Hero once On Air

Something I noticed as I was doing the reading for Thursday, in which Macon gets his first tastes of celebrity life on the Joe Francis Show and Rise and Shine News and Pedantic Perspectives (lol @ that name) is that Macon seems to become decidedly less obstinate and asshole-y about expressing his views. I'm comparing the scene in the BSU meeting, where he is quite rude, period, regardless of the whole "does he have a right to be there and have an opinion?" debate, to his later behavior on the talk shows and such.

First, let's look at the BSU meeting. He announces his presence by disparaging their ideas for speakers, as told with the classic cynical aside of our narrator: "'Boring,' muttered Macon, too loud to be accidentally too loud" (123). Then, when he is given to opportunity to speak his peace -- hell, he's explicitly given to floor, is told the "say what [he's] got to say," and is totally put in the position to lay his whole ideology out there --  he opts to make the inflammatory and hyperbolic suggestion of "buying a gun and killing a cop" (124).

Even at his very first press conference a day later, he is much more comported and articulate with his what he says: "I guess I'm exposing white people to themselves. We've gotten so good at pretending we're not racist that we've started to believe it. We act like racism got dealt with back in the sixties (...) We teach our kids the doctrine of color blindness, tell them not to notice race. Which is impossible in a society as racially stratified as ours (...)" (141). Later, on the Joe Francis Show: "What I will address, though, is the sense of entitlement with which white people grow up, and which they hold on to for their entire live" (190). On Pedantic Perspectives: "'Forget channels of dialogue,' interrupted Macon. 'That lets them [Katie's note: them?] off the hook too easy. How can you even start talking without a basic acknowledgement of culpability?'" (203).

Clearly, when Macon actually talks about what he believes, it's the whites that he has a problem with, which begs the question of 'Why is he even giving the BSU crap in the first place?' because it doesn't really fit in with his ideology. But the seeming irrelevance of the BSU to Macon's goals is part of a larger shift in his character. Before his rise to fame/infamy, Macon is just sort of shooting out aggression, black militancy, and bravado without a very clear focus of what he is doing with it. He's robbing taxi-goers, he's stalking and cherry-picking his roomate, he's doing an open mic, and he's intruding on the BSU meeting. His haphazard behavior seems to us to be just as much of a cry for attention as a "down" whiteboy as it is an expression of any sort of governing principles, as murky as those seem to be.

But once he is given a voice, or more accurately, a listener, he becomes a lot more coherent. Coherent in the sense that his actions reflect his ideology. Before, he seems to be just as much trying to be a part of black culture as he is trying to show the problems with white privilege, but that aspect of him takes the back burner as he goes on media appearances. In fact, if we hadn't gotten the little manifesto in the Letter from a Birmingham Bus, his rise to fame is arguably the first time that we actually get a clear picture of what he believes. But we have to remember that the Letter from a Birmingham Bus was written after everything that transpires in the novel.

This shift implies that perhaps Macon hadn't 100% distilled his ideology until he gets the opportunity to articulate in an effective way. He does rhetorically ask for permission to speak at the BSU meeting, but that too is fraught with subtext, for he already bullied his way into the conversation: "The humble request for an invitation was always a respect-getter, a perfect way to carve out space for himself where none existed" (123). What are the club members supposed to do, not allow people to talk? Before his rise to fame, he has to make insane statements for their shock value, so people may listen to his actually intelligent ideas. The taxi cab robberies serve that purpose in perpetuity, so after he goes public, he doesn't have to make a name for himself, and he can focus on telling people his beliefs.

Here we have a possible exposition of Macon's heroism. Once he no longer requires his asshole version of himself, he sheds it to a certain extent and focuses on his admittedly admirable goals of a recognition of racial injustice. Of course, this doesn't negate the fact that his asshole self had to run its course in order for him to express his goals, that it was instrumental in its own fade-out. Nevertheless, Macon is somewhat redeemed in my eyes, because this shift lays aside my worries that Macon was simply using hip-hop culture and racial inequality as an outlet for his own lust for violence and feelings of inadequacy.

Conflicted Tan White Girl

I'm now three readings into Angry Black White Boy,  and I still struggling with what to make of the character of Macon Detornay. He seems like a bundle of walking contradictions, and it's especially hard to evaluate because the issues of race and cultural appropriation still carry so much weight in current dialogue.

I've been trying to come up with analogies to provide an alternative lens through which to critique Macon's character. The analogy would have to have a traditionally empowered group endorsing and appropriating the culture/symbols/whatever of the very group that they've oppressed. I think that point is very important, as we discussed in class on Friday, because it really isn't the same for a white person to be told to stay in their place and for a black person to be told the same thing

But so far I'm not having tons of luck, because I realized that I'm not really able to relate to a white person mimicking any culture other than black culture. Today (Thursday the 30th) I thought about its parallels to transgender women (meaning, individuals who have made the switch from man to women), which has some interesting results. I'm not really sure about how fitting the analogy is, , but the incongruities do help illuminate the problems with Macon (I'm going to be referring to a man-to-woman transition for the rest of the post).

The transgender transition seems to be renouncing ones man-ness in the same way that Macon wants to denounce his white-ness, but I'm guessing that we as an English class would have much less animosity and reservations about a transgender woman than about Macon. I think motivations play into it. People switch genders because they don't feel like they were assigned the correct gender. I don't think Macon feels like he was assigned the wrong race, because he relishes the thought of himself as the one white person who renounces white-ness. The color of his skin is a crucial part of the equation. I think that might not sit well with us because it seems like he has picked up on this thing just so he can feel special, and if we want to analyze it really deeply, he is still using the color of his skin to satisfy a feeling of superiority.

Of course, he is also motivated by a hate for white privilege. His method of fighting it is kind of weird though. If you were a man who hated sexism, your route of action probably isn't to switch genders. It's to tell your fellow men to not be sexist. I'm not sure if Macon's renunciation is really a fight against white privilege, certainly not enough to be compared to Malcom X, and his excessive arrogance is why we are looking at his whole ideology in such a critical light.

Another point is that even if Macon renounces his white-ness, he will still be white and still have white privilege. By contrast, when a trans woman makes the switch, she is now completely subject to sexism (I talked to a transgender woman once who had some astonishing things to say about how her professional life changed, how she was treated worse in meetings and her ideas given less thought, etc.). The fact that Macon can't ever actually be subject to racism makes his renunciation seem less authentic, even if he wholeheartedly believes in it.

One final idea: I keep getting pissed off that Macon goes to Columbia. But so does Andre, and Nique goes to NYU, and not every black person lives in the projects, etc. However, these facts don't totally invalidate the claim that if Macon was really as balls-to-the-wall as he says he is, he would live a much less affluent life, because (a) his money was gotten at racist means -- it's not even implicit, it's explicated with the Cap Ansen thing -- (b) Nique and Andre aren't the ones that have REALLY gotten screwed by racism. You don't evaluate a group of oppressed people by it's more prosperous individuals, you evaluate by how many of them have been denied opportunity.

I would get into flaws in my analogy but this post is already getting really long and heavy and I want people to read it, so please point them out in the comment section.