Racial Identity Double Speak Guaranteed to Confuse and A Potential Solution

On July 21, 2014, at My Brother's Keeper Town Hall meeting, the featured speaker addressed black male identity saying,

Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of “acting white” -- which sometimes is overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that?  Or why are you speaking so properly?  And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.  Because there are a whole bunch of different ways for African American men to be authentic.

I had trouble following that speech, never really sure what he was attempting to communicate.  So I decided to deconstruct the essential phrases to see whether I could make any sense of them.  The phrases and my deconstruction follow:

THE SPEAKER:  “acting white” -- which sometimes is overstated­­­. 

INTERPRETATION:  Some people sometimes make too big a deal about the notion of “acting white.”

THE SPEAKER:  but there’s an element of truth to it.

INTERPRETATION:  There is something about the criticism “acting white” that is valid and proper.

THE SPEAKER:  where, okay, if boys are reading too much

INTERPRETATION:  Some black boys read too much according to the criticizer’s definition of “too much.”   And reading too much is a worrisome thing.  I naively had thought that blacks, like whites and all people, should read to succeed, but I guess I was wrong.

THE SPEAKER:  then, well, why are you doing that?

INTERPRETATION:  Blacks should question their own or others’ reading habits in order to be able to justify reading behavior to the criticizer.  Is this a thinly veiled fear of unholy thoughts reminiscent of Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2:  “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.   He thinks [reads]  too much; such men are dangerous.” 

THE SPEAKER:  Or why are you speaking so properly?

INTERPRETATION:  As with reading, speaking “so properly” might indicate some nefarious motivation.  The criticizer is not a “brotha,” not a brother's keeper, but an Orwellian Big Brother who monitors and evaluates black peoples’ thoughts, readings, and speech and decides what is and what is not proper.

THE SPEAKER:  And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.

INTERPRETATION:  Taken at face value, I fully agree with this, but it is a non-sequitur given the statements that preceded it.

THE SPEAKER:  Because there are a whole bunch of different ways for African American men to be authentic.

INTERPRETATION:  Once again, a patently obvious truth that the criticizer belies by the total context in which the statement occurs.  According to Merriam Webster, authentic means behavior that is not imitated and that is spontaneous whereas the criticizer has made himself the gatekeeper who must okay all thoughts, readings, and speech to ensure that they do not merely represent “just acting white.”

So who was the featured speaker at the My Brother's Keeper Town Hall meeting who addressed black male identity?  You guessed it: none other than Barack Hussein Obama.  How, you might ask, could so brilliant, eloquent, celebrated an orator give such a convoluted, indecipherable speech?   The answer: personal racial identity conflict.  He even has alluded many times to having had a conflicted identity in the past but he always erroneously then asserted that he managed to overcome the problem. 

To my way of thinking, Barack Obama’s July 21, 2014 muddled racial identity speech illustrates beyond a doubt that racial issues still confuse him.  Race clouds his thoughts and undermines Obama’s general leadership more than anything else because race is his perennial, conflictual preoccupation.   Unfortunately, Barack perceives racial issues almost everywhere and filters too many decisions through the colander of his racial preconceptions and biases.

Having said that, I do applaud Barack Obama for at least attempting to address the scourge of racial identity slavery.   A couple suggestions for improving the message are in order, however.  First, stop inviting to the White House foul-mouthed rappers like Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA “Common” and Cee Lo Green whose “songs” regularly including racist and misogynistic lyrics.  Second, celebrate and defend eminent black men and women who do not fully endorse each and every presidential policy, persons such as Dr. Benjamin Carson and Dr. Condoleezza Rice, two of many regularly maligned as "acting white."  Emphasize that such persons are not “acting white” when they think, read, and speak in ways authentic to them but discordant to you.  That would be a powerful statement to the effect that you truly believe “And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.”

My final suggestion is that President Barack Obama publicize and consistently endorse the following addendum that I have written for him and that should have been included in his July 21, 2014 My Brother's Keeper Town Hall speech:

Take me for instance.  Everyone says that I’m the first black United States President, but that’s not true.  No matter what people say about me and no matter what people write about me, I am the first biracial United States President.  I had a white American mother and a black African father.  Case closed.

