Posted on 01/17/2013 8:52:35 AM PST by Osage Orange
Leonard Pitts Jr.: How black is black enough?
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
| Published: January 16, 2013
I suddenly find myself concerned about my blackness.
It had never occurred to me to worry about it before. Then came the incident last month on ESPN's “First Take” program that initially got commentator Rob Parker suspended and then, last week, fired outright. It seems Parker, who is black, analyzed what he saw as the insufficient blackness of Robert Griffin III, rookie quarterback for the Washington, D.C., football team that is named for a racial slur.
Having returned their team to relevance for the first time since the Clinton era, RG3, as he is known, can do no wrong in the eyes of Slurs fans. But Parker, saying that the young man's fiancee is (gasp!) white and that he himself is rumored to be — cover the children's ears — a Republican, found him lacking in the area of authentic blackness. “My question,” he said, “which is just a straight, honest question: is he a brother, or is he a cornball brother? He's not really … OK, he's black, he kind of does the thing, but he's not really down with the cause. He's not one of us. He's kind of black, but he's not really like the guy you really want to hang out with …”
That explosion you hear is the sound of my mind, blown. I'm left second-guessing my own blackness.
I mean, I listen to Bruce Springsteen, for crying out loud! There's even a Dixie Chicks album on my iPod. And I read books sometimes, man — even when no one's making me do it. Some of them are thick as bricks. Some aren't even about African-American themes.
It gets worse. I have no natural rhythm, no criminal record and can correctly pronounce the word “ask.” I don't curse nearly as much as I ought to. Oh, and I went and married my baby mama.
Obviously, my blackness is on life support.
Many of us have been taught that it is demeaning and delimiting when someone presumes to say who you are, how you will behave, what you think, what you like, and how intelligent you are, from the color of your skin. We have been taught that such behavior abridges the other person's individuality.
But apparently, that's only when white people do it to black people. When black people do it to black people, it's called assessing your blackness, making sure you aren't some “cornball brother.”
How enlightening to learn that. It is even more enlightening to discover that we have such easy-peasy rubrics to go by. You can't be black if you are a Republican? That means Colin Powell isn't black. Neither, if published reports are to be believed, are rappers LL Cool J and 50 Cent. Who'd have thought?
Poor Frederick Douglass has a double whammy. He was a Republican and had a white wife. Who'd have thought this former slave, one of the towering heroes of African-American history, wasn't black enough?
It is this kind of bold insight and trenchant analysis ESPN loses in sacking Rob Parker. What is the network thinking? Parker, who also contributes commentary to WDIV television in Detroit, defended himself in an interview with the station that aired just before ESPN dropped the ax. He pronounced himself shocked by the fallout and suggested his comments were taken out of context.
“You can't be afraid to talk about race,” he said. He's exactly right. In discussing race, we must be fearless. We must also be thoughtful. And informed. And exact. And alive to the ramifications of what we say.
Surely, Parker knows this. Or if he didn't before, he does now.
As for being black enough, he is probably a greater expert than he was before. He is, after all, a man out of work. It doesn't get much blacker than that.
Once in a while...Pitt’s swerves into some truth.
Yeah, I was surprised to see this.
Wow! Good post.
it amazes me that being “black” means a drop of black blood in your system.....we caucasians and asians don’t get to claim the vast number of mixed race celebrities/athletes/politicians out there.....then again, with the bammey boy and his ilk, who would want to...
Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican. I guess this means he wasn’t black, either.
Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican. I guess this means he wasn’t black, either.
Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican. I guess this means he wasn’t black, either.
Shocker coming from this guy.
Yes, it’s strange. And the other thing is that being “black,” as he points out, is now based on behaving like part of the black underclass.
It would be like saying the “true” white person is the greasy-haired, tattooed thing out in the woods making meth while his girlfriend prostitutes herself at a gas station while her several children by unknown fathers are locked in the closet of her doublewide. Or maybe singlewide.
A little.......
“Phone call for Mr. Pitts, Justice Clarence Thomas on line 2.”
What I find interesting is that many of the most zealous “black-identity” race-mongers are the lightest-skinned black people one sees.
I am thinking of people like Jeremiah Wright, Julian Bond (first head of Southern Poverty Law Center), Ben Jealous (head of NAACP) or even media talking-