Critical Noir

Washington PostNewsweek Interactive recently launched the interactive site The Root. Ostensibly a partnership with Henry Louis "Skip" Gates to promote the latest incarnation of his black "celebrity DNA" project, the site features a virtual cavalcade (literally) of smart Negroes. We can thank our man Barack for this.

With the Illinois Senator confounding pundit expectations about the legitimacy of his candidacy and the perceived capacity for non-blacks to support his campaign, there's suddenly a need for highly articulate Negroes, who are actually armed with some quantitative and qualitative data. So unlike the Don Imus, Michael Richards or even the Jena 6 controversies--where the clear desire seemed to be to create spectacles around racist transgressions and Negroes who love to agitate--the Barack moment actually demands some sophisticated political analysis (read: Civil Rights Leaders need not apply). For example, in recent weeks political scientists such as Melissa Harris Lacewell and Paula McClain have weighed in thoughtfully on the issues of race, gender and white supremacy with regards to the barbed exchanges between the Clinton and Obama camps, in venues as diverse as Democracy Now! and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. Such opportunities did not consistently exist prior to the Barack moment.

The Root offers Gates the opportunity to trade on his true gatekeeper status, by delivering smart Negroes to mainstream corporate news platforms. This is not a new hustle for Gates. A decade ago, Gates was the intellectual and marketing force behind Africana.com, an on-line journal that provided a regular and critical forum for thinkers such as Amy Alexander, William Jelani Cobb, Lester Spence, Jimi Izrael, and Bethany Allen. At the time the site was essentially an on-line vehicle to promote Gates's Encarta Africana. Africana.com soon became part of a necessary intervention into public discourse during the early years of the Bush II presidency, when smart Negroes--excepting Secretaries Powell and Rice--were no longer in vogue and ThugNiggas (50 Cent, Allen Iverson, etc.) were concretized in the popular imagination. Africana.com was shut down in 2004, after it was purchased a few years earlier by Time Warner (AOL)--and the latter came to the realization, that "critical interventions" scare off advertisers and upscale chat rooms don't.

As such one has to wonder if the shelf life of The Root will outlive Gates' current vanity project, the whims of corporate media entities and the general skittishness of too many smart Negroes strolling the promenade with well-packaged critical analyses in hand. In any regard there is competition in the way; According to sources "Cathy Hughes and Radio One are about to initiate an online venture."

Tags: Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Root