Harrogate finally decided to watch this clip, given the bruhaha. Now, he reports what he saw.
Many no doubt see it as the same old tired argument. And in a sense, it is. Why do African Americans say the "N-Word." The Moral and Intellectual Juggernaut known as "The View" (on television, perhaps only "The Situation Room" and "Hardball" surpass "The View" in terms of Moral and Intellectual Juggernautness) tackled precisely this, and the real showdown featured:
In The Blue Corner: A Caricature of Liberal Smugness and of Self-Righteous Identity Politics......
Whoopi Goldberg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And in the Red Corner: A bastion of spoiled, privileged white womanhood. She married a Quarterback! Her opinions really, really, really matter! But, the fly in her $3,000 a jar ointment? Blame America Firsters!!!!!
Elizabeth Hasselbeck!!!!!!!!!!!!
Between Goldberg's smugness and Hasselbeck's intellectual woodenness, this particular conversation didn't have much to recommend it going in. But then came Hasselbeck's "meltdown." This made an otheriwse banal experience suddenly a bit "worthwhile."
Harrogate's Verdict: The pampered one "wins" on account of seeming most like a human being in the clip.
And oh yeah. Barbara Walters is a tool.
20 comments:
Oxymoron to Oxybaby: Words have meaning in context. Always assess the rhetorical situation before you speak.
I give it to whoopi
When either side of an argument is brought to tears, nobody wins.
Could someone please make Elisabeth stop talking until she gets some sort of decent education? Really...please?
I can't see that it's whoopi's fault mrs. hasselbeck can't keep her shit together.
I'm being facetious.
but seriously, if she were weeping because someone was being mean to her, that's one thing. b ut this? eh.
and yes, please someone make her stop talking until she gets a clue.
"...until she gets some sort of decent education"
Oh, come on, M! I agree that maybe Elisabeth should talk less and listen more, as should Whoopi. But lets not hold education (I assume you mean formal education beyond high school) as something that qualifies one to speak upon certain matters.
Informal conversation is perhaps the best learning tool that we have, so says Isaac Watts, the 18th-century hymn writer and pedagogue.
Now, I'll agree this isn't really a conversation, just two people shouting over one another. However, in Elisabeth's defense, she does seem to want to make this a dialogue whereby she can learn something about the topic at hand.
My bad, M. Maybe you didn't mean a decent formal education, as she already has that--a B.A. from Boston College.
"in Elisabeth's defense, she does seem to want to make this a dialogue whereby she can learn something about the topic at hand."
This is the key to why Hasselbeck comes off better than Whoopi, however vacuous both in fact seem to be.
Harrogate confesses he is a bit disappointed in Readers, for pouncing on Hasselbeck, who at least on some level admits to a lack of understanding.
As opposed to Whoopi, who acts as though this is a very simple issue which she understands completely, and if she just talks slowly anough, the poor ignorant white girl will "get it."
Maybe, indeed, Readers.. For some of ye, apparently, it is your "superior" education and bizarro sociopoliticla notions which makes you unable to see how stupid, and more importantly two dimensional, Whoopi Goldberg really looks to reasonable people, in this clip.
Perhaps, too, this whole conversation also, once again, can be seen as a microcosmic explanation of the tensions between academic feminism and the issue of social and economic justice.
Don't hate Harrogate because he;s beautiful.
I'm sorry, I meant to direct my earlier comment to Academama, not M.
I'm done with this blog.
I'm not sure why, Harrogate, you framed this as a throw down--and then complain that people come out against one of the participants. Yes, it is tense and emotional, and yes, Hasselbeck does start crying. But it isn't a grudge match at all. In fact, what I see happening is that two women, who come from vastly different backgrounds and points-of-view, are actually trying to make themselves heard. What seems to happen, as does so often in our own lives is that they let emotion overwhelm them and stop listening--something that also happens from time to time on this blog.
And Anastasia, I certainly hope you're not done with us. I appreciate your comments and your view point.
To begin, by "education" I meant both a formal education as well as just an ounce of common sense about the different worlds (plural) that constitue our culture. Going to school doesn't help much, but "being schooled" might be necessary. I was indeed *shocked* to learn about Hasselbeck's Boston College education, as she rarely demonstrates anything that qualifies as logic or critical thinking. But, as I suspected, her college education stopped at the BA level, and I certainly didn't get much in my own BA experience.
Second, I don't buy the whole,
"But let's have a conversation so I can learn about race" idea. As she points out in the clip, she already knows how she'll explain this to her daughter; she's merely playing out the hypothetical position of Regular Joe Citizen/Viewer.
Finally, regarding the notion that Whoopi presented this as "a very simple issue which she understands completely, and if she just talks slowly anough, the poor ignorant white girl will 'get it'": I don't think Whoopi, of all people, would ever make the claim that race is a simple issue. However, the very specific point about why blacks can use the word and whites cannot does, to me, seem very simple indeed. It's not rocket science to know, for example, why I could make fun of my little brother when we were younger, but I'd be fighting mad if someone else did the same. It is, among other things, largely an issue of insider/outsider status. Last time I checked, it was pretty obvious that Elisabeth Hasselbeck couldn't mistake herself for being black. For her to then go on and say something as ridiculous as "We all live in the same world..." simply proved, in my view, how sheltered and privileged her life has been and how naive she is. In the true sense of the word, yes, she is ignorant. So am I. Neither of us have any knowedge of what it means to live in the world to which Whoopi refers: the world of a black woman.
