Touré on Post Blackness in the "Chappele Show"

Content

1. Introduction

2. Post-Blackness
2.1. Definition
2.2. Three ways of performing Blackness
2.3. Who Toré considers post-black
2.4. Touré and Dave Chapelle

3.Chapelle Sketches
3.1. Sketch One: Clayton Bigsby
3.2. Sketch Two: The Niggar Family

4. A Post-Black TV show

Sources

1. Introduction

Chapelle’s Show was an American sketch comedy series viewed from 2003 to 2005. It looked at race and social relations in today’s America. The show’s controversy makes it worth being subject of this paper. In the following, its aspects of Post-Blackness are being discussed. Touré’s Who’s afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now will be the main source of this paper, for it especially wants to carve out Tourè’s understanding of Post-Blackness.

This paper aims to portrait the different ways of Blackness visible today. This new approach of Blackness is represented best in the TV Show Chapelle’s Show. Therefore two skits examined in the chapter The Rise and Fall of a Post-Black King, in Touré’s book Who’s afraid of Post -Blackness? What It Means to Be Black Now will be used to illustrate, why the Chapelle’s Show is a post-Black TV show.

This paper also tries to present the controversy, about the appreciation of Blackness itself. The following quote by Melissa Harris-Perry, who is a professor for Politics at Princeton University, tries to emphasize that she cannot really believe in the lack of acceptance, of different ways of being Black among African-Americans:

I guess I’m just convinced that there’s actually a lot more room in our conceptions of Blackness, particularly on a very interpersonal level, then we tend to let on. I’m saying I’m not yet convinced by the discourse or the evidence that I have out there that we really don’t make room for each other (Touré 7)."

Touré, in reference to the quote, states that African-Americans indeed limit each other in their notion of Blackness, as the next quote gives evidence:

"Such is the intellectual diversity of Black people: We can’t totally agree on whether or not Blacks have a collective awareness and acceptance of Black diversity. I know Professor Harris-Perry is correct that many of us are cognizant and tolerant of our diversity but I also know from personal experience that there are self- appointed identity cops in our community- people who are like Sergeant Waters in A Soldier’s Story - policing the race and writing Authenticity Violations as if they were working for internal Affairs making sure everyone does Blackness in the right way. But what is this right way? And who chose it? (Touré 7)"

2. Post-Blackness

Black is a box but it doesn’t mean anything. There seems to be an issue of authenticity. What is it about? Without defining Blackness there is a fear of losing it. Black America has come from a collective conception of Blackness, to a more individualistic understanding of Blackness (Toré 25).

"Post-Blackness does not mean post-racial." This would refer to the oblivion of race in the USA (Toré 12). That racism does exist, is the perfect proof that race is still recognized.

Touré states, the US today is in a post-Black age. This means, nowadays there is a broader understanding of Blackness in contrary to the era of the Civil Rights Movement, for the perspectives and the experiences have changed. It is described by Touré, how Michael Eric Dyson talks about post- Blackness as a harsher, individualistic way of Blackness, which for the majority lacks the nationalistic way of seeing Blackness. African-Americans in the USA no longer get the feeling of their only purpose being fighting for Blacks (Touré 8). This cognition of the existence of Post-Blackness has been initiated by the election of Obama, the first Black president of the United States of America (Touré 21).

Obama among the other white, old front man politicians sticks out. If it is noted that 53 of his voters were white, 66 percent of his voters were Hispanics and 95 of them were black, he must embody what it is seen as ―most" American, today. This probably helped him to win the election to become president. Maybe these voters could identify best with him as he spoke directly to the middle class (Dingle xii).

2.1. Definition

The term ―Post-Blackness" derives from something that was noticed in the art movement (post-Black-art) but picked up again by the time of the election of president Obama (Touré 16).

Visual Artist Glenn Ligon defines Post-Blackness as a notion of Blackness, away from a collective way of conceiving Blackness. Mostly, there are no Black leaders anymore who speak for the entire group (Touré 25). The artists Ligon and Thelma Golden (Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem) came up with the idea of Post-Blackness in the late nineties. This new term was meant to describe a nouveau chapter of Black visual arts by a new generation. The term tries to express the idea, of a connection between the Black artist and his creation (Touré 31).

This new approach of Black art is contrary to what DuBois wanted art’s purpose to be. It could be argued that DuBois reduces people to their race. The quotation of ―Criteria of Negro Art" by W.E.B. Du Bois’ published in the magazine The Crisis of October 1926, underlines what art shall be used for in his opinion:

"All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda (Du Bois 1926)."

According to Touré ―Post-Blackness is what it looks like when you are not caught by your own trauma anymore." By trauma it is referred to the civil rights struggle which united Blacks, to fight for one common cause (Touré 9). He underlines that Post-Blackness does not mean post-racial for this would mean, race no longer would be recognized and would play no role in everyday live anymore (Touré 12). This is not the case. Race issues like racism do still exist; a lot of those matters however have become more subtle (Touré 21).

2.2. Three ways of performing Blackness

Dyson, in Whos’s afraid of Post -Blackness? What it means to be Black now names three types of Blackness (Touré 9). Those three types of Blackness become even clearer in the era of Post-Blackness.

He gives them the terms ―accidental, incidental and intentional." Touré calls them ―introverted, ambiverted and extroverted." Touré’s terms make up a whole new meaning and cannot stand representatively for Dyson’s terms. It has to be taken into account that Touré rejects categories but still categorizes Blackness.

Is it really the case that people wherever they go underline that they are Black by behaving in a way associated with Blackness and talking in this kind of way? Are all their actions related to their Blackness? Do those categories make sense at all? And are they so easily to be defined? It can be asserted that Dyson’s categories seem to be more neutral. Are those categories performed intentionally? Are people taking a role by performing Blackness, out of those categories? Does the way one talks belong to one’s identity or is modulating one’s language a skill?

To sometimes modulate your language, in interactions and conversations with different groups of people it seems, is the easiest way and most successful way to get along in a post-racial and post-Black society (Touré 10).

2.3. Who Touré considers post-Black

Obama is a good example for a post-Black man because he gets along in the White world, but still does not forget how to modulate his behavior in order to get along among African-Americans (Touré 21).

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