Out Damned Spot
Under the ‘stain’ lies a truth about race in America
2008-04-09
By Del Walters

There is a hideous commercial on television these days. It first aired during the Super bowl, and has played nonstop since then.  The commercial features a young white man sitting down during a job interview.  He begins to tell the prospective boss about himself, and that’s when it happens.  A stain on his shirt begins talking so loudly that you never really hear what the man is saying. Actually, you can’t hear what either one of them is saying. That’s the problem. No one seems to be listening. A dialogue usually suggests that one person is talking, while the other listens but that simply is not what is happening in the commercial.

The ongoing dialogue about race is no different.  Because of the ‘stain’ of slavery, lynchings and bigotry, all meaningful dialogue about race is drowned out before it ever begins.  Every time this country appears close to talking about the institution that claimed millions of lives, ruined millions of others, and destroyed entire families, the ‘stain’ begins to scream. 

It happened back in 1988 with the late ‘Jimmy the Greek.’  He lost his job as a sports commentator with CBS when he told a reporter, “The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way.” The more he talked the deeper the hole he dug. He lost his job. 

Had he listened, Doug  ‘Greaseman’ Tracht, working in the same city, wouldn’t have lost his job.  Instead he took to the airwaves right after James Byrd Jr. was chained and dragged behind a Texas pickup truck and made a joke of his death, commenting following a Lauren Hill song, "No wonder people drag them behind trucks.” He lost his job, and began his contrition tour.

Then who can forget ‘Imus’ and his insensitive comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team calling them "nappy-headed hos," or conservative talk show host and author’ Bill Bennett who said,  "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.’  The list goes on and on.  

Enter the Reverend Jeremiah Wright who uttered the words, “God damned America,” and a slew of other racial insults.

The ‘stain’ kicked into high gear following those comments and has not stopped.  When Barack Obama offered up his attempt to begin a long overdue conversation about race and racism, that attempt was quickly drowned out by the angry voices under the ‘stain.’ Just listen to talk radio. 

Sixties radical, H. Rap Brown was no stranger to race, or racism. He once told me that racism is as American as cherry pie.  When I stopped to correct him suggesting he meant ‘apple’ pie, he corrected me and said his words were exactly what he meant.  “Racism is as American as cherry pie,” he reiterated adding, “It is based on an image of America that is an illusion.” Rap and others maintain behind the outrage over race, is hypocrisy. 

The truth is, in America, racism is in the eye, or the ear, of the beholder. There is a growing chorus of those who want to know why Barack Obama didn’t leave Wright’s church and denounce its controversial pastor.  Some of the voices on one side of the ’stain’ say a black man would have to abandon his family, his preacher and his barber.  Some whites say that is embracing racism.  Few, however, question history and ask is there hypocrisy behind the racism?  Few ask what would have happened if there had been talk radio when the founding fathers framed the constitution.

Would bloggers, for instance, have objected to Thomas Jefferson?   Was Jefferson a bigot when he described blacks as “inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind?”      Should George Washington have disowned him…or Benjamin Franklin…or both?  Instead Jefferson’s on the money and his monument sits in the Tidal Basin. 

No one left the room when the most controversial President in U.S. history, Richard M. Nixon, described Africans as “just out of the trees,” black people as “Niggers,” and the fetuses of aborted black babies as, “the little black bastards.” Donald Rumsfeld was in the room during that one such conversation and went on to serve two more presidents. He was never asked why he didn’t leave.

Keep in mind these people weren’t ministers; they were men, mostly white, directly shaping American policy toward African Americans and Africans.  Nixon’s comments about Africa came as the continent was struggling to break the shackles of colonialism.  The president of Liberia publicly declared Richard Nixon his ‘close personal friend.’  Nixon said privately Liberia hadn’t had a contested election, “since the slaves went over.”  With friends like Richard Nixon small wonder Africa’s downward spiral began on his watch.

Jeremiah Wright, also, wasn’t the first to question America’s role in the violence that grips so many parts of the globe.  There, he would have to take a back seat to the man who won the Nobel Prize for Peace.  The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, undoubtedly one of the greatest voices against violence, described the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

Ironically most of the voices against that U.S. led violence are white.  Roger Morris, who worked in the National Security Council during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations said in the documentary ‘Apocalypse Africa, Made in America’ that “we (The United States) are responsible for what has to be the greatest human rights catastrophe in the history of the planet…

In ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ John Perkins, attacked the US. And institutions that lend billions to world on the first page of his book.

“Economic hit men (EHMs ) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries, around the globe, out of trillions of dollars.  They funnel money from the World Bank, The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations, and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.  Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder.  I should know; I was an EHM.”

Perkins book became a New York Times best seller. No one suggested those who bought the book should feel free to burn it.  

Rock star Bono speaks out frequently against the World Bank. No one has suggested crushing his albums.

Jonathan Kwitny, the author of ‘Endless Enemies, The making of an unfriendly World’ was also critical of the U.S. Government and its policies. .  Kwitny, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter says,    “National Security has provided a cloak under which the men who run a large part of the U.S. government have excused themselves from their responsibility to tell the truth to the people who elect them.” He goes on to say, “U.S. citizens can’t believe their leaders anymore, although some citizens in the press corps seem not to have learned that. We have been lied to through one war after another, the press often in naïve complicity with the liars.”

Meanwhile other African Americans authors and activists have added their voices to the chorus critical of American foreign policy. Carlos Campbell, an African American pilot who risked his life to fly reconnaissance missions over enemy territories described America as a country where “Lies beget lies.” Many consider Campbell to be a national hero.

Randall Robinson, the man who led efforts to get Nelson Mandela released from prison and end Apartheid, has publically accused the U.S. of having “blood on its hands.”

In fact, a close examination of the historical record reveals, dissent, to quote H. Rap Brown, “is as American as cherry pie.”  If we start to question the patriotism of all involved, we will find ourselves taking Thomas Jefferson off of our money, and removing his statue from the tidal Basin. Martin Luther King, under today’s microscope, would be criticized on Fox News as being anti-American, as would Roger Morris, John Perkins, Randall Robinson, Jonathan Kwitny and Carlos Campbell.  Richard Nixon was a bigot, and ignored.

Still, while dissent may be all-American, the jury is still out on redemption.  ‘The Greaseman’ will be back on the air soon, in Washington D.C.  Don Imus returned to the airwaves earlier this year, and Bill Bennett is an unapologetic contributor to CNN’s election coverage. Despite their past controversies, all are still working again in their industry of choice.  Less clear, the future of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. 

That brings us back to that horrible commercial and the angry voice beneath the ‘stain.’  Because the ‘stain’ is so loud it is difficult to tell what either party is saying. The only thing that can be heard is the shouting.  The world will never know whether the young man applying for the job was qualified or not.   We will never know if what he had to say made sense, or was pure stupidity.  All we can hear is the ‘angry voice behind the stain.’  And until the ‘stain’ is removed, we probably will never hear or see anything else when it comes to racism in this country.

Ironically the commercial advertises a cleansing agent, as a way to get rid of the ‘stain.’  Perhaps Barrack Obama was right.  Perhaps it is time to examine this ‘stain’ of racism. If only we could get past all of the shouting.

Del Walters is a Washington D.C. based filmmaker and investigative reporter and the author of ‘The RACE’