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Is “30 Rock” racist?
I don’t watch enough Curb to weigh in there. But let’s admit up front that 30 Rock treads on matters of race more than most mainstream comedies dare. And certainly, “get your hair did” sequence from last week’s episode certain walks right up to the line. Does it cross it? I don’t think so. Is Tracey Jordan stupid? Sure. So is Jenna, the white blonde woman who plays the other main star of 30 Rock’s show within a show. Is Angie bitchy? Sure. But we’ve seen plenty of evidence that Pete’s wife, along with their kids, are slowly draining the life out of that white nebbishy dude. Are Grizz and Dot Com servile? It never occurred to me to think of them that way, but that doesn’t mean they’re not. For what it’s worth, they’ve always seemed like the two characters in the show who aren’t crazy or dumb — and if they are servile, that’s only a mask for their savviness. (There’s a number of jokes along these lines.) All of which feels a bit like saying: “Well, some of my best friends are black!” I don’t think 30 Rock is racist because, in part, I don’t really want it to be racist. In fact, I think the truth is a bit more complicated. And for this theory, I look to the star of the show: Liz Lemon herself. Liz, we’ve established, likes to think of herself as a racially enlightened person — a good liberal, at least where these matters are concerned. Sometimes that leads her to patronizing behavior, like when she dated Wayne Brady’s “Black” character to avoid a charge of racism, or when she bought Christmas presents for a poor black family … and expected to be treated as some kind of savior. But she also struggles against less-generous instincts: Remember the episode where she turned her Arab neighbor into Homeland Security because he was training to be on The Amazing Race? To the extent that 30 Rock has an attitude toward race — and isn’t simply finding jokes where it can — it’s a wry commentary, I think, on “post-racial” America, a country filled with people, like Liz Lemon, whose good intentions are sometimes at war with their darker impulses and the whole thing can simply be very, very uncomfortable. It’s tricky ground to mine for laughs; I think 30 Rock does a pretty good job of it. |
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PhillyNow | PW Style | Make Major Moves | The Trouble with Spikol
Over at The Clog, the Philebrity-nominated writer Isaiah Thompson asks a question my dear little elitist liberal heart doesn’t want to contemplate: 
“Dot Com, your need to be the smartest person in the room is…off-putting.”
Hey there, Joel — thanks for getting in there.
Yeah, I don’t really have a manifesto about this or anything (not *yet* anyway) — it’s just been on my mind.
It seems to me that the question is: are shows like Curb and 30 Rock confronting prejudice, boldly exploring dangerous territory — or are they just sort of being prejudiced and saying “Hey, isn’t it funny how prejudiced we are?”
And if we’re all watching this and – assuming I’m remotely right that there is something untoward going on – none of us are saying anything about it, what’s that all about?
You remember when Attorney General Eric Holder said we were “a nation of cowards” when it came to talking about race? I think he was dead, frickin’, on. So it’s good to talk about this stuff.
Joel, I think you nailed it. If we want to ask about truly racist shows I think The Family guy comes to mind.
[...] Another liberal Philly-based blogger, my friend Joel Mathis, is a bit more sanguine on this question than Thompson. In fact, Mathis pretty much nails it: [...]
Wow…how warped do you have to be on racial issues to see Family Guy as racist? Applying that term to that show pretty much reduces it to meaninglessness. Well done sir, as that is not an easy task…. Family Guy has lampooned/ridiculed racism consistently and completely at every opportunity. Perhaps you would be assuaged if Seth McFarland would donate every dollar he has ever earned towards “reparations”? Me? I have no culpability for slavery in America. My ancestors were too busy being oppressed by the British. Wait, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles owe me money….!
And Isaiah appears to subscribe to the doctrine of “presumed racist until proven innocent”. I wouldn’t hold Eric Holder up as an example of reasoned debate on the subject, considering his “Justice” Department pulled the plug on perhaps one of the more egregious cases of voter intimidation in recent memory, perpetrated by members of the New Black Panther Party. One of the witnesses (who happens to be black, and a veteran of the struggle to gain unfettered voting rights for blacks in the south) called it the worst case of voter intimidation he’d ever seen. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html
Hey there, Zipity – I don’t presume people, or shows are racist until proven innocent. But I do presume that prejudice, steriotypes, assumptions, and tensions over things like race and class are more subtle and pernicious than we acknowledge sometimes.
