Beyond the White Negro: Empathy and Anti-Racist Reading

273 Pages·2014·1.93 MB·English

by  Kimberly Chabot Davis

Beyond the White Negro

Beyond the
White Negro
Empathy and Anti-Racist Reading
Kimberly Chabot Davis
UNivERsity of illiNois PREss
Urbana, Chicago, and springfield
Part of chapter 1 appeared in a different form in At Home and
Abroad: Historicizing Twentieth-Century Whiteness in Literature and
Performance. Copyright 2009 by the University of Tennessee Press.
Reprinted with permission.
Part of chapter 2 appeared in a different form in the International
Journal of Cultural Studies 7.4 (2004), by Sage Publications Ltd. All
rights reserved. © Kimberly Chabot Davis.
© 2014 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 c p 5 4 3 2 1
∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Kimberly Chabot, 1968–
Beyond the white negro: empathy and anti-racist reading /
Kimberly Chabot Davis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-252-03843-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-252-07994-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-252-09631-0 (ebook)
1. Whites—United States—Attitudes. 2. Anti-racism—United States.
3. United States—Race relations. 4. African American arts—Influence.
5. Empathy.
I. Title.
E184.A1D2828 2014
305.800973—dc23 2013050780
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Cross-Racial Empathy:
Viewing the White Self through Black Eyes 1
1. Wiggers or White Allies?
White Hip-Hop Culture and Racial Sincerity 27
2. Oprah, Book Clubs, and the Promise
and Limitations of Empathy 79
3. Reading Race and Place:
Boston Book Clubs and Post-Soul Fiction 111
4. Deconstructing White Ways of Seeing:
Interracial-Conflict Films and College-Student Viewers 149
Conclusion. Black Cultural Encounters as a Catalyst
for Divestment in White Privilege 201
Notes 211
Index 247

list of illustrations
Figure 1. Cover of Norman Mailer’s The White Negro
(1st separate ed.; San Francisco: City Lights, 1967) 2
Figure 2. Nineteenth-century advertisement
for a blackface minstrel show 4
Figure 3. Danny Hoch as Flip in Jails, Hospitals, & Hip-Hop:
The Film (Kicked Down Productions, 2001) 43
Figure 4. Chalk drawing, Do the Right Thing
(40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 1989) 155
Figure 5. Radio Raheem’s brass knuckles, Do the Right Thing
(40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, 1989) 172
Table 1. Racial/Ethnic Demographics of Cities
and Towns in Greater Boston 114
Table 2. Median Household Income for Localities
in Greater Boston 115
Table 3. Book Clubs Discussing The Known World 118
Table 4. Book Clubs Discussing Caucasia 133

Acknowledgments
I owe many thanks to the people who have supported me throughout
the past decade spent working on this book. Since Beyond the White Negro fo-
cuses on the reception of African American literature and culture among white
audiences, my biggest thanks go out to the twenty-one book clubs who gener-
ously welcomed me into their homes and to the many students at Bridgewater
State University, Bentley College, and Harvard University who participated in
my study of film reception. Their participation vastly enriched my understand-
ing of the connections between empathy and cultural consumption. I am also
grateful to my senior-seminar and graduate students at Bridgewater for sharing
their feedback on my work in progress. Particular thanks are due to the novelist
Adam Mansbach for being such an insightful and funny interview subject.
This book might never have been completed without the intellectual and emo-
tional support of my writing-group comrades, Lori Harrison-Kahan and Shilpa
Davé. For seven summers, they read scores of drafts, gave brilliant editing advice,
and cheered me on through every stage of my career. Special thanks to Lori for
her expertise in black/Jewish relations and for introducing me to Mansbach’s
work, and to Shilpa for her insights on neoliberalism and race in media culture.
I am deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers at the University of Illinois
Press, whose smart revision suggestions clarified my argument in myriad ways.
Thank you to my editor Larin McLaughlin and to Dawn Durante for guiding
me through the publication process with grace, and I appreciate the efforts of all
the staff at Illinois Press who worked on the production of this book. Thanks are
owed to Patsy Schweickart, La Vinia Jennings, Cecilia Konchar Farr, and Jaime
Harker for including my research in their edited collections and journal issues.
Part of chapter 1 appeared in a different form in At Home and Abroad: Histori-
cizing Twentieth-Century Whiteness in Literature and Performance (University