This is me, sighing.

Maybe this is another case of me being “hypersensitive“, but so be it. If you’re a white person or a particularly assimilated person of color, then you’ll probably think this is a rather harmless video.

You may think it’s funny. Hilarious, even.

If you’re a person of color with even an iota of militancy, or hell, if you’re me then this commercial probably makes you cringe, or just plain annoys you.

But perhaps you’re not entirely sure why. So I’ll tell you why it irritates me, and maybe my explanation will make something click for you.

First of all, it’s cultural appropriation.  Which means that an element of a given culture is taken and used outside of its intended context – worse yet, in blatant opposition to the intended context.

From Wikipedia:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

Hip-hop, and rap in particular, by no measure of historical revisionism or denial of their contributions, is undoubtedly an African-American cultural product.

This, however, does not mean that it belongs exclusively to African-Americans, or that no one else can use it.  The rule, though, is that it should be used in the spirit in which it was intended.  That is, as an expression of positivity, uplift, counter-establishment, or justified anger towards historic and lasting inequality and/or injustice.

People around the world have used hip-hop brilliantly and properly – from the Palestinians speaking out against Apartheid conditions in Israel, to the righteous anger from the socially marginalized of the Parisian banlieues, to Somalian rapper K’naan speaking about abject poverty.  And let’s not forget M.I.A., who in spite of generating mainstream appeal, has managed to keep her message authentic and political.

There are countless examples of where hip-hop and rap are used incorrectly – just look at the majority of mainstream rap today.  By African-American artists, no less.  But remember that bit I told you about appropriation?  Well, as much as I despise commercial mainstream garbage rap, the fact of the matter is that, as an African-American cultural product, rap is free for African-Americans to do with as they please.

If you own a television, it is your right to use it as a surfboard, even if it means you are rushing headlong down a slippery slope towards self-annihilation.  That was not merely an analogy, but a metaphor.

If someone else were to come in and use your television as a surfboard, well…you’d be pretty justified in wanting to smash said TV over their heads.  The smash-impulse I speak of is neither an analogy, nor a metaphor.  Which brings me back to the Toyota commercial.

Here we have a fictional white family, with all of the privilege, normativeness, and inherent “rightness” their mere existence implies, members of the “dominant” culture, appropriating the music, language, and projected mannerisms of African-American culture (“minority” culture) and using it in a way that completely contradicts the intended spirit.

Hip-hop, should I need to remind you, was originally all about countering the establishment – an establishment built-in with various mechanisms and controls to ensure that African-Americans would never stand on equal footing with white people.  An establishment that would deny the average black family access to the so-called “American Dream”, which the white family in this commercial exemplifies to a truly laughable extreme.  I mean, they even seemed to choose the blondest babies imaginable to ram the point home.

Contrary to this “wholesome” symbol of white normalcy, hip-hop and rap for the most part – in spite of their mainstream commercial appeal – are regarded as less than ideal, unworthy, “not music”, “ghetto”, “stupid”, “irresponsible”, promoting all the wrong values.  That last bit – about values – is interesting, because of course hip-hop would never promote “white values” – white being “right” – where African-Americans were not given access to the same livelihoods and cultural environment within which such “values” would flourish.

This is not to say that such values – personal responsibility, emphasis on the family, etc. – are foreign or unimportant to African-Americans.  They are equally, if not more important, in an environment that regularly creates obstacles to achieving the ideal.  Hip-hop and rap, though, were the response to that environment.

So this video, in its promotion of white normalcy and wholesomeness, not-so-subtly implies a black/white dichotomy wherein the white family champions family values and the American Dream, in stark contrast to the mainstream rap music of today, which places a premium on materialism, excess, selfishness, and often violence.

“Where are the kids?” seems particularly meaningful when we consider the stigma against black families as being “broken” – having absentee parents, teen parents, or otherwise not “doing right” by their children.  No worries about the white family, though – their two little Aryans are close at hand.

The white family drives the station wagon, with the car seats in the back, while rappers show off their financially unwise and unsustainable Escalades or even fancier cars, symbols of their excess and irresponsibility.

The whole commercial screams – or maybe whispers for most of you – this paternalistic message of: “Here, let us show you what you’re supposed to be doing.”

It is important to note here that when hip-hop and rap were definitively anti-establishment, flew arms-swinging into the face of white normativeness, there were no attempts to appropriate them.  They were swiftly and decisively demonized, devalued, dismissed as invalid and inappropriate.  The average white person would have sooner taken a shit on a rap album as purchased one.  Their children who embraced the music or the culture were regarded cautiously at best- parents hoping it to be just as a fad (as it could only ever be) – or punished at worst.  They were ridiculed by their peers and regarded as niggers-by-association, the word of choice being “wigger”.

