Teju Cole on Blackface

Summary

---

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Teju Cole on Blackface

Date: February 18, 2019
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Teju Cole (novelist, essayist, photographer, Harvard professor)

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, David Remnick speaks with Teju Cole about the political and cultural meanings of blackface, prompted by the then-recent scandal involving Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s yearbook photos. Their conversation digs into the deeper roots of racism in America, how incidents like Northam’s function in the public eye, and the limitations of focusing on individual cases rather than structural issues. Cole draws on his experiences as a writer, critic, and student of photography, and reflects on his journey understanding U.S. racial dynamics as an immigrant.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Ralph Northam Blackface Scandal

• Initial Reactions & Media Frenzy
  • Cole expresses a lack of surprise over the Northam photo, emphasizing the routine nature of such incidents in American society.
  • Teju Cole: "The only strange thing about seeing this particular little thing explode was how unsurprising it was."
    [02:37]
• Uncertainty and Changing Stories
  • The facts of the case were unclear—was Northam actually in the photo? Still, Cole sees the focus on the individual as a distraction from systemic issues.
  • The public demands resignation, but Cole questions what meaningful change would actually result.

Systemic Racism vs. Individual Guilt

• Cole critiques the American impulse to isolate and punish individuals for racist acts without addressing longstanding systemic inequalities.
• Teju Cole: "If Northam resigns...it serves a kind of a valve function of which this country seems to frequently require an example."
  [04:53]
• Structural racism—such as wealth inequality and housing discrimination—remains mostly unaddressed.
• Teju Cole: "That is racism. And yet I don't suppose most white Americans wake up in the morning and feel personally responsible for that state of affairs."
  [04:20]

Blackface as Recurring Cultural Phenomenon

• Blackface, as an expression of racism, is “a sleeping virus” that never really left American popular culture.
• The recurrence of blackface on college campuses echoes major shifts in the country; similarly, Confederate monuments appeared after Reconstruction.
• Teju Cole: "Black people could always be insulted or could always be assumed not to be in the audience that the joke was for. Because after all, this is what it comes down to—a kind of, who are we addressing here?"
  [06:10]

Cole’s Personal Perspective as an Immigrant

• Cole shares his experience growing up in Nigeria and coming to the U.S. at 17: he initially had limited understanding of American racial dynamics.
• Exposure as a child to American films like “Blazing Saddles” through a “white filter” impacted his understanding.
• Teju Cole: "So being in the US...has been about learning how insidious racism in this country is."
  [08:00]

The Power and Limits of Photography

• As a historian and critic of photography, Cole reflects on the medium’s inability to capture the full story behind any image of racism.
• Teju Cole: “A photograph is made in 1/25th of a second...everything before that moment, everything after it, we really don't have. So if I do see somebody in a photo doing something that seems to be racist, my first assumption is that, well, there's a lot more where that came from.”
  [09:00]

Tipping Points, Reconciliation, and Progress

• Cole voices skepticism about the idea of a racial “tipping point” in America.
• Teju Cole: "I think I've learned that when it comes to race in America, there is no tipping point. I mean, it's no tipping point with cesspools. It's just going to be this very, very slow cleanup process."
  [10:13]
• On President Obama’s optimism about American progress, Cole counters that Obama’s personal story was not a “general truth,” pointing to backlash and the climate after Obama’s presidency.
• Teju Cole: “Maybe it's one step forward, two steps back. You know, the samba is also...”
  [11:17]

Hope and the Speed of Societal Change

• Despite his skepticism, Cole acknowledges that social change can happen unexpectedly fast, illustrated by rapid progress on LGBTQ rights.
• Teju Cole: “When societal change happens, it happens at such a velocity that it takes even the experts in that particular area by surprise. ...50, 60, 100 years of an overnight success.”
  [11:50]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Teju Cole: “The only thing that happened here is that he was caught.” [02:44]
• David Remnick: “It seems to me that, obviously, this is the symptom of a much deeper, more widespread disease.” [05:00]
• Teju Cole: “Black people could always be insulted or could always be assumed not to be in the audience that the joke was for.” [06:10]
• Teju Cole: “Being in the US has been about learning how insidious racism in this country is.” [08:00]
• Teju Cole: “I think President Obama mistook his remarkable personal story for a general truth. And it's just not one that really holds.” [10:52]
• Teju Cole: “Maybe it's one step forward, two steps back. The samba is also a complicated dance.” [11:17]
• Teju Cole: “When societal change happens, it happens at such a velocity that it takes even the experts ...by surprise.” [11:50]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:15] – Introduction to Teju Cole and the Northam blackface photo
• [02:37] – Why the incident was “unsurprising” to Cole
• [03:11] – Cole on the efficacy (or lack thereof) of resignation and public punishments
• [04:20] – Discussion on structural racism and collective responsibility
• [05:30] – Blackface’s reappearance and cultural persistence
• [06:44] – Cole’s immigrant perspective and first encounters with U.S. racial imagery
• [08:34] – Photography’s limitations in capturing racism
• [10:13] – Cole’s skepticism on racial “tipping points” in America
• [10:52] – Obama’s optimism and the reality of progress
• [11:50] – The unpredictable “velocity” of social change

