggest-selling television DVDs of all time, moving more than 3 million units. “I didn’t have any producer credit or anything. Dave and Neal got a nice cut of that,” Tucker says. “But that’s OK.”
After Chappelle notoriously ended the show for personal reasons (“I think he just wanted to be in control of his work,” Tucker says), leaving at least $50 million on the table, Tucker was unemployed again. But Brennan put in a good word for him at “SNL” and Tucker was hired six months later.
It's not that it has been a slow news day or weekend (more on that tomorrow). But a reader and fellow blogger sent this in and it is cool enough to pass on. This piece is a journal entry from a blogger named "Daisy" on her experiences as a white girl with a black name. While "Daisy" is her screen moniker she claims that her birth name would cause her to be outed pretty easily as a white girl.
:: At a retail location, a white male sales rep asked who was purchasing the books for a display, which was my job: _______ is, he was told. He blanched, shook his head adamantly and had something of a fit. He needed someone who knew about READING.
:: Employees are attending a seminar and a list of attendees' names given over the phone, to reserve seating . Wait, WHAT'S that name, again, who? "Has she finished high school?" (Everyone must finish high school to have the job in the first place, so why this question?)
:: "That's the worst name I ever heard, unless you're black, and you ain't!"
:: "Did your mom expect you to be black, or wasn't she sure who your daddy was?"
:: Lots of canceled dates, due to my name. Lots of changed invitations. And these were (white) guys my friends wanted me to meet, fellas they assured me were nice. I would invariably hear that the guy snorted derisively and/or initially freaked out: "I'm not going out with ______!!!" --until informed that I was blond and pale. Then he would.
But then, I wouldn't.
Various factors have influenced my politics. My mother was an EEOC representative and disability activist. She believed all people should be treated equally, and she lived her politics. And somewhere along the line, she gave me a black name, which has helped to guide my life. I have been forced, even against my will, to identify with a despised people.
"I know, I gave you a black name! I still thought I made it up," she told me, some time before her final illness.
"But it's been GOOD FOR YOU!" she announced. And then she smiled, satisfied.
It’s a rare piece of writing that engenders the wrath of black militants and white supremacists, but that’s just what a March 13 column by Kent State photojournalism major Beth Rankin did after it was published under the headline, “I Am Not A White Bitch.”
The column criticized the Kent State student organization Black United Students, or BUS, for promoting a black supremacist agenda and demonstrating hostility toward whites. Rank described being called a “white bitch” at two recent BUS events she was assigned to cover for the Daily Kent Stater.
“I am not a white bitch. I am a straight, white girl who will always do everything in her power to support the plight of all minorities,” Rankin wrote. “I don’t use the color of your skin against you, so please do not use mine against me.”
BUS members responded to the column by posting fliers across the Kent State campus depicting a figure dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe next to Rankin’s name.
But white supremacists were hardly claiming her as one of their own. “Fuck this bitch. She needs to be kept stable for breeding purposes only,” wrote Vanguard News Network senior member “Iouotiviacoc.”
“I want to hand this bitch the heads of her loved ones. I want to drink her tears before I shed her blood.”
Outraged by Rankin’s pledge of support for civil rights despite her own experiences with reverse racism, dozens of other racists posting to websites like Vanguard News Network and Stormfront branded Rankin a race traitor and threatened her life.
“These are the Whites that need to be killed—worthless niggerloving scum,” wrote VNN senior member “Ironguard1940.”
Last Wednesday, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, the FBI office in Cleveland notified Rankin that white supremacists were posting death threats and were distributing her telephone number, E-mail address, and work schedule.
On March 27, two weeks after Rankin’s column was published, about 100 students, including Rankin, attended a regularly scheduled meeting of the BUS, which a campus reporter described as “heated but peaceful.”
Meanwhile, Rankin’s column remains a hot topic on white supremacist discussion boards, where the tone remains anything but peaceful. “The solution to this particular problem and those like her [is to] pack freaks such as her into cattle cars and double-time them into the Grand Canyon as per the solution proffered by [National Alliance founder] Dr. William L. Pierce,” wrote VNN junior member “Zek S 854.”
