OINK, OINK, OINK, THIS LITTLE PIGGY CRIED SEXISM AND RAN WITH IT ALL THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE

You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still pig! The republicans can talk about change but if you use the same old tactics you’re still the same ole fascist pig!

I’m with Obama, ENOUGH is ENOUGH. How many Willie Hortons do we have to suffer through election after election after election? Our House is FALLING DOWN people. We are in two tragic wars and winning neither. Our economy is in the shitter! Our children think George Bush is the member of a boy band! Most American adults read at a 7th grade level and comprehend at a 5th grade level. And what is the major issue serious news shows are tackling all day phony outrage over an innocent comment made by a Presidential candidate making a point about spinning change! ARE WE F-ING CRAZY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

We should all know by now that the Republicans do the same hatchet job every four years. Republicans decimated Mike Dukasis in 1988 when they married him to Willie Horton, a black man who raped a woman while out on a state furlough program. In 2000 the Republicans made Al Gore out to be a liar, by saying that he (Gore) said, he invented the internet. Truth is, if it wasn't for Gore there would be no internet today. Four years later it was John Kerry’s turn. The Republicans hunted down the men he commanded as a Swift Boat Captain and put them on TV to say that Kerry had lied about receiving wartime medals. This also turned out to be untrue. Now it’s Barack Obama’s turn. The Republicans are beating up on Obama like he dissed McCain’s mama. It's a lie a day, he’s not really an American, he’s a Muslim, a racist, a sexist, a terrorists, uppity, teaches sex education to five year olds, the list goes on.

Every election the Republicans roll-out the wheel-barrow fill it full of dirt and dump it on the American electorate, and we wallow in the mud loving every minute of it. This election is no exception. Republicans seem to understand Americans far more than Democrats. 1. Americans by and large are lazy and stupid. It’s true. In America smart people are called geeks, or nerds and outcasts. Nobody wants to be smart. To be smart you have to read, study, research; you have to do stuff. Both John McCain and George Bush finished near the bottom of their respective college graduating classes and people love them. Barack Obama was editor of the Harvard Law Review and he's called an elitist. 2. Americans like to drink. They sold George Bush as the guy you’d want to have a drink with. Hilary Clinton had to show hutzpa by drinking shots in a bar. Barack looked uncomfortable in a bar. 3. Americans love a good mudslinging fight. The more mud the better, John McCain a quick study has started blindly throwing mud Barack's way. Barack is merely deflecting, but he hasn't joined in the fray.

Democrats on the other hand stubbornly wait for Americans to “get it,” to realize that the country is going to hell in a hand basket and someone has got to govern! I have news for them, Americans don’t get it. For many the government is a vast labyrinth of branches, departments, bills, regulations, laws and layers usually used to do more harm than good to the American public. Most don’t know the difference between the House and the Senate, Executive vs. Legislative, a bill vs. a law; it’s all to confusing so let’s just not think about it.

Democrats like also like insist on having “confidence,” that Americans will see these tactics for what they are insidious and divisive. Wrong again Americans don’t live in segregated neighborhoods and small towns for nothing. We all know that suburbia is mostly white and Urban is most black or brown. There are not Baptists churches but white Baptists churches and White Baptists churches. Whites live in “safe,” neighborhoods, blacks live in violent neighborhoods. We are already a divided country they simply remind us just how divided we are.

That’s all well and good and I understand the game. But the world has changed. I’ve been to Asia on several trips. Japanese grandparents walk around typing on blackberries, while bullet trains whiz commuting executives 288 miles an hours to jobs 300 miles away from home every morning and whizzes them back home every evening. They generate electricity by burning their waste, schoolchildren walk down the streets with mini laptops. I witnessed this in Japan 10 years ago. If Japan was 50 years ahead of us 10 years ago where do you think they are educationally and technologically today? India now has more billionaire than any other country. This is a nation that just 40 years ago was one of the poorest in the world.

Obama has to figure out a way to wrestle this campaign away from the Republican smear makers. Our existence as a country depends on it. To do so he will have to steal a few pages from the Republican play book. I’m sorry but he has got to start slinging some serious mud himself. He has got to use John McCain’s strengths against him. He has to turn “Country First,” into “Campaign First.” He has to turn his choice of Sarah Palin into a cheap trick, and he has to do it immediately.

