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 _________________________________________|____________________________________ --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005