In 2007, race profiteer “Reverend” Jesse Jackson criticized presidential hopeful Senator Obama for “acting like he’s white”.
One of those rare times when I applaud President Obama’s statement. From last Monday, speaking at a town hall event at Howard University on his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative (apparently does not involve any new federal spending), Jonathan Capehart of WaPo writes:
In the panoply of insults African Americans hurl at each other, there are two that are meant to stunt the viewpoints and ambitions of their victims. One is being called an “Uncle Tom.” We covered this ground back in May when I urged folks to stop smacking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with the epithet. The other is being accused of “acting white.” And I was thrilled to see President Obama brazenly broach it yesterday at the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) town hall yesterday.
Obama got into it via a question from a Native American young man who wanted to know what the federal government was doing to help his people “revitalize their language and culture.” The president responded, “The Bible says without vision a people will perish. And what happens when you start losing your language and you start losing your culture and you don’t have a sense of connections to ancestors and those memories that date back generations is you start feeling adrift. And if you’re living in a society that devalues that, then you start maybe devaluing yourself and internalizing some of those doubts.” He talked about how America was great at taking people from different cultures and making one unifying culture out of it. But he also said, “There’s no contradiction between knowing your culture, the traditional cultures out of which your families come, but also being part of the larger culture.” It was here that Obama willingly waded into “acting white.”
And I think that one of the things — this is true not just for Native Americans, but it’s also true for African Americans. Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of “acting white” — which sometimes is overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that? Or why are you speaking so properly? And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go. Because there are a whole bunch of different ways for African American men to be authentic.
~~~ “Acting white” and its ugly cousin “not black enough” are noxious putdowns meant to foment a sense of betrayal. Those who employ it believe their targets are so ashamed of being black that they value things considered the provenance of white people to be superior to all others. President Obama, football player Robert Griffin III (RGIII) and just about every African American you know or are acquainted with has been insulted in this manner. I had one well-meaning acquaintance say to me, “You’re the whitest black man I know.” As if the act of learning, speaking proper English, properly wearing pants or not having a clue about rap or basketball (just to name a few) makes one less black or not black at all. As if the pursuit of excellence and success is not within the African American spirit.
Conservative writer Crystal Wright on CNN:
Obama said that it is important for Americans to know their roots and where they come from, but not be held hostage by our cultures from advancing in life.
Then, Obama got real. He talked about how black Americans use this “group think” psychology to bully other blacks, keep them from expressing themselves as individuals and stop them from assimilating into the broader culture of America.
“Sometimes African-Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of ‘acting white’ — which sometimes is overstated,” he told the group. “But there’s an element of truth to it, where, OK, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that? Or why are you speaking so properly? And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go. There are many different ways for African-American men to be authentic.”
He went on to use his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, as an example.
“If you look at Michelle, she grew up South Side. And her mom still lives in a neighborhood where gunshots go off, and it can be rough where Michelle grew up. But she’ll talk proper when she needs to. Now, you also don’t want to get on her wrong side, because she can translate that into a different vernacular. But my point is, is that you don’t have to act a certain way to be authentic.”
I rolled my eyes in disgust, remembering all the times in my life that phrase has been hurled at me from other blacks.
Growing up, I wasn’t raised in a home where we “talked or acted black” — speaking broken English, neck jerking and behaving like the black stereotypes we see in some of the Tyler Perry movies. So, I was shocked to encounter such nonsense when I attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate.
Most of the black students — who generally all hung out in the same pack, eating, studying and socializing exclusively together — informed me I was an “Uncle Tom,” not really black because I chose to have an integrated experience at Georgetown.
One of the biggest sins I committed was refusing to eat at the all-black cafeteria tables in the various dorms. I would wonder, if you only want to socialize with black students, then why not just attend a predominantly black college?
My freshman year, I went to a dance with a white guy from my class. When he came by my dorm room to pick me up, two black girls from across the hall stared and snickered, uttering something along the lines that I wanted to be white so bad.
Really?
The next day the same girls heckled me again about my date. Tired of dealing with their stupidity, I walked over and told them I would continue to do whatever I wanted. Instead of being so concerned with my life and who I was dating, they should be concerned with their own.
I have never been counseled on how to act black. And I never will.
