Let's stop fooling ourselves on race - Separate & unequal

I can find racism everywhere - which is ironic because my white friends usually can’t find it anywhere. Since they’re not racist, they always have a non-race-based justification for what (to me) is obvious racism. I don’t blame them. They haven’t lived with it all their lives, so they don’t know the many forms it can take. Ask a white person if he or she is racist or knows any racists and the answer will always be “no”. Ask a black person if he or she has ever experienced racism and the answer will always be “yes”. That’s because racism lives in that mysterious place just beyond consciousness where our defense mechanisms dwell, making it difficult to recognize and easy to deny. But sometimes there is just no other explanation.

Last week, former Senator Mitchell released his report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Putting aside the questions of whether or not the report was necessary (and whether players should have their reputations destroyed by the word of guys facing jail time for distributing illegal drugs), the big news was that Roger Clemens, the greatest pitcher of his generation, was a steroid and HGH user. Over the last few years, I’ve heard some awful things said about the greatest hitter of his generation, Barry Bonds. On the field, he was arrogant, cocky, and showed up pitchers. Off the field, people said he was aloof, inaccessible to fans, and contemptuous of writers (who now may or may not vote him into the Hall of Fame because he “cheated”).

After the Mitchell Report, anything that was said about Barry Bonds can be said about Roger Clemens. As a kid growing up in Boston in the 80’s, I can tell you that the Rocket was no sweetheart, on the field or off it. He’s every bit as surly and just as much of a “cheater” as Bonds ever was. Roger is no more deserving of the benefit of the doubt than Barry, but he’s gotten it. If wanting to believe the best about the white guy while pushing the black guy under the bus for the same transgressions isn’t racism, then what is it?

There was a similar situation with last year’s Oscars. Alan Arkin was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a heroin-addicted grandfather in “Little Miss Sunshine” and Eddie Murphy was nominated for his work as a heroin-addicted R&B star in “Dreamgirls”. For his part, Eddie had to sing, dance, and age almost twenty years before dying in Act II. Alan Arkin also dies in his role, but leaves the singing and dancing to Abigail Breslin. And despite the fact that Eddie won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in the performance of his life, he was passed over for Arkin (who wasn’t even nominated for a Globe) at Oscar time. Since the Academy can’t or won’t recognize Eddie Murphy’s work at least as much as the Foreign Press, I don’t blame him for telling them to keep their “serious films” and walking right out of the Kodak Theater and onto the set of “Norbit”. That Oscar was Eddie’s to win and there would have to have been a damn good reason not to give it to him. Alan Arkin’s earnest delivery of a tired old cliché (“A real loser is someone so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try.”) doesn’t qualify.

It’s the same thing that was responsible for the Great Snub of 1985. There were two huge movies that year, both nominated for 11 Academy Awards: “Out of Africa” and “The Color Purple”, based on a story by a black author about black people and featuring an all-black cast. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Song, Original Score, Costume Design, and Make-up – but, somehow, not Best Director. How many Oscars did this epic movie win? Not a single one.

I acknowledge that the Academy did (finally) see fit to give some statues to some black people in the past few years. While it’s good that Denzel, Halle, and Jamie got some love, they earned their awards with their performances. Where “The Big R” comes into play is when we make excuses for the fact that one person’s work is judged by different criteria than another person’s work. Racism lives in that place in your mind where you give Roger a break that Barry doesn’t get, it exists in that place where Eddie has to work harder than Alan for the same recognition, and it thrives when you allow yourself to believe there are eleven good reasons why “The Color Purple” was passed over. In other words, racism is real – whether you want to believe it or not.