Howard, P.S.S. (2014) “Drawing Dissent: Post-Racialist Pedagogy, Racist Literacy, and Racial...

Post-Racialist Pedagogy, Literacy and Racial Plagiarism 1

Drawing Dissent: Postracialist Pedagogy, Racist Literacy, and Racial Plagiarism in Anti-Obama Political Cartoons

Philip S. S. Howard

Current Affiliation:

Department of Integrated Studies in Education Faculty of Education

McGill University

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in

The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies

It is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/xB7C643qZ9sF3qPHrDDI/full

Please cite as:

Howard, P.S.S. (2014) “Drawing Dissent: Post-Racialist Pedagogy, Racist Literacy, and Racial Plagiarism in Anti-Obama Political Cartoons.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 36(5), 386-402.

and please check the published article for accurate page numbering as necessary.


Introduction

There has recently been a clear shift in the ways that North American societies talk about

and act upon race. Racially-charged and racist incidents, or at least the public expression of

them, seem to be on the rise. From the frequency of the racially motivated and racially-justified

slayings of black youth to the increased popularity of blatantly derisive racist humour, the

enactment of race and racism appears to have become more defiantly overt and unapologetic.

Consider the slayings of Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, and Jordan Davis whose armed

white killers, in each case, suggested that they felt threatened by their unarmed black victims;

and the recurring incidents of blackface at race/culture themed parties—which in at least one

case included a blackface portrayal of Trayvon Martin, complete with blood stained T-shirt. Yet

this upswing of racist incidents seems to accompany the rise to prominence of President Barack

Obama, whose candidacy and election also paradoxically ushered in postracialist discourse and

rhetoric—claims that racism has been transcended and race is no longer relevant (see, e.g., Cho

2008; Ono 2010, 229).

In this contradictory context, humour is a popular technology for weaving together these

apparently opposing currents, such that racist humour is often justified as “harmless” fun. And,

not surprisingly, in this critical moment for theorizing race and racism much justified racial

humour has presented itself in the form of political dissent directed at President Obama, around

whom the postracialist currents seem to swirl.

In this article, I argue that postracialist humour is eminently pedagogical, playing a key

role in the communication of racial knowledge in the postracialist climate when race is

unspeakable. Through a focus on anti-Obama humour and its tropes, I examine postracialist


humour and its particular features, strategies and functions in the postracialist climate. In Part I,

I discuss the literature on neo-liberal racism and postracialism, laying theoretical groundwork for

a discussion of this eruption of raciality through humour in the contemporary moment. In Part 2,

drawing particularly upon Goldberg’s (2009; 2012) analyses of neo-liberal racism and the

concept of “racial dis-appearance” (Goldberg 2012), I examine some of the racial humour

directed at Obama and his family occurring as political cartoons, online images and leaked email

messages. Using these incidences, and noting that they often involve some of the most blatant

historical Africanist tropes, I argue that racial dis-appearance through humour betrays a deep and

enduring societal racist literacy rooted in racial history. Further, I argue that this humour

performs a specific function of casting and recasting racial boundaries in ways that are congruent

with the work performed historically by these tropes. Finally, in part III, I turn attention to what

postracialist anti-Obama humour tells us about racial knowledge and its pedagogy in the

postracialist era. Paying attention to the ways that the racist history of these tropes are denied, I

map out some of the features that distinguish racial knowledge and literacy in the postracialist

era from that in the colour-blind era that it is quickly replacing. Framing postracialist humour as

racial plagiarism, I conclude by offering some thoughts about the form that resistance to

postracialist humour, and more broadly postracialist knowledge, might take.

PART I: Postracialism, racial dis-appearance, and racist humour.

In sketching the most recent shifts in racial arrangements in neo-liberal North American

contexts, theorists have specified two main trends. On the one hand, Goldberg, in his 2009,

Threat of Race, argues that there has been a shift in the primary locus of racist expression from

(explicit) state intervention to the ostensibly benign workings of civil society. Racial disparities


and inequalities, as well as racist expression, are seen as happenstance—“a mix of being guided

by the presumptive laws of the market [and] the determinations of the majority’s personal

preferences” (2009, 78-79). This “privatization” of racial expression has led to a tendency to see

racially-charged incidents as so many isolated instances, and has obscured the recognition of

racial trends in the frequency and type of these incidents (Goldberg 2012, 20). In neo-liberal

society, the market and personal preference are, of course, regarded as sacrosanct markers of

freedom that are not to be challenged. Thus, these racial incidents are understood to be

“produced by . . . doing nothing special” (Goldberg 2009, 78), seen, at worst, as the

understandable price of freedom, if seen as problematic at all. This moves racial arrangements

beyond critique (52) and certainly beyond the reach of corrective action by the state (79).

However, as Goldberg argues, the state is not innocent in these transformations. Rather, the

privatization of racist expression simply masks the state-cultivated logics and discourses that are

implicated in the production of civilian “choice” and its enduring racialized outcomes—even

while the state’s racial formation is itself reinforced by civil trends (78).

The other, and recently more topical, trend in neo-liberal racism is the rise in post-

racialist discourse. While no credible race scholar would claim that racism is, in fact, a thing of

the past, a cursory perusal of popular media will nevertheless confirm that the presumptions that

race is no longer socially significant, that racism has been overcome, and that antiracism is

gauche, are gaining increased currency and traction in the popular social imagination. Cho

(2008, 1597-8) distinguishes postracialism from colour-blind ideology. Colour-blind ideology

works by setting up behavioural ideals appropriate for a utopian moment of racial transcendence

yet to come. On this basis, colour-blindness claims not to see colour (i.e race), and fails to

account for the histories and extant conditions that differently locate variably racialized social


actors in the present. In contrast, postracialist ideology makes the claim that the moment of

racial transcendence is upon us—already manifest and fully established. Thus, postracialism

transforms colour-blindness from future ideal to idealized present, denying that there is currently

any racial inequality to take account of in the first place. Thus, postracialism enjoins us to:

. . . give up on race before and without addressing the legacy, the roots, the scars

of racisms’ histories, the weights of race. We are being asked to give up on the

word, the concept, the category, at most the categorizing. But not, pointedly not,

the conditions for which those terms stand. (Goldberg 2009, 21)

This silencing of race while racial arrangements endure is, then, a technology of whiteness

engineered to do away with race on the basis of its spuriousness, with the intention of casting

racism as similarly spurious, and thereby doing away with the bothersome task of addressing it

(Cho 2008, 1596; Goldberg 2009, 22).

