Readers turn up volume on debate over race, radio
By ERIC DEGGANS
Published July 16, 2004
Want to get a spicy conversation started in the community?
Write about radio and race.
That's the lesson I've learned following a story last week, in which I outlined how the Clear Channel radio show The Monsters was broadcasting a host of slurs in its morning comedy bits airing on radio stations in Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, including words such as "nigra," "jigaboo," "spic" and "fag."
The response from readers was tremendous, delivered mostly by e-mail, and close to the largest public response I've gotten on anything I've written for the St. Petersburg Times.
Not surprisingly - at least to someone who has been writing about these issues for a while - opinion among the 40 or so electronic missives I received in the first few days was split almost down the middle, with 17 readers criticizing The Monsters and 20 or so in general support (once Clear Channel decided Friday to force the team into a week of sensitivity training sessions, e-mail from the public turned almost exclusively negative).
Indeed, such letters were more notable for what they forced me to do: explain why racism doesn't belong on mainstream radio.
Those who supported The Monsters generally fell in two categories. The first, I began to call the "change the channel" crowd: buying The Monsters' mantra that all their epithets are slung in good humor, these fans branded as silly "political correctness" any suggestion that such terms are unfit for mainstream radio.
"By the sound of your voice, we now all know that you're obviously a gay negro, so you must have been offended on multiple levels by The Monsters' behavior," read one particularly pungent e-mail, which the courageous sender only signed "J." "Look, grandmas get cancer, rednecks beat their wives, and black men rob liquor stores. It's just as natural as rain on a g- d-- Sunday morning."
These objections were easy to handle - even coming from people who didn't resort to such cartoonish racism - because criticizing racial slurs on the radio isn't about protecting someone's feelings.
It's about ensuring that mass media never again become vehicles for oppressing people of color.
Once upon a time, radio, TV and movies were filled with horribly stereotypical depictions of minorities. White men would sit behind a radio microphone and adopt thick dialects, creating a universe of black and brown people who were childishly simple, lazy and unaccomplished.
In this world, built and perpetuated by white institutions, the shortcomings of black people seen through racist eyes were fodder for great comedy. As these depictions influenced casting in movies and television, great talents were forced to re-create white America's fantasy of a fumbling and servile people who somehow deserved their second class status enforced through segregation and Jim Crow laws.
The other category of Monsters supporters brought up a better question: Don't comics of color indulge in the same sorts of stereotyping?
True enough, some of the hottest comics of color have created caricatures of their own culture and others', from the Wayans brothers' White Chicks movie to Chris Rock's legendary diatribe about the difference between black people and n---.
But there's no racial oppression involved in making fun of your own culture (which is why The Monsters' redneck jokes go down a lot easier).
And though it may sound a bit unfair, there's no history in America of black people oppressing white people through a network of horrible media stereotypes. That doesn't mean black and brown people can't be racist against white people; it does mean that racism among a white majority against a historically oppressed black minority has a special resonance, even today.
And racial slurs remain the ultimate expression of that awful legacy.
The lasting effect of such terms came to mind as I read a recent Scripps Howard News Service story published by the Times last week, noting there are 13 location names across the state that still include the word "negro," such as Negro Head cape in Fort Myers.
Often, the story noted, "negro" location names are the legacy of a 1963 federal decision to change place names from the more offensive epithet, known these days as "the n-word." Of course, old school locals usually keep using the original language, perhaps wary of bowing to "political correctness."
Imagine a single word that can sum up centuries of mistreatment and oppression for you, your family and your culture - the central link in a stereotype used to disenfranchise people like you for centuries. Then imagine having to face it every day on a map, street sign or TV program.
Now imagine a radio show that traffics in such language every day, claiming to use the words in good fun. Just turning off the radio when you hear it does little to mitigate the damage.
Russ Rollins, The Monsters' leader and creator, asked a telling question when I agreed to speak with him on air last week.
He had been saying all morning that, because I didn't speak in some sort of dialect when I interviewed him, he didn't know I was black. I'm still not sure why that mattered.
"Does that offend you?" Rollins asked me, referring to his assumptions.
No, I replied. But such thinking is the legacy of his work, building an image of minorities among himself, his staff and his listeners that leaves little room for black and brown people who aren't butts of an awful joke.
Racial slurs cross a line of humiliation and oppression that many Americans thought we left behind a long time ago in mainstream media. And though some people wondered if it might not have better things to do, the St. Petersburg City Council seemed to agree, voting last week to send a letter to Clear Channel complaining about the show's use of such terms.
The council didn't ask for the program to end or for the hosts to be fired, by the way. If that eventually happens, blame a gutless Clear Channel, which often avoids taking direct responsibility for what its shock jocks air, despite a much-ballyhooed initiative to curb sexually offensive conduct on air after incurring hefty federal fines.
As the nation's largest radio station owner, Clear Channel uses the public's airwaves to earn millions. But it won't explain why The Monsters were allowed to air racial slurs for years in Orlando and elsewhere before complaints from a St. Petersburg NAACP chapter president and City Council prompted the company to send the jocks into "sensitivity training."
What are the company's policies involving the use of racial slurs on air? Will other jocks throughout the company be required to follow similar policies? And if the company does find such language unacceptable, why is it forcing reporters, the public and public officials to police content instead of doing it on its own?
By avoiding the issue, Clear Channel forced the community - in the form of City Council members and NAACP president Darryl Rouson - to take a stand instead.
Whether it will bring lasting change, and keep mainstream radio from devolving into a new school version of Amos "N' Andy remains to be seen.
-- Eric Deggans can be reached at 727 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com