A native informant is someone from a particular race or place who is seen as an expert on it simply by virtue of belonging to it. Rented Negroes are native informants. So are the black people who appear in sentences like “I have a black friend who says…”
Examples:
- You: if you are a white person’s only black friend then most likely you are seen as a native informant. Tell-tale signs: they ask you serious questions mainly about “black” issues, like about affirmative action but not about health care reform. Or they say things like, “I know this black guy at work and he does not agree with what you say.”
- Roger Ebert’s wife: when Ebert said he knew more about black women’s hair than Chris Rock because he was married to a black woman.
- Rap videos or BET: when people watch them thinking that is how black people are. But this is even worse because most of what is on television could not have got there without white approval at different levels – producers, advertisers, company heads, etc.
Seeing someone as a native informant is racist because it assumes that all people of a particular race are alike, that talking to one is as good as talking to another. It is on the same level as saying “All black people look alike” or “All Asians look alike”.
The danger of using native informants is that of the single story: no single person, no matter how broad his experience or how insightful his observations or how long or beautiful his words can possibly sum up the full range of experience of his race or place. Or, in fact, even of his own life.
If you want to know what New York is like, for example, there are over 8 million people you could ask. But each one would give you a different answer, some of them wildly different. Donald Trump’s New York is not Sonia Sotomayor’s New York or Spike Lee’s New York or even Lou Reed’s New York. Spike Lee’s New York is not James Baldwin’s New York. And so on. And even if you went there yourself to live for 20 years, that would itself just be one answer.
Black America has about 40 million people. So asking a black person about black people is just as bad – well, in fact, about five times worse than the New York example.
Native informants cut out that huge range of experience.
But it gets worse: in practice they wind up supporting narrow stereotypes and white opinion. Because native informants who say what white people want to hear have their opinions repeated or put on television. “See, a black person said it!” They give the white lens a false sense of perfect vision.
A good example are the Rented Negroes you see on American cable news: nearly all of them have middle-of-the-road or right-wing opinions despite the fact that most blacks – and even most news reporters themselves – are well to the left according to opinion polls.
See also:
- Rent-a-Negro – plays this idea for laughs
- the single story
- the white lens
- The whiteness of Roger Ebert
- gangsta rap
- house Negro
- How to argue like a white racist
The “native informant” thing happens when you’re ignorant of (or at least relatively inexperienced with) another group of people.
Years ago when I lived in England, people would ask me about America as if I was the spokesperson for the whole country. I was asked, “Is it true that you all carry guns?” and “Why do you like Ronald Reagan?” in spite of the fact that neither of those things was true of me.
So when a white person asks a black person to explain some aspect of “blackness,” the subtext is that they’re fairly clueless. If they weren’t, it would never occur to them to treat you as a spokesperson.
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I agree with your entire post except for:
“Roger Ebert’s wife: when Ebert said he knew more about black women’s hair than Chris Rock because he was married to a black woman. “
*headdesk* Roger Ebert never said that. I don’t know why it’s being perpetuated that he did.
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@Elsariel: because people read between the lines and saw that he basically *was* saying that in so many words?
@abagond: so…a token? what about don lemon and tj holmes? i think they do a pretty good job of representing without falling too in line with what only white ppl want to hear.
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Thank you.
whatever token white washed person you were hanging out with does not reflect the opinions of every single black person especially not ME so dead that
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@Yolanda – people are assuming he said that because his wife is black. He didn’t actually say that.
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Ebert said:
“The movie has a good feeling, but why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock does? Smile.”
The only way that makes sense to me is that he means that his wife is black.
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I can see where you and others are coming from, abagond, I just want to make the distiction that it wasn’t something that he actually said, it’s something that is assumed. We don’t actually know what he meant by that unless we ask him.
I certainly don’t want to derail this post on this one subject, though.
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Ok but then I have a question about what you call “rented Negroes”. Although I haven’t read your definition of one, I assume it is a pejorative term for a Black person who is paid to publicly espouse White views.
