REFLECTING ON RACE JANUARY 15, 1996 TRANSCRIPT

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why can't Americans think straight about race?

BENJAMIN DEMOTT: Charlayne, I think the problem is, it's a complicated problem, but it comes down to this: we had a 400-year history, black people had a 400-year history that was negative and extremely oppressive and we've had that followed by 30 years of freedom. For most Americans, I think most white Americans, the hope has been that that 30 years following the Civil Rights Act, that that 30 years and the affirmative action effort and the expansion of the black middle class would mean, did mean, has meant, that the problems have gone away and that the equality between the races and a sameness between the races has come to exist. We wanted to believe that, we've got a media industry that seems to be devoted to telling us the story of how we've come to be the same. It's devoted to the idea of showing us, blacks and whites, in situations in which they not only behave the same, but they have, roughly speaking, the same advantages and, above all, they're close friends, intimate friends, they get along perfectly. An example: in the movie "White Men Can't Jump." Wonderful, lively basketball movie. You have a white guy playing basketball, making a living play basketball, gambling, wagering, on public courts in a black section of Los Angeles. His bacon is saved, his hide is saved over and over again by his black buddy. The white fellow is able to go into black neighborhoods without the slightest trace of fear. He's able to taunt black fellow players about... He's able to insult them in stereotyped ways and never get socked, beat up or anything. Why? Because he has a... part of the answer in the show, in the movie is because he has a black buddy. The larger answer is because this is hollywood and this is a fantasy and this is the story that we're being told.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Are you saying that the popular media is contributing to our misperceptions about race? Because in the past, the criticism has always been that there haven't been enough stories like this, there haven't been enough reputations of minorities in the media.

MR. DEMOTT: That's why this is a complicated tale that we have to tell, why Americans can't think straight about class and the trouble with friendship. These are hard subjects because friendship stories are precisely what, for a long time, as you know, there were none of in the media. There weren't any representations of good feeling between blacks and whites.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Now you're saying there's too Much?

MR. DEMOTT: No. Now we've got the kind of stories that, in effect, say, "There's no gap anymore. we've made it. We've become, in some sense, the same."

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is there another example?

MR. DEMOTT: When you see in stories like... In sitcoms like "Seinfeld" for example, you see a character, George, George has a black boss. George is a white guy; he has a black boss. George lives in terror on "Seinfeld" that his black boss won't think he's capable of having a black friend. It's baloney, of course, it's a premise, it's a shtick. But George, in one segment of the thing, knocks himself out to establish that a delivery man, a black delivery man is a close friend of his and the premise of the whole evening is that he, effectively, George rents this delivery man to play the part of his friend. Now, what we get here is a story that is essentially a story about... Not just about friendship, but it's a story about how whites are the disadvantaged, whites are in the positions of weakness, whites are in the position of needing help from their black friend or black boss. Now, in other words, what I'm trying to say, Charlayne, is that the story isn't just a story about blacks and whites becoming friends, but it's a story that completely upside downs the power relationships that exist in the general society.

Most relationships, unfortunately, in American society, between blacks and whites, are not relationships of equals. I mean, you cannot be when one out of every two black kids lives below the poverty line and four times as many black families are below the poverty line as whites. I mean, these stories about blacks in power and whites on the bottom or blacks and whites as equals, as in "White Men Can't Jump" are stories that falsify both our history and things that are going on right now.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you think they have that much of an impact on the real psyche of Americans?

MR. DEMOTT: Well, I think in some sense they do. For example, when the Los Angeles riots came off, this was, what, two or three years ago? Not so long, four years ago. It was during the presidential campaign and I remember that President Clinton said when he was asked -- he was campaigning then; he wasn't President Clinton-- but he was asked about Those riots and he said, "The problem is that all too few Americans have... white Americans have a black friend, someone they know intimately." Now, I'd argue that when you put 30 years of freedom against 400 years of slavery, the mere achievement of a black-white friendship, one on one, you and me, is not going to transform the structural problems that were visited upon this society by the past.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But [Clinton] talked about that even in his speech today on the...

MR. DEMOTT: Yes, he did.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: He said that fear is what leads to hatred and separation is what breeds the fear and that-- that is the popular wisdom-- that if people could somehow come together and get to know each other better, their histories and so forth, the racial problems would be ameliorated.

MR. DEMOTT: And I'm not... I'm not necessarily putting down the idea of friendship. but what I am concerned about, though, is if you think about Dr. King-- I mean, after all, this is his day-- if you think about what did he do? He led, essentially, a people's movement or political revolution, not in the name of friendship between blacks and whites, but in the name of specific transformations. You were part of them-- excuse me for speaking directly to you-- specific transformations. He did this not despising black-white friendship, but he did it with, I think, a clear sense that he had specific political goals. And they were structural goals and they were achieved. I think it was a wonderful accomplishment. Now we are coming back to the question of why we can't think straight about race. Now we're trying to tell ourselves that the further structural problems that this society faces can be solved at the level of personal one-on-one relationships.

Dr. King would never have bought that; he never bought that idea in his life. It isn't that he didn't have a vision that said a little black boy and a little black girl would hold hands. That was a very moving vision, but he coupled that vision of unity between the races with specific action toward political ends. And we need to have that kind of vision back in the society again, not just to tell ourselves sitcom tales or not just to have advertisements where we have one white fellow and one black fellow corporate employees discussing a Cadillac or Tylenol, where the black fellow, being the authority on medicine or the black fellow being the authority on the Cadillac and they're both buddies. We need to have a situation where we deal more directly and straight with social and economic fact.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Should we do that in sitcoms and in fantasy worlds on television and in the movies or... Is that the place?

MR. DEMOTT: I think what we need to do is to face... We need film makers and sitcom makers, actually, who will face this interesting subject, which I think is much more an interesting subject than phony sameness, is real difference, real moments when differences that are significant differences between blacks and whites come into play. They don't always occasion riots. They don't always occasion battles. Sometimes, in rare instances, but sometimes, they occasion serious talk.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is Dr. King's dream of an integrated color-blind society attainable any time as you see it in the near future or even in our lifetime?

MR. DEMOTT: That doesn't seem to me to be the question. What I would like to see is a society that stops asking itself whether it can become color blind and starts asking itself what it would have to do to create circumstances in genuine Equality for the races. It doesn't ask itself that kind of question.

There are people who do. those schools point toward the end of color-blind society, but they point to the end not by talking about friendship, not by talking about us getting along with each other, but rather by creating a world of equal opportunity where that phrase isn't just rhetoric but where it has something to do with the kind of schooling that people get, with the kind of job opportunity they're prepared for or the ways in which family and student and teacher and corporate America work together to ensure that what is going to happen is a situation of genuine equality, rather than loving the words but paying no attention to the thing.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Benjamin DeMott thank You.

MR. DEMOTT: You're welcome, Charlayne.

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