What Pat Robertson is Really Saying About Haiti

What Pat Robertson is Really Saying About Haiti
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

There are many reasonable people (and even some otherwise unreasonable ones) who would maintain that Pat Robertson's take on the recent earthquake in Haiti need not be dignified with a response. I understand that point, and I see where its adherents are coming from. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that Robertson represents an isolated quack. We ignore him at our own peril, especially since there are many people who accept his basic premises without question. So, I do feel like a few words are in order about the significance of his supernatural claims about divine justice.

One thing to note is that the political "fringe" is no longer as fringe as it might once have seemed. I got about 10 messages (via twitter, email, and facebook) regarding Robertson's comments within a few hours of him making them. I've also seen his thoughts discussed on several cable news programs on several different channels more than just a few times in the last day and a half. His comments have gone viral, and it means that "dignified" or not, they are circulating quite widely already.

If you are still one of the few people who haven't heard it, Robertson argues that 18th and early 19th century Haitians were able to throw off the chains of race-based slavery and colonial dependency by (literally!) making a pact with the devil. As a function of that Faustian bargain, they have been cursed by God, which explains their history of violence and their contemporary degree of poverty.

I got the surreal news (via text message) about the Haitian disaster on an Amtrak train from Washington DC to Philadelphia Tuesday evening (after attending the AAA symposium on race that I blogged about on Monday). And it just so happens that I was reading, in an almost eerie kind of irony, a small new book by Susan Buck-Morss during that ride, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History.

The book is an extrapolation on her Critical Inquiry article (from 2000) where she tried to argue that Hegel got his master-slave metaphor from the Haitian revolution, and that such a seemingly clear and self-evident historical fact has been sorely under-appreciated (in fact, missed just about entirely) by the best and brightest philosophers and historians who have worked on Hegel. She chalks these omissions up to a series of factors, including the narrowcast biases of disciplinization and academic specialization. Buck-Morss argues that the early Hegel was clearly influenced and inspired by the Haitian revolt (championing the psychic need for slaves to forcibly reclaim their full humanity by asserting it in the face of brutal reprisals), even if the later Hegel (of The Philosophy of History) ends up dismissing all of Africa as radically ahistorical, uncivilized and unprepared for full sovereignty.

In many ways, Robertson's pseudo-religious reading of the Haitian tragedy is a sensationalized version of the very logics that Buck-Morss critiques.

Read the Full Essay @ From the Annals of Anthroman

Remembering John Hope Franklin: Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Mark Anthony Neal

from The Root

John Hope, the Prince Who Refused the Kingdom
By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

For decades, John Hope Franklin railed against the often segregated academic field of 'black studies,' deriding it as intellectual Jim Crow. But there would be no black studies without him, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

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The Living Link That Expired
By Mark Anthony Neal

Black intellectuals remember the late John Hope Franklin, the courtly gentleman scholar who connected generations of black thought.

John Jackson, Jr. On Chip Saltsman

from The Annals of Anthroman

Saltsman's "We Hate the USA" CD

by John L. Jackson, Jr.



As one of the many Americans considering a descent on the inauguration ceremonies next month, even without any actual tickets in hand (and nary a perfunctory response to my queries about possibly obtaining some from my local Congressman), I have been following the "transition" fairly closely. And I'm not just talking about the president elect's cabinet picks. I also mean his decisions for the ceremony itself. The brilliant choice of poet Elizabeth Alexander; the more controversial decision to ask Rick Warren to offer up the day's prayer.



Obama is certainly trying to demonstrate his commitment to an inclusive political conversation that allows for many different ideological positions. Frank Rich persuasively challenges the limits and contours of that move vis-a-vis the Warren choice in today's New York Times. But it is clear why Obama feels he has to make such massive gestures in the direction of political inclusion. To his opponents, he represents the unassimilable anti-American. He is the butt of jokes. The threat from within.