Doesn’t the use of this term imply that Blacks all think the same except when paid not to?
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More mental gymnastics :s
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Native informants cut out that huge range of experience.
But it gets worse: in practice they wind up supporting narrow stereotypes and white opinion. Because native informants who say what white people want to hear have their opinions repeated or put on television. “See, a black person said it!” They give the white lens a false sense of perfect vision.
Yes. Whatever the native informants say helps “validate” what they’ve (white people) been saying all along.
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Some Rented Negroes seem to be sell-outs (like Amy Holmes), but most seem to truly believe what they say (like Clarence Thomas – no white person could make that stuff up). It is not so much the Rented Negroes who are being dishonest as the whites who employ them to give a black face to the opinions they want to push.
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“it assumes that all people of a particular race are alike”
Yet we assume that all white people are racist?
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My mother belonged to the Kumbaya School of Anti-Racist Child Rearing. So I was brought up to be colour-blind. I ASSUMED that whites were NOT racist. I kept believing that even in the teeth of whites calling me racist names, which looking back is utterly nuts. So I wound up learning about white racism the hard way. It is not a piece of intellectual laziness or hypocrisy on my part.
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@ Elsariel..
You might not want to derail the topic but you are, and it is in such an insulting manner it is surreal. You are playing around the edges and making excuses for something which is plain as day.
If there is any other way to read what dude said… then state it.
What’s with the double speak. He is not a hairdresser, he did not grow up fooling around with black womens hair. What else is his frame of reference or was it his extensive use of wikipedia as source material (imagine that a respected critic to boot!)
you are doing what many white people do without even realising it and being arrogant as well as ignorant about it to boot.
But please…. explain that statement he made about why he knows more about black women’s hair than chris rock (don’t forget the *smile* at the end.. you know the inside joke he is sharing with erm…who is it.. white people or black women?)
Go ahead… i think many black people who post to this board would really like to hear you try…
Instead of coming here with attitude, telling us we are ‘assuming’ stuff why don;t you let go of that superiority complex and stop trying to manipulate the issue or tell us what we should be hearing when someone is blatantly acting like he knows us more than we know ourselves.
Ohhh I forget..
you are white. We black folk can’t possibly be intelligent enough to interpret what the dude is saying.. we are just making a big deal out of it, you know cos…
what he really meant was……. ________ please fill in the blanks’
thank you.
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Damn Soul! LOL
But yeah I hear that a lot “My friend (insert name here) said it and he is (insert race here)”.
I made a comment on the white people are individuals post about if a Black person who is a public persona mentions something then it MUST be true and I can’t possibly have a different experience or whatever.
“But Oprah said…” oh please
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Clear said:
On a side note, I’ve found that when the topic of American Indians comes up in a conversation, 95% of the time white people will say something along the lines of “Yeah, my grandfather/grandmother/etc. was/is a Cherokee”. Sometimes you just have to laugh.
You know what? Some of them would go silent if you ask them if they have any African ancestry lol
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I think the whole “rented negroes” or “rented POC” terms are people who espouse the white supremacy logic on television to support the White people’s views and to try to trump the arguments poc make in regarding race relations in this country.
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Doesn’t the use of this term [“rented Negroes”] imply that Blacks all think the same except when paid not to?
No, it implies the very thing that was explicit in the context: that there are Black people/POC who are willing, for whatever reason, to say things that feed into the pre-conceived stereotypes society/Whites have about Blacks/POC. The “rented Negroes” are apart of and exposed to the same society and stereotypes, after all.
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To Dani’s point, the history of Whites employing — both literally via payroll and figuratively — one Black person/group to denigrate/denounce another Black person/group is so long, so obviously apparent and widespread across the African-American experience that it’s hard to fathom that such “Negroes” don’t already know that they are “rented” even when they “actually believe” what they say. Obviously some of said “Negroes” do it as a way to attack other Black persons/groups they feel they are in competition with, politically or otherwise, and/or to advance their position, personal or ideological, at the expense of another Black person/group.
