More Than A Notion (Updated)

Many black people (and not a few white liberals) have, unwittingly, been indoctrinated by those who are the real enemies of upwardly mobile black people.  Note this anecdote reported by James Taranto:

We were en route to Shea Stadium along with fellow conservative commentator Joel Mowbray, and our driver was a youngish Haitian woman who had her radio tuned to Air America. Mowbray started a political discussion with her, and she told him that she doesn't like Republicans because "they hate black people."

"Does President Bush hate Condi Rice and Colin Powell?" Mowbray asked, to which she replied that Rice and Powell aren't "really black" because they "don't think like black people."

The idea that black people are supposed to think in a certain way is, of course, a racist assumption in itself. But what's most interesting about this exchange is that our driver had in effect redefined race so that it has nothing to do with race.

Oh, how many times have I been involved in similar conversations before, with me as the target!  Usually, if this “accusation” is hurled at me by another black person, I’m not above playing dirty, whipping out the “African card.”  Turnabout is fair play.

And, yes it is a dirty accusation.  Don’t think so?  Well, for demonstration purposes, try taking this little quiz:  of the following two groups of people, which collectively displays the most demonstrably “black thought processes?”  Individually, which ones are most likely to be thought of as “not really black?”

Group One

• Mike Tyson
• Colin Ferguson
• Li'l Kim
• Robert Mugabe
• Mel Reynolds
• R. Kelly
• Eminem (just kidding)

 

Group Two

• David Robinson
• Manute Bol*
• Walter Williams
• Bill Cosby
• Oprah Winfrey
• Peter Kirsanow
• Larry Elder

No need to post your results.  Simply consider why those blacks who have been accused of bad behavior or demonstrate questionable character do not have their “blackness” questioned, but those who are conservative and/or preach the virtues of hard work do.

*Mr.  Bol, who is of the beleaguered Dinka tribe of Sudan, has had a run of very bad luck.  Read this article.

(Thanks to Booker Rising)

UPDATE: Moxie gets the point.

UPDATE:  Here's a little "black thought process" that would have liberals of any stripe quaking in their boots. Heh.

Comments

[caltechgirl]

wow. That's really sad when you look at it that way.

I was thinking that another thing that splits the groups is the role of the individuals in community building. Almost everyone in group 2 has been associated with trying to improve their community through their works and/or their donations..... Says interesting things to me (as a white person) about the real interests of the "black community" that I wish were less true.

[Jack]

I've always had a lot of discomfort and ambiguity when thinking of racial issues. I grew up just outside of Memphis, Tennessee from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Although I was not subject to it directly, I was a witness to an incredible and outrageous amount of discrimination, and I was the subject of discrimination in my first "real job" after graduate school in the late 1980s because I worked for a Japanese-owned company and I was not Asian.

I wish this was an easy problem to solve, but I fear that it requires at least another 15 years for the culture to change enough so that no longer is there not a "victim mentality" but there is also unambiguously no need for that mentality.

[Kevin Murphy]

It's the very aspiration to upward mobility that is offensive. It conflicts with class dynamics for blacks to attempt to join the [strike]bourgeoisie[/strike] middle class.

Watts is authentic. Ladera Heights is not.

[baldilocks]

Watts is authentic. Ladera Heights is not.

:-)

[DagneyT]

I think the President's description of "soft racism" should be aptly applied to this viewpoint!

[Dave Schuler]

I have to admit that I've been somewhat puzzled by the adulation that's been accorded to Barack Obama. Not because he's not a fine human being (not to mention one of the few bright spots for Democrats on Nov. 3) but as a standard bearer for African Americans.

How could anyone be any further separated from the African American experience in America than Barack Obama? Kenyan father, white mother, raised in Hawaii. Where would he have gained exposure to the African American experience?

