"I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head."

"I am not owned by Lack, Griffin or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.... I don’t know if there is a personal racial component... I don’t think anyone is doing something mean to me because I’m a black person.... I care only about substantive, meaningful and autonomous work... When we can do that, I will return — not a moment earlier.”

Said Melissa Harris-Perry, walking away from her MSNBC show. The second-highest rated comment at the link — which goes to the NYT — is "I'm sure someone will come along and explain this to me but I have no idea what the issue is here. Why is this news?"

"It is breathtaking how fearlessly – almost recklessly – she throws herself between he and I."

Writes Melissa Harris-Perry, which I'm reading because Glenn Reynolds blogged:

NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS TO MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY EXCEPT THAT, IN A CROWDED HOTEL LOBBY, SHE MEETS SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T LIKE HER WORK. Naturally, she concocts tremendous “what if he’s here to kill me” drama out of thin air. As always, everything is about her, and her dramatic struggle against people of the wrong race and gender.

I'm going to back away from that drama. There is something genuinely creepy about a strange man saying to a woman "I just want you to know why I am doing this" when she has no idea what "this" refers to. The fear instinct belongs there and she's right to assume she needs to protect herself. After it's over, the question is, what, if any, kind of essay do you write about it?

I'll just confine myself to recommending avoidance of the phrase "between he and I."

"'Wrapping Paper' is the most appalling piece of shit I've ever heard in my life! I was totally against it, right from the start... Eric and I didn't like it."

Said Ginger Baker.



Listen. That's Jack Bruce, composer of the music (not the lyrics), singing the lead vocals and playing bass guitar, piano, cello.

"Now, what could possibly be wrong with the description 'hard worker'?"

Asks Greta Van Susteren before playing video of Melissa Harris-Perry calling out a guest for saying that Paul Ryan is a "hard worker."

This is Harris-Perry's stern warning:  "I want us to be super-careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."

Oh, so the slave is the idealized "hard worker"? Then why, just a couple weeks ago did a textbook publisher, McGraw-Hill, have to apologize and agree to change a geography textbook that referred to slaves as "workers"?

On reading a caption in his geography textbook that described slaves as “workers”, Coby Burren sent a photo and an annoyed message to his mother. "We was real hard workers wasn’t we," he wrote.

Roni Dean-Burren was also disturbed by the language, and posted about the book online. Her comments went viral and the publisher swiftly decided to rewrite the section....

"We are deeply sorry,"  said the publisher's chief executive for a map of "Patterns of Immigration" that had a notation: "The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

Even assuming you want to follow the instruction to "be super-careful," it's hard — if I may use the word — to figure out which way to go.

The McGraw-Hill incident teaches that you should never refer to slavery without framing it in somber moral terms. It can't be mixed in with other matters as if it were not a unique evil.

The "Paul Ryan is a 'hard worker'" incident teaches that slavery must be mixed into discussions of, well, perhaps anything. If someone complains about the heat, maybe you should get on their case for not acknowledging how much more slaves suffered from the heat. If somebody comments that the food isn't very good, you should lay into them about how poorly fed the slaves were? (That sounds like the opposite of "super-careful.")

Taking "transblack" seriously.

"Alyson Hobbs, who literally wrote the book on 'racial passing,' said there’s 'certainly a chance that she identifies as a black woman and there could be authenticity to that.'"

ADDED: Hobbs — whose first name is misspelled in that quote (it should be Allyson) — wrote a NYT op-ed that was published a couple days after she got this publicity. I blog that op-ed here.

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry asks Eric Holder to quack like a duck.

"You know, we call you ‘The Duck’ in nerdland... Would you quack for us?"

ADDED: Don't forget that Melissa Harris-Perry is "America's foremost public intellectual."

Ta-Nehisi Coates reacts to the reaction to his calling Melissa Harris-Perry "America's foremost public intellectual."

"I made this claim because of Harris-Perry's background," he says, reciting achievements from her resume. Somebody has to be America's foremost public intellectual, right? Actually, that's not right, and any time you create a superlative, you're inviting dispute. Coates humorously restates his designation as the "TNC Public Intellectual Prize," which retracts the invitation. In TNC's opinion, MHP is America's foremost public intellectual. Okay, then... never mind. She's a public intellectual — aren't we all?

And we're all entitled to have our personal favorites, not that I can think of mine, and if I could, I wouldn't use the expression "America's foremost public intellectual." I'd say "my favorite public intellectual." And doesn't that really show Coates's sleight of hand? Both "America's" and "foremost" imply that this isn't a matter of his personal preference or even his opinion of who is the best, but an observation of prominence in America. "Foremost" doesn't mean best. It means first in rank, and to speak in terms of what is "foremost" is to claim that there is a rank. Why do that?

"The prevalence of specifically racial offenses shouldn’t blind us to a kind of bigotry jiu-jitsu that often follows in the wake of these incidents..."

"... in which the offenders quickly flip the script to portray themselves as the victims of intolerance toward their own intolerant remarks."

One of many New Yorkerish sentences in a New Yorker piece grappling with the way playing the race card backfires. And I mixed my metaphors knowingly and with intent to be annoying, because I don't think The New Yorker — famous for its "Block That Metaphor" squibs — noticed it mixed metaphors of eyesight, martial arts, boating, script-writing, and portraiture.

IN THE COMMENTS: Henry says:

I'm trying to figure out the point of the word "specifically."

That seems to imply the existence of "vaguely racial offenses" which by definition must be even more prevalent than the specific ones. The world is awash in the brickbats of hamhanded script-flippers.

