"You can take the boy out of The Badlands, but you can't take The Badlands out of the man."
I'm happy to welcome Academy Award winner Will Smith to my racist inner circle. Who knew Will Smith was racist? Certainly not me.
I was a fan of Smith back in his youth, when he was a rapper and television star. I am, however, no aficionado. Regarding his film career, I haven't been that thrilled. I've never read a Smith biography, and really, it's never been on my bucket list. People have told me that Smith was great in Ali, but I was a Muhammad Ali fan as a teen, and I'm hesitant to watch a film with an actor portraying him. Ali is the only athlete whose autograph I wanted. He did his banking in my little hometown, and we watched several of his training sessions about 15 miles down the road in Deer Lake. I have no compulsion to see Smith as Ali.
As I was saying, it's good to know that Will Smith is racist, just like me. I'll get to why in a minute. First, though, I want to mention that I knew nothing about what had occurred during the Oscar broadcast until I read a Stephen A. Smith tweet about the slap heard round the world. It's rare that I agree with the declarative hyperbole of Stephen A, but in this case, I think he pretty much nailed it. A black man can't do that shit to another black man live on national television.
Will Smith's actions reinforce almost every American black male stereotype. Oversensitivity to "your mama" words, lack of behavioral discipline, toxic masculine fixation on being "disrespected," whatever that is. You can take the Negro out of The Badlands, basically, but you can't pry The Badlands out of the Negro, even when he's getting the greatest honor of his life. It's the entire panoply of black man stereotypes on display. Every white dude watching the slap clips is thinking, "So this is how these black guys kill each other all the time. At least he didn't have a gun." Really, speaking for all of us racist white folks, I can tell you that's what went through all of our minds (I'm telepathic like that).
Mitigating Joke?
I'm neither here nor there on the alleged cruelty of Chris Rock's "GI Jane 2" joke. Rock preceded it by saying, "Jada, I love you." Really, I'm not weeping over the horrors of another human being losing their hair due to a medical condition. Hundreds of thousands of people go bald due to chemo. I'm bald. I don't weep over that, either. Kojak, Michael Jordan, Sinead O'Connor, and Jason Statham are all more or less bald. There are more important things to weep about.
Maybe it's a really sensitive subject in the Smith/Pinkett household. Point taken. I'll try to not spend much time, as Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, admiring the shape of their skulls.
Why is Will Smith Racist?
I think that he's racist (and welcome to my club) because his response was tailored to a black man saying something, rather than tailored to what was said. I'm concurring with Stephen A's initial tweet here.
If Ricky Gervais makes that joke, does Will Smith go on stage and slap him? It's possible, but I doubt it. If an older white Academy member is on stage and says the same thing, does Will Smith rush to the defense? I think not.
I believe that Smith behaved like a classic Badlands bully. Black on black lights the emotional fuse, and because it's black on black, Smith allowed himself to respond with violence. What was worse, he went with a very, if you'll pardon the word, Blackish response. He bitch slapped Chris Rock. Now I don't claim to speak for all white dudes with short fuses, but in general we don't utilize the bitch slap against other men. We put up our dukes. Man-to-man white guy bitch slapping, and correct me if I'm wrong, is very, very rare. Bitch slapping is something one does to women (that's why it's called bitch slapping), children, and the help.
My point here is that Will Smith's haughtiness played into this. He decided that Chris Rock was "the help."
Luke Cage
It just so happened, with Disney making Netflix Marvel shows available with Disney+, that I'm in the middle of watching Season One of Luke Cage. Luke Cage was one of Marvel's first black heroes, and the show deals with his adventures in Harlem. Luke Cage is actually my favorite of the Marvel Netflix series. Something occurred to me as I watched the slapping clip.
Will Smith has pretty much gone through life as the reality equivalent of Luke Cage. He's good-looking, a black man's hero, saying and doing the right things while staying authentic to his roots and without appearing overly spoiled, arrogant, or narcissistic. Will Smith, to take the Cage analogy further, has been bulletproof. That all changed last night.
The Cultural Argument
With Will Smith's son tweeting, "That's how we roll," I just shook my head at the juvenility of it all. The pushback against my head-shaking, I presume, will be that non-black folks have little to no right to judge the cultural mores of Badlands blacks thrust into a situation on an Academy Awards broadcast. It's an anthropological argument. Black males settle frictions in ways beyond the ken of alleged civilized white men, and they should be left alone to demonstrate their 2022 blackness.
Well, I get the argument, and I don't necessarily disagree. I'm neutral on cultural arguments like these. So if Chris Rock's philanthropist ex, Malaak, would have had an issue with the bitch slap and walks up to Will Smith's table and puts a shiv in his eye, I maintain my neutrality. The Academy show would have better ratings in perpetuity, and Smith could finally replace Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.
Will Smith Questions
Well, of course we have the question of what would have happened if a white actor had bitch slapped a black comedian. Standing ovation five minutes later? Uhhh, where can I get a bet down on that?
Now, as to the haughtiness of the act. Will Smith employed a bitch slap as it was a safe thing to do given Chris Rock's size and Will Smith's status. Picture, if you will, instead of Chris Rock delivering the GI Jane line, The Rock delivering it. Think Will Smith would have, in the heat of the moment, walked onto the stage and bitch slapped Dwayne Johnson?
Am I calling Will Smith a bully or a coward? No, not at all. I'm just suggesting that he employed selective bravery.
Conclusion
Will Smith bitch slapped a comedian, is announced as a winner, then tears up and blathers about God, love, and family. And gets a standing ovation for it. You gotta love America. Last night checked all the boxes.
Arrogance. Check. Unnecessary violence. Check. Appeals to God and family as reasons for the violence. Check. Standing ovation for the appeals to God and family regarding the violence. Check. Just another night of family entertainment.
Decadent spoiled behavior. Decadent spoiled responses to the spoiled behavior. And a display of racism from the most celebrated actor in the country.
Bob Dietz
March 28, 2022