From a blogpost I had written concerning my own background:
Multiculturalists would tell the four year-old boy in the photo that he was being white-washed. They would tell the 40 year old blogger hammering this post out on his keyboard, that he is a twinkie: White on the inside, yellow on the out. If I were black, maybe I’d be an Uncle Tom and a sellout. I spent 6 years of my college time living with two of my teammates, who were brothers. They also happened to be middle-class black, from Alburqurque. One day, a student asked Greg, the younger brother, if he had been to any ASU meetings, lately. He replied that, “Yeah, we’ve been out there; we compete there sometimes.” (My roommates and I were on the gymnastics team- the older brother, Chainey, eventually making the ’96 U.S. Olympic Team). The guy who asked Greg the question just shook his head and thought my roommate was so out of touch because Greg thought he meant had he been to Arizona State University; but what he really was asking is, had Greg attended any African Student Union group meetings.
UCLA is heralded as diverse and multicultural. That might be. But rather than a melting pot, half of what I saw were self-segregationists. On my way to class, down Bruin Walk, I could see the Chinese Student Union members mingling at the steps of Kerkhoff Hall; on the other side, ASU members hung out together. I attended one Pilipino student group meeting, and found myself turned off by the rhetoric of activism, which had an “Us vs. Them” mentality of persecution. I, as a non-Filipino, felt alienated because I didn’t identify myself through my skin-color. They didn’t know this, and probably thought I fit right in, due to my shared Malay heritage.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/iYhsnLdUiUs[/youtube]
Thank you President Obama for speaking to this point; thank you in this instance for being the American president and not the African-American president.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Why does Obama hide his college grades from Americans? Because they are really, really bad. He was spending most of his time fooling around, smoking marijuana and sucking in cocaine.
Grades: F, C, C, D, F
No wonder we get the following:
Social skills: C
Foreign policy: F
International affairs: F
Health care: F
Constitutional skills: F
Congressional skills: D
Comments from those who grade Obama: This is the worst of the worst. Don’t expect much from the lame duck now. If Obama is soon impeached AND REMOVED, he will go down in flames as a NIXON on steroids. So many people have put their foot on Obama’s throat, Obama can do very little anymore.
If you asked about Italian culture, or Irish culture, the culture of the Spanish. the culture of Arabs or the culture of the Watusi, or the culture of any subgroup, people could give you precise examples. But what is “black” culture?
When growing up, black culture seemed to be strong family ties (more black children raised in two parent homes than white children, stronger religious faith than their white counterparts, a work ethic that should have been emulated by all), but I want to know what is considered “black” culture by todays standards. Has it changed in the last five decades? Is it different than it was in 1965?
Culture is not determined by race. Black Cubans have the same culture as white Cubans. Mexicans of Indian heritage share the same culture as those who can track their families back to Spain. Culture is a national, not a race, component. Do French blacks of today share a “culture” with American blacks?
So I would really like an answer.
In Canada, I saw a young man walking in the early morning on the streets of Calgary. He was wearing a kilt. He would raise a few eyebrows here in the US, but it is fairly common in Canada. However, it was 40 below. He seemed comfortable and oblivious to the cold.
I am fairly certain, he was either active duty military or former military; since the kilt was an olive drab color and he had combat boots a military sweater. I am sure OIL Guy could give us a more in-depth and detailed idea of the man’s roots, but I figured he was either from Scotland or the local military group, the Patricia Rifles.
Now, I have lived and worked in the extreme cold and I have gone outside in my underwear to fetch firewood, but I have never gone out in the serious cold for a long walk with bare legs. The Red Legs or Scottish Highlanders earned their nicknames by traveling in the mountains barefoot in kilts in the 40 below. Now, these guys are a part of my heritage, but if I must walk in the 40 below wearing a kilt, I think I would rather just read about my heritage.
This guy was living his heritage and none of the people who saw him that morning had any doubt as to his authenticity. Yet, authenticity is the reason, I began writing this diatribe of circumlocution. Native Americans, African Americans, and Asians all come from a variety of cultures. Grasping to often false ideas of cultural heritage may give the insecure a sense of belonging and create adhesion among a group, but the individual traditions and cultures of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas varied as much from each other as they varied by continents.
Most of these bonding agents are only artificial concepts or pacifiers to give people a false security and of bonding. They are only weak reminders of the cultures of the past that serve to distance ethnic groups from one another and to reenforce feelings of uniqueness and of belonging, while avoiding feelings of insecurity.
Yes, I have no plans for buying a kilt.
When a protochristian culture encounters the big lie, well there you go.
Cons and marks. And cultures that are starving for the real thing, not business as usual.
