On “Negro Dialects” and “Talking White”

Like many, I’ve followed with interest the recent ruckus over Harry Reid’s comments to journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, reported in their new book, "Game Change," that Obama could be successful thanks, in part, to his "light-skinned" appearance and lack of a "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."  As many Lounge readers know, there is a large academic literature addressing the impact on professional and social success of names, skin tone, speaking patterns, hair and dress styles, and other mutable and immutable characteristics. 

So, I asked Devon W. Carbado, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at UCLA, for his reactions to the Harry Reid controversy and how that controversy related to current scholarship, including his own, on race. Below is Professor Carbado’s response:

Harry Reid is in trouble.  Specifically, for saying, in a private conversation during the 2008 campaign, that Barack Obama had a better chance of success in his presidential campaign thanks in part to his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns “with no negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

But what exactly is problematic about these comments?  Yes, the term “negro dialect” is jarring, particularly from a high profile figure like Reid.  But it is not Reid’s poor choice of words alone that has generated criticism.  In other words, the fuss is not simply about Reid’s use of the term “Negro.” After all, as troubling as that term might be, few would equate it with what we now sanitize and express as the “N-word.”

Instead, then, much of the fuss is about Reid’s observation that racial minorities have to modify their behavior in ways that serve to negate stereotypes. Whether we like the racial register in which Reid made his observations, reality is that Reid’s observations hold true for many African-American men, who face a variety of hurdles to success in a white-dominated environment, whether it be a corporate law firm, academia, or national politics.  This is a phenomenon I discuss in the chapter, Talking White, in my forthcoming Oxford University Press book “Acting White” (co-authored with Mitu Gulati).  A number of other scholars speak to these issues as well, including Holning Lau at the University of North Carolina and Angela Onwachi-Willig at the University of Iowa.

Here is the gist of what our research tells us:  Black men are subject to lots of stereotypes, most of them negative.  To succeed in environments where others hold those stereotypes, therefore, they routinely do extra work (“identity performance work”) to ensure that their white colleagues are put at ease with their blackness.  And that means showing their white colleagues that they are different from the stereotypical black man; that they are not angry, militant, aggressive, lazy, uneducated, uncommitted to their marriages and families, etc.  Doing this extra work is not easy; it takes effort.

Barack Obama was able to succeed, in part, because he successfully negated these stereotypes.  Arguably, he had to be calmer, less emotional, smarter, better educated, more committed to his family than any of his competitors. Harry Reid, a wily politician and a realist, presumably recognized Obama’s ability to sustain the performance of this identity early on and predicted success for him.  Reid recognized, in other words, that Obama, like many other black people, “works” his identity.

And let’s not forget the other “controversial” part of Reid’s comments—that having light skin helps.  This is hardly a debatable proposition. As stated by Syracuse professor Boyce Watkins in a Hip Hop Wired piece:

“But the truth is that for the past 400 years, light-skinned Blacks have been preferable to darker skinned African Americans in almost every walk of life, from beauty to employment to politics. In that regard, Reid was simply pointing out the obvious and reminding us that we are a long way away from any kind of ‘post-racial America.'”

That brings us back to the question posed at the start: What exactly was problematic about what Reid said to those reporters?  Was the problem that he was being explicit in recognizing that we are not in a color blind society?  That black men still have to do extra work in performing their identities to be palatable to the majority in society?  Open any serious contemporary academic treatment about the realities of race in American society (and particularly in the employment context) and one will see Reid’s views reflected.

My guess is that Reid’s comments have put him in boiling hot water in part because they are viewed as impolite, as recognizing a reality that we would like to sweep under the rug.  And this is interesting, because it tells us something about what we, as a society, think is an acceptable racial discourse for politicians.  They have to pretend that we live in a colorblind (and maybe gender blind) society.  They are not allowed to recognize that for a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to succeed, they have to constrain and modify—work—their identities to negate numerous problematic stereotypes.  Blinding ourselves to these dynamics won’t make them go away.  We need to see and grapple with them.  I don’t mean to say that Reid was doing exactly that. In other words, I am not arguing that Reid was speaking truth to justice. But he was speaking a truth about race that remains uncomfortable for us to engage.

Comments

[Tung Yin]

The one thing that struck me about similar observations of Sen. Reid's comments (i.e., impolitic, but accurate) was how one day during the O.J. Simpson murder trial, a witness testified that he heard someone (presumably Simpson) speak but didn't see the person; however, the witness testified that it was an African-American male from his "accent." Defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran was outraged and accused the witness of being a racist, because Cochran said there's no black accent.

Of course, I realize Cochran was just representing his client (and did so quite well), but still . . . .

[Kim Krawiec]

Thanks Tung. I had forgotten all about that incident.