Magazines

I’ve made a point of ignoring most articles that use  Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick to make a point; however, when I ran across Melissa Harris Perry’s on reactions to the Vick case I was struck by her attempt to make the reaction by SOME to Vick a predominately racial issue.

The latest Vick-news-cycle started when the President commended the Philadelphia Eagles for giving Vick a second chance. It set off yet another firestorm of Vick-as-metaphor. The Daily Caller‘s Tucker Carlson then made his now infamous idiotic comment that Vick should have been executed for his involvement in dogfighting.  After that, media outlets couldn’t wait to book people to provide a reaction to the President and Carlson. Perry was one of those people.

Perry bungled her point on “The Rachel Maddow Show” and got called out on it by snark blog Mediaite. After that, Maddow’s segment producer threw up a curious and supremely condescending blog post defending Perry who then used her twitter account to bemoan being robbed of three additional minutes she thought she’d get to complete her point. Mediaite has since responded AGAIN and Perry has now clarified her point in The  Nation.

Let’s look at why Perry’s Nation piece is so problematic.

Perry’s overall point appears to be that white people react differently to the Vick case than black people because blacks have historically been compared to animals and believe whites often value the lives of animals more than they value the lives of black people. Perry says:

I believe that to understand these different public responses we need to know how the Vick case evokes often unspoken, but nonetheless powerful, and deeply emotional interconnections between the rights of black Americans and of animals.

In the piece, Perry covers a lot. She talks about blacks being compared to animals by animal rights activists and also by business owners who put up signs that said “No negroes or apes” allowed. She also points out that dogs were used as weapons against black people during the civil rights movement and that calls for harsher punishments for Vick are painful for blacks given the lesser sentences afforded to people like the officer who shot Oscar Grant.  While Perry’s piece is a great statement on why blacks haven’t traditionally been heavily involved animal rights activism, it does not prove that or explain why blacks react differently to the Vick case than whites.

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I wrote about Essence Magazine’s hiring of a white fashion director a few weeks ago–I thought the decision was needlessly meritocratic and shortsighted. Nevertheless, I respect the opinions of those, like Washington Post Style columnist Robin Givhan who supported the magazine’s decision. Still, Ms. Givhan’s recent article on the subject was deeply flawed and troubling.

Quickly, she spends 2 paragraphs explaining that many of the reasons people opposed the magazine’s decision to hire a white fashion director was due to the special relationship black women have with their bodies and hair etc. as a result of their history in this country. Then the wheels fly off the bus in the 14th paragraph when Ms. Givhan, who is herself African American, contradicts herself by saying that black women aren’t special, they’re universal and that black women need to include other voices in their conversations about themselves. Givhan writes:

Instead of assuring her readers that nothing has changed, Burt-Murray should inform them that going forward, everything has. How bold it would be if Essence embraced the rise of Michelle Obama — a black woman who serves as a symbol of the American woman — and used that as a signal that it’s time for the magazine’s beloved “sister-to-sister” conversations between black women to be overheard by others, for them to include other voices.

How inspiring! *sarcasm*

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I know that any Desiree Rogers post is supposed to be about whether or not she’s qualified to be the person to take Jet and Ebony magazines to the next level, then you should insert the obligatory mention of the White House state dinner crashers and her subsequent resignation as White House Social Secretary, and definitely don’t forget to introduce speculation as to whether Rogers is a diva.

But you know I can never follow the script

Now that we’ve got all the basics out of the way. While reading a Chicago Sun-Times article on Rogers’ new position as CEO of Johnson Publishing Co. I was very concerned about this quote:

Rogers said she intends to expand Ebony and JET magazines’ popular features online and create communities around them. One idea: To highlight JET magazine’s “Beauty of the Week” online, post a video, host an advertising sponsor, publish a question-and-answer column, ask readers to vote on whether this week’s beauty is more exciting than last week’s, and hold online contests around the theme.

To that I say two things: No and hell no.

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So…I retweeted a post by Slate Magazine, my favorite site for “explanatory” posts, about how black people use twitter. I began reading the article and didn’t notice the accompanying picture which is a bird wearing a baseball cap while presumably making a drug deal er..I mean..sending a text message on his cell phone. Shout out to Lyneka and TKOed for pointing out the photo. I think I’m offended but then again I’m not sure. What say you?

In terms of the post, there was one thing that I thought was interesting, and that is, apparently, black people on twitter have circles that are more interconnected than whites. I think most black people have figured that out already, but it’s nice to have the science to back it up.

