A few years ago, I relayed the following experience:
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.
Those two former roommates are now very successful doctors, upper middle class, in solid marriages with beautiful children.
In wake of the recent Bleacher Report that charged some in the Seahawks locker room didn’t think quarterback Russell Wilson was “black enough”, his teammates have denied that allegation. In addition, outspoken Charles Barkley weighed into the controversy:
The fact that Wilson’s “blackness” was even questioned struck a nerve with former NBA star Charles Barkley, who was asked about the situation on a Philadelphia radio show last week.
“There are a lot of black people who are unintelligent, who don’t have success––it’s best to knock a successful black person down if they’re intelligent, they speak well, they do well in school, and they’re successful,” Barkley said on WIP Radio last Thursday.
The Basketball Hall of Famer elaborated on those comments Monday at a media day for TNT’s Inside the NBA.
“What I said was, it’s a dirty secret in the black community unless you’re a thug or got a criminal record or just a jackass, some people don’t think you’re black enough,” Barkley said. “It’s a dirty little secret in our community. I want black kids [to know] we can be strong, intelligent. We just tell kids if you’re doing good in school, you’re acting white. If you speak intelligently, you’re acting white. That’s bull[expletive]. That’s one of the reasons we as a group, us black people, are struggling. We don’t have great respect for each other.”
Barkley said that he hadn’t gone on the show prepared to speak on the topic, but that the hosts brought it up in conjunction with the Wilson story.
“The question was asked. I talked about it in my last book. One of the problems in our black community is us, not white folks, other black folks. It just happened to come up because the Russell Wilson thing just broke. It’s not something I hadn’t said before. I don’t know why people took it national last week. You don’t have to be a thug or unintelligent. You’re supposed to do great academically. You’re supposed to speak correctly. You don’t have to have street cred. I tell people, ‘We’re the only group where if you have a criminal record it makes you more black.’ It’s ridiculous.”
Barkley is sticking by those statements, despite taking heat. Interestingly, criticism for his statements also comes from a conservative perspective as well:
Charles Barkley’s defense of Russell Wilson has done more to implode the issue than it has done to further the conversation about personal identity within the black community. Barkley stated: “We’re brainwashed to thinking if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough.”
Charles Barkley’s own statement proves the falsity of his argument. There are a lot of black Americans that thinks he is a traitor to his race, which devalues his race card, and would still call him a thug because of his “hold no punches” attitude. I can’t fathom how many blacks think he is an idiot.
Those are not the qualifying factors for blackness. Beyonce is not judged as less than black because she isn’t a thug or idiot. Neither is Kerry Washington, Jill Scott, or Oprah Winfrey. They are all intelligent, successful black women. Why isn’t their blackness questioned? Is it because that definition only applies to black men? Then explain the assault on color correctness witnessed by Stacy Dash and Crystal Wright.
Black America doesn’t question Barack Obama about his blackness. Nor do they question Cornel West, Al Sharpton, or Van Jones. They are intelligent, successful black men. Why isn’t their blackness questioned? Why do Hermain Cain, Allen West, and Tim Scott require a black litmus test?
Hint: It has nothing to do with race.
Russell Wilson came from a two-parent home. He had a quality education because his parents had the economic ability to choose an excellent school district. Wilson attended college based on skill, not affirmative action. Oh, and he likes to tweet out Bible verses to his twitter followers.
Russell Wilson is the antithesis of the progressive format to success. His parents didn’t rely on government to raise their children. His parents had the option of school choice. He worked to keep his grades up and build his football skills. And to top it off, he has the nerve to thank God for his success.
These are things progressives hate, not black America.
Hat tip to Michael Medved Show for the following find:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOY9CbIK9zk[/youtube]
Remember the Cosby Show?
It had to represent race in a way that enabled audience members to feel good enough about themselves, sometimes for different and contradictory reasons, that they reliably returned every week, ready to attend to the ads of the corporations that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute for access. By the time the show finished its first season on NBC in 1985, it deftly had won admission into millions of segregated European American homes.
Cosby’s popularity and skill was surely crucial to its success, but significant too was a critical aspect of his persona-he never raged or despaired. No doubt for many the show’s goodwill carried with it some acceptance for African Americans, a GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER? for the Reagan years. Yet as several critics have noted, the price paid by the makers of TFIE COSBY SHOW for its jumbo audience was clear: silence on racism. “To have confronted the audience” about racism “would have been commercial suicide,” says Justin Lewis, who has studied viewer responses to the program (164). An active supporter of progressive politics, Cosby acknowledges that COSBY did not mention racism for fear of alienating white viewers (Graham). “I agree with critics who say it doesn’t do enough,” he says. “But the people who’re viewing it are having a ball with it” (Christon 45). Yet in what seems both cause and effect of cultural productions such as THE COSBY SHOW, polls show that most U.S. whites “no longer feel blacks are discriminated against in the schools, the job market and the courts” (Brownstein Ml).