Just think about Chip Saltsman's version of holiday gift-giving this year. Saltsman was national campaign adviser for Mike Huckabee during his failed presidential run, and Saltsman is now one of the people vying for head of the RNC. This weekend, we also found out that he sent a CD out to RNC members (as a Christmas gift) that included the song youtubed above, "Barack, The Magic Negro."



But the CD didn't just showcase that gem. According to Rebecca Sinderbrand's CNN report, the CD itself was titled "We Hate the USA," and boasted tunes that poked fun at many other political figures.



According to Sinderbrand and The Hill, the CD included the following song titles: "John Edwards's Poverty Tour," "Wright place, wrong pastor," "Ivory and Ebony" and "The Star Spanglish Banner."



The Star Spanglish Banner?



Saltsman has dismissed the controversy out of hand, describing the CD as a harmelss spoof. "I think most people recognize political satire when they see it," he said. "I think RNC members understand that."



But it is clear that Saltsman comes close to trafficking in the very forms of small-minded xenophobia, race-baiting, partisan hypocrisy, and fear-mongering that helped cost John McCain the 2008 election. To many critics, such a CD looks like political pandering (and scapegoating) at its worst -- and doesn't nearly imply the kind of forward-thinking sensibility needed to take the Republican party where it needs to go. If anything, it appears to be a surefire recipe for many more electoral defeats at the hands of a browning electorate.



Read the Full Essay @



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John L. Jackson, Jr. is an Anthropologist, academic and filmmaker born in Brooklyn, New York.

Hughley vs Chappelle?

from the Chronicle.com

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Waiting for Chappelle
by John L. Jackson Jr.

DL Hughley is trying to step into that televisual void opened up by Chappelle's hasty departure from his hit cable show in 2005. Chappelle walked away from the show (and tons of money) because he started to fear that some of his provocative racial humor was possibly reinforcing American racism, not challenging it through parodic excess. Hughley's new CNN show is operating on that same racial terrain, and he hasn't quite found the right balance between biting satirical commentary and the threat of a more vapid reinforcement of our worst racial stereotypes.

Read the Full Essay @

John Jackson, Jr. Weighs in on Celebrity, Beyonce Style

from The Chronicle Review

Knowles Knows
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

I had a long conversation with Essence magazine's Jeannine Amber last month. She was working on a cover story about Beyonce Knowles, and she wanted to chat a bit about how celebrities negotiate fandom, its commonsensical expectations and its worst excesses.

Part of the point of that Essence article, which has just hit newsstands, was to discuss Beyonce's attempt to maintain a modicum of privacy in an age of Reality TV'd hyper-access. She is known for being pretty cagey about the most basic facts of her personal life, including her marriage to hip-hop mega-star Jay-Z.

Read More @

Race Card? John L. Jackson, Jr. Responds

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Race Cards and the Race for the White House
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

McCain's camp went on the racial offensive this week, accusing Barack Obama of playing "the race card" in recent speeches and characterizing some of Obama's statements as "divisive, negative, shameful, and wrong."

The remarks in question pivot on Obama's claim that Republicans might attempt to engage in race-based and xenophobic fearmongering to win the election against him - that they might point out his foreign-sounding name and subtly remind voters how much he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on dollar bills" (a clear nod to his racial difference).

I've already commented on this kind of accusation before, when Dennis Miller went off on Obama for a similar statement back on June 20th.

Miller and McCain want to argue that Obama is calling McCain and the Republicans a bunch of racists and that unless Obama has explicit proof about some cabal of Republican strategists prodding people with explicit invocations of Obama's racial identity, he is disingenuously injecting race into the election for political gain.

I can see why they would make that case, but race was already a part of the election. It always is, even when a black candidate isn't running for office. So, invoking race explicitly isn't about introducing a foreign substance into the mix. It just recalibrates the nature of that inclusion.

Read the Full Essay @

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John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001).

