Revolution Televised.pdf

160 That Nigger’s Crazy
action, which in the end secured jobs for white women more than
any other minority.
The presence of reporters from black publications such as Jet
and Ebony at the news conference, with the president favoring
their questions, assures that the discussion stays on black issues.
The nomination of Huey P. Newton for the director of the FBI is an
acknowledgment of J. Edgar Hoover’s role in targeting the Black
Panther Party for extinction. The idea of having Newton in Hoover’s
position is particularly humorous for a black audience cognizant of
the FBI’s tactics to repress black political speech. Today’s continued
lack of black ownership and coaches in the National Football
League and the majority of other national sports is ironic in light of
the president’s promise to correct that situation. Pryor’s dismissal
of the reporter from Mississippi further emphasizes that, if there
were a liberal black president, the black community would have a
greater chance of getting its issues in front of the highest office in
the land. For a black viewing audience, this was a pleasant fantasy,
especially in light of the black community’s suffering under Richard
Nixon and Gerald Ford, whose presidencies immediately preceded
The Richard Pryor Show. Nixon was successful in his overt attempt
to reverse the progress made during the Civil Rights era. In his attempt
to clean up widespread “lawlessness” caused by the antiwar
and black power movements, Nixon, through the FBI, used repressive
tactics to squelch African American protest.
Finally the white female reporter’s question targets both the reality
of Pryor and the fears of a nation, exemplified in the D. W. Griffith
epic Birth of a Nation (1915). By having the black president, now in
the ultimate position of power, engage in interracial relationships,
the skit realizes the fears and expectations of Griffith and a segment
of the U.S. viewing audience: that given the opportunity, black men
will take advantage of the “virginal white woman.” 25 While Pryor’s
skit can be seen as perpetuating a myth of black rape and black
masculinity, he addresses the racism implicit in the idea through
the look of disgust on the reporter’s face. He flaunts his ability to
make his own sexual decisions. Pryor also winks at the issue to a
black audience. His personal life and his relationships with numerous
women, both white and black, were a long-standing topic of
discussion within black circles, driven by the idea that dating a
white woman was selling out the black community. Pryor converses