Money, Race

The New York Times reported on Friday that Annie Leibovitz arrived at an agreement to restructure her excessive loans. This is important for her, of course, and for many reasons. Chief among them, if we read reports anyway, is that this allows her to retain rights to her art. Great. I like that. I don’t much care for loans and interest and the kind of exploitation we find in conventional banking practices. But that’s another issue. I find the Leibovitz case instructive for what it says about race.

I’ve read a lot of stories about Leibovitz’s financial troubles. Nearly without exception, they have been human, focusing on the tragedy of losing rights to one’s art, the sadness she felt after the loss of her long-term partner, and so on. All of which was supposed to add sympathetic texture to her financial problems. Somehow, she got into all of this trouble – to the tune of two dozen million dollars of debt! – because of depression and inattention. I suspect all of that is overly sympathetic, as well as probably pretty true.

But I’d ask you to consider this: what if Annie Leibovitz was black?

Well, we don’t have to imagine. There are plenty of cases of rich black people in the public eye, who get famous and rich and then go broke. We laugh at them. We sneer at them and talk about how stupid they were to blow millions and not plan well. They end up on VH-1. First, in Behind the Music. Second, on some degrading reality show.

MC Hammer lost all of his money. He’s broke. In debt. Same with Mike Tyson. Both are culture jokes because of it. They were stupid and blew all their money. Were cheated and deceived by those around them. Yet, not a word of sympathy, except in outlier cases of reporting.

Coverage of Annie Leibovitz’s financial problems portray her as depressed and forgetful and inattentive. Sympathetic, really. Or at least complex.

There’s all the example we need for how race works. White, famous, and going broke? Tragic and complex. Black, famous, and going broke? A culture joke.