Breaking the Silence
by Erin Aubry Kaplan
When all is said and done—and written—I really want just want to be popular in high school. I want to be liked, and better than that, understood.
People call my pieces controversial sometimes, but the boring truth is that I write because I want to resonate, not provoke.
I want to increase community, not sit alone atop some mountain of racial aloofness or pissed-off prophecy, gloating at the mess I stirred down below. No. To me, whatever I write about, I’m always saying the same thing to readers who I assume are my fellow travelers: Isn’t this wonderful/awful? Isn’t life glorious/a bitch? Don’t you wish things were more like this/different?
That was my frame of mind when I wrote a much-maligned piece last week for Salon.com about Michelle Obama’s butt. Well, it wasn’t really about her butt (though that was a lively starting point, for sure), it was about the psychological impact of having a First Lady who is black and, for the first time in history, who looks like me.It was about a flesh-and-blood physical representation and affirmation that black women, and black people, have never, ever had before. It was about the American social register being turned upside down and blacks being suddenly at the top of the page instead of stuck at the bottom, or stuck wherever people want us stuck.
Lastly, but most importantly, it was about black people holding up long-debased ideas about ourselves—starting with physical ideas--to the light and saying: I’m not so bad. In fact, I’m great.
Ultimately, my piece was about removing the lens of white scrutiny and approval from the black gaze and seeing what lies underneath. Sure, there’s a lot of insecurity that’s built up over hundreds of years, but there’s also a lot of satisfaction that never had the chance to express itself. The Obamas have given us that chance. (I don’t know about you, but I always liked my butt, but never felt comfortable in saying so. Now, as you might have read, I’m saying so.)
It’s more than ironic that so many critics—many of them black-- bashed me for “perpetuating stereotypes” and “reducing” black women to “objects.” In affirming myself, I was doing exactly the opposite.
Are we all so addled by mainstream validation that we don’t see the difference between whites perpetuating exaggerated ideas of us, and us embracing something about ourselves that we like, that makes us attractive or unique?I submit that, sadly, black folk simply don’t have a public context in which to talk about ourselves. In public discussions, we fall between two extremes: either we’re “reduced” to impersonal statistics or blown up as cartoon characters a la BET. There’s little in between. Whenever a unfamiliar take pops up, like mine, we tend to panic and hide behind well-worn positions. (Since the piece was published, I’ve been accused of being both an out-of-touch academic and an evil agent of BET and/or the white corporate media. Go figure.)
I know the black image wars very well. I’ve tracked them. I’ve written impassioned commentaries about them. I’ve been an advocate for black people and for justice of all kinds. But I see myself as a living, breathing character in all these scenarios, not a detached observer.This stuff matters terribly to me.
I’ve actually written extensively about the butt before, namely in a 5,000-word essay I did for the LA Weekly back in 1997 called “The Butt: Its Politics, Its Profanity, Its Power.” That pretty much says it all. Of course, few were offended because I was mostly talking about myself, not the First Lady-to-be.
It seems to me that in the new era of Obama we already have a profound paradox: we are policing black images more than before, which means there’s now less room for discussions of race. Not unless it’s all positive and worthy of our new commander-in-chief.
Not only is that dishonest and ahistorical, it’s dull. People scolded me for trying to be funny. If we can’t be funny now—with a serious underside, of course—when can we?
I’m not a fool. Put race and sex together in any way, shape or form, intentionally or not, and you get a genuine American meltdown; all of us lose our minds, not just black folk. I didn’t expect a whole lot of warm fuzzies on this one, but I did expect some nods, however grudging, from my fellow travelers. I got some, for sure. But I want more. I need more.
I may not ever be class president. But I’m still going for cheerleader.
ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN is the first African American in history to be a weekly op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Her musings continue to appear in the Times, Essence magazine, and on the blog 3 Brothers and A Sister. Among her many projects, Kaplan is currently working on her much anticipated book.