Cover Story
“I'm going to give you some ammunition.” These are the first words out of Ralph Wiley's mouth. The essayist has just taken the microphone on the stage of a tiny auditorium at Spauldings Branch Library in Prince George's County, and a hundred admirers peer back at him, expectant.
They wait. And wait. Wiley fixes his gaze on the audience. The expression he wears is the same one that appears on the dust jacket of his latest book, What Black People Should Do Now. His face fills the cover in a silvery close-up that embraces the rough, nicked skin of his face, the stubble of his nascent beard, and eyes flashing angrily over a mouth on the edge of frowning. That's The Gaze—confrontational, resolute—and Wiley rakes it across his audience tonight.
“Pimp,” he says.
The audience is quiet. Wiley asks what image the word calls to mind. No one replies, so he describes the creature everyone saw: a black man in a flashy suit with broad lapels, gold jewelry, maybe a purple hat. A real street dude.
“Single mother.”
Again, the same test: Didn't we see a young black woman clutching a baby in some public-housing project?
There's a problem with these images,Wiley explains. They are fiction. None of us has ever seen a pimp like that. And most single mothers are white. The images in our heads are not our own, and they are not random. They were fed to us by Hollywood and the media, images selected for us, by others, for a reason. These images place black people at the center of every social problem, every pathology, every crisis. Eventually, we begin to believe what we are told.... Continued 
Issue of Dec. 10 - 16, 1993
News and Features
- Writin' Is Fightin'
Cover Story - Working for Peanuts
Feature - Policy Paradox
The City - Cannons Into Sox
The City - Swastikas Über Everything
The City - Jazz Blowhards
The Mail - Watch the Skies
The Mail - Dapplause
The Mail - Miss-taken Identity
The Mail - The Stale Yorker
The Mail - Trained in Vain?
The Mail - Fax Your Mother
The Mail - Stop Blade-Bashing
The Mail
Columns
- Old-Timers' Game
Bullet Heads - Three Thousand for the Pants
City Desk - Free Billy
City Desk - The Precocious Gourmet
City Desk - DAVE CASHES IN
Loose Lips
Eats
Movies
- Clueless
Film Review - How the West Wound Down
Film Review
Music
- From Despair to Where
Music Review - Siren Songs
Sound Check - Branching Out
Sound Check - Holiday in Indie-ana
Sound Check
Theater
- Hail Caesar!
Theater Review
Arts and Events
- Starr Treatment
Artifacts - Buccaneers and Profiteers
Books - Insides Out
Art Review - The Secrets Garden
Books
City Lights
This week's best in Arts and Entertainment.
- Noam Chomsky
City Lights - Reggae Big Bang '93
City Lights - Ras Pidow
City Lights - Migration Series
City Lights - Wayne's World 2
City Lights - “Moving Forward: Expression in Contemporary Asian-American Dance.”
City Lights - Herbie Mann
City Lights - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
City Lights - Gloria Wade-Gayles
City Lights - Herbert Block
City Lights - “Children of the Gospel: Voices of the Next Generation.”
City Lights - Fat Lady Sings
City Lights - Joseph Passonneau
City Lights - Lucy Fellowes
City Lights - Kol Simcha
City Lights - Operation Game Warden
City Lights - Buzzcocks
City Lights
Find an Event
Enter a keyword, select the type of event, and the particular day this week below.
Submit your event to the City Paper's Event Calendar.
Find a Restaurant
Enter a restaurant name, or select a cuisine and neighborhood below.
Find a Movie
Select a movie theater in the box below to see a list of all movies at that theater.
...Or view a full list of theaters, films, and showtimes.
Search Classified Ads
Post a Classified Ad
Search inventory on the City Paper's CarTango website:
This Week in
City Paper History
- Angels Without Wings
Oct. 2 - 8, 1998 - Fare Elections
Oct. 3 - 9, 2003 - Kicking and Screaming
Oct. 3 - 9, 2003