Republicans Using Black Conservatives to Attack Obama

Has anyone noticed the surprising number of African Americans on TV representing the conservative end of the Republican Party, touting the wonders of John McCain and the horrors of Barack Obama? In all my years of watching cable news and listening to Republican pundits, never before have I seen so many black conservatives paraded across my television screen. Joe Watkins, Larry Elder, Ron Christie and other black conservatives, have taken out of hiding and propped up on TV to support a white man against a black man.

There’s an old saying among black folks. When whites really want to attack a black man and keep their hands clean, they get another black person to do it. It legitimizes the attack. White pundits can only ask vague coded questions about the readiness of Americans to vote for an African American candidate. To go for the juggler and use Obama’s race against him they need someone who won’t be restrained by would be accusations of abject racism. They need a black person. Conservative black pundits have no such restraints. They can say on TV what whites can’t say. While white pundits can’t get on TV and say that whites are not going to vote for a black man period, but the black pundits can.

Joe Watkins went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and said, “White people are running away from Barack Obama in droves,” a white Republican pundit wouldn’t be able to do in such blunt terms. Watkins who has been a rabid attack dog used against Obama, seems to be making it personal with Watkins, he doesn’t just want to defeat Obama, he, wants to destroy him. When the Reverend Wright story broke Watkins worked overtime appearing on all of the three top cable news channels CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, condemning Obama as a closet racist. Watkins has also accused Obama of trying to start a race war. On August 1st Watkins was asked to give his impression of how Obama handled hecklers in St. Petersburg, Fl., Joe started off by saying that Obama handled the situation the right way, then veered way off the highway by adding, “I only wish he would handle John McCain the same way instead of trying to turn this into a race war.” I had to do a Scooby Do! What did he just say? Did he just accuse a presidential candidate of trying to start a “race war?” He went on to say that Obama was “Waging a Race War,” rather than a presidential campaign.

Larry Elder another black conservative has not only married Obama to Reverend Wright but to Louis Farrakhan, as well, stating that the church that Obama attended for 20 years assisted Farrakhan in organizing the Million Man March alluding that Obama, himself was involved.

None of this is new of course, as the country waged the civil war to free the slaves, it was the house slaves who took up arms to protect their white slave masters, and the institution of slavery, sleeping literally at the foot of the bed with guns in hand.

So it is today with Watkins, Elders, and Christie, house slaves protecting the masters. Christie was a house slave who worked for Vice President Dick Cheney as deputy assistant for domestic policy. Watkins also worked in the house as associate director in the Office Public Liaison at the White House under President George HW Bush as well as being the staff of Dan Quayle and Larry Elder who wrote the book “Stupid Black Men, How to Play the Race Card and lose.”

Food for thought; if Joe Watkins a black man had got on TV and called the Loyola women’s basketball team “nappy headed hos,” no one would have raised a brow, but because a white man Don Imus said it, a firestorm was set and Imus was fired. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Michelle Obama! Resplendent!

Monday night Michelle Obama was given a simple task; tell the world how she is just like them. Just like regular Americans.

So much has been said about Michelle Obama and very little of it good. She was stereotyped horribly, called an angry black woman, unpatriotic, militant, a woman who made fun of her husband, someone who did not play well to Middle America. To me Michelle was beautiful. Timidly trying to step into a role so completely improbable that I’m sure she did not even dream of it as young girl; wife of the President of the United States of America. For a black woman the thought of being first-lady, let alone President would not have been an impossible dream, it would not have even been a dream. Young African-American girls do not have such dreams. It is a thoroughly alien proposition that my granddaughter would lay in her bed at night and dream that her African-American husband could be president, or that she could be President. It simply would never happen.

Strike everything I have just said, because Michelle Obama is here! She’s a tickle behind the ear of every pig-tailed black girl in America. I could be president; I could be married to the President. I can dream; and those dreams can actually come true.

