Paula Deen and the US's 'subservience fantasy'

[bemildred]

So, how do you feel about servants? Do you want a few servants? Should they feel grateful to you? What if they don't?

The Food Network recently announced that it will not renew the contract of television personality and chef Paula Deen. This announcement followed exposure of deposition testimony in a discrimination lawsuit that she routinely used the "N-word." In addition, she also acknowledged that she was interested in planning a "really southern plantation" wedding for her brother by hiring an all-black staff that would "pretend to be slaves." She came up with this idea after attending an event where:

[t]he whole entire waiter staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie. I mean, it was really impressive. That restaurant represented a certain era in America…after the Civil War, during the Civil War, before the Civil War…it was not only black men, it was black women…I would say they were slaves.

Deen's comments are problematic for a number of reasons. But it would be a mistake to characterise her remarks as a single instance of racism by a misguided or misinformed individual. Rather, Deen's remarks are representative of a growing kind of "subservience fantasy" of whites who are witnessing significant changes in the demographic and political landscape in the United States.

This subservience fantasy corresponds with the increasing anxiety about the growing influence of non-white populations, ushered in by the election of Barak Obama and heightened by the political strength of Latino/as. This type of fantasy allows some whites to bask in the comfort of "the good ole days" when non-whites were invisible to their gaze, except to the extent that they were useful as exploitable and expendable labor.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/06/201363013043246952.html