The Race Card
Recently, I watched a young black man deliver a speech at a contest. He was dynamic and forceful and charismatic. He got a standing ovation and won the contest. But there were aspects of his speech that I found problematical.
The subject of his speech was the disparity in rewards for whites and blacks for similar efforts. The young man is right; that’s a problem that needs to be continuously addressed until the disparity is gone. It is completely unacceptable that any social transaction be based solely on race. We need to fight for racial equality. But we need to fight for the equality of all races, not just black with white.
In order to fight effectively, we need to be informed. When we speak, we need to speak with the authority of truth behind us. Otherwise, no matter how valid our points are, we will lose our audience. That’s what happened with this young man’s speech and me. The people who applauded him and awarded him first place in the contest were black. It was a black function. He was preaching to the choir.
No one gets to be a change agent by preaching to the choir. Change agents preach to the unconverted as well as to the converted. How in the world can opinions change if no one with a different opinion ever hears the message? And if those with differing opinions hear the message but it’s interlarded with nonsense, how can they be expected to change their opinions?
This young man spoke of white teachers favoring white students at the expense of black students. He spoke of being discouraged from speaking up in classes taught by white teachers. He spoke of different and harsher disciplinary actions toward black students by white teachers and administrators. These are enormous problems and must be addressed. Our children and young people deserve much better than this.
But then he spoke of Cocoa Puffs. Must, he asked, he go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because the cereal is brown, like his skin? May he not be in his right mind when he eats Cocoa Puffs? And wild rice. Is rice wild merely because it is brown?
As a metaphor for negative racial attitudes, Cocoa Puffs is singularly inappropriate. For one thing, Cocoa Puffs has been around since the fifties and, whatever references druggies and rappers make to it, it is merely a cereal advertised with an animated bird who bounces around proclaiming that he’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Wild rice is even more inappropriate as a metaphor for negative attitudes toward black people. It is not called wild rice because it is brown, it is called wild rice because it grows wild, not in cultivated fields. All cultivated rice, the white rice we see in restaurants and grocery stores, is brown rice before the rice is polished to remove the most nutritious part of the grain. This makes some sense as a racial metaphor: the nutritious brown is removed to make the rice white and therefore presumably acceptable to white consumers. It’s actually pretty stupid to remove the brown and make the rice less nutritious just as it’s pretty stupid to try to prevent black people from full participation in the body politic, depriving that body of the talents and viewpoints of a large number of our citizens.
No, if wild rice has a racial connotation, it is Indian/white. White people have discovered the profitability of wild rice and have begun to use harvesting methods that preclude optimum reseeding, which will eventually take the profitability out of wild rice. White people have also tried to expand the natural beds by damming, which changes the water level, which destroys the rice beds, as they only grow in certain depths of water in certain places. Many of the wild rice beds are located on Indian reservations, where white people have no business harvesting the rice in the first place.
If this young man wants to be a change agent, he must get his facts right and speak so he makes sense to people other than his own choir. He must realize that not every card is a race card and not every race card is black.
The subject of his speech was the disparity in rewards for whites and blacks for similar efforts. The young man is right; that’s a problem that needs to be continuously addressed until the disparity is gone. It is completely unacceptable that any social transaction be based solely on race. We need to fight for racial equality. But we need to fight for the equality of all races, not just black with white.
In order to fight effectively, we need to be informed. When we speak, we need to speak with the authority of truth behind us. Otherwise, no matter how valid our points are, we will lose our audience. That’s what happened with this young man’s speech and me. The people who applauded him and awarded him first place in the contest were black. It was a black function. He was preaching to the choir.
No one gets to be a change agent by preaching to the choir. Change agents preach to the unconverted as well as to the converted. How in the world can opinions change if no one with a different opinion ever hears the message? And if those with differing opinions hear the message but it’s interlarded with nonsense, how can they be expected to change their opinions?
This young man spoke of white teachers favoring white students at the expense of black students. He spoke of being discouraged from speaking up in classes taught by white teachers. He spoke of different and harsher disciplinary actions toward black students by white teachers and administrators. These are enormous problems and must be addressed. Our children and young people deserve much better than this.
But then he spoke of Cocoa Puffs. Must, he asked, he go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because the cereal is brown, like his skin? May he not be in his right mind when he eats Cocoa Puffs? And wild rice. Is rice wild merely because it is brown?
As a metaphor for negative racial attitudes, Cocoa Puffs is singularly inappropriate. For one thing, Cocoa Puffs has been around since the fifties and, whatever references druggies and rappers make to it, it is merely a cereal advertised with an animated bird who bounces around proclaiming that he’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Wild rice is even more inappropriate as a metaphor for negative attitudes toward black people. It is not called wild rice because it is brown, it is called wild rice because it grows wild, not in cultivated fields. All cultivated rice, the white rice we see in restaurants and grocery stores, is brown rice before the rice is polished to remove the most nutritious part of the grain. This makes some sense as a racial metaphor: the nutritious brown is removed to make the rice white and therefore presumably acceptable to white consumers. It’s actually pretty stupid to remove the brown and make the rice less nutritious just as it’s pretty stupid to try to prevent black people from full participation in the body politic, depriving that body of the talents and viewpoints of a large number of our citizens.
No, if wild rice has a racial connotation, it is Indian/white. White people have discovered the profitability of wild rice and have begun to use harvesting methods that preclude optimum reseeding, which will eventually take the profitability out of wild rice. White people have also tried to expand the natural beds by damming, which changes the water level, which destroys the rice beds, as they only grow in certain depths of water in certain places. Many of the wild rice beds are located on Indian reservations, where white people have no business harvesting the rice in the first place.
If this young man wants to be a change agent, he must get his facts right and speak so he makes sense to people other than his own choir. He must realize that not every card is a race card and not every race card is black.
posted by Barbara J. Olexer @ 8:43 AM
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