The Barbershop Conversation Myth

Functioning as an open forum, the barbershop represents a place where people can talk about anything, especially the issues that affect communities locally, nationally, and internationally. For every ethnicity,  racial group, community, or avenue that has a community-based barbershop there, that location is probably a place where free speech thrives. The barbershop can be a place of refuge, as well as a place where people can have group-specific conversations, without fear of backlash. The most potent  conversations are uncut and honest, without much input from outsiders. The more homogeneous the environment is, the more unfiltered the conversations can be. The ‘barbershop as a sanctuary’ ideal  destroys the myth that says a TV show, movie, or recorded discussion can replicate what happens in a traditional barbershop setting.  The barbershop is a de facto, town hall-like meeting place, where people just happen to get haircuts and shaves. 

Since the inception of the  original thirteen colonies, the U.S. has been an adverse environment for “American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS).  With that being said, anyone affected must continue to move forward, as an answer to the way racism continues inventing covert methods of oppression. Institutional racism and White Supremacy are deeply etched into the framework of the modern world, and saying it might not seem significant. Institutional White Supremacy and systematic racism in the U.S. remain real. Without that continued level of White Supremacy, the USA would not exist as we know it.  This is one example of an authentic, uncut barbershop conversation.

In a press release from Time Warner, Inc. dated July 26th, 2018 titled, “HBO Sports and UNINTERRUPTED Present The Shop, Unscripted Series, debuting August 28, 2018. It goes on to state how the show is, “…Offering Unfiltered Conversation And Debate With Some Of The Biggest Names In Sports And Entertainment.”   Practical wisdom knew from the beginning that The Shop was going to be a watered-down facsimile, made  for mainstream audiences. Paul Rivera is credited as being the co-creator of The Shop.  Nothing groundbreaking could be expected, because modern entertainers are only allowed to entertain.

Right away, we must consider the limits of The Shop.  In our politically correct climate, there is no way that HBO will allow inner-city  conversations to take place on their channel. The problem is that we have a lot of people who came from the inner-city, look like they live in the inner-city, but have changed. That is not a bad thing, but stop acting like someone can go back and forth equally. The HBO press release further states that, “The Shop is executive produced by LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Peter Nelson and Rick Bernstein; supervising producer, Bentley Weiner.” With Nelson, Bernstein, and Weiner on board, a dilemma exists. The culture of ADOS is always meshed with other non-ADOS groups that don’t directly connect to the original construction of the United States.  Mainstream forums are always watered-down with immigrants, recent immigrants, or outright Caucasians, yet those “others” have their own agendas that do not include anyone else. Everyone feasts on the US  and what was built by the institution of Slavery through ADOS.

Who owns HBO, and who makes the executive decisions there? Enough said. Caucasians have little to do with what is said at local barbershops in inner-city communities, so why would Caucasians be executive producing The Shop, and if so, how much impact do those corporate entities have? 

Consider the June 1, 2017, Jonathan Eig piece in The Undefeated magazine titled, The Cleveland Summit and Muhammad Ali: The true story (Historic meeting organized by Jim Brown had an economic incentive), which dissects that June 4, 1967 meeting in Cleveland, Ohio.  We’re not saying The Shop has to also be a militant meeting place, and definitely not a “black-activist,” sellout, paycheck pickup center. Our point is that today’s ADOS athlete is relatively safe and  sanitized. Therefore,  The Shop is not an accurate depiction of the barbershops that some of us know. For the record, Muhammad Ali took his case to the ‘Supreme Court’ and won.

Secondly, even if HBO’s executives had nothing to do with producing The Shop, there are still certain subjects that could never be talked about with complete honesty.   For example, so-called ADOS, “Black American” life has gotten to a place where the N-word is freely used in mainstream media, yet no athlete or entertainer has corporate partners that will allow them to use derogatory words about homosexuality. Neither can they discuss institutional racism, White Supremacy, or any subject that is a  completely about inner-city life.  

