White People Will Never Win the "Race Game"

Take a look at this clip from a 60 Minutes interview that Mike Wallace conducted with Morgan Freeman. (You might want to watch it twice — it’s only 55 seconds.)

Here’s what Bryson Nobles, the former program director with the Race Relations Project, had to say about it:

While I’ve never been all that enthusiastic about Black History Month, I’ve also never thought it to be something to get all bent out of shape about. I love Morgan Freeman – but I think he’s wrong here. I imagine that at his age he is exhausted by being a “black actor,” and with the feigned and unconvincing empathy that many white people exhibit during February. But I also think that having a month to celebrate black people is no less silly than having a day to celebrate your birthday – both are spaces of time set aside to give someone who deserves year-around acknowledgment attention for something they played a relatively small role in bringing into the world — mostly because it is customary.

White people are not relegating our history to a month; most are simply being cordial the same way that our family and friends are cordial on our birthdays so as to avoid the consequences of not acknowledging what most people probably find unimportant (or uninspiring) to acknowledge in the first place. Some of us love birthdays, but probably most of us hate the attention and find birthdays more annoying as we get older.

So indifference is more likely to be the emotion people feel about BHM – let’s not displace our disinterest or make white people play the race game that we all know they can never win.

Not talking about race doesn’t improve race relations any more than ignoring a cavity helps your tooth or ignoring lust helps your marriage. Race is real and it’s okay to talk about and it’s only as boring and unproductive as your inability to say anything original about it.

Morgan Freeman had an opportunity to say something constructive, and if he couldn’t, the default should not be a disarming attack that only makes white people more unwilling to talk about race. He should have just graciously moved on to another subject.

So what do you think about Bryson’s words? How is Freeman playing into the race game? And what do you think he means by calling it a game “that white people can never win”? Hint: What happens if Mike Wallace says, “Well, yes, I think that Black History Month is silly and that we should stop celebrating it?”

Follow-up comments from Bryson Nobles:

Try to imagine the overplayed black guy who grew up in “da hood,” plays basketball, wears “do rags” and “tims,” will eat a small mountain of chicken (with hot sauce, of course), wash it all down with “red” kool-aid and top it off with watermelon flavored Now ‘n Laters for dessert . . . then throw in one more ridiculous stereotype for fun – that’s the Bryson Nobles you’ve been responding to.

I wanted to thank you for taking the time to watch, read and respond to the Morgan Freeman clip. This is important stuff that many people are afraid to touch it so please keep talking, asking questions and not be put off by those who are too afraid and/or too lazy to talk about it.

If you will permit me, I’d like to round out the Freeman discussion with a few thoughts:

I, like most of you, believe Black History Month should not be “the” means for learning about black people’s involvement in American history. But THAT is the unfortunate consequence of being birthed and distributed by an education system that tends to compartmentalize things. The roots of Black History Month actually begin with an educator (a black one in fact, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, circa 1926, based upon his teachings at Howard University) to celebrate the “birthdays” (ironic to my analogy) of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and their importance to black people. As a side tangent here, this is what’s curious about black people who frame Black History Month as though it was created by white people to pacify us or “relegate” our history to one month. With all due respect, this is why talking matters because most people don’t seem to know that or fail to talk about it.

But my original criticism is that we should not spend February talking about “we only get February.” Morgan Freeman hardly added anything meaningful to the race dialogue. Just because talking about it hasn’t worked to this point doesn’t mean it can’t. Maybe we need to learn how to talk about race. I sharply disagree that talking about our differences has to result in driving us apart. Men are different from women. Sure we have tons in common but we are different and that’s awesome. A lot of white people can’t dance (save Justin Timberlake – lol). A lot of black people like chicken (I do). A lot of Hispanics come from huge families and play the music God-awful loud (I married into one). A lot of Asian dishes are made of noodles, and yes, a great many Hollywood executives are Jewish. But how do any of those things rank us among each other? They don’t, but they do exist all the same whether you share my light-heartedness or not. All those “differences” make for an interesting story – one that we would be remiss for overlooking.

Lastly, I agree that we should learn about all these cultures and races and histories. I earnestly do. But I am afraid that this is not one that we should leave up to the school systems. Mark Twain said, “Don’t let schooling get in the way of your education.” A school system’s poor handling of sharing our histories is EXACTLY why we can’t stop talking about it.

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