The Folk Devil Made Me Do It
Code Switch host Gene Demby and guests compare the current hysteria over critical race theory with previous moral panics and, in doing so, provide a glimpse of how it will play out.
So if we just take a quick survey of the last 150 years of U.S. history - right? - you have the anti-immigrant yellow scares and pogroms of the 1870s, which led directly to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which shaped American immigration policy for, like, the next 100 years. Those same fears of sneaky, untrustworthy Asians - they got recycled through the 1940s, when the U.S. interned Japanese Americans. The panic during the early days of the AIDS crisis led to a federal ban on gay men donating blood - a ban which is still on the books today. The post-9/11 moment made way for the broad acceptance of surveillance and profiling of Muslims, people of Middle Eastern, North African descent and South Asians. I mean, the war on drugs, like, by itself is, like, a hydrant of moral panics. You’ve got crack, you’ve got crack babies, you’ve got super predators. All of that led to more policing of Black and Latino neighborhoods and mass incarceration.
And in retrospect, we can see how baseless and overheated each of those supposed threats were. But when they were happening, they were treated as not just politically legitimate, but politically urgent.
Let’s Talk About ‘Sellouts’
John McWhorter, writing for The New York Times:
No one is so obtuse as to think Black people aren’t allowed to think for themselves — per se, at least. Rather, the assumption is that when they think for themselves, all Black people will come to the same conclusions out of the exigencies of sheer reality.
Why? Because racism. The idea is that racism is so oppressive that a Black person who “decenters” the decrying of it could have only ulterior motives. That’s not crazy — but it’s also wrong.
‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’
DeNeen L. Brown, writing for The Washington Post:
Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings of Black men and teenagers in Mississippi, according to court records and police reports.
How ‘Do the Right Thing’ Recreated Greek Tragedy in Bed-Stuy
Kambole Campbell for Hyperallergic:
[Spike] Lee filters contemporary America and the weight of its history through the structures of theatre. Its now-iconic opening moments, featuring Rosie Perez dancing and shadowboxing to Public Enemy, appears on a stage built to look like Bed-Stuy. This continues through to its insular setting, and the story taking place over a single day. It’s essentially a Greek tragedy where everyone is wearing Nikes. Its mimesis comes down to a microcosm of America contained within Bed-Stuy.
Bobby Shmurda’s New Lust for Life
Joe Coscarelli, reporting for the Times:
“Hip-hop loves an underdog story and a hero’s journey,” said Sidney Madden, an NPR Music reporter and podcaster whose series about rap and the criminal justice system, “Louder Than a Riot” (co-hosted with Rodney Carmichael), dedicated three episodes to Shmurda’s case. “His rise and fall felt so rapid and a little bit Shakespearean. It really left people wanting more because of the way he got jammed up.”
These Ten Black Women Invented the Supermodel
Jason Campbell, writing for The Cut:
Ten American models — specifically, the ten Black models, out of 36 Americans total — including Bethann Hardison, Alva Chinn, and Pat Cleveland, who, spinning in layers of chiffon for Halston, owned the night. Those ten women delivered attitude, something no one had been delivering in traditionally stuffy and snoozy fashion presentations. The audience — the European beau monde — stomped their feet, threw their programs in the air, and leapt out of their seats to cheer. American models weren’t just taken seriously after that night; they were suddenly sought after.
Black Surfers Reclaim Their Place on the Waves
Diane Caldwell, reporting for the Times:
“I had to develop a voice right away to scream: ‘I got it — it’s mine, my wave,’” she said, and the assembled surfers cheered in response. “I have a right to be on this wave.”
This is one of those multimedia pieces the Times does so well. Striking photos and videos abound.
Chester Higgins’s Life in Pictures
Jordan Coley, writing for The New Yorker:
When Higgins began making photographs for magazines and newspapers, in the late nineteen-sixties, he was one of a handful of Black photographers working in mainstream media. Much of the work produced in his thirty-nine years as a staff photographer at the Times was a concerted attempt to incorporate Black America into the world’s consciousness. “When I arrived at The New York Times in 1975, I felt the media was immune to any real comprehension of the world I knew well,” he wrote at the time of his retirement from the paper, in 2014. “I wanted to share the history and traditions of the people I grew up with.”
Thanks for reading. See you next week.