The most splendid thing about Michelle Obama that has yet to be said is that when her husband, Barack Obama came home one day and said; I want to be President, she didn’t doubt him, she believed! He believed in something impossible; and she believed it right along with him. What’s more she got in to the fight with him. She supported him, got behind him, rolled up her sleeves and worked for him. Monday night at the DNC she delivered America for him.

Who is this woman, this Carthaginian? The world has never seen anything like her. Oprah though beloved by all, is not attempting to attain the highest office in the land. She is alone, an alien in a world that has never seen anything like her. Women who look like her have never been considered beautiful, soft, loyal, hardworking, dedicated, disciplined, nurturing, smart, intelligent, articulate, passionate, or feminine. Because she is all of these things, she certainly can not be “black enough,” to be black. She has entered a world that does not understand her, who is she, and what is she? To them she is a circus freak show. They poke, prod, diagnose and label.

But I know her, I see Michelle Obama in every woman I know, she is my mother, Beatrice Houston, the first African American woman to be trained as an Engineer for GM’s Oldsmobile, in 1966 in Lansing, MI. When my mother arrived at the entrance gate of Oldsmobile, she was told that the "cook's" gate was in the rear. With her head held high, my mother told the guard that she did not come here to cook. She is a friend, Spring Myles, who was a single mother of twins, working full-time during the day as a CPA, and attending law school at night. She reminds me of my sister Joyce, a mother of four, who while pregnant, stood up all day working as a cashier, and still managed to get straight A’s and graduate college with a difficult medical degree, my sister Catherine matriarch of a blended family of five children, who then adopted another child abandoned by her mother. She worked on the factory floor at GM, hefting a 30 pound hammer up to the door of thousands of cars a week for 10 years. Catherine left GM and followed her dream and is now a minister of her own church. As I said before, in my world Michelle Obama is every woman I know. She is just like us. She is an American Woman.

She's Gone Country!

I arrived in Detroit, Mi in 1954; I’d just turned two years old. I was just in time to witness Motown burst onto the scene. Motown took the urban sound mainstream. Soul music which had been an underground favorite of southern blacks and urban whites was taken out of the plain brown wrapper and placed on the top ten charts. The Motown sound was young, fresh, and upbeat, juxtaposed against the raw, passion filled sound of southern rhythm and blues. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown had found a soulful formula of lyrics and beat that white kids could sing and dance to along with their parents, making it legit. As a young girl, I went to sleep dreaming of the Temptations, and the Supremes became sex symbols for both black and white adolescent boys. I knew every word to every song and practiced the moves for hours on end.

Once Motown broke through, the door was kicked open and, the Philly Sound a more raw resonant sound rose up to compete with Gordy and his lovesick crooners. Soul music poured in from everywhere, Chicago, New York, DC. Martha and the Vandellas were “Calling out around the world,” asking “are you ready for a brand new beat.” We were, but everything changed in November 1963.

As a teen growing up in the contradiction of the 50’s and 60’s music more than anything defined the times and told our story. To this day I remember what was playing on the radio the day John F Kennedy was shot. It’s a song that still makes me cry and yet gives me hope. Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” The melody is slow and sad, but the lyrics are hopeful:

“People get ready, there's a train comin'

You don't need no baggage, you just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'

You don't need no ticket you just thank the lord

People get ready, there's a train to Jordan

Picking up passengers coast to coast

Faith is the key, open the doors and board them

There's hope for all among those loved the most

There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner whom would hurt all mankind

Just to save his own

Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner

For there is no hiding place against the kingdoms throne

People get ready there's a train comin'

You don't need no baggage, just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'

You don't need no ticket, just thank the lord.”

As the decade continued we tried to maintain our innocence. Detroit was as much a dance town as a musical town. We learned how to Detroit Bop, Social and Ballroom along with the shing-a-ling, watusi, and cool jerk. At the same time colored people became black people, words like civil rights and we shall overcome crept into our vocabulary. Dr. King was marching across the south and the swell of pride was written into soul music. When King was shot, in 1968, James Brown’s “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud,” surged to number one. The lyrics were written to make a strong statement of pride not hatred; and Brown was able to make his statement of black pride without being disrespectful to whites, he even sang it on American Bandstand. “Say it loud,” became an anthem that spurred a generation to want to live up to the proclamation once again we all sang along.

