Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cicher. I'm your host, rams'
Speaker 1: Jah and I go buy the name q board. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: it's been a great year so far, almost done with
Speaker 1: it and we got a lot for you to stick
Speaker 1: around for as we head into the last couple of
Speaker 1: episodes of the year. Uh, stay tuned because today we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss a couple of things, you know, a
Speaker 1: more conceptual show. We haven't really had a chance to
Speaker 1: do a lot of these because the year has been
Speaker 1: so full of events. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: black face and why it's so offensive for those that
Speaker 1: might not know, you know, for people that you know,
Speaker 1: ask the question, and it's the big deal. Come Halloween,
Speaker 1: you know movies or you know, a costume party or whatever,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal. We're gonna kind of peel away
Speaker 1: a couple of layers there. We're also going to talk
Speaker 1: about what a culture vulture is. Now, there's you know
Speaker 1: terms that a lot of folks here, you know, culture
Speaker 1: vulture might be someone who's really in art or something
Speaker 1: like that, but if you've heard it in certain circles,
Speaker 1: especially like black brown, you know, indigenous circles, culture culture
Speaker 1: means something very different. You've hurt that. We're gonna peel
Speaker 1: away a couple of layers of that as well and
Speaker 1: really try to zero in on what that means and
Speaker 1: how that feels. Also on the show, we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss Santa Claus and the roots of Santa Claus. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people every year around this time
Speaker 1: that you know, discuss black Santa Clauses in the mall,
Speaker 1: and there's actually a connection to black Santa historical connection
Speaker 1: to a black Santa Claus that you may not know about.
Speaker 1: So we're going to discuss that for our way Black
Speaker 1: History fact as well as some other things that we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss, not the least of which is, you know,
Speaker 1: our a story about a gentleman who is facing I
Speaker 1: believe it's one hundred and ten year sentence for some
Speaker 1: a truck driver in Colorado that you know, we'll give
Speaker 1: us a chance to examine how sentencing were in this country.
Speaker 1: But first we're going to do like we always do
Speaker 1: at this time and discuss some ebony excellence. And fortunately
Speaker 1: we got a chance to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this before we started recording today. So Bell hooks Q
Speaker 1: this is someone that you know about to some degree.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read a couple of things here
Speaker 1: about her. This I believe came from Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia. So we're just gonna, you know, dedicate a little
Speaker 1: time to her, just so you're aware.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Gloria Gene Watkins who passed December fifteenth, the better known
Speaker 1: by her pen name Bell Hooks, was an American author, professor, feminist,
Speaker 1: and social activist. The name Bell Hooks is borrowed from
Speaker 1: her maternal great grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. The focus of
Speaker 1: Hooks's writing was the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender,
Speaker 1: and what she described as their ability to produce and
Speaker 1: perpetuates systems of oppression and class domination. She published more
Speaker 1: than thirty books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films,
Speaker 1: and participated in public lectures. Her work addressed race, class, gender,
Speaker 1: art history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism. Also as an academic,
Speaker 1: she taught at institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, and
Speaker 1: the City College of New York before before in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, joining Brea College in Brea, Kentucky, where
Speaker 1: a decade later she founded the Bell Hooks Institute. South
Speaker 1: End Press published her first major work, Ain't I A Woman?
Speaker 1: Black Women, and Feminism in nineteen eighty one, though she
Speaker 1: had written it years earlier while still an undergraduate. In
Speaker 1: a decade since its publication, Ain't I A Woman has
Speaker 1: been recognized for its contribution to feminist thought, with Publishers
Speaker 1: Weekly in nineteen ninety two naming it one of the
Speaker 1: twenty most influential women's books in the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: And what we were discussing before the show is that
Speaker 1: an example of a life well lived. Unfortunately we did
Speaker 1: get to talk about her. You know, our show is
Speaker 1: only a year old, but you know, posthumously, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a moment and honor her as our testament
Speaker 1: to eb any excellence. So rest in peace. Bell Hooks.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all of your contributions to.
Speaker 2: Such an appropriate title to Ain't I a Woman?
Speaker 1: Right exactly?
Speaker 2: You know, speaking of feminism, you know, shout out to
Speaker 2: Sojourner truth and just I don't know, man, maybe that's
Speaker 2: something that you know, maybe in the future we can
Speaker 2: spend some time diving into because I don't think people
Speaker 2: have as complete an understanding of the feminist movement as
Speaker 2: they should or about sojourn are true who we have to,
Speaker 2: you know, bring her up in the way.
