The Forever Culture Wars

0:02As America entered the 20th century, Jim Crow laws took cold across the South. They mandated segregated schools, segregated workplaces, restaurants, and hotels. Voting and holding public office became difficult, if not impossible, for Black citizens in many Southern states. We heard in the previous chapter how historians during this era cast the accomplishments of Reconstruction as a big mistake. They argued that Black people were not, and had not, been able to handle the responsibility of holding public office or building new schools. But historians weren't the only ones making this argument in the early 1900s.

0:44New forms of media also denigrated the accomplishments of Reconstruction, especially a film called The Birth of a Nation, based on the novel The Klansman. At a time when most films were only a few minutes long, The Birth of a Nation clocked in at more than three hours. It was a blockbuster. In March 1915, President Woodrow Wilson assembled family and friends in the East Wing of the White House to watch The Birth of a Nation. The title placards assured viewers that they would be seeing quote, historical facsimiles. Most of the Black characters in The Birth of a Nation were performed by white people in blackface makeup and wigs, and they acted outrageously.

1:30One of the movie's most notorious scenes claimed to show what Reconstruction did to the South Carolina legislature in 1871. Picture a statehouse filled with Black lawmakers acting like buffoons. They put their bare feet on desks, wave around turkey drumsticks, and make eyes at white women in the galleries. The whole scene, much like the rest of the movie, somehow manages to be ridiculous, historically inaccurate, and very effective. Effective because President Wilson, a Democrat from Virginia, and also the former governor of New Jersey, loved The Birth of a Nation. He described it as writing history with lightning.

2:14and called it terribly true. Members of the NAACP picketed the film, at one point drawing a rally of thousands in Boston, but to little avail. The film became a de facto recruitment tool for a newly revived Ku Klux Klan. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Reconstruction, the unfinished promise.

2:54The fact is, for a long time, every new medium in American popular culture got a boost from Confederate nostalgia channeled as blackface. In the early 1930s, Amos and Andy became radio's most popular show, with two white men playing black characters. And then there was Gone with the Wind, the early technicolor film drenched with nostalgic depictions of the antebellum South. So television, movies, and other forms of entertainment have been used to promote blackface. But entertainers can also respond in kind, like the comedian Wyatt Cenac. So this is going to be like a late-night television show for your ears.

3:35You remember television? It was like a giant iPhone that respected your privacy. A while back, he took to a stage in Brooklyn for a live taping of a show he's been developing. It's called Everything is Racist with Wyatt Sinek. D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation is a movie that most film scholars and critics agree is horribly racist. If you've never seen it, good for you. It's over three hours long. It's kind of like a Marvel movie of racism. The world is under attack. but instead of aliens, it's black men who attempt to conquer the state of South Carolina and it's white women. Like the Avengers movies, it's going to take a bunch of white guys and one lady forming a team to save the day.

4:23They even give their squad of white supremacist superheroes a name, the Ku Klux Klan. It is a terrible movie. They blew most of the special effects budget on blackface. And the big battle scene at the end is just the KKK intimidating black people not to vote. It's as if Thanos used that glove of his and just snapped it for voter suppression. The film, it actually led to a revival of the KKK, because just like a comic book movie, afterwards people want to cosplay. Like a lot of good performers, Wyatt does his research. and one of the people he talked with was the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and critic Salamisha Tillett.

5:07The conversation was so fascinating and funny and informative, I wanted you to hear it as well. When we think about pop culture as a concept, it's often regarded in an unserious way. And I'm curious, in your work, how much does the popular culture of a particular time overlap with how we see politics and history? I definitely think the period after Reconstruction is the period in which you see a real clamping down on not just the political and legal gains that come about at the end of the Civil War, but you see it's a real cultural battlefield. And I think for the South, you know, that expression that the North won the war, but the South won the peace.

5:55What that means is like clearly with the rise of Jim Crow, that is a kind of legal way in which the South wins the peace, right? But then you have all these other ways in which this idea of Southern rule, Southern reign, almost a Southern victory emerges in the wake of law. So through monuments, through minstrelsy, and then the emergence of movies. There's so many problems with Birth of a Nation, but it's a film that, like, traffics in multiple stereotypes. So one, you know, the myth of, like, the black male rapist and that character Gus, who, like, is chasing this white woman, and she literally just jumps over the cliff.

