Is Racism ∝ Money?

After reading about Dean's fate in Run Mourner, Run, I was struck by how similar it was to Ralph Ellison's short story, King of the Bingo Game. In case you don't remember, Ellison's story is about a poor black man who plays bingo to win money for his wife and coming child. He calls bingo and stops the wheel on his number, but instead of being awarded the prize money, he is beaten by a police officer (Video).

Both Dean and the protagonist in King of the Bingo Game are poor, but stumble on a chance to turn their life around. Percy "promises" Dean a promotion to foreman if he sleeps with Raymond, a prominent black man in his town. Dean goes through with his part of the deal, but Percy doesn't. After waiting half a year, Dean goes to Percy to ask why he hasn't been promoted yet, but instead of a promotion, Dean gets a beating by Percy' sons and loses his job.

This odd similarity between the story of a poor white man and a poor black man made me wonder if racism is as rampant on this level as it is with wealthier people. Would it have made a difference if Dean was black? Probably not. What if Ellison's protagonist was white? He might have received the money, but people would be awfully salty and might end up taking aggressive actions towards him. A sort of similar dynamic can be seen in Their Eyes Were Watching God and The White Boy Shuffle, where (although not explicitly stated in the text), poor people of multiple races are coexisting peacefully.

What if Gunnar was interested in rap?

In Gunnar's community, poetry plays a dominant role. Gangs have their own poets, sport teams are named after poets, it seems like everybody is obsessed with poetry. What if this wasn't the case? What if Gunnar's community was obsessed with rap? Most things probably wouldn't change. Gunnar would still become a community sensation, instead of being asked to speak at funerals, he would MC at clubs and bars. However, I think that after he leaves his community, his life would be much different.

Even if his rap skills matched his poetic ability (they aren't all that different), he probably wouldn't draw as much attention from the college students and professors in Boston. Their high minds wouldn't consider some underground black musician from the west coast as someone to study and draw inspiration from. He would go through his college life without gathering nationwide attention or publishing anthologies of poetry. Instead, he would go back home and continue his rap career. With his skills and rep, he could probably make a good amount of money as well. The book would also lose its signature, "kill us all" ending, but, maybe, in its place, he could start a movement promoting rap as something more than just an underground trend, something that more people should be interested in.

An Interesting Combination

Although this is probably missing the point of our discussion after watching the film Ethnic Notions, I would like to address an interesting aspect of the film. To me, it seemed like the film portrayed the change in African American culture as an invasion. This invasive theme can be seen in both the content of the documentary, but also in the music and other technical aspects.

            African American culture, before the Civil War, is portrayed as a “look at all of those happy Negroes!” kind of deal. The black people in books and songs are happy, non-aggressive, and are happy with their position in society. They are not depicted as a threat to society. Yet after the Civil War, this attitude changes. Not only does the content in films and books change to a more hostile view of black people and culture, but the attitude of the documentary changes as well. There is ominous music with odd screeching sounds playing in the background of clips and pictures that the documentary presents. It is the kind of music that is often present in those cheesy science films about an invasive species or disease. It’s somewhat unnerving. Combine this with the odd echoey sounds in the version of the documentary that we watched and you get a very compelling background to support this claim. What’s more unnerving, though, is that many people during that time (and still today) actually believe in this invasion.