But then something happened.  White businessmen, as they had with Jazz, Blues, Soul, Rock, and other forms of black music before, saw the money-making potential of rap music.  They may not have wanted it for their own children, but they recognized it as perfect for consumption by other white children who could use it as the ultimate symbol of rebellion against everything their parents stood for – that is, everything white.  That the sizeable minority of African-Americans would also buy the albums in large quantities was an added bonus.

And so was rap music corporatized – warped and perverted into a commercial product far-removed from its original purpose; something achieved by the silver tongues of businessmen appealing to the sensibilities of those with very little, with promises of what they never had – and, for the most part, still wouldn’t have even after the deals were signed.

When deciding which of the wide variety of rap music to push into the mainstream market, the businessmen chose those who emphasized the black/white dichotomy in the most extreme way – the “gangsta” rappers – the music which further reinforced just how far black people were from the white ideal of family values and personal responsibility.  It was the portion of rap that the kids of white suburbia would most embrace, thereby generating the highest profit.

The rappers themselves, beneath a superficial layer of anger and violence, often had important messages to relay – but these messages were lost on a market that had neither any frame of reference within which to process them, nor any real interest in hearing them.  The music that stayed completely true to hip-hop’s original spirit, what we today call “conscious rap”, was kept in the margins.  Not only because it continued to speak against white businesses’ appropriation of hip-hop, but because their message, more readily accessible without the superficial layer of violence, was not marketable to white suburbia, nor was it something that the establishment wanted people to hear.

So make no mistake.  While much of mainstream rap music today disgraces the spirit of hip-hop, its popularity and mass-marketing is the direct result of cultural appropriation.  What little wealth or acclaim it grants a handful of African-American artists – often short-lived – is a mere consolation prize for the wholesale theft of a cultural product.

The Swagger Wagon Toyota commercial, in implicitly pointing an accusatory finger at mainstream rap music, and African-Americans by proxy, again aims to make a profit by promoting a black/white dichotomy that reinforces white righteousness.  And anything that validates the current social pecking order is ripe for consumption by those at the top.

As an added bonus, the commercial even elicits a few hearty chuckles.  Hee mother fucking hee.

While I have zero doubts about what this commercial is saying, implicit though it may be, I cannot say with any conviction whether or not this loaded message was intentional.  White privilege, white normativeness, white standards, white values, and the black/white dichotomy – these things are all built into the foundation of American society.  This video may truly have been an innocuous attempt at humor, but one that echoed from that foundation.

I’ll ignore, lest I get carried away with my analysis, the fact that the commercial itself is in black and white.

The people who made it, having already embraced the dichotomy, may not even have been aware of all of the implications – just enough in the abstract to recognize how it would speak well to the sensibilities of other white people.  Such is the essence of good marketing, which as any self-aware capitalist will tell you, is often mutually exclusive from any ethical or moral good.

That lead me to Scratch Beginnings, a book written by Adam Shepard detailing how he, starting with only $25 and the clothes on his back, managed to “live the American Dream”.  He started at a homeless shelter, got a job with a moving company, and by the time the whole experiment was over, had his own apartment and nearly $5,000 in savings.

Wow, right?

I found an interview with Shepard where he explains some of his experience and also his views on what it takes to live the “American Dream”.  Before I even found the article, I had some ideas about Shepard – ideas that were only affirmed the moment I saw his picture.  To sum it up in two words: white privilege.

Adam Shepard: Poster Child for White Privilege

What proponents of the “American Dream” always forget – or perhaps never even consider – is that the “American Dream” is not equally accessible to all Americans.  Shepard’s experience of being able to get that job, to rent that apartment, has much to do with his privilege as an able-bodied white male.

Before I get into that, though, there is a bit that needs to be discussed about Shepard’s background. He entered the experiment with a college education, which although he did not use the credential to help him get the job, certainly played into his ability to navigate his experience with poverty.

That he was even able to secure a college education speaks to certain advantages he had that many do not.  That he was even inclined to go to college in the first place says more still, because for the genuinely poor, foregoing four years of income for the mere possibility of a better job is often not even a consideration.  The value of higher education is easy to take for granted once you have it.

There is also the small matter of Shepard’s major in college: business management. Might that have given him an advantage that many – if not most – people do not have, with regards to handling his finances? I would say so.

