America Behind the Color Line

by Henry Louis Gates

  I think it’s not individual racism; it’s institutional racism, at the level of the production, the green-light people, the people who are making the final decision. That’s where the bottleneck is. I think we’ll open it up eventually; we’ll squeeze through. But what is the incentive for a white studio executive? Why should they have to take that chance, and why would they? The onus is on us. Our job is to make a film as marketable as possible. I can’t come in the door and say, hey, man, I’m Jackie Robinson and you’re Branch Rickey. That’s not what it’s about. We’ve got to go in and say, look, you can make money and this is why, and then hope that they can see beyond their perception.

  I guess I’m trying to do for Hollywood, through this film and films like it, what The Cosby Show did for sitcoms on TV. The Cosby Show was about black people ostensibly, but it was not a black TV show. It was about a father and a mother and their growing children, and that’s why everybody in the world watched it. Bill Cosby did a great job because he is really funny, but it wasn’t a sociological study of the Negro family.

  It’s taken me a while to get that paradigm, because the people I admire most are not people in the film industry. My wife and I were in South Africa for our honeymoon, and we saw Nelson Mandela’s home. You look at somebody like that and say, well, he stood up for what he believed in. But he didn’t just stand up for what he believed in, he also succeeded. He became president and helped end apartheid. I’m not saying I want to be locked up for twenty-seven years. But it’s not just about being in Variety and making lots of money and being that kind of success; it’s bigger than that. And I believe deep down that the world is not as racist as some studio executives perceive it to be.

  If there had been a point of view about The Cosby Show that it was just a black series, that only black people would come to it, maybe they would have put it on anyway. They didn’t have UPN at the time, but if the show were just coming on today, it might just be on UPN and only go after a specific audience. Sometimes it’s really hard to see whether we’re making progress. Even prior to The Cosby Show there was Roots, and I was a kid at that time, but I remember everyone in the world watched Roots. At the time, it was like the NBA play-offs were going on. We went to school the next day talking about Roots, and when I was a kid, I went to an interracial school. It was predominantly white, and all the kids were talking about Roots. That show went beyond specific characters, specific nationalities, to the deeper human emotions. That’s what art does. Just as Othello is not about an interracial marriage; it’s about jealousy between two men, and using the woman as a pawn.

  We need to be able to tell a good story that goes beyond sociology. And a lot of the onus also has to be on executives who are intelligent enough to know when there’s a good story and when there’s not, and who are willing to be innovative instead of just repeating something that was already successful. But ultimately, it comes back to getting to the other side of the table. And when I’m on the other side, I’m not going to be the guy saying, black face, black face, black face.

  I don’t know if everyone has the same agenda that I have, and I don’t know if everybody needs to. Whether or not our agendas are the same, it’s actors like Denzel and Sam Jackson and Chris Tucker and Laurence Fishburne and Will Smith and Halle Berry and Angie Bassett who have been making it possible for people like me to even be in a room to fight for these projects. The biggest contribution that African-American actors can make is to do good work. The biggest contribution African-American audiences can make is to ensure that their good work makes money.

  It’s possible to tell stories about black people in a new way, an authentic way, and be profitable. I think that’s what people want. We need to change our frame of reference for who we are. Slavery was a very important part of our history, but I’m tired of being offered slavery projects, and I think people are tired of seeing the gangster thing. The sixties were another highly relevant time in our history, but we’re not supposed to be doing the same thing we did then—because if we are, then what was the point of doing it in the sixties? This is the twenty-first century. We have to move with the times or we’ll get left behind.

  We have to be very committed to sitting down on the other side of the table. If we don’t do it and I’m asked about our progress ten years from now, I’ll be saying the same thing, and that’s not cool. We need a black studio to be the Motown of the film industry, and it will come, without a doubt. If the studio heads want to start a black studio and say, hey, Reggie, we want you in there, I’m like, cool, I’m there. But the stand we need to make is to start our own studio. If I figure it out for us, that’s great, and if somebody else figures it out for us, that’s great too, as long as we figure it out.

  DARNELL HUNT

  The Buddy

  Professor Darnell Hunt of the University of Southern California told me that in earlier days of television and film, African Americans “weren’t quite equipped” to pull off roles as doctors or nurses, or roles of similar status, and as a result they “bumbled and fumbled.” Now it is less a problem with competence than with taking the lead. Whether in action films or TV sitcoms, African Americans are typically relegated to the role of “buddy.”

  Imagine a tourist unfamiliar with American culture deciding to spend just one day learning who the African American people are. He might stop in Los Angeles and divide his time between the American Film Institute and the Museum of Television and Radio, studying blacks in movies and on television from the 1950s to today. Our visitor would receive a very limited view of the people he was trying to understand. There are comedic images—he would find lots of those, from the early days of television straight through to today. He would find images of African Americans that show them as somewhat secondary in terms of status relative to whites, because most of the roles we see, with a few exceptions, are African Americans playing the buddy to the central white character. This is true in all the buddy cop films and in many situation comedies and dramas on television.

