This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:
Some prominent white liberals, in this case Bill Maher and Michael Moore, are pretty quick to portray conservatives and particularly Tea Partiers as racist.
But in fact, it is these white liberals who harbor negative stereotypes about blacks. They just don’t see the stereotypes as negative, but rather, in some way “cool” and “hip.”
And when it comes to Obama, what they got apparently isn’t black enough for them:
Maher and Moore apparently want Shaft, and anything less is just a white guy.
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes at The Atlantic:
But it really isn’t [a great line]. In fact, it’s racist, and Michael Moore would do well to stop repeating it. It really is no better than the Kenyan anti-colonial bit, indeed it is a good deal worse. I said this yesterday on twitter, but it would be as if my Jewish accountant messed up my taxes and I said, “Dude, you’re Jewish, what the hell?!?!”
Examining the stereotypes of blacks held by prominent white liberals could be the starting point of a frank discussion of race, but it would not turn out the way white liberals want.
So instead, white liberals too often project their own prejudices onto conservatives and Tea Partiers as a means of shutting down the conversation and avoiding self-examination.
For political gain, of course.
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I have members in my family that are hispanic americans as well as some that are black americans(they seem to prefer being called black americans not AA — I wonder if this preference is widespread)
they told me when they listen to bozos like Micheal Moore, or other white liberals on MSNBC, its like they treat minorities like pets. Not individuals, etc, but pets.
Thought that was an interesting perspective, I have never thought about it like that, but listening to idiots like Moore, I can see what my family is saying, these white liberals really do treat and talk about minorities like pets, pets that they don’t accept straying off their viewpoints.
“Maher and Moore apparently want Shaft”
He’d certainly be better than the current occupant of the White House. (Wait a minute – isn’t the name of the President’s residence racist?)
No thanks on the Shaft idea. We already had a president who was “a sex machine to all the chicks.”
And, y’know, there’s not much of a difference between getting Shaft and getting THE shaft, whihc is what we’re getting now.
In a similar vein, Moore decried the 9/11 terrorists on the day after the atrocity–for killing people who were not Bush voters.
Where to start?
Not only do white liberals expect minorities to act a certain way … minority liberals’ self-identity is often a self-fulfilling cultivation of these caricatures. Maher and Moore are obviously frustrated they’re not seeing a “Shaft” type president. Most dorky white people who want nothing more than to be seen as being hip find some kind of “authenticity” in a black person acting “black.” They are like naive anthropologists forever searching for a long lost tribe of noble savages somewhere in the South Pacific … some idyllic place of people uncorrupted by western society … some sweet society of people “keepin’ it real,” from whom the anthropologist can learn new moral truths corroborating his suspicions of his native society.
Until a few months ago, I worked with a black woman who is the perfect distillation of this self-identity through caricatures. During the 2008 campaign she said to me, “John McCain is just a boy … you heard what I said, he’s a boy.” (Ummm … gotta come up with better bait than that to get a nibble out of me.)
A couple years ago, when a black USC football player was doing bench presses and almost died when he dropped the barbell on his own neck, she said the white coaches had arranged this. When I asked her why on earth they would go to all the trouble of recruiting him … just to try and kill him, she responded, “You have no idea what it’s like to be a black man in America!”
The few times we argued politics (she would always initiate things and try to get a reaction out of me) she would get louder and louder in hopes of intimidating me. I just matched her volume and she would finally give up (no doubt disconcerted that a white person was not going to back down when she put on her show … but then, I can become quite theatrical, too … or as President Obama said … like LeBron … I got some game if you want to play that way).
She’s middle class, but given the situation, she’ll start talkin’ ghetto if it suits her purposes.
The funny thing is … she liked me much more than the white liberals in our office … you know, the cloying “I’m in solidarity with people of color” Alan Alda types. I could keep her laughing all day … but she knew I’d tell her in a hot second she was full of crap when it came to politics. I told her one time (half-jokingly) “It’s called tough love … I refuse to be an enabler of your B.S. way of thinking.”
Maher and Moore want a jive-talking black president who will pull a gun on Congress when necessary, I suppose?
Can they be a little less vague … just a little more specific on how Obama could be more of a black president?
Anyway, my main question is, how did Coates’s Jewish accountant mess up his taxes?
LukeHandCool (who now has two intensive accounting courses in cost accounting and auditing … and is procrastinating the day away on LI and youtube. Damn you, internet!)
Well, you do recall that Eric Holder, just days after being confirmed, called Americans cowards for not having a national conversation about race.
Maybe he was just off base. Certainly Maher and Moore need to have a conversation about race and I’ll stipulate that they are cowardly little snots.
Maybe he should have a conversation with them. Right after he gets out of prison for treason.
During the Deep Horizon well problem, Maher asked something like ‘when are going to get the angry black man? you know, the one with the gun in waist, who lifts up his shirt and says “get something done or we’re going to be shooting people”, like that?’ The only armed Black men I’ve ever had to deal with were calm and wearing law enforcement uniforms.
Ironically, poor whites (aka “rednecks”) are far more likely than latte liberals to live, work and go to school in close proximity to people of color.
So true.
Maybe that’s why southern whites seem to have a certain appeal that’s quite broad in politics (except to latte liberals).
My dad always hired blacks in his stores that were in black neighborhoods … so I grew up around blacks. His black employees would take me to L.A. Rams games.
To many of my white liberal friends growing up, to whom blacks were something more abstract, black opinion often has had some magical characteristics attributed to it.
Maher and Moore ought to move to Zimbawee. I hear Mugabee has just what they want. Sometimes, I get the idea these two, and others like them, throw out these statements to get a rise out of listeners. Or do they think this armed black president, who cares nothing for the rule of law, will overlook their skin color? Oh wait, we already have a black president who cares nothing for the rule of law and we are rapidly sinking into a Zimbawee country.
I read somewhere that people in the south hate the race but love the people and the people in the north love the race but hate the people. That was decades ago. I wonder if it is still true.