Bill Maher has earned his time in the corner.
And make no mistake, this will be a relatively short stay in the corner, as the fires around his use of the term “house nigger”, on-air, will eventually die down and out.
I took a look at the episode expecting a slightly grander moment and observed two things that led me to discontinue watching anything Maher related some time back.
The first of these being the ease with which he slid the term into the conversation. There was no build up, no transition, and no discomfited pause in his process. This suggests repetition in exercise. It suggests to me that Maher has been, not surprisingly, using this, and likely other terms to accompany it, in any of the spaces he commands safety in. For Maher, this has been all spaces.
Maher used a space of minutes to leverage Black death, claiming that those lives matter to him, and simply evaporated the space to move on to his greater point.
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There was not the coltish hesitation of approaching a topic considered taboo. There was no sheepish averting of the eyes to suggest he realized that he had crossed some social line. No. Maher, in this matter, behaved most Maher. He exercised his considered Liberal White Male privilege, assumed his Socratic place in any conversation, and so clearly felt not only entitled, but justified in making use of any term he saw fit in this conversation.
It is this that raised the second obvious point for me, that being the question of who has empowered Maher, and those of his tribe, to so freely misappropriate words and terms. Who walked him through security on the matter, and who co-signed?
For that, I look to his ready club of Black allies, and the support and encouragement of this kind of brash inappropriate display, that each has given him. I can’t see how that dynamic, his Black cohort at his side, hasn’t contributed largely to what we see of Maher and his every discussion around race matters.
You will recall some weeks back, Maher and one of his most trusted Black allies, Cornel West, sharing a heated exchange about Hillary Clinton and revisiting, again, why she was not elected and would have made a better President than our present vintage.
Lost in this, and to the dialogue about this spirited exchange, was that Maher had begun the conversation with his panel by leading in with issues of police brutality and the loss of Black life. He introduced the matter of Black people suffering trauma and death and used it to immediately transition into a discussion about HRC. West, with the stage and opportunity, allowed for this messy self-satisfied transition by Maher, without rebuke or challenge. He simply engaged.
Maher used a space of minutes to leverage Black death, claiming that those lives matter to him, and simply evaporated the space to move on to his greater point.
Maher literally used the loss of Black life in traumatic circumstances to offer a review of our present political climate. And was allowed to. With Cornel West to his immediate right. He met no challenge or redirection.
This is nothing new. Maher has for many years now been crossing those lines. You know which lines even if you can’t readily quantify their place.
He has made himself an arbiter of Blackness, claimed status as an individual with their finger on the pulse of the community, suggested a profound knowledge of what it means to “love Black people”, and generally offered himself as an informed, concerned citizen. Which fits the optics offered when next to him, congratulating him, engaging with him, is Cornel West.
There should be no surprise that Maher used the term. He has been building to it publicly, as I am certain that he has gone further over that line, and in shared spaces, away from the public eye. What has made him so bold to my eye is the fact that his Black allies have accompanied him. That they have supported him in this climb. Instead of publicly, and likely privately, correcting him, they have joined him in his pursuit.
He has become a kind of loud, obscene liberal monster, and has been fed energy by his Black allies. They are culpable here.
There is a means to promote culture sharing, in safe spaces, that does not lead to the brand of narcissism and appropriation that we have long seen brewing with Maher and those like him.
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Maher has tried to present himself as a kind of radical thinker, but he has surrounded himself with fewer radical forward thinkers than his profile would suggest. Considering his act and presentation, a radical would have already pulled his coattails, would have already corrected this with him, would have seized on the moment to suggest to him that “your privilege is showing, get that tucked in.”
It does not appear that he has these kinds of relationships. West and several others are his enablers. They feed this brand of narcissism present among White Liberals in our present spaces. Often smug, exhibitionist, and seeking the approval of a chosen few sacred Black people over engaging the real problem spaces in their community. He has spent too much time being who he is to be effective and thoughtful, so again, there is no surprise that he landed here.
Black men and women should be most cautious about branding those who suggest that they are informal allies, such as Maher who would likely suggest that he never said he was but enjoys the status, as dignitaries, free to appropriate words and ways at their leisure.
There is a means to promote culture sharing, in safe spaces, that does not lead to the brand of narcissism and appropriation that we have long seen brewing with Maher and those like him. He could have been preserved had he been reached sooner. Those with access were simply too ready to give him “cool edgy White guy” status, and to believe that he had finished his developmental courses and was prepared to operate independently.
They failed him, as much as overall Liberal America has failed him, and he has failed himself.
With those like Maher, there often appears to be a childlike desire to be risqué around matters of race. When they have access to Black persons in shared spaces, they want to know, first, when they have met acceptance, and what privileges are afforded those who have been welcomed.
Privileges. It always comes back to those, as our society is supremacist, floating in Whiteness as a mindset, and privileges are a hard currency.
What those like Maher, all self-identified allies should know, is that they don’t strengthen themselves or their position by being granted access to words and ways that Black people freely traffic in. That is a completely wrong focused headspace.
Their focus should be on maintaining an agenda and practices that support and further the well-being of the community that they supposedly ally with.
That is missing. And Maher has been tone deaf to that for some time. And his Black allies have partnered to keep him there, have made him ill, in this way.
I wonder if his allies are conceiving of his as a victim. I wonder if they consider the great harm a presence like his offers the public.
I truly wish that Maher would use this time to decide, actively to be a better version of himself, though I am not terribly invested in him personally. I would like to see Black doers and thinkers that have access to those like Maher, in those public spaces to take real stands, and offer real dialogue.
That is missing here.
What we had was soil made fertile for the kind of confident slur offered by Maher. West and others helped to till that soil. By laughing off bad behavior, failing to see the root of that behavior, and forgetting the importance of the space they occupy. They are off task, and have been, and should be replaced.
The psychologist in me understands where some of this comes from. For Black allies, often oddities and made to feel like Black unicorns, there is an anxiety around making White friends and allies comfortable. There is a focus on providing a bridge, and being the concierge to the Black experience. There is little consideration given to the ways in which our neighbors will handle that faux access. You land on moments like these.
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