Media Diet: Ishmael Reed

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What current trends in the media trouble you?
I'm trying to write about this in my novel about the Simpson case. I've studied the media for about 10 years, and I've come to the conclusion that the representation of African Americans and Hispanics is no different from the representation of minorities in Nazi Germany. In Der Angriff, Goebbels' first newspaper, images of the sexual variety played very well to the countryside. In that case it was Jewish men who were a threat to Aryan women; now it's black men. Today the whites are shown as idealistic, thrifty, and virtuous, and African Americans are shown as the dregs. I don't know what to expect when I pick up the newspaper in the morning. I always think: What have we done now?

Are there any media trends that hearten you?
The Internet. A guy named John Hoberman wrote a book called Darwin's Athletes, and he quoted me unfairly. I tried to respond in the Nation, and they rejected the article. I was finally able to get my response on the Internet, and Hoberman had to reply because the site, Black World Today, reaches 70 countries. The African American view, especially the male point of view, is so often marginalized that we can't answer critics. Pete Hamill wrote this piece in Esquire that scolded blacks and blamed them for every possible thing, including alcoholism. I tried to answer the guy, and of course Esquire didn't print it. It's very difficult for African Americans to reply to Henry Louis Gates Jr. because he's become what a friend calls "the postcolonial voice of the establishment." But with the Internet you can get your point of view out with the world as your audience. It's the most important tool to come along in my lifetime.

What do you watch on television?
Boxing and CNN.

Where do you get your inspiration?
Sometimes I'll write a poem about my neighbors. At other times I'll write something very abstract. I used to write about things in the past and mix them up with the present. Recently I've been writing more about contemporary events—the crackhead epidemic in Oakland, the entrapment of Marion Barry.

What do you want to learn next?
I'm studying jazz piano. I want to know what [New York Times critic] Michiko Kakutani means when she congratulates all these people for being jazz writers. People tend to dismiss jazz as something you can do off the top of your head, but it's very complex. Look at a Thelonious Monk score. I was able to play a little before, but I didn't know what I was doing. Now I know what I'm doing a little bit better.

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