Guest post by: WAYNE HODGE
[Editor's note: IMG MGMT is an artist essay series highlighting the diversity of curatorial processes within the art making practice. Today’s invited artist Wayne Hodge is an artist who combines elements of performance, video, photography, and film production. Wayne is the recipient of a grant from The Art Matters Foundation and recently received a grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. He is currently a studio artist at Smack Mellon in DUMBO.]
Race Card
The rhyming of Barack Obama’s name with Osama Bin Laden, the Baby’s Mama tactic, as well as the emphasis on his middle name, while completely racist, are also sophomoric, and ultimately, will not resonate with American voters as much conservative media outlets would like them to. However, as the first so-called “serious” black presidential candidate (a label that denies the agency of Black political movements of the past); Obama’s bid invokes a level of anxiety amongst his opposition that touches a deep hysteria about race, politics, and the history of media images, particularly those involving African-American men. Two recent ads by the McCain camp, “The One” and “Celeb” question Obama’s readiness as a possible president. The subsequent reaction by the Obama camp, as well as the McCain response, illustrate an example of media double- standards.
With all of the attacks between the two camps, no one would ever accuse John McCain for being “not ready” to be a president, as these ads have done. Barack Obama responded to the attacks by accusing the Republicans of trying to make voters afraid of him, one of the most potent analogies he used referring to his difference from the presidents on the dollar bills. Consequently, a McCain aide accused Obama of “….dealing the race card…from the bottom of the deck.” Every time I pick up a newspaper, or watch the news, I am confronted with a story or poll claiming to gage Barack Obama on the issue of race in America. Despite, his well-scripted temper-tantrum on the Sunday news shows, John McCain is simply not expected to carry the same burden of the so-called race “problem” in America. McCain’s indignant attitude, and the presumption that he was the “victim” in a one-way race- baiting game precipitated entirely by a vindictive candidate of color is the type of hysterical rhetoric that harkens back to media images from the post-reconstruction era. The images I am presenting are by no means comprehensive, but do offer a historically based rebuttal to bad media coverage that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Earlier this summer, I purchased a well-worn book of Currier and Ives prints. Known as America’s most popular printmakers, they were also responsible for some of the cheapest and most widely distributed imagery of the century. The subject matter ranged from bucolic scenery to disaster reportage, as well as political cartoons.
This is the image that made me buy the book. The central figure may be based on Zip the Pinhead. It is also interesting to note that Lincoln is leaning on a P.T. Barnum sign. This image was most likely made before Lincoln’s assassination and subsequent martyrdom. It goes back to the days when Republicans were “free-soil” and inexorably involved in abolition, hence, they are the punch line of the joke. While Zip was free and able to earn a relatively autonomous life as a circus freak, the idea of the Negro body, usually associated with spectacle are all the more outlandish as they are thrust (by Republicans in this case) into the political sphere. Perhaps sophistry plays a larger role in the American political psyche than I am willing to concede.
The next image may on its surface seem kinder and gentler, but it reveals some interesting parallels to our current political state. Ulysses Grant is standing on the riverbank looking on as the condescending paternalistic father figure. If anything this is an example of the Republican Party playing the “race card” before or during Grant’s presidency. Grant is the $50 president that Barack Obama does not resemble.
Speaking of Reconstruction, I have been buying used copies of Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman”. Used as a recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan in the teens and twenties. It was also the book which D.W. Griffith based “The Birth of a Nation”. I have been searching out pre 1915 copies of the book (after 1915 scenes from Griffith’s film replaced the illustrations).
The story is an elaborate epic that casts white protagonists in the roles of victims preyed upon by politically ambitious Negroes that have the insolence to attempt to enter the American political system after abolition. These “victims” apparently have no recourse but to band together, put on hoods and burn crosses- AND IT’S NOT IRONIC!!! This was how Reconstruction was historicized in the first half of the 20th century
At this point in the story, the family patriarch and former slave-owner is paraded around in chains in an apt reversal of fortune. A former slave has decked one of his former master’s captors in a Stockholm syndrome induced rage. Lest we fear too much for the “victim”, (victim in this case refers to powerful white landowners who’s fortunes are jeopardized by the lack of free labor) later on in the story…
Notice in both illustrations, regardless if our “victim” is in chains or Klan robes, he has some unidentified dark body lying prone at his feet. In this particular illustration, the body seems to melt into the dark void that surrounds it. The guy on the ground could never be considered a “victim” in this context. To be accorded that status, he would first have to be considered a human being.
Now, according to the history books, Griffith toned down Thomas Dixon’s virulent racism, he even inserted a disclaimer at the beginning of the second act of The Birth of a Nation:
This disclaimer makes it even worse. Griffith was false veneer of “authentic” history. It is a history that constantly declaims the grievances of slavery in favor of perceived transgressions by demands of African-American political autonomy. This was an ideology backed by then U.S. President, and former Princeton University President (and presidential face of the $100,000 bill), Woodrow Wilson.
As one of the most segregationist Presidents in U.S. history, Wilson forced segregated facilities in many government jobs that had previously seen little to no separation based on race. His reluctance to support anti-lynching bills could be attributed to his southern heritage. He was a supporter of Griffith’s film, and it seems as though they were in a mutual admiration society as Griffith freely quotes him in his film:
This open skepticism of ANY possible political power held by Blacks in Wilson’s quote along with the imagery from Griffith’s film is a prime example of political and media representations creating images of Negro political autonomy that more closely resembled a Minstrel show.
In one of the more famous scenes from the film, Black members of the state legislature (one of the few scenes when Black characters are depicted by Black actors). Elected Black representatives are seen eating chicken and drinking liquor during the state assembly. They also leer at white women, and pass a law mandating interracial marriage (which is one of the reasons gramps in the illustrations above is so pissed). The most damaging stereotyping is reserved for mulattoes. This is the racial body that is most difficult to negotiate in media images. Mulattoes are depicted as the most politically ambitious and most willing to usurp the order of antebellum power. While Negro characters are merely coerced into power that they don’t really want, nor rightly wield (they are coerced by Carpetbaggers and you guessed it….mulattoes). Biracial characters presume on both biological and political rights to equality and autonomy.
The media discourse around Obama’s position, though not as heavy handed as some of the earlier images, carries a very similar message about his position on the stage of celebrity desire. By placing him in the same space as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton as the “Celeb” attack ad invariably draws comparison. First the ad feminizes Obama. By placing him next to these women (both of whom are white and highly desired in the celebrity market) a tactic to further separate him from the more traditionally “presidential” (read white, male) McCain. We are also to presume that the so-called menace Obama represents is not merely limited to just the political sphere. While it may be a given that he means to usurp political power in a realm that has been the exclusive domain of privileged white men, his effect is to bleed over into the celebrity stage, becoming the desire object over traditionally gendered white bodies, in this case Britney and Paris. Not only does he not look like presidents on money, but he also threatens to become the hot girl you fantasize about. This could make millions of straight, white males potentially desire Barack instead of Paris Hilton (sex tape anyone?)
Obama hit the nail on the head when he spoke about Presidents on dollar bills. The image of the “founding fathers” is one that is constantly invoked to link powerful, white men of privilege to leadership and power. But Barack has challenged those reference points. By doing so, he has pushed on a door that has only been cracked since Reconstruction. I hope he kicks it wide open. If he has dropped any “Race Card” it would be the equivalent of this one, courtesy of Adrian Piper.
-W.H.
