Is Avatar Racist?

Spoiler Alert -- Do not read if you haven't seen but plan to see Avatar.

I was directed by a tweet to an story in the Japan Times on line saying that a small but vocal minority of people believe that Avatar is racist. First, the phrase "small but vocal" wants to be looked at. What it may mean is that there are two or three people who are extremely talkative who believe this. This article begins

Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 2.75-meter-tall, long-tailed alien. "How does it feel to betray your own race?"

This is funny.  The avatar is no longer an avatar whose brain is being controlled by a white man lying in a device that facilitates this control, but is instead a Na’vi man if someone in a manufactured Na’vi body whose human brain has been transferred into this body can be said to be a Na’vi person. The insulter should have said, "How does it feel to betray your former race?"

One idiot promoting this thesis says

"The ethnic Na'vi," he writes, "need the White man to save them because, as a less developed race, they lack the intelligence and fortitude to overcome their adversaries by themselves."

This is so inaccurate I have to believe the author did not see the movie or is incapable of seeing what is in front of his face. The Na'vi defeated the white devils thanks to Jake's knowledge of the white devil's military hardware and tactics and the intelligence and fortitude of the Na'vi and the assistance of other inhabitants of Pandora. Far from lacking fortitude, the Na'vi threw themselves into battle without regard for their personal safety. Jake's growing understanding of the Pandoran ecosystem played a critical role as well in that he (quite literally) plugged into the ecosystem seeking it to intercede on behalf of the planet. Had he not become an authentic Na'vi in spirit, that intercession would not have worked.

James Cameron set himself up for this criticism by using a white actor to play Jake and a person of color to play the Na'vi princess he fell in love with. Had he simply used an African American or English speaking African our critics would be in a hell of a position. It would no longer be a white man saving the blue-colored people but a person of color saving a person of a different color, but it would still be a human rescuing the people of Avatar. So, at the worst, Cameron's mistake was he cast a White man in the role of Jake.  Casting a white man made economic sense, I suppose, but it isn't just white people who save others in movies.  Will Smith saved the planet in one movie and I understand that Denzel Washington saves the planet in a new movie I haven't yet seen.

I am so tired of people playing the "race card" I want to vomit all over this blog. I got into the civil rights movement back in 1960 when it was a serious business because African Americans were denied most basic human rights in the South, including Texas and Oklahoma, as well as other places. The change over these 50 years has been stunning. And guess what? A lot of white people worked alongside African Americans to make the civil rights revolution happen. The lesson from that time is that when there is injustice everyone is obligated to do his or her part. That is the lesson of Pandora. The three white people who controlled the Avatars as spies all "got religion" and did what they could to help the Na'vi defeat the occupying army.  It is a good thing when people of any color assist people of any color.  The Haitian relief effort is a prime case.  Is that relief effort racist because white people are helping persons of color?

This Issue of Code

After posting my last blog, I turned on MSNBC for a full day of politics and immediately saw in succession two Black men, one old and one young, claiming that some things the Clinton's have said are code -- that they have social meanings for Blacks that are negative in nature. I think that they are wrong and that what they are saying is as divisive as anything that the Clintons might have said. For something to be code, it has to be shared. It was not in this case.

First, we have to understand that all language has to be interpreted relative to the context in which it occurs. That is a given. Second, there are two types of code of interest here. One is code that is actually a cypher, as when one does some sort of letter substitution known to writer and reader or speaker and hearer that allows them to communicate without others who are not intended to receive the message understanding it. The codes of the military, CIA, etc. are examples of this.

There is another type of code in which people use language that on its face seems harmless but is understood as having some sort of negative meaning. The problem here is that like a military code it too is conventional in that there is a regular association of the negative meaning with the language used. Sports announcers often refer to certain receivers as "possession receivers." The great majority of these are White. In fact, I think that broadcasters automatically assume that if a receiver is White he is a possession speaker. In the 2006 football season, Ohio State had two great receivers, one Black and one Hispanic, the latter as White as any White man. The Hispanic one was constantly referred to as the "possession receiver" even though he was nearly as fast as the Black guy (who had near Olympic class speed), and regularly caught deep passes. Both were first round draft choices and both had successful first pro seasons.

