The Black List, Volume 2 (Not the Commie Kind!)
Anthropologist and Reason contributor Grant McCracken urges his audience to check out HBO's The Black List, Volume 2, which airs tonight. The show profiles prominent African Americans and how they conceive of identity in a post-racial world. Here's a snippet from McCracken talking about Volume 1:
In his segment on The Black List, Volume 1, Chris Rock gives us a glimpse of a variation on the theme. He notes that African Americans who took up positions previously forbidden them by racism were obliged to be larger than life, heroic, exemplary. This is a double standard too. An African American can't be merely as good as white player. He has to be much better. In the case of baseball, he can't be a 'pretty good utility infielder,' he has to be Jackie Robinson. As Rock puts it,
Baseball isn't equal till the 1970s, because that's when you start to see bad Black baseball players. The true equality is the equality to suck like the white man. That's Martin Luther's dream coming true. (2:50-3:14)