FOOB: Getting All Racial
yes, it’s time for another installment of “Brendan Rants About the For Better or For Worse Death Spiral.”
I’ve written extensively about the lame plot devices Lynn Johnston uses in her increasingly predicatable and depressing comic strip (click on the “comics” category for recent updates).
Today, I’m more concerned with issues of race and the stereotyping associated with the topic. You’d think I’d be happy to see someone finally tell Lizzie what’s what, that you can’t jerk someone around over and over again. And so far as yesterday’s strip’s first three panels, I’m pretty satisfied. But what the hell is going on in panel 4? “He’s a native man. Susan shares his culture.”??
By that logic, my officemate, an Irish American gal from Fishtown, has no business being married to her second husband, a Puerto rican. She should have stayed with her first husband, an Irish American guy who was addicted to drugs.
My friend Duncan should has no business being married to a woman with Korean roots who grew up in Peru.
My other officemate, who’s Venezuelan, should have gone home after college: what the hell was she thinking marrying a Jersey boy?
My son’s mom, who’s Canadian herself, is dating a Latino guy named Jose: I’d better warn her that it’s doomed for failure, and she should find a nice Anglo. Fer chrissake, look what screwing an American mutt like me got her!
I’d like to think that this is just an oversight on Johnston’s part, but she has a history of this sort of thing. Witness my post from April 2006, telegraphing:
First, she bashes us over the head that Eva’s a cutie, and Boris (or whatever the token black kid’s name is) thinks she’s a hottie…
Gotta love the way he’s looking at her like a starving man looks at a rack… of ribs.
Actuallly, the boy’s name is “Duncan”, but whatever. At the time I was just speculating, but o-ho, what have we here? Why it’s April’s January letter!
Eva and Duncan are sort of together too, and they’re soooooo cute. Duncan’s a sweetheart, and he appreciates a very smart woman. Eva’s got a good brain, and she’s gorgeous. They look good together, they treat each other really well and they’re friends.
Like with like. Dark-skinned with dark-skinned, white with white.
Mind, I’m not declaring Lynn Johnston some kind of outright racist. What I object to is something more casual, what I think is known as “institutionalized racism”, the kind of racism we don’t think about because we practice it ourselves everyday. You see this in Johnston’s overly broad depiction of Lovey Saltzman, the Jewish landlady.
Dig those coarse features and ethnicy language!
Suffice it to say, I can think of a number of reasons why Liz and Paul wouldn’t work out: country boy and suburban girl; money issues; meddling parents…
But race? In a strip that embraces gay people and emphasizes the dignity of the mentally retarded? That’s either laziness or blinders.
One of my clearest memories from New Haven was my stint at Pizza Pal.
But it was the blacks, the niggers, that Carmella and Bill hated worst. “You don’t know,†they would tell me, their faces knotted in scowls. “You’re still too young to know how those fucking niggers take advantage. Goddamn fucking niggers. By the time you move from this city, you’ll hate ‘em as much as we do.â€
I was disgusted with my employers, but even more disgusted with myself when, less than three years later in lily-white Northampton Massachusetts I remarked of a black classmate “…and she’s so articulate.”
“Do you have ANY IDEA what a lousy racist shit thing you just said?” my girlfriend responded, and the realization of what had just come out of my mouth knocked the knees out from under me, as my stomach dropped sixteen stories. The shame, the horror I felt at myself that I’d said such ugly, such bigoted, such casual things about someone I barely knew, based on her skin. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, I was so embarrassed that I’d harbored such an assumption, something so alien what my own self-perception. It’s a confrontation I’ve never forgotten; even as i write these words, I cringe at the memory, the realization that I had somehow absorbed these beliefs. Added in italic, inspired by WithoutaK in comments: What made it all the more troubling was that I had not absorbed this attitude from my three years in New Haven, where I worked with and socialized with people of all races: rather, I had slipped into the pattern while living in a highly racially homogenous region. And that’s the kind of racism I see in Lynn Johnston’s work here: from what I’ve seen in my limited experience with Canada, it’s a pretty white place, and I’m not talking about snow. The picture of Ontario, where FBorFW is based, is similar. I’m not saying I think LJ is a racist, but I do believe subtle, unstated, and flawed race tropes are at work in this particular narrative. When I read this “He’s a native man. Susan shares his culture” dogshit, I’m embarrassed for Lynn Johnston for trafficking in such obvious stereotypes and rationalizations. What are you thinking? Or more to the point, “Are you thinking?”
Casual racism: it’s ugly, shitty, and worst of all insidious. Johnston doesn’t even realize she’s participating. Guaranteed.
8 Responses to “FOOB: Getting All Racial”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:13 am
You called it. Paul is half-white, but I guess one drop of colored blood taints you. Awesomely offensive.
January 17th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Word to everything you just said. I drives me nuts that anyone would think that being of a different race is the one thing that dooms a relationship. I myself am black and white and have never felt the “Curse of the Half-Breed” that others (like Mariah Carey) always trumpet. I’ve always felt lucky that I belong to two “different” worlds. And that’s all I’ll say on that.
However, I did want to add, not to downplay your “and she’s so articulate” comment, but just to throw in my two cents, that given the downward spiral in educational standards these past 10 or 20 years, I’m generally surprised to meet anyone capable of being articulate regardless of their color.
January 17th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Amen!
January 18th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
It gets even better today (01/18/2007), Brendan. After doing her victory lap around Mitgwaki, Liz drops by Paul’s house to tell him off one last time.
Note to Liz: I think Paul has the great people of Mitgwaki figured out - that’s why he’s not with you, bitch!
January 18th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I thought I was the only person offended by this casual racism. Thank God for the Internets! Eva and Duncan together? I never saw it coming - much like I never saw Granthony getting divorced, or Liz being cheated on (again!!!), or them ending up together. Is LJ writing this in her sleep?
Seriously, as the mother of a mixed-race child, I am sick to death of the “stick with your own kind” paternalism evidenced in this strip. Ms. Johnston ought to be ashamed of herself, but I get the feeling she’s beyond it.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Exactly what I was thinking. But hey, at least Paul gets some sort of vague mysticism as part of ‘his culture,’ presumably to help offset his ‘unfortunate’ sort-of-Native background.
Did anyone else not even notice he was meant to be ‘ethnic’ until it was hammered home (long after we met him) in some dialogue?
January 19th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
You should send Lynn Johnston a link to this page. I wonder if she realizes just how many people she’s alienated with this particular strip?
I was expecting the whole Paul/Susan thing but the whole “birds of a feather flock together” explanation is just so offensive. As if, when considering a mate, shared racial/ethnic background trumps all other possible facets of compatibility. I know there are probably a lot of people out there who agree with Lynn and truly believe this, but, as someone in an interracial relationship (that has also been the longest, happiest and most serene in my life) I feel I’m qualified in saying that those people are full of shit.
And frankly, I’m pretty surprised it’s still considered acceptable to air these kind of sentiments in public (in an internationally syndicated comic strip, no less).
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 am
i’m just glad to know i’m not the only one who thinks Lovey Saltzman is a horrible jewish stereotype. all that yiddisha backwards yoda-talk, wtf is up with that? and don’t get me started on her “look.”
i really think the cartoonist is trying to be inclusive, trying to express a diversity that many comics really don’t achieve–but god, why does she have to be so clumsy and crude about it? surely in the last 25 years she must have met some actual jews/native americans/black people….. right?