For myself, the Show wasn’t about “white-washing” the racial divide. It was about obliterating seeing them as a “black” family and promoting them as a successful one. As Morgan Freeman expressed it on 60 Minutes when asked how do we get rid of racism: “Stop talking about it.” Quit pointing out a person’s ethnicity as the primary defining, driving characteristic.
Bill Cosby several years ago:
‘They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk…
Why you ain’t
Where you is
What he drive
Where he stay
Where he work
Who you be…
And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.
And then I heard the father talk.
Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.
In fact, you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around.
The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.
These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what??
And they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.
I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.
Where were you when he was 2??
Where were you when he was 12??
Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol??
And where is the father?? Or, who is his father?
People putting their clothes on backward, isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong?
People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something?
Or, are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?
What part of Africa did this come from??
We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans. They don’t know a thing about Africa .
With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem.
We have got to take the neighborhood back.
People used to be ashamed. Today, a woman has eight children with eight different ‘husbands’ — or men or whatever you call them now.
We have millionaire football players who cannot read.
We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs.
We, as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal- Mart with seven kids… you are hurting us.
We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.
We cannot blame the white people any longer.
Read in greater detail, Dr. Bill Cosby’s speech at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision
My feelings are assimilation over multiculturalism. Shared values and culture. Tolerance and dialogue for differences.
Democrats and liberals are race-fixated. They cannot get past seeing and identifying people through the color of their skin. The charge that the GOP and conservatives are racist is nothing short of slander. Conservatives are the ones who are judging others through content of character. Both sides are capable of stereotyping, prejudice, and generalizing (like I just did in this very paragraph). Whether based upon skin color, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, economic class, neighborhood, state or country of origin, musical tastes, dress, etc.
As a side not, it’s kind of funny how some liberals do want to blur the lines, though, when it comes to gender differences and promote that gender should be defined as a state of mind as opposed to anatomical tools you are physically equipped with, from birth.
What good does it do us when we divide ourselves into “the black community”, “white culture”, “Asian solidarity”? Can we self-segregate and still consider ourselves a melting pot blend of “One people” AND celebrate our diversity? “Out of many, One”?
Yes, racism will always be alive in America (just as it will be, all over the globe). But it will especially stay alive because we are constantly “having that dialogue” and talking about it; picking at that scab, highlighting, underscoring, boldening, exclamation marking obsessing over it.
I do remember a moment where I did literally stare at myself in the mirror, as a child becoming self-aware that I was physically “different” from just about everyone I saw around me and on television, at the time:
My earliest memory of being race-conscious, was one day when I was about 4 or 5 living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My mom took me to check out Tinkerbell Kindergarten. It must have been an open-house or something. I went out on the playground where two boys were playing on the monkey bars. They basically told me to go away and I couldn’t play there with them; they used racial slurs to reject me. Back then, children used to take their thumbs to stretch the corners out to mock those with “slant eyes”. I don’t see kids doing that these days. It was one of those experiences that began to shape my consciousness that there was something physically different about me from other “Americans”; that I didn’t physically resemble Robert Conrad. And I began to take a closer look in the mirror, to see what others were seeing that I had failed to see.
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.
Well, Obama says “It don’t make no sense”
The problem is the left wants to throw money at a problem that cannot be solved with payments and a large proportion of the black community thinks if more money cannot solve their education and economic issues in a week or so, it is not even worth trying (but keep the cash rolling in; might as well have a party). The fact is, a family that decides right now to work hard and sacrifice to better their economic condition is going to have to be prepared to see it take generations for true and lasting improvement to develop. I can say this because that was how my family did it.
We’ll probably see a great big emphatic example of this in Ferguson in the not too distant future.
Excellent post, Word.
Barkley and Cosby don’t promote hate and mewling, but they do inspire self determination and aspiration toward positive lives. They encourage taking responsibility rather than blame. Jarrett, Holder and Obama would learn much from listening to them, but they can’t.
The Democratic mantra promoting fear, blame, and loathing keeps their pols elected.
I was not going to comment on this entry, because, frankly, I am sick to death of the racial divide that is being propagated in this country for no other reason than identity politics gain votes for Democrats.
But I have to ask: is being rejected as a child because of race any worse than being rejected because the other kids think you’re too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, or because they think your stupid? Do we now have classifications of rejection, one being worse than the other?
I have no sympathy for the blacks that languish in ghettos with no ambition to get out of it. They are offered a free education up to the 12th grade, and if their parents don’t force them to utilize that service, why should I care? They’re not like the children of the northern reservations that sometimes live as far away as 90 miles from the nearest school. And even considering that hardship, I have no sympathy for the rez dogs that lay around broken down trailer homes with no electricity spending their every dime on alcohol or drugs.
