File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9804, message 236


Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 20:07:47 -0400
From: janedoe-AT-echonyc.com (Theresa M. Senft)
Subject: Head Negro in Charge?


Hi All,

I just wrote the following (kinda) polemic, below. Wonder if other people
have thoughts/riffs/sentiments on it? It's a real rough draft, lots of
first thoughts, and I'd love it if other people who have been thinking
about this stuff more fully spoke up. Hopefully on the list! If not,
private is fine by me, as well.

Thanks,
Terri


------------
Head Negro in Charge?
By Theresa M. Senft


The cover of the most recent (April 1998) issue of _Boston Magazine_ looks
like every other local glossy I've seen lately: white background of a
"luxury home", blonde haired, blue eyed female perched in an overstuffed
chair, hand on chin, gazing at camera. Welcome to Spring.

 At the top of the magazine's cover, perched above the "Boston" logo, reads
what presumably is the title of the lead story: "The Best Places to Live".
To the model's right, lined up adjacent to her knee, are the words "Top
Exotic Restaurants" and "Fashion: Cool Color for Spring".

To the model's right, ironically perched at white woman crotch-level are
the words:

         HEAD NEGRO IN CHARGE:
         Why Harvard's Skip Gates
         May be the Most Important
         Black Man in America.

----------------

Inside the mag, there is a long profile of Heny Louis, (note 'insider' use
of the name "Skip" on cover of mag) Gates, running well over 15 pages. The
profile was written by Cheryl Bentsen, who (the credits say) writes for Los
Angeles Times and New York Magazine. She also wrote "MAASAI DAYS, an
account of life in an African Village."

In the Table of Contents, the copy reads like this:

"As chief interpreter of the black experience for White America, Harvard's
Henry Louis Gates Jr. may be the most influential black man in the United
States today."

On the articles front page, the large copy continues, in this way:

" Having created a power base that extends deep into the nation's
media-entertainment complex, Gates has brought money and glamour to the
country's great racial debate. In the parlance of black activists, he has
become the new Head Negro in Charge."

-------------------

If coverage in the BOSTON GLOBE (one daily paper)is any indication, the
reaction among Boston's black leadership to the cover headline,"Head Negro
in Charge", has been heated. Some activists point out that the cover is
deliberately provocative, and that given Boston's history as a town of
racists, provocation is a dangerous tactic. Others counter, pointing out
that when black leaders storm out of meetings (as one gentleman did) with
the all-white Boston Mag editorial team, "Then they are just setting
themselves as the brand new HNIC, and the cycle continues."

Boston Mag's position remains unrepentant. Their first line of defense is,
"We gave Skip Gates the longest profile in a mag he's ever had." The second
defense is, "Read the article, and you'll see why we ran the headline."

--------------------

I'm trying to tease out a series of questions I have on this subject.

First and foremost, I'm interested in thinking about reading: specifically
about the way in which "reading" the language of a magazine cover differs
from reading the article within. This is one reason why I chose to explain
the cover of this issue of Boston mag in such performance-oriented
detail.Particulary, I am interested in the *image* of a white woman
juxtaposed with the *text* of the Head Negro.

This textly ghost of the Negro, a kind of ancient word these days, drives
me past the cover of Boston Mag. I dive into the thick white pages, hoping
to find a reason why someone, in this day and age, would use the word,
"Negro". What I find is  Bentsen's explanation that it is the polite
translation for the *real* term: Head Nigger in Charge.

Part of me thinks,  why stand on politeness, here?  But then, politeness
may be part of the program. "Negro", these days, is a sort of impotent
word, lacking neither the acceptability of "Black" (or black) nor the
abject threat of "Nigger". It's hard to think of a "Negro with Attitude."

And yet, if there was a nice NWA, it seems, its Gates. I'm told that
Gates's most exciting contribution to scholarship is his status as a
charming celebrity: his income (in excess of one million per year,
apparently) , his consumption of cars, his embrace of DuBois theory of the
"ten percentile of outstanding black thinkers" --these are all documented
in detail.Over and over, he is referred to as an "intellectual
entrepeneur".

According to the Bentson's breathy version of it all, capital in which
Gates, "entrepeneur", traffics, is African American studies. Gates is proud
that his "Dream Team" at Harvard is "resisting tokenism"  --the articles
names fellow Harvard "Dream Team" scholars Cornel West, Suzanne Preston
Blier, Lawrence Bobo, and Evenly Brooks Higginbotham, Anthony Appiah,
William Julius Wilson, and Lani Guinie. Nevertheless, the article states,
"Sitting at the head of this Round Table, of course, is Skip Gates."

