What does race have to do with Scandal and March Madness?

After reading Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Writing Race and the Difference It Makes” and E. Pauline Johnson’s “A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction”, it was evident that even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended all state and local laws requiring segregation, race, more specifically its integration into literature, is still very much an issue and a heavily debated subject matter.

Gates makes it obvious in section one that blacks and whites were seen as different and there was a tendency to single out black authors prior to the 20^th century. And he argues – and I agree – that race is biologically futile. Take for example the “Aryan” race; it really is a “biological misnomer, and more generally, a metaphor” (4), because it isn’t something that is actually biologically or scientifically correct. We attribute different characteristics to different races, but who decides what characteristics equal what race? Then, these differences are firmly established in our language and eventually, they become associated as derogatory characteristics. “To do so is to engage in a pernicious act of language, one which exacerbates the complex problem of cultural or ethnic difference, rather than to assuage or redress it. This is especially the case at a time when, once again, racism has become fashionable” (5). Black race. White race. Mixed race. Aryan race. Jewish race… it subdivides us into categories instead of reflecting on the general human condition, which obviously causes problems. Gates even goes further to say that “scores of people are killed every day in the name of differences ascribed only to race” (6). This made me think of the hit show called Scandal, an American political thriller starring Kerry Washington, a beautiful and talented black actress. Scandal was created by Shonda Rhimes, a famous writer, director and producer who is best known for her creation of Grey’s Anatomy, but moreso for featuring black women as the leading roles in her productions, and not just as the stereotypical “crazy black woman” that we often see in television and film. After reading “Writing Race and the Difference It Makes”, it made me think of an episode from Scandal in season 4 called “The Lawn Chair” (click the link to view http://www.hulu.com/watch/760471#i0,p0,d0). While the episode is about forty-five minutes long, my main point in including it in this blog post is because it was modeled after the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown that happened in Ferguson, Missouri less than a year ago. I am not going to delve into the Ferguson occurrence, but in the this episode [14] however, **spoiler alert** a black father sits with a rifle in a lawn chair over the body of his dead son, who he believes was wrongly murdered in a notoriously bad area of town by a white police officer, and refuses to move until justice is served. You’ll have to watch the full episode to find out what happens, but my point in including this and comparing it with Gates Jr.’s piece is because it proves that even though he thinks race does have much bearing on literary theory in the 20^th century, it is still at the forefront even today.

Furthermore, Gates Jr. states, “blacks and other people of color could not write” back in the day, and writing was the “hallmark of reason, thus humanity” and “the most salient repository of genius” (9). As their way of fighting back as they faced the challenge of writing in the “white language”, blacks began to write and publish work to fire back. In essence, they were attempting to “write themselves out of slavery” (12), but clearly, even though the physical restraints are long gone, there are still cultural shackles that revolve around race.

Regardless, blacks have come far in their quest to eliminate any differences in racial distinction. What frustrates me though is when they use racially stereotypical words that are degrading to their culture, such as the “n word”. This recently happened with University of Kentucky’s player, Andrew Harrison, was in a group interview and said “f*** that n****” about University of Wisconsin’s player, Frank Kaminsky. I provided two links below so that you all can brush up on the scandal if you were not already aware.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/tournament/2015/story/_/id/12623587/frank-kaminsky-wisconsin-badgers-ready-move-racial-slur-used-andrew-harrison-kentucky-wildcats

http://deadspin.com/kentuckys-andrew-harrison-on-frank-kaminsky-fuck-that-1695776906

What is aggravating is that there are people who plow through these racial separations in order to unify them, and when things like this happen, it just seems as if we are taking steps backwards into time. Harrison may not think that his language has that much of an effect on race in literary criticism, but it does.

On a another note, with Johnson’s “A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl in Modern Fiction”, I found that the most important point lay in the ending: “let her be the italics, even if the author is not competent to give her tribal characteristics” (389). This seemed connected to when Johnson said, “the gallant white marries his fair lady, who the poor little red girl has assisted him to recover” (388). The importance of using italics is to make something you’ve written stand out. She is saying let the “little red girl” not be the background extra, but the leading lady for once, because ultimately, “it matters little to what race an author’s heroine belongs, if he makes her character distinct, unique, and natural” (385). While Gates Jr. focused more on black race and white race, Johnson makes the point that saying someone is “Indian” is just as descriptive as saying someone is “European” – there’s really no scientific evidence behind it, especially since most everyone has many layers in their ancestry.

Whether it is Johnson or Gates Jr. tackling race in literary theory, or Scandal or Andrew Harrison facing it head-on in everyday life, race IS still permeating literature and language. As Mikhail Bakhtin said, “language lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes one’s own only when the speaker populates it with his own intention” (Gates 1).