Woodstock occurred in 1969 most performers fell under the stupor of drugs and stumbled through the 70s. The Motown sound was beginning to wane. Marijuana, heroin, and LSD got into the best homes; good kids from good homes got hooked. Music was about to evolve once again. The beat and the lyrics became hard driving. Curtis Mayfield was still the troubadour commenting on the times. Mayfield had decided, “If there’s A Hell below, We’re all Gonna Go.” Followed by “Pusherman,” and “Freddie’s Dead.’ And he was right; drugs were on everyone’s mind. The once clean cut, mainstream Temptations succumbed and lifted off to “Cloud Nine,” Grace Slick really believed she was 10 feet tall, and Pink Floyd was “Comfortably Numb.” Precious few made it out of the 70s Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Mama Cass Elliott all perished. You knew the good times were over when the Supremes broke up.

The 80’s was the “Me,” generation the music reflected the hedonism of the times. Rick James debuted “She a Super Freak,” in 1981 and unleashed the thankfully short lived disco era. Donna Summer had an orgasm right on the radio. She was a bad girl. Patti Labelle and the Blue Bells sang song so dirty it had to be song in French.

Then along came the Sugar Hill Gang. Hip Hop had arrived. It started off innocently enough party songs spoken rhythmically over music breaks. But I was a woman now with children of my own. As a child I used to sing Motown hits with my father, as a Mother I couldn’t sing disco with my sons. I took my son to see, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious five, Curtis Blow, and Melle Mel in Kalamazoo, MI. They were booed off the stage, but this wasn’t the sign of times to come. They would recover and I believe set R&B and soul music on a sad journey of no return.

Hip Hop splintered and the upbeat the raps of Doug E Fresh, MC Lyte and Queen Latifah was pushed aside by Gangsta Rap, and in my opinion its vile, tasteless, meaningless lyrics poisoned an entire generation of music makers. For the first time in my life I heard a woman being referred to as a “bitch,” over the radio no less. I had my children in the car. I was stung, embarrassed, and ashamed. I didn’t know what to make of it. These new young, angry troubadours were only describing life on the streets they said, the streets are mean, dirty and full of death they said. We may not live through the day, we live for the moment, our fathers are gone, our mothers are bitches, our women are whores and we are their pimps, our music reflects this, they said.

But wasn’t the 60s mean, dirty and full of death? JFK was shot in 1963 and the bloodletting didn’t stop until Bobby Kennedy’s death in 1968. I saw people being beaten in the streets, hosed down and attacked by dogs, little girls blown to bits, Kent State, the draft, and Vietnam and happened during the 60s. Yet our music was full of hope. Curtis Mayfield told us to “Keep on Pushing,” and “We’re a Winner,” and as black women we were all “Miss Black America.” We asked for and got RESPECT. Gangsta Rap killed hope. I’m a grandmother now; and for a long time I was afraid to even turn on the radio with my grandkids in the car. Afraid of what they might hear, of how my granddaughters would feel about themselves being referred to as bitches and whores.

I visited my grandchildren several times a year, making the trip by car from Detroit to Connecticut, taking the shortcut across Canada and upper state New York. You can continue to receive the Motown stations for about 40 miles into Canada after that it became a musical wasteland. You had to bring your own music with you, or heaven help you during the long 12 hour trip between Detroit and Hartford.

On one of my trips down the mountains of upstate New York I broke down and tuned the radio to a local country station. To my surprise I enjoyed every tune I heard. Especially a tune by Rodney Atkins, “If You’re Going Through Hell,” the tune and the lyrics were infectious I actually found myself singing along.