Cho further argues that postracialism is brought into being and justified through a

specific precipitating or “watershed” moment (2008, 1645). In the United States, it is

undoubtedly the candidacy and presidency of Barack Obama that has precipitated contemporary

postracialist discourse (Cho 2008, 1645; Ono 2010, 228). By this reasoning, the fact that a black

man has attained the highest public office in the nation, and that presumably many white

Americans voted for him, serve as evidence that racism has been transcended, and that race does

not serve as a barrier to accessing social goods or status. Hence, there is no further need for

antiracist initiatives. All explicit references to race—whether for racist or antiracist reasons—are

taken as “morally equivalent” (Cho 2008, 1603) and are equally disdained. Those who disagree

that race is irrelevant are themselves cast as racist (Goldberg 2012, 121; Ono 2010, 229).


Postracialism therefore intensifies the “deniability” of race (Goldberg 2012, 123) and race

becomes unspeakable (Cho 2008, 1595; Goldberg 2009, 23; Goldberg 2012, 121).

Dis-appearance and humour

Paradoxically, however, the postracial climate from which race has been voided produces

what Goldberg has referred to as the “dis-appearance of race,” whereby racially-charged

incidents show up in unanticipated and sometimes ambiguous, but usually crude and

objectionable ways (2012, 125). As Goldberg writes:

Racial disappearance . . . signals both the conceptual evaporation and the material

unrecognizability of racial matters. . . . dis-appearance speaks to the ways in which

racialities re-appear in sometimes unexpected, perhaps unpredictable and less

noticeable ways once race conceptually disappears. (2012, 125)

Ostensibly humourous civil contexts are an extremely important and popular site for the

dis-appearance of race (Goldberg 2012, 125). Humour theorists have long recognized the

potential for humour to inferiorize the “Other” (Morreall 2005, 68, Plato and Aristotle in Weaver

2011, 416), support the “suspension of empathy” (Billig 2001, p. 279), and importantly, to serve

as an outlet for that which has been repressed (Barnes, Palmary and Durrheim 2001, 335-336;

Freud 1989/1905, 120; Morreall 2005, 68; Mueller, Dirks and Picca 2007, 332). At the same

time, racial humour, in its ontology, as well as through the justification, “It was just a joke!” is

inherently ambivalent—declaring, yet denying in the same moment through the comedic context

(Billig 2001, 270&286; Weaver 2010a, 542). Thus, the joke-teller’s motives can remain unclear,

making it difficult for those challenging this humour to establish racist intent in the joke-teller

(Weaver 2010b, 681), while it is simultaneously difficult for the joke-teller to convincingly rule


out racist motive. Even more poignantly, the context of humour, removes any imperative for the

joke teller to resolve the ambiguity for her/himself (Billig 2001, 286; Freud 1989/1905, 121,

Weaver 2010b, 681). Indeed, those who enjoy racist humour find in the comedic context the

opportunity for a measure of “self-deception” whereby they are able to imagine that their

enjoyment derives from wit rather than, or in the absence of, racism (see Billig 2001, 268).

Finally, the humour literature draws attention to the rhetorical possibilities of racial

humour and therefore to the idea that racial humour has the ability (where not the express

purpose) of at least temporarily overcoming racial ambivalence, and thus supporting (Weaver

2011), or occasionally challenging (Rossing 2012), racist ideologies.

Thus, it is not surprising that humour is a privileged site for the dis-appearance of

racialities in the postracialist context. At this site, racial disparagement and denial converge,

serving the ambivalent demands of the postracialist context which is organized by race but

rejects any claim to the ongoing significance of racism. Under these conditions, debates over

conscious racist intent become irrelevant since the rhetorical work of racially-charged humour is

effectively realized, regardless of intentionality.

PART II: The Humour, The Tropes

I now turn to analyzing racial dis-appearance in the postracialist moment that has been

manifested through comedic political dissent directed at Barack Obama since his rise to political

prominence. I will establish that the forms that much of this humour takes are not isolated

historically but, rather, draw on easily recognizable, historical, Africanist tropes. I argue further

that through these racist tropes, this comedic racial-disappearance performs specific types of

rhetorical work to cast and re/cast a colour line at a time when it may be perceived to be


unraveling. The work performed in this moment by the deployment of these tropes is congruent

with the work that these tropes have performed historically. Thus, while these incidents of racial

dis-appearance may appear unrelated and committed by unrelated individuals, the specificity of

the deployment and rhetorical function of this racial dis-appearance is not haphazard. I limit my

focus in this article to two tropes featured in Obama-related humour: images of Obama and his

family as simian, and images of Obama as witchdoctor.

The Obamas as Simians

Numerous images of the Obamas, ostensibly intended as humour, employ the simian1

trope. These depict Barack Obama and/or members of his family as apes or monkeys, half-

monkey, or otherwise compare them closely to non-human primates. For example, on a site with

the byline “the truth network sprinkled in satire,” a moving image of Obama metamorphosing

into a gorilla carries the caption “Obamanation: Planet of the apes.” Another popular image

shows a child holding a sign at a protest which reads “Obamanomics: Monkey see, Monkey

spend.” In another example, Marilyn Davenport, a California Republican official, emailed an

image portraying Obama as the child of chimpanzees and carrying the caption, “Now you know

why no birth certificate!” (Flaccus 2011).

The president’s wife, Michelle Obama, is also frequently the subject of this kind of

representation. Notably, for at least two weeks in November 2009, a Google image search for

“Michelle Obama” returned as its top result an image of Mrs. Obama photoshopped to look half-

monkey-half-human (Heussner 2009; McGee 2009). In another instance, former chairman of the

California elections commission, Rusty DePass, posted a Facebook comment claiming that an


escaped gorilla was “probably one of Michelle’s ancestors” (Baram 2009). Beyond these, the

Internet is littered with other images comparing President and Mrs. Obama to simians.

