TED Fellows

?uestion: Are We Being Served?: Lunch Counters, Racism, and the Real-Time Web of Twitter

February 5, 2010

(rev. 2/5/2010)

My day started with an amazing Haiti Teach-In at Baruch College-CUNY with my colleague Haitian Carolle Charles, who was featured on the cover of the NYTimes this same day (above the fold, no less). That was immediately followed by a great 3rd meeting of my Intro to Cultural Anthropology class where I introduced social constructs. Did you know that the "weekend" is a social construct?

a social construct is an idea which may appear to be natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society.

The “weekend” do not exist in nature, per se, and yet it is perceived as natural and obvious though at some point long, long ago, human beings invented it as a sort of technology to deal with the work week. Social constructs are odd discourses, like race, because changing something we have agreed seems so natural and real (“that’s the way it is”) requires a lot of hard and endless work to achieve simply because we have forgotten it was invented. LOL. Signs of its persistence abound but in reality we keep social constructs around by talking about them over and over again. Thus the persistence of stereotypes and all the larger structural implications of racial discourse. When I returned to my office in the late afternoon, I learned that a whole brouhaha had erupted hours earlier about a "Fried Chicken menu" at NBC's 30 Rock cafeteria.

FROM SIT-INS TO TWEET-INS
Almost to the day fifty years ago, a group of "Negro" students from North Carolina A&T staged a non-violent protest at lunch counters in a fight for equal rights for all. Because of their darker skin, they were refused service at a Woolworth's lunch counter. To protest, they remained seated while waiting to be served. The anniversary of their pivotal acts of non-violence remind me of how young people’s actions turned the tide of the Civil Rights movement. Twitter wants to become a similar platform for people to voice their racial dissent in real-time. The only problem is that certain geographical and social disconnects of class and nation between “black” actors cannot be galvanized in the same way as the sit-ins. Life on Twitter is much more unexpected and unpredictable leading to clashes of culture as was experienced today, February 4th, around a tweet about a menu in honor of Black History Month. The tweet transformed NBC's ordinary cafeteria, at least for a NY minute, into a 21^st century "lunch counter" of racial stereotyping about fried chicken and black-eyed peas. The sit-ins of the past because a tweet-in of the present over what and who was being served at NBC.

IS FRIED CHICKEN TOO P.C. FOR NBC OR ARE WE? (#blackhistorymonthfail)
In honor of Black History Month, the NBC menu read: "Fried chicken, collard greens w/ smoked turkey, white rice/black eyed peas, and jalapeno cornbread" @Questlove, aka Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, currently of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon fame, tweeted a link to a photo of the menu that he captured himself along with "Hmm HR?" The menu seemed to offend many in the Twitterverse as I scanned through the day’s streem of tweets. One tweet that followed read: black.history.month.fail. Sparked by hundreds of retweets, NBC Universal replied on Twitter: "The sign in the NBCU cafeteria has been removed. We apologize for anyone who was offended by it."

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/02/04/oops-nbc-offends-black-musician-fried-chicken-cafeteria-special-honor-bl#ixzz0edH7tEBJ

Fueled by popular (meaning “everyday”) perceptions of NBC as unfavorable to black audiences and actors (think 10 seasons of NBC's Friends devoid of funk in the whitest New York City ever witnessed on Must-See TV), the tweet by Questlove would inadvertantly trump the local efforts of black folk working behind the counter who had spent the last two seasons of Black History Month at NBC struggling to get their culture ON the menu not off. What's ironic about the brouhaha is that the menu was actually requested by black staff for Black History Month. One disheartened cook from the cafeteria explained (see video). Their efforts were eclipsed, though not necessarily forever, by all kinds of blogs and reports about the reaction to the tweet. For instance, if you Google "NBC" and "Blacks" right now, all the top hits are about this controversy without much mention of the folks who took a stand for minority representation in their own workplace. They, who work beyond the glare of cameras and late night jokes at NBC Universal, learned of the thwarting power of Twitter by those who have access versus those who don’t.

DON’T EAT THE MENU: REPRESENTATIONS VS. REALITY
For Questlove "Hmm HR?" was likely a perfectly innocent tweet for a man who once called himself "BROther ?uestion". But as I told my students earlier this week, people often take their views of maps as if that's the way the real world looks, as if North is actually UP (see the Peters Map or a South-Up Australia-centered map). Questlove made an assumption from the surface about what might be going on without considering the other implications as most people on Twitter do day in and out. Somehow I think this links to the ways in which race as skin-color works. Such a cursory glance presumed everything about a person just from the surface of their skin.

There are menus and then there is the meal. If you eat the menu, you will NEVER be satisfied--social constructs 101. When we consume ideas of race and racism or even look for injustices at the level of individual, sometimes we get caught in the flatland or a superstition like the once held “truth” that the earth is flat. Thinking from ideas that are not based in reality—or initial perceptions are often disconnected from the social resources, labor, costs and technologies of intellect and community that lead to the moment. It often leads to what I call "kooky" behavior. Jumping to conclusions because things seem perfectly real or obvious often leads to a dangerous, slippery slope to hell where our perceptions severely limit our perspectives and the possibilities of seeing beyond the moment to connect to others’ liberation that may not look like sitting at the lunch counter. What does it say that the protest is being lodged from BEHIND it? (rev. 2/5/10)

SERVING BLACKS ON NBC: A FORGOTTEN PAST
Since its Black History Month, here's a little trivia for you. What was NBC once endearingly called by many blacks in the 1940s thru the 1960s? The "Negro Broadcast Company"! My mom, who was raised in the D.C. area, recalled that NBC was the only channel that prominently featured blacks. From my own research on Ethel Waters (1896-1977), the richest woman (and I didn’t say black woman) in Hollywood and the most powerful on Broadway during her day, was the very first black to have her own TV show The Ethel Waters Show on NBC in 1939. It was called an "experiment" at the time. The Nat "King" Cole Show is more popularly remembered as the first show on television featuring an African American which was also on NBC. It was a fifteen-minute weekly musical variety show in November 1956.