You step off the straight and narrow

And you don't know where you are

Used the needle of your compass, to sew up your broken heart

Ask directions from a genie in a bottle of jim beam

And she lies to you

That's when you learn the truth

If you're goin' through hell keep on going

Don't slow down if you're scared don't show it

You might get out before the devil even knows you're there”

At that moment that song described my life. I was separated from my husband, unemployed, and between homes. When I heard another song on the same album, “These are My People,”
I stopped at the next service area and bought the CD. I’ve become a big Rodney Atkins fan. Tracy Lawrence, “Find Out Who Your Friends Are,” had a profound affect on me. I bought the CD and played it for my grandkids. We all loved it and sang along. I played it so much that whenever I picked them up, my four year old grandson requested Grand mommy Caron, play my song. Here it is:

Run your car off the side of the road

Get stuck in a ditch way out in the middle of nowhere

Get yourself in a bind lose the shirt off your back

Need a floor need a couch need a bus fare

This is where the rubber meets the road

This is where the cream is gonna rise

This is what you really didn't know

This is where the truth don't lie

You find out who you're friends are

Somebody's gonna drop everything

Run out and crank up their car

Hit the gas get there fast

Never stop to think 'what's in it for me' or 'it's way too far'

They just show on up with their big old heart

You find out who you're friends are

Everybody wants to slap your back

Wants to shake your hand

When you're up on top of that mountain

But let one of those rocks give way then you slide back down look up

And see who's around then

This ain't where the road comes to an end

This ain't where the bandwagon stops

This is just one of those times when

A lot of folks jump off

When the water's high

When the weather's not so fair

When the well runs dry

Who's gonna be there

Now a days my radio is tuned to 92.5 fm Connecticut Country. I swoon over Kenny Chesney, Garth Brooks and Toby Keith. I like the fun songs like “Me and My Gang,” by Rascal Flatts, down home knee slappin songs like “Way Down Yonder on the Chatahoochee,” by Alan Jackson, the beautiful and sad “Live Like I was Dying, by Tim McGraw, or the sweet gospel; "I Saw God Today," by George Straight...

What I’ve found in Country music are meaningful heartfelt lyrics, which tell a story, sad, funny, moral stories, written to great melodies. Songs I can play with my grandkids in the car. Words we can sing out loud and not be embarrassed. Women are referred as Heroes by their Mr. Mom husbands; Country men describe their women as the love of their life, life is meaningless without them. I’d have to go all the way back to 1960s to find a rhythm and blues song where women are placed on a pedestal. The men in country songs sung by both men and women; are loving, supportive, patriotic, hardworking regular Joes, just making a living and trying to do right. Even the raunchy Big and Rich “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,” is more tongue n cheek than dirty.

As a daughter of Motown and child of the sixties I wonder how we got from Brenda and the Tabulations’ “Stay Together Young Lovers,” a beautiful tribute to young love, to the vile, “Stay Together,” by Ludicris. From My Girl to My Ho, R-E-S-P-E-C-T to Super Freak, marriage to misogyny, soul music no longer comes from the soul, it’s manufactured to make a quick buck.

I love to sing even if I can’t carry a tune and I want to be able to share my love of music with my family. Country allows me to this. Gansta Rap and today's rhythm and blues does not. For me the clean easy to remember lyrics and melodies of country is and easy choice.

COMING NEXT MONTH- look for us out on the web at www.thehoustonposts.com.

PLAYING THE RACE CARD

Do you remember where you were when you first heard the term “Playing the Race Card?” Sure you do. You were sitting in front of your TV memerized by the case against O.J. Simson. James Darden accused Johnnie Cocoran of play an Ace of Spade or trump card, in other words playing the race card, when the defense brought up Mark Fuhrman’s racist comments and use of the word “nigger” during the trial. From then on… it was a trial about race, not murder.

The New York Post claimed that Hilary Clinton played the race card when she dismissed Barack Obama as a candidate who will have a hard time winning support from ‘white Americans.’ Clinton Stated; “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,’ she told USA Today in an interview published yesterday. She referred to an Associated Press story on Indiana and North Carolina exit polls ‘that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.’ She added, ‘There's a pattern emerging here.”

Did Geraldine Farraro play the race card when she stated “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro said. When did black men get lucky?

What about Senator Obama’s assertion that Republicans were going to try and make the public afraid of him, because he “doesn’t look like those other presidents on the dollar bill.” I’ve even been accused of playing the race card by employers when I went to them to discuss issues I was having with co-workers?