Now there was a time in some parts of America when any mixed race person with “one drop of black blood” was considered black.  That racist assertion was wrong, overturned in the courts and in the hearts of Americans.  Mixed race people simply are mixed race people who, like everyone else, must be judged on their own merits, not compared to somebody’s standard of what a white person, black person, or intermediate-colored person should be.      

I too expect to be judged on my own merits.  I am proud of my white side and I am proud of my black side.  I am proud of being biracial.  Let me give you a quote to contemplate: “The 2010 Census showed that people who reported multiple races grew by a larger percentage than those reporting a single race.”   That statistic represents more than a number.  It represents about six and one-half million individuals who want nothing more than to be themselves—to think, read, and speak in ways authentic to who they are.

It took me a long time to say unequivocally what I have just said.  Like so many black and white mixed race Americans, I felt I had to choose white versus black.  But there is no white versus black.  People are people.  I pray that mixed race people who hear my message will have the courage to be their authentic selves and to make no excuses for being the persons that they are.  And I hope that non-mixed-races persons will let them do that in peace.  Nobody needs to act in any particular way to be racially acceptable.  There is no “acting white,” "acting black,” or “acting mixed.”  

My February 7, 2012 Blog About the USA & Russia Is Relevant Today

In early 2009, the Obama Administration, with much giddy showboating, boasted how they were pressing a bright red “reset button” with Russia.  Although not directly condemning George Bush, they strongly implied that his mishandling of Putin et al had caused the USA to miss an alleged opportunity to develop American-Russian collaboration that would make both countries and the world better places.

From the outset, the gesture was laughable.  ABC.net documented the absurdity of the attempt on March 9, 2009 as follows:

Russian media have poked fun at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she gave her Russian counterpart a "reset" button with an ironic misspelling.

Ms Clinton's gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at their meeting in Geneva on Friday evening was meant to underscore the Obama administration's readiness "to press the reset button" in ties with Moscow.

But instead of the Russian word for "reset" (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word, meaning "overload" or "overcharged" (peregruzka).

Daily newspaper Kommersant put a prominent picture of the fake red button on its front page and declared: "Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button."

For once the Russian media had gotten it right, laying bare the sophomoric attention-seeking antics of Obama and his not so merry men and women.  The gang thought that the red button would be perceived in our country and throughout the world as dramatically symbolizing the “I’m not George Bush” philosophy that served as the basis for Obama’s intended remake of America.  Instead, the red button fiasco presaged a wagon-train-long line of policy blunders.  Barack Obama proved one thing:  neither a president nor an administration can fashion a personality or practices that depend on not-being someone or something.  (Psychologists call that “negative identity” and it is negative in every sense of the world, the kind of identity adopted by many charlatans, crooks, and other criminals.)  

Since 2009 we have seen the results of the myopic not-George Bush governmental policies, especially as revealed in our interactions with Russia.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have empowered Vladimir Putin’s interminable anti-USA sniping and undermining.  On February 6 of this year, the Goggle search “2012 Russia condemns USA” produced 31,700, 000 results, including items illustrating negative Russian remarks and actions regarding  our country pertaining to Libya, Israel, Cuba, international law, violations, spying, and a host of others.

The Russian refusal to sanction Syria is only the latest of that country’s failure to cooperate with the USA, albeit the most inhumane one.  CNN reported that the United States, France, and the United Kingdom “were furious” with Russia for its February 5, 2012 veto.  The article noted that American Ambassador Susan Rice told their reporter, "Those that have blocked potentially the last effort to resolve this peacefully ... will have any future blood spill on their hands.  The people of Syria have yet again been abandoned by this Council and by the international community."  On February 6, Reuters quoted Rice as having used the word “disgusting” to describe Russia’s veto and its implications.

Syrian people lie dead in the streets because, having seen that Barack Obama supported the Libyans, they erroneously expected that our President would lead Russia, China, and the free world in supporting their rebellion as well.  