It does no good, but it does buy votes. There is a reason it is called the grievance “industry.” It has made some very wealthy building their wealth on the hardships of others. And until the press, and the Democrats, stop giving people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson a platform, nothing will change. It’s a lot easier to blame someone else (whitey) for your troubles instead of taking responsibility for your own failure.
I’ve read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book. The name character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin was anything but what the slang term, (so often used by the left,) infers. It wasn’t Uncle Tom who followed the will of the evil slaver. Uncle Tom’s black antagonists in the book (Quimbo and Sambo) are the ones who work for “the man” against fellow blacks. But I guess that’s just an extension of the Simon Legree-like leftist elite, who have followed Legree’s lead for this nation’s blacks, whom the elite left are working hard to keep as low information voters on the progressive plantation.
On further thought, conservative blacks whom have had the Uncle Tom “insult” thrown at them should embrace it and wear it as a badge of honor. For Uncle Tom was the hero of the book, a man of integrity who refused to succumb to the will of an elite slaver. IMO they should smile and proudly proclaim their acceptance of the term, and go on to educate the fools who sling it, as they are acting just like Simon Legree’s ‘s black overseer’s (Quimbo and Sambo whose job it was to keep the other black slaves in their place.
The ignorance of Liberal racism, hate, envy astounds most thinking people.
Just more proof the Ideology of the Democrats/Liberals is A MAJOR FAILURE. The party has evolved into a party of Petulant Adult Size Children…Losers. If you think you are a loser…join the party who will confirm that for you….
Why is recognizing something that exists and has profound impacts upon peoples’ lives being “race-fixated”? Are physicians needlessly “cancer-fixated” because they recognize that cancer exists and is harmful? Are the one million blacks currently residing in prison and their families foolish for asking why such a staggering racial disparity in incarceration rates exists to this day? You’re suggesting people ignore mountains of factual evidence because the obvious implications make some people uncomfortable as they threaten a comfortable (for them) status quo. There is no history of the United States separate from the history of white supremacy in the United States. What was the economic engine of the Unites States for the first 100 years of its existence? To say the effects just disappeared overnight is an exercise in magical thinking that has no grounding in reality. Ignoring factual and statistical reality is a choice, a choice – in this case – often predicated upon what’s in ones’ best interest. It’s entirely plausible that for many white conservatives ignoring the reality of the legacy of white supremacy and the impact of institutional racism has a salutary impact on their lives. But what people choose to believe is separate from what exists in objective reality.
Are black parents “picking at that scab” when they acknowledge their teen is 21 times more likely to be shot by the police than a white teen? Or three times more likely to be incarcerated for marijuana possession than a white teen even though usage rates are the same? I would suggest it would be a staggeringly neglectful parent who wouldn’t confront that reality. If you you were told your son had a condition that made him 20 times more likely to die playing football, how would receive the advice that you’re needlessly “obsessing” over that condition, that it’s best just to ignore it and let him play because its making the parents of the other kids on the team uncomfortable. The mass incarceration of black America is a crisis that should not be ignored and cannot be dismissed as having no racial component. So unless you can explain it as a phenomena that is outside of the history of white supremacy and its lingering effects, then why shouldn’t it be “obsessed” over by those whose lives it impacts?
I understand and salute the the spirit of your post, but I think you’re being very naive. I think the racism in some of the comments is a good indication of that fact.
@Tom:
You’ve pushed this before. Truth be told, a black teen is more likely to be shot by another black (example Chicago) than by any police officer. A black teen is more likely to be sold drugs by another black. A black father is more likely to abandon a black single mother. A black women is more likely to abort her child than is a Hispanic or white mother.
Now you can continue to play the blame game, but you can only do it by not looking to the black community, itself. Why are black students failing in inner-city schools, run by DEMOCRAT black school board members and taught by black teachers? After 50 years of Brown, why are ESL Hispanics graduating at a higher rate than blacks? Why are Asians kicking everyone’s butt when it comes to grades and graduation rates? Why are a greater percentage of blacks on welfare than whites, Hispanics or Asians? And yes, the number of whites on welfare is greater than the number of blacks on welfare but only because there is a greater number of whites in the U.S., but the percentages speak for themselves.
You want to blame others for the failure in the black community; failure to get an education; failure to provide two parent homes for black children; failure to stay away from drugs and alcohol; failure to show personal responsibility. None of those things can be legislated, no matter how you want to play the grievance game. If you want to lay the blame anywhere, lay it at the feet of Democrat politicians who have aided and abetted the destruction of the black family, once the strongest family units in America and have killed the black work ethic that was once the strongest in the nation. Lay it at the feet of the poverty pimps that earned their livings off telling blacks they were owed something because “slavery.”