Speaker 1: Black Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know, not to take
Speaker 1: too much away from what we're talking about next. But
Speaker 1: I actually got a chance to check this workout in
Speaker 1: my in one of my classes that doctor Westernberg taught
Speaker 1: when I was in college. Doctor Westernberg, for those who
Speaker 1: don't know, is if frequent contributor to the show here.
Speaker 1: She was my teacher once upon a time, and this
Speaker 1: book written by Bell Hooks was one of the books
Speaker 1: that we used as textbook in our class. And so
Speaker 1: bell Hooks is a name that we know very well
Speaker 1: around here. And the plight of women, black women, black people,
Speaker 1: all marginalized people is all kind of intertwined and between
Speaker 1: her and Angela Davis and so general truth and so forth,
Speaker 1: these are folks that really kind of helped us to
Speaker 1: be as free in the world that we're living in today.
Speaker 1: So one more time, shout out to Belle Hooks, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for a life well lived. Now, why
Speaker 1: is black face so offensive? So I pulled us a
Speaker 1: little bit more from Wikipedia here just to kind of
Speaker 1: set the stage, So bear with me. Blackface is a
Speaker 1: form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by performers of non
Speaker 1: African descent to portray a caricature of a dark skinned
Speaker 1: person of African descent. In the United States, the practice
Speaker 1: gained popularity during the nineteenth century and contributed to the
Speaker 1: spread of racial stereotypes such as the happy, go lucky
Speaker 1: darkie on the plantation, that's another word we need to revisit,
Speaker 1: or the dandified coon. Keep that word here as well.
Speaker 1: By the middle of the century, blackface minstrel shows had
Speaker 1: become a distinctive African art sorry, a distinctive American art form,
Speaker 1: translating formal works such as opera into popular terms for
Speaker 1: a general audience. In the early twentieth century, blackface branched
Speaker 1: off from the minstrel show and became its own. It
Speaker 1: became a form in its own right. In the United States,
Speaker 1: blackface declined in popularity beginning in the nineteen forties and
Speaker 1: into the civil rights movements of the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: generally considered highly offensive, disrespectful, and racist by the turn
Speaker 1: of the twenty first century, though the practice or similar
Speaker 1: looking ones continues in other countries. All right, So why
Speaker 1: is this important. Well, I'll start and I'd love for
Speaker 1: you to jump in here. Q. My belief, my human
Speaker 1: belief before we even talk about things like race or
Speaker 1: you know, anything else. My human belief is that you
Speaker 1: teach people how to love you. That can be people
Speaker 1: in your family, that can be romantic partners, that can
Speaker 1: be your friends, whoever. You teach people how to love you.
Speaker 1: And what is love? Love is admiration, it's respect, It
Speaker 1: is any combination of adjectives that foster a jovial, happy,
Speaker 1: good natured relationship back and forth volley between two or
Speaker 1: more persons. You know, this is my definition I'm making
Speaker 1: up on the fly here, but I think it fits.
Speaker 1: And I think that we're all here today listening to
Speaker 1: this show because we believe in love. And you know,
Speaker 1: for those that don't, you know, I'm sure that you
Speaker 1: can appreciate my idea that we teach people how to
Speaker 1: love us. Right. You know, folks come, they might come
Speaker 1: with the right intentions, but you know, it's very easy
Speaker 1: for people to you know, overstep or say something out
Speaker 1: of line or whatever, you know, and it's our job
Speaker 1: if we recognize that they're not trying to upset us,
Speaker 1: to show them, Hey, I see what you're doing here.
Speaker 1: This doesn't work, but this might. Let's try that again
Speaker 1: in the future. The reason we're talking about blackface is
Speaker 1: because I can imagine a non black person wanting to
Speaker 1: dress up like Shaquille O'Neal right, putting on the jersey,
Speaker 1: the headband, the shoes, everything, looking in the mirror, and
Speaker 1: saying to himself. In this example, this is a man
Speaker 1: we're talking about, I look like a white guy wearing
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neill's jersey. I don't look like Shaquille O'Neil. What
Speaker 1: would really set this off? I love Shaq, Shaq is
Speaker 1: my guy. I want to look like him for Halloween.
Speaker 1: What would really make this pop? Well, if I just
Speaker 1: take a little bit of paint, put it on my arms,
Speaker 1: take a little bit of paint, put it on my skin,
Speaker 1: then that really helps sell that I'm trying to be
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neal right. Excuse me. So with that said, I
Speaker 1: recognize that a lot of times people that and I
Speaker 1: know you, I tend to be a little bit more generous,
Speaker 1: a little bit more forgiving when it comes to this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But I can see and I my
Speaker 1: assumption is that most people who kind of step out
Speaker 1: of bounds with respect to this do so at least
Speaker 1: in the examples of where I see where I can see,
Speaker 1: you know, the benefit of the doubt, you know, working
Speaker 1: in the favor of the person you know, committing the offense.