Black president, White president. There is no racism here.

Not surprisingly for the postracialist era, there is denial that these simian images of the

Obamas have any racial significance. One objection to a racial reading of these portrayals of the

Obamas involves the fact that both Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush were portrayed as

simians during their terms as president. This claim seeks to make equivalent the simian

portrayals of all three presidents, and thus to assert that the motives behind them could not be

racist/racial in that Lincoln and Bush are white.

The claim that portrayals of blacks and whites as simians in the contemporary moment

are equivalent is ahistorical and ignores the specific historical inferiorization of blacks through

the simian trope (to be discussed in Part II). Some European groups, particularly the Irish, have

also been portrayed as simians in political cartooning as demonstrated by the site Sociological

Images. However, the site unfortunately sums up with the claim, “So, there you have it. Being

compared to apes is a tactic of oppression totally unrelated to skin color — that is, it has nothing

to do with Black people and everything to do with the effort to exert control and power.” (Wade

2011). Indeed, the simian portrayal of the Irish represents a dehumanizing act. However, as

respondents to the blog point out a) the Irish were not always considered fully white (see

Ignatiev 1995), and therefore this representation does have to do with racialization if not skin

colour; but also b) that the portrayals of Africans as Simians both predated and outlasted the

portrayal of the Irish this way. There is a long history of the disparaging comparison of the Irish


to Africans, and as such, the racialization of the Irish in this manner was to blacken them by

making them similar to Africans. Thus, the simian portrayal of Europeans depended upon, and

was given meaning by, the simian portrayal and broader racist conceptions of Africans.

Thus, in the absence of an analogous independent discourse that has employed the simian

trope to identify white men in general as savage or inferior, images of whites and blacks

portrayed as simians cannot reasonably be taken to have equivalent symbolic/cultural meaning.

Given these uneven histories, then, it is, in fact, quite possible and likely that simian portrayals of

white presidents could lack racial meaning. In contrast, because of history, simian portrayals of

Obama signal racial discourse quite independently of, and exceeding, the intentions of those

employing them.2

How, then, might we read the simian portrayals of George Bush? It can be noted that

Bush’s characteristic malapropisms often led to an interpretation of him as unintelligent. Indeed,

these malapropisms are frequently prominently featured where a written context/motive is

provided for the simian images of Bush. This is in marked contrast to the fact that Obama is

often deemed too intellectual, professorial, and aloof by supporters and detractors alike (see e.g.,

Carlson 2013; Edsall 2008; Wolcott 2010), thus ruling out his intelligence as a motive for the

Obama simian portrayals. In any case, given the workings of whiteness to individualize whites

while homogenizing and essentializing those who are not, we can safely assert that whatever

drove the simian representations of Bush, however derisive and ableist, is not generalizable to all

white men, and therefore does not indicate anti-white racism. By contrast, only racial meanings

make the simian portrayal of Obama intelligible.


However, to say that the portrayal of a white president as simian does not indicate anti-

white racism is not to say that it cannot indicate anti-black racism. The most common simian

portrayal of Lincoln is a caricature of him as monkey that appears on January 14, 1863, shortly

after the emancipation proclamation of January 1. In this image, the Lincoln-monkey is holding

the emancipation proclamation. This association of Lincoln with the end of black enslavement

associates him with blacks and their interests. I argue, then, that this association compromised

his whiteness for white supremacists of the time and exposed him to the kind of anti-black racist

iconography to which the simian trope belongs. The use of the simian trope in this caricature

serves to disparage Lincoln precisely because he is perceived to have disrupted the racial order

and transgressed the colour line by betraying white interests. Thus, while not communicating

anti-white racism, the portrayal of Lincoln as monkey pointedly communicates an anti-black

racial message.

Finally, while two few former presidents have been portrayed as simians, their wives

have not. If elected officials in public office must expect to be the subject of satire, and if this

satire is in response to their policies rather than their persons, then the frequent simian

representations of Mrs. Obama are exceptional and significant. The stark difference between the

treatment of Mrs. Obama and the treatment of other presidents’ wives is incoherent without

reference to race. However, race makes intelligible this disparity, as well as the otherwise

inexplicable idea that Michelle Obama is not fit to be First Lady of the United States (see

McAlister 2009). Here, the simian trope assumes a role within the raced and gendered

discourses used to indict Mrs. Obama as departing, through her politics and embodiment, from

normative (white) womanhood and respectability, which apparently are implicitly central to the

“First Lady” construction. Thus, one critic is recorded as remarking, “It's about time we get a


first lady in there that acts like a first lady, and looks like a first lady” (Huffington Post 2012,

emphasis added).

These arguments taken together, then, underscore that the simian images of the Obamas

are racially indexed, and are not made less so by the fact that other presidents have been

portrayed this way.

The Simian trope: History and Rhetorical Work

What then, is the history of the simian trope? The depiction of Africans as animals—in

particular as apes and monkeys—is a well-worn trope with a long history. This imagery is by no

means the earliest depiction of Africans by Europeans (Pieterse 1992, 39-40). Rather this trope

has roots in social Darwinistic logics and the biologistic aspects of the discourses of racial

naturalism that considered humans to be organized into hierarchically arranged, genetically

distinct races. While it is popularly thought that racial historicism—the notion that racial

inferiority is based on cultural/historical immaturity—succeeded racial naturalism, Pieterse

(1992, 41), relying on Barker, suggests that prior to 1770 African inferiority was claimed on

what was more akin to a form of cultural racism (or racial historicism), and that naturalist racial

ideology had not developed in its full scientific manifestation. Full-blown racial naturalism,

along with images depicting Africans as, or compared to, animals developed between 1790 and

1840 alongside thrusts for the abolition of slavery, taking full hold only after the abolition of the