As reported by Newsweek on November 29th, 2018, an article titled,  Who is Marc Lamont Hill? CNN Commentator Defends Comments on Palestine After United Nations Speech, by Donica Phifer, stated that, “CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill made comments some have deemed anti-Semitic following a speech at the United Nations on Wednesday… CNN ended Hill’s contract with the network on Thursday, a move that some critics decried as censorship.” Hill’s problem was  that he spoke on a topic that is off-limits to him, specifically, in U. S. media.  What happened to Hill is a discussion that would never happen on HBO.

The Shop sometimes features  openly lesbian and homosexual guests on their show, but no opposing voices are allowed to criticize or debate the LGBT lifestyle on The Shop, and no one can have a real conversation about Greco-Roman history and  homosexuality-which real barbershop patrons can talk about when they choose. The HBO press release goes on to say that, “The Shop gives viewers a one-of-a-kind barbershop experience, which for many provides a sanctuary for free-flowing and spirited discussions. The series will visit barbershops around the country to gather distinguished individuals who can speak honestly on sports, music, pop culture, world events, business and other culturally relevant topics.” What does  ‘culturally relevant’ mean to HBO? In a PC (politically correct) environment, there are certain viewpoints that ADOS males can’t present on TV. Someone from “Africa” or the “Caribbean” would be asked about United States issues before someone with an ADOS background would. The irony is the fact that the main figure of the series, LeBron James, is ADOS and would be discouraged against having intelligent guests like Dr. William A. Darity, Jr. He surely goes to the barbershop regularly. Instead what we see in the inner-city is a lot of entertainers speaking on topics that they have little knowledge about economics. A potential Caucasian guest that comes to mind is author Joshua Poe, an expert on gentrification and Urban Planning. No one would want to talk about the negative effects that gentrification has on inner-city communities.

To get a more accurate depiction  of what a barbershop might sound like, see, “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, released in 1983. This was Spike Lee’s thesis project at New York University.  Although Lee’s project was non-commercial, it was possible to argue to the film school’s Thesis Committee that authenticity was necessary, in order to lend realism to the project.  Next came the Ice Cube-produced movie, Barbershop.  An article about the film was covered in a New York Times, published on September 26, 2002, titled, Film Brings in Cash and Controversy,  by John Leland and John Fountain. The article discussed the nature of the film and the controversy that surrounded it. They wrote how controversy erupted, “When the shop’s elder, Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer), poked fun at Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.”  The real controversy comes from the lack of balance that was presented.  Could Caucasian leadership have be critiqued at that same level in that film? Absolutely not.  Hollywood is Hollywood. We get it.

If depictions of barbershop scenarios took heed to the advice of Malcolm X, we’d see what an unfiltered barbershop really sounds like.  In the PBS documentary, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, released in 1994, about the life of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz  (Malcolm X), his message still represents a level of bravery that today’s athletes and entertainers are advised against.  In the documentary, from a previous lecture, Malcolm X states, ” And I, for one, as a Muslim believe that the white man is intelligent enough. If he were made to realize how black people really feel and how fed up we are without that old compromising sweet talk — why you’re the one who make it hard for yourself. The white man believes you when you go to him with that old sweet talk, ’cause you’ve been sweet-talking him ever since he brought you here. Stop sweet-talking him. Tell him how you feel. Tell him how — what kind of hell you’ve been catching and let him know that if he’s ready to clean his house up … if he’s not ready to clean his house up, he shouldn’t have a house! It should catch on fire and burn down.”  Back then, Malcolm X was a cultural benchmark of inner-city honesty throughout the United States.  In any conversation where  the truth might be avoided or criticized, facts could always be brought to the forefront by invoking Malcolm X-styled arguments, which still can not be denied. 

Barbershop and beauty shop-type television shows are filtered facsimiles of what happens in real life. Unfortunately, life now imitates art. People are unaware of a set of realities that will soon awaken them in their darkest hour. TV imagery does not offer an accurate depiction of inner-city life. It is nothing more than smoke and mirrors, and the funhouse-like distortions that we see come through censored voices.