The Black Commentator - Michael "Kramer" Richards

By now, the nation and much of the English speaking world have become familiar with the racist tirade of Michael Richards, former cast member of “Seinfeld”, where he played the hairy, neurotic “Kramer”. This occurred at the landmark “Laugh Factory”, a comedy club in West Hollywood, on the eastern tip of the Sunset Strip. Responding to hecklers, Richards totally abandoned all sensibility and trod into forbidden territory, not just with a racially charged tirade with the “Nigger” word, but also into lynching and burning, saying “….50 years ago, we’d have been putting a fork into your ass…” to one of those who had heckled him.

Since then, we’ve been deluged with profuse, scripted, and disingenuous apologies from this lunatic who, the day after this tirade, which occurred November 17, 2006, went back on stage at the “Laugh Factory”, and continued to do his comedy routines as if nothing had ever happened.

Nothing might have come of it, and he would have been in “deniability” mode, had it not been for a digital phone camera capturing the tirade and posting it on “TMZ” and other web sites. Having been caught and without being able to deny the ferocity and vitriol of the tirade, Richards quickly came to realize that his career was destined for the toilet. Further, the incident had both ‘feet’ and ‘tentacles’, and was spreading his infamy like wildfire, infuriating Blacks and right minded whites, but also threatening the reputation of the “Laugh Factory”, and even extending to the “Seinfeld” show itself.

“ Nigger… Nigger…Nigger…Nigger…”

David Duke, Don Black, Trent Lott and the Council of Conservative Citizens must be laughing their heads off. Michael Richards has said in one evening and in one infamous performance, what they have been trying to say and have wanted to say for years. It is clear that Richards set a new watermark…a low one, in the race for his career to hit rock bottom. Even David Duke never engaged in his racist rhetoric with anything approaching this psycho-racist fit of pique that has come to characterize Richards. It is necessary to take a look at the last quarter century to get some point of reference on the basic meaning of this tirade…which really was not a tirade so much as it was an assertive and consciously delivered point of view, or POV. If you’ve heard the tirade on TMZ or via other media, you cannot help but notice that this was delivered with no fear of any Black people and no fear of a consequence of any kind. It is hateful and vitriolic, and those adjectives fail to capture the true scope and dimension of this display that has shocked so many…and which may have made many others quite proud.

The state of race relations in Amerikkka as of now, December 2006, is the result of a number of cumulative conditions that have evolved. I would start it directly with the Bakke decision of 1978, though it truly extends back to the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964, and the Voting rights act of 1965. When LBJ passed those laws in direct contravention to the Jim Crow mentality that had a ferocious grip on the whites of this nation, he knew that there would be backlash, proclaiming “…well…there goes the south!” It is at this junction in history that Jim Crow became “White Backlash”, and that has been the state of the state ever since.

Being a southerner himself, LBJ knew full well what he was doing and what the impact would be. It is here that we see the shift of politics in the south from Democrat and ‘Dixiecrat’ to Republican. Kevin Phillips and his “Southern Strategy” aimed at the so-called “silent majority”, the whites who felt taken aback at the passage of some laws that attempted to extend some fairness to people, long mistreated and disenfranchised, was the fuel for the fire of reversal.

But if one single person can be blamed for the racial morass we endure today, it is Ronald Reagan. This writer is convinced that Ronald Reagan was and should be considered an aberration in the history of this nation, because people were not really voting so much FOR Reagan in 1980 as they were voting AGAINST Jimmy Carter. The proof of this lies in the recollection that the elder George Bush, who was running for President and who was wearing something of a diluted “Beatle” haircut at the time, is the one who coined the term “Voodoo economics”, when he discovered what Reagan's economic plans for the nation were. Also, the world itself can witness that Jimmy Carter, though the nation was not happy with his performance at attempting to extricate the American hostages in Iran, has proven himself to be a better statesmen out of office than he was in office, during the intervening years.

But I digress.

Ronald Reagan, he of aberrational persona, had an appeal to that “silent majority”, the ones who came to be called the “Reagan Democrats”. These people were, in actuality, the closet racists of the old school, the old fashioned, working class whites of a generation ago - really of my parents’ generation - who had their particular fears and prejudices realized in the racial double-speak of Reagan era ideology. Reagan deregulated everything, including the FCC, and many of its then prevalent policies, including the gutting of the “fairness doctrine” policy. Because of this, we almost immediately began to see the rise of the racist shock jocks, the insulting, bellowing, howling jack-asses that created a talk format that is with us to this day.