[Paul]

I see a big difference as a 60 years old white guy! Group two I would invite into my home and want to share their thoughts with my wife, kids, and grandkids. Group one I want nothing to do with and have no desire to share anything with! My choice has nothing to do with color.

p.s. Larry Elder would have to bring his mother along (The Chief Justice). She is just great!

[Montie]

Juliette,

I have seen this before. A lady that I used to date and still remain close friends with has run into this frequently. She works in the local office of a Federal law enforcement agency (which is how I came to know her). She is a Black female conservative Christian, and registered as a Republican.

She has told me of numerous incidents where she has been told that she "isn't black" because of her views and politics, and I witnessed a couple firsthand when we were dating.

She also got grief from men who were complete strangers to her for "dating a white man" when we were involved, even from one guy who was married to a white woman! It seemed that it was OK for a black man to be involved with a white woman without losing his "blackness" but not for a black woman involved with a white man.

[Ken Summers]

You can add Ward Connerly to the second list. He has actually been called a "race traitor" for opposing racial quotas and marrying a white woman.

[baldilocks]

Dave Schuler: I'm half Kenyan--of the same tribe as Obama, as a matter of fact. And though my mother is a black American and I was born in Illinois and raised in LA in a designated "hood," I'm also told that I don't represent the "'African American' experience" either.

"The 'African American' experience" is any experience that a black person is having in America.

Who died and made *anybody* the arbiter of all things black?

[Yeff]

My standard answer for people who tell me I don't act black enough is, "You didn't make me black, you can't take it away."

Most people don't have an answer to that one.

[Army of Mom]

You go girl! My college roomie got so much grief from her family for living with a white girl and acting white that she tried to put a little ghetto in her life and it was awful. She was miserable trying to act like she felt she was supposed to and in the end she gave up and was happy again. I have many friends - of all colors - and I hate to see people put each down because they don't live up their expectations. I live in Texas, but I don't ride a horse to work or wear a cowboy hat. Yet another stereotype up in smoke. I think I'm blogrolling you honey! Thanks.

[baldilocks]

Yeff: I like!

[Iron Mike]

J--
I noticed Walter Williams on your list. Thomas Sowell and Ken Hamblin could be added too!

Sonja "found" W.Williams when we were in Alaska (92-96) and is absolutely in love with him/his mind. She reads everything he writes and listens to him whenever he's subbing for Rush. She laughs at his funny comments about his wife. Sonja and I are sure that his wife runs the house/marriage.

Sonja was really jealous of me about a month or so ago. I am taking a class at George Mason, and remembered one day that Williams works there. SO I looked up his faculty webpage, found out his office number/building, and went to see if I could meet him.

I expected a secretary as guard...of course people would be lined up to talk to him. But no, as a matter of fact, he was sitting at his secretary's desk checking email. I met him, told him thanks for writing such great stuff. He asked me my name, thanked me, and I left.

I felt so dorky that I emailed him the next day, apologizing for my ramblings of the day prior. He told me no problem, and told me to make an appointment next semester to come and sit and talk with him!

Sonja is so jealous!!!

[baldilocks]

Iron Mike: I'm jealous too!

[Colonel Nikolai]

I'm a liberal and I think the "liberal" Air America is pretty stupid: as stupid as AM Radio's The Patriot, which is "conservative" radio station in these parts. Hatemongering on either side of the political spectrum is just stupid. To lump all of us liberals in the Air America camp is not at all an accurate assessment, black or white. (Yes, I know the actual text of your post did not lump us all in there, but!)

I have no problem with real conservatives, which doesn't mean I agree with your views: some I do, some I do not. The difference between finding common ground between us is really how willing each participant is to interpret the facts outside of his own local prejudice and historical attachments.

[jeff]

At my old job, I worked with lots of intelligent, middle class blacks. Without exception, they all sneered at Condi Rice, & without exception, they passionately defended OJ Simpson & Jesse Jackson.

The message to their kids is clear: it's okay to be a thug, a killer, a huckster, a wife beater, an adulterer, & to treat women like shit, but to be provost of Stanford University & National Security Advisor is to be the worst kind of scum. In other words, to excel is to sell out.

