Sticks and stones, the bullied child is told, may break the bones. But names? Shoot, they'll never hurt ya. But what if the name-calling results in one Black person labeling another an "Oreo" or "'Nilla Wafer" or "Uncle Tom"? Can words do damage then?
Harvard Law professor and author Randall Kennedy seeks to pin down the history of the racial turncoat with Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (Pantheon, $22), a well-researched little book that looks into a practice, he writes, that "haunts the African-American imagination." Kennedy charts a course from the days of slavery to the post-Civil Rights era, from W.E.B. DuBois to Barack Obama, examining how perceptions around Blackness have led Black people to call others a sellout or face the charge themselves. Throughout the narrative, he points out that while the nature of groups is to partake in self-preservation, sometimes, charges of racial betrayal squash dissent, or may simply be wrong.
Kennedy has already walked headfirst into the thorny bramble of our country's ongoing racial saga. His previous book, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, while praised by critics, it cut too deep for others. The aggrieved labeled him, of course, a sellout. In part, he says, that experience led to Sellout. And with this being Black History Month, what better time to print the discussion Kennedy and I had last month, one that touched upon Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and -- who else? -- Clarence Thomas.
In a broad sense, how would you define sellouts?
The term sellout is used in lots of different senses. That's one of the things interesting about it. One side of the spectrum is failure to pay racial dues. The other pole of the spectrum is a much harsher meaning, much more telling, and that's the idea of treason: a person who is a member of a group who is an enemy of that group. And then there are places in between.
The subtitle of the book is "The Politics of Racial Betrayal." And you write that along with using words like Black and African American [in the book,] you are also going to use Negro and colored. Do you think people could see that as racial betrayal?
Oh yeah, sure, I've gotten called out by people for referring to Black people as colored. I had a student who just was beside herself and she demanded that I apologize. In fact, it was that experience that prompted me to do some research in the history of Black Americans' naming practices. But yeah, that's viewed by some people as highly insulting.
So let's talk about the quintessential sellout, Clarence Thomas, get him out of the way first.
Well, there is no Black person in American history that has been more vilified than him. And [in the book,] I tried to show a couple of things. His is an interesting one because the key moment in his career had competing sellout narratives. In his confirmation hearing, when Anita Hill leveled her accusations at him, the question was for many people, "Well who is the biggest sellout?" On the one hand there were Black people who accused her of maybe torpedoing the brother's chance to be a Justice. But some people called him a sellout because, after all, he was a Reaganite. And he won, ironically, by blowing the bugle for racial solidarity behind his [statement that the hearing was a] "high-tech lynching." Now, subsequently, things have changed: he is widely viewed as a race traitor.
I am very critical of him. But I don't think he should be viewed as a race traitor. He's just a reactionary Black jurist. I think that his method of constitutional interpretation is wrong. I think that he comes to the wrong conclusions in respect to a bunch of key issues, including affirmative action. So I disagree with him about a lot of things, but I think it should be recognized where it's coming from. A lot of people simply label him as a sellout, but they wouldn't be able to explain what is wrong with him, because they settle for this label doing all the work. If you just say, "Well, the guy is a racial traitor..." What the heck? Abolitionists were criticized as being white race traitors. What? I'm supposed to put them down for that?
Is there anything Clarence Thomas could do to change the perception of him?
If Clarence Thomas all of a sudden, in the next affirmative action case, says, "You know, I've changed my mind. I think affirmative action is broadly constitutional," I think a lot of the criticism would go away. Affirmative action has become such a litmus test, such a symbolic stand-in for everything. If he did that one thing, it would change things around.
Almost all famous Black people have been called a sellout at least once. Now we have Barack Obama.
Barack Obama, the person I hope will be the next president of the United States? I don't think there are that many people who have said that Obama is a sellout. I think there have been a number of people who have raised the suspicion that he is: "Why do all these white people like him so much? Is that because he's a collaborator?" So, he's had to grapple with that. And I think it's very destructive. I think right now, as we speak, there's a real effort to put pressure on him to display his colors as Black man. If he runs a flag up the pole of Blackness, people will say, "Whoa, whoa. Do I want him to be president?" Is that going to do Black people good, his putting on James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud"? Would that help us out? We've got Black kids in schools who feel guilt about excelling. So I think this thing has real consequences.
Here's a Black person who has excelled: Condoleezza Rice. You don't really talk about her that much in your book.
I could have talked about her a bit more. Didn't. She's an interesting one because, I tell you, there's some people who call her a sellout, but she would have [been] called a sellout even more if during the big affirmative action cases, she came out more against [the cases].