My education is not "superior" to hers (or anyone else's) because of schools I attended or the degrees earned. My education is *necessary* for me to exist in this culture as someone who is at least aware, to a small extent, of the material economic, political, and social conditions in which less privileged members of this country live. That's the least I can do, though I should work to do more than simply be aware, as it takes more than awareness to reconcile what I see as academic feminism with feminist activism.
acadaemama:
Harrogate delights in the prospect of having more than one thread on this topic continuing to roll. That is because he, unlike 99% of those who say, on television or in newspapers or on blogs, that they would like to have "an hionest conversation about race in America," he actually would like to see such a conversation take place.
Honest conversation about race in America is not synonymous with enumerating whites' sins against African Americans. This is what Goldberg clearly means by it however.
You highlight the question, "why blacks can use the word and whites cannot," and persuasively invoke familial conflict as a metaphor for why this is the case. Fair enough.
Except Harrogate thinks the question itself largely a straw man. It implicitly assumes that there is a desire among whites to publically say "nigger," but they cannot say it, so they resent the fact that Afircan Americans can.
But this is silly. Hasselbeck is a poor interlocutor indeed, and so bought into that phrasing as well:
But it is not rocket science to see that the REAL QUESTION SHE RAISES IS:
"Why do African Americans keep this harmful word so vitally in the popular discourse?"
And Goldberg did treat this as though it were a simple issue, which it assuredly is not. Not if you REALLY want to have a discussion about Race in America, that is.
Here's another question:
Why is Bill Cosby, himself a long-established liberal humanist, for some time been marked as something of a pariah among huge swaths of African Americans and white liberals? Why is it that now suddenly, Republicans get to freely quote Cosby, whereas among (and interestingly) prominent Democrats only Obama has had the guts to channel Cosby's message with aplomb?
These are hard questions too. TYo engage them rquires more than enumerating whites' sins, or explaining how since whites are white, their role is to nod and listen while some third rate intellectual (and only marginally better actress) holds forth on why it is wondrous that African Americans say "nigger."
I still think that the problem with E.H.'s question is the premise behind it: Think of the question:
"Why do African Americans keep this harmful word so vitally in the popular discourse?"
E.H. asks this as if all people will have the same reaction to the word. No matter how simple or sad her refutation is, W.G. is correct to reject the premise that all people will receive and interpret the word in the same way, especially when people possess different experiences. W.G's response, we provide meaning, is correct, even if we forget that point.
Words lose their meaning all of the time. I thin it is a bigger problem to force the same meaning on a word of phrase over time than it is to adapt the word to a new context. It we required a static meaning of the word "speech" in the first amendment, we would not protect television, radio, film, art, etc as being vital to society. At some point, some individuals changed the meaning of the first amendment and it has been quite beneficial. Not all changes will be as beneficial as the history of the swastika provides an excellent example, as it once, and still may, played in important role in eastern religions before the West appropriated it. Now some religions are attempting to reclaim its meaning.
Solon,
Of course WG is correct to assert that the word is differently received in different Rhetorical Situations. Yet, there is another interesting acet of Hasselbeck's lightly facist "one world" plaint that we have not yet touched on. Harrogate will try to elaborate on this herein.
A sandbag: Please forgive the length and the less than smooth presentation of what follows, as Harrogate does not pretend to be an expert on such matters. But hpefully the point will come across.
An African American who bandies the word about with other African Americans is largley debarred from this kind of verbal interaction in the broader mixed-race communiy. For example, we might suppose that Kevin Garnett has used the word in the way that Goldberg frames it; yet during his emotional post-championship interview on national television, when he gave a slang-laced series of shout-outs to his friends and his mother, Garnett at no point said, "this is for my niggers."
Now, Harrogate says the word is largely as opposed to totally debarred from African Americans' usage in the broader discourse, because after all, you have the standup comedians and more resonantly, you have the dynamic musical genre of rap, wherein verily, it is perfectly acceptable to release records sporting the word "nigger," and imbuing that word with meanings far different than that which Bull Connor conceptualized.
So from this Reality-based fact a question emerges: would itg be healthy for the discourse if African Americans outside of standup comedy and rap were comfortable referring to one another as "nigger" on television or in large, race-mixed crowds.
Would it benefit our evolving discourse if African American shareholders at a Board Meeting greeted one another this way in front of their white colleagues?
Or something like that.
H.
Would it be better, maybe. I suppose if we discuss what would be better, large-scale amnesia to forget the sorry state of race and gender relations would be best.
Yet, in your example of the shareholders, I do not read distinctions based on race rather than distinctions based on class. This seems similar to the lament of Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind) where certain forms of expression (modern music circa 1960s - 1970, jazz) seem to fall below proper standards for class and aesthetics, especially because of the raw emotional power in these forms of music that damages the logo of philosophy and the community. These forms of musical expression become a detriment to the student whereas classical remains the most admirable. Why you ask... well, that's the key- the criterion.
The Danger in E.H.'s position is that she would desire to lose some of these distinctions in order to have a society where "people get along." Standards or practices that don't reflect the proper class etiquette or aesthetic criterion ought not be repeated even those those forms present alternative forms of expression, beauty, justice, etc.
This reflects a belief that the proper class distinction is "natural" rather than just an arbitrary set of power standards set up by those in charge. We think that there is a natural order (the N-Word always hurts) but quickly we realize these distinction of the natural reflect certain prejudices and biases within the people that make them (E.H.'s seemingly lack of experiences about empowerment in other cultures.)
So Garnett's use of "niggas" is bad. Would peeps be better? Friends & Family members? If the usage is bad how do you correct the culture of the NBA that perpetuates it?
Sure social harmony is better than discord; but there is not clear boundary as Drive Like Jehu is music to some and noise to others. Leaving groups to form their own ideals and language rules in order to play their own language games may be easier than imposing arbitrary norms on everyone.
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