I want to see Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, even though I know I’m going to have to prepare myself for it ahead of time. It’s not going to be the kind of film where you can decide, on a whim, to just run out and see it one afternoon. The subject matter is too heavy and too relevant to where we are in America right now, with the New York Times doing soft-focus profiles of Nazis and Donald Trump not even bothering with the racist dog-whistles, he just comes right out and says racist sh-t now. Which is Spike Lee’s whole point: his film might be set in the 1970s, but all that sh-t is still happening today. It never went away. Spike covers the latest issue of Time Magazine, and it’s a fascinating read – go here for the full piece. Some highlights:
Spike wants America to stop falling for the “okey-doke.” By that he means the tricks—which Lee calls the skulduggery, the shenanigans, the subterfuge and the bamboozlement—that straight, white American men masterfully use to stay in control. Lee is a student of history, and so he understands where these tricks are hiding and what form they might take in the future. He’s obsessed with the okey-doke. And it explains so much of why Lee is the way he is.
Black folks can be part of the okey-doke when they get money too: “People become delusional and think they’re not black anymore because they are accepted—it’s the okey-doke. You can say that now, but they still think you’s a n–ger.”
He never wants to be sanitized: “There’s this thinking that athletes should just run up and down the field, run around the bases, run down the court, play ball and shut the f-ck up. But there’s a history of that not being the case. And the powers that be don’t like that.”
On Trump’s tweets about LeBron: “He has a thing for black athletes. He does not like them brothers making that money.” But it runs even deeper than that. “This stuff is all planned,” he continues. “The sneaky thing is, he tried to start some sh-t between Michael [Jordan] and LeBron. That’s the old divide and conquer.”
The truth: “This brings me to another point. Let’s stop telling lies and teaching young people bullsh-t. The United States of America’s foundation is genocide of native people and slavery! That’s the foundation—the very fiber. No people have been more patriotic than black folks, who shouldn’t be.”
On all of the white people who want to talk to him about sports: “To use football terminology, it’s a classic misdirection play. They’re masters at it,” Lee says. In this context, they refers to everyone from a white man talking about sports to members of the Republican Party to any group of powerful whites. “It’s well-conceived, well-disguised. So we, as a people, as American people, have to really stop going for the okey-doke. We have to be smart and not go for these distractions. And you know they’re calling me every type of n–ger when they do that sh-t.”
The Nazis marching in Charlottesville last year: “I saw this horrific act of homegrown, red, white and blue, cherry-pie terrorism,” Lee says. Part of what Lee found so profound was the death of Heather Heyer. He called her mother Susan Bro, to ask permission to use footage of her death in the film. “What can you really say to anyone who loses her child?” Lee says. Bro told him that there had been criticism of how Heyer, a white woman, had been lionized in the media when the deaths of so many people of color go unnoticed. Lee didn’t care. “I consider her a martyr,” Lee says. “It don’t matter what nobody else says.”
The interview takes place in Martha’s Vineyard, where Spike has a home and where he’s surrounded by lots of white people who seem to be both visibly uncomfortable with Spike yelling about genocide and slavery AND fascinated by him because he’s a celebrity. Throughout the interview, various white dudes come up to him and want to talk about the Knicks or just sports in general, and he chats with them, then as soon as they walk away, he sort of projects on them that they’re secretly calling him the n-word. That’s the only thing that bothered me a little bit about this interview – I completely get what he’s saying… except I think he’s guilty of just assuming every white person he encounters is saying terribly racist sh-t about him behind his back. The rest of it is the truth though.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Time.
I think you meant “visibly”.
Cue completely unhinged tweet storm from the Orange Pig-demon in 3…2…
I think he assumes that…because of his life experience…Just glad to see that he’s fired up and it’s translating into his work….
I think he also assumes that because of all of his accomplishments, and all of the things there are to talk about in this world…. they only approach him to talk about…. sports?
Like the man is educated. He’s been in the business for decades. There are so many more things to talk about other than sports.
I would recommend a Pandora podcast called Questlove Supreme where Questlove and his crew did a great, great, great, great interview with Spike. The man in very interesting and has lots of things to say.
After his mother died his father married a white woman. He is very conflicted.
As a POC I’d like to say I personally don’t think all White people are racist. I have had to deal with plenty of racism in my life, but I have also dealt with many genuinely nice White people who really don’t act superior or think they are better than me. Spike shouldn’t assume they’re all bad.
White people don’t need you caping for them. They will be just fine without you, “speaking as a POC”, making sure they know someone on the other side of the color line knows they aren’t all bad. Your feeling the need to make this statement IS an aspect of the okey doke that Spike is referring to.