You can cling to the past until Hell freezes over, but you can only do that by not accepting responsibility for the future. White privilege is a myth. If you’re white, do you get special consideration for college entry, a police/fire academy, a job? No.
You want better students in the black community? Hire better black teachers. You want a greater say in our government? Quit aborting your children and grow your population. You want fewer blacks in jail? Stop raising children in single parent households.
Allen West, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ben Carson, Starr Parker, C.L. Lewis, Doreen Borelli, et al were not accidents. Each and every one of those blacks worked for what they have. It was not handed to them by some friendly Democrat.
@retire05:
The Chicago strawman, the list of five black people you approve of – you’re really pulling out all the stops.
That’s funny. I don’t remember blaming any person for anything. Is “white supremacy” a person? Interestingly, you have an entire laundry list of people to blame and reasons to give. But what exactly are you arguing? If you’re arguing racism doesn’t exist, then what exactly is it that is the black communities fault? If you’re acknowledging that racism exists, then you’re doing a pretty poor job explaining it when all you can offer is tired generalizations about alleged black pathologies. You do realize that painting the entire black community with the broad brush of “failure to get an education; failure to provide two parent homes for black children; failure to stay away from drugs and alcohol; failure to show personal responsibility” is, in fact, racist, don’t you?
How is asking why blacks and liberals shouldn’t point out prison disparities, disparities in police shootings and sentencing, clinging to the past? I think I’m pretty firmly in the present.
That’s rich. Do you think the fact so many black men are in prison has something to do with that?
@Tom:
How about black fathers deserting their children, leaving them to be raised by single black mothers?
How about decreasing their numbers, and power, by aborting their unborn in greater numbers than any other racial/ethnic group?
How about not demanding better schools than the ones in the inner city that are controlled by Democrat school boards and black union teachers?
How about working with the police departments to get the drug dealers and pimps off their street corners?
How about teaching their children that the future of the child is in the child’s hands, not the hands of some politician that promises to hand out more and more largess?
You want more?
It is undeniable that blacks self segregate, Tom. But if you think I am painting with a broad brush, I have two words for you: Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson was a mixed race town of blue collar workers. Now it is a minority majority town. And yes, a white police officer shot a black man. But when any killing happens, reasonable people wait for the police investigation, and the charges to be brought before a grand jury and allow our system of justice to work it way. Not so in Ferguson where blacks have torched businesses, destroyed private property and have taken to the streets protesting, all being urged on by the race baiters/poverty pimps and the Communist/Socialist groups. How does any of that benefit the citizens of Ferguson? Bottom line, it doesn’t. Perhaps you think it is coincidental that 50% of the households in Ferguson, Missouri are black single mothers. (according to the U.S. Census Bureau)
If you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime. That was said by a Democrat. Blacks have a higher rate of the commission of crime than any other racial/ethnic group. Why is that? You should be asking why so many young black men are committing crimes, not why they are incarcerated for the commission of those crimes.
There is one sure way to stay out of prison; don’t commit a crime.
Perhaps you would like to answer why so many black mothers are single parents (male incarceration not withstanding), why are so many black women aborting their unborn children, why are so many blacks on welfare, or other government handouts, why so many young blacks are dropping out of high school and why drug use/dealing is so rampant in black neighborhoods?
@retire05:
What? You must be unfamiliar with the history of housing over the past 100 years. Blacks didn’t “self segregate”. They weren’t allowed into white neighborhoods, or they (more commonly) were denied loans for housing in white neighborhoods. It’s called redlining. When blacks were denied loans through banks they often had to contend with predatory Contract Sellers. And, yes, housing discrimination still happens today,
@retire05:
You still haven’t addressed head-on why blacks are arrested and go to prison at a much higher rate than whites. And, no, it’s not as clear-cut as they commit more crimes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/04/the-blackwhite-marijuana-arrest-gap-in-nine-charts/
Do you remember the post-Zimmerman news conference by George Zimmerman’s lawyers?
The lead lawyer, Mark O’Mara, said that the main reason George was found not guilty was the quality of his law team.
According to O’Mara the prosecution made many, many mistakes, some perhaps with guilty knowledge.
BUT a Public Defender would have most likely lost under the same circumstances.
This is partly because they are over-burdened with too heavy a case load combined with a steady paycheck whether they win or lose.
How often do blacks, brought to trial, bother to hire a private law team so as to have a better chance at winning?
It could make all the difference.
It did in Zimmerman’s case.
If racism and slavery still exist for Blacks and it could be argued it does not!! The Blacks need to realize they have been held as slaves to the whims of the Democrat Party and it has failed them!!
@Nanny:
Very interesting point. Thank you. I would only caution you from assigning it too it too much significance for racial disparities. If anything, it’s probably a related symptom rather than a direct cause.