Speaker 1: And as you know, that's the way I work. I
Speaker 1: tend to get folks the benefit of the doubt. I
Speaker 1: don't assume that someone is trying to be out of
Speaker 1: line until I have something that confirms that. You know,
Speaker 1: my I move the way that I move, I move
Speaker 1: with love, I try to move with respect, and I
Speaker 1: all I have is the assumption that other people are
Speaker 1: moving in that way. I know that not everyone is,
Speaker 1: but I until I know that they're not moving with
Speaker 1: those intentions, I give them that same courtesy that I
Speaker 1: would hope to have. Right, So, when a person steps
Speaker 1: out of line, when they, you know, do something like this,
Speaker 1: I imagine that the question, you know, because obviously there's backlash
Speaker 1: all the time for folks that do well. Not all
Speaker 1: the time, but you know, especially folks on a folks
Speaker 1: on a public stage, or folks that have friends that
Speaker 1: really love them. They say, hey, yo, that's that's wrong.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that. They might not get
Speaker 1: the why. So I think that when we peel back
Speaker 1: the layers of the history here, we can kind of
Speaker 1: you know, I say, I use this term a lot
Speaker 1: to breathe a little bit of life into this. Now
Speaker 1: I am familiar, a little bit more familiar with the
Speaker 1: history in this country of black people. I got it, honestly.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I grew up with educated parents who very much wanted
Speaker 1: me to be educated about the past and the present
Speaker 1: so that I would be empowered to walk the path
Speaker 1: that ultimately I would walk. I probably didn't know I'd
Speaker 1: be doing a show like this, but whatever their reasons,
Speaker 1: here I am so I can make the connections very easily.
Speaker 1: But never before I ever had a stage and the
Speaker 1: topic come up where it's like, well, listen, man, let's
Speaker 1: try to meet people where they are. We're not mad
Speaker 1: if you've ever dressed up and warn the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: or you know, tried your best to look like Alan
Speaker 1: Iverson or whatever. But again, there's a why here. So
Speaker 1: I'll begin these minstrel shows, these actors dressing up in blackface.
Speaker 1: Originally these were white folks, and then later they became
Speaker 1: black actors. This was the only work that black people
Speaker 1: could get is dressing up as caricatures of themselves. But
Speaker 1: we'll start with the white folks painting their skin black
Speaker 1: and painting the big lips and the and the big
Speaker 1: white eyes. It kind of looking like spooks. You know.
Speaker 1: This is we talked about darkies. This is the darky
Speaker 1: motif here. The characters in these shows were often based
Speaker 1: on stereotypes that were not true. Now, think of the
Speaker 1: time in this country. This is this is a funny story.
Speaker 1: Think of the time in this country. These white actors
Speaker 1: and and story. You know, the screen are not screenplays,
Speaker 1: but whatever the show writers what are those called screenwriters
Speaker 1: or authors of the shows? Whatever? Play rights, that's the word.
Speaker 1: They would often write shows about the past, as you do. Right.
Speaker 1: So their past, their immediate past, was a time when
Speaker 1: there was slavery, right, So they would have these slaves
Speaker 1: as extra lazy, right. They would have them, as you know,
Speaker 1: engaging oftentimes in sort of criminal behavior, not like like
Speaker 1: robbing banks or anything like that, but just kind of
Speaker 1: mischievous behavior.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And what it did you know, to to the to
Speaker 1: the to the black leaders of the time, the reason
Speaker 1: why that why in black circles. It was so offensive.
Speaker 1: What it did was it presented a view of black
Speaker 1: people to an audience that some of whom didn't really
Speaker 1: get to interact with black people. Right. And so if
Speaker 1: all you're seeing of black people is white people dressing
Speaker 1: up quote unquote as black people with a big lip
Speaker 1: paint on and the big white eyes painted on, and
Speaker 1: all they do is their comic relief. They're silly, they're uneducated,
Speaker 1: they speak you know, broken English, they have these weird accents.
Speaker 1: They are lazy, they're you know whatever, they're like the
Speaker 1: not antagonist, but they're dimitted, dim witted. That's a great one.
