Not a Hoax: Courtney McClellan Interviews Kevin Young at Art Papers

In the latest issue of Art Papers, Courtney McClellan interviews Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and New Yorker Poetry Editor, Kevin Young about his most recent book, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. McClellan observes, "[t]he term hoax has recently rejoined political dialogue via President Donald Trump’s frequent use of the term in reference to topics as broad as his impeachment trial, coronavirus, and Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data during the Obama administration. Young addresses the race-based advent of the term hoax in the United States, and champions the importance of preserving truth and distinguishing it from fiction." From their conversation: 

CM: What led you to write Bunk, and how did writing it overlap with the 2016 election?

KY: When I was writing The Grey Album, I started thinking about: what’s hoaxing? How’s that different from storying? But I’m happy I didn’t try to shoehorn that part in. I wanted to meditate further on this idea. People often said there was this blurry line between fact and fiction, when that wasn’t really true. And that’s one of the things that I try to do in both the books—to say that there are some clear lines that I think storying purposely crosses, but to act like there isn’t a line is strange.

I had this hunch that hoaxes were not about what they said they were. And of course they aren’t, because they’re not telling the truth. The more I started looking at it, the more I realized that they really mirrored the history of race and our modern notions of race in the West. These are fairly recent notions, dating from the 18th century, and almost to the very same decade as the invention of the term hoax. I don’t think that’s an accident. In the book, I trace [these] linked phenomena from P.T. Barnum to the present.

I had finished most of the book, but the hoaxes kept coming. At a certain point I told my editor, “I’ve just got to stop” because there’s new a hoax every week! I remember, for instance, the case of Rachel Dolezal, the woman who was claiming she was of African descent though she is by all accounts White. I thought, “Man, do I really have to write about her?” And then I ended up writing an essay about her and, after some convincing, put her in the book. I’m glad now that that part ended up in there. A similar thing happened with the presidential election. The book was all but done, and then after the 2016 election, the terms fake news and alternative facts took off, so it really seemed like a lot of the things I had predicted and said were about to happen, happened. That was a strange feeling. It also meant I had to write the book’s coda—I end with the notion that the truth is a muscle, one we need to learn how to exercise once more and strengthen.

CM: You note in the book that the hoax feels particularly American. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

KY: I think … a few things contribute to the particular Americanness of the hoax. One is this tradition—that I think P.T. Barnum perfected—of hucksterism, where hoaxing meets entertainment meets capitalism. This is exemplified in the saying, “Every crowd has a silver lining,” [which is widely attributed to Barnum]. P.T. Barnum also perfected the American notion that everyone’s an expert. “You can decide for yourself whether this is real or not.” And I think we’re seeing, now, almost the opposite, which is that no one’s an expert. Expertise is looked down upon. Whether from scientists, historians, journalists—we’re constantly told that things that are true aren’t accurate, or somehow don’t feel accurate. And that’s really worrisome and hard to combat.

This, I think, comes from the American notion of individualism—that you’re your own person, that you get to decide—as well as our idea of self-invention. It’s hard to say to someone “You can’t pretend to be Native” if there’s a notion in the culture that “You can be anything you want to be!” Around race, and the hoax, circulate these questions of power, and White people claiming things for Native peoples or Black peoples, including being them.

Read on at Art Papers.