British slave trade in 1807 (45). As Pieterse claims, “racial thinking developed not in spite of

abolitionism but because of its success, and in response to the situation created by the

questioning of the legal status of slavery” (45). In other words, simian imagery and the climate


of naturalist race discourse within which it developed were generated in a context where slavery

as one marker of African subordination and its supposed essential alterity threatened to

disappear. Simian portrayals of Africans, then, as expressions of racial naturalism were part of a

discursive apparatus to shore up a racial hierarchy that was newly threatened. If Africans were

going to be thought of as having a measure of human rights that would justify their freedom

(which was the thrust of many abolitionist arguments), then at least they would not be seen as

having rights equal to the rights of European humans. In fact, many of those committed to

abolition were simultaneously committed to racial naturalism (Pieterse 1992, 60). This fact is

not as counterintuitive as it might first appear when it is understood that antiracist gains are

seldom achieved through an ideological epiphany that challenges racist conception, but rather

through situational factors and a convergence of political interests (Bell 1980). The abolition of

slavery is no exception in this regard. The decline of the slave trade’s economic profitability

because of the overproduction of sugar in the British colonies, as well as the cumulative

resistance efforts of Africans (such as the Haitian revolution and the abolitionist efforts of free

Africans like Olauda Equiano) were powerful factors contributing to the inevitability of abolition

(see Adi 2007; Williams 2014). Thus, the tropes of race, including the simian trope, “established

new social boundaries at the very time the old ones were annulled” (Pieterse 1992, 63). Images

of Africans as, or as akin to, simians worked rhetorically to reassure insecure whiteness of

African/black inferiority and bolster a threatened colour line where the accustomed symbolic

markers of this supposed inferiority were disappearing. The simian trope somewhat pre-

emptively undermined the looming new threat of equality, such that “equality” would

nevertheless be unequal in its application.


The simian trope in the Obama era

The contemporary resurgence of the simian trope and the license that many feel to use it

seems undeniable, as does its association with the Obamas. It cannot reasonably be argued that

we are seeing in these images a return to full-blown racial naturalism, nor am I implying that

these tropes ever fell into complete disuse. However, the frequency and the crudely embodied

dimensions of this humour carry an intensity that seems anachronistic and nostalgic in the way

that it references racial naturalism. It certainly strains at the boundaries of the more culturally-

based discourses of race that are often assumed to characterize racism in the present (see Weaver

2011). So why might this dated trope be finding new currency in the Obama era? I would

suggest that, however symbolic and limited the anti-racist impact of the Obama presidency might

be, it represents a symbolic threat to the racial hierarchy as it has been known for so long. Just as

the election of Obama signaled racial transcendence for many, so it also marked the first

transgression of a longstanding symbolic boundary. It specifically troubled colonially-derived

conceptions of who could be President and, very importantly, of who could/should be governed

by whom. While symbolizing new hope for some, it represented a threat to whiteness for others.

More broadly, Obama, a black man with immediate Kenyan ancestry, embodies a challenge to

colonial ideas of black/African inability to self-govern—never mind to govern whites—and

destabilizes the colour line in a similar manner (if with decidedly less consequence) to the

abolition of the Slave Trade. That his extended black family inhabits the nation’s most

prestigious residence—the White House, perhaps not so incidentally so called—only intensifies

the insult. I suggest, then, that the dis-appearance of the simian trope with its attendant

implications occurs to counter the perceived shifting of the racial order, and that this is connected

through time to the appearance of the same trope in relation to similar threats in the past. This


congruency does not depend on questions of whether those who employ or enjoy the “humorous”

and ambivalent use of the simian trope are consciously intentional as they do so. However, by

calling up embodied representations that invoke the stark hierarchies of racial naturalism, the

trope endeavours rhetorically to re-assert a racial order that appears to be slipping.

The witch doctor trope: History and Rhetorical Work

A less prominent but still significant set of Obama images arose in the midst of the furor

around the Affordable Care Act (popularly called Obamacare) and depicted Obama as “witch

doctor,” to use the terminology that accompanied the images. For example, the site Obama

Cartoons carried a caricature of Obama in a white lab coat with a large book entitled “Health

Care Reform by Dr. Barack Obama” which he will apparently force down the throat of an

emaciated white patient. It carried the caption “Doctor Obama is Really a Modern Day ‘Witch

Doctor’: Voodoo Health Care with a Kenyan Twist.” The most popular and recurring image in

this genre first emerged in a 2009 email message showing the president’s face photoshopped

onto the photograph of a Huli Wigman from Papua New Guinea. Also photoshopped into the

image is a bone through Obama’s nose. It carried the caption “Obamacare coming soon to a

clinic near you” (Roth 2009a). Despite the fact that Papua New Guinea is not an African nation

and that the tradition of the Huli wigmen is an honoured tradition there, the well-worn trope of

the witch doctor, while not explicit is clearly invoked. Its use in the context of the debate around

the Affordable Care Act and health care further strengthens this reading, and the term “witch

doctor” is used widely in discussions about the image, making it evident that this reading is the

dominant one. This image was widely circulated, and in fact, was featured on T-shirts at a 2013


Tea Party convention along with the text “Your New Doctor: Obamacare coming soon to a clinic

near you” (Dunkley 2013)

The witch doctor trope is part of a compendium of images and ideas that emerged in the

early 1900s accompanying a shift in the ways Africans were constructed in the white colonial

imagination: from noble savage to ignoble savage (Pieterse 1992, 69). The image of the witch

doctor performed a number of rhetorical functions. First, associated as it is with non-Western

spirituality (understood as magic in the Western imagination), it bolstered the view of the

African as savage who is necessarily “primitive” and superstitious (see Mudimbe 68).

Europeans could know themselves in opposition to these images as civilized, Christian, and

rational. Second, portraying the African as ignoble savage suggested the incompetence of

African leadership and supported a notion that Africans were not fit to govern themselves. This,

of course, served the colonial project by helping to justify European domination (Pieterse 1992,

71). Thirdly, images of the witch doctor served to mitigate the tendency for Europeans in Africa

to “go native” (Pieterse 1992, 70) and in the process, collapse the sharp lines of distinction

between European and African, primitive and civilized, and ultimately between the self and the

enemy “other” (Pieterse 1992, 70).