Now there are things that Whites say that Blacks see as deliberately negative. Hillary said, "“Dr King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” This is factually true. It says nothing whatsoever negative about Dr. King or Blacks or anyone else. Clinton was trying to make the point that Presidential leadership is critical to obtaining changes in policy that people want. Activists inspire -- politicians achieve. This is a fact. This in no way denigrates Dr. King's contribution. Without his inspiration, the dream would have come but surely much later than it did. But without Johnson's driving force and political skills, which were enormous, it probably wouldn't have been realized in law as soon as it was. We had the conjunction in time of the right activist and the right politician, both wanting the same thing.

The reality is that Blacks in general are as racist as Whites are. The problem is that Whites in general have power and Blacks in general do not. So long as that is the case, Blacks will often have a legitimate reason to see some remark a White person makes as racist or racial (evokes race but not as a put down per se). That does not mean that speaker meant it that way. I do not think Hillary's remark was either racist or racial. Obama turned into a racial issue.

Now, had Hillary said, "Martin Luther King was very well-spoken man and he was a great Black leader, but President Johnson is the one responsible for getting legislation through Congress and signing it," then we would have a racist statement. She didn't come close to that.

Beating up on Hillary

It seems that Obama and Edwards paid dearly for their ganging up on Hillary in the New Hampshire debate, handing her a nice victory thanks to angering women. Male political talking heads, who also have been treating her in predictable sexist ways, may also have helped her out a bit. At the same time, the "First Black President" did not do her candidacy much good when he attacked Obama's proposals as being "fairy tales." The latter seems to have irked some, perhaps many African Americans.

Interestingly, Bill Clinton called Al Sharpton's radio show and, according to an article in The Trail, a section of the Washington Post devoted to the election campaign,

Sharpton began by asking Clinton about the criticism he's received, especially from Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking African American in Congress, who told the New York Times that "To call that dream a fairy tale, which Bill Clinton seemed to be doing, could very well be insulting to some of us."

If Rep Clyburn believes that Clinton's comments had a racial subtext, then he has a problem because the comment has no racial implications whatsoever, especially given Bill Clinton's record. Surely not all attacks on Clinton aren't sexist and not all attacks on Obama aren't racist but I suspect we will hear a lot of charges of sexism and racism as the election heats up. With any luck it will be over before too much damage is done.

The reaction by women and by Rep. Clyburn, who is not alone in his feelings, serves as an indication that from now until the end of the General Election women and African Americans will have their "feelings outsticking" as my father used to say of himself and others in circumstances in which people were being a bit too sensitive. There is no question that it would be best for the party if everyone behaved and stuck to the issues. However, there is a fundamental difference between Clinton and Obama. Clinton has been a great deal more forthcoming about what she would do as President. Indeed, yesterday Bloomberg.com reported that Hillary has proposed a $70 billion dollar program to deal with the predicted impending recession. This caught Obama and Edwards with no plan at all.

The problem that Obama and Edwards face is that they can't use the phrase "tax and spend Democrat" to poke a stick at her on this issue since that would make them sound like Republicans. We should understand that Bill Clinton meant to be communicating only that there has so far been no real substance to Obama's campaign. He is against the war in Iraq but has no specific program for dealing with terrorists and the nations that in one way or another support them. Like Obama, I was against going into Iraq, but like Obama, who was in the Illinois legislature at the time, and unlike Clinton, who was in the US Senate, I did not have to vote on the issue of giving Dubya the powers he thought sufficient to invade. It is easy for him to say that he didn't support the war.

From now until the end of the Democratic Convention, I would like to see Hillary and Barak tone down their rhetoric and run on the issues with personal attacks being forbidden. This will be very difficult since women and African Americans do seem to have their feelings outsticking. I plan to focus my blog between now and then on this question, not because I care a whit about political correctness issues per se but because I want the Democrats to beat the living hell out of the Republicans in the General Election and my ideal ticket includes both of them.