Furthermore, Shepard admitted that he had a credit card in his back pocket for emergencies.  While he didn’t use it for the experiment, just knowing that it was there for him to use certainly buffered him against the harsh reality faced by actual homeless people.  Knowing that he always had a way out if he needed it would prevent despair from setting in.  The psychological cost of homelessness is one that can only be taken for granted by someone who was never truly homeless.

Now, back to his privilege.  As an able-bodied male alone, he would be considered more qualified for work at a moving company, than say the man in the wheelchair he discusses during his interview, or even an able-bodied woman.  As a woman, current statistics would suggest that she’d be getting paid less for the same job, if she had gotten it at all.

Being a white male further enhanced his opportunities, because of certain things he did not have to face.  A person of color in his same situation – especially in South Carolina – would likely have to deal with discrimination, by police who might question his right to be anywhere, by employers who would not give him the time of day, and by rental property managers who would assume that he – for his ethnicity, nevermind his financial situation – may not be able to pay.

In a way, homelessness and poverty are associated with people of color, and indeed people of color are disproportionately poor.  White Adam may have been looked upon with sympathy, or with the assumption that he must genuinely be in a tough spot and that he’ll pull himself up if only he’s given the chance.  Black or brown or red Adam’s condition would’ve only affirmed what the property managers, employers, and police already expect of such people, that even if given a chance he probably wouldn’t do anything with it.

Perhaps here one would be inclined to criticize me for injecting race into an issue that has nothing to do with race.  Except that of course it does, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, and because Adam Shepard himself indicates that it does – whether he intended to or not.  He says in the interview:

I’ve got child care. I’ve got a probation officer. I’ve got all these bills. Now what am I going to do? Am I going to continue to go out to eat and put rims on my Cadillac? Or am I going to make some things happen in my life…?

Who will most people picture when they imagine someone driving a Cadillac with rims on it?  Who, according to stereotypes, drives Cadillacs?  A black or brown person, undoubtedly.  And I am certain that it was a black or brown person that Adam himself envisioned when he made that statement.  Urban dictionary is hardly a scholarly or reputable source of information, but it is useful in providing some insight into the ways that racism can be packaged within subjects that ostensibly have nothing to do with race.  The first definition of Cadillac reads:

A car which is bought with crack money, that must have D’s thrown on it. Sometimes referred to as a bitch.

“Just bought a Cadillac, Throw some D’s on that bitch!”

“D’s”, in case you’re wondering, is short for “Dubs”, another term for rims.  A second definition rams the point home more explicitly:

Once classy brand which my doctor neighbor owned in the 80’s but has now transformed and became popular amongst gangster wannabees…

…Cadillac brand has now become a joke since the only people who like them now are gangstas, poor blacks from the hood…

About rims:

The chief expenditure of African Americans

And:

The subject of every “crunk” rap song, along with “twunny foes”, and prostitution and strippers.

So maybe – maybe – Adam Shepard wouldn’t have been thinking about black or brown people if he had only mentioned Cadillacs, but tack on the rims bit and it’s pretty clear that he was.

Considering all of this, how should I interpret the quote above?  That contrary specifically to what poor black and brown people are doing with their money, with only some “hard work” and “common sense”, anyone can achieve the American Dream.

What Shepard fails to consider is the presumption built into the ideal of the American Dream that one should be white, able-bodied, and male – as is Shepard himself.  It is a presumption that rings true as we see many people, unequipped with white male privilege but exerting the same amount of – or more – hard work and common sense, unable to shatter the various glass ceilings set above them for reasons of gender, race, class, and physical ability. Interestingly enough, Barbara Ehrenreich highlights some of these disparities as they relate to race in a recent article she co-wrote for the Huffington Post.  In it she writes:

The longstanding racial “wealth gap” makes African Americans particularly vulnerable to poverty when job loss strikes. In 1998, the net worth of white households on average was $100,700 higher than that of African Americans. By 2007, this gap had increased to $142,600. The Survey of Consumer Finances, which is supported by the Federal Reserve Board, collects this data every three years — and every time it has been collected, the racial wealth gap has widened. To put it another way: in 2004, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family had only one 12 cents. In 2007, it had exactly a dime. So when an African American breadwinner loses a job, there are usually no savings to fall back on, no well-heeled parents to hit up, no retirement accounts to raid.

Do these statistics reflect an entire population foolishly choosing to put rims on their Cadillacs?  Or do they perhaps reflect a serious socioeconomic disparity based in the institutional racism of American society?  The last sentence in the above excerpt corresponds to Shepard’s ability at any time to fall back on his credit card and the wealth of his parents if and when he needed them – something he was able to take for granted because he did not, in fact, use them.  That is, until he decided the experiment was over and went back to his normal life – again, a luxury that a genuinely poor person does not have.