The witch doctor trope in the Obama era

What rhetorical ends might the witch doctor trope serve in the context of the debate

around health care reform? One of the key components of the resistance to the Affordable Care

Act hinged on the fact that by democratizing health care, the costs of health care would balloon,

while the quality of health care would be sacrificed (see, e.g., Blodgett 2013; Roth 2009a). Thus,


by using the witch doctor trope, opponents of the Affordable Care Act intensified their

arguments by drawing on dichotomies in the racist imaginary between the medicine practiced by

“witch doctors” (understood as primitive, irrational, and superstitious) and Western medicine

(understood to be advanced, rational, and scientific). In this vein, it is not insignificant that the

Huli Wigman image first came to public attention through an email sent by a medical doctor,

David McKalip, who, through the image, could understand himself as standing for sound

medical practice and against quackery. Furthermore, in the use of this trope, concerns about the

ostensible primitivization of health care precipitated by the Affordable Care Act are made

inseparable from Obama’s black body and African heritage, and conflated with notions of

incompetence (which, of course, have featured strongly in objections to the Obama presidency).

Finally, the Affordable Care Act represents an obvious democratic thrust. In its aim to make

health care more available and affordable for a wider range of Americans, it aligns well with

America’s national mythologies of egalitarianism and anti-elitism. Nevertheless, objections to

the Act have seldom been with a view to working out the kinks while preserving its egalitarian

thrust. Rather, the talk has been about decimating and repealing it. In this way, fiscal

conservatism and discussions about handouts to the underserving, strengthened by racial

opposition to Obama (whose body associates him with those who are considered most

undeserving) run up against American egalitarianism. However, the risk run by the opponents of

health care reform is that the fictive sense of egalitarianism might overtake the objections of

fiscal conservatism—particularly among those whites who themselves might be well served by

the Affordable Care Act. The witch doctor trope, then, strengthens the racial logic that forms

part of the underlying structure of the objection to health care reform, and like its earlier


manifestations, dissuades the kind of capitulation that would result in supporting the Affordable

Care Act.

Racial Humour and Racial Violence

As a final note in Part II, disparaging and dehumanizing humour—particularly that which

dehumanizes through comparisons to animals—has been found to justify racist violence (Goff et.

al. 2008, 293), and Goldberg has pointed to the links between racial dis-appearance and the

devaluing of black life that plays out violently (2012, 126, see also 2009, 27). Not surprisingly,

then, the postracialist humour I have been discussing, as both disparaging and dis-appearing, also

has links to violence—generally, and specifically with reference to Barack Obama. One

particularly violent example of this humour is the now infamous New York Post cartoon inspired

by the case of a pet chimp gone berserk and that had to be shot. The cartoon shows a dead chimp

in a pool of blood where he has been shot by a police officer who is holding a smoking gun and

saying: “They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” (Delonas 2009). By

referencing the author of the stimulus bill (and not just the stimulus bill) an unmistakeable

allusion was made to the President. Similarly, in 2013, a rodeo clown performed wearing an

Obama mask, and with the end of a broomstick inserted into his pants to simulate sodomization,

while the cheering crowd was asked if they wished to see Obama run over by a bull (USA Today

2013). Without going as far as saying that either instance explicitly advocated for Obama’s

assassination, both cases clearly invoke as humour a murderous resolution to political differences

with Obama. In this manner, this humour plays on themes of racist violence and bridges a


conceptual gap between symbolic/epistemic racial violence and (the threat of) actual physical

racial violence.

PART III: Postracialist Knowledge: Racist Literacy, Colour Line Pedagogy, and

Resistance

Critical race scholars have long argued that racial gains in the legal realm are quickly

followed by retrenchment that undermines the gains (Delgado & Stefancic 2012/2001). The

same applies in the symbolic realm, such that it makes perfect sense in the contemporary

moment that racist humour focusses particularly upon Barack Obama and his family, whose

position as “first family” is widely (if exaggeratedly) perceived as marking a substantive shift in

racial configurations and a displacement if not eradication of the colour line. Moreover, if

Goldberg is correct that civil rights gains have blackened the state in the eyes of conservatives

and made attacks against “big government” a stand in for anti-blackness (2009, 91), then the

election of a black president who also represents a shift to the left allows racist anti-Obama

humour to be understood, as is often claimed (e.g. National Post 2009, and see Roth 2009b),

simply as opposition to his government and policies.

However, in addition to the dominant pushback, what I also emphasize is that in the

postracialist moment when race is declared irrelevant and racism considered obsolete, the

Africanist tropes being used belong to a litany of long-standing historical racist tropes. While

the use of these tropes may never have totally become extinct, they are now used with an ease,

boldness, and frequency that are not consistent with the more surreptitious and self-conscious

racism of the post-civil rights, pre-Obama era. Moreover, the race work done by these tropes is


congruent with their use in the past. I argue then, that these acts signal a historical memory

deeply embedded in the social fabric, as well as a keen literacy around these symbolic tools, the

kinds of race work that they do, and the effects to which they can be deployed. As such, while it

is produced in the postracialist climate through the modalities of racial dis-appearance, the

rootedness of this humour in racist precedent causes it to stand as self-incriminatory evidence

against the claims of postracialism, highlighting the contradictions of the postracialist moment.

Now clearly, those who name postracial humour as racist also display a racial literacy,

and openly draw upon racial history as a tool to recognize and indict this humour. Their racial

literacy consists of the analytical aptitude to assess social and institutional realities in the context

of history and intersecting injustices (Guinier 2004; Twine and Steinbugler 2006). However, in

the originators and willing consumers of postracialist humour, this literacy is further complicated

by the fact that in almost every instance there is not only a firm denial of racist intent, but also a

claim to innocence/ignorance of the racial knowledge that would be required to construct this

racial rhetoric. For instance, Davenport who portrayed Obama as belonging to a family of

chimpanzees claimed afterward:

"I'm sorry if my email offended anyone, I simply found it amusing regarding the

character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth . . . In no way

did I even consider the fact he's half black when I sent out the email. In fact, the thought

never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race (Pierce

2011, emphasis added)

Similarly, Los Alamitos, California mayor, Dean Grose, responsible for forwarding an image of

the White House lawn planted with watermelons claimed he was “unaware of the racial


stereotype that black people like watermelons” (CBS News/AP 2009). Innocent ignorance is

established through an insistence that any congruence of one’s humour with racist tropes is

purely coincidental, and therefore that the humour cannot have racial meaning.