Judging by the statistics, black youth are getting that message

[Cassandra]

It's the very aspiration to upward mobility that is offensive. It conflicts with class dynamics for blacks to attempt to join the [strike]bourgeoisie[/strike] middle class.

I think you've hit it right on the nose, and it's not just a black thing.

I had a very close friend from the South side of Chicago - she was white, half Irish, half Serbian, and I was pushing her to go to college (I was returning to college at the time) because she was obviously extremely intelligent. She just couldn't see herself there - it was viewed as a betrayal of her working-class roots. It took 3 years of talking to her to try to change her mind. I didn't think I'd succeeded when we left.

A few years ago I caught up with her - she was just finishing school.

My daughter-in-law experienced the same thing. She's also white, and the first in her family to graduate college. She is as smart as they come. She worked all the way through high school and saved enough to put herself through community college and then a four-year school. She will graduate with her Masters next month.

Her family made $70K a year: more than enough to help with her school, but they viewed a college education as a total waste of time. Not one of them attended her graduation ceremony. They actually asked her what made her think she was better than they were!

I'm so proud of her for getting out of the dead-end town she grew up in (there were no jobs there) and making something of herself. She doesn't think she's better than her family - she just wanted some security and was smart enough to look at the mistakes her family made and learn something from them.

In the military, we've had several close friends (black) who have invited nieces and nephew to live with them to get out of bad neighborhoods or family situations. They are viewed as race traitors because they have nice houses and steady jobs. It's silly. They earned what they have. And now they're trying to pass on that knowledge to the next generation: that's how cultures prosper.

I think people are just afraid of having the excuse for failure taken away from them.

[big al]

Regarding Casandra's comments about advanced education: Since I live in a small resource based industry village,where if you get a job you'll make pretty good middle income money,I'm really quite suprised at the back lash on higher education. Up here if you can get a job in the logging industry it's considered good. But if graduate from high school and head off to the bright lights(big city to you)to university or college, it's considered a lot better.......I guess technically,I'm a redneck good ole boy,but I think Ms. Rice should be held up for every little black kid(especially girls) to aspire to. Even much more if she gets a run at the presidential or even vice-presidential spot in four years. Hell,Colin Powell,first black Sec. of State,where's the racism?......And as for Bill Cosby,much as I like raunchy comedy,the guy can make you wet yourself and not even say "damn" never mind the "Seven Words".

[Cassandra]

I wish we could get to a place in this country where the trades were respected again.

I'm not sure everyone needs to go to college. We do a great disservice to students when we try to flatten out the bell curve - why not design a basic HS diploma that assumes reasonable reading/writing/math/civics/science proficiency: in other words, enough to be a good citizen. Let students graduate with that, if they are so inclined, and move into a skilled trade if that is their desire.

If they want to go to college, great. Let them take advanced coursework, but don't try to put students who aren't interested in those courses. They just hold everyone else back and the end result is that the course gets dumbed down because (and I know this is politically incorrect) God knows we can't allow anyone to fail, because failure is inherently racist, sexist, and inegalitarian.

Well guess what: men (and women, for that matter) are created UNEQUAL.

There is always going to be someone smarter, faster, and better-looking than you are, not to mention harder-working.

Competition is the name of the game in the working world.

Why on earth are we trying to eliminate it from our schools? We are training for failure, not success.

I'm not suggesting that we turn our schools into American Gladiator. But you don't make kids stronger by shielding them from all of life's little misfortunes. You pick them up, dust them off, and teach them to recover.

And they learn that nothing can keep them down unless they choose to LET it keep them down.

In my mind, that is where true self-esteem comes from: from overcoming obstacles: not from having Mommy, Daddy, or the NEA remove every possible obstacle from your path, lest your precious little foot be bruised by a pebble along the way.

/ rant :)