TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Thu, 12/10/2009 - 11:38

Are the Black experts on Fox News sellouts?

We are born to a race, to a family, and that does not pre-determine how or what we think, act or believe. With that said, there is something very suspicious about many Black conservaties whose ideas I read about, and whose faces I see — often on Fox News— giving racial cover to white conservatives to go after other average Black folks or political leaders. They are so routinely paraded before us, despite the fact that they make up such a very small minority of Black political thought, it makes me wonder if it is intentional. They might not be intentionally trying to sell out Black people, but they often appear to be used in that way. And they certainly don't seem to mind.

Even though I fully understand we are not a monolithic people, in watching them, I can't help often wondering if they are sellouts, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or just patently unconcerned with the plight of Black people?

This below clip really drives it home. We have former Vice President Dick Cheney essentially calling President Obama a traitor. And here we have a Black man excusing Cheney’s outlandish actions. Once again, a Black man providing cover for a white man as he goes for the jugular of another Black man. In this case, it's particularly concerning because Cheney is intentionally trying to characterize the president as illegitimate, and therefore nearly condoning violence. 

House Negro vs. Field Negro

There is the whole house v. field negro dynamic that we often use to define folks like this. Quite frankly, I’m tired of it. I do not want to be defined today by something that happened in our collective history, especially if it is not useful. We do not appear to use this historical identification in any productive way, as a means to measure our progress (which is how Obama generally references the black experience) or as a means of motivation (which is something that Colin Powell has done quite eloquently). 

If you consider the difference between the Black and Jewish experience, it does make you wonder how our collective identity affects our ability to rise above adversity. Jewish people tend to use their history and cement that history of oppression through religious ceremony and customs, much like the Black community does. But it appears to be something that binds them as a people yet motivates them as individuals.

I know there are huge differences between the Black and Jewish experience, and comparing the Black experience with the immigrant experience as well. Many of those non-Black minorities came to this country as tradespeople. They often represent the most entrepreneurial of their people, the ones who would venture to another country to claim their fortunes.

But I must admit that as a people we have historically appeared to use our history as a “collective grief.” We have, at times, nurtured that grief. Even now, we continue to use our historical framing as a way of discrediting folks who look like us but do not think like us. And much of this rhetoric has, especially among younger Black Americans, become irrelevant.

So the premise of the Black conservative is reasonable. There is something to be said about this “Get over it,” mantra. This wave of thought that is much more about personal responsibility than using the old grievance dynamic as a crutch.

The problem with Black conservatives is that they do not seem to understand that, we as a people, no longer cling to that “grievance dynamic.”  They are still shouting get over it, even as most Black people have in fact done just that. It seems being defined as "house negroes" has made them "resentful" negroes. It seems that they have been so absent from the Black political landscape that they really no longer even know the issues we are now debating.

Black conservatives cling to principles and policies that not only oppress Black people but oppress all minority people. Even as their party, the Republican party, regresses to the world of intolerance and stubborn adherence to ideas that have already failed all of us as American people, Black conservatives continue trying to debate issues that are simply no longer on the table.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. OK. Who cares? The Democratic party is full of racists. OK. Racism has no political persuasion. Black crime is killing the Black community. Yes, we know that. What do you propose to solve the issue? Black men need to take more responsibility for their family. Once again, OK. That’s true, tell us something we don’t already know.

The race and class debate is not about offering an image of an oppressed people who are without fault, it is about solving issues and about understanding the full context into which many oppressed people are born and must rise above. Black conservatives, much like their white counterparts, offer no solutions. It would seem their proclamations are simply meant as a way to unburden themselves from caring. 

“When the new Black conservatives accent Black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of Black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people,” wrote Dr. Cornel West in an essay called Unmasking the Black Conservative. “We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of Black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking this, the new Black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming Black poor people for their predicament.”

Was it wrong for Palin to use LL Cool J's old interview for her own show's promotion?

Yes, it's a misrepresentation

No, it's a smart tactic

Maybe, it's just lame

I didn't know Palin has a show

I'm not sure