Shepard’s Scratch Beginnings is in part a criticism of Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, which was about her struggle (and failure) to work her way out of poverty as a Wal-Mart employee.  His criticism does not consider how Ehrenreich’s experience might have been different for the fact that she was a woman.  And while Ehrenreich is white, a disproportionate number of Wal-Mart employees are people of color, a fact that is related to the uneven distribution of wealth along racial lines.  Those employees likely have an even more difficult time than she did.

In that Shepard is able to criticize the poor Wal-Mart employee by proxy through Ehrenreich, for her inability to achieve the American Dream as he did, and invoke the image of the poor black or brown person choosing extravagance over fiscal responsibility, he makes his white male privilege very evident.  He also shows how from that position of entitlement it is easy to condemn those who do not have it – invariably women and people of color.

Finally it shows how white male privilege underpins the American Dream and how implicit within that ideal is the utterly racist, classist, and sexist assumption that it is for their own shortcomings – laziness, irresponsibility, stupidity – that anyone does not live the dream.

I was watching the 12th grade students at my internship put on their senior projects – videos that provided a snapshot into their lives – montages of baby pictures, friend testimonials, other things that they felt would put who they were into context for their viewers. And as I watched, there was the little spark of cynicism, the voice that said “must be nice”.  Must be nice, to be privileged to a life unburdened by any internal or external discussion about matters such as race or power, any personal struggle notwithstanding.  The last part of that statement acknowledges that people of all colors and creeds experience struggle, but white privilege liberates white people from the additional burden of race, and all the meaning that goes along with it.

But as I watched these videos I did not begrudge these children their experiences, their ability to live without certain burdens.  And I realized that I do not begrudge white people their privilege, either.  Like when I watch any of the countless “neutral” or “normative” movies featuring the conflicts of white protagonists, where race is simply not an issue, I am able to be right there with them through the highs and the lows, the struggles and the victories.  But those movies, like the insular world in which white people are able to live, are fiction.  At least they do not reflect my reality, or the reality for other people of color in the United States.

I would also say that they do not reflect white people’s own reality, that they choose to ignore.  And so it is not privilege itself that I begrudge white people, but the failure to acknowledge privilege as such.  It is true that sometimes I experience a bitterness towards white people’s ability to sit within their bubbles and be oblivious to a larger reality.  But nothing is more infuriating then when they extend themselves outside of the bubble – but still from within the bubble – to offer their commentary or engage in any sort of activism, including liberal advocacy for people of color on one end of the spectrum and overt demonstrations of racism on the other.

In other words, if they – white people – are going to live within the bubble, then they should tuck in their arms and legs and detach themselves entirely from the greater reality, and not pretend to understand a single thing about the world outside.  They should not argue with people of color over their perceptions, they should not deny any grievances.  If they are going to stick their fingers in their ears, then they should also stick socks in their mouths. They should respectfully decline any investment in the conversation and retreat to the comfortable confines of the bubble.

The alternative, of course, is to come full-bodied outside the bubble and to embrace, however difficult, the full reality of race and power as it applies to them, and to their relationships with people of color.

Not-See

–noun.
a person able to ignore or deny certain realities, such as racism, sexism, classism, sexualism, ableism, or religious prejudice by virtue of the privilege associated with membership within a dominant group.

Origin: Unknown Date, Americanism

Word Origin & History
A play on words, the pronunciation of “Not-See” invokes the word “Nazi”. The crimes of the former are passive instead of active – those who would turn a blind eye to injustice rather than perpetrating it themselves. The ideologies of both, however, are predicated upon a certain egocentrism, social privilege, and stark self-versus-other mentality.

Not-Sees are people who witness racism or other prejudices and either are unaware of it, or even when made aware of it, deny it – even going to great lengths to explain it away or dismiss the grievances of those affected by that prejudice. Not-Sees love to use the term “race-card”.

Look into any discussion in an online forum about, say, whitewashing – or racebending – as it pertains to the upcoming Last Airbender film:

Here’s a clue – people invest millions of dollars into films because they want to make more millions of dollars, not because they want to help insecure people feel better about themselves. If some of the title roles are played by “white” actors, it’s not racism, it’s marketing.¹

Or blackface in The Secret of Kells:

You’re all babies, this is an animated movie, not KKK propaganda. Get over yourselves, either watch it or don’t, but don’t pollute a thread with this bullshit. Racism is bad ra ra we all get it move along please.²

And the PSP game Loco Roco:

…I’ve been playing the demo of this game for sometime now, and these thoughts never crossed my mind, and you know what, I’m sure the kids who will play this game will never see it as well. I’m 23 years old, and after you pointing out all this bollocks I still don’t see it, I see it as a fun, creative game…³

Not-Sees are those who accuse people of color of being “hyper-sensitive” for daring to notice what are for POCs obvious instances of racism. Not-Sees are people who would deny the legacy of slavery in the United States, and tell African-Americans – disproportionately poor and still denied access to quality education, housing, and employment – that they need to “get over it”. The Not-Sees themselves have, after all.

