Race, Politics and Exploitation

I will forewarn you, this is going to be one of them long, heady blog postings. So, if you got a printer, I’d print this one out.

But first the video:

And the story which comes via CBS in Washington:

BRISTOL, Conn. (CBSDC) –Robert Griffin III might be the NFL’s offensive rookie of the year in a season that has his Redskins competing for the NFC East. But even with all his accomplishments on the field, one ESPN commentator thinks the former Heisman Trophy winner could be a “cornball brother” because of his white fiancée and speculation of the quarterback’s political leanings.

Rob Parker, a contributor for ESPN’s “First Take” morning show, questioned Griffin’s standing as a black man, asking whether the quarterback was a “cornball brother,” and later saying that the black quarterback is “not one of us.”

“He’s black, he kind of does his thing, but he’s not really down with the cause; he’s not one of us,” Parker said this morning. “He’s kind of black, but he’s not really the kind of guy you want to hang out with cause he’s off to something else.”

During the “First Take” segment, Parker pointed out Griffin’s engagement to his white fiancée, Rebecca Liddicoat. Parker also speculated that the Redskins quarterback might be a Republican, but that Griffin’s braids added to the “authenticity” of being black.

“I want to find about him,” Parker said about the rookie quarterback. “I don’t know because I keep hearing these things. We all know he has a white fiance. Then there was all this talk about him being a Republican, which there’s no information at all. I’m just trying to dig deeper into why he has an issue.”

At the end of the segment, Parker said that this was the type of talk about Griffin that is being brought up in the barbershops.

I will admit it, I was at one of my Dad’s friends, whom he used to work with at GM, at his house over the summer, my Dad was there to turn over a garden spot. I was there as the grunt worker and to do the heavy lifting. It may sound funny, but I am not much into gardening, outside of mowing the lawn. While we were there, some very interesting subjects came up; Detroit, the decline of it and then, the big one — Obama. I braced myself for what I was about to hear. Keep in mind that I really never was a fan of the guy.

Much to my shock, much of what this dude said up there in the video, was said by all the people who were there, who were, outside of me and Dad — black. I won’t lie to you, I sat there —- eyes bugged out, and jaw on the floor as they all said, and this was the exact quote, “He’s a bought nigga! Wall Street and the Jews own his ass!”

I was quite shocked, I did not ask questions. I just sat there, rather amazed. Well, I did ask if they voted for Obama. They answered, “Yeah, I did. But what did he change? Nothing. We’re still where we are! The Country still has the problems it did when they put him in office!”

My Dad wasn’t in on the conversation, he was running the tiller and it was louder than they were. 😀

Keep in mind now, these were not 20-something people. These were people in their 50’s and 60’s. At first, I was a bit saddened; but you know what? It really proves something that I really have known about black people for a very long time. They know the difference between an authentic black person and someone who is a faker, someone who is not really down with the struggles that the black community did really face back in the day and some of the ones that blacks face now. They know. It all goes back to that little thing that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. disagreed on. It is part of the black culture and I do get it. Most of the Conservatives that I now or have had interaction with, they do not understand it at all.

There is a reason for it too. It is because they are a product of their environment. I am not faulting them for it, really, I’m not. Everyone is a product of their environment. Some people grew up in the ghetto, some people grew up in the suburbs; all of that stuff affects your worldview and the way that you interact with other people. The problem is that for whatever reason, those who believe that smaller Government is the answer, and also happen to white; they have this built-in resentment of the fact that black people insist that other people acknowledge the fact that they were brought into this Country as slaves by white people.

The Conservatives like to call it race-baiting, race-hustling or having a “victim mentality” or an “Oppression Complex.” Which is pretty damned ironic, because the Jews in America; many of them have the same problem and nobody, especially on the right says anything about that at all. In fact, most Conservatives think that is just perfectly fine. Anyone that disagrees with that; I have two simple words for you to Google — Rick Sanchez. Sanchez dared to speak his mind, without his “I gotta watch what I say, or someone will get angry” filter enabled and you know what happened? He lost his job and his good career. The question I have is this; was that even remotely fair to the guy at all? I mean, I can give perfect examples were American Jews have bad mouthed White Angelo-Saxon protestants like me, and not a word as ever been said about it.

I will be perfectly honest with you, people like Al Sharpon and Jesse Jackson, as a white man; they get on my nerves. Why? Because they are exploiters. They exploit racial divisions and tensions to further their little pet causes. Now does the right do this? Hell yes they do. A perfect example: the recent event in Lansing, Michigan with the Hot Dog cart guy. That guy was out $500 and the right acted like he had lost his entire business. The truth is, he didn’t lose anything at all and the right played the people who read that little sad tale like a fiddle.

The result is that all that money, will go to replace a tent, that was lost, because a bunch of political activists decided to wade into a territory that normal sane Conservative people would not go near. What those idiots did was the moral equivalent of going into a high school on the east side of Detroit, which is, conversely almost all black and hollering “NIGGER!” at the top of your lungs repeatedly, like someone with Tourette syndrome. Which would most likely get you beat up, or worse even killed! Then, after doing this; you complained about getting beat up and accuse the other people of not being tolerant! I know, it sounds funny; but it happens to be very true.

The problem I have with this sort of thing; is that it cheapens this discussion, it also cheapens everything that Martin Luther King Jr. fought so hard for and gave up his life for. As for Conservatives, this idiotic nonsense that they are doing, cheapens the legacy of people like William F. Buckley, who simply wanted people to reconsider the idea that Government was the “end all”, of the problems of our Country. I guess it all goes along with that whole “dumbing-down” of the Conservative movement and as whole, of America.

It is not to say that the Democrats are not guilty of some of the very same things. They are most assuredly. The whole thing of being told that if you did not vote for Obama, you were most likely a racist bigot, I found that to be most highly annoying. It was as if the Democrats were cheapening voting down to the lowest common denominator. I thought we had evolved as a society not to look at things through the prism of race?

In closing: Whew. I took a simply blog posting and turned it into an almost 1500 plus word philosophical essay. I hate it when I do that. However, I believe it is necessary to espouse things like this; because the political process and the idiotic nonsense that goes along with it, is cheapening the battles that our founding fathers fought, and the people who died in all of our wars, especially the revolutionary war and world war II. It is sad to know that all of things that people, like my great-uncle John Franklin Hayes of Dalton, Georgia, fought for are now being cheapened by those, who could really care less what my great-uncle lost and gained in that war. This is what corporate shills do, they are all about an agenda and could quite honestly care less about me and you.

It is a sad thing to behold; but it is the America in which we live.