Susan Rice’s comments explain, then, why the Obama-Russia reset button had been colored blood red. 

Even the Brainwashers Are Brainwashed

Remember the “good old days” when racism was comprehensible.  You know, a time when white people demeaned black people and black people demeaned white ones.  That was the kind of bias that had been normative across the world since time immemorial.  Everyone—white, black, and all shades in between— “naturally” favored their own group, regarding their own people as superior to all the rest.  

Although racism always has been abhorrent on its face, in the past racial prejudice at least tended to strengthen affiliations within each racial group; racism was “honest,” loosely speaking.  In 21^st Century America, however, racist talk is mostly disingenuous manipulation intended to raise the profile of the racist speaker and to achieve his ends.  Racism always has been stupid, but contemporary racism takes stupidity to a whole new level.

Enter Harry Reid who on July 9, 2014 when speaking to reporters about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision said,  “The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determine by virtue of five white [emphasis added] men.”

What did race have to do with the Holly Hobby decision?  Answer: nothing.   

So why did Harry Reid interject race into his comments?   Because he was polita-speaking—double speak gerrymandering the boundaries of rationality and language to provide a sound bite intended to rally Democrats for the November 2014 election.  And nothing rallies the Democrat electorate or legislators as well as race baiting does. 

As in this case, polita-speak makes both speakers and listeners crazy, so crazy that Harry Reid forgot that one of the five male Supreme Court Justices—Clarence Thomas—is black.  You probably know that Thomas is a black man that no race mongering white or black ever forgets.  Justice Thomas is a number one target for racial slurs, most coming from black racial identity slavemasters who “Uncle Tom” him because they simply cannot tolerate an African American who doesn’t think, speak, and behave according to their racial orthodoxy norms.

Moreover, it was not Harry Reid’s first race-oriented public relations snafu.  Recall that on January 8, 2010 Reid “confessed” that during the 2008 presidential election he had referred to Barack Obama as “light skinned … with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."  The admission occurred because Reid’s comments were contained in the Mark Halperin and John Heilemann book Game Change that was being released the next week.  As expected, Reid called Barack and apologized profusely for his “poor choice of words.”   In another comical, unconsciously determined slip of the tongue, Obama responded by releasing a White House statement that said, “As far as I am concerned, the book [emphasis added] is closed."      

Regarding Reid's reference to “white men,” the term rarely is objectively descriptive in the so-called liberal progressive lexicon.  Rather, to Harry Reid and other progressives, “white men” is its own racial slur that they use mostly in polemic, political tirades.  The only greater progressive slur would be “OLD white men,” but that is an issue for another blog posting.       

The fact that Reid forgot that Justice Clarence Thomas is black illustrates that the good senator was operating on auto-think with gobbledygook flowing effortlessly from his vacuous mind.   It is noteworthy that Harry Reid, himself, actually is an elderly white man, presumably a self-hating, quasi-delusional one.

In America, demeaning remarks against white males are so hard-wired, so automatic a feature of political manipulation, that the demagogues—white and black—literally don’t even know what they are speaking about when they speak.

As Michael Jackson once sang, “It don't matter if you're black or white,” if you are a politician, you can proffer an automatic, mindless, outrageous anti-male, anti-white racist accusation at any time and expect to get away with it.  That feature of Harry Reid’s unconscious was on display in his latest fiasco and what it revealed about him and his progressive mentality was not pretty.

Barack Obama's Behind

From January to July of this year, over 52,000 unaccompanied children and 39,000 women with children have been apprehended at the south Texas border (http://dailysignal.com/).  That number, then, only summarizes those counted at one Mexico-United States border and does not begin to describe how many have crossed undetected or at other Mexico-United States borders.

Does the border crisis qualify as one that demands swift, decisive governance or is this a political issue wherein electioneering is front and center?  Should Barack Obama and his White House decide which actions will yield them the most November 2014 votes or which actions will be in the best interests of our country?  As you will read below, even Obama-loving NBC News personnel question the President’s handling of the problem and his motivations for what he has and has not done.

