If there’s one thing your coffee table needs this season, it’s a big book with the word “racism” on the cover.
Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism should fit the bill nicely. The book assembles a field of startlingly honest voices for a selection of lists and essays that seem to agree on at least one thing: Letting taste and political correctness reign in the discourse on race is pointless. Beyond that, they don’t seem to agree on much of anything, but that would be too much to ask of this topic. In agreement or not, they do say a lot of things that most people wouldn’t dare touch in print, giving a book that packages dozens and dozens of brief tidbits in a nicely-designed, easy-to-read magazine-type format. The content is totally scattershot, ranging from the innocuously hilarious to the curiously informative to the kind of stuff that will make a lot of readers do a double take.
The book was edited and partially written by five racially diverse guys who once worked at the groundbreaking Ego Trip magazine. After that publication folded in 1998, most of the staff moved on to other jobs, many of them at other rap magazines, and in 1999 those same five published Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists. The book was the kind of hilarious, honest and occasionally scathing work that only true fans of hip-hop could produce, and it continued the unique approach to journalism that had made the magazine so cool. The book blessed the reader with everything from individual rappers’ personal obsessions (e.g. D.M.C.’s all-NFL dream team) to the authors’ own senses of humor: What’s the number one reason hip-hop will never die? You can’t kill something that’s already dead. And around this frame, they packed enough fascinating info to bring out the rap junkie in anyone.
The Big Book of Racism takes the same tack, only it doesn’t work out as smoothly. Rap Lists presented an incomplete but cohesive account of rap music by some guys that obviously love the old school but still spend hours poring over new music. That was probably why they were friends in the first place, so making that book was pretty straightforward. But race in America is a different topic entirely?to begin, it’s much more complex. The result is a book that’s bigger, more unwieldy and much harder to digest. The content is all over the map. Much of this material is hilarious without really stepping on anyone’s toes?see the list of “white baseball players with ‘black’-ish names” (including Marcus Giles and Darren Holmes), but a lot of it is more risqu?, like the piece speculating on the ethnicity of various Muppets (“Muppets = mulattos + puppets”). And some pieces have an ambition all their own, useful or not. Know the phrase, “More chins than a Chinese phone book”? The authors researched the reality beneath it?Baton Rouge, La.: 1, New York City: 517. This is the dynamic of the whole book; the content is so fragmented that readers will be delighted by some parts, appalled at others and sometimes just unsure of whether or not what they’re reading has any value at all.
The best thing to do in the face of such content is to avoid arguments over where the “line” is, and instead just laugh. Or to be more precise, laugh, then feel bad about it. Maybe that’s just my reaction because I’m of the Caucasian persuasion, but I think most readers will have the same reaction to some degree.
For those of you not in the mood for the snorting-your-beer-up-your-nose laughter and subsequent self-reflection that this text can offer, it also contains a wealth of well-researched historical info on the intersection of race and pop culture. Lists of Spike Lee’s public race issue disputes, sportscasters’ worst on-air epithets and famous Mexican movie roles portrayed by Puerto Rican actors are all worth reading, and are sometimes downright sobering. Yet the vast majority of this book is intended as humor, which is probably the reason most people will buy it, if anyone does. From “Christina Aguilera vs. Carmen Diaz?Who is More Latin?” to “The Wacky World of Caucasian Recreation,” these guys have most of their fingers on the zeitgeist, and it’s hard not to be swept up in the rush.
But just who will be swept up? Who is the audience here? Dedicated Ego Trip fans? People who think race jokes are funny? People who don’t? The answer to this question makes for the book’s final punch line, which might be a jab at anyone who believes too strongly that reading a book makes a difference or might just be what the authors honestly expect: The final page says only, “That’s all, white folks.”
