Prompted
by what they saw on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars,"
viewers let loose salvos of racial slurs, stereotypes and insults
on the show's Internet message board. It was enough to startle
even people like me, who aren't easily offended by controversy.
What prompted
it was the awful performance of one of the program's star contestants,
Master P, an African-American who is a successful rapper and music
mogul. How to describe it? It was as if Jabba the Hutt of Star
Wars suddenly found himself entered in a track and field event.
P's partner stepped, twirled and bounded around him as if he were
stuck to the floor, not exactly what you'd expect to see in a
ballroom dance contest. When he moved, he was clumsy, slow and
out of step, thankfully destroying one persistent racial stereotype
about rhythm. By any measure, including the judge's scathingly
honest evaluation of his clogging, it was truly bad.
That brought
forth such viewer questions as: How did this guy get on the show?
And, why is he still there? He was still there, until he got bounced
a week ago, because the viewers could reverse the judges under
some screwball and secretive scoring system ginned up by the program.
And vote they did, booting more qualified couples off the show
before P was dispatched. Some viewers insisted that P got favorable
treatment because of his race. Both sides organized call-ins to
keep him dancing or to show him the door.
And the bile
flowed. References were made to your mama, the N word, honkies,
moron, redneck, trailer trash, white trash, black trash, idiot,
white bread ... I gathered that a moderator was supposed to clean
up the messages, but even racist jokes were posted. If there was
a monitor, I can't imagine what didn't get past him. One can legitimately
ask whether ABC irresponsibly let this racist anger well up for
a ratings boost, which the show got.
Those who
said P deserved to stay brushed aside his embarrassing performance.
P comes from the "hood" and says he wants to be a role
model so boys know that they don't have to succumb to the streets.
Others said the judges were mean to P, so the pro-P voters were
just getting even. Others suggested that P was getting all those
votes only to honk off "people like you." Said one:
"I just got 100 people who gonna go vote for P for no reason
at all. U white folks mad huh?" A few actually thought the
man was a good dancer. That the affable P showed more class than
his detractors. Or that white people who wanted to make black
people look bad made up those horrible messages. And that the
voting was rigged.
The other
side was up to the challenge, insisting that ABC put him on to
pander to a black audience, that he unjustly advanced to the next
level in the competition while two more talented couples got bounced,
that he could be a better role model if he would stop "humiliating
himself, dress the part, dump the `ghetto' speak and train hard."
Said others: He had an attitude problem, as if he didn't care
enough to even try or practice. He's disrespecting the art (sport?)
of ballroom dancing and therefore disrespecting real ballroom
dancers. And, the scoring system is rigged.
To some,
P was Exhibit A of the defects of affirmative action. Only race
could explain why this obviously incompetent contestant advanced
competitively. To which some P supporters asked how whites felt
for a change, watching someone unfairly getting ahead of them.
One side argued merit, the other side argued fairness. Mystifyingly,
both sides claimed that equality was on their side. Some pointed
out that Jerry Rice, the great National Football League wide receiver,
is a black contestant who lasted longer than P, so race doesn't
explain anything. One lonely post asked about another contestant:
"What the [expletive] is a George Hamilton?"
This is amusing
and sad. A hopeful sign was that many posts asked the name-callers
to knock it off and respect each other. Many others only talked
about the competition and the dancing.
And there
was this wisdom: "Ignore the trolls. If you don't feed them
they will go away."
