Bill Maxwell, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, writes today that “On matters of race, blacks are cowards, too.” (HatTip to Drudge)
You should read the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:
…. On matters of race, blacks are cowards, too. We may be the worst cowards of all. First, we have perfected the crude art of controlling the terms of race talk. Second, we have developed various ways of avoiding and squashing the truth about our complicity in matters of race that are self-destructive….
Seeing themselves as victims of racism, most blacks reject raw race talk from whites. After all, whites are viewed as being the perpetrators of racism. The perpetrator, therefore, should confess, shut up and listen. Because of this dynamic, far too many whites have learned to avoid direct matters of race….
Although black attacks against whites are harsh, our attacks against other blacks who tell the truth are downright vicious. I know from personal experience. You are tar-brushed with the stain of Uncle Tomism, and it sticks to you forever.
You are ostracized and given the silent treatment. Your mistake is not that you told the truth but that you told the truth in public, thereby giving the enemy valuable ammunition. (Here, think of comedian Bill Cosby, who is castigated for saying that too many low-income blacks have not held up their end of the nation’s civil rights gains.) In short, you committed the unforgivable sin of “airing dirty laundry.”
Your achievements and good deeds are never recognized. You simply do not exist, unless you put yourself in people’s faces to have your say.
On matters of race, most blacks run away from introspection, and we do not like to hear others publicly remind us of our responsibilities to ourselves…. [Shades of Shelby Steele].
One of Maxwell’s virtues is that he practices what he preaches. Back in January 2008, shortly after Obama’s surprising win in the Iowa caucuses, Maxwell reiterated his view, expressed first in an October 2006 column, that “Obama’s overnight rise to national prominence has everything to do with race” and that he is writing about “the campaign’s racial subtext” again “because we need to stop playing games with race — America’s rawest nerve — and deal with it forthrightly.”
Maxwell’s forthright view, in January 2008, was that
[i]f Obama becomes the next president, he will do so primarily because of white support, especially the support of whites eager to prove that they are fair….
Many whites see Obama, like Colin Powell before him, as a black who has transcended race. He is the rare black politician who is not seen as a “black leader,” a designation of contempt reserved for the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.
Obama is what many blacks, along with some whites, pejoratively refer to as “an honorary white man,” one who can soothe white people. In the parlance of race studies, he is a “good black” rather than a “bad black.”
“And, for sure,” Maxwell added, “neither Powell nor Obama is ideologically black.”
Commenting, forthrightly I hope, on Maxwell’s forthright comments, I wrote (here) of my hope that
Perhaps some day Maxwell will grace us with “A Black Manifesto,” explicating the content and contours of ideological blackness. In the meantime it would be quite helpful if he, or someone of like mind, could provide a short summary or precis to university admissions officers, a checklist or something similar to prevent those architects of “diversity” from extending any preferences to the “good blacks” or “honorary whites” in their applicant pool since they would obviously provide no real “diversity” to the actual whites.
Forthrightness is good. And thus perhaps even Attorney General Holder’s accusation that we are “a nation of cowards” may in the end do some good, if it continues to provoke thoughtful responses.