It appears that both blacks and whites can use the “race card.” The Urban Dictionary asked it members to vote up or down on definitions of “Race Card.” The following definitions came in first, second and third, respectively

639 Up 161 Down “ what "certain folks" like to cry when they don't get their way. Awe.....that shopkeeper won't keep the shop often after closing time for me to shop...I'm going to cry the race card!!!”

551 Up 64 Down “Calling someone racist, even if they aren't, just to get away with something. Jalen played the RACE CARD and all the charges were dropped.”

353 Up 84 Down “When a minority in America (and more recently, Caucasians) try to call foul on a situation that is detrimental to them and say the situation is racially discriminatory. Now, whether it is or not is irrelevant, as such stories are taken as gospel. Because the black woman didn't win in "The Apprentice", she pulled the race card. Miguel had the lowest work rating in the company took 5 personal days in a row and came into work drunk. He was fired, but because he went to the ACLU and pulled the race card, he has his job back.”

Here is the lowest rated definition: 59 Up 167 Down A term that has been misrepresented in recent years to represent what some Black people do when given a raw deal. The original term, from the French, "Carte Blanche" (WHITE card) was used to mean something akin to "I run everything" and was just another euphemism for white supremacy.

George Dei, Karumanchery, et al claims in their book that Playing the Race Card, a term used to “devalue and minimize claims of racism.”

Senator Barack Obama is the first ever African-American in the 400 year history of our country to be nominated by a major party to run for president. And everyone including the party who nominated him is pissed off! Everybody’s wondering; what happened? And what are we gonna do to if we can’t get rid of him. The press has gone wild, scrutinizing his every word, action, thought. Cable TV has all guns blazing minute by minute; no second by second accounts of Obama. Who is he, what is he, where is he? I’ve never seen anything like it. So the county has a black presidential candidate and what in God’s name are we going to do. John McCain has decided to play on the one thing that always works; our fear of each other. He running ads the question his religion, patriotism, race, and yes posibility that he could be the “AntiChrist.”

What is this, thing, that seems to be ground into our American DNA. This sticky mess called racism that we can’t seem to shake. Recent accusations, surrounding the presidential election, of one party or another playing the race card, have moved me to take a look at the new zietgeist on race which makes it unclear just who the victims.

One thing is for sure, America has two obsessions, and it’s not baseball and apple pie. Something far more seductive, an addiction we can’t kick. Like strung out junkies we’ve become a ghost of a country refusing to let go of our addiction to race and sex. In this post we will discuss race. Every decision, every move we make on any given day, in any given moment, begins with how we feel about race. We fool ourselves when we deny it. We try to hide our obession like a junky trying to hide his track marks, by shooting up between his toes. But our every action, give us away. It’s the shadow on the wall beside us. We don’t have to think about it, or do anything to make it happen it’s ingrained in the very fabric that makes us Americans. To deny our racism would be to deny our Americanism. From the moment we are aware of who we are, we are aware of what we are.

We think about race when looking for a home, if whites see too many blacks in the neighborhood it is immediately scratched off the list for this has to be a “bad” neighborhood. Where we go to eat and socialize. I was sitting in a swanky black night club in Detroit, across the street from the Greektown Casino, when a group of whites came through the door. Initially they asked for a table, but then you could see their eyes slowing moving around the bar taking everything in. Once they got a good look around the bar and noticed that there were only three other whites in the place, they changed their minds and left. Conversely when I’ve gone out with white aquaintances to a “white,” sports bar or bar with too many pick-ups outside for my taste, I’ve made an excuse to take a rain check.

Where we send our children to school, the route we take to work, the parks we walk through, movie theatres we attend, movies we see, cars we buy, food we eat, people we invite to our homes, the way we refer to one another; when telling a story we always feel the need to stop and describe the main character by their race; “yesterday, my friend Jill, whose white, fell and hurt herself. Or my husband and his best friend Charles, who happens to be black, went to the game. My sister is married to a black man, or my son is dating a black girl, etc. We have to make sure the listener knows we associate in some broad sense with the other races.

