Michael Richards and the Power of Segregation in the White Mind

By this time, everybody knows about Michael Richard's racist rant at the LA Comedy Club last week. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in whether Richards apologized (he did) or whether Richards a racist (how could he say he isn't?). The tabloid question of whether Michael Richards is going to be condemned, saved, or rehabilitated doesn't grab me either. I never liked Seinfeld all that much. As a result, Richards never really mattered to me as a cultural icon. Perhaps some good will come out of the efforts of Jesse Jackson to use the incident to question the use of the n-word in popular culture.

However, what really interests me is what we can learn about American society more generally from Richard's outburst. I think there's a lot to learn about the enduring symbolic importance of segregation here.

What set Richards off was heckling by either Frank McBride or Kyle Doss that Richards was not funny. The issue here was a black person was passing judgement on him as a white man. From Richards' point of view, McBride or Doss were mistaken in presuming to have the right to evaluate Richards' work as a comedian and he quickly moved to correct them. For Richards, desegregation was an act of noblesse oblige on the part of whites rather than a recognition of racial equality. Believing that McBride and Doss should have been grateful to be allowed in the club at all, Richards was offended that they would presume to judge a famous white man.

This is why Richards reminded the men that "fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass." Of course, the "we" here is the white race and Richards is reminding McBride, Doss, and their party of the power he views whites as exercising over blacks in American society. For Richards, segregation and lynching are still archetypical expressions of the fullness of white dominance. When Richards raises the specter of lynching, he is reminding blacks of his view that segregation is still current and fundamental even if it is not often spoken. Racial power relations have remained the same even if few blacks get lynched and Richards doesn't see these particular blacks guys as having any more right to judge him than Emmet Till had to whistle at a white woman during the fifties.

Michael Richards reminds us of the extent to which segregation is fundamental to American culture. With the on-going dominance of stereotypical portrayals of black women and men in popular culture, popular culture inculcates the idea that the racial stereotypes of the segregation period are still "true" and that anyone who rejects those stereotypes is morally questionable as a snob, (most likely a) hypocrite, and a "politically correct" kind of person. The spirit of segregation may have died in American law, but it dominates American popular culture. Of course, Michael Richards is going to be exiled culturally because he crudely spoke what a great many white people think in vague and unselfconscious ways. But his racist tirade spoke something that was very true of white thinking.