I am curious. Do you like
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
Please forgive this racially insensitive question but I really want to
know.
Yes, peanut butter and jelly questions are racially insensitive
according to Verenice Gutierrez, principal of the Harvey
Scott School of Portland, Oregon who asserted that asking my question is an
example of racism in language. Verenice
argues: “What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches? Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat
peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you.
Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”
Apparently, Ms. Gutierrez is referring to Somali or
Hispanic students living in and being schooled in America. She no doubt believes that these “culturally
different” children are so out of touch with the broader society that they
could not possibly have had the “opportunity” to consume a sandwich, let alone
a peanut butter and jelly one. Perhaps
due to “extreme poverty” they do not know that such “gourmet” foodstuff exists.
Like so many of her intellectual persuasion, the
principal feels compelled to school dumb white Americans about their pervasive overt
or covert racist attitudes. She believes
it is her solemn duty to teach us what to think, say, not think and not say.
When it comes to forbidding personally-defined
racially insensitive language then, Ms. Verenice Gutierrez is in accord with
Attorney General Eric Holder. For example,
on April 8, 2014 Holder in a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder challenged Representative
Louis Gohmert’s question about the Attorney General’s recent contempt of
Congress citation by snarling, “You
don’t want to go there, buddy! You don’t want to go there, OK?” You see, a few
seconds earlier, Holder had declined Gohmert’s requests for documents relating
to congressional investigations and Gohmert had replied, “I realize that contempt
is not a big deal to our Attorney General, but it is important that we have
proper oversight.”
So where is the racially insensitive peanut butter and
jelly connection?
To answer that question, we must turn our attention
to Eric Holder’s next day, April 9, 2014, speech before a black lobby group
called National Action Network where he told the presumably all-black audience:
The last five years have been defined by significant
strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of
unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity. If you don’t believe that, you look at the
way — forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney
general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee — has
nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal
with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind
of treatment?
So, speaking about himself in the third person (“the
attorney general of the United States”), his Eminence was suggesting that
criticism of him and Obama is really criticism of black people in general. He could not possibly imagine that his or
Barack’s policies ever seriously could be challenged on their own merits or
lack thereof. Maybe he and we should
contemplate related questions: “What attorney general ever has been able to
deflect all personal criticism by hiding behind a shield of racial invulnerability?
What president ever has been able to do so?”
Holder is trying the oldest trick in the racial manipulation
playbook. He does not want us to think
about or talk about him because then his personal responsibility could be called
into question. No. the “black” attorney
general wants us to think and talk only about race. If he can make the discussion about race and
race alone, a pro-black army of racial warriors—like those from the National
Action Network—will spring to his defense and Eric can skip off to the golf
course while everyone else fights his battle.
Racial double standards, double speak, and double
binds will end when white, black, and intermediate-colored individuals are free
enough to ask each other questions without anticipating a race-based over-reaction. Then and only then will I be able to ask Eric
Himpton Holder, “Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”