But that’s not even the point here as I see it. Abagond’s focus was on the EMPLOYER as opposed to the EMPLOYEE. And, if Rycher’s inquiry was a genuine and/or thoughtful one, s/he would have answered the question by reading the very context of Abagond’s passing reference to said “Rented Negroes” and abandoned the foolishness before s/he typed it:
“A good example are the Rented Negroes you see on American cable news: nearly all of them have middle-of-the-road or right-wing opinions despite the fact that most blacks – and even most news reporters themselves – are well to the left according to opinion polls.”
Simply put, Abagond clearly indicated not only that all Blacks don’t think alike but clearly reasoned that the “Rented Negroes” are genuinely “middle-of-the-road or right-wing” in their opinions with or without the pay-benefits. Which reminds me of this old FAIR article:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1488
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Rycher feigned curiosity, what he really wanted to say is in the last two lines of his post. Just another derailing troll.
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@ Rycher:
Nquest understood the post. I agree with what he said.
@ Nquest:
Thank you for the link. I have not read through the FAIR article yet but it seems to support what I was saying – only it has the numbers to back it up. It is dated – from the early 1990s – but it does not seem things have changed much since.
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LOL this picture made me laugh for some reason. Juan Williams is a piece of work isnt he?
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[…] Here is, for reference, a definition of the “native informant”: A native informant is someone from a particular race or place who is seen as an expert on it simply by virtue of belonging to it. (Abagond) […]
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abagond said:
“My mother belonged to the Kumbaya School of Anti-Racist Child Rearing. So I was brought up to be colour-blind. I ASSUMED that whites were NOT racist. I kept believing that even in the teeth of whites calling me racist names, which looking back is utterly nuts. So I wound up learning about white racism the hard way.”
Co-sign to infinity…and beyond! I’m glad I stopped being ANYONE’S ‘token associate’; it took a fairly ugly incident to get me to see the light. It was like the ‘real me’ threw a bucket of ice-water on the ‘fake me’ and screamed “WAKE THE F&@k UP ALREADY!!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?!?”
I had to learn some hard lessons, but it was well worth it!
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[…] Here is, for reference, a definition of the “native informant”: A native informant is someone from a particular race or place who is seen as an expert on it simply by virtue of belonging to it. (Abagond) […]
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[…] Here is, for reference, a definition of the “native informant”: A native informant is someone from a particular race or place who is seen as an expert on it simply by virtue of belonging to it. (Abagond) […]
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[…] responsibility of the native informant will land right on your shoulders. My advice: let that “responsibility” slide right off of […]
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@ 5 Things To Expect If You Are The Only Black …
I’d bet you get some folks (like me) to leave a comment or two if everyone didn’t have to LOG IN via the limited methods.. Anywho, good post! Made me LOL 2 or 3 times, not just because your points were funny, but because they were FUNNY and TRUE.
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[…] Anglo-Saxons ont un joli nom pour désigner ces personnages, « native informant » (informateur indigène), quelqu’un qui simplement parce qu’il est noir ou musulman est […]
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[…] Here is, for reference, a definition of the “native informant”: A native informant is someone from a particular race or place who is seen as an expert on it simply by virtue of belonging to it. (Abagond) […]
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[…] nativo informante | Abagond […]
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[…] anyone who invokes ‘Native Informant’ status, for another or themselves (there’s a good definition of ‘Native Informant’ at Abagond’s blog). I’ve often rolled my eyes at ‘ironic’ academic attempts […]
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Here, there is a good example of “rented negro” from Belgium : http://bougnoulosophe.blogspot.be/2010/03/fatoumata-sidibe-tirailleuse.html
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[…] know the 'correct view'. And call them what you will, they might also be called 'native informants', becase after all, it was privileged/entitled white male land/slave/houseowners built this country […]
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