6:33And then the Klan. I mean, the Klan's, like, the savior in the films. Yeah, so I saw it in college. Okay, I saw it in high school. Oh, wow, okay. No. All right. Wow, all right, you win then. All right, well, yep. Well, how did you see it in college? So I took film studies classes in college. That makes sense. And then, yeah, it was shown as this is an amazing movie. Yeah, I'm curious. You saw it in high school. Yeah. So we had this like every week or maybe, let me say once a month, they would show like classic films and we'd be in the big auditorium. So we saw like, I guess not the full length version of Birth of a Nation, but we saw a portion of it.

7:14and it was horrifying because like these things were not given context none of them were given context or like big debriefings and i'm also one of four black kids in my class so it was just so traumatizing to watch birth of a nation in 1992 the year that you know lapd officers are found out guilty in um for beating rodney king so it's a it's a really hot hot year yeah well and this came out in 1915 and i'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what the reception was like at the time yeah i mean it's it's a film that's based on thomas dixon's the klansman i mean it was a hit there was no other way of describing it this is where like the idea of pop culture being important is because something can be so seductive as a kind of sensory aesthetic experience, then what's put into that is important.

8:15And so in this case, you have this like provocative thing that emerges, American film, and it's also on the backs of Black people. Well, and it still gets celebrated to this day. You know, I mean, it's this idea, this is, it's a peculiarly American thing that slavery and democracy are simultaneously twin to each other in our founding of a country. And so it doesn't mean that we can't have technological innovation and also be racist it's not like they're two independent things and so i think that's why you know someone's like birth of nation's a great film oh yeah and it happened to be racist versus like birth of the nation is a great film and part of its greatness was it's like white supremacist like logic you know what i mean like you could say that yeah you know and like and that's terrible but also you can also understand that it did do important work cinematically, but that Black people being subjugated was part of that cinematic evolution.

9:15So I always think it's important to understand that even as popular as these representations are, that as artists and as creatives, that people are always trying to come up with counter-narratives and tell different stories of Black life, even if the repression feels as strong as it does with the popularity of something like Birth of a Nation. I guess we think of him as the big grandfather of African-American film, Oscar Mee Show. Sure. He has Within Our Gates his first kind of big film in 1920, and he's responding to Birth of a Nation. And the way he responds is showing how violent the Klan and how violent white supremacy is and how white Northerners should actually be open to Black people being equals to them.

10:02and the South is the aberration as opposed to Black citizenship being the aberration. So there's all this like battle going on and an agency that Black people are showing despite the fact these myths and stereotypes are so powerful and potent.

10:33One thing I've been very fortunate to do in my life is travel. Political events, music festivals, and of course, big sporting events. It really never gets less exciting. Kelly and I love going to live concerts, but the hardest part is always finding a place that actually feels like home in the middle of all that energy. And that's why listing your space on Airbnb makes so much sense, especially when something big is happening in your area. You've got people coming in who don't just want a place to crash. They want to feel like they're a part of the neighborhood, even if it's just for a few days.

11:12If you've got an extra room or even your whole place available while you're away, it can really be an easy way to earn some extra income. And Airbnb gives you tools to make it simple to list your space. I always think about it like this. When I travel, the places I remember most are the ones that felt personal. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Summer's my favorite. Everything just feels a little more relaxed. The days, the pace, the way people carry themselves. And I take the same approach to how I dress. I'm reaching for pieces that feel easy, look good, and don't require a whole decision.

11:58That's why I keep going back to Quince. They focus on well-made essentials, breathable linen, soft organic cotton, the good stuff that just become the pieces you reach for all season. Their tees are beyond soft. The lightweight cotton sweaters are perfect when the sun goes down. and their breathable European linen pants and shirts started just$34. I picked up a 100 % organic cotton mesh stitch sweater polo in beige, and it's basically become my uniform. Goes with everything. Feels like a T-shirt, but actually looks like I put in some effort. Everything at Quince is priced 50 % to 80 % less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen.

12:47You're paying for quality, not the brand markup. And it's not just the clothes. Quince has you covered for home, travel, everyday stuff too. It's become one of those go-to spots I just trust. Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com slash reconstruction for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash reconstruction for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince dot com slash reconstruction. We are in uncharted territory. Staff writer Evan Osnos on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I think all of us right now are trying to make sense of an avalanche of news every day.

13:37And there aren't very many places where you can go and understand how something looks in the grand scope of history and context. That's what I come to The New Yorker for. I'm David Remnick, and each week my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. And I hope you'll join us for The New Yorker Radio Hour.

