A black friend - a painter and intellectual of some success, who I have always respected greatly - just posted this article on his Facebook profile and has been praising it as though it contains some great truth. But I read the piece, and it seems like claptrap to me.
To sum it up: it regards a New Yorker cover which came out in 2008, depicting Barack Obama and his wife dressed respectively as a Taliban-esque Muslim and a 1960s black Panther type radical. They are giving the “terrorist fist bump” and in the room with them is a portrait of Bin Laden.
The article condemns this illustration as an example of “hipster racism,” which it then goes on to define:
I think that the outrage at this cover is completely misdirected. Completely. The cartoon on the cover is making fun of the absurd idea floating around America that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer, Muslim, or radical. Like it or not, this attitude was heavily in the air during Obama’s campaign and there were all sorts of absurd, overblown claims being made about Obama (and obviously it’s still going on.) It was a cultural phenomenon, the whole “Obama is a secret Muslim/terrorist/black-radical”, and the New Yorker was trying to comment on it by illustrating out the mental picture that Obama’s more outrageous detractors seem to have of him.
It in no way was actually trying to endorse the views of the people who actually see him that way.
I was against racism before it was cool. But if the New Yorker is all about post-modernist irony, its time to re-think my position. I am now in favor of anti-racist irony.
I once started a thread in which I questioned the way Daniel Tosh frequently told racially and sexually offensive jokes on his show. And many people responded that I didn’t “get it” - Tosh wasn’t actually telling offensive jokes; he was satirizing offensive jokes by telling them.
I did get that. But I rejected the irony defense. What’s the ironic point when you’re exactly the same as you would be if you weren’t being ironic? At some point, you stop satirizing something and you just become the thing you were satirizing.
It’s dependent on your audience. I watch Tosh.0 and get the satire and the jokes. I’m also sure there are some hicks in Arkansas watching thinking that Tosh would be a good addition to their white supremacist movement because they believe his jokes.
I’ve been uncomfortable with the ironic racism as a source of humor for a while now. People who were upset at the New Yorker cover, on the other hand, were flat-out stupid. The cover was making fun of the idea that Obama was a secret terrorist and that Michelle was a militant black feminist a la Angela Davis. New Yorker covers comment on current events that way (unless they’re illustrating the weather or something.)
The stuff about President Obama doesn’t need any explanation, but in case you’re lucky enough to have forgotten, Michelle Obama was accused of being a racist during the campaign. For a while, there was a rumor in right-wing circles that there was a video tape of her going on a tirade about Whitey and all his evils. It was going to sink the campaign. It was completely made up. There was also a smaller to-do about her college thesis, which was also supposed to have been racist. The New Yorker cover was a parody. It was a comic illustration of how stupid it is. If it were irony (hipster-y or otherwise), it would have presented them in some kind of realistic context. It even included their “terrorist fist-jab.” Even diehard racists don’t believe that Barack Obama wears “Muslim garb” and that Michelle walks around with an AK-47 and combat gear, much less that they have a picture of Osama bin Laden on the mantle.
This is a common problem. There are Conservatives who believe Stephen Colbert is actually a Conservative, and that he is making fun of Liberals. The New Yorker cover was loved by the racists who hated Obama simply based on the color of his skin. The mindsets of these kind of people are based on willful ignorance of anything that doesn’t correspond to their own malformed view of the world.
A few months back I had dinner out with a friend, and four of his overtly racist relatives showed up and joined us. After several minutes of listening to their stereotypical rant about affirmative action giving 'black’s jobs that they couldn’t be fired from, and how they were discriminated against because they had to work with ‘black’ people, or worse, for ‘black’ people, and how the government works exclusively for the benefit of 'black’s, I piped up and said, “Gee, I wish I was ‘black’ so I could get all that stuff”. The results; one blank stare, one bewildered look, one look of shame, and one response “Yeah, if only we could get stuff like that”.
As a foreigner, I have no real context to judge this by. Without the context, it comes over as straightforwardly and egregiously insulting to the Obamas.
So what is the context? Does the New Yorker routinely have a cover with such insulting caricatures of political leaders? If so, are they balanced? If they only caricature Democrats then they are just delivering right wing propaganda. If they only caricature black politicians then they are simply racist.
Even without a context I’m struggling to see scope for this to be ironic satire of right wing stupidity. Satire generally directly targets the object of the satire, not the victims of the object of the satire. Irony is generally delivered dead-pan, whereas this cover has a comic feel to it (though I acknowledge that irony is heavily culture dependent, so I might not be right here).
To be convinced of the New Yorker’s good faith here, I’ll need something like a caricature of Ronald Reagan as Joseph Stalin, or George Bush (either one) as Charles Manson. Some Republican dressed as a cowboy isn’t going to cut it - not nearly harsh enough.
Do you really think a major international magazine based in New York is going to stay in business by only caricaturing black people? I mean, as a thought experiment, yes, that might be racist. In the case of the New Yorker in particular? No, it’s not a racist magazine. And its editorial stance is to the left of Obama. (This is still probably my favorite New Yorker cover.)
The message is “this is how idiots see the Obamas.” The cover is from June 2008, and it was current at the time. I thought it was very funny. It could hardly be any more over-the-top. They’re even burning an American flag in the fireplace.
You don’t understand the cover. I wasn’t reading the magazine during the Reagan years, but I don’t think Reagan was often compared to Stalin, so that wouldn’t work. They did go after Bush all the time. Cite 1, Cite 2.
I thought it was a great cover, hilarious and on-point, but it did seem to whoosh past an awful lot of people.
Here’s more on “hipster racism,” if anyone wants to see the context for that term, the Racialicious site, and Van Kerckhove’s outlook (though she’s apparently tired of it).
[QUOTE=Marley23]
The message is “this is how idiots see the Obamas.” The cover is from June 2008, and it was current at the time. I thought it was very funny. It could hardly be any more over-the-top. They’re even burning an American flag in the fireplace.
[/QUOTE]
A similarly-themed political counter-example of the 2008 New Yorker Obama cover would likely work in an “intelligent” conservative publication like National Review (when it was still run by Buckley) or (maybe) the American Spectator. Reagan wouldn’t be depicted as Stalin or Bush as Manson but it would probably have them shown in as trigger-happy bible-thumping Nazis and/or Klansmen throwing darts at a world map to pick which country to invade next. The Oval Office would be garishly decorated in loud red, white, and blue color and, instead of the flag, a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights–with the Second Amendment noticeably removed–would be burning in the fireplace.
I’m not sure why the American Apparel ad stuff is racist. And why does photographing mixed race people with flaws/blemishes make AA racist? They photograph everyone in that unflattering way.
I’ve heard people say Gwen Stefani is racist for the Harajuku girl stuff but lots of singers have back up dancers without us saying they’re being objectified. I don’t see it.
Exactly. It’s one faction of rich white people battling another faction of rich white people. The experience of actual minorities is almost a non-issue.
I’m not understanding a lot of their thinking either.
