death to Oprah

Music: Blossom Dearie: Jazz Masters 51 While he was imprisoned for peaceably demonstrating against racism, on April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. penned a letter from a jail in Birmingham in response to a statement published by eight Alabama religious leaders. The Alabama clergymen publicly stated that although they "recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized," they were nevertheless convinced that the peaceful demonstrations led by Dr. King were "unwise and untimely." The clergymen's alternative, "new constructive and realistic approach" to "racial friction" and unrest in Birmingham is unclear from their statement (presumably it consisted of talks with local and state leaders, as well as courtroom challenges), but what was made clear to King was that "outsiders" would only worsen their progress: ". . . we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders," and these outsiders have no "knowledge and experience of the local situation." As they say in seventh grade surfing clubs, "locals only."

King's response is, of course, masterful and well known. The core can be located in the third and fourth paragraphs, where King stresses the "interrelatedness of all communities and states." He says,

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outsider agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

King continues by chastising the clergymen for their relative unconcern for the demonstrators. "I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes." To wit: racial disharmony is a systemic problem, and cannot be reduced to this or that town or city. The ideological contest here, of course, could be cast as a contest between collectivism and individualism, between those who would stress a systemic cause for racism and those who would urge a "locals only," self-actualization form of individual empowerment.

Jump cut to the recent flap regarding Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, a best-selling drug and alcohol addiction memoir that The Smoking Gun website has unmasked as a lie. Last week, while Frey was defending the "emotional truth" of the book on Larry King Live, Oprah phoned in at the conclusion of the show to defend her endorsement of Frey and his memoir:

I am disappointed by this controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces, because I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within, and also the authenticity of the work. But the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me, and I know it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book. What is relevant is that he was a drug addict who spent years in turmoil from the time he was 10 years old drinking and tormenting himself and his parents, and stepped out of that history to be the man that he is today and to take that message to save other people and allow them to save themselves. To me, [the controversy] seems to be much ado about nothing.

Obviously Oprah's endorsement of this "redemption" story, whether real or imagined, was not intended as a commentary on racial inequity in this country. The defense does, nevertheless, represent the great con of Whiteness also reflected in Oprah's bromide, "Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism." We should qualify this philosophy with the term "individual," insofar as redemption is code for individual salvation, either through Christ or by singular will.

Today on our celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., I would like call for the (symbolic) death of figures like Oprah Winfrey and her self-help "friends." Only the eradication of self-help idiocy will return us to the notion of an "inescapable network of mutuality" that King stressed must be embraced for systemic change. A recent AP-Ipsos poll revealed that perceptions of "significant progress toward Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial equality" has been stymied, but by what is not clear—at least to the pollsters. But we all know why the dream has faded: we live in yet another "post-" era. Like postfeminism, post-civil-rights-ism is the idea that we have already made so much progress in racial equality that it's up to each individual to make it. Aside from herself, Oprah parades one Horatio Alger success story after the next as evidence it can be done! Fuck you Oprah Winfrey. You are the poster girl for the Me-Me-Gimme-Gimme Stupidity of Whiteness, and no other person on this planet--including Der Fuhrer, GWB--represents a greater threat to the dream of MLK than you do.