Dark Continent: There They Go Again!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

There They Go Again!

I just laughed when I saw the Times headline Trying to Change Its Face, G.O.P. Weighs a Black Chairman [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/us/politics/11gop.html?hp]. It seems the Republicans are playing the Race Card again.

But it also got me thinking as I often have about the meaning of the Race Card in this society. I had similar thoughts when I saw that Illinois’ disgraced Gov. Blagojevich appoint Roland W. Burris to replace Obama in the Senate. That was a pretty cynical use of the card; but Burris was right in there playing his own version of the card, too.

Here are just a few of my questions:

Who gets to play the race card most often—blacks or whites? Let’s admit it, we all use the race card at some point. Sometimes it’s appropriate, isn’t it? For example, if we see someone being excluded from a position because people don’t understand their own blind racism, shouldn’t we play the race card to intervene in such a racially prejudiced situation?
Of course, one can use the Race Card for racist ends. The RC was played to get on the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas, a man who is willing to cover up the negative impact of racism by showing his black face as a supporter of racism and the enemy of justice. Don’t we have to ask who is playing the race card and why?
Is charging someone with playing the RC sometimes a way to actually play the card?

If I’m right that we all play the race card sometime and that it can be used for good or evil, shouldn’t we question the context in which the RC is played? It is not the playing of the Race Card that is in and of itself bad; perhaps it is how we use that it that matters.

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Academic Biography

Professor White's first book, Sierra Leone’s Settler Women Traders: Women on the Afro-European Frontier, was winner of the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Price in 1987. Her book with Iris Berger, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History, has become a standard reference text and has been translated into Japanese. Her most recent book is Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability. She has been named a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and a Mellon Scholar and has received a Kidder-Peabody Grant for research in The Gambia. Her appointments have included chair of the Five College Black Studies Executive Committee and member of the Graduate Faculty of the University of Massachusetts. She has a B.A. from Wheaton College, an M.A. in African history, and a Ph.D. in history from Boston University.

Along with her teaching and scholarly career, she has had a distinguished career in academic administration. At NYU, she was appointed Vice Provost in 2005. She advised the Provost on faculty appointments, tenure, and promotion. She worked closely with the Faculty Senators Council to enhance work-life conditions for faculty. She also spearheaded the university’s efforts to diversify the faculty and has responsibility for the Office of Academic Appointments, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Faculty Resource Network, a faculty development consortium of 52 institutions of higher education.

From 1998 to 2005, Professor White was dean of NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she greatly increased the school’s visibility and reputation. From 2001-05, she was chair of NYU’s Deans Council. Prior to coming to NYU, she was a professor of history and Black studies at Hampshire College, where she also served as Dean of the School of Social Science and Dean of Faculty. While completing her Ph.D. at Boston University, she was an instructor at the University of Sierra Leone and a research assistant at the Afro-American Studies Center at Boston University.