The rise of the racist far right occurred under the watch of Ronald Reagan, and it is no wonder. He began his bid for the presidency with an appearance in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the location where three civil rights workers, Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner, were murdered…by LAW ENFORCEMENT in 1964. This incident, of course, sparked the involvement of huge numbers of white college students into the movement, and gave it legs and credibility as “Freedom Summer”, perhaps the official beginning of not only the civil rights movement, but the radical underground. The symbolism of this infusion of whites into the movement spoke volumes to many of those who opposed their actions, but who felt that their opinions never got aired, and who were frustrated with the direction of the country, that is to say, were tired of “…giving the country away to the goddamned Niggers”, as I heard one white put it many years ago.

It is during the Reagan era of the early 1980s, where we begin to hear unrelenting racist rhetoric spewing forth from the media, while at the same time denying that racism exists. The era of multi-national corporations, racial double speak, and so much simple-mindedness that someone needed to address forthrightly, but didn’t; the Democrats were all busy going underground or finding spaces in the trees where they could hide away and not be seen. While they abdicated, poor people, and Blacks especially, caught holy hell as the racist, far right agenda was imposed virtually unchallenged. The atmosphere changed radically. Speech changed radically, interactions between races changed radically. Civility quickly reverted to incivility, at levels not seen since prior to the advent of the Civil Rights era. And we have been stuck in the unspoken quagmire of this abyss ever since, tossing race off the table, trying to replace it with economics, class, and status. All to no avail.

The visitation of evil that descended upon the Black community in the wake of Ronald Reagan is an unspeakable devolution of race relations in the US yet to be addressed or discussed in detail or honesty. The only race discourse that is pervasive in the nation is one of confrontation. Blacks are and always have been the disadvantaged, but now, to discuss it is to be shouted down by an attitude that can only be called, charitably, white supremacy. It is more venomous than that. It is the hate speech that has freed the minds of white Amerikkka to blame the victim for his/her own downfall, to scapegoat the victim by telling whites that any progress they, Blacks, are making comes at the expense of you, the supreme ruler and owner of the nation and the economy. White Amerikkka has a problem owning up to its unspeakable wealth at the expense of others, and the unspeakable means by which that wealth has been acquired. The ‘80s and ‘90s were the slave years all over again. Some relief from it came during the Clinton era, but he, too, sold the poor of the nation down the river with the “Welfare Reform Act of 1997”.

“Fifty Years Ago We Would Have Been Putting A Fork In Your Ass……”

The Richards “rant”, more appropriately titled the Richards racist exposé, has come to us courtesy of a number of factors, Reagan, Bush one and Bush two, Katrina, Howard Beach, Avenue X in Brooklyn, police murders, Rodney King, OJ…all these and more. But it has also come to us courtesy of the rappers and the hip-hoppers, who freely abandoned all manner of civility and common decency, glorifying the drug culture, “pimpin' and hoe-ing”, violence, murder, and misogyny, and through the almost unchecked use of the word ”Nigger”, both on CDs, on the airwaves, and in public conversation.

It is a perennial embarrassment for this writer, and always has been. The free use of the term coupled with the embracement of the hip-hop attitude and culture WORLDWIDE virtually encourages the use of this negative and derogatory term, one that we fought to get rid of during the civil rights era…but which is here again, staring us down in its belligerent defiance, daring us to do something about it, knowing that we failed to do so when we had the opportunity. To that extent, it is fair to say that for Blacks, “The chickens have come home to roost” when a white takes it upon himself to refer to you in that language. You’ve not much to fall back upon…it is, after all, your sons and daughters and nieces and nephews who use the term like it has no meaning ...around you and around your house. They probably first heard it uttered from your lips, though it has a different meaning when Blacks use it than it does when whites use it.

The power dynamic is completely different, and bereft of any intrinsic white supremacist connotation. Blacks have not historically enslaved other Blacks, are not truly each other’s oppressor, though we do tend to keep each other from rising, from getting ahead, and we hold each other back. There is much reason and much room for self examination. We have more than two generations that have come up with no respect for themselves, for their elders, or for their communities, and no one has called them on it or checked them on it. The few that have tried have seen their names become anathema to the culture, and the lives and safety of these individuals have been a matter of some concern.

This has had the effect of not only emboldening a “Kramer” to say what he said, but it has also emboldened some other people to act in ways that put our people and their safety at peril…namely the cops. One week after the “Kramer” expose, police shot and killed an unarmed, young Black man in Queens NY on the morning of his wedding day. When the police hear you talk as you do, they see you don’t care about your community or the people in it, the invitation for disaster to you and your family and the place where you reside is extended to them…PENALTY FREE.

Fifty bullets.

Damn.

And no cop is indicted?

And probably NO cops will be indicted.

And the police chief is still there in his job, too.

Something is very wrong, and “Kramer” may be only the more conspicuous symptom, or one of the uglier manifestations of what is a growing malady that has evolved to a stage where it can no longer be ignored. But a torrential tirade of the term “Nigger” in a nightclub…on stage…in public?