  Even though African Americans have roles as series regulars, much of the research shows that not all series regulars are equal. More “marquee” series regulars, typically the white ones, garner most of the screen time. And it is these regulars, rather than the others, whose families are represented on television. Lots of African-American characters are presented as atomized, as just being there, again at the pleasure of the white characters, going back as far as the 1965 inaugural season of I Spy with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp.

  I think our visitor would also find an overrepresentation of black men relative to women. We tend to see black men much more frequently on television than we do black women, and I think the same is true for film. In early periods, we’d find black Americans shown in roles that weren’t exactly considered to be high-status, and people were very concerned about this, going back to the days of Amos ’n’ Andy. Even when African Americans were extensively seen in roles as doctors or nurses or in roles of similar status, they weren’t quite equipped to pull it off, and as a result they bumbled and fumbled. And this was at a time when America was moving toward integration.

  The main character of Calhoun the Lawyer, for example, in Amos ’n’ Andy was not a high-status role. It certainly did not reflect African Americans as they wanted to see themselves, at a time when they were trying to become full-fledged citizens of this country. As time progressed, at least we saw more respectable images, for example in the sixties with shows like I Spy and Julia. But then the problem was that these characters were completely disconnected from the realities of what was happening with the rest of black America—the turmoil of the sixties, the uprisings and protests. All those goings-on were just completely erased from escapist television.

  I think the thing to remember is that television is, and has been really, our major cultural form, even more than film. A lot of work has been done on the creation of the concept of nation around mass media, and television in particular, giving people the sense of participating in the same pheno
mena at the same time over wide expanses of space. And when television provides these images—particularly when people don’t have face-to-face contact, or when most of what they know is through these images—it plays a major role in shaping the way race relations have unfolded in this country.

  A great deal of research, again with respect to mainstreaming, indicates that television views of the world become the views people embrace when they watch lots of television. I don’t think race is immune from that. In fact, I think race probably is more susceptible to that than most other things. So I would think that much of what Americans know, or think they know, about African Americans comes from televised images. In other words, the largest part of society in America, particularly white people—not just foreign visitors—learn who African Americans are by watching them on TV and at the movies.

  BERNIE MAC

  The Chameleon

  Born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough in 1957 in Chicago, Bernie Mac has been extraordinarily successful in Hollywood. “But what got me here,” he told me, “definitely wasn’t Hollywood and it definitely wasn’t whites. Blacks got me here. When they filled those rooms up for me, when they filled those shows up, seven-thousand-, five-thousand-seaters, it was black . . . All those people that came and saw me in places where no one ever bought tickets—Meridian, Mississippi; Graysville and Harrison, Alabama—I went to places where a lot of cats never wanted to go because there’s blacks there. It made me.”

  My focus, man, right now is, and has always been for a long period of time, on the essence of what I do: the humor—the story. I’m a storyteller. I love reinventing myself, especially today, because a lot of people really are just not tuning in to Bernie Mac. They thought Bernie Mac was something, was potent like them, these little things I’ve done. They haven’t even got a fourth of Bernie Mac, and that’s where my focus lies right now. It’s really tuning America more in to that man, to the message.

  My message is, I deal with the truth. I try to find humor in the most inopportune places and times. My humor comes from pain, to be able to laugh at your misfortune, to really laugh at your struggle, to really laugh at the trials and tribulations that occur in everyone’s life. It tells the tale about an individual, and I learnt that from my grandmother.

  I used to think something was wrong with me because I never understood that I was poor. I never understood that I was having to struggle, because the way I thought, I really wasn’t. I thought I had it all. I was so much at peace and I was so much into the total surroundings of my family, my grandparents, my mother, and the true love, the true essence of the word “love.” I didn’t know what all that other stuff was until they passed. I was twenty-six when my grandmother passed, and I was fifteen when my mother passed. When they left, I saw what this thing, what we call life, is all about. I saw the downside of it and tried to be able to tell the story so many of us live. So many of us, we try to put it on the back burner and block it out from reality. That’s why so many people are really in pain struggle. Being able to find humor in those places, that’s really where my focus is.

  Now, what you put on me, that’s your own perspective. But I know what got me here, and it definitely wasn’t Hollywood and it definitely wasn’t whites. Blacks got me here. When they filled those rooms up for me, when they filled those shows up, seven-thousand-, five-thousand-seaters, it was black. When you set up and they ran up and down that aisle and I told stories about what the white folk didn’t understand, they were black. When they sat there, when the television show came up, I was ready. I was seasoned. I was over the campaign. All those people that came and saw me in places where no one ever bought tickets—Meridian, Mississippi; Graysville and Harrison, Alabama—I went to places where a lot of cats never wanted to go because there’s blacks there. It made me. Now I get white people too. I’ve got the biggest crossover program on television. They call that growth. You go from point A to Z, you don’t go from M to Z. I brought the people from Meridian, Mississippi; Detroit, Michigan; Savannah, Georgia—all those places—with me. When they put that me on television, the old people knew me. I did the groundwork, and that’s what made the show successful. The audience just travels over.

