SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2021
No Crazy Claim Left Behind: Jason Johnson is a "cable news" professor serving our own blue tribe.
He also has his own podcast at Slate. Yesterday, in a new edition, he spoke about the frequent casting of interracial couples in current TV ads.
Those TV ads are a somewhat surprising manifestation. We've never seen a discussion of the marketing strategy behind these ads.
That said, those ads are also a manifestation which lets kids with parents of different "races" see similar couples on TV. In theory, this could also be instructive for kids who aren't personally familiar with interracial couples. It could let those children begin to see that love and romance and even marriage can work this new, different way too.
At any rate, President Biden has frequently commented on these TV ads. Below, you see what Professor Johnson had to say about this offensive phenomenon.
Move to the 15-minute mark. He spoke with Khalil Muhammad:
PROFESSOR JOHNSON (9/17/21): Biden has said more than once, he's cited interracial couples in commercials as signs of progress on race. I’m going to tell you this, Khalil, because this is a key thing for me. Not only did I find that offensive. Not only did I write a piece about it in The Grio, but I have actually found the spate of interracial relationships in both commercials and television to actually be kind of an act of violence...
The professor has actually found those TV ads to be "kind of an act of violence." As he continued, he "explained" his peculiar remark:
PROFESSOR JOHNSON (continuing directly): And the reason why is because they are not reflective of actual demographic changes in this country. And second, the relationships still seem to be, they're sort of mock progress. You know, 86 percent of African-American men who are married in this country are married to black women; 92 percent of black women in this country who are married are married to black men. And yet, and I’ve done my own research on this, over 70 percent of interracial couples on television, it's always a white guy and a black woman.
Yes, that was the "explanation." Let's consider what the professor said.
(For an error-riddled Slate transcript, you can just click here.)
First, the professor said that these TV ads "are not reflective of actual demographic changes in this country." Presumably, he meant that, on a proportional basis, there are more interracial couples on TV than there are in the general population.
That may or may not be true; let's assume it is. Would that even begin to explain why those ads should be seen as "an act of violence?"
Tribal loyalty will instruct you to cast about for a way to say that it does. Simple rationality, however construed, will tell you that it doesn't.
The professor's explanation continued from there. He now seemed to say that the interracial relationships which exist in real life "still seem to be, they're sort of mock progress."
Or he might have meant that about the interracial relationships seen on TV. By the time he got through talking, it wasn't clear what he meant.
Whatever it was he actually meant, he turned to statistics to prove his point. Saying he'd done his own research, he ended with this mangled claim:
"Over 70 percent of interracial couples on television, it's always a white guy and a black woman."
Over 70 percent of the time, it's always a white guy and a white woman! Aside from the comical non sequitur involved in that statement, it's unclear how that statistic (if accurate) relates to his previous statistics (if accurate). And none of this begins to explain why those TV ads can be seen as "an act of violence," the statement we rode in on.
Here in Our Town, it's easy to see the craziness which is being widely displayed by quite a few of The Others. But our own blue towns increasingly run on a sad rule of thumb, especially when our cable professors start talking.
Increasingly, our blue towns run on this sad rocket fuel:
No Absurd Statement Left Behind!
Increasingly, this is the way we live Over Here, within our blue tribe, especially when we talk about matters of gender and race. Disconsolate anthropologists insist that our human brains are wired to produce such tribalized claims and have been all along.
We humans are the tribal animal! That's what the experts all say.
On Fox, they play the tape of our cable professors and tell The Others how crazy We are. When they make such moves on Fox, it's hard to say that they're totally wrong.
Tsk. So, liberals are dumber than a box of rocks, dear Bob?
ReplyDeleteBut that's common knowledge, dear Bob. The sky is blue, the liberals are dumber than a box of rocks. Tell us something new, dear.
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Delete"Those TV ads are a somewhat surprising manifestation. We've never seen a discussion of the marketing strategy behind these ads."
ReplyDeleteAs if Somerby reads the advertising trade papers!
It is a matter of cost. With an inter-racial couple you can make one ad and reach two demographic groups. Before public opinion supported inter-racial marriage (94% now support it), an ad agency would have to make one ad for a white market and another for a black market. Those costs are now cut in half by making an ad featuring an inter-racial couple.
