Venus Williams taps into fears of black female sexuality

Venus Williams' lacy outfit at the French Open last week has ignited a firestorm of media coverage. Many of the responses to Williams' black lace outfit (see image) have been negative, or at least hardly favorable: The New York Daily News criticized the athlete's "flagrant disregard for traditional tennis attire," which the paper said, "harked back to a 19th century chorus line," while the Boston Herald referred to the outfit as "hooker couture."

Others recognized Williams' skill as a tennis player, her win over Swiss opponent Patty Schnyder and yes, her rock-solid physique. ESPN.com's Jemele Hill argues in an editorial that it is America's obsession with the body--and athletes' bodies in particular--that has fueled this controversy. Hill goes on to say that when we see images like those of Williams on the court, we cannot help but wonder how we measure up. And, as media comparisons go, we don't come out on top. Williams' outfit, says Hill, taps into our sense of inadequacy, which then breeds curiosity and resentment.

I think that the outcry and attention to Williams' outfit was not a product of our fascination with athletes nor our own bodily insecurities. Instead, her choice of dress ignited white fears of black female sexuality. Black women have been stereotyped throughout history as hypersexual and without control of their sexual urges (black men have also suffered this stereotype). Black lace, fire-engine red piping and shorts that match Williams' skin tone remind us of lingerie, which then brings us to sex. And for a black woman to display such sexually connotative clothing on national television only "proves" that black women cannot stifle their overflowing desire.

Why do I think this? Look at white female athletes in other sports. Do gymnasts, many of whom are white, get flak for their high-cut leotards? Do figure skaters get called out for their flesh-toned undergarments that are oh-so visible on those triple axels? While these wardrobes go unnoticed, Williams gets skewered for her choice. I smell a rat.

I am glad she wore the lace. I'm glad she wore it twice. Williams is the epitome of a strong woman: physically powerful and business savvy. (If you think she didn't know what she was doing when she donned that outfit, think again). When the media daily decry the poverty and devastation among single black women, why would they then turn around and scorn a successful black woman? Fear. Downright fear.

We may be in awe of athletes and we may compare their glutes to ours, but the attack on Williams proves that our ideas about sex and race, rather than the color of her shorts, must be more closely scrutinized.


Photo Credit: StarPulse.com

Senate hopeful slams civil rights

Dr. Rand Paul is Kentucky's GOP nominee for Senate. Dr. Rand Paul is named after Ayn Rand. And Dr. Rand Paul is in a PR pickle.

In an interview with Robert Siegel on NPR's All Things Considered last Wednesday, Dr. Paul was asked whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act went too far.

Paul answered: "What I've always said is that I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would've, had I've been alive at the time, I think, had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism."

Upon the show host's urging, Paul then went on to say that he is in favor of ending institutional racism, but that "a lot of things could be handled locally."

What does that mean exactly? Leave it to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow to ask just that, and then some:

Maddow: Do you think that a private business has a right to say that 'We don't serve black people?'

Paul: I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race.

But I think what's important in this debate is not getting into any specific "gotcha" on this, but asking the question 'What about freedom of speech?' Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent. Should we limit racists from speaking. I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that's one of the things that freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it...

Maddow:...How about desegregating lunch counters?

Paul: Well what it gets into then is if you decide that restaurants are publicly owned and not privately owned, then do you say that you should have the right to bring your gun into a restaurant even though the owner of the restaurant says 'well no, we don't want to have guns in here' the bar says 'we don't want to have guns in here because people might drink and start fighting and shoot each-other.' Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant? These are important philosophical debates but not a very practical discussion...

Maddow:Well, it was pretty practical to the people who had the life nearly beaten out of them trying to desegregate Walgreen's lunch counters despite these esoteric debates about what it means about ownership. This is not a hypothetical Dr. Paul.

