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.