You are also seeing more biracial people in ads, where you cannot readily identify whether someone is well-tanned but white, some ethnicity, Hispanic, or light-skinned black. That strikes me as a good thing. That gives the ad broader appeal.
Once advertising recognizes cultural realities about diversity, the white supremacists and separatists have lost the war.
Somerby, living in Baltimore, perhaps doesn't understand that this is what California looks like -- Los Angeles is the most diverse city in the country. It is also where a lot of ads get made (second to New York).
Minorities have objected to roles being cast by race. Insisting that both people in a couple shown in an ad be the same race is discriminatory. The acting role should go to whoever is best qualified.
DeleteHere are some stats on black intermarriage:
ReplyDelete"Perhaps more striking – the share of blacks in the marriage market has remained more or less constant (15% in 1980, 16% in 2015), yet their intermarriage rate has more than tripled."
Black men are twice as likely as black women to intermarry. Asian and Hispanic people are the most likely to intermarry with a different race/ethnicity. Intermarriage is more common with more education.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/
These stats do not support the professor's claim that black intermarriage rates have not changed. They do support his claim that black men tend to marry someone of a different race more often then black women (the opposite of what he claims to see on TV).
Here are some stats on black intermarriage:
"Perhaps more striking – the share of blacks in the marriage market has remained more or less constant (15% in 1980, 16% in 2015), yet their intermarriage rate has more than tripled."
Black men are twice as likely as black women to intermarry. Asian and Hispanic people are the most likely to intermarry with a different race/ethnicity. Intermarriage is more common with more education.
"Over 70 percent of the time, it's always a white guy and a white woman!"
ReplyDeleteObviously, Somerby means black woman. But he seems to have formed this new habit of repeating something said in a quote, perhaps for emphasis. Not only is it unnecessary to do that, but it is annoying, wastes everyone's time, and provides the opportunity for this kind of copying error.
I apparently missed the meeting where Professor Johnson (has he no first name?) was elected as a representative of Blue Town. I didn't vote for him and I don't know anyone else who did.
ReplyDeleteHow can someone who is a member of a minority group, holding what seems to be a minority opinion even for his demographic about racial intermarriage, be representative of blue opinion? Why is he not speaing only for himself on this topic?
How does Somerby even know who he speaks for? Obviously he is making things up in order to make the left appear intolerant or even ridiculous. Johnson has strong feelings, but at this point, no one on the left is advocating mandatory intermarriage for anybody. People are marrying who they want. Acceptance that people should be free to love who they will seems like a non-controversial belief held on the both right and left, judging by that 94% acceptance rate found by Pew researchers.
“The ways we reason in our own blue towns!”
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what to think of Johnson’s use of the term “violence.” He says later in the podcast “we can’t use our relationship as evidence that racism is no longer a problem”, so I would assume that these interracial TV ads strike him as manufactured, a mostly false picture that is used (by Biden, for example, he says) to claim that racism is no longer a problem. (I will point out that Biden said the ads represent “progress”, not that racism isn’t a problem.)
I do know that Somerby uses the conservative tactic of claiming that one (presumably liberal) man’s opinion is representative of “blue” reasoning. That is what’s called a logical fallacy, and it is what Fox News does every single day.
Say that you disagree with Johnson. Say you think he’s an idiot, and is talking stupidly. But don’t say he represents some consensus liberal view. Pretty clearly he doesn’t, since he is harshly critical of the country’s top Democrat.
Johnson is a frequent guest on MSNBC, which gives him a certain level of prominence, I suppose. However, a Slate podcast is hardly a really prominent platform. It isn’t clear why Johnson should refrain from expressing his views there at least, without being defined as the voice of all liberals and used as fodder for Fox News’ daily hatefest where the goal is to show that all liberals are evil.
ReplyDeleteI wish we could get to the point where a person can express an opinion, even if provocative, without the false reasoning “He is a liberal, therefore all liberals think just like him.” It is the kind of reasoning that Somerby specifically condemns when he thinks liberals do the same thing with conservatives.
I am willing to listen to Johnson because he has a perspective on America and race relations that is interesting and challenging, and correct in some ways, whether or not I agree with everything he says.
I actually agree with Biden that interracial couples on TV are a sign of progress. And, IMO they also encourage more progress.
ReplyDeleteJohnson tends to run off at the mouth in a jerky fashion. Even MSNBC busted him once. I was disappointed when they brought him back.
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ReplyDelete