WOMP. Busted. And so began the dig out. After today's appearance on Good Morning America, the Washington Post reports that a Paul campaign spokesman said the GOP nom will do "no more national interviews on the topic." Paul also backed out of this Sunday's scheduled appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, becoming only the third guest to do so in the program's history.

(Have we learned nothing from Tiger Woods, Dr. Paul? You clam up. We talk more.)

Now let's get to the meat of what Paul was saying. A Libertarian through and through, Paul advocates for limited government infringement in public life. Fine. But limited government infringement on discrimination, to the point of allowing private businesses to say, "No, young black man. You cannot work/eat/exist here"?

Liberty for who, Dr. Paul?

Watch the complete Maddow skewering of Rand Paul: (And let me just say, minute 14 on? DING! Maddow for the kill!)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal

'Fair and Balanced' goes south of the border

Fox News is branching out to the Latino media market. The Huffington Post reports the news channel will launch FoxNewsLatino this fall. According to the Fox News network, the website will "feature the latest breaking news, politics, economic and lifestyle stories that impact the Latino community." HuffPost reports the site will feature both English and Spanish-language videos, along with reports from Latin American countries.

While Fox News Senior Vice president for News-Editorial Michael Clemente said the network will not launch a companion Latino TV network, he stressed that the expansion is an "unprecedented opportunity" to broaden Fox News' reach and impact to a new audience.

I have to wonder just how smart a business decision this really is. From Arizona's new immigration law to a recent report showing a majority of Americans believe Latinos face the most discrimination, Latinos seem to take a lot of heat these days. How can the "Fair and Balanced" news network attract this new market when Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly wholeheartedly defends the Arizona law on his nightly O'Reilly Factor, or when pro-Arizona Sarah "Go Rogue" Palin is given her own show on the network?

Funny, also, that Obama was criticized recently by conservatives for reaching out to blacks, women, Hispanics and young people, and yet here Fox News takes a similar path. Hypocrisy much?

Something tells me FoxNewsLatino.com won't prove the unprecedented opportunity Clemente expects.

Photo Credit: FoxNews.com

My trip to NYC becomes a lesson in profiling

On an AirTran flight to New York City last Sunday, I came face to face with racial/ethnic profiling in the worst way. As I boarded the plane, moving to my assigned seat in row 28, I noticed a family of traditionally-clad Africans or Arabs seated in the middle of the plane. Truth be told, the four of them--two women, an older man and a toddler--stuck out like a sore thumb amid a sea of New York businessmen and cheesehead tourists. I was also seated next to an Arab man way back in the belly of the plane.

Throughout the flight, all five of these individuals were treated differently than the other travelers. When the older man tried to walk to the bathroom at the front of the plane (near which he was seated), a crew member came on the intercom saying, "The front lavatories are only for our business class." Ahem. I have used both the front and back bathrooms on planes countless times, and while I understand the business class pays an arm and a leg for wider seats and complimentary mimosas, do they really get VIP bathroom access? Or is this a case of airplane apartheid? And when the man did walk to the back of the plane, people actually snarled in seeming disgust that he would deign to use the bathroom nearest his seat.

The women received patronizing admonitions about their luggage, and the flight crew addressed them as they would normally speak to the six-year-old sitting one seat over.

The worst display, however, came not from the crew members but from my fellow passengers...

The man seated next to me was quiet throughout the flight, reading the in-flight magazine, taking a short nap and drinking a Coke over the course of the two hours. We exchanged courtesies upon boarding, but other than that we did not interact. After the plane landed at LaGuardia, this man took out his cell phone and made a call. He started speaking in Arabic (or what I assume to be Arabic based on previous experience) to the person on the other end of the line. And not a second after he first spoke did panic set in among the people seated around us. The usual stand-up-to-stretch-your-legs became we-must-get-off-this-plane-immediately pushiness. People actually said, "Let's get off quickly. C'mon honey. Get your stuff. Let's go. NOW."