Even the white patrons were aghast. Lynching….’putting a fork in your ass’? ( an obvious allusion to not just the lynching, but to the numerous burning of Black corpses). In the photos of those victims of lynching, the whites in the mob do not shy away from anyone taking photos. They knew nothing would be done, because no value was placed on Blacks in the society…then or now. Few if any whites were ever held accountable for these crimes. The Jim Crow laws were strictly upheld for Black males perceived to have disrespected or to have “compromised the virtue” of the white female. I do not know of any cases where the opposite holds true. The white man stole the virtue of countless hundreds of thousands or millions of Black women before, after, and during slavery. She was property, and had no rights. I recall having been warned by an expert in assisting Blacks to discover their family histories, that their White ancestors will crop up very frequently… in those instances where records were kept…especially from 1830 to 1860. One can only imagine the horrors of the countless rapes, possibly the gang rapes against the Black female that have not been recorded. Their souls cry out from the soil of the nation for justice, and may be forever in quest of that justice.

What passes as “race relations” today in Amerikkka is a series of well engineered artifices designed to keep white Amerikkka in its superior posture. The Rodney King mantra of “…can’t we all just get along?” has come about at a very stiff price, and lines have been drawn in the sand that either side crosses at its own peril. Michael Richards not only transgressed those lines far beyond the realm of the forgivable, but has turned the already retrograde mentality of the nation not just back to the 19th century, but perhaps to the 18th or 17th century. The gloves are off, the racial gauntlet has been thrown down in a manner that absolutely cannot be ignored. Those words spoken by Richards cannot be taken back. His apologies are dishonest…what was honest were the words that came forth from his mouth during his performance on November 17th, 2006.

This was not his first foray into uncharted or forbidden waters. He has also had tirades against Jews. Everyone thought he was a Jew, so that did not make the rounds of the networks as it should and could have. However, it now turns out that Richards is not a Jew, or so says Martin Lewis in his article in the Huffington Post, and echoed by a leading Jewish newspaper. The ramifications of those revelations can only mean that there is further trouble on the horizon for Richards. He is his own worst enemy, and has trashed his own career far better than anyone else ever could have.

His apology is not accepted. I have turned off a number of radio talk shows that I venture to listen to that are hosted by whites. As well meaning as they may be…they just don’t get it. The freedom and equality about which they speak are conditional things….contingent upon a bedrock and framework of white supine and Blacks on the bottom.

Richards did not just offend the members of the audience that night who heckled him. He offended every Black man and woman in this country. He is a psychotic loose cannon, and the Laugh Factory has banned him from the premises. I have gone to The Laugh Factory in times past, and the owner, Jamie Masada is a decent man, soft spoken, generous, and has a kind disposition. No question that he wanted the club he owns to be famous….NOT infamous. Any comedian will tell you that being heckled is part of the territory. As a comedian, you earn your stripes, and if heckling is more than you can stand, comedy is not your business. Get off the stage and go to work for the post office. This business about “snapping” because he was heckled is a lot of hooey, and this writer simply does not buy it.

What a ridiculous thing for Richards to do…to hire a white PR firm? To call on Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? These are high-profile Black figures, yes, and in the twilight of their careers. They could not call on one million Black people to come out and march. The only one who could has got an image problem with the rest of white Amerikkka. How is a PR firm going to reach Blacks in Amerikkka, a people they spend time avoiding, over-looking, and under-valuing? Not smart.

But then…what can you do after you’ve insulted over 15 million people, and then come back the next night as if nothing ever happened? Richards is not worried about public relations, except as it pertains to the bottom line dollars. He opened his mouth and did not consider the consequences of what he might say. That he felt no compunction to think about it is proof of that.

The apology of Michael Richards has about the same worth as the recent apology of Kevin Philips for his “Southern Strategy”, or the death bed apology (?) of Lee Atwater. The racism is not disavowed, and the damage has been done by full unabashed blast of the volley. He did not speak the mind of all whites, to be sure, but he spoke the minds of many enough.

Michael Richards, the psychiatrist’s couch and the strait-jacket are too good for you. I would remand you to TMZ and other sites on the web where your torrent of hatred has been archived, and I would sentence you, nay condemn you, to be forced to watch repeated reruns of your own words that night, in a constant, never ending loop, on a wide screen, at full volume.

One may wonder…”how would he keep his sanity?”

I would answer, “Did he really have any to begin with?”

Thomas M. Palmer, Jr ([email protected]) is a veteran jazz musician, a bassist, originally from Chicago, and now transplanted to Los Angeles. He is also a writer, currently working on children's books as well as screen plays and stage plays. He has been writing the feature, "Justice Journals", a series of essays on Blacks and Black Life in America and on the race issue since 2005, just before the tragedy of Katrina hit New Orleans.