arguchik | of michael richards and racism

(this is slightly edited from when i first posted it this morning...)

by now i'm sure everyone has read about, and probably watched the video of, michael richards' (kramer from seinfeld) racist rant. he was onstage at a comedy club, doing a standup act, and went on a horrible tirade against two (possibly more?) black men in the audience. he referenced lynching (referenced? that isn't the word for it. he seemed wistful that it was no longer an option.), and i don't even know how many times he called them the n-word.

i debated whether or not to blog about this. it's such an easy mark for analysis, such an easy way for a white person to say, "god how terrible! how offensive!" and to feel like they've "done something" about racism. without actually having to do anything. this was not a subtle instance of institutional racism (which is only subtle when you're not on the receiving end of it); it was a blatant eruption of hate speech (which means: white people--by which i mean "those enjoying the luxuries and blindnesses, the luxury of blindness, the blind luxury, of white privilege"--can see it too).

and the aftermath has been inevitable: richards apparently apologized, and kept repeating "i'm not a racist. i'm not a racist." his friends (seinfeld, most notably) abhor his words and say incredulously, "he's not a racist. he's not a racist." apparently seinfeld appeared on letterman last night and they patched richards in via satellite or something...i don't know what they said, but i'll bet everyone agreed that the incident was "unfortunate," perhaps even "an abhorrent mistake" for someone who is "not a racist."

and therein lies the problem, also the reason eruptions like this interest me (i.e. why they don't simply "horrify" me): we essentialize racism in the same ways that we essentialize race. that's why an eruption like this is met with the rhetoric of incomprehensibility, the logic of "how could this happen?" we constantly "check" with ourselves, verifying with a mania for repetition that would make freud rub his hands with glee: "no, i'm not a racist. see how awful i think this man's words were? see how awful i think this man is, for being such a racist? i'm not a racist." it's a ridiculous dichotomy: racist / not racist, as if "racist" were an essence, something inherently true about a person, ineffable and embedded within them like a biological trait. if it were only ridiculous, this dichotomy, i'd roll my eyes, do the quick theoretical work of deconstruction, and be done with it. but it's more insidious than that: it does regressive, oppressive cultural work, because it represses knowledge about all of the other places where racism resides--that's what i mean by "the luxury of blindness," which is a necessary component of producing and reproducing white privilege. if we can point to a person like michael richards and say, "there he is! he's out now! he's a racist!" and banish him from stage and society, we can feel good about ourselves for having fought a courageous battle against racism, for helping to eject it from our society and from our lives, and then go on about the business (which i mean quite literally) of living lives structured by white privilege.

meanwhile racism's material effects continue to proliferate, morphing to blunt the equalizing and liberatory work sought through changing laws and cultural norms, in those places where dominance and power really live: in law, institutional structures, divisions of labor and wealth, and in language. rather than simply ousting "kramer" as a racist--and please don't misunderstand me as thinking that he shouldn't be held accountable for his display--we need to ask why these verbal weapons lay so closely to hand, for this angry white man on a stage; and how they get mobilized in situations like that. we need to recognize that racism is not an identity--and this is difficult, because recognizing this makes it impossible for a white person to ever say "i'm not a racist." racism is a social formation, it's part of american social and economic structures, and it's embedded in material conditions and practices that produce a differential structure of privilege and dominance. if you're white, you have access to white privilege; that access and privilege take forms of which you may have little or no conscious awareness. we need to do the hard work of rooting out and draining away the power of racism, wherever we meet it--including within ourselves, our lives--which means also draining away the power of its twin: white privilege.