We have black churches and white churches and refer to them as such like the very idea isn’t inherently insane. Whites and blacks alike have fought over the color of Jesus Christ. Race hangs around our necks like an albatross. Like Atlas doomed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders forever. It’s a weight. A heavy weight. When will we get over it already? While the rest of the world has moved on we are still grappling with this monkey on our backs called “Race.” Of course it isn’t out in the open like it used to be, it’s gone underground. It lurks around in the corners and under the bed like the boogey man. Blacks don’t get called “nigger,” these days. They get called the “N-word,” which of course means “nigger.” Lynching has been outlawed. Now you can merely pick them up for a broken tail light, put them in jail and throw away the key.

Blacks don’t drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus; but when a black person sits on a park bench or a bus bench seat, what do the whites do? They stand. Regardless of how tired they look or how many bags they’re carrying; they will not sit down on the same park bench. It’s the little things. And the big things too, like being the only black professional at work and having everything you say and do hyper-scrutinized, never getting the memo, or meeting notices, not having anyone to step into your office and shoot the shit or never being asked out to happy hour.

But wait whites feel the sting of racism or bigotry too. Their black friends feel comfortable blaming them for every bad thing whites have ever done. You’re always feeling like you have to apologize for something, and if you try to fit in, you’re accused of trying to act black. Constantly being told you’re not cool, can’t dance, too uptight, think your better than . . . the list goes on. Blacks can be some of the worst racist you will ever meet. They hate both blacks and whites. What’s more they think they have a right to feel the way the do. It’s all very complicated. We won’t discuss it here.

We acknoweledge that we’re laden with racism that it intrudes on every decision we make sometimes unconcisously. So when someone is accused of playing the race card what exactly are they being accused of? Making up Racism?
I understand that “white guilt,” is a thing of the past, but it’s laughable to me to think that an accusation of racism or discrimination is merely an attempt to attain some undeserved advantage. I think whites have an undeserved advantage, what should I do to level the playing field? If you’re one in 1000, and 999 have stacked to the deck in their favor, should you keep struggling to make it, workin hard for the city? Should you pretend everything's okay because you’ve been given a slightly improved condition over others like you? Or should you play the trump card. The “Race Card.”

Barack Obama is the first black man to be nominated by a national party to run for president. Racism is in play. He has had to defend his citizenship, his religion, his patriotism, where lapel pins when the other candidates didn’t have to, dared on national TV to pledge his alleginace to the flag, have his wife referred to as his “baby mama,” told he only got the nomination because he’s a black man (affirmative action candidate?), been referred to as exoctic and un-American? Sometimes you just have to call a spade what it really is. In this case; I say, throw down the trump card.

Will the Real First Black President Please Stand Up!

Last week Bill Clinton was asked a direct question is Barack Obama ready to lead? Is he qualified? This was a chance for the “first black” president to pass the torch to the “second” black president by exclaiming that yes, of course, without any doubt Sen. Obama is qualified to be President. From one brother to another I give my resounding support. Instead this “brother,” fidgeted, coughed, rubbed his nose, looked cross eyed, did everything but say yes, Obama is without question qualified. He used his moment in history to state unequivocally; “I am not a racist,” which reminded this writer of Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook,” exclamation in 1974. Oh yeah, we learned that no one is ready to be President (especially Obama) and the constitution, not Clinton, determines who is qualified.

The statements were stunning to say the least. Black people loved Clinton! And we all thought he loved us! We naturally assumed that once Hilary gave up her bid for President that Bill, the “first black President,” would naturally do everything in his power to ensure that Obama was elected, right? Wrong. Clinton had done what every powerful white male or female has done for centuries, pretended to love blacks as long as he needed them to achieve his/her goals then drop us like the two dollar whores we are when being linked to us would hinder their political goals. Clinton’s statements provoked me to look deeper into the supposed close relationship between the Clintons and African Americans.

It was Toni Morrison who bestowed onto President Clinton his blackness, when she anointed him the “first black President.” What would move arguably the greatest novelist of our time to bestow upon an American President a white man the title of “first black president.” What had he done to become black? Did he do a reverse Michael Jackson, change his voice, and chemically darken his skin? or Go on his own experimental Black Like Me journey? No, none of the above, Morrison decided that Clinton was black because he as she stated came from a “single-parent household, was born poor, came from the working-class, and was a saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.” Oh yes, his sexuality was “unpoliced,” more evidence of his blackness.