Consider NBCs July 2, 2014 Meet the Press exchanges between David Gregory, moderator of the show, and Chuck Todd, NBCs Chief White House Correspondent and NBC News political director, as they discuss the aforementioned issues.

Gregory:  So Chuck, from Secretary Johnson [United States Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson], I think an ambiguous [emphasis added] response to what they're going to do [emphasis added] and how exactly we got here [emphasis added].

Todd:  It's been that way.  It was that way Thursday in the White House briefing, when you could not get a straight answer out of the administration [emphasis added].  You couldn't get them to say should the President's image [emphasis added] be used to send this message in Central America, for instance.

Gregory:  Yeah.

Todd:  To send the message, "Hey, don't send your kids here, this isn't going to happen." There was ambiguity in his answer to you about is there going to be an attempt to increase-- you want the ability to increase the amount of deportations. They've been afraid to say that. And it's the politics of this, right?

Gregory:  Right.

Todd:  You know, we have immigration law conflation going on here.  This crisis is separate from the immigration issue that's been debated here in Washington.  But it's been conflated, obviously, back and forth.  And think part of the problem is you have an administration that, on one hand, has immigrant rights groups wanting them to expand some of the executive orders, including maybe Dreamers, this DACA thing, Dreamers for the Parents.  And in exchange, they know politically, in order to get away with that [emphasis added], they do have to increase--

Gregory:  Right.

Todd:  …  the deportations, but they don't want to say it.

Many Democrats, too, are frustrated with the me-first, politicize-everything President.  Obama refused to go to the Mexican border to see the illegal child immigrant problem firsthand because he believed that doing so would make him more overtly responsible for the catastrophe since his image there would be publicized in photos and news footage.  Instead, the President went to a Colorado fundraiser where he orchestrated his own photo-op showing himself having a beer* while playing pool with multi-millionaire Democrat state governor, John Hickenlooper.  In response,  Texas Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar complained: "He [Barack Obama] can get on Air Force One, be there [at the Mexican border] in a half an hour ... right after he finishes his fundraising in Texas…  One of the things he needs to do is roll up his sleeves, go down there to the border, talk to the community leaders there."       

But, of course, Obama did not go to the border as requested.  

No matter how dire the situation, the President and his policy of leading from behind is not “thoughtful reflection” as Obama lovers would have us believe.  No.  Barack Obama is mostly concerned with looking good and with milking crises for all they are worth; that is why he is so late in reacting to each and every catastrophe. 

Leading from behind is a deliberate strategy to delay, leak information about this or that approach to a crisis, wait to see how popular which approaches are with whom, and then proceed with the option that is most politically advantageous to Barack Obama’s image and political ambitions.  Regardless of the issue-Central American children flooding our borders, the slaughter of Syrian citizens, the annexation of Crimea, Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, and so forth-Obama always has followed the maxim of his former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Barack Obama has tried to blame the Central American children crisis on the fact that the illegal immigrants are trying to escape their lethally dangerous communities.  Perhaps the President once again can call upon Rahm Emanual for guidance.  You see, Emanuel, now mayor of Barack's home town of Chicago, is uniquely qualified to advise the President about a violence crisis.  Quoting The Chicago Tribune, the July 4, 2014 weekend in Chicago unfolded as follows: 

In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.

Five of the people were shot by police over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, including two boys 14 and 16 who were killed when they allegedly refused to drop their guns.

Many of the long weekend's shootings were on the South Side, clustered in the Englewood, Roseland, Gresham and West Pullman neighborhoods that rank among the most violent in the city.

The victims ranged from the 14-year-boy shot by police in the Old Irving Park neighborhood to a 66-year-old woman grazed in the head as she walked up the steps of her porch on the Far South Side.  Most victims were in their late teens and 20s.

Each night of the long holiday weekend, at least a dozen people were shot in the greatest burst of gun violence Chicago has seen this year.

• From Thursday night into Friday, three people were killed and 10 others wounded. An attack outside a West Englewood salon left two men dead and an East Garfield Park shooting took the life of a 21-year-old woman.