As it stands now, she's a Black Republican, obviously close to the Bush Administration, and people criticize her for this or that -- her stand on foreign policy. Same with Colin Powell: there are people who are critical of him, but he's not in the same boat as Thomas. I think again this is an illustration of the peculiar potency of the affirmative action debate.
Can you conjecture what Clarence Thomas thinks about selling out?
Thomas is actually concerned about his reputation among Black people. He gets really angry when people call him a sellout. His anger is a reflection [of how] he would like to be respected among Black people. He considers himself a "race man," and it sort of hurts him when Black people deride him so contemptuously.
But with Colin Powell, I've read a couple of profiles on him and they've talked about how when he was in his office, on the walls were pictures of various Black folks, including Black pioneers in the armed services. Now, maybe he was just interested in these people, but I can't help but think that at least part of that was a signal that implicitly said, "Listen, I realize that where I am stems at least in part from the collective struggles of those who have gone before me. And I want you to know, you might not like my view about this, that, and the other, but it has been a struggle for me." This was just a little symbolic thing, a little wink. I think that when Black people meet one another at some public event, a way that [they signal the other is with] a handshake and gestures, maybe a little colloquialism thrown in there: "Yo!" I think that's just signaling, "I've got my position, but don't think I'm a sellout." You know: "Wassup?" So yeah, it affects the way people act.
What do you think is the cause of us calling others sellouts?
An anxiety over abandonment. An anxiety of betrayal. Any group that's been put under pressure to feel these things -- I mean, I wrote about Black Americans, but what the heck? I could have written about Jews. A Jewish person can be really, really critical of Israel: "But you're a Jew: how can you say that?" Think of Northern Ireland, think of the Palestinians. Any marginalized group can have this anxiety because you're afraid that your enemies are going to turn one of your number. Your enemies, at least you know they're your enemies: they wear a certain uniform, they have a certain look, they have a certain name, and they're over there. But people who are right next to you, inside? White America can offer things that Black America can't offer, and the fear is that white America is going to offer something to some Black person, they're going to go for it, and they're going to turn.
You know, in slavery days, the offer of emancipation could make a slave turn. During the 1960s and 1970s, it didn't even take that much: it just took a little bit of money. The bookkeeper from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: it wasn't like he was making a fortune, but it was enough to turn him. [Ed. note: In 1964, the FBI recruited a SCLC bookkeeper to provide the agency with Martin Luther King's itinerary prior to his schedule being publicly announced.]
In the book, you talk about how some of those people tagged as traitors might not have been.
I know some people are really going to get mad at me on that one, but I think it's an interesting hypothetical that I raise. What about the slaves who informed on the slave rebellion, not for self-interested reasons -- at least not for purely self-interested reasons -- but to avoid the ravages of a misplaced rebellion? You might say, "Oh, you're standing on tiptoe," but I don't think so. What about the people who testified against Marcus Garvey [who, among other actions, fought for a permanent homeland for Black Americans in Liberia in the 1920s]? Some of them said, "We were against Marcus Garvey and were willing to help the government bring him low because we thought he was leading to the destruction of Black folks." Maybe they were wrong. But just suppose that they were sincere in their beliefs. There are real dilemmas that people face in life like that.
People who are labeled as sellouts, sometimes they get shot or attacked.
There are real consequences that flow from this and that's why people should be real careful. You call somebody a sellout and people believe you, and they'll ostracize the person, if not worse. That's a word with some punch to it.
You mention that labeling someone a sellout could squelch a dissenting viewpoint.
One way of squelching a rival is calling them sellout: I appoint myself to be the arbiter of what's good and bad among Black folks. And then, if I'm successful in making that charge stick against somebody else, they go down and I go up. So it's a great weapon of demagogues.
There are websites that let people list those who are supposedly sellouts and you found out you were on one of these websites.
I came across it in a weird way. I wrote a book a couple years ago and was doing research for that when I came across the site, and Bam! there I was. I don't know, but I'm surmising this guy putting this [site] together had read things I'd written, and thought that I was conservative and assumed I was married to a white woman. A friend of mine said, "You should write them, and correct them." Me? No, leave it alone. It's up there.
Why did you decide to do that?
I just suspected it wouldn't make any difference, frankly, me saying something about it.
Do you think if we all just didn't care about it, then calling people a sellout would lose its power?
The answer is yes, but that ain't going to happen. Any group, to maintain itself, is going to be worried about defection. It's just part of every group. So, in a way I don't worry so much about that, because there are going to be mechanisms put in place to deal with that. You can bet your bottom dollar. I think we have to lean against that, but I'm more concerned with group tyranny than groups falling apart.