---

Summary

This wide-ranging conversation uses the Northam scandal as a springboard to examine the enduring, often invisible mechanisms of American racism. Teju Cole challenges the focus on individual guilt, urges a systemic view, and provides a personal account of learning about the subtleties of racism as an immigrant. Although he expresses skepticism about rapid progress on race, Cole acknowledges the surprise and speed with which societal change can sometimes occur—leaving an uneasy but honest hope about the future.

Transcript

[Mint Mobile Advertiser]

As summer draws to a close and the kids go back to school, I know I'm going to want to keep in touch with my kids at a price I can afford. Back to school Shopping can be a hassle, but your phone plan shouldn't be. That's why I made the switch to Mint Mobile. For a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So while other parents are sweating overage charges, I have a little bit more room in my budget for cool back to school threads. Say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plan's jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages, Mint Mobile is here to rescue you. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Dish overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. This year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your three month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a [e-mail] New Yorker that's that's mintmobile.com New Yorker upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[David Remnick]

This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick. Teju Cole is a novelist and an essayist who writes widely about photography and many aspects of the culture we live in. He's the author of Blind Spot and many other books. Last week, Cole joined me to talk for reasons that are pretty obvious about the history and the meaning of blackface. Now, Teju, I've got to ask, what went through your mind when you first saw the photo that everybody's been talking about? The Governor of Virginia, either in blackface in a photograph of his medical school yearbook, or his admission that at one time he had dressed up in in blackface in the 80s, right?

[Teju Cole]

Well, I think like many of us, I received that information and a kind of a second or third hand. What I mean is that I was already seeing commentary about it before we even understand what the facts of the case are. In this case, the facts were not clear at all. And since Ralph Northam kept changing his story, it wasn't actually clear what kind of responsibility we were talking about here. Was he the one in the picture? It Wasn't clear at all. The only strange thing about seeing this particular little thing explode was how unsurprising it was.

[David Remnick]

What do you mean by that?

[Teju Cole]

What I mean is that a white man of a certain age in the US is found to have done something racist in their past. Well, yes, this is a racist country. And we seem to think that each time it happens, it's somebody who is a bit of ait's a unicorn. But what. The only thing that happened here is that he was caught.

[David Remnick]

Do you think he should resign?

[Teju Cole]

Sounds terrible to say so, but I actually don't care what he does one way or the other. What I'm interested in is what kind of conversation is possible out of an incident like this that is not the same old Groundhog Day. Because what I really see here is that it was bad to do what he did, and it was bad for his attorney general to also be in blackface. But how far does that badness go? The public reaction is interesting to me because we think these are bad actors and they should be punished for. For what they have done. We seem to have an automatic way of talking about that this person should resign. It's offensive and they're racist. We don't know if they've changed.

[David Remnick]

In other words, that it's isolated an individual.

[Teju Cole]

Well, what do you do about somebody who, let's say in the 1980s refused to rent to black people? What do you do about somebody who acted in such a way that they got black people fired or blocked their access to mortgages? How do we talk about the fact that right now in this country, wealth inequality between black people and white people is cavernous? It is immense. That is racism. And yet I don't suppose most white Americans wake up in the morning and feel personally responsible for that state of affairs. So if Northam resigns, on the one hand, it's the right thing to do. On the other hand, if he resigns, it serves a kind of a valve function of which this country seems to frequently require an example.

[David Remnick]

In other words, it takes the pressure off and we move on and fail to deal with the heart of things.

[Teju Cole]

It takes the pressure off.

[David Remnick]

It seems to me that this, isobviously, this is the symptom of a much deeper, more widespread disease. And it has been with us for hundreds of years in one form or another, with blackface. Just this one manifestation. Blackface seemed to recede from the culture during the civil rights movement and then during the rise of affirmative action. You started seeing it more and more on college campuses. Clearly as some kind of reaction, right?

