TheLoop21.com

By: Raechal Leone (Add to your loop)
Thu, 03/26/2009 - 00:00

Heather Chadwell, runner up from "Rock of Love's" first season, is a little embarrassing.

No one person represents an entire group of people, like women or men or black people or white people.

Of course, we know that — or most of us know that. But forget it for just a minute and answer honestly whether you've ever been embarrassed that someone was of the same race as you.

I know it's happened to me.

When Tammy Bruce called Michelle Obama trash and said she was "talking white?" Embarrassed.

Any mention of former Klansman David Duke? Triggers embarrassment and shame over here, both that he's white and from Louisiana.

Every Sunday when I watch Rock of Love Bus on VH1? Yes, I feel embarrassed by the fact that usually all but one of the stripper mom contestants on that show are white women like me. (Well, that also says something embarrassing about me; At least I know enough to be embarrassed about watching it.)

I'd never thought about it much until lately. In the last month, a couple of my black co-workers have mentioned being embarrassed someone was black. The first time was at Tavis Smiley's State of the Black Union here in Los Angeles. As we walked in the door, a woman handing out programs gave me one, then turned to someone and not quietly enough, said, "I got whitey."

OK, that was just awkward. Two of my friends needlessly apologized. They didn't know her, but she was black like them. Same scenario happened again just this week when four black guys driving on a street near our office said out their car window that several of us walking were "not used to seeing black people."

Both of those incidents were relatively harmless — I mean, I didn't apologize to anyone about this — but they got me thinking about why we are embarrassed about someone we don't even know doing something we have no control over.

It's not just us, either.

BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com had a post this week called "Local black government officials often embarrass our race."

When we asked last fall — on the heels of Jesse Jackson's infamous and colorful comments about Barack Obama — if you were ever embarrassed when famous blacks acted "crazy," the results were split. Of the 43 votes cast in our poll, the answers "Yes, it reinforces stereotypes" and "No, they don't represent all blacks" each earned 36 percent.

But why do we even care?

Part of it, I think, is that we know some people really do overgeneralize. They really do know only a couple people of another race or religion or sexual preference.

Just look at all the talk about Obama being the new spokesman for blacks during the presidential campaign. Why should there just be one or even a few spokespersons for an entire race of people? (For the record, a Gallup poll last July found that 29 percent of blacks surveyed preferred Obama, compared to 4 percent who preferred Jackson for the pseudo position.)

So while I know it doesn’t make much sense, I can't stop myself from being embarrassed about what Bruce said this week any more than I can stop her from saying what she did.

What do you think? Are you ever embarrassed that someone is of the same race as you? When and why? Let me know in the comments.

Raechal Leone is TheLoop21.com's senior editor and writes the Inside the Loop blog.