TiVo Alert: John L. Jackson, Jr. on BookTV (C-Span 2)

Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness

Author: John Jackson, Jr.

Upcoming Schedule

Saturday, June 21, at 9:00 PM
Sunday, June 22, at 3:30 PM


About the Program

John Jackson, author of "Racial Paranoia," discusses the current state of race matters in the United States. Mr. Jackson uses recent events, like Hurrican Katrina and the walk out of Dave Chappelle to deconstruct the idea of racial paranoia. Mr. Jackson spoke at the University of Pennsylvania Bookstore in Philadelphia.

About the Author

John L. Jackson, Jr., teaches at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America and Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity. His writing has appeared in numerous academic and popular publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, South Atlantic Quarterly, and the American Journal of Sociology. He lives in Philadelphia.

John L. Jackson, Jr.: Racial Paranoia and Jeremiah Wright

The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated May 16, 2008

Racial Paranoia and Jeremiah Wright
By JOHN L. JACKSON JR.

In the 1950s and 1960s, "consensus historians" such as Richard Hofstadter argued that large swaths of the American public displayed a "paranoid style" of political analysis that made them incapable of fully participating in rational debate. That "sick" style was concerned with "the way in which ideas are believed and advocated rather than with the truth or falsity of their content." Half a century later, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s claim that the AIDS epidemic is a scourge inflicted on the African-American community by the U.S. government exemplifies the extent to which paranoia —racial paranoia, in particular — continues to play a powerful role in our politics.

The civil-rights movement succeeded in outlawing legal discrimination and driving explicit racism to the margins of society. But in many respects, racism has simply gone underground. Today it is usually subtle, making it more difficult to identify. Of course, recent studies demonstrate that black people still have a harder time than white people (even with identical credentials) when it comes to buying new homes or cars or landing lucrative jobs. According to some social scientists, those differences aren't just about white prejudice. They are also related to institutional and structural realities like housing patterns and the reliance on market forces in hiring that perpetuate racial differences as a byproduct of seemingly colorblind social policies.

When racism was explicit and legal, there was less need for African-Americans to be paranoid about it. For the most part, what they saw was what they got. Racists could be unabashed about their feelings, and politicians could blatantly vow, like George Wallace, to fight for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

With the social advances of the 1960s, African-Americans have become increasingly secure in their legal citizenship, but they are less confident about determining when they are being victimized by silent and undeclared racism. Racial paranoia characterizes the post-civil-rights generation of "affirmative-action babies." They are young black people for whom legal segregation is a glimpse at black-and-white images in a PBS documentary. But they also have a sneaking suspicion that somehow the smallest slights and the most trivial of gestures may be a telltale sign of what has been called "two-faced racism" — hidden racial animus dressed up to look politically correct. Such uncertainty gives rise to paranoia, especially if we stubbornly fail to discuss racism's newfangled subtleties.

What do I mean by racial paranoia? It describes the suspicions black people have whenever, say, an idle white salesperson at their local drugstore sees them beckoning with a question but ignores them anyway. Or when that salesperson takes a few seconds longer than needed to sigh himself into an unenthusiastic response. Insignificant, I know — petty, even. More hollow bourgeois angst. But when talking about race and racism, we shouldn't underestimate the potential significance of seemingly inconsequential acts.

Read the Full Essay

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John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His latest book, Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, was published this spring by Basic Civitas. He blogs as Anthroman

Anthroman Weighs in on Lebron-Gate

Lebron as King Kong?
by John L. Jackson

Is this an ironic critique of racialized American pop culture, or just another example of semi-cloaked forms of contemporary racism?

Are black folks being too sensitive, or are whites not being sensitive enough? This is a version of how every single five-minute segment on CNN or FOX frames the debate. Of course, that is exactly the WRONG question, which is what I try to explain in my new book, Racial Paranoia, an essay asking for a new set of assumptions about how race/racism actually functions in contemporary America.