So let me get this straight, if you are born poor or out of wedlock, in his case both, eat a lot of fried chicken and can’t seem to keep your Johnson in your pants, you must be black. I have always felt that we as a people could have moved much farther and faster if we had not defined our “blackness,” in such narrow terms making it easy for anyone to join the club.

White people are freed by being defined as acting “Black,” it gives them license to do things that would otherwise be inexcusable in their own social circles. Things like being “sexually unpoliced,” however, blacks are trapped by the definition. Being black in America if you are an authentic black person means, being something distinctly different than white, being black has rules. A lot of rules. You have to talk a certain way and if you don’t your not black enough. Walk and dance a certain way, also as a Black American you can’t be a deep sea diver, because black people don’t swim or go deep sea diving, you can’t be a entomologists because black people don’t like bugs, can’t be a forest ranger because black people don’t go camping, black people don’t play golf, black people don’t play tennis etc… rules that unfortunately define us in don’ts or can’ts, rather than cans and dos. Bill Clinton, has never been hindered by such rules. Bill Clinton is not nor was he ever been black, which was why he was able to rise from that hovel in Arkansas to go to Yale, meet Hilary become Governor of Arkansas and get elected to two terms as President of the United States of America.

In any case Morrison’s proclamation led me to want to do a little research into why the Clintons were beloved by the black community as to be made honorary black people. I looked to, Steve Benen’s, 2002 article on Salon.com, asking the same question. Why do blacks love Bill Clinton? Benen’s article enumerated on Clinton’s style, and affable manner around black people, as the reason. Alexis Herman reminisced in the article, that Clinton invited her and a Ernest Green, to the Governor’s mansion and they spent the night talking about their college days. This feel good session during which Clinton treated them like regular human beings, apparently made an impression on her. Also, his trip to Africa, no other sitting President had gone, his move to Harlem, he knew the Black National Anthem and so on all superficial with little to no cost to Clinton but which made a big inroads into the black community. Clinton also appointed many blacks to serve during his administration. He fired a few too. Remember Joyce Elders? Lani Guinier? When he moved to Harlem promises were made to the area’s small black business owners, but it wasn’t until Al Gore’s policy advisor Trooper Sanders took over that things began to happen. Clinton’s coming to Harlem also sped up the Gentrification efforts which have led to more losses of black owned business not able to keep up with rising rents.

From my point of view Clinton got us (blacks) on the cheap. We stood by this “brother,” through all of his trials got him re-elected when he would have lost, stood by him during the impeachment speaking out loudly at the shear unfairness of the process. What black people found out during the 2008 primaries is that when it’s all said and done Clinton was just another white boy playing black. He jumped the tracks and went back home when the seas go rough, and in effect so did we.

With Obama, for the first time we had a dog in the fight. As soon as we knew he was a contender we jumped on the train. For the first time we were working for one of our own, blacks cut the Clintons loose and pushed Obama across the finished line. Of course now we have a really pissed off white boy on our hands. One who is extremely powerful and can use his power to help Obama or hurt him. His latest statements show that he has no inclination to help. It seems that once again blacks put their hopes, dreams, and trust in the hands of a white man playing black and got burned.

Today, Blacks are beginning to gain power in their own right. Obama proves that a black man can reach the pinnacle of white power, CEO of America. His trip to Europe confirmed that a black man could be taken seriously by world leaders and stand as a symbol of American leadership and power around the world. So the question becomes, when will black Americans stop fawning over white politicians who during campaigns try to show a level of familiarity around blacks by eating collard greens and corn bread, or making sure that we know their predilection for fried chicken, soul music, show a little rhythm or a taste for black women? When will black leaders and spokespersons who are allowed a certain proximity to white politicians stop being duped by the glamour of nearness?

The hidden meaning behind Morrison’s conferring the title of first black president onto Bill Clinton was, that this was as close as we would ever get to a black man in the white house. The shame of it is she couldn’t imagine a Barack Obama. She just never saw him coming.