Bob Garfield, an
Adage.com writer, basically asserts that Obama will win votes from even Hitler-style racists simply because
he's one of the good niggers:
Acceptably black means
being nonthreatening to white people inclined to feeling threatened
by black people. It means standard English, clean-cut appearance
(or, as Joe Biden fumbled, "clean") and the most Caucasian features possible.
These obviously are not objective measures of character or worth; just as obviously,
they are measures of what sells to the vast, white audience. Halle Berry and Denzel
Washington are acceptably black. Your local news anchors are acceptably black. Tupac was not.
In other words, Obama is a House-Nigga and Tupac would have been a field nigga -- kept outback with all the other unnacceptable filth.
Now, having once played the role of an "acceptable" Black (when I married my conservative white husband), I can tell Garfield that even a good nigga is still a nigga. I learned that lesson
the hard way. Even though
house-niggas were allowed inside the house, they were still required to enter through the slave entrance, stay out of sight unless they were serving their master,
and never mention the desire for education or freedom. Only a hardened racist suffering from the worst form of
Schizophrenia would nominate a Black man and give him the kinda political
and social power
that very few people even want a white man to have.
If Obama gains momentum with hardened racists, it's only because those people dislike the idea of a woman running
the country more than they dislike the idea of a Black man sitting
in the White House.