Explaining implicit bias and subtle racism to white people can be frustrating. Most people I’ve come into contact since I moved stateside think I’m Mexican. I don’t mind because they are Indigenous to this continent just like I am. But as a result, there are times people treat you differently when seating you in restaurants, etc. That happened last week. I was explaining it to co-workers and they kept thinking of different reasons why it wasn’t racism. After a lifetime of experiencing it, I put up with it. But I still acknowledge it. I think that’s what Spike is talking about when people walk away from them. Their behavior may be overtly nice, but there’s also an undertone and mannerism that you recognize as well.
I am mistaken for Mexican most of the time as well. My husband is white and one of my children is brown and one is white. I have twice been mistaken for my white child’s nanny at the playground. I have never taken on the visual cues of my new economic class, that plus my skin color and I am often treated like I don’t belong certain places.
@Me and Tanya, yes to both. People think I’m White, so they share stuff with me. The seemingly nicest people can display ignorant racial bias on one end and flat-out racism at the extreme, and there are also plenty of White folks who truly are the salt of the earth. Spike is correct because that is his experience and the lived life of so many POC. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie. His film and Crazy Rich Asians are giving me life. All stories are important, and compelling ones should be brought to the screen. I’m so sick of mediocre stories about the fantasies of rich White guys from Los Angeles. A lot of movies today remind me of what someone said about an author who died recently, that he wrote about women but didn’t understand or even attempt to understand the women he so frequently represented in his books at all. No dimension. The rich LA White guy fantasy movies always make me think, “I wonder who vacationed here and decided to come back and make a movie.”
This is what I was trying to imply in my above comment reply. Thank you for putting into better, clearer words.
I feel you, Lboogi. Of all the things they could ask him about and with all of the tensions occurring, the Knicks should be a nice opening to a real conversation. The White men he references are afraid of engaging him on the topic of systemic racism, and that is Spike’s life’s work. Too fearful of the discomfort that comes with having core beliefs challenged, or maybe they want a little of the shine that comes from saying you engaged with the cool, famous Black Guy. Men hate small talk unless they are kissing the ass of one of their heroes, and Spike gets their respect not as a hero but as a man who made it into the power structure and the Hamptons and who shows up on the TV screen in the first row at Knocks games.
Spike is a national treasure. His movies should be required viewing for all Americans.
I agree with everything Spike said and then some!
As a born poor, mixed race person I’ve thought for a very long time that racism, classism, misogyny, and theologism are woven into the tapestry of our national fabric and it can’t be washed out. It will have to unwoven and put back together not only with threads of every color and class etc but actively rewoven by hands of every color, class, gender, oirientation, and belief or unbelief. I don’t really think we need to pull it apart all at once but teasing out the evil threads and replacing them to eventually weave a new nation that includes the very best of the founders radical ideas but extends the guarantee of liberty to everyone, not just rich white men.
Langston Hughes says it best….https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america-be-america-again
Amen, Aang. As one myself, down to the poverty, co-sign.
He is … not wrong.
The most woke white person in the world can’t undo a lifetime of privilege and ingrained bias that exists in American society. Whether you’re talking about innate fear, or something (seemingly) more benign, like beauty standards, it’s all based on a racist history that goes back centuries. It’s there for everyone; even people of color buy into it on many levels. See things like the studies with children of color being asked to pick the “pretty” doll or the “bad” guy and pointing to blue-eyed blondes, or a dark-skinned black man, respectively. That’s the absolutely insidious thing about generations of oppression and hate and othering.
I am constantly having to question and confront myself when trying to teach my kids about their own privilege, and I know I don’t always get it right. Not even close.
And I’m not just talking negative stuff…When I excelled at school and got into an Ivy league college, no one called me a, “credit to my race” or marveled at how “articulate” I was when I spoke in class. When I opened up a magazine, turned on the TV, went to the movies or read a history book, I consistently saw people of my race not only represented, but represented in a positive way. No matter what a deadbeat loser my dad was—and he was a big one—we were never, ever denied housing, or seating at a restaurant, or asked if we could pay for something before checking out. No one ever blamed his alcoholism or inability to care for me (frequently passing me off to grandparents), on his race. Heck, even stuff as minor as walking into the school nurse’s office and my kids getting a dang Band-Aid, knowing it’s gonna basically match their, apparently default, skin tone.
This sh!t runs DEEP and it effects every single one of us.
I really enjoyed reading your comment.
Thank you. I’m always a little scared to talk about things like this, because know I don’t have any authority on subject, and hope I don’t say anything wrong or offensive. I think this is the sort of stuff that is a life-long process of figuring out, and know even then I won’t get it right, but still feel it’s very much worth the effort.
Even the most well-meaning, “woke” white people reveal implicit bias and subtle racism.. As a Black woman who grew up in majority-white areas, I experience this frequently. I understand his resentment and he is certainly entitled to it.
Racism..It’s a difficult, uncomfortable, often heartbreaking topic, but the conversation needs to be had and I’m glad he’s leading the way.