The Frontstage is the New Backstage: Racism in the Public Square

TheFrontstage is the New Backstage: Racism in the Public Square byDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Threestories have captured the imagination of social media recently.
ABuffalo High school suspended several members of the basketball team becauseits members allegedly regularly chant racial epithets prior to each game.  As reported in the Buffalo News, "Tyra Batts, the sole African-American on theKenmore East High School's squad," said "her teammates would hold hands beforethe game, say a prayer and then shout "One, two, three (n------).'"  Batts, who was suspended because of herinvolvement in a fight resulting from the repeated use of the N-Word by herteammates, disputed claims that it "was just a joke." The efforts to defend itsusage and to deny the racist and violent history have set off anger and debatethroughout the web.   

Notto be outdone, a P.h.D student at Rutgers University invited her whiteclassmates to a screening of the Disney Classic Song of the South.  Aneditorial in The DailyTargum describes the circumstancesas follows: 
This email invited "her fellow non-racist racists" toa private, guilt-free viewing of 1946 musical Song of the South in her home, where together they could engage incelebratory mocking of stereotyped 1940's images of southern blacks. This wasan event hosted by a "ragtime/minstrel loving fool" who was due "for somerollicking Disneyfied Ole Darkeyism." The postscript read, "If you do come,hooch is most welcome, as are straw hats and other Darkeyisms. I might even buya watermillyum if I get enough interest." It specified who invited guestsshould bring, given that "I might yell racist things at the TV." The author ofthis email articulated the hope that the experience would be a "communion withher shamefully preferred era of Disney."
Thecelebration of dehumanizing representations, the efforts to create a segregatedspace, and the replication of longstanding stereotypes provoked outrage,condemnation, and ample conversation on Facebook and Twitter.  Citing it as evidence of the absurdityof a "post-racial America," the instance became another moment to protest thepersistence of white supremacist ideologies within contemporary America. 
Yet,none of the outrage would compare to the anger, protests, and denunciation thathas followed Gene Marks ode to paternalism in Forbes Magazine.  In "If I Were A Poor Black Kid," Marks provides "advice" that rehashes bootstrapsideology all while playing on longstanding stereotypes about black laziness anddisinterest in schooling.  Following in the footsteps of Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump, Marks recyclesthose arguments that link black unemployment and poverty rates to work ethicand personal choice. 
Hiscomments have produced a strew of commentaries that have condemned the articlefor its arrogance, paternalism, and overall erasure of structuralinequalities.   "Mr. Gene justwants to give us some of that patented #WhiteLove™ that he has laying aroundthe house," writes Elon James White.  "With a healthysprinkling, poor ignorant black children can rise above their station into themagical world of reasonable participation in society!  Mr. Marks has a step-by-step booklet for you to get yourschool game on track, not your wig pushed back ... by poverty."  James, like so many of the responses,identified the arguments offered in Forbesas not a peripheral aberration but instead a central white racial framewithin contemporary culture. Evident in The Help and The Blindside, reflected in politicaland academic discourses, and central to white racial framing, the narrativefocus on black pathological failures and the potential through betterparenting, better choices, and better work ethic, guides American racialdiscourse. 
Yet,the social media world was abuzz with shock not because of the audacity ofpaternalism exhibited by Marks but because of the brash openness with hisracial arguments.  There are nocodes and subtleties here; like Ginrich and Trump a few weeks before, thearguments and the racial dimensions central to the narrative are quitetransparent.  As with thesituations at Rutgers and the New Jersey High school, the surprise stems notfrom the acceptance and promulgation of dehumanizing language, but the brazenand open exhibition of this racism. 
Thesemoments highlight the absurdity of claims about a post-racial and the perpetualdealing of the race-denial card. These moments are reminders, albeit reminders to white America about thepersistence of white supremacy within contemporary society.  Yet, beyond illustrating how racematters, these moments demonstrate the ways in which racial discourse andblatant racism has steadily moved out of the backstage into thefrontstage. 
InTwo-Faced Racism, Leslie Picca andJoe Feagin explore the ways in which racial performances are carried in boththe frontstage (integrated andmultiracial public spaces) and the backstage (those private/semi-privateall-white spaces where race talk and racist ideas reveal themselves in profoundways).  Their research found thatthe backstage offers whites a place to "perform, practice, learn, reinforce,and maintain racist views of and inclinations toward people of color.  These views and inclinations play acentral role in generating and maintaining the overt and covert racialdiscrimination that is still commonplace in major institutions of this society"(27-28). 
Increasingly,however, the frontstage is replacing the backstage whereupon whites arepublicly performing, learning, reinforcing and maintaining their racist viewstoward people of color.  Evident incollege students donning blackface and then putting pictures online, evident inGene Marks, Newt Ginrich, Donald Trump and their reactionary pals lamenting thelaziness of black youth, evident in the usage of the N-word, evident inwhite-only movie screenings and white-only swimming pools, the lines between the frontstage and the backstageare blurring before our eyes.   In other words, the frontstage is nowthe backstage, leaving me to wonder what sorts of ideologies, stereotypes andracial talk is transpiring in backstage. Or maybe, in a "post-racial America," widespread racism has returned(did it ever leave?) to the frontstage thereby illustrating the importance ofchallenging and resisting in each and every location.
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. Hehas written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing inboth popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popularculture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popularrepresentations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard's latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault onBlackness will be published bySUNY Press in May of 2012. [image error]