Historically, magazines like Vogue could have quoted scientific "experts" who made careers out of proving that Blacks were closer to apes on the evolutionary ladder than whites. Indeed, the 20th century's most popular forms of print culture (magazines, journals, newspapers) are littered with such testimony. But now we live in a world where explicit racial ideas, assumptions or unexamined presuppositions are shunned--and can get the expert into some serious hotwater. So, we have a much different kind of racial dance we do with one another these days, a new configuration to America's racial dance floor-cum-minefield.

The point isn't about whether or not Vogue's superstar photographer is a racist. It is about recognizing that in a world where explicit forms of racism have been banned from the public sphere (especially for mainstream publications) such imagery operates like a kind of spectacular return of America's repressed racisms--regardless of the photographer's intent or the lack of any conspicuously hanging noose, the racial equivalent of a smoking gun.

If America is, in fact, "post-racial," all this means is that we've gone from a moment of explicit/public forms of racial distrust to potentially trickier and more perniciously privatized/cloaked demonstrations of racial misgivings. Of course, none of this is to assume that the Vogue cover was "meant" as a racial dig, but the meaning of any bit of communication is never completely controlled by its sender. That's Communications 101.

Read More AT From the Annals of Anthroman

NBM BookNotes: Racial Paranoia

Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness by John L. Jackson, Jr.

The Civil War outlawed slavery, and the civil rights movement put an end to legalized segregation. Crimes motivated by racism are now punished with particular severity, and Americans are more sensitive than ever when it comes to the words they use to talk about other races and ethnic groups. Yet the country remains divided along racial lines.

This controversial book identifies a new paradigm of race relations that has emerged in the wake of the legal victories of the civil rights era: racial paranoia.

African-Americans distrust the rhetoric of political correctness, and continue to see the threat of hidden racism lurking below the surface of America's public conversations. Conspiracy theories abound and racial reconciliation seems nearly impossible.

Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness explains how this skepticism is cultivated, transferred, and reinforced; how it shapes our nation and complicates the goal of racial equality.

Racial paranoia isn’t just about people being hyper-sensitive, and it is hardly the same thing as old-fashioned racism. The nuances of those differences are at the center of current debates about the very possibility of democracy in a multiracial American society on the verge, potentially, of its first African-American President.


ADVANCE PRAISE FOR RACIAL PARANOIA

“For those who are repeatedly wounded by racism, the prophylactic defense of 'paranoia' may be every bit as involuntary as it is practical. In his insightful new book, John L. Jackson Jr. renders a rigorous and fresh examination of the new axis of race relations in America."
--Randall Robinson, author of The Debt and An Unbroken Agony: Haiti From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

"Brutally honest and brilliantly original, Racial Paranoia diagnoses an urgent problem: the suspicion and the reality of racism on the down-low. John Jackson takes us on a stunning whirlwind tour through a landscape peopled by everyone from Frederick Douglass to Dave Chappelle. The picture that emerges is of a new reality where race is everywhere and nowhere, seen and unseen, felt and ignored. Jackson's insight into what he calls the de cardio racism inscribed on American hearts is destined to make this book a classic."
--Noah Feldman, Professor of Law, Harvard University, author of Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

"By listening to conversations about race and studying its endless iterations in popular culture, John L. Jackson, Jr., arrives at a nuanced and utterly convincing reading of how, when we talk about race, we pretend to talk about everything but race, and of how all of us learn to understand what's being said. This important new book will help us decipher and make sense of our national conversation about race."
–Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

"Having an honest conversations about race is as daunting as it was a century ago when W.E.B. DuBois acknowledged the color-line as the defining reality of American culture. Never one to be discouraged by such challenges, John L. Jackson, Jr., once again puts conventional wisdom on its head with a smart, imaginative and humorous conversation about race in contemporary America. With the publication Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, I suspect Jackson will become everybody’s favorite public intellectual."
—Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man

John L. Jackson, Jr. is the Richard Perry University Associate Professor of Communication and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.