Beyond that, the article essentially said that a certain subgroup of black people not representative of the entire population of black people start hashtagging phrases that often lead to lots of questionable tweets. The hashtagged phrases begin to “trend” due to the interconnectedness of accounts.

I’ve long stopped complaining about stupid trending topics on twitter and from the looks of it, they’re not going to stop anytime soon.

Update: One creative blogger has put some different spins on the black twitter bird. I think it’s hilarious. And many tweeters have already changed their profile pictures to one of the birds. My personal favorite: The twitter bird with chrome rims.

Update: The commenters totally showed me up on this post (as you all do regularly lol). I’ll highlight the most thorough breakdown with what was wrong with the Slate article. The lovely @Lyneka wrote this:

Essence Magazine’s recent hire of a white fashion director is the latest in a series of newsworthy topics about race. From the Shirley Sherrod debacle to Senator Jim Webb’s Wall Street Journal article advocating for the elimination of affirmative action programs, America is struggling to talk about race constructively.  Essence’s hiring of Elliana Placas, who has been working at the magazine for the last 6 months, reignites the conversation about the role of race in hiring practices and the expectation that black owned or targeted businesses will act as equalizers.

I’ve read a few differing opinions on Essence Magazine‘s decision, and I am sensitive to the fact that people support and oppose the decision for a variety of historical, social, personal, and sentimental reasons. I think Mark Anthony Neal does a great job of capturing those issues here. The most prominent argument in support of Ms. Placas’s hiring has been the magazine’s own argument that essentially implies that companies should pick the “best person for the job” and that race shouldn’t be a determining factor. While I’m not surprised to hear such an argument in a country like America that fancies itself a meritocracy, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that these matters aren’t quite that simple.

America has always struggled issues of inequality. We’ve made much progress but in many cases the consequences of remaining bias is hidden behind the achievements of a relative few. We all carry the burden of reconciling this dynamic; however, black-owned or targeted businesses bear a special responsibility to be cognitive of these issues. Before I go further, I want to note that it’s important to understand that these types of considerations aren’t limited to racial minorities.

For example, weeks ago the web publication Jezebel posted an article about sexism on the set of the Daily Show. The article included first hand accounts from women who’d worked on the show stating that it’s hard for women to be hired on the show, harder for them to keep the job, and near impossible to get an on-air role. The article was met with criticism most notably from the 39 or 40 women who work on the show.  The Daily Show women wrote a letter defending the show and its host Jon Stewart with the crux of the point being that the show is hard for everyone, comedy is a rough business, and still, women make up 40% of the show’s staff.

The most poignant response to the Daily Show story came from the show’s co-creator Madeline Smithberg who pointed out that the comedy industry is so biased against women that a disproportionate amount of women are already eliminated from the pool before they could even gain the necessary experience to be hired on such a show. The women’s present experience may not be sexist, but sexism has already colored the circumstances.

I think what many women are looking for, and deserve, is some sort of equalizer but there’s none in place.  I think this point is relevant to Essence as well. The fashion industry is harder for blacks than whites to navigate.  Though Essence may have chosen the “best candidate for the job,” by basing its decision on skill alone the magazine contributes to the overarching problem (or at least maintains the status quo) by refusing to play an equalizing role. The fact that a white woman is considered to be the best qualified fashion director for a fashion magazine geared toward black women says more about the makeup of the pool of candidates and the magazine’s agenda than it does about Ms. Placas’s relative skill.

In the whole of America there are great many factions of people (mostly white men due to their historical advantage) that work feverishly to keep their associates protected and to increase the chances that they can create opportunities for each other in the future.  For black owned or targeted businesses to choose not to employ some targeted favoritism to augment their largely meritocratic practices is perplexing. By virtue, we expect black businesses to look beyond the present and consider both the historical implications of their hiring decisions as well as the potential outcome.

In addition to considering the present benefits of hiring Ms. Placas, Essence should also consider the future result e.g. whether or not hiring a white woman would result in more or less opportunities for black women going forward.  I think a strong argument could be made that not only does Ms. Placas’s hiring take an opportunity away from a black woman in the present, but she is probably also less likely than a black fashion director to use Essence as stepping stone to later create more opportunities for black women. But as Danielle Belton points out over at the Black Snob, Essence Magazine is no longer black-owned and doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Still, a black-focused fashion magazine’s decision to install a white person as its fashion director is both symptomatic and consequential.