In more recent decades, with the exception of the Bill Cosby era of the 1980s and its spinoff A Different World, NBC is no longer considered an innovator in Black programming. The only caveat might be the fact that The Roots are the house band on the LATE show (visions from Spike Lee’s Bamboozled are dancing in my head right now SMH). I should be glad the brothers are getting paid every night. Everybody's gotta sleep n eat, right!? <tongue deeply in cheek>. One outcome of their regularly being in NYC is their regular $10 shows at the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan. The sit-ins of 1960 will be remembered in pictures just as the tweet-in yesterday might be, sparked by a pic Questlove sent about fried chicken on the NBC menu. But there are many other "lunch counters” where a tweet-in might redefine rather than disrupt everyday workplaces that need to be transformed. When Twitter starts making a meal of such social inequities, a 21st century March on Washington is a distinct possibility. Hope we don't have to wait til 2013.

"MEN ARE NOT DISTURBED BY THINGS, BUT BY THE VIEW THEY TAKE OF THEM" -- Epictetus

Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us....I supposed that all the objects (presentations [i.e., tweets]) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had
in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams (René Descartes, 15)

Questlove wrote about 8 hours ago "i think i need a twitter break. i done started something. and now i must put out fire." The discourse--the process of reasoning--surrounding race and racism, whether face-to-face and on Twitter, are a special kind of conversation or languaging that we take to be real--they were invented not much differently than maps and passed around, displayed and we simply forgot it's not the thing, its our view of things that upsets us. Upsets persist as if they are as real as the color of my skin. They are not.

The social construct of race spins its complicated web over time and space and a "real-time" tweet launched by a popular black musician on Twitter with 1,287,559+ followers at the time of writing this piece, calls a popular proverb to mind: "Too whom much is given, much is expected". Said in redux "Too whom many follow, much is expected". Tweets ignite meaning. Folks are listening to those #140 characters or less and running with them, often without context. But such lessons in the real-time Internet are to be learned in hindsight. And perhaps ought to be so. Twitter needs to add the new three Rs to the old set--Reflection, Relationships and Resilience (Daniel Siegel) and that comes with time.

Despite Twitter's treasured values of transparency, connectedness and blurring the walls that more or less separate top from bottom in society and despite the ascension of Obama as POTUS, conversations of race and racism on Twitter are not any less complicated than they are in real meatspace (face-to-face). They might be that much more complicated by the lack of limitations in a real-time Internet. We have forgotten that tweets are still laced with racial residue from its senders, that past injustices seep into the Twitter stream through the pigments of our social and historical hands that grasp and hold on to the ideas of our racialized bodies with the same national and international discourse of white privilege ingrained in our subconscious..

We have yet to really deal with a future full of diverse followers ready to tweet hundreds of cliché reactions about race and racism into the Twitter stream. Tweets that at their start may be misconstrued or misunderstood observations. Last summer's twensorship of the #thatsafrican trending topic is perfect example, but that's a story for another anniversary.

AGREE TO BE OFFENDED + STAY IN THE CONVERSATION
As some people celebrate Black History Month, others do not. They choose instead to celebrate black culture & history every day. While some of us ("us" here in all instances means all people not just black), while some of us love fried chicken and acknowledge its Southern and/or black roots, others do not. They choose to disassociate with it because, well, it’s too black, too fried or too chicken (for the vegans in the house).

So I ask why don't we just Agree to Be Offended and Stay in the Conversation i.e., Stay Connected. Perhaps we can have our fried chicken and collard greens with smoked turkey (instead of hamhocks) and celebrate America's history too. As I said in a quibble on Twitter two days about repeating the stereotypes about angry black women in praising Mrs. Michelle Obama's appearance on...yes NBC's Today Show, perhaps the dismantling doesn't need our additional pointing to the past that once was. Perhaps it also doesn't mean rejecting our love for traditions, fried chicken and black eyed peas. Collard greens and, yes, watermelon because it really doesn’t mean all that mumbo jumbo anymore. Yes, there’s fried chicken on the menu AND perhaps we won’t need a segregated month of history to cure our social indigestion.

WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR REACTIONS AND YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHETHER WE ARE TRULY BEING SERVED (i.e. FULFILLED) BY THE CONVENTIONAL FORMS OF REACTIONS AND CONVERSATIONS CURRENTLY EXPERIENCED AROUND RACE and/or RACISM? Leave comments below. And check out the 3 photos, too!
--
Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D.
2009 TED Fellow
Associate Professor at Baruch College-CUNY
Voicing "the unspoken" through song, scholarship and social media
http://twitter.com/kyraocity

An idea worth spreading: Agree to be Offended & Get Connected (TM). Reveal the remarkable Oneness of Humanity.
"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strangely, I am ungrateful to these teachers" -- Kahlil Gibran

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Filed under // 30 Rock Baruch College Carolle Charles Haiti Kyra Gaunt NBC NYT NYTimes Questlove The Roots civil rights lunch counter menu racism sit-ins social construct tweet-in twitter

Posted by Kyra D. Gaunt, Ph.D.

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?uestion: Are We Being Served?: Lunch Counters, Racism, and the Real-Time Web of Twitter

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Kyra Gaunt

Free e-book: WHAT'S DYING TO BE BORN enjoy!

An International Women's Day Gift - What is Dying to be Born?

?uestion: Are We Being Served?: Lunch Counters, Racism, and the Real-Time Web of Twitter