Black Envy/White Profits

Occasionally, I write about Black people in popular culture. While most academics dismiss pop culture, I have always felt that our consumption of it — how and what we consume — can be very instructive.

Before launching into this blog about how Black envy is turned into rage and rage is turned into white profits, I would like to first define a few terms. Black folk are human beings. We have the same emotions, desires, and heartbreaks as everybody else on the planet. However, and this a HOWEVER, Black folk tend to be monitored more closely by the media and denied the privacy to work out our own problems without white interference. Furthermore, Black folks seem to be the only people in America who are punished for our emotions. One of the most pervasive stereotypes about upwardly mobile Black folk is that we are “angry,” then talked about as if Black folk, human beings, should never be “angry” even when provoked. Our emotions are monitored and policed daily at our jobs and nationally through media personalities. Let me illustrate this point for you with a personal and public example.

For example, I was once denied a teaching job, because the professor of Teaching Composition, who was from Kentucky, said I was “too angry” to teach 18-year-olds. I asked her to give me the rubric for her assessment. I rarely said anything in her class and when we were assigned papers to grade, she penalized me for not grading the students strictly enough! And this Ph.D.-level white woman, steeped in reality tv shows of what Black women looked like and how we behaved, had help. There was a Black feminist professor who had it out for me. She became angry when I analyzed Giyatri Spivak in her class. Okay, Reader, that does not make sense, but let me give you some context. At the beginning of the school year, this Black woman professor looked at me, learned that I was from Mississippi, and assumed that I wouldn’t know any literary theory. Because, you know, Reader, Mississippi. When I demonstrated that I did know and could apply theory, this lady became angry enough to change colors. And this is saying something about Black people. Looking back, I was too young to understand professional jealousy and envy. And I certainly did not expect to be the target of it as a student. But that year, the white racist woman and the Black envious woman teamed up to deny me a job and make my life a living Hell. In order to survive economically and finish my degree, I went back to my undergraduate days. I was a good secretary as an undergraduate, and I used those…