As we’ve all witnessed to in the last few days and weeks, the culture of collective punishing of black protest in the public sphere has become the norm in the United States.
By protest, I don’t mean what we’ve come to know in the national historical imagination of the civil rights movements and people marching through the streets. Instead, instances of black celebrities — athletes and entertainers — that express their opinions or emotions publicly on national television better watch out because the firing squad is about to publicly execute them, metaphorically speaking. We’ve all followed the public media’s scrutiny of Kanye’s (in my opinion ‘truth-telling’) blow up at the VMAs, Michael Jordan’s bitterness towards everyone in spite of his illustrious career full of domination, and Serena Williams and Stephen Jackson’s complaints that were followed by severe fines levied by the respective professional sports associations that they belong too (by contract, I’m assuming).
Everyone — including myself — feels entitled to commenting, criticizing each of them for their sense of entitlement. As “Americans” that watch TV together, we care so much — almost too much — about speaking against black public opinions. Granted, each case is vastly different. It’s difficult to compare (and to watch) Kanye shit on Taylor Swift’s MTV parade to the possible suspension of Serena Williams from future USTA Grand Slam events for her “I will shove this tennis ball down your throat” comment to a line-judge. But as Andrew Sharp of the Sports Blogging Nation (SBNation) has written, there are stark contradiction and hypocritical judgments of certain athletes’ comments based on the success of certain athletes.
But those exceptions to the rule are few and far between. For every Lebron or Kobe protected by the higher-ups, there are thousands of Stephen Jacksons or Jeremy Shockey’s (white) for that matter. Yet Jeremy Shockey goes untouched. To add to that, David Zirin, cultural critic, points out the hypocrisy of judgment based around race, as Roger Federer (white by American standards) was free from evaluation for his similar tirade against judges and his racket. There have been other instances where anti-war made by black and white athletes have been construed much differently by the media and consumers of these athletes. So, it makes me wonder why we care so much about containing moments of black opinion in the public sphere that is national media.
There’s something weird about television itself in the way it makes people citizens and in turn feel like they’re doing their national duties through their consumption of television. Television is called “national television” for a reason. As several scholars in media studies have noted, there’s an assumption that the viewers constitute a collective “America” as we can watch the same things and we’re all witness to historic events on an everyday basis, together. Generally speaking, television corporations bank on that rhetoric of multicultural unity and nation in their marketing of shows because it makes dollars and cents.
On a separate but interrelated note, in a post civil rights era, there’s seems to be some sort of common sense logic that we all SHOULD speak out against black opinions or that these opinions need to be publicly scrutinized in a public forum. The backlash always seems to come in the very context that because black entertainers and athletes (in particular) have “made it” given that they are awarded with million dollar salaries, there should NEVER be a moment of black discontent, publicly. These parts speak and supposedly represent the whole. In a post-civil rights and post-affirmative action era, discourses of racial empowerment are ONLY understood through ideas of class mobility. For some reason, the nation — collectively — removes the “right” to complain given the “right” by black people to make millions. Basically, I’m suggesting that the ways that we understand and react to any form of black ‘protest’ reflect the vestiges of the fall-out of civil rights movement and the strategic attempts by conservatives and liberals to control social justice agendas (as flawed as they might be many of the times) that contest the exploitative marriage between racism, capitalism, and nationalism.
In NO WAY am I suggesting that any of these instances are platforms for social justice agendas. But I will say that there is an eerie sentiment of punishing black opinions that smells strongly like other forms of black punishment in the law and of President Barack O’Bama and members of his administration.
These public forums of scrutiny have proliferated, thanks to the internet. And I will go as far as to say these are metaphorical ‘lynchings’ and I will go there because of the type of public fanfare that we all seem to enjoy from it. Though I’m not condoning all the way that Kanye publicly protested the award nomination, nor am I appreciative of the Stephen Jackson’s contribution to the on-going mess that is the Golden State Warriors (my favorite team unfortunately), I do wonder why people have become so invested in speaking out against black opinion … and often together. Would this be the same if it was a White athlete?
For a very interesting reading on the consumption of kanye and his middle class striving and denunciations, click here