Not-Sees are people who see nothing wrong with Emily Blunt posing with crutches, or think that Abercrombie and Fitch are justified within their business ethos to reject a model with a prosthetic arm. They are people who think that gay marriage isn’t an important issue, because after all they are not gay, so why should they care? These are the same Not-Sees who would dismiss a transgendered person’s struggle with identity as mere “confusion”, or some sort of intended sexual deviancy.

Not-Sees are people who dismiss the outrage of feminists around the sustained gender inequalities such as wages, the sexual double standard, or the inordinate pressure placed on women to conform to the beauty standard, and to be judged by their physical appearances first, if not exclusively.

Ironically, Not-Sees can even be feminists themselves, Western or white who ignore the particular experiences of women of color, presupposing that the problems women face are universal or at least the same as their own; who would ignore Islamic women’s own voices while railing against the practice of covering.

It would be a wonderful world if there were no pressures on Muslim women at all to don the hijab. Frankly, if every Muslim woman in the world threw off her hijab, refused to be “modest”, and became a rad-fem activist, it’d suit me perfectly.⁴

Not-Sees are willing participants in a culture of willful, sustained, institutionalized obliviousness – people who out of laziness or for the sake of their own peace of mind ignore, shy away from, or attempt to delegitimize issues that do not affect them directly.

Memetic in that it has convinced people of diverse backgrounds and interests to shed their individuality, their cultures, their morals, for the promise of something better – a chance to be a member of the ruling class.

It spread to the Irish in America and manifested in the antagonistic relationship between the police and just about every non-white ethnic minority.  It spread to the Italians and made them forget how they were wop ginnies yesterday in exchange for a chance to be just white tomorrow – and to fight vigorously against other groups for the scraps from the ruling Anglos’ table.

The whiteness virus, contrary to popular belief, is not genetic, but it might as well be in how it infects children by way of their parents not much later than they have their first concept of a “self” and “other”.

The whiteness virus is made up of ideas. And all bad ones.

The primary symptoms of the virus are privilege, denial, fear, and willful ignorance.  Unlike other illnesses, for which we scramble to find cures, there is virtually zero incentive for those with the white virus to seek treatment.

This is where denial comes in – because in order for someone to want to improve themselves, they have to first accept that there is something wrong in the first place.  For those infected with the white virus, whether they realize it or not, their symptoms are not merely benign but ostensibly to their benefit.

I did not list hatred as one of the characteristics of the white virus, and that’s because it isn’t.  Hatred is a response – a coping mechanism for the fear that is a symptom of the white virus.  Whiteness juxtaposes people of certain features – mostly Western European – against everyone else.

Where those others are seen as a threat to safety or resources, the whiteness virus fosters an adversarial relationship.  Ironically, the only real threat is the white virus itself which, as one of the most formidable memeplexes in existence, reinforces its hold over the infected by encouraging either the assimilation or annihilation of those others.

As its purpose since the onset has been propagation – and again we see this manifest physically and memetically – the whiteness virus instills fear of change most of all.  Change in the form of any shift in the social or political dynamic, in the form of miscegenation, in the form of multiculturalism.

Whiteness cannot thrive in a non-hostile environment, and so its survival as a cultural phenomenon – also manifest in the misguided survival instincts of the infected – depends on conflict between groups, namely any conflict that allows the infected to maintain any real physical, social, cultural, economic, or emotional distance between themselves and everyone else.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so they say, so let us dispense with any “intentions” and be straightforward with what is absolutely essential to reconciliation – the absolute annihilation of the whiteness virus, and the vaccination of the youth against future infections.

If it is not clear that I am speaking metaphorically, let me state plainly that I am, and that I am not advocating any physical action against any group of people.  Even though the whiteness virus has allowed for unconscionable violence on the part of the infected, to react with violence would only strengthen the adversarial climate that allows the virus to thrive.

The ultimate weapon against the whiteness virus?  Information.  But information alone is nothing without incentive.  And that incentive can only come from the infected themselves, by sheer strength of will, out of a sense of right and wrong.

The first stage is always denial.  But it’s about time to move forward.