BlogHer - Michelle Obama depicted as KKK victim...by a supporter? - Comments

wow, thanks again

washwords — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:01:24 -0500

washy || http://washwords.wordpress.com || washwords.dc@gmail.com

sorry, took me so long. i just saw this again... thanks for the journalist/history lesson. I love poynter. Like you, this phrase resonated with me (though for different reaons, resonated with my Jewish - question everything, learn everything, liberal, touchy-feely upbringing, and then, later, my journalist heart)

anyway, thanks for the lessonS! interesting stuff.

very thoughtful

violetteb — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:39:13 -0500

I think it also gives creedance to the outrage of Muslims over the depiction of their religious leader in graphics. I think setting aside these "freedoms of speech" people have no common decency to what can be offensive.

http://her-christian-blog.com

Looking forward to that

Jill Miller Zimon — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:31:30 -0500

And although I am upset with my own level of cynicism these days, I ask myself when I read what you wrote, "And who wrote that narrative? Men. With their linguistics and definitions."

Ok - so maybe it doesn't always end up being our parents fault, or men's fault, but even so - well - I can't help feeling that way when issues like these are raised.

And what should our role be - what must it be - now?

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Thanks Kim

Jill Miller Zimon — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:26:30 -0500

The weird thing is, it all started with someone asking me, a pro-Obama person, sincerely asking me, how do we get to the core-HRC voters? And I answered sincerely, and now that's being used against me? I am totally flummoxed.

But you are right - people need big ole chill pills.

I did write this evening that I think part of this is that primary voters typically are thought of as the base - they would be the most vocal party people, yes?

AndI don't think of myself as a party person so I think that's why their insistence had been so out of whack for me. In the context of how primary voters can be, though - I think maybe it makes more sense - even if it's still not acceptable treatment.

As for them writing off that graphic - they continue to do that. It is absolutely nuts.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

Yes, those shirts are horrible.

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 21:04:27 -0500

A distraction from what?

And what are you waiting for?

For what it's worth, I've been toying with a post about media constructions of Hillary Clinton, and other women in positions of power. The germ of the idea is a comment I left on this post at Elisa's blog:

I think of HRC much the way that I think of the former investment
banker Zoe Cruz. They came of age at a time when the path to success
required the development of a toughness and tenacity that was equal to
men. Of course, there was a price to be paid -- ranging from the social
stigma of being labeled something other than a "real" woman, or the
threat of actual violence. I imagine there will be a lot of good
conversations at BlogHer trying to make sense of what all of this means
for women going forward.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

It's not just Mrs. Obama

omgiamgoingnuts — Sat, 24 May 2008 20:45:13 -0500

It's happening everywhere. Have a look here as well.

Bros not Hos

I'll wait as well.

I think it's horrible what is going on with this campaign.

Wonder how that statement on that shirt makes Hillary feel. Oh right, that's just a distraction, let's get to the real issue.

Thanks, Lisa

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:54:56 -0500

I struggled too, and even with the post, I still struggle to get at the full dimensions of this madness. Glad to have a place to work this out in conversation with others.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

yesyesyesyes

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:31:38 -0500

You are so wise. I love to read you and value the attention and intention in every word you write. Thank you, Nelle

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Folks got issues

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:18:40 -0500

People just need to calm down. I read some of the comments you've received on your blog and it's crazy. There are partisans for each of the candidates that seem to have become too lathered for constructive conversation. We won't get anywhere that way. Praying for sanity.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Wandering in

nelle2nelle — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:53:33 -0500

What this diverse world creates is an environment where we might support efforts to overcome discrimination, efforts to achieve equality, but we do so from a position of not experiencing life as part of whatever group we are talking on.

I can set here and fully support everything you write Kim. I might even be able to take any given scenario and *imagine* what it is like - but imagining and experiencing are two very different creatures.

I'm a gay woman, or for the purpose of this discussion, trannie dyke. Any given person reading this might be able to picture any given incident in my life, perhaps even feel inside what that moment in time is like - but that is different from the round the clock existence of my life.

And hosting a feminist board - and even me, as that trannie dyke, who will never be pregnant - I might imagine what it might be like, but putting my imagination to work for say... 20 minutes (and that is long) is quite different than actually experiencing pregnancy full tilt for 9 months.