My offhand theory would be that "specifically racial offenses" are incidents where the use of race is explicit or at least implicit and intended, to be contrasted with pervasive disparities that can be perceived or understood to have a racial aspect, like incarceration or poverty or inadequate education. It's exasperating to comb through the author's tangled prose, but here are a couple sentences than might support my theory:

[Melissa] Harris-Perry’s apology was striking precisely because we inhabit a hallucinatory moment in which the lines of power, inequality, and, yes, victimhood are blurred. Untouched is the higher standard for those confronting real grievances, the kinds rooted in systemic, empirical inequalities, not the imaginings of the angry entitled.

I love the use of "precisely." It serves a function similar to "specifically." And here we are, living within a hallucination full of blurred lines. I guess that first sentence means that if anyone says anything at all clear, like Harris-Perry's apology, it's striking. In a world of blurred hallucination, we're surprised to discern anything.

Now, what's going on in the next sentence? What is "untouched"? Harris-Perry apologized for her specific racial offense, but there are also the "real grievances," things that are more important, but harder to discern. The real grievances are the "systemic, empirical inequalities," but they're nonspecific, so thoroughly woven into everything that if you try to point them out, people will hold you to a "higher standard." Instead of talking about what really matters, we pay attention to the wrong victims, the upstart victims, like Mitt Romney, who's able easily to command our concern, because of the specificity of Harris-Perry's offense.

Okay, I think I untangled that, and I do see the author's point. His name is Jelani Cobb, and I think for whatever reason, he's decided it's brilliant to write like that, and The New Yorker is refraining from the tough work of word editing, for which it was once renowned.

Melissa Harris-Perry apologizes, again, this time with tears.

Transcript here. Key lines:

My intention was not malicious, but I broke the ground rule that families are off-limits, and for that I am sorry.

Also, allow me to apologize to other families formed through transracial adoption, because I am deeply sorry that we suggested that interracial families are in any way funny or deserving of ridicule. On this program we are dedicated to advocating for a wide diversity of families. It is one of our core principles....

Here's my post from New Year's Eve covering the controversy. I said: "Quite aside from racial politics, I thought children were off limits. Here you have an MSNBC panel segment planned around laughing at a baby. We scrupulously avoid using Obama's daughters as raw material for jokes. Why didn't anyone at MSNBC nix this?"

Speaking of "core principles," balanced journalism should also be a core principle. If you find you forget your core principles when you see ways to take shots at political candidates you oppose, then you're also forgetting the core principle of balanced journalism. You're doubling up on the forgetting of core principles. And it's so easy to test yourself: Imagine that conservative is a liberal (or vice versa).

"We still have so much to get to, including the annual tradition of asking 'Hey, was that racist?'"

Squeals Melissa Harris-Perry, on her MSNBC show, going to a break, just after displaying picture of Mitt Romney's family that includes a black adopted child  and inviting her panel to "caption" it, which they do with mockery like, "It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person."

The line I quote in the post title, above, was delivered without a trace of awareness that the segment she'd just overseen would prompt the cry "Hey, that was racist!" I have no idea what the "Hey, was that racist?" stuff after the break turned out to be or whether Melissa Harris-Perry — if we were to look more broadly at her efforts — has been doing any good work in the enterprise of making race consciousness something that can be joked and bantered about in a relaxed and friendly way.

I see I do have a tag for her name, based on an article she wrote in The Nation in September 2011. I blogged about her perception that "A 'more insidious form of racism' — replacing the old 'naked, egregious and aggressive' racism — is now undermining Barack Obama." She thought — as I paraphrased it — "that people loaded race into their positive feelings for Obama, and now they have a special race-based disappointment."

Quite aside from racial politics, I thought children were off limits. Here you have an MSNBC panel segment planned around laughing at a baby. We scrupulously avoid using Obama's daughters as raw material for jokes. Why didn't anyone at MSNBC nix this?



UPDATE: More apologizing — replete with tears — here.

A "more insidious form of racism" — replacing the old "naked, egregious and aggressive" racism — is now undermining Barack Obama.

As perceived in The Nation by polisci prof Melissa Harris-Perry:

Not only did white Democratic voters prove willing to support a black candidate [in 2004]; they overperformed in their repudiation of naked electoral racism, electing Obama with a higher percentage of white votes than either Kerry or Gore earned. 

Overperformed in their repudiation... a fascinating phrase. Harris-Perry, applying some standard political science tests and failing to detect racism, says "electoral racism cannot be reduced solely to its most egregious, explicit form. It has proved more enduring and baffling than these results can capture." So, she posits another form of racism: "the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts."

What is her measure of this form of racism? The fact that Democrats kept supporting Bill Clinton, even though he "failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever, signed onto "don’t ask, don’t tell,” and supported "welfare 'reform.'" But a lot of Democrats, myself included, like the moderate approach, the "triangulation." And, of course, the economy was good back then. Moreover, Obama hasn't gone up for reelection yet. You can't compare the final vote for Clinton in 1996 to the pre-election grousing about Obama.

I believe much of [the decline in support for Obama] can be attributed to [white Americans'] disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation.

Salvific... a great word. Let's put it together with that fascinating phrase overperformed in their repudiation. Now, tell me what that says about racial politics in America. There is something about race there, whether you want to deploy the powerful word racism or not. The points seems to be, even in the left-wing Nation, that people loaded race into their positive feelings for Obama, and now they have a special race-based disappointment.

But how do we disentangle this insidious new form of racism from American politics? Obama himself stoked delusions of salvation. What would it look like to just stop overperforming the repudiation of racism?