Going for a classic VNN misogynist/racist/anti-Semitic trifecta, Frank Toliver summed up the VNN thread by calling Rankin, “another race traitor whore and proof positive why white women need to be put back into the kitchen, well away from any jew trendiness.”
From the New York Law Journal. More power to this guy. Follow ups here on the blog for how it turns out:
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held for the first time Tuesday that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 may be violated where a white man is fired for associating with a person of another race -- in this case his black wife.
...
"We reject this restrictive reading of Title VII," Judge Guido Calabresi said for the court in Holcomb v. Iona College, 06-3815-cv. "The reason is simple: where an employee is subjected to adverse action because an employer disapproves of interracial association, the employee suffers discrimination because of the employee's own race."
...
Holcomb was an assistant to head coach Jeff Ruland when the Iona College Gaels won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference in 1998, 2000 and 2001. He was also an assistant when the team's fortunes began to sour and school officials started contemplating a shakeup.
In addition to Holcomb, Ruland had two other assistants, Tony Chiles, a black man, and Rob O'Driscoll, a white man. In May 2004, Holcomb was asked to resign. He refused, and was then fired. Chiles, faced with the same decision, chose to resign. The college elected to keep O'Driscoll.
Ruland was retained, in part, because the college was on the hook for his $300,000 salary. He was fired in 2007 after a 2-28 season.
Like Ruland, who is also white, Holcomb was married to a black woman. He claimed that Richard Petriccione, a vice president at the college, made a number of racist comments about black players on the team and used a racial epithet to describe Holcomb's fiancee -- an accusation Petriccione dismissed as "ridiculous."
Holcomb also claimed that Shawn Brennan, director of athletics at the New Rochelle, N.Y., school, tried to bar local high school players -- the majority of whom were black -- and Holcomb's wife from functions held by the "Goal Club," an alumni fundraising and social organization. Brennan did so, Holcomb claimed, so as not to antagonize white donors.
Holcomb also alleges, and Brennan denies, that Brennan, on seeing some of the team's players dressed in hip-hop styles, asked Ruland to see if he could "get these colored boys to dress like the white guys on the team."
Southern District of New York Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed Holcomb's suit, saying that even if Petriccione and Brennan had engaged in racist conduct, Holcomb had "not established any facts that link these alleged racist tendencies ... to the administration's evaluation of the basketball program."
She said Holcomb had shown "no evidence" that the decision to fire him was driven by improper motives.
The circuit, however, said that, taking the allegations as true for the purposes of deciding the appeal, Holcomb had alleged discrimination "as a result of his membership in a protected class under Title VII" and, as to Petriccione and Brennan, "had adduced evidence of racially improper motives."
"[T]he record permits an inference that Brennan sought to reduce African-American presence at basketball program events for the sake of alumni relations and fundraising. From this perspective, it would make sense for Brennan to want to keep O'Driscoll, as the only white member of the staff without a black girlfriend or spouse, rather than Holcomb," Judge Calabresi said. "And in the case of Petriccione, there is clearly evidence in the record indicating his disapproval of Holcomb's marriage to a black woman, and indeed, of Petriccione's willingness to act on his disapproval by insulting Holcomb in public."
RACE-NEUTRAL EXPLANATION
While Holcomb had laid out a prima facie case for discrimination, Calabresi said, the college had offered a race-neutral explanation for its actions, including an evaluation of O'Driscoll that said he was the only one performing at an acceptable level.
Calabresi said there is "ample evidence that Iona had good reason to make some changes" to its men's basketball program.
"The team was doing relatively poorly on the court, the academic performance of its players was disconcerting, the players and coaches were the subject of an NCAA investigation, and the college faced criticism from fans and in the local press," he said.
With the college offering a nondiscriminatory explanation, he said, Holcomb "may no longer rely on the presumption of discrimination raised by the prima facie case," and the case must be returned to the lower court for a jury to determine whether "Holcomb has established by a preponderance of the evidence that his termination was the result of racial discrimination."
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