FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a fifty-year-old white guy. And while I am not at all qualified to criticize any race but my own, I do feel compelled to offer up for your reading pleasure a few choice thoughts regarding a small but growing trend within the microscopic, upper class, African American community that has me, to say the least, somewhat puzzled. These are the men and women whom, through either fortitude, dumb luck or affirmative action, have found themselves as members of the privileged class but who, for reasons known only to them, have sought to pull up the ladder to prevent other members of their own, disadvantaged race from achieving the same piece of the American dream. In polite society they might be known as "traitors to their race". Malcolm X called them "House Niggers"..
I am referring to the parable Minister Malcolm used to tell about the House Nigger and the Field Negro. The House Nigger, who did light work inside the home, loved his Master. The Field Negro, who did the back breaking work out on the plantation, hated the old bastard. When you think about the House Nigger, picture Stephin Fetchit. When you think of the Field Negro, picture Ossie Davis. That puts it beautifully.
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The underlying analogy here deals with people who have been able to obtain fame and treasure because of something called affirmative action. That was a program put forward around forty years ago by a nasty conspiracy of commie-loving, Karl Marx-reading, latte-swirling liberals, in order to level the playing field so that black persons would have more of a fighting chance at obtaining a middle class lifestyle - Clarence Thomas, for instance.
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No one (with the possible exception of Antonin Scalia) gets as apoplectic as Justice Thomas at the mere mention of affirmative action! In his memoirs, "My Grandfather's Son", published late last year, Thomas wrote that when he received his diploma from Yale Law School, he slapped a "15 cents" sticker on it and relegated it to the basement of his home. You see, the good judge was ashamed and embarrassed that all of those silly and stupid Great Society types had helped him along his journey. By his twisted reasoning, his law degree would have had real meaning and his position on the Supreme Court would today be all-the-more legitimate had he merely gone it alone and not relied on the assistance of those goddamned, nosy, liberal do-gooders. Why can't those people just mind their own business?
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QUESTION:
Just where do you think Clarence Thomas would be today were it not for affirmative action?
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ANSWER:
He would be mounted on the front lawn of some beer distributor's home in Albany, Georgia, wearing a jockey uniform and holding a lamp.
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At the time Judge Thomas came out with his book, Bill Maxwell, an African American writer for the Times of St. Petersburg, Florida and, like Clarence Thomas, an "affirmative action baby", wrote the following:
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"Clarence Thomas' diploma may be worth fifteen cents to him. My degree from the University of Chicago is priceless."
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Like any government program, affirmative action is not perfect. While it has done a great deal of good throughout the years, one of its glaring flaws is the fact that it occasionally allows someone of mediocre talent and intellect to rise to the top. Clarence Thomas' very presence on the Supreme Court is proof positive of that.
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Excluding the guy on the Creme of Wheat box, forty years ago it was difficult - if not impossible - to find a person of color in this sick country spouting a right wing point of view. In recent years, however, they have been coming out of the freaking wood work: In addition to Clarence Thomas, there has been Condoleeza Rice, Tony Brown, Armstrong Williams, J.C. Watts, Michael Powell (Colin's half-witted kid) - and more than a few others.
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Where the hell did these people come from? What do they want? Once upon a time, most black people were Republicans. It had not a thing to do with right-wing ideology and everything to do with the fact that the Grand Old Party was, after all, the party of the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln (I must emphasize the word, "was". Old Abe wouldn't recognize his party today). Things began to change in the nineteen-thirties. By that time it became apparent that black people had a real friend in the White House in the person of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. No one is more responsible than she for the great migration of blacks from the Republican to the Democratic party in the years during and after World War Two. In 1937, she made no apologies when she was vilified in the southern press after being photographed graciously accepting a bouquet of flowers from a little negro girl. It is no wonder that she was such an admired and beloved figure to the African Americans of her generation.
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With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the "solid south" of bol weevil, conservative Democrats fled like frightened rats to the GOP within a matter of a few short years. The very concept of even acknowledging the equality of people with dark skin finally gave them enough motivation to join the party of "that bearded bastard who freed the slaves". When those two laws came into being, President Lyndon Baines Johnson told his aides Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers that the Democrats had lost the south for at least a generation. A generation and then some. The "solid south" has been solidly Republican ever since. The conservative line today, that the mass exodus of disaffected Dixiecrats was all about economics and had nothing to do with race, is pure, unadulterated bullshit. It was all about race. Let's stop kidding ourselves.
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As a result of the legislative and judicial gains made in the quarter of a century following the Supreme Court's Brown vs Board of Education decision in 1954, by 1980 a black middle class - which had barely existed in the mid-fifties - was beginning to emerge. That progress came to a dead halt when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Nearly every study has found them losing ground in the years since.
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Given all we know about the agenda of the right wing, why on earth would any descendant of a slave want to sleep with the devil, so to speak? It really isn't that hard to figure out if you think about it. Let's face some serious facts here, folks: Black faces at a Democratic gathering are a dime a dozen. What better way for an ambitious (devious) person to stand out than by joining the ranks of the GOP as a Black Republican? It is the perfect, quid pro quo scenario! It gives the black person in question a chance to be noticed and maybe even make a little extra bread on the side (as Armstrong Williams did when he was paid $250,000 in taxpayer money by the Bush Mob to promote their "No Child's Behind Left" scam). It also gives the Great White Father the opportunity to say to the rest of the country, "See? We really are the party of all the people." Black hand washes the white hand. You get the idea.
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For years, whenever you scanned the pictures transmitting from any Republican convention, they always showed the same old faces - white faces. That was the case with the convention which mercifully concluded last night. There was hardly a black face to be found in the crowd. So where were all these newly recruited Black Republicans of which I speak? They were all up on the stage - EVERY FUCKING ONE OF THEM! You want to talk about a good old fashioned minstrel show? So help me Hattie McDaniel, I thought I was watching the "Tribute to Scatman Crothers" portion of the evening. Oh, Lawdy! Lawdy! Watchin' all dem smilin' 'n' slap-happy Uncle Toms shufflin' 'cross da podium - that was truly a funny thing to behold. The Great White Father had indeed pulled off another great trick. I can just imagine one of his hired, token Negroes congratulating him back stage:
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"Hee! Hee! Oh, Mistah White Folks, You sho' is sly!"
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Very funny....and unspeakably sad at the same time. You would think people like that would know better, wouldn't you? You would think that someone born (as all of them were) on the lowest rung of the economic ladder would want to make it possible for all the members of his or her oppressed race to take full advantage of the same government programs they so skillfully exploited in order to reach the heights to which they have been able to climb. Any black person who embraces the sick ideology of the extreme right wing - no question about it - needs to have his or her head examined. We're talkin' serious therapy here. They should also hang those heads in complete and utter shame.
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You've got to hand it to Malcolm X's House Nigger, though. He had a pretty sweet deal inside the Master's home and he knew it. The last thing in the world he wanted was to have another servant move in on his territory, replacing him in Massah's affection. If he witnessed another slave stepping so much as an inch out of line, he made damned sure that the poor bastard was beaten senseless. He didn't want to give any of his black brothers and sisters the opportunity to enter Massah's comfortable house and share in Massah's treasure.
He has a whole hell of a lot in common with these modern day House Niggers, doesn't he?
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net
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SUGGESTED READING:
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X with (Alex Haley)
To read more recent postings on this site, please click on this link:
"The Rant" by Tom Degan
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There are one-hundred and thirty-six days until January 20, 2009!
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