Text
of article:
Hon, Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner?
Satirical rent-a-negro.com:
Performance Art With a Jolt
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
The e-mail and Weblog buzz are conflicted. The subject is race,
so people are torn. They forward the link, to rent-a-negro.com,
without quite knowing what they think of the site. Is it a joke?
Why is this funny?
"I don't know if it's genius or heinous," says Vincent
Thomas, 24, a project coordinator for American Forest and Paper
Association here.
The site offers "the chance to promote your connection with
a creative, articulate, friendly, attractive and pleasing African
American person," available, for rent, to add flavor to your
function.
"Where do you find the people to diversify your life?"
the site asks. "What if you don't know any black people?
You want to appear up-to-date, but just don't have the human resources."
Thomas thought it was a joke, "but I kept on going through
the site and saw it was a real live thing. Even right now I'm
still trying to gather my thoughts and come forth with an official
stance." Because he has been in those situations, he says.
He's been at functions with folks who look to him "for comic
relief or to add some type of personality." And maybe black
folks should stop giving it away for free.
When a reporter finally tells him the Web site is a satirical
piece of performance art by damali ayo, 31, a Portland, Ore.-based
artist and personal growth consultant, he is relieved -- but,
of course, still conflicted.
Ayo says she got the idea for the piece after years of being in
all-white settings, fielding questions from people wanting to
touch her hair, and playing the role of cultural ambassador.
"I feel like people are saying, 'You need to serve my ignorance
by teaching me,' " she explained in a telephone interview.
"I've said to certain people, 'I don't feel like talking
about that now,' but there is really an urgency and an insistence.
It's an urgency and an insistence with which we speak to servants
or people who are working for us."
She adds: "I understand the white environment because I was
forced to learn it. White people are not forced in any capacity
to learn about other cultures. I'm not mad about it, but I would
like more equity."
Since rent-a-negro went online late last month, ayo -- who eschews
capitalization in both her and the site's names -- says she has
been e-mailed hundreds of rental applications, from both whites
and blacks. Some play along with the satire. "Some people
will say, 'I need a Negro to come talk to me and teach me to sing
like Aretha Franklin,' " ayo says. But some are obscene or
angry; "They say I'm a disgrace to my race or they can't
believe a black person would actually be selling themselves and
I'm re-invoking slavery," ayo says. About a third are clueless
and actually looking to rent her services for a golf outing, a
graduation party, a corporate lawyer function. She hasn't answered
those yet; she's thinking about turning those requests into the
second part of her performance piece.
She is reluctant to divulge more information about her "clients"
because the site promises confidentiality. "After a long
time of working with white people," she says, "I understand
they need to feel so safe just to learn something. My whole life
I've had to learn about white culture and I've been markedly unsafe
while I'm doing that."
Much of ayo's art focuses on issues of gender and race, and is
on view in Portland's Mark Woolley Gallery. She won't say much
about her background other than that she grew up in Washington
and attended Sidwell Friends School and Brown University in Providence,
R.I. She says she legally dropped her last name, and doesn't want
to say what it was. "I would prefer to concentrate on my
life as an artist," she says.
She will say that in a former incarnation she was a "diversity
facilitator" who taught workshops on subjects like communicating
with respect.
She still does a few. "I'll pick out a white woman with blond
hair and say, 'You look like Lisa Kudrow and Madonna' and three
other white women who don't look anything like each other, or
her."
She says she's trying to draw attention to the ways people of
color are treated differently, but not everybody likes her art.
Invitations to lynching parties have come from both blacks and
whites angry about the site. "People are very literal,"
she says. "I understand that."
In Internet chatter about the piece, reaction has been mixed.
"I think it's a fabulous plan," Michelle Jones posted
last week on the Weblog Uppity-Negro.com. "You could probably
even jack up prices a little bit because you could provide the
option of 'the angry black man.' "
On Groovy-Mommy.com, "ebony" said: "When I clicked
on the link, I wanted to be amused. Please let this be a MadTV
going to the extreme but still make you giggle stuff. I really,
really, really wanted to laugh. I didn't."
Richard Zmijewski, 26, of Erie, Pa., thinks the site is a hoot
and posted a link to it on his Weblog. Zmijewski says the piece
holds a mirror up to all the pretentiousness in race relations.
He understands that people are worried about being politically
correct about race but should instead "just say yes, I'm
ignorant because I didn't grow up with black people around. I
have these questions and I don't know how to ask them."
That discomfort with the issue of race, the fear of being wrong,
the hesitation to engage, is exactly what ayo says she's trying
to satirize. For people who don't know what to think about "rent-a-negro,"
she hopes their reactions offer points to be explored.
It's a discomfort she struggles with as well. "I have a hard
time saying the name of the site some days," she says. "But
that means it's exactly where I should be working as an artist."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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