Is it not enough for us (read: blacks) to say that we are extremely uncomfortable with this and have non-blacks accept that?

No problem. Everybody else is “extremely uncomfortable with this,” too.

I think what EF and some others are trying to get to is a “Big Picture” idea of What Does It Mean?

I think it is possible to argue that race relations have, in some sense, gone backward (or at least downhill) over the past 30 years.

In the 1976 movie “Silver Streak,” there is a hilarious scene in which, as a disguise, Richard Pryor puts shoe police on Gene Wilder’s face and tells him to “act black.” Wilder then does a (ridiculously laughable) ghetto-hip routine, and asks Pryor whether he thinks this will be good enough to fool the police, who are looking for them.

Pryor replies, “We’ll make it past the cops. I just hope we don’t see no Muslims.”

The “Muslims” reference, of course, was to the Nation of Islam, who at that time were well-known in the black community for denouncing the type of underclass culture which Wilder was imitating.

I don’t recall anyone in 1976 claiming that “Silver Streak” was racist.

So, 30 years ago, a movie that featured a blackface scene was not an occasion for ritual denunciation and, indeed, the scene itself was used to make a multi-layered cultural commentary. Now, in 2006, we’re analyzing a scene from a forgettable 20-year-old movie role as if it could reveal some deep mystery about the state of Michael Richards’ soul.

I certainly don’t doubt that we’re now more sensitive to racial issues, but I am by no means sure that this increased sensitivity is unalloyed progress.

Richard Pryor and the movie audience of 1976 understood that Gene Wilder’s ludicrous ghettofied blackface performance was a conscious portrayal of a certain stereotype, not an insult to black people generally. But it seems an annual occurrence now that some fraternity will have a party during which some white kids decide to do a blackface thing and, without any examination of the intended meaning or context, this results in ritual denunciation.

As an analogy, suppose that someone were lampooning hillbilly stereotypes — toothless moonshine-guzzlers, etc. As an Appalachian-American, I might get offended by that, if it was offered as a general depiction of all Appalachian-Americans. But I cannot deny that it is a fair depiction of some Appalachian-Americans, who are indeed noted for poor dental hygiene and an affection for homemade whiskey.

When Richards started shouting the “n-word” at hecklers, that was completely wrong, and Richards himself has acknowledged as much. But this rooting around in the vaults for other “evidence” of some generalized trait of racism on Richards’ part is redolent of the Washington Post’s assertion that Sen. George Allen was using a little-known French slur when he said “macaca.”

Ali-Bubba on November 22, 2006 at 9:30 PM