LeVar Burton is auditioning next month to succeed Alex Trebek as host of Jeopardy. The Roots, Star Trek, and Reading Rainbow star will be the fourteenth of sixteen guests hosts vying to become the game show’s third host since its inception in 1964.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine‘s David Marchese about his latest career aim, Burton signals that Kristi Noem and her fellow apartheidist Thought Police will probably want to ban mention of the game show from our classrooms, since a big part of Burton’s aspiration to the answer-podium is his ongoing challenge of our nation’s oppression of Black Americans:
“Jeopardy!” is a cultural touchstone, and for a Black man to occupy that podium is significant….
…There are times when I experience my life as having been for a specific purpose. I look at Kunta. I look at Geordi. I’ve been able to express humanity as enslaved in the past and as free in the future and do it as a completely liberated Black man. It’s kind of mind-blowing.
…One could not achieve a status lower in society than to be born Black in America. That means everything is on the order of ascendancy. That is the raison d’être. It’s why we exist: to rise, to rise, to rise to the point where our humanity is recognized, to rise to our fullest level of potential in spite of the knee on our necks [LeVar Burton, interviewed by David Marchese, “LeVar Burton’s Quest to Succeed Alex Trebek,” New York Times Magazine, 2021.06.25].
South Dakota’s Lakota people might debate Burton’s characterization of his people’s rung on America’s social ladder as the lowest, but let’s not bog ourselves down in quantifying to the millipascal the pressure Noem and her fellow racists are placing on non-white America’s necks.
Burton will helm the quiz show July 26–30.
Related Rambling Reading: Burton also mentions the values he shares with another PBS children’s television icon, Fred Rogers:
Fred was a Presbyterian minister. I studied for the Catholic priesthood. He and I shared a value that our lives should be centered around service. He taught me that it wasn’t about me. It was about the audience’s experience. I was the conduit. I also think that Fred’s example is about being able to be OK with who we are wherever we find ourselves. It’s easy to forget how important that is: simply being fine with who we are at any given moment [Bruton, in Marchese, 2021.06.25].
Well, he could audition for Qback at Green Bay if he doesn’t get it.
Indians and Black people should have an income and lifestyle within the top 10 % of all Americans.
Of every dollar a billionaire accumulates, half is due to the sacrifices and hardships forced on these two groups.
Tax the wealthy triple what they now pay, with no loopholes, and dedicate that taxation to reparations.
“One could not achieve a status lower in society than to be born Black in America.”
Wow. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Burton and I would support his long-term success as a Jeopardy host if he is good at the gig, but I am going to have to disagree strongly with his opinion about status here. Eeesh.
Whose status as a group is worse, Ryan? Whose status subjects members to greater discrimination, violence, etc.? Women? Muslims? Atheists? Transgender golfers in South Dakota?
Cory – this is a tricky question, no doubt, but you even called into question the claim with your thoughts about the lakota people. I would submit that because the US is so large, there would be different answers in different regions. Probably in the south, muslims and black folks are viewed as lower status than native americans. Maybe in the midwest black folks are viewed as higher status than native americans and muslims. In a large portion of the country, the only categories that matter are “immigrant” or “not immigrant” and all “not immigrants” are viewed as higher status than immigrants, even if the “not immigrant” is black. This is why it’s not smart or helpful or accurate to compare millions of people to millions of other people thousands of miles away with entirely different lives, cultures, and social structures.
Well Ryan, you’d have to ask the black slaves who traveled with their Native American masters on the trail of tears who had higher status.
Ryan, do you feel another group has a lower status from birth or do you deny the premise that anyone has status different from whites in the US?
The book “CASTE” by Isabelle Wilkerson addresses Ryan’s false assertions and explores the Black experience very well.
One salient point she observes is that when Irish and Italians arrived in America they weren’t considered white, at which point both groups became outwardly racist against Blacks and Indians, in order to appease white males and move up the caste ladder.
O, I think status is probably more regional than national, and I don’t think being born black is the lowest achievable status. As I mentioned in my response to Cory, I would imagine in many rural places in the US, being a muslim is viewed as lower status than being black. I also assume in some midwest areas, being a native american is viewed as lower status than being black. Also, maybe I am just being too literal with Mr. Burton’s words, but he doesn’t even say that being born black is lower status than being born anything else. He said it’s the lowest status one can achieve. I would submit that child abusers, rapists, sex traffickers, spouse killers, pedophiles, and other scumbags are viewed widely as lower status than a person who just happens to be black.
I find Mr. Burton’s comments ugly for the same reason I disagree with some pillars of CRT – it doesn’t seem like a good idea to have authority figures or respectable public personalities running around telling little black kids that they were born victims and were born beneath other people. I can see that some people think this is helping to strengthen the youngsters, or helping educate them to the disgusting history of america, but I have two kids and like most kids they are very impressionable and it breaks my heart to know that some kids are interpreting this “help” as condemnation, shame, and a lifelong self-hatred. Kids don’t understand nuance and history and systemic issues. Their world is much smaller than ours, and everyone telling them they are perpetual victims who won’t succeed without grace from others is more dangerous than helpful in my opinion.
You’re messed up, Ryan. Your little white brain can justify systemic racism by inventing convenient excuses. It’s you who doesn’t understand and it’s because you’ve chosen the easy road.
The white supremacist road.
LWIY (last word is your’s)
IDITRI (I don’t intend to read it.)
porter, you and I both know you aren’t strong enough to walk away. you are a soft, weak excuse for a man. how did I justify systemic racism? you just say things to get attention with absolutely nothing to back it up. you are identical to noem and trump. you are part of the decline of american intelligence and the rise of tribalism.