The article sets up an interesting vision of Black Studies within the
academy, where Gates is firmly entrenched in the New Guard (the Yale story
of being 'passed over at tenure-time' is detailed, here.)  Among Gates's
critics, only one scholar,is mentioned: Martin L. Kilson (described as
"being seen as old and eccentric these days) . Postcolonial critics (I'm
thinking of Paul Gilroy's re-readings of Gates's work on rap music in The
Black Atlantic) go unmentioned.

Against Gates in the Academy, the article pits another black male--The
Reverend Eugene F. Rivers--in the political trenches. While the article
takes pains to point out that Rivers "took classes at Harvard and Yale, but
never graduated", it nonetheless paints a sympathetic version of the
"ivory tower" gripe that all political activists have with academics. Gates
defends himself in the standard format: in effect, "Intellectual work is
what I do for the black people. Other people do other things, and I respect
that. They ought to respect me."

I would like to point out here that I am in sympathy with Gates's argument
about intellectual work qua work, and in truth, I am a fan of his writing.
Nevertheless, something strange is going on in this profile. Why are there
only two types of black men, the kind who are "Black Panther types" and the
kind who will dialogue with White America? Why are there only two types of
academics, old white guys and Friends of Skip Gates? Why are there only two
forms of black activism, the academy or the trenches?


Its this kind of dichotomizing that sets up the end to the story. Gates is
the Good Black, the article seems to want to argue. In fact, "Head Negro In
Charge" doesn't seem that bad a moniker, by the end of this piece.
Historically, the HNIC had a valued place in white plantation homes: he
spoke English; he often was educated. Would that all negroes aspire to be
the head, the logic once ran.

Postcolonial critique, however,  allows us to see violence in the image of
the HNIC as a "benevolent fetish". "A fetish", someone once wrote, "is a
story, masquerading as an object." What, I'd like to ask, is the story that
functions beneath the grinning mask of the HNIC? Historically, we know that
the myth of the "Good Black"  allowed whites to identify, and objectify,
the "Bad Black". The good black worked in the home. The bad black worked in
the field. Those days are past. So why is Boston Magazine back to casting
(albeit it with ambivalence)  good blacks as the academics and bad ones as
the scary activists? Aren't we past this stuff yet?

Profiling Gates, Boston Mag had a great opportunity to write a really
challenging series of questions. Is Gates, they might have asked the new
fetishized "Great Black Hope" of white liberals in and out of the academy?
Is Gates, the "intellectual entrepeneur" a kind of  as a postmodern "Good
Black" for our times? If this is the case, are "non-entrepeneurial"
intellects, "Bad Blacks"?  Is Gates, himself a complex man, functioning as
both an icon and a fetish in Black American identity politics? What do you
gain, and what do you lose, when you combine the words, Black,
Intellectual, and Celebrity?

Boston Magazine asked none of those questions. In fact, they made a
conscious choice to change the headline from a "provacative interrogative"
(ie, "Head Negro in Charge?") to a predictable (if shocking) statement of
Business as Usual. Truthfully, it's just not far from the label "The Most
Important Black Man in America" to the justification:  "the chief
Interpretor of black experience for ***White America***". To date, Gates
has yet to publicly comment on the cover of the magazine in question,
further instantiating his icon/fetish status for those who care to read in
this way.

Having heeded the editors advice to 'read the article' before judging the
headline making headlines, I  return back to reading  the cover of Boston
Magazine. Suddenly, things are a little clearer. "No need to worry about
the black male presence marauding under the crotch of your Boston Brahmin
model," I'm reading. "Forget the angry noise of rap, contemporary black
performance art, or the Black Atlantic. The Man is here, Boston's got him."

And the best news is that he's Negro.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERESA M. SENFT                         |
                                         |
Co-Editor                                | email: janedoe-AT-echonyc.com
Issue 17 :"Sexuality and Cyberspace"     |
                                         | Mailing address: 7 Otokomi Rd.
WOMEN & PERFORMANCE:                     |                  Nantucket, Ma
A JOURNAL OF FEMINIST THEORY             |                  02554
Published in conjunction with New York   |
University's Dept of Performance Studies |
                                         |
Our website:                             | Terri's website:
http://www.echonyc.com/~women            | http://www.echonyc.com/~janedoe
_________________________________________|____________________________________





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