14:01While Oscar Michaud may have used his films of the 20s to respond to Birth of a Nation, this disagreement continues on movie screens. Every generation, Hollywood seems to accidentally on purpose make a film that wonders aloud if ending slavery was a big mistake. Take Disney's Song of the South. For those who've never seen it, the movie's from 1946. It's set during Reconstruction and is basically about a white boy who gets a babysitter named Uncle Remus. Why, you said there was a tale about Burr Rabbit not coming back to his briar patch. Oh, bless my soul, child. I sure did. And if I don't tell you about it, you're going to pestle me until I does.

14:48now to be clear uncle remus is a former slave and uh in the movie this is how he remembers that time it was a long time ago and in them days everything was mighty satisfaction the critter they was closer to the folks and the folks they was closer to the critter And if you'll excuse me for saying so, it was better all right. Yes, sir, honey? The folks, they was closer to the critters. Which, closer to the critters, technically during slavery, he would have been two-fifths critter and three-fifths folks. But not really the point. Not surprisingly, that movie is not on Disney+. For all the shame that exists today, though That movie won Disney an Oscar For Best Original Song with Zippity-Doo-Dah James Baskett, he actually got an honorary Oscar For playing Uncle Remus He was the first black man to win an Oscar And I will say, watching the movie today It's hard not to see Uncle Remus As a guy with severe PTSD

16:16Whenever he's reminded of the horrors of slavery, he just disassociates into a magical animated world with cartoon bluebirds.

16:30Sorry for South is such a, for lack of a better word, a hit for a very long period of time. And it does show this sense of not just nostalgia, but very naturalistic. Like you have like the birds coming. And so that, so Black people are like innately tied to land, to nature, to the plantation. and that what's being passed on over generations and over time is this myth that Black people don't want legal rights. They don't want to be treated equally, that they want to have this kind of paternalistic relationship with white people and they want to be back in slavery. Right, yeah. Through a kid's kind of story.

17:12Yeah. So that's the danger of the Song of the South. It's also like, you know, if we think about, again, the South winning the peace through monuments, minstrelsy, and through movies, you know, blackface minstrelsy in the mid-19th century with white actors corking their faces and playing blackface, that was one version of showing how black people were inferior and making fun of the way that they speak. And so then when you get to Song of the South, what Uncle Remus is in many ways is it's not minstrelsy proper, right? They aren't painting their faces, but the way in which the richness and the versatility of Black Southern speech is still being made fun of, right, is another form of minstrelsy, or maybe the afterlife of minstrelsy in American film.

18:00And so it's, you know, all these ways in which the film could be both valorized, like Academy Award winning, but also so dangerous in how we're understanding the South, Black people's lives in the South, Black people's freedom in the present. While Disney has worked very hard to keep people from seeing the movie. It hasn't stopped them from trying to have their racist cake and profit off it, too. Zippity-doo-dah has long been a staple in ads for Disneyland and in shows. Here's a remix that the company actually produced.

18:38Don't nod your head to it. Got a nice beat. It doesn't. And it's also weird to think that the song is sampling a recently freed slave and he's probably still not getting paid the disney ride splash mountain opened in 1989 and it was inspired by the movie song of the south and it removed or reshaped most of the references to slavery like there was no animatronic uncle remus thank goodness but the characters of brer rabbit and brer fox and brer bear were there and those characters were derived from African folklore that enslaved people used to communicate with one another. But when you see them in an amusement park, they become cartoon characters to be monetized and exploited.

19:27In 2020, Disney finally decided they'd shut down Splash Mountain the ride, but they didn't demolish it. It's been rebranded as Tiana's Bayou Adventure. Yeah, yeah, that is, yeah. The ride is essentially the same, but because there are no mountains in New Orleans they had to get creative in trying to make the structure of the mountain fit the story of the princess and the frog and so like you all have been in New Orleans it's a flat city so they turned Splash Mountain into a salt dome yeah because you know when you think of New Orleans you think of the salt domes I will say there is a strange symbolism that a ride whose origins were rooted in a movie romantically fantasizing about the days of slavery and white supremacy now must be reimagined by the first black Disney princess.

20:21Like, Tiana couldn't have gotten something new. She just had to sage the shit out of that place and hope for the best, like so many black people in this fixer-upper of a country.

20:42I'm curious why it feels so hard to let these things go or even just to properly reckon with them. Yeah. Well, I think we're in a moment in which that idea that it makes people feel bad about themselves. I mean, it's like a weird thing because it's we're like in a moment where like feeling bad about yourself or feeling bad about American history is on scale. Right. Like, it's like, I want to get rid of the word slavery, or I want to get rid of these images of an African-American man who's whipped because I don't want to feel bad that this thing happened in the past. Because if this thing happened in the past, then what does it mean about my privilege in the present?

