The recent brouhaha over the beating of 13-year-old Lenard Clark in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood has given us yet another occasion for public hand-wringing about race in Chicago. There has been no shortage of these occasions, which have repeatedly erupted into the public consciousness in the past year or so. There was Hiawatha Park, on the far west side, where the Chicago Housing Authority's attempt to purchase a single three-flat for its scattered-site housing program ignited shrieks about the proposal's negative impact on "property values." Then there were the symbols of white supremacy, the swastika and the lightning bolt, left on the playlot of the Keller Gifted Regional School in the all-white Mount Greenwood neighborhood on the far southwest side. And the series of arsons last summer at the predominantly black Mary Crest housing development in the 18th Ward's Ashburn neighborhood, also on the far southwest side. And "Girl X," the nine-year-old black girl who was beaten, raped, poisoned and left for dead in a stairwell of one of the Cabrini-Green high-rises. (Not to mention The Bell Curve; Denny's; the O.J. Simpson trial; the Texaco Tapes; and the burning of black churches.) And these are only some of the most prominent instances.
Everyone agrees that these incidents are salient illustrations of something important and something having to do with "race." But beyond that very general assessment, their meaning and significance are not at all clear. Even the assertion that they point to race's importance in Chicago doesn't clarify things much. In fact, the lack of specificity probably enhances their symbolic power by leaving all the interpretive options open.
As focal points for public attention, these racial incidents, and the hoopla around them, can be seen primarily as examinations of Chicago's establishment media. These episodes enter our collective awareness only after they've been shaped and projected by and through that corporate behemoth. That's an easy fact to lose sight of because the establishment media's pervasiveness gives it the appearance of a neutral environment. As likely as not, we don't even recognize it as the source of our common knowledge and frames of reference at all.
But does anyone honestly think that Chicagoans would have become so obsessed with stories about the fate of a young rape victim at a Chicago Housing Authority development or a single black boy in one of the city's more notorious white neighborhoods if they hadn't been fed to us constantly, complete with the clichéd commentary? An all-encompassing corporate information apparatus has repetitively driven these stories home without calling undue attention to itself. My point isn't that there is a conspiracy afoot to shape out thinking. But what determines newsworthiness and legitimacy in the mass media is restricted to a very narrow band of pro-corporate, pro-establishment perspectives. Just consider the range between "left" and "right" on news-chat television.
As news and entertainment dissolve into an increasingly indistinguishable stream, a gloss of titillation obscures the banality and narrow bias of what passes for public information. That may be the main impact of the glut of TV talk shows and true-crime programming. They obliterate the difference between stimulation and information, the shock value of entertainment and the urgency of current affairs, momentary scandal and the deep forces that shape our lives.
From this perspective, the occasional racial incident that enters Chicago's collective consciousness is one that conforms to the information industry's stock-in-trade. That is, they are broadcast to us as sensationalized, emptily ponderous, very familiar revelations. Who can really be surprised -- especially 15 years after Ronald Reagan shifted the political terrain by legitimizing and accelerating the fires of white racial resentment -- by repeated announcements that racial classification is significant in the United States status system? Of course, nonwhites don't find these episodic revelations like the Lenard Clark beating especially surprising. And at this point it's implausible that a sufficient number of whites can be startled to learn more about them. So what do they mean? Why do they retain their power for riveting public attention?
Ultimately, the specific revelations -- whether about Lenard Clark or police brutality, church burnings or the symbols of white supremacy at a public school -- don't necessarily draw attention to the extent of racial inequality and injustice at all. Instead, they ignore what's at the heart of the racial stratification, and focus on the titillating circumstances of the particular case: The what-did-who-know-when frame that exhausts critical thinking in the mire of lurid details, the overheated news trivia that gives the illusion of being well-informed.
As a sensational story, each case in known by its unique outrages. The effect is to wash out whatever lessons it might teach about larger patterns and broader ramifications. Each outrage by definition has its own genesis, its own cast of characters, its own complex of motives and ambiguities. And as the instances accumulate, the fact of racist outrage becomes standardized as a genre of the public information industry, much as "homelessness" has become part of the conventional backdrop of urban life. The stories exemplify a familiar structure: public and private reactions follow a pro forma course. Thus, the logic that focuses our attention on these incidents undermines their usefulness for civic education.
The racial news drama is also a morality play. Various personalities fall into scripted roles. Because of its outrageousness, and the flood of coverage that it receives, each case demands our response. Black activists mobilize rallies against the offense, some whites search for nonracial explanations of the outrage, and the punditocracy chatters ceaselessly and vacantly, lobbying platitudes back and forth. All come together, finally, around calls for racial healing.
From the vantage point of what was once known as "managing racial tensions" (as opposed to eliminating racial injustice), this is perhaps an ideal situation. Recurrent exposés project serious concern and honest disclosure. Yet the exposés' standard form undermines their critical potential, and their recurrence desensitizes the public to their effect. In this way, drawing attention to the evidence of racial injustice becomes the alternative to doing anything about it.
Adapted from a column that appeared in the Village Voice, Dec. 10, 1996.