"My Husband Uses Racial Slurs During Sex": Did Essence Magazine Get Suckered Into Publishing A White Nationalist Piece of Anti-Black Propaganda?

Dear Abiola,  

My man keeps calling me a “nigger bitch” during sex and I hate it.  

I have been married for a year and I am at my wit’s end. My investment banker husband is from a White old money family. I am a first generation Black-American woman whose family is from the island of Jamaica. We met at a reunion for the ivy league school we both attended, and he proposed in six months.

We have the picture perfect fantasy life. He wines and dines me and we travel and shop the globe. Unlike all of the Black men I dated in the past, my husband is generous, loyal, committed and considerate. He courted me and I never have to pay for anything. He said I could quit my job and I did. He makes me feel like a woman.

I have been writing the occasional advice column here on We Are Respectable Negroes. I enjoy thinking through other folks' problems and then putting on my best Ann Landers-like voice. Those efforts at advice are also a type of self-therapy where by working through other people's dilemmas--real or imagined--it helps me to think about my own values and behavior.

Given my curiosities, I gravitate to questions about race and inter-personal relationships. I came upon this column at Essence magazine's website about a woman who husband uses racial slurs during sex. I was intrigued until I realized that this was likely a con, a hoodwink, designed to get attention from the readers of Essence, and to elicit a response from the black blogosphere and other sites as the story goes viral.

Moreover, that Essence would publish such a screed begs any number of questions about editorial responsibility. To point. Here is a particularly rich passage from its piece "Intimacy Intervention":

I am a little embarrassed to share our problem. The first time he let the n-word drop was during sex on our honeymoon. When I reacted negatively, he explained that a Black woman he dated in the past enjoyed being called racial slurs. Another time he joked that he had purchased my freedom. He also speculated about whether his family could have owned mine because I have “good hair.” Then he made jokes about my pubic hair. He called it my “negro bush” and referred to himself as a “nigger lover.” He says I am being overly sensitive because he loves me to death and should get a “Black pass” for marrying me.

This language is racially pornographic and uses the logic and cognitive map of the White Right. Such speech in an advice letter sent to a black publication is not a mistake.

"Intimacy Intervention" is an example of cyber racism in practice. The White Right has been engaged in a coordinated campaign to harass, spam, and troll websites and online venues which they have identified as targets. I am sure you have likely seen comment sections broken on anti-racist, progressive, African-American, and other sites by White Nationalists and their Right-wing conservative brethren.

"Intimacy Intervention" is ultimately part of a larger maneuver, what is a cyber version of a "swarm" attack.

By using talking points that are cut and pasted, stymieing and misdirecting the conversation, and creating a hostile environment, the White Right can disrupt these potentially productive spaces for dialogue and political discourse online. Letters such as the above, are also part of a cyber racism strategy where White Nationalists create fake websites,wikipedia entries, and other online resources, that appear to be "race neutral" or "anti-racist" but actually do the work of white racism. Fake websites on Dr. Martin Luther King which actually serve the purpose of circulating disinformation are an example of this tactic in practice.

Cyber racism is an assault on digital democracy. There, racism has moved from the backstage to the frontstage online--exactly the opposite of what has happened in the "real" world of post civil rights America. The Internet also allows for the racial micro aggressions committed by one, or even a few people, to have an out-sized influence.

Cyber racism is a force multiplier weapon. Those of us who find white racism, systems of white racial superiority both immoral and unacceptable, and a threat to the Common Good, must get organized. The public sphere has expanded to include digital spaces. Contemporary efforts at anti-racism have been good at dealing with old school, de jure, de facto racism. Dismantling the formal Racial State has also been a triumph of our various freedom struggles. However, those efforts have been woefully inadequate online.

I am developing a proposal in response to the concerted cyber racism campaign by the White Right and its allies against the progressive, centrist, and liberal blogosphere (and New Media more broadly) that I will explain very soon. In the near term, the Essence story was such a naked bait designed to draw attention that I was moved to comment.

What do you think of Essence's "Intimacy Intervention: My Husband Uses Racial Slurs During Sex?" Am I wrong here? Is this is a legitimate letter seeking advice? Or is something about "Black and Proud's" problem just too perfect a fit for the racist imagination of herrenvolk degenerative pathological white racism for it to be sincere and real?