By Nicholas Stix
A friend sent me a link today to a well-written, hard-hitting new blog, Guy White: Making Sense on Race.
I hope that “Guy White” has the tenacity to maintain his blog, and that his name is a play on “white guy,” as writing honestly on race is not good for white men’s health.
We also need writings on divisive racial code words expressed by US Senator Barack Obama. Here are three.
ReplyDeleteACTING WHITE
Obama used this stereotype ("acting white") in his famous July 27, 2004, Democratic Convention speech. He claimed that the context was when some black American students mock more studious black American students. And he even remarked in his speech that this stereotype against black students by black students was slander! But he neglected to speak out against the way these code words mocked and denigrated diverse white Americans, smothered our diversity, and tended to divide our nation on a racial basis.
With this vocabulary, how does he bridges the black-white gap?
WHITE RESENTMENTS
Obama memorialized this stereotype ("white resentments") about the diverse white American peoples' feelings in his March 19, 2008, speech on race. Once again we see his underlying claim to supremacy, the kind that claims the right to describe and define entire demographic groups. As code words, "white resentments" is also an attempt to smother our diversity, to name our feelings, and to mock legitimate emotional responses.
How does he bridge that gap?
TYPICAL WHITE PERSON
Obama used this code phrase during a radio interview on March 20, 2008, in his shocking reference to his grandmother. He had already "thrown her under the bus" in his March 19, 2008, speech. (There is something of the King Lear and post-flood Noah narratives in his disgusting and loathsome references to his grandmother.)
The stereotype of "typical white person" is another effort to belittle diverse white Americans, to smother our diversity, to divide the nation on a racial basis, and to use a formulation that has long since been identified as an unacceptable way to describe people in the African American, Asian American, and Latino American demographics. Try using "typical black person," "typical Asian person," or "typical Latino person" in public discourse and watch the metaphorical pitchforks and torches advance, double-time, toward your person, your family, your home, and your employment. Of course, Obama knows that this formulation is inappropriate and arrogant. His sense of supremacy, however, tells him that he is entitled to use this code phrase without social or political harm to himself.
The famous bridge seems to have collapsed.
Awesome link Nick.
ReplyDeleteI think the Jeremiah Wright link has changed the national perception of Barack Obama from "a Tiger Woods-like" character who "transcended race," to just another liberal-black candidate, making amends to racial arsonists within the black community because he knows white society is largely led by appeasers.
I think this is why so many GOP strategists prefer to run against Obama - he has tons of such skeletons, from Jeremiah Wright to James Meeks to Bill Ayers to Anthony Rezko and on and on.