Throwback Thursday: Black Art and the Phenomenon of White Discomfort

Michael Harriot rewinds to an era when a Super Bowl performance and the Grammys made white America uncomfortable.

NFL via YouTube

This article originally appeared on NegusWhoRead on May 3, 2016

I am a skeptic.

I don’t believe most of what I read on the internet. Even when someone presents a benign, obvious story, I, at the very least, Snopes it, to make sure it has some truth behind it. Otherwise, I’d be immersed in a sea of anxiety about would-be gangbanging murderers every time I flashed my high beams or teenagers subverting breathalyzer tests with alcohol-soaked tampons. Those stories never turn out to be legitimate and even when there is a modicum of truth behind them, the problems are never as widespread as the forwarded email or local news anchor makes them out to be.

Similarly, what the internet’s thinkpiece writers and social justice warriors deem as “growing outrage” is usually confined to one or two lone kooks. I didn’t believe anyone was really mad about Starbucks changing its holiday coffee cups or Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. It was hard for me to buy the fact that a rational adult could be upset about a Beyoncé song or a joke by a late-night comedian. I chalked it all up as fodder for pundits who needed to fill TV segments on slow news days. No one — I thought— really sweated stuff that small.

Until I met one of them.

A couple of days ago, I shared an Uber with two young white women who wanted to play a joke on their male friend. They asked the driver for the auxiliary cord and began blasting tracks from Beyoncé’s Lemonade. As they gushed over the album’s personal narrative and discussed the postmodern themes of the accompanying long-form video, I watched the guy’s face turn increasingly sour. When he could no longer hide his disgust, he burst into a rant about how Beyoncé was one of his favorite artists until she “pulled that stunt at the Super Bowl.” He went on about how Knowles was so powerful and influential, so he couldn’t understand why she would alienate … Then he stopped.

I don’t know if he stopped because he couldn’t express himself, had no more to say or was just halting his speech before he offended me. Whatever his reasoning was, I was just excited to finally meet one of the much-speculated-about white people who was outraged about a pop album. After all of the Fox News segments and thinkpieces, I had finally seen one in person. Now I believed.

A couple of days later, Larry Wilmore hosted the White House Correspondents’ dinner and ended the evening with a monologue that roasted politics, Washington racism, and Don Lemon. Although he was hilarious, the room was awkwardly silent during much of his set. By the time Wilmore reached his climactic closing — congratulating the president by lauding him with, “We did it, my nigga,” you could feel the tension spreading around the room filled with the Washington elite. It was one of the most awkward, uncomfortable scenes ever televised. And it was glorious.

I love when performers make people uncomfortable.

The goal of an artist is to inspire emotion. So often, middle-of-the-road, hack comedians take the easy way out with dick jokes while pedestrian poets pen trite, formulaic songs and verses about love and happiness. Anger is as valid an emotion as the warm fuzzy feelings of beauty and desire. Tears are as credible as laughter. When an artist reaches a peak level, they often produce a nuanced, realistic perspective that requires introspection and inspires internal conflict. And if Black art is unapologetic and authentic, it is supposed to do that. A Black artist can’t communicate truth without weaving in the pain of Blackness. If their art is successful, it will also, by definition, make white people uncomfortable.

Last week, a segment of white women were in uproar about Beyoncé’s use of the term “Becky with the good hair.” They were genuinely offended, deeming Beyoncé’s use of slang racist and insensitive — which may be the most epic display of privilege ever. To those women, the denigration of a specific white woman is unacceptable —even if it is just in the context of a pop song …

Even if the singer is referring to her husband’s mistress.

Even if the song is supposed to be angry.

To them, Black people are being whiny when they object to the exclusive application of the term “thug” to describe Black men or “hood” to describe a minority neighborhood, but privilege has left them so thin-skinned that they cannot reconcile the fact that a disparaging phrase for white women even exists, let alone used behind their backs. That the expression contains connotations that remind them of the collectively carried burden of the European beauty aesthetic and the societal hierarchy of an American racial totem pole that holds white women as pure and more valuable is really difficult to accept. Beyoncé’s feminist anthems are cool, but when she gets too Black, it gets uncomfortable.

Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of this than the word “nigga.” While there is a valid debate among Black people about the use of the word, its social acceptability and the generational split on its popularity, it still engenders white uncomfortability.

Whenever white people are allowed into the debate about the “n-word,” there is always a section of the argument entitled “Well then … why can’t we say it?” I contend that is the essence of their uncomfortability — there exists something in the universe that is off-limits to them.

To be fair, white people were not the only people who were uneasy with Wilmore’s word choice. Many of the best and brightest Black players on the respectability politics all-star team came down with a case of the jigaboo jitters (it’s like the “heebie-jeebies” for people who are immune to “economic anxiety). Al Sharpton — who white America thinks of as the de facto leader of Black America, and Black America thinks of as … well, Al Sharpton — said Wilmore’s comment was “in bad taste.” He felt the white people squirm. He smelled the sweaty indelicacy of the moment because it made him uncomfortable in front of his progressive co-workers and the influential executives who saved a seat (and a time slot) for their nigga.

“To say that to the president of the United States in front of the top people in media was at best in poor taste,” Sharpton told a white man during a white afterparty for the white-owned network where Sharpton serves as the featured nigga. “I think he was trying to, in his own way, to act like he was relating. But relating to who? Or what? I really didn’t like it.”

As the world’s leading white comfortability expert, Sharpton would know. If Al Sharpton made white people feel any measure of discomfort, he wouldn’t be sitting next to Joe Scowlblowhard and Mika Beckyzinsky as they fawn over Donald Trump on the network that treated Melissa Harris-Perry like a nigga. Whether he’s marching through Bensonhurst or rhyme-preaching politics to a white liberal audience, the “reverend with the good hair” knows the difference between being loud and being outspoken. Black artists, activists and preachers whose outspokenness threatens the status quo don’t last long. Ask 21-year-old Fred Hampton or 26-year-old Tupac Shakur. Medgar Evers, Bob Marley, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X never lived to see 40.

Al Sharpton is alive.

They don’t mind “nigga” in rap songs and “hood” movies, but when it rears its head in the mainstream, it is just like “Becky.” The word carries the luggage of the history of white supremacy and reminds them of the historical injustices perpetrated by their people — not necessarily their specific forefathers but by their compatriot lookalikes. Not only is the n-word an unpleasant reminder, it is also a closed doorway to a culture and history built by my niggas.

That’s why Lemonade was an affront to America.

By exposing her affinity for “negro noses” and afros, Beyoncé insulted the little white fangirls who were trying to get in formation. She summoned up the memories of Katrina to the people who had already swept the displaced survivors onto the pile of dead negroes hidden in America’s ugly past. On the day when America gathered around TV sets to showcase its nigger gladiators, Beyoncé brought up Black Panthers. She recalled negro heroes who carried guns on their shoulders. She equated a not-so-distant icky past with the current situation.

That’s why the room at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was so quiet. The moment was cringeworthy to them because Obama didn’t cringe. Even worse, he was in on the joke. At a time when the most accepting, liberal section of supposed truth-tellers gathered in a room to pat themselves on the back for how progressive and inclusive they were for hiring the Black comedian to sit on stage with the Black president, Larry Wilmore held up a mirror and said: “Don’t forget, we’re still carrying the scars from those whips.”

That’s why “Beckys” are upset with Beyoncé. That’s why Kendrick Lamar ”went too far” at the Grammys. It’s why Viola Davis’ Emmy speech ruffled feathers. It’s why the upcoming Birth of a Nation is causing trepidation. It’s why Chris Rock’s Oscar monologue made Hollywood fidgety.

White America loves Black art. It makes them feel things. But, apparently, they get to determine which “things” are appropriate. They want grateful, smiling performers who color inside the lines they drew. They want all the rhythm but none of the blues. They don’t actually like the rappers, just the delight. In a country built for their comfort, white America will never be comfortable with Black people exercising their freedom of speech or telling the whole truth. Unfortunately, for them …

We did it, my nigga.