However, these claims not to know are hardly credible–especially within the context of

humor–because, apart from the racial knowledge implied, the incongruity that creates the

“humour” (see Thornton 2011, 438; Weaver 2010a, 542-3; 2011, 416) vanishes and the jokes

simply do not work, or are rendered so facile as to be inept for making political statements. Yet,

the banality of the joke produced when it has been severed from its historical moorings further

serves to construct the kind of postracialist innocence that operates as alibi for racist expression.

By contrast, only those “spoiled by race” could identify any racism in it. Thus, Grose, who sent

the watermelon photo directly to an African American, glibly claimed when challenged, “Bottom

line is, we laugh at things and I didn't see this in the same light that she did" (CBS News/AP

2009). Yet all the while, the pleasure of the joke is intensified precisely by the fact that race play

is hidden in plain sight (see Farley 1997).

We see in this humour, then, a regurgitation of racial expression that does not admit to

having ingested it in the first place, and thus a regenerated racism “purged of its historical roots”

(Goldberg 2009, 23). Goldberg reminds us that the silencing of racial reference and the

forgetting of racial history are parts of the same postracialist project (2009, 24), and points out

the tensions between the imperative for public racial forgetting at the state level, and the

necessity of privately publicized racial expression at the individual level (2012, 126). The

humour I have been discussing, here takes it one step further producing the tension between

remembering and forgetting at the individualized site of privatized racial expression rather than

just between the state and the ostensibly autonomous individual. This duality characterizes racist


expression in the postracialist era. Race is to be forgotten, but the technologies of race must

remain at the fingertips of those who would assert a colour line in ways that nevertheless speak

of keen memory. The dependence of postracialist humour upon long-standing racist tropes is

evidence that the politics of postracial forgetting is paradoxically in intimate relationship with

racial remembering for the purpose of re-membering at the colour line. Historical memory is

disowned and suppressed in the same moment that it is called upon and expressed, thus

constituting what might be thought of as racial plagiarism. It claims to forget the source of its

knowledge about race, and to forget the race knowledge that is at the center of its consciousness,

identity, and agency. This postracialist cryptomnesia “becomes the perfect excuse” (Juskalian

2010), and Whiteness attempts to have it both ways, performing the pernicious rhetorical work of

race through humour while dodging racial accusation. Racial literacy is thus transformed, in the

disowning, into racist literacy.

To speak about literacies is also to speak about pedagogies. I want to suggest that racist

literacy is taught and learned precisely through the availability of these acts of humour, and thus

that these acts constitute a racial pedagogy in the postracialist era. Based on an assumption that

humour and racism are incompatible, we are asked to agree that these jokes are just for fun and

should not be confused with something as serious as racism (Billig 2001, 268). Nevertheless,

racial humour accomplishes rhetorical race work through the performance regardless of whether

it is taken seriously or not. As Weaver claims, “[r]acist jokes can remove the appearance of

ambivalence from racism. Stereotypes when presented in rhetorical structures, are rendered

momentarily truthful in the racist imaginary” (2011, 422). Thus, racial humour is eminently

pedagogical in multiple ways. First, in addition to sharing and perpetuating racist tropes, racial

humour assays to interpellate us all as raced subjects, disciplining and arranging us around a


colour line by reminding us of the side of the line/joke to which we belong. Second, in the melee

that inevitably follows these jokes, we learn clear lessons about whose opinions count and whose

we might disregard, and in cases of violent humour, about whose lives count and whose are

expendable (Goldberg 2012, 126). The role of this humour, then, in a public pedagogy around

racist literacy—indeed a pedagogy of the colour line—makes noteworthy both the public

instances of this humour that are individualized, and the disturbing regularity with which

privatized racial humour seems to “leak” into public circulation. Racial humour serves to teach

race in a postracialist climate that does not name racism.

There is, also, a particular form to the whiteness knowledge evidenced in postracialist

humour. Whereas colour-blindness claims not to see what it does, in fact, see (Sleeter 1993,

161), postracialism refuses to know what it, in fact, knows so that it can see but not know. This

is denial of a higher order than that normally associated with colour-blind racism. Colour-

blindness understands racial justice as equal treatment (the so called blindness of justice) by

conveniently forgetting the racial history that mediates racially-embodied experience.

Postracialism involves actively deploying the language and signifiers of race that are part of this

history while denying that this is what it is doing. Postracialism endeavours, at least within the

context of humour, to continue to draw upon an asymmetrical set of signs that can only offend

unidirectionally while unilaterally declaring them to be without racial meaning.

Perhaps, then, since the evidences of race and racial inequality are so stubbornly

persistent, and the addiction to racism so binding, the strategy of whiteness has altered, and

postracialism now changes the terms for making sense of the racism that we see. Perhaps the

bad faith claim to desire a future that is rid of racial offence has been abandoned. Instead, the

postracialist strategy is to take the offence out of racial offence—gutting it from within without


changing its form—so that racialities may continue their accustomed performances with

impunity without being called out. Colour-blindness at least aspires to racial transcendence, but

what is the anti-racist to do in the postracialist context where there is apparently nothing to

transcend, where popular consciousness regresses into a manufactured ahistoricity while agency

and expression remain firmly rooted within racialisms?

Conclusion: Resisting Racial Plagiarism in the Postracialist Moment

In this paper, I have made the case that racist tropes used in anti-Obama humour, and

racially-dis-appearing humour more generally, are not used haphazardly but attempt to do an

analogous form of race work as that performed in the past to shore up a colour line perceived to

be dissolving. This humour and its denial are constitutive of, and constituted by, a racist literacy

that, in a moment where race and racism are denied, exposes the central contradiction of

postracialist rhetoric, and can therefore be identified as racial plagiarism. Further, it marks the

shifts in the ways that racial knowledge is articulated and transmitted in the postracial era.