So all of us congregate and share our experiences. We interact and express our support, or our opinion, or we disagree. In this interaction, at any given time, it might be my experiences under discussion, it might be your experiences, and as that shifts from your story to my story or whatever, so too shifts who experienced and who tries to get a feel for that experience.

Small wonder in that dynamic that someone will post something that triggers backlash ( a student at Keene State College, an artist working with metals, created a metal sculpture of a black woman who was lynched, and she parked it square in the middle of the campus. Controversy. But damn, that image was powerful, and it really made people think. She took a lot of heat, but not from this one.) and do so because they have only a bit of knowledge and an overall view of support for another community - but will not necessarily know what might be insensitive, or silly (what do you give a gay couple as a wedding present? Which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.)

I find these discussions to be immensely helpful, because we are sharing more of our experiences, and more of our outlook. We learn from each other about our own unique lives and the issues of those lives. The key is to learn about, and not to trod all over, dismiss, or suppress, those experiences.

nelle

I need to comment but am struggling

Lisa Stone — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:43:12 -0500

...with how angry I am -- both at HRC and at dailyKos. For now I'll be brief: Great post Professor Kim. I like Candelaria's answer over here on BlogHer: In response to Artpax's question about whether an apology makes up for any of this, Silva says no.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Like Catherine, kind of speechless

Jill Miller Zimon — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:30:38 -0500

From some backchannels around me, Obama supporters I know say that they think this could only happen because of Hillary Clinton and that Hillary's RFK comment is far worse. How everything comes back to her is beyond me - talk about not taking responsibility.

Honestly, the extremes of both candidates are really wearing me down. It's as though they have completely forsaken ANYTHING remotely like an internal moral compass that isn't tethered to their person winning.

And the failure of liberal bloggers who do patronize Kos (and I'm not one of them) to not call this out angers me as well.

People wonder how leadership would be different with women in charge - I cannot IMAGINE a woman sanctioning this graphic. Now - I could be proven wrong - weirder things are happening all around us for sure. But I do believe that a woman editor of some type would have said no to this immediately, and if she didn't, well - I can't imagine the excuse.

Thanks for calling attention to this Kim and providing great links to help understand it - if thats possible.

Jill
Writes Like She Talks

My apologies

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:33:54 -0500

I should have caught that. It's fixed now. Thanks!

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

So true.

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:31:11 -0500

We do indeed need to get back to the idea that people are responsible for their words and actions. Thanks for the thoughtful comments.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

One has to wonder

Kim Pearson — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:29:45 -0500

Hi Catherine,

Thanks. It does seem clear that the creator of this lost sight of the fact that this is a real human being, a mother, daughter, sister, wife.

The irony of this too, is that the creator was trying to point an accusing finger at Obama's critics, but instead has drawn it to hm/herself.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Michelle Obama depicted as KKK victim...by a supporter?

Kim Pearson — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:08:34 -0500

What does it tell us when an ostensible defender of Michelle Obama creates a graphic that plays on the deepest racial and sexual fault lines of the American psyche? If you saw the now-removed post at the Daily Kos that depicted Obama's critics as a KKK-robed lynch mob stringing her up, you know what I'm talking about. Not only were they stringing her up in the image, but Obama is depicted in pearl earrings and a strapless red gown that has been ripped open to expose her back -- a back that is about to be branded "Uppity Liberal" by a poker wielded by one of her tormentors. Take a look at it -- I'll wait.

There are lots of layers here. Start with perplexed disgust. BlogHer Contributing Editor Megan Smith, who first alerted us to the post and the controversy it's engendered, has some questions

How is it that someone decided this was something acceptable to post? Could it be because whoever decided to post it isn't a black woman, and possibly doesn't know or care about any black women? Is it possible they thought the message was so important that the controversy was worth it? Or did they crassly decide the controversy would stir up more hits and that was all that counted?

Megan first read about this image at What About Our Daughters? Here's part of their take:

I get the point they were trying to make, Michelle Obama is being criticized by the GOP for numerous things, but really what was going to your mind when you imagined Michelle Obama being tortured by the Klan? SECURITY CALLING SECURITY! To be clear, REPUBLICANS did not create this,a liberal "progressive" blogger created this foolishness.