"Pardon me," I wanted to say. "You are in row 29 and 30...do you not know how a toothpaste tube works?"

"And furthermore, could you be more OBVIOUS!?"

I'm sure the Times Square bomber is fresh on everyone's minds, and the suspect in that caseis Pakistani, but does that justify these passengers' actions? Absolutely not. The media has primed us to connect Arab to terrorist, sure, but we must be smarter than our evening news. We must realize that the images presented to us via the media are not universal truths about a person or group.

Even as we try to "un-prime" ourselves, we may occasionally revert to our primed ways. I admit, I went there. I thought, "That's suspicious. This man makes a phone call immediately after landing, and he seems to be speaking quickly and nervously." I hate that I thought that. Clearly, I am not faultless in this case, but I do believe there is a difference between fleeting thought and action. Fleeting thought can be redirected. Fleeting thought can be overcome. Action is branded into the moment, a distinctive and public marker of profiling and racism.

I've thought about that man every day since, hoping he didn't notice his fellow passengers' reactions. And amid a sea of Times Square tourists, I wondered how many were shuffling faster than usual to snag their "I love New York" T-shirts and Bubba Gump shrimp, eager to escape the men making phone calls and drinking Cokes on the corner of 7th and Broadway.

Blacks at the office, blacks on TV: A study

While the news of the Pakistani Times Square suspect still percolates in the media stratosphere, I thought I'd share a recent race-based study I conducted with a group of students in a mass media and public opinion course here at UW. We will present these results and the implications of our research this coming Thursday.

We investigated perceptions of hiring equality between blacks and whites over time, and portrayals of blacks in professional positions on primetime TV for the same time period. "Professional positions" were those that required a high level of intellect or academic/managerial training (doctors, lawyers, nurses, detectives). Athletes and talent judges (Randy Jackson, e.g.) were not considered professional, as their jobs are not intellectually-based or a result of academic or managerial training.

We hypothesized that:

1. Public perception of hiring equality among blacks and whites would increase over time.

2. The prevalence of blacks in professional positions on primetime TV would increase over time.

Our public opinion data came from Gallup polls. From 1963 to 2009, Gallup collected responses to the following question:

"In general, do you think that blacks have as good a chance as white people in your community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, or don’t you think they have as good a chance?"

Graphing the responses revealed a trend toward greater public perception of hiring equality over time (see top graph above).

For the media analysis portion of our project, we coded for the presence and number of black professionals in each of the top 10 shows (in terms of viewership) for each year from 1963-2009. We used the Internet Movie Database for character lists and descriptions. After testing intercoder reliability (98%), each of the five researchers coded 94 shows.

After combining our coding results, we found an increase in both the number of shows with black professionals and the number of black professionals in each show. For simplicity's sake, the graph above shows only the increase in the number of shows with black professionals, and not the increase in the number of black professionals per show.

The above graphs compare the public opinion and media trends. These graphs indicate that as perceptions of hiring equality among blacks and whites increased, so too did the prevalence of blacks in professional positions on TV. These results support both our public opinion and media hypotheses.

Of course, every study has its limits. We only looked at the top 10 shows for each year, and there may have been other influential shows that did not make that list (Roots, e.g.). Furthermore, our data collection began with the Civil Rights years, and that is undoubtedly an influential factor to be considered in any subsequent analysis of race politics over this time period.

It is important to note that we cannot claim causation from our results. But even so, the correlation between public opinion and media content leads us to ask: What does this mean?

These results are hopeful, indicating that we have made progress both in society and on screen. These results speak well of Equal Opportunity Employers and their commitment to their claims, and they speak volumes about the progress minorities--blacks in particular--have made in the entertainment industry.

We should also take these results with a grain of salt. It would be wrong to look at these trends and claim, "See! We're equal!" Hardly. Workplace discrimination is not only yesterday's problem, and whites, professional or otherwise, still outnumber blacks on screen.

In sum: Progress? Yes. Success? Not so fast.