Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(34)
We are told that black actors and actresses cast as central characters in works of fiction are unrealistic. We are told that they are historically inaccurate, or that they are too far a stretch of the imagination. But really, this is about a belligerent section of society that refuses to think outside of themselves, who believe that everything must cater to them and the rest of us must adapt to their whims and wishes. And this is nothing but insulting when heard by the black fiction lover who, if they are to enjoy their chosen genre, have no choice but to empathise with a character who looks nothing like them.
This line of thought demonstrates a real struggle to identify with black humanity in any conceivable way. To them we are an unidentifiable shifting mass, a simplistic, animalistic herd. They don’t believe that black characters have the capacity to be sophisticated like James Bond, or intelligent like Hermione Granger. But those of us who aren’t white have been subjected to having to identify with the lives of white main characters since film began. Fear of a black planet destroys good fiction, and it demonstrates how racism gets in the way of human empathy. Seeing non-white characters relegated to sidekick or token status has been routine for so long that, for some, attempting to try and relate to black skin in a main character is a completely alien concept. We’ve been positioned as the ‘other’, only taking centre stage to portray subjugation or provide comic relief. White people are so used to seeing a reflection of themselves in all representations of humanity at all times, that they only notice it when it’s taken away from them.
Fear of a black planet manifests in a co-opting of the language of liberation to describe white resentment, anger and discontent. There is talk of fairness, without acknowledging what is already unfair. It manifests in a rigid and shallow understanding of freedom of speech (generally understood to be the final frontier in the fight to be as openly bigoted as possible without repercussions). The fear of a black planet is the by-product of social and demographic change, and calls for state accountability. There is an old saying about the straight man’s homophobia being rooted in a fear that gay men will treat him as he treats women. This is no different.
And the fear is completely unfounded. Power and wealth in this country is still concentrated in very few, very white hands, and power never goes down without a fight. Your life chances are still drastically influenced by your race and class. Demographic change might spearhead some representational wins at the top, but we are far from any Noughts & Crosses-style black supremacy.11 Regardless, that isn’t the kind of world anti-racists are envisioning when they agitate for justice. It has always been about the redistribution of power rather than the inverting of it.
The paradox, of course, is that those who oppose anti-racism have worked themselves into quite the double bind. It’s a bit of a Schr?dinger’s cat situation. If, as they say, racism doesn’t exist, and black people have nothing to complain about, why are they so afraid of white people becoming the new minority? I suppose we will all have to wait in suspense until 2066 – the projected year when white people will be a demographic minority in Britain – to find out.
5
THE FEMINISM QUESTION
Back in October 2012, I sat in a cold university library, furiously typing out a blog post on race and feminism. I was supposed to be revising, but was so irritated I could barely sit still. Lena Dunham’s television programme Girls had premiered that year to critical acclaim. It was widely regarded as an accurate reflection of young women’s lives. The characters were all working low-paid jobs and waiting for their lives to begin. They bickered among themselves, and wrestled with jealousy, pettiness, and body-image troubles. These were all characteristics I recognised among my peers and myself. Most of us were just drudging ahead, balancing unpaid internships alongside bar or retail jobs in the hope that we would reap the same rewards for hard work as the generation before us did. We had been hoping for a nine-to-five job and secure housing. We thought that if we worked hard enough, we would rid ourselves of that panicky feeling that sets in when you don’t quite know where next month’s rent is coming from. The scenarios in Girls were hugely familiar. But the programme, set in New York City, was starkly white. Because of this, it was hard to take commentators seriously when they insisted that it was the most feminist television show in decades.
As a result of the show, one of the most prominent debates in recent years about feminism’s race problem began to brew. Some asserted that it would be nothing but tokenistic for Dunham to write black characters into her TV show just for the sake of it. Others said that it was absurd to set a television show with an all-white cast in one of the most racially diverse cities in America. To me, it was obvious. It also wasn’t really about a TV programme, although the programme was symptomatic of a widespread problem. Finishing up the blog post, I wrote: ‘When feminists can see the problem with all-male panels, but can’t see the problem with all-white television programmes, it’s worth questioning who they’re really fighting for.’
On reflection, the representation and inclusion of black faces wasn’t actually what I was passionate about. This wasn’t about being seen, or about being included. I was used to not seeing positive reflections of black people in popular culture. An all-white television programme was nothing new to me. What I was really upset about was the ease with which white people defended their all-white spaces and spheres. Theirs was an impenetrable bubble, and their feminism sat neatly within it. Not only this, but the feminists who insisted they were agitating for a better world for all women didn’t actually give a shit about black people and, by extension, they didn’t give a shit about women of colour. Gender equality must be addressed, but race could languish in the corner.