Mrs. Grapevine thinks it's a case of liberal excess. Racewire thinks it's specifically a case of white liberal cluelessness (although I haven't come across any definitive identification of the race of the image's creator.)

Of course, it isn't only black women who are attacked online. Last year, when tech blogger Kathy Sierra disclosed the online harassments and threats against her, BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone noted that misogyny is alive and well across the Internet:

I have no idea how many women have emailed and telephoned me about attacks via IM, IRC chat, message boards, email and blog comments. These attacks use language that describes detailed rape, dismemberment, profanity and indescribably sick images. The goal? Abuse and humiliation of women.

But don't miss this -- many of the African American bloggers commenting on the image say that the image frightens them. Megan described "a grapefruit-sized knot in the pit of my stomach." Others see a real and present danger in the historical ignorance reflected in the image. In an online chat with me, Spelman College history professor William Jelani Cobb commented:

No one who has an iota of understanding of the history of lynching, rape or violence in general could think that this was appropriate -- even to make an ironic point about racism.

For example, commenter msladydeborah at What About Our Daughters notes the significance of the red dress in the image:

A black woman in a red dress symbolizes the traditional belief about our sexuality. We are loose no matter what station in life we hold.

Princeton University political science professor Melissa Harris Lacewell explains why the image "terrorizes" her:

After September 11, African Americans mourned along with the rest of the country. But many black Americans also harbored a secret knowledge that this was not the first time that Americans had faced terrorism.

We remember Emmett Till’s broken body and distorted face. We remember four little girls murdered in a church basement. We remember grandmothers who dared to register to vote being visited in the dead of night by masked white men bearing torches and crosses. We remember slain leaders and know that strange fruit hung from American trees too recently to be discounted as archaic history. While the memory of racial terrorism is fresh for many, it has been completely absent from public conversations about terrorism over the past seven years.

University of Pennsylvania professor Marc Lamont Hill adds:

Although the site was attempting to critique the recent onslaught of Republican attacks, I worry that the normalization of such images will have a dangerous impact on the public imagination. The last thing we need is the normalization of images depicting the abuse of black female bodies. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that such tactics would be used against any of the other potential First Ladies. Can you imagineBill O'Reilly talking about lynching Nancy Reagan?

It doesn't help that this image hit the blogosphere not long after a Roswell, Georgia magazine published a cover showing Sen. Obama in a rifle's cross-hairs. And Sen. Clinton's unfortunate reference to Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassination as part of her explanation for why she's staying in the race for the Democratic nomination further poisons the atmosphere in the minds of many. (BlogHer CE Erin Kotecki-Vest condemns Clinton's comments here.)

Two final layers. This image flips and merges two of the most emblematic images in our tragic racial history: the black (usually) male victim suffering unjustly at the hands of white racists, and the fragile woman (historically white) being violated by brutish (black, and often imaginary) men. In a provocative 2001 book, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White From Uncle Tom to OJ Simpson, UC Berkely professor Linda Williams argued that racial melodrama sets the terms of our debates over equality. What we may be witnessing in part, is just how poorly those terms fit our current situation.

Last thing. As I pondered the image, I thought about Sen. Obama's recent call for an end to the attacks on his wife. Bowling Green Daily News columnist Kathleen Parker derided his comments, along with his recent gaffe when he called a woman reporter "sweetie." But look at that image again, and think of another historical echo. During and after slavery and Jim Crow, black women were routinely sexually violated by white men -- and their husbands, fathers and other family members were powerless to defend them.

And indeed, in this image, Michelle Obama's husband is nowhere to be found. As I pondered the image, I could not help but be reminded of "On the Coming of John" WEB Du Bois' short story from his 1903 landmark work, The Souls of Black Folk. In his definitive biography of Du Bois, noted historian David Levering Lewis said "Of the Coming of John" described the dilemma of the black intellectual. That dilemma, essentially is that an educated black person would natuarlly assume the full privileges of citizenship. In the story, that assumption leads an educated black man to kill a white man who is trying to rape his sister. While a white man who did the same thing might have been found to have committed justifiable homicide, the protagonist in this story decides to take his own life as a lynch mob bears down on him.

In many ways, we are clearly a long way from 1903. However, it is equally clear that we are struggling to assimilate and articulate the new reality in which we find ourselves. And in moments such as these, one can be forgiven for fearing that we have not come as far as many of us would like to believe.