Affirmative Actions, Part 4

Post-Soul Nation: The Explosive, Contradictory, Triumphant, and Tragic 1980s as Experienced by African Americans (Previously Known as Blacks and Before That Negroes)
by Nelson George

(Page 4 of 4)

Despite having enjoyed some solo hits, Michael struggled through adolescence as he searched for a grown-up identity (both on vinyl and off). The trick that underlies Off the Wall is how deftly veteran producer Quincy Jones matures the singer without losing his youthful quality. The dance jams are brilliant disco ("Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Working Day and Night"); the mid-tempo tracks sexy ("Rock with You"); and the ballads ("She's Out of My Life," "I Can't Help It") heartfelt. Vocally, Off the Wall is a tour de force that brings Jackson back to fans who'd grown up with the Jackson 5 and wins him the allegiance of a new generation.

Jackson appears in promotional videos for two songs, "Don't Stop" and "Rock with You," that are typical of the time Michael singing and dancing alone before a cheesy blue-screened backdrop. The videos play on a few variety shows and fringe-time music programs, but basically they have no impact on record sales in the United States. They receive most of their play in the United Kingdom, where "promos," a.k.a. videos, had been commonplace since the '60s. As Michael goes back to work with his brothers on a Jackson 5 album, many wonder if Off the Wall will prove the peak of his solo career. After all, Jackson seems too old to play Peter Pan much longer.

The Feminist Press publishes I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive, edited by novelist Alice Walker, which brings obscure author-folklorist Zora Neale Hurston to national attention. Walker situates Hurston in the cosmology of black letters as the black female writer, the touchstone and artistic role model for all to follow. Hurston was a contemporary of and collaborator with Langston Hughes. Her work was regarded with disdain by the first black literary superstar, Richard Wright, and many of her books had been out of print for years. The attention given by Walker and other female writers to Hurston heralds a new prominence for black women writers and inspires many to use Hurston's work as an artistic template. Her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, would soon be reissued and enter the canon of great black (and feminist) (and American) novels.

Two of the most popular sitcoms of the '80s debut Benson, starring Robert Guillaume on ABC, and Different Strokes, with Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges on NBC.

Benson, which debuts on the thirteenth, is a semi-dignified throwback to the age of movies and early sitcoms that featured the wise black servant. This show claims to subvert that tired concept by making the servant a male butler who works for (and usually outwits) a sitting governor. Guillaume is a solid comic actor who does his best to bring some class to what, in lesser hands, would be an all-out coon show. As it is, Benson runs for nearly seven seasons. By the last season Benson has risen from butler to lieutenant governor, the result a symbolic olive branch held out by its producers to its many black critics that should have been snapped in two. To its apologists Benson is a positive look at black servitude, the same people who think Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind presents a positive view of black women.

Lacking the grace that Guillaume brought to Benson is the sad Different Strokes, the tale of a rich white widower and his two adopted black sons, which is first broadcast on September third. Todd Bridges plays a normal teenager, but the focus of the show is Gary Coleman, who many suspect is a midget but who is actually just a very irritating little boy. Coleman, with his toothy grin and "Lucy"-like antics, becomes a huge star during the show's eight-year run. He is the latest in a long line of caricatured black males who find success in American entertainment (Jimmie Walker's "J.J." on Good Times is his immediate predecessor).

The longevity of both Benson and Different Strokes (and the addition of Webster in 1983, another show about a black child being raised by white parents) speaks to Hollywood's comfort with stereotypes. Half the decade will be over before the black sitcom formulas that spawn these series are overhauled by a Philadelphia-born comedian who opens the '80s doing Jell-O commercials.

Dudley Moore stars in the midlife crisis comedy 10 that introduces the white world to cornrows. Bo Derek, a twenty-two-year-old blonde with a frankly bodacious body, runs in slow motion on a beach, undresses, and beds the nerdy protagonist. Posters of Derek in a swimsuit adorn barbershops and car repair shops worldwide.

For black people, the sight of this Caucasian in long cornrows with decorative shells at their tips is a shock. The cornrow, an American adaptation of an African style, was a hairstyle intended to flaunt black pride. White women everywhere (albeit briefly) go to hair salons to get that "Bo Derek look."

A black cultural phenomenon is adopted by a white sponsor and spreads across the country an old story in America. But in the '80s it all goes faster; there are more black faces in the mass media, and whites are freer to admit they like to borrow.

Marion Barry takes office as mayor of Washington, D.C. The fiery leader had been a civil rights organizer in the South during the '60s and then evolved into a radical, dashiki-wearing nationalist in the '70s. During both incarnations Barry showed a charismatic flair for speaking forcefully for blacks. This is a man who would not be grateful for federal government handouts or accommodating to white liberals (at least in public). Because D.C. is the nation's capital, much goes on in the District that the mayor has no control over. But in his campaign, Barry makes it clear that what he can control, he'll control with gusto.

Yvonne Scruggs, executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, would later tell Barry biographer Jonetta Rose Barras that views of the mayor and his team on power were very different from those of the first generation of black politicians elected in the '60s: "Nobody gave them [Barry and his people] anything. They started out clawing and scratching. The style they developed was more confrontational, less ameliorative, more driven by quid pro quo than compromise. People like Marion Barry understood that the only way they got power was being in your face and making it clear there would be consequences if you didn't help them."

Unlike the previous wave of black mayors, such as Cleveland's Carl Stokes or Newark's Ken Gibson, who sought to accommodate the city's eroding but moneyed base of white voters, Barry's assertive national rhetoric has more in common with another relatively new chocolate city mayor, the curmudgeonly Coleman Young of Detroit.

Tom Wolfe had popularized the phrase "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" to describe how black militants used threats of boycotts and rioting to appropriate power from white gatekeepers during the big-city turmoil of the late '60s. Barry had been the kind of loud, trash-talking advocate for the black agenda the journalist was referring to. Now, as mayor of D.C., Barry is the gatekeeper.

© 2005 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Nelson George is an award-winning author of both fiction and nonfiction. He has written for Playboy, Billboard, Esquire, the Village Voice, Essence, and many other national magazines, as well as writing and producing television programs and feature films.