• From Friday afternoon into Saturday, 20 people were shot, one fatally. The man who died had been flashing gang signs in a parking lot in the Clearing neighborhood when someone told him to stop. When the man didn’t, he was shot, police said.

• From Saturday night into Sunday morning, four people were killed and another 10 wounded.

• The bloodiest stretch of the weekend was a 13-hour period between 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:30 a.m. Monday when four people were killed and at least another 26 wounded, many of them in critical condition. And the most chaotic scene was in South Chicago, where three people were wounded during a running gun battle.

Should the Central American refugee children be sent to Barack’s home town of Chicago where they will be safe?  Should Barack Obama’s leading from behind presidential approach to America and to the world be applied by United States mayors to enable them to manage our nation’s dysfunctional inner-cities as successfully as his advisor, Rahm Emanual, is managing Chicago?

*  P.S., While Barack was in the bar a patron asked if he wanted a “hit” of the patron’s marijuana cigarette.  Apparently, that patron was aware of Obama’s drug-taking history and/or of Obama’s joke last week about crack cocaine being in the White House pastry.

Like a Little Crack Cocaine in Your White House Pastry?

Most of us  have heard that on June 30, 2014 while hosting a reception celebrating Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, Barack commented about his White House pastry chef’s delectable goodies saying "I don't know what he does—whether he puts crack in them"  whereupon the crowd exploded in uproarious laughter to hear the swaggering, most excellently with-it president being  “very cool.”  Barack had so tickled the nation’s funny bone, in fact, that award-winning CNN journalist John King later gushed, “They must be pretty good though I think I want one of those pies!” to which Kate Bolduan CNN co-host of New Day chortled, “I want a piece of that pie too John that’s for sure!”

The President is just so clever that I can understand why Chris Matthews famously announced that when Barack spoke it sent shivers up his leg.  Still, I must admit that I had wondered where the “the most intelligent man ever to become president” (presidential historian Michael Beschloss, November 11, 2008) gets his material.  Now I know the obvious answer: he draws both upon his history and current perspective on life.

In Dreams from My Father Barack Obama recounted his marijuana and cocaine abuse, rationalizing that the problems issued from his conflicted racial identity.  Poor soul.  As Michael Medved (ABC News, 2005) observed, “Obama's drug confessions only add to the sense that he's a radically different sort of candidate -- and it's hard to see how the confessions will work against him.”  Medved, of course, was right on target with that.  As we have learned repeatedly, nothing seems to dampen the enthusiasm for our identity-challenged biracial president who thinks he is all black.

Surely Barack Obama’s leadership skills also account in part for his success.  David Maraniss in Barack Obama: The Story explains that the then-youthful Barry Obama was a drug-abusing innovator responsible for his Choom [choom is marijuana] Gang’s creative pot-smoking antics.  Mentioned were: “Total Absorption” (when a gang member exhaled marijuana too quickly he had to skip his next drag);   “Roof Hits” (closing all the windows in the car used for marijuana smoking to maximize the high); and “Interceptions” (Obama’s tendency to take an extra “hit” by grabbing the joint from the person next in line to smoke it himself).

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Mr. Obama.  After all, he cares deeply about the welfare of crack users.  For many years, Barack and Attorney General Holder had been in favor of drug leniency: “Holder’s urging is the latest in the Obama administration's retrenchment on the war on drugs and crack-era mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately impacted poor minorities [emphasis added] and non-violent offenders” (Trymaine Lee MSNBC, June 10, 2014). [Note that in 2010 the Obama Administration successfully fought to reduce the disparity between prison sentences for the more dangerous and more black-abused crack cocaine versus the less dangerous and more white-abused powdered cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 and in December, 2013 Barack pardoned eight crack-abusing federal inmates, six of whom had been sentenced to life in prison.]

As Gomer Pyle might say, “Well, surprise, surprise," Barack Obama has a race-based affection for crack cocaine because of his history and current mindset by which he confounds crack with racism.  Who would have guessed?  Perhaps Obama’s crack pastry joke is just the most intelligent president of all time wink-winking at American youth, especially poor black youth, letting them know that he understands their cravings and won’t be too hard on them since he shares the cravings too.