21:27And while that's a question that gets wrestled with in the present, it's also one that others have wrestled with before. In the attempt to protect our comfort, history gets packaged and repackaged in ways that can make the racist imagery even more pronounced. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time watching cartoons like Tom and Jerry, which, like Song of the South, debuted in the 1940s. Tom the house cat and Jerry the mouse were the main characters. But every now and again, they'd be joined by a woman whose presence felt problematic to me, even as a kid. All you saw were her slippered feet and occasionally her hands, but you heard her voice.

22:09Let's see. What's going on in here? Why, you overstuffed pigamese hound, you. She eventually became known as Mammy Two-Shoes because she sounded like a mammy, and all you saw were her two shoes. Mammy Two-Shoes was voiced by Lillian Randolph, an actor who's best known for playing a housekeeper named Annie in the holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life. Here she is in 1976 discussing Tom and Jerry with Chuck Shaden on a Chicago radio show. You know Tom and Jerry? Yes. That's my voice. That was you. Your legs made the... My legs and big feet. Oh, listen, the funniest thing. I saw that cartoon in Japan.

22:56You did?

23:00And it wasn't just Japan. The character was also redubbed in the U.S. in the 1960s when the cartoons began making their way to television. Because I guess some people thought, hey, that might be offensive. So they not only redubbed the character. In some instances, they reanimated the character entirely. And then in the 90s, she became black again. but they hired the comedian Thea Vidal to redub her voice to make her sound less offensive. My goodness, what's going on in here? Why, you over-stuck Pekingese dog, you? She's not Mammy Two-Shoes anymore. She's Miss Two-Shoes. Before, you assumed she was the housekeeper for a white family.

23:44Now she's a single lady in a Tyler Perry film who just got home from the law firm and was looking forward to a nice glass of Pinot while she catches up on Love Island.

23:58I have memories of seeing and hearing the multiple versions of Mammy Two-Shoes on my television. It was always a little jarring because I was never sure which version of the character I might get. It felt like content being quickly and sloppily repackaged, rather than some way to address why the animators at the time thought it was amusing to depict a domestic worker as a mammy. Was it because that's how they truly saw domestic workers? in a moment when many of those Black women were taking to picket lines to fight for fair wages? The 40s is such a really important political moment because it's the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.

24:37Yeah. So that's why these images are, like, so strange because even as they're popular, they're, like, retrograde at the same time. You know what I mean? Like, they're holding on to something that no longer exists, But the images are necessary to prevent the cultural and political gains that people are demanding for at that time. Right. Thinking about Disney and sort of their connection to all this, obviously they made Song of the South and then at some point realized oops and hid it in their vaults. Yeah. But it very much kept making money because of things like the Splash Mountain ride and the song Zippity-Doo-Dah.

25:19And it allows people to create new memories and false narratives around the ride and the song without actually engaging in the origins of it. Yeah, they're building on a kind of archive or history of previous popularity. And they're just kind of, you know, what do we call it today? It's like the IP is so strong. Sure, yes. The IP is so strong for those minstrel folktales. I mean, the IP of slavery is so strong in this country that we keep finding new ways to reboot it. Yeah. But then I guess I want to talk about the absence of Reconstruction in cultural narratives. That has probably done to our imagination.

26:05Reconstruction wasn't a failure. It was more radical than the birth of the United States. And so we can think about it as something that was unfully realized, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't a glorious moment of American history. And it becomes easy to miss seeing what could have been when it's obscured by the imagery of folks like Mammy Two-Shoes, Uncle Remus, and a bunch of white dudes in grease paint storming the Capitol. I'm thinking particularly like when Ta-Nehisi Coates' collection of essays We Were Eight Years in Power came out. Do you remember that? Yeah. I immediately thought he was referring to the Obama years.

26:45But in fact, he was referencing or quoting Black elected officials at the end of Reconstruction. And so even in that moment in which I'm thinking we're bemoaning the end of a particular era, it just shows how little or how few references we have in our everyday vernacular about Reconstruction. Because of the way in which these minstrel shows or these movies take up so much oxygen, so much air, we lose this really beautiful and potentially compelling moment of equality in this country. And if you can't remember something, how do you imagine it? How do you make it even better? What Wyatt Sinek spoke of on stage ending conversation with Selamisha Tillett very much calls to mind what Jelani Cobb talked about in our previous chapter, that history is argument without end.

27:44The birth of a nation still has legions of fans and the arguments about it will probably keep going long after you and I are gone.