Speaker 1: So this is this is all you know of black people,
Speaker 1: and this is the this is the Internet of the day,
Speaker 1: this is the cinema of the day, This is how
Speaker 1: populations were influenced.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So you begin to see that black folks, especially black
Speaker 1: leadership at the time, really didn't appreciate the way black
Speaker 1: people were portrayed by white actors in these shows. Right.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it was from pressure from
Speaker 1: you know, black leadership, or if it was just an
Speaker 1: evolution of the genre. Later on, black actors began dressing
Speaker 1: up in black face, so they'd be people just as
Speaker 1: black as me and you Q. And this was the
Speaker 1: only work that we could get as an actor. Only
Speaker 1: mainstream work is by dressing up and acting like a goofy,
Speaker 1: cartoonish version of ourselves. Right, And that's where you begin
Speaker 1: to see the beginnings of black folks really challenging and
Speaker 1: fighting in show business for black writers, for legitimacy in
Speaker 1: terms of depictions of black life and black people and
Speaker 1: black households and so forth. And this is why you know,
Speaker 1: shows like The Cosby Show when it did air, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about Bill Cosby, but when the Case the
Speaker 1: show did air with such a breakthrough because you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lawyer and a doctor on the show.
Speaker 1: It wasn't good times wherever they were just having a
Speaker 1: good time and hanging out and chilling. These were like
Speaker 1: educators raising a family, you know, in a big city.
Speaker 1: You know, these things were hard fought battles, and it started,
Speaker 1: you know, on stages like this. And so back to blackface.
Speaker 1: You know the legacy of that is that you a
Speaker 1: person who does not live a black life, playing pretend,
Speaker 1: not only at best can you base whatever acting you
Speaker 1: do as an actor? You know we're not even talking
Speaker 1: about those folks who dress up as a Halloween costume.
Speaker 1: But whatever work you can do as an actor, at best,
Speaker 1: you are only going to be able to you whose
Speaker 1: stories you may have heard. At best, you're only going
Speaker 1: to be able to use inferences, examples, you know, things
Speaker 1: like that. But the actual feeling and the lasting impression
Speaker 1: of this performance are things that you'll never know, but
Speaker 1: all the black people that exist in the wake of
Speaker 1: this performance will know. Right. And so it's not only
Speaker 1: is it offensive, but it's it almost disregards the actual
Speaker 1: people who have to live in the wake of whatever
Speaker 1: it is that you do based on whatever prejudices or
Speaker 1: stories you may have read or whatever. Right, the disconnect
Speaker 1: is where black folks often find the problem. Later in
Speaker 1: the show, we're going to talk about some examples with
Speaker 1: that are indigenous brothers and sisters, right, So please stick
Speaker 1: around for that, But for now, just know that there's
Speaker 1: more connections that we can make there. Now, another thing
Speaker 1: that I want you to know is that if you
Speaker 1: go back and kind of research this stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: be my guest, please go back and look at the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page for blackface or just google it, and when
Speaker 1: you see when all this stuff was happening, you'll see
Speaker 1: all of these very racist caricatures of the darkie and
Speaker 1: of the coon and so forth. And I think I
Speaker 1: shared on the show before that I have some of
Speaker 1: those posters in the backyard of my house. The people
Speaker 1: that own this house before, you know, put them up
Speaker 1: in the backyard and I didn't see them until a
Speaker 1: few years after living there because they're up under an
Speaker 1: awning or something like that. And it just goes to
Speaker 1: show that as recently as twenty ten when I bought
Speaker 1: my home that you know, people thought these things were okay, right,
Speaker 1: And I look at them. I haven't taken them down.
Speaker 1: I live here now, you know what I mean. But
Speaker 1: I look at them and it's sort of a reminder
Speaker 1: of the world that I live in. You know, again,
Speaker 1: I live in Arizona, very red state. But you know,
Speaker 1: these things were funny. They were meant to be funny.
Speaker 1: They're meant to be comical to a white audience, and
Speaker 1: black people really didn't think they were funny. We recognized, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not who we are. But this is really
Speaker 1: the only form of entertainment, the dominant form of entertainment,
Speaker 1: and we have to live in a world in a
Speaker 1: wake of this. So these subtle influences, these subtle impressions
Speaker 1: over the population are going to affect our day to
Speaker 1: day lives. You know, we wonder why police pull guns out,
Speaker 1: you know, at the traffic stop if a person is
Speaker 1: black driving the car, especially a black male driving the car,
Speaker 1: versus any other type of person. You know, you can
Speaker 1: trace roots all the way back to this time. You
Speaker 1: can trace them even a little bit further. But you know,
Speaker 1: these are things that really have helped tell the story
Speaker 1: of why such ignorant ideas exist about black people, just
Speaker 1: because these folks were trying to entertain folks based off
Speaker 1: of prejudices and so forth, not really caring what would
Speaker 1: what they would leave in their way, you know, in
Speaker 1: their real life consequences of this. So far, what do
Speaker 1: you think about.