I don’t really mean to call shows like 30 Rock “racist.” But I do mean to point out undercurrents of racism that I notice, and that, I suspect, sometimes go beyond the writers’ own intentions.
By the same token, I don’t go around calling people “racist,” either – but that doesn’t mean I don’t hear people say things (me too, of course) that belie deep-seated racial tensions and assumptions. All of us, of any race or class or gender, have our prejudices, right?
The best thing we can do is to keep trying to look at them.
The fact that discussions about race often get so tense and so defensive so quickly speaks, I think, to how insecure we all are about race in this country.
What Isaiah said.
Also, Zipity, have you ever *seen* Bartle Bull? About as white as they come. The New Black Panthers were knuckleheads, sure, but they stood outside the Fairmount polling station for an hour, at best. It’s a far cry from killing election workers or bombing churches, so I think Mr. Bull might’ve been … exaggerating a little. Folks who keep trying (literally) to make a federal case out of this incident are really overplaying their hand.
So Isaiah, my desire to not be labeled “racist” by default, being “so defensive”, is evidence of my racism? Wow, there’s some circular logic.
And Joel, “about as white as they come”? How is that not a racist statement? My mistake for identifying him as black.
“Mr. Bartle Bull, a former aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s in his 1968 presidential campaign, gave DOJ attorneys a sworn affidavit dated April 7 that he was serving in November as a credentialed poll watcher in Philadelphia when he saw the three uniformed Panthers confront and intimidate voters with a nightstick.
In my opinion, the men created an intimidating presence at the entrance to a poll,” he declared. “In all my experience in politics, in civil rights litigation and in my efforts in the 1960s to secure the right to vote in Mississippi … I have never encountered or heard of another instance in the United States where armed and uniformed men blocked the entrance to a polling location.”
Mr. Bull said the “clear purpose” of what the Panthers were doing was to “intimidate voters with whom they did not agree.” He also said he overheard one of the men tell a white poll watcher: “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.” He called their conduct an “outrageous affront to American democracy and the rights of voters to participate in an election without fear.”
He said it was a “racially motivated effort to limit both poll watchers aiding voters, as well as voters with whom the men did not agree.”
And they were only there for an hour, due to the intervention of the police.
From the case file “The complaint said the three men engaged in “coercion, threats and intimidation, … racial threats and insults, … menacing and intimidating gestures, … and movements directed at individuals who were present to vote.” How do you feel about the Holder Justice Dept. withdrawing the case on the verge of a default judgment, against the advice of career lawyers at the “Justice” Department? And are you really equating the bombing of a black church, and the murdering of election workers with @ the polls voter intimidation? Apples and oranges, anyone?
Cute.
Well yes. In Mississippi, the police were on the side of the intimidators. To suggest equivalence between a couple of New Black Panthers and systemic violence and intimidation inflicted by the white power structure in Mississippi is ahistorical crap.
So no: I’m not equating the two situations, Zipity. I’m responding to your quotation of a man who does.
That said: The New Black Panthers acted in a wrong manner. It is right that the police intervened. And I don’t think this is Eric Holder’s best moment. But I’m still waiting to hear the testimony of a single person who claims to have been kept from voting that day.
Cute? If I described someone as “as black as they come” would you be just as blasé as you are about your statement? How about if a landlord loudly proclaimed he wouldn’t rent to people of color, but nobody of color sought to rent from him. Would you be in favor of him not being prosecuted?
I think it’s “cute” when the same people who get worked up about other people getting worked up about racism decide to counterattack by … getting worked up about perceived racism. It’s adorable. I just wanna pinch your cheeks!
I have no problem with people getting upset with actual racism, as opposed to simply being members of the religion of victim-hood, who demean everyone who ever was or will be the victim of actual racism by using it a convienent cudgel to wield against those with whom they disagree on any number of unrelated subjects. Racism can be, (and is) despite your dismissive tone, practiced by blacks and whites…