Racial dis-appearance is the eruption of racializing knowledge that refuses to be denied,

forgotten, or de-centred. Postracialist humour provides an avenue for the racialities that must

find expression and remind us about their unchallenged place at the centre of the collective

consciousness. However, the simultaneous remembering and forgetting that constitute

postracialist humour highlight the contradictions at the heart of postracialism, and may point us

toward the ways that post-riacialist racism may be challenged. While the racist content is

important in its own right, the defining moment, and the force of the offence in dis-appearing

racial humour is in the independence that it claims from its historical sources. My


characterization of this as racial plagiarism may help us to think through what a politics of

resistance might look like in the postracialist era.

First, in addressing matters of plagiarism, the new context of the plagiarized idea is a

secondary concern, as are its impacts upon readers of the plagiarized work. The primary focus is

upon demonstrating the unacknowledged indebtedness to earlier work. Likewise, in challenging

racial humour as a plagiaristic moment, attention ought to shift away from the tenuous idea that

these are new times in which the meaning of the tropes might be different. Attention should

even shift away from discussions about the racist impact3. Instead, the objective should be upon

establishing that this humour is, in fact, derived from a pre-existing racial script. Further

interventions can only be taken once this is firmly established. Practically, this might take

different forms, but acts of resistance in the face of claims to innocence may seek less to accuse

than to simply juxtapose this humour and its tropes with its historical antecedents, demonstrating

its commonalities. Resistance, then, will insistently and repeatedly remark, “This reminds me of

. . .,” and, “That looks a lot like . . .”. I suggest that the constant juxtaposition of these historical

moments—in essence, insistently remembering and making available a denied history—will

progressively undermine existing and future claims that Africanist tropes are used innocently.

Through this lens, we can also clearly see the shortcomings of those ostensibly preventative

educational initiatives that focus solely on looking ahead to social harmony, and even those that

are pre-occupied with discussions of privilege in the present, but that fail to also look backward

and remember. The incorporation of this backward glance is essential as the grounds for

understanding what it is that needs to be overcome, and the things that we expect to be absent

(rather than simply re-defined) in the future we seek.


Second, plagiarism inherently implies admiration of the original knowledge, the desire to

present it afresh, and the desire to make it one’s own. In this manner, the knowledge claims of

the plagiarized author are co-opted by the plagiarizing author. Even in the case of

cryptomnesia—that is, plagiarism that occurs when recalled knowledge is honestly mistaken as

one’s original creation—the plagiarist clearly identifies with the plagiarized knowledge to such

an extent that s/he is able to mistake it for her/his own, and the likelihood of cryptomnesia is

known to increase the more similar the original author is to oneself (Juskalian 2010). Similarly,

racial humour that employs racist historical tropes signals a resonance in the present with the

historical conditions that authorized the free expression of these tropes in the past. Here, I want

to understand the authors of racist humour less as the ostensibly isolated individuals who create

cartoons or forward emails (which would give way to a “few bad apples” argument), but rather

as the overarching racial conditions within which the humour is generated, and which tie these

acts together. Without claiming similar material conditions, I do, however, suggest a similarity

between the state-sanctioned discursive and representational conditions in both time periods—

and importantly between the racial impetuses behind the deployment of the tropes. Once again,

then, framing the issue as one of plagiarism facilitates the situated argument that must undergird

resistance to this humour. Such resistance challenges the disconnect between the privatized

expression of racism and the conditions of possibility for this expression created by the state

(Goldberg 2009, 78). Resistance, then, involves a critical psychological analysis of the

contextual and conceptual convergences that have caused repressed social memories to resurface

with force, whether or not individual actors are aware of their plagiarism.

Third, plagiarism can seldom be argued away as a joke. Resistance efforts in the

postracialist era must mount a sustained challenge to the ways that humour is deployed as the


unchallengeable explanation and excuse for racist expression. Indeed, the ways that race and

racism constitute pleasure and humour (Farley 1997) deserve particular attention in the

postracialist moment.

This discussion of anti-Obama racial humour, then, speaks to much more than the racist

targeting of Barack Obama and his family, but speaks to broader trends in the postracialist era.

The re-engagement of historical racist tropes through racially-charged humour appears in more

general contexts such as in the rising popularity of blackface, not only at Halloween but on other

unrelated occasions, on university campuses and beyond. As the nature of racism shifts and

becomes more complicated and contradictory, the form of anti-racist education and resistance

must also change to make postracialist ideology and practices visible and challengeable to

scholars and, indeed, in the broader public cultural spheres where this humour is circulated.


References

Adi, H. (2007). The Wider Historical Context of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Pambazuka News [Online], 302. http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/jobs/41131 Baram, M. (2009). Rusty DePass, South Carolina GOP Activist, Says Escaped Gorilla Was Ancestor Of Michelle Obama. Huffington Post [Online] 17th June. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/14/rusty-depass-south-caroli_n_215439.html Barnes, B., Palmary, I., and Durrheim, K. (2001). The Denial of Racism: The Role of Humor, Personal Experience, and Self-Censorship. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 20(3), 321-338.

Bell, D. A. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(3), 518-533.

Billig, M. (2001). Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux Klan. Discourse & Society, 12(3), 267-289.

Blodgett, H. (2013). Republicans hate Obamacare because they're Afraid People will Like it. Business Insider [Online] 2nd October. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-republicans-hate-obamacare-2013-10. Carlson, M. (2013). Is Obamacare Challenging Enough for Obama? Bloomberg News [Online] 26th November. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-26/is-obamacare-challenging-enough-for-obama-.html

CBS News/AP (2009). Mayor Hits Rough Patch Over Watermelon Pic. CBSNews [Online] 25th February. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayor-hits-rough-patch-over-watermelon-pic/

Cho, S. (2008). Post-racialism. Iowa Law Review 94, 1589-1649.

Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (2012/2001). Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press. Delonas, S. (2009). They'll Have to Find Someone Else to Write the Next Stimulus Bill (cartoon). New York Post, February 18. Dunkley, G. (2013). Obama Witch Doctor Shirt Stirs Controversy. Huffington Post [Online] 22nd January. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/obama-witch-doctor-shirt_n_2473330.html


Edsall, T. B. (2008). Barack Obama: Egghead? Huffington Post [Online] 19th September. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/20/barack-obama-egghead_n_120005.html. Farley, A. P. (1997). The Black Body as Fetish Object. Oregon Law Review 76: 457-535. Flaccus G (2011) Marilyn Davenport, California GOP Official, Apologizes for 'Unwise' Obama Chimp Email. Huffington Post [Online] 19th April. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/19/marilyn-davenport-califor_n_850992.html Freud, S. (1989/1905) Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, ed. A. Richards, trans. J. Strachey. London: Penguin.

Goff, P. A., Eberhardt, J. L., Williams, M. J., & Jackson, M. C. (2008). Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 292-306.

Goldberg, D. T. (2009). The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Goldberg, D. T. (2012). When Race Disappears. Comparative American Studies 10(2-3): 116-127.

Guinier, L. (2004). From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Divergence Dilemma. The Journal of American History 91(1): 92-118.

Heussner, K. M. (2009). Google Explains Offensive Michelle Obama Image in Search Results. ABCnews.com [Online] 24th November. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/google-explains-offensive-michelle-obama-image-search-results/story?id=9165099.

Huffington Post (2012). Michelle Obama 'Doesn't Look or Act' Like a First Lady, Says Virginia Voter Bobbie Lussier. Huffington Post [Online] 28th September. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/michelle-obama-look-like-a-first-lady-bobbie-lussier_n_1922236.html.

Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. Milton Park, UK: Routledge. Juskalian, R. (2010). Is Unconscious Plagiarism a Real Phenomenon? Newsweek [Online] August 31. http://www.newsweek.com/unconscious-plagiarism-real-phenomenon-81861. McAlister, J. F. (2009). _____ Trash in the White House: Michelle Obama, Post-Racism, and the Pre-Class Politics of Domestic Style. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6(3), 311-315.


McGee, M. (2009) Offensive Michelle Obama Image Returns, Google Buys Ad To Explain. Nov. 23. http://searchengineland.com/offensive-michelle-obama-image-returns-google-buys-ad-30381. Morreall, D. (2005). Humour and the conduct of politics. In S. Lockyear & M. Pickering (Eds.), Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour, 63-78. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mueller, J. C., Dirks, D., & Picca, L. H. (2007). Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Other. Qualitative Sociology, 30(3), 315-335.

National Post (2009). That Cartoon. National Post [Online] 20th February. http://nypost.com/2009/02/20/that-cartoon/. Ono, K. (2010). Postracism: A Theory of the ‘‘Post’’—As Political Strategy. Journal of Communication Theory, 34(3), 227-233. Pierce, T. (2011). Orange County GOP Official Considers Photo of President Obama as Baby Chimp 'Amusing'. Los Angeles Times [Online] 18th April. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/04/obama-davenport-racist-chimp.html Pieterse, J. N. (1992). White on Black: Images of Africa and blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Rossing, J. P. (2012). Deconstructing Postracialism Humor as a Critical, Cultural Project. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 36(1), 44-61. Roth, Z. (2009a). Conservative Activist Forwards Racist Pic Showing Obama as Witch Doctor. TPM [Online] 23rd July. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/conservative_activist_forwards_racist_pic_showing.php.

Roth, Z. (2009b). McKalip: I'm No Racist -- I Once Had a Career Counseling Day for Black Kids. TPM [Online] 24th July. http://www.unz.org/Pub/TalkingPointsMemo-2009jul-00543.

Sleeter, C. E. (1993). How White Teachers Construct Race. In C. McCarthy and W. Crichlow (Eds.), Race and Representation in Education, 157-171, New York: Routledge. Thornton, D. J. (2011). Psych's Comedic Tale of Black–White Friendship and the Lighthearted Affect of “Post-Race” America. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(5), 424-449. Twine, F. W. and Steinbugler, A. C. (2006). The Gap Between Whites and Whiteness: Interracial


Intimacy and Racial Literacy. Du Bois Review, 3(2), 341–363. USA Today (2013). Rodeo Clown Draws Criticism for Obama Mask. USA Today [Online] 11th August. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/11/rodeo-clown-obama-mask/2641597. Wade, L. (2011). Irish Apes: Tactics of Dehumanization. Sociological Images Blog, January 28. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization.

Weaver, S. (2010a). Developing a Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Humour: Examining Anti-Black Jokes on the Internet. Social Semiotics, 20(5), 537-555. Weaver, S. (2010b). Liquid Racism and the Danish Prophet Muhammad Cartoons. Current Sociology, 58(5), 675-692.

Weaver, S. (2011). Jokes, Rhetoric and Embodied Racism: A Rhetorical Discourse Analysis of the Logics of Racist Jokes on the Internet. Ethnicities, 11(4): 413-435. Williams, E. (2014). The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery. Lanham, MD; Rowman and Littlefield Wolcott. J. (2010). One Cool Cat. Vanity Fair [Online] September. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/09/wolcott-201009.

1Thistermisacollectivetermreferringtomonkeys,apes,andhumans.Forthepurposesofthisarticle,Iusetheterm“simian”torefertonon‐humansimians.

2 A similar argument is often made about the term “nigger” which cannot be used in the contemporary moment without invoking its racist history, making it inexcusable whenever it is used, regardless of the stated intentions of those who use the term. Further, the use of the term by white and black individuals cannot be made unproblematically equivalent because of this history.

3Ofcourse,theimpactofracisthumourisimportant,andspecificattentionmustbepaidtohealingfromthesemoments.However,challengingthishumourbyattemptingtoestablishempathyhasusuallybeenafruitlessendeavor.Empathydependsuponidentificationwiththe self. Processes of racial othering make identification of racialized bodies with thedominant“self”impossible,placingracializedbodiesoutsideofthereachofempathy.

Howard, P.S.S. (2014) “Drawing Dissent: Post-Racialist Pedagogy, Racist Literacy, and Racial...

Documents

Transcript of Howard, P.S.S. (2014) “Drawing Dissent: Post-Racialist Pedagogy, Racist Literacy, and Racial...