And that is just these “culture warriors” dancing around the fact of the thing itself.
I am native. I think a lot of my family are giving up on evolving into the New Testament. But the old songs and ceremonies pictured that. Stuck in a hard place.
You know, what we call the original instructions of how to live do not need replacement. Just completion.
Some are still waiting, hope and faith, and all that. The other thing, been there, done that. Just blood cults, and war.
Rerun season.
Cocaine is delivered to the wipe house two times a week-he never stopped using it.
@Skookum: #3
Skook, probably one of the best observations I’ve read in a while — our reality being that the insecurity you make note of, is the very fuel that the hate-mongers use to light the flames of resentment, jealousy, and envy. It’s a big business. It divides societies, and it even gets Presidents elected.
Wordsmith
good post as usual, i got lost in 2008 for a while, I DID ENJOYED IT AGAIN,
TO SEE MY FRIENDS THEN WAS A PLEASURE,
now that you have grown, where is the new boy picture with muscles,
AFTER ALL WE SAW YOU GROW TO A NICE PERSON VERY SMART AND TALENTED,
BYE
SKOOKUM
the HIGHLANDERS FROM WINIPEG are the many who cut of the GERMANS IN THE WAR,
THEY LEFT A POWERFULL NAME OF HOW BRAVE THEY DID, RUTHELESS AND UNAFRAID GOING
FOR THE THROAT, whithout mercy for the oponant,
and their names where fear like they where never beaten,
THEY CONTRIBUTED A LOT ON THE WINNING THE WAR,
ANYONE WHO HEAR THEIR BAGPIPE HAVE A FEELING OF PRIDE,
WHATCHING THEIR COLORFULL PARADE,
I applaud Obama for this.
My only quibble is why he hasn’t hammered this message for the last 5+ years he’s been president.
What’s a bully pulpit for if not improving America.
Sadly Obama’s actions in making more difficult for schools to get unruly and even criminal students out of the classroom go in the opposite direction from these off-script words.
Still, they were good words.
AdrianS
I saw the YOU TUBE on the call for impeachment, he, the one who REPRESENT THOSE WHO had ask for it,
said the HIGH COURT HAD AGREE TO IT, he names all the reasons why they ask for it,
IT WAS NO FAKE, IT WAS REAL AND LEGIT,
It was very surprising to hear MR BOENER TELL IT WAS THE DEMOCRAT AND HE HAD NO DESIRE TO IMPEACH OBAMA, HE SAID THE DEMOCRATS WANT IT FOR THEIR GAMES, OF THE ELECTION,
MR LAROUCHE IS A CONSERVATIVE SAID IT MIGHT TAKE MORE TIME BUT IT WILL BE DONE,
Did you know that 34% of all firms in the U.S. economy are older than 16 years?
That 72% of ALL private-sector workers employed are inside those OLD businesses?
That tells us that new companies, new businesses are not making it as opposed to in the past when only 23% of businesses were that old or older.
And why is that?
In the last few years (Obama) we lack the entrepreneurship that is needed in this country.
Not only are start-ups failing at huge rates, fewer start-ups are even happening.
Why take the RISK?
Obama has made it crystal clear that you didn’t built that, so you don’t deserve the extra money for all your pain.
Also a much larger percentage of young businesses (under 16 years old) are going under.
Why?
Well, what advantage is there to jumping through all those new daily hoops of Gov’t red tape for such a small return?
And then you are vilified if you succeed.
So, what’s the cost?
Our nation’s path-breaking innovations are far and fewer because those things are the material of new firms.
Maybe Obama is finally starting to see the epic failure of his own redistributionist policies and rhetoric of division.
One can hope.
But what is “black” culture?
Still waiting on an answer.
@Nanny G: #12
NanG, excellent post — the millions of new laws and regulations heaped on top of the Obama version of healthcare, have made being an entrepreneur extremely difficult.
Then you add the insanity of The Fed’s 0% rates, and you have venture capital sitting on its hands, unenthusiastic about risk investments. A half-dead monkey can make positive ROI without grief at those rates. Just ask the bankers.
Weakening the strongest Nation in the world will assuredly weaken the rest of the world. If you’re unstable, or unhealthy, you can’t help anyone else. The ENTREPRENEUR is the life blood of a healthy and free society. The Admin is succeeding in achieving its objectives >>> weaker America and bolder enemies like Iran and Putin. THAT should teach those Colonialist Americans a thing or two, shouldn’t it?
What a bunch of supreme idiots.