Speaker 2: This, Q Man? This there's so much to unpack, right.
Speaker 2: You think about the idea of categorizing ethnicity as skin
Speaker 2: color in the first place, and that's where our problem starts,
Speaker 2: right and that in Africa there's no ethnic category called
Speaker 2: black that as a Western you know, Colonizer Urn, Sure
Speaker 2: we can and we can send a lot of time
Speaker 2: on the history of that and the political and societal
Speaker 2: reasons why it's even black versus white when neither color
Speaker 2: is really accurate, and describing the actual skin color of
Speaker 2: either population of people that you're talking.
Speaker 1: About, not a pigment in your skin, that's literally it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when you start when you talk about our
Speaker 2: Aboriginal brothers and sisters being identified at some point as red,
Speaker 2: people of Asian Pacific Island descent being referred to as yellow,
Speaker 2: if you start to depict people based on those descriptions,
Speaker 2: it could get problematic really fast. And you spoke of
Speaker 2: Halloween costumes, for instance, making.
Speaker 3: That choice right, the white guy choosing Shack instead of
Speaker 3: you know, Larry Bird. You know, it's not like there's
Speaker 3: not a great player who would fit your skin tone.
Speaker 3: That could be you know, demonstratively less offensive in the
Speaker 3: spirit of it. If I decided to be a character
Speaker 3: from the popular movie Rush Hour, choosing Jackie Chan's character
Speaker 3: as opposed to Chris Tucker's could get problematic really fast, absolutely,
Speaker 3: because the only way is for me to make it
Speaker 3: readily identifiable that that was the character I chose would
Speaker 3: be to wear some type of wig, to do something
Speaker 3: exaggerated to the shape of my eyes, and if I
Speaker 3: went so far as to color my skin different, it
Speaker 3: would be obviously and instantly recognized as offensive, especially to
Speaker 3: the people that I know that are from that part
Speaker 3: of the world. And a Chinese roommate in college, you know,
Speaker 3: if he saw me in that cost of I think
Speaker 3: he'd be greatly disappointed in his former roommate.
Speaker 1: And I think that that says that says it all.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's this you know, there's people that
Speaker 1: are like, you know, why can't I say the N word?
Speaker 2: Like I don't.
Speaker 1: I just don't get it. It's just a word. It's
Speaker 1: in all music, blah blah blah, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it just offends. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, we we try to, you know, give things
Speaker 1: some context, really bring things to life conceptually, some concepts
Speaker 1: to life. That's what I mean to say. But you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, if you recognize that
Speaker 1: even a small minority of a given community might be
Speaker 1: offended by something that you're doing. And again we'll peel
Speaker 1: away more layers when we get to you know, our
Speaker 1: culture vulture discussion. But it's just something that you just
Speaker 1: don't want to do you don't want to, We're not
Speaker 1: here to do that. There's so many options, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's an issue with America, among others, is
Speaker 1: that people feel so entitled to everything. Well why can't
Speaker 1: I do this? And then they fixate on the thing
Speaker 1: that they can't do. It's super wild. And I want
Speaker 1: to make one more note too. For minstrel shows, they
Speaker 1: always depicted black people as being lazy and they were slaves.
Speaker 1: So who's really lazy the people that kidnapped people to
Speaker 1: do the work for them or anyway, let's talk.
Speaker 2: About but before you before you move on though, that
Speaker 2: was intentional, sure, right, These people are not complaining because
Speaker 2: they're being overworked and and manipulated and exploited. They're complaining
Speaker 2: because they're lazy guys, Like let's you know, that's that's
Speaker 2: why they're not happy doing the work they we're asking
Speaker 2: them to do. Or they're as happy as possible, which
Speaker 2: you know you mentioned dandified earlier there that's another dress
Speaker 2: to the nines and really excited about this wonderful work
Speaker 2: they have to do. And it's just you know, you
Speaker 2: said that there are most people that do the kind
Speaker 2: of Halloween constant thing mean no offense. I think most
Speaker 2: is being generous. Let's say some that's fair. I think
Speaker 2: I think most is going a little bit far. And
Speaker 2: you said those stereotypes often portray us in a negative light,
Speaker 2: let's say always, those minstrual stereotypes always portrayed us in
Speaker 2: a derogatory and negative light.
Speaker 1: Stick around your radios. We're coming back with more cipy
Speaker 1: cipher right after this.