  I think anytime there’s change, it frightens people. Especially in Hollywood, because they’re experts; they’re the geniuses. They want to be responsible for your existence. They want to be able to say, I created that. And when I came in with the story for The Bernie Mac Show, with the outline, it really shocked them, for number one, that I had that. They want to be in control of you. They want to be in control of your existence.

  They wanted to be able to say, well, this is what we see and we’ll put your name on it. That satisfies most people. We’ll pat you on the knee doggone, that’s what. We’re going to have a little girl here, she’s gonna talk back and she’s gonna shake her head and all that old stereotypical stuff and I was saying, no, we ain’t having that. This is what the story is about. I wanted to go back to basics. I wanted to show, hey, it’s time out. It stops with us. A kid is going to be a kid. I’m gonna tell the truth; I’m gonna say what Americans only wish they could say. And you know what, it fit. I took the laugh track out, because I didn’t want to insult my audience. I got tired of that old fictitious, phony-assed ha, ha, ha, telling you when to laugh and how to laugh. I really truly thought that was an insult. I thought, America, it’s time. It’s time for us to go back to basics.

  I can’t take credit totally for the success of the show, because it’s so many combinations that are involved. It’s the story, it’s the writing, it’s the acting, it’s the style, it’s the look, it’s the titles. It’s the love; it’s the warmth. It’s innovative; it’s a breath of fresh air; it’s all that. All that combined in one. And I have to give credit to all the people before me that set the precedent for me— from Harrison, Alabama, and all of that. And the word of mouth and how they say, you better watch this guy; this is the guy I was telling you about, and how it was like a snowball effect. And now, when they tap in, the people who did know me, the white audience, the Asians, everyone, they see the Iranian; they see all the different cultures on the show; and they see how that’s real life. It’s real life, man.

  My uncle used to come over to the house, and we used to love this cat to come over because he was real. He would turn and say something unexpected, offensive, maybe rude, but he got it. He knew what was happening. It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. But he told the truth, even when he lied. He’d be sitting out at the table with his fork in his hand and he’d be like, now you pray for that. Do you want me to feel sorry? I’m not feeling sorry for a goddamn thing. If you went there with him, you kept on getting nothing. And he used to just sit there.

  He only came once, twice a year, but he knew what everybody did wrong. He knew and he told it. My grandmother would sit there and she would go, that’s right, that’s right, I keep telling them. But when you heard it from somebody else, it registered, versus coming from her, because she was too close.

  My auntie, she was so phony and everything. She would go, don’t say that. Because she always worried about what other people thought, what other people said, and how they feel about it. My grandmother and my uncle, they were what you call real. My grandmother could always tell you the truth as she saw it, even when she was wrong. She could say, I apologize for that. She’d say, when you’re wrong, you’ve got to stand up and look the person in the eye and tell them you’re wrong. She could say, I didn’t use good judgment on that, but because I didn’t use good judgment doesn’t mean you do the same. She always broke it down like a fraction. She was always honest, and that was unusual for adults in those days.

  And I had my brother. I used to watch my brother. He was my role model. He was one of the first blacks at First National Bank of Chicago. I was so proud. He was a hell of an athlete, and I watched how, man, everybody kept trying to put us under here, his standard. We had to mimic what Mitch did. Mitch was this, Mitch was that, he was, oh, the acad
emic, while I was thinking, I can’t follow those shoes, man. And I saw how he got a little bit cocky. He was a hell of a baseball player. He went to the St. Louis Cardinal farm system and he got cocky. I saw how his head got big and I saw how all his hard work just dropped, because he got too much into the moment, and I said, I’m not going to do that.

  I watched how my sister was the queen of Chicago, how she used to sing all the radio jingles, and how she’d sing in the background with Aretha Franklin. She found out who the real queen is, and she had to come back home with her head between her legs. And I said to myself, I’m not going to do that. I saw how you go from one level to the next, and how you do things for the wrong reasons, and how you lose everything overnight. You never know. We don’t know what tomorrow brings. That’s why I can’t get excited about what’s happening, because I’m not done. When I’ve done thirty years in the business and I’ve done exactly what I wanted and I set a look, a tone for the thing, and I can reflect back and hopefully in my old age sit somewhere with grandkids around, then I can say, thank you, Lord. That’s when I’ve done something. I ain’t done nothing.

  In our show, people are incidentally black. I mean they’re black, but people can identify. We bring out their humanness. It’s 2002. I’m trying, baby. We have done it, almost to death. We have killed it. I want to show the human side of us, man. It’s good to be upper middle class. We are that now, would you know; and we still got our roots. There’s a time and a place for everything. My grandmother, she was great, man. That’s something we don’t have today— manners. What you talk—yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am—and we sat there, me and my brother, and she would sit there, and we get in the car. I’m kicking your ass a bit. You know damn better than that, embarrassing me in front of those people. What the heck’s wrong with you? I’m gonna tear your behind off. You’re doggone right; she didn’t play with you. We grew up on manners. I miss that. We had manners; we don’t have that anymore. And if I’m wrong, you tell me.