Racial Cornball and Cornrows

How about the latest edition of the black identity slavemaster saga in which a “genuine” black man disparages a black man deemed “inauthentic” for not conforming to the first’s stereotype of what it means to be black? 

Of course, I am talking about Rob Parker, a black sports commentator, who on the December 13, 2012 ESPN, First Take show asked whether black Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is "a brother or is he a cornball brother?"   Actually, the question was no question, only a pretense for “dissing” the not-black-enough RG3.  Speaking of Griffin, Parker explained that  

Well, he’s black, he kind of does his thing. But he’s not really down with the cause, he’s not one of us.  He’s kind of black. But he’s not really the guy you’d really want to hang out with because he’s off to do something else … I want to find out about him. I don’t know, because I keep hearing these things. We all know he has a white fiancee.  There was all this talk about he’s a Republican, which, there’s no information at all. I’m just trying to dig deeper as to why he has an issue.

Only when Skip Bayless, a white co-commentator, asked “What do RG3’s braids say to you?” did Parker concede,

Now that’s different, because to me that’s very urban and makes you feel like he would have a clean cut if he was more straight-laced or not.  Wearing braids is you’re a, you’re a brother.   

Before Rob Parker’s comments, we had heard uniformly positive spin about Griffin, the man and the athlete.  The disparagement came exactly one day after RG3 had told Tom Corbett of USA Today Sports, "You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That's what I've tried to go out and do."  In short, Griffin was being verbally spanked by Parker for being so naughty as not to toe racial color line talking points about hypermasculine black pride. 

Now that racial double standards and double speak is troubling enough.  But equally disturbing is the story’s subtext, unspoken but always lingering just under the surface, a subtext unwittingly revealed by the commentary of Julee Wilson, HuffPost Black Voices Style and Beauty editor. 

Ms. Wilson began her HuffPost Live remarks by saying all the commonsense things that any objective, rational person would say, underscoring how inappropriate Parker had been.  However, toward the end she said,

There are times (in the black community) where people are like, “Oh, you’re not down, or you’re not like with the community.  That sort of thing but I mean that’s, you know, that’s kinda like these inner conversations that we have.  To put it, one, on that scale and, two, even to put it in question for him in particular is kinda crazy.  I, I, I don’t know.” 

Julee Wilson thus reveals the absurd racial preoccupation endemic to black culture, a culture whose people tell white America that they want to be judged not by race, but by the content of their characters.  And by the presence or absence of “cornball” cornrows?  Pure double standards and double speak.

And, oh, by the way, according to Wikipedia,  Rob Parker also had called Hank Aaron “a coward” when Aaron refused to attend the baseball game during which Barry Bonds broke Aaron’s record. 

Right to Work and Right to Abort

Freedom, self-determination, and the right to choose:  that is how so-called liberals frame the abortion issue.   Women must be able to make their own independent, autonomous decisions.  No one should tell a woman what to do after she “mistakenly” becomes pregnant. 

Those same liberals have quite a different view of that same pregnant woman’s employment rights.  Liberals believe that pregnant women should be coerced into union membership, if they want to work.  There is no right to choose when choosing conflicts with liberal opinions.  In fact, liberal Michigan requires workers to pay union dues in union shops even when the worker, herself, is not a union member.

Here, once again, we observe the double standards and double speak so characteristic of liberalism.  The strident voices of liberal elite assail us with their visions of equality and justice.  But their pronouncements about justice and equality are identity-bound.  If you are a “loyal,” card-carrying  union worker, you are a true American patriot and deserve to be compensated handsomely, but if you decline a union, you are a scab who should be thrown out the door. 

Right to work laws permitting employees to decide whether or not to join a union are anathema to Obama liberals.  They apparently see a slippery slope:  If you let workers autonomously decide about their union membership, next thing you know they will expect to vote for whomever they want, a prelude to the demise of the Democratic Party. 

Control the purse strings and you control the labor union electorate.  Make the masses understand in no uncertain terms that the Democrats and the union bosses hold your jobs in the palms of their hands.  If you resist domination, you will be crushed, but if you play along, you will be richly rewarded.   For instance, according to Jeanne Sahadi of CNNMoney (January 31, 2012), “Federal workers with no more than a high school education are paid 21% more on average than their private-sector peers, and have average benefits worth 72% more.” 

Federal and other public sector unions vigorously promote private sector unions as well.  They know that once private sector dominoes begin falling, public unions cannot be far behind.  Josh Hicks of the Washington Post illustrated the tight public-private alliance when on December 12, 2012 he quoted J. David Cox, American Federation of Government Employees president, as he reacted to passage of Michigan’s new right to work law:

“This profoundly anti-democratic action is an affront to anybody who believes in democratic processes or even basic decency … The people of Michigan do not want this law, and Governor Snyder and the lawmakers who are trying to enact this anti-worker bill before their terms expire at the end of the year know full well that what they are doing is immoral and unjust.”

David Cox, and like-minded liberal democrats, then, believe that it is an affront, indecent, immoral, and unjust that Michigan employees, even pregnant ones, are free to choose or reject union membership, and free not to pay union membership dues when they decide not to join the union.  Double standards and double speak at its best.  God bless you, Mr. Cox, I could not have dreamed up a better example of the doubles.   I suggest that you assert your “I’ll decide for you” position in your discussions with  those who advocate a woman right to choose abortion.