[Teju Cole]

I mean, it's sort of how, you know, it was after Reconstruction that all these Civil War Confederate monuments went up, right? So there's this sort of like delay or there's this like a sleeping virus. But the thing with blackface is that it never really disappeared from popular culture, right? I mean, you know, the long list of people that we might otherwise admire who have, in one form or the other, done blackface's. Ted Danson, of course, Fred Astaire, there's Billy Crystal, you know, Shirley Temple, Frank Sinatra and so on. So I think what it shows is that black people could always be insulted or could always be assumed not to be in the audience that the joke was for. Because after all, this is what it comes down to a kind of, who are we addressing here? And if we say, well, what Ralph Northam did was problematic, what's problematic about it is not shoe polish on his face. It's that he somehow did not see his black neighbors as fully equal and he did not imagine a future in which he might have to deal with them as fully equal.

[David Remnick]

Teju, you were born in the United States in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but you didn't grow up here. You grew up in Nigeria and came here as a.

[Teju Cole]

Yes, I was 17 when I came.

[David Remnick]

To the US for university. Do you have memories of coming here as a teenager and encountering some of this racial imagery for the first time? What were your first memories of that?

[Teju Cole]

Well, I came to the U.S. and I came back to the U.S. as a college student in 1992. And I think at that time when I came here, I did not really understand American racial politics or America's racial history. And this is a peculiarity of the way that African American history has gone out into the diaspora. So much of it comes to us through a white filter. So, for example, this might sound very odd to you, but when I was growing up, one of my favorite movies was Blazing Saddles with its extremely foul language and very, very broad humor, very often at the expense of. Of black people or stereotypes about them. And it was Mel Brooks humor. It was gross out humor. Of course it would appeal to a 10 year old. So being in the US and I've been here for about 27 years almost now, has been about learning how insidious racism in this country is.

[David Remnick]

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this is because you're a deep student of photography. And this issue got raised yet again because it shows up in a photograph that's particularly Potent.

[Teju Cole]

That's right.

[David Remnick]

When you look at. As a critic of photography, as a historian of photography, how does that help you understand American racism, these countless images?

[Teju Cole]

Well, one of the things that I'm most convinced about when it comes to photography is actually a kind of definition in the negative, which is that it is an extremely limited art form. A photograph is made in 1 25th of a second, 1 60th of a second. You know, if it's a long exposure, maybe half a second or one second, everything before that moment, everything after it, we really don't have. And so if I do see somebody in a photo doing something that seems to be racist, my first assumption is that, well, there's a lot more where that came from, not only in that person's personal life and in their history, but. But in the society that created that.

[David Remnick]

You know, we use this phrase all the time, over and over again. But is Northam in any way a tipping point? Is there the possibility that this can be used beyond him, beyond his survival, non survival in his office, that it can be used in a useful way? He's talking about a reconciliation tour, for example. Forget his reconciliation tour. What should reconciliation look like?

[Teju Cole]

David? I think I've learned that when it comes to race in America, there is no tipping point. I mean, it' sit's no tipping point with cesspools. It's just gonna be this very, very slow cleanup process. But people have to be willing to do that. I don't see that willingness, really.

[David Remnick]

Do you think somebody like Barack Obama was overly optimistic? He would talk about, you know, he would employ the king phrase about the arc of justice and feeling always that it's two steps forward, one step back, but there is progress. You seem much darker in your view.

[Teju Cole]

Yeah. I think President Obama mistook his remarkable personal story for a general truth. And it's just not one that really holds. When we consider who succeeded him in the presidency, we already see that that was not the case. Now, it's also possible that there is a samba going on here. There's like two steps forward, one step back. It's possible, but I don't know, maybe it's one step forward, two steps back. You know, the samba is also.

[David Remnick]

That seems to be the recent samba.

[Teju Cole]

Right. The sambha is a complicated dance, and then there's all kinds of improvisation and the sideways moves. But I don't want to end on a negative note because, I mean, you are a keen observer of history, and so maybe you'll agree with me on this, is that when societal change happens. It happens at such a velocity that it takes even the experts in that particular area by surprise. If you consider the speed at which public acceptance for the rights of queer people has happened in this country, it does feel precipitous also. And yet that's like, you know, 50, 60, 100 years of an overnight success. Exactly.

[David Remnick]

Teju Cole, thank you so much. It's good to talk to you.

[Teju Cole]

Good to talk to you, David. Thank you.

[David Remnick]

Teju Cole contributes to the New Yorker and many other publications, and he teaches creative writing at Harvard University. The food's good.

[Katie Drummond]

What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

[Teju Cole]

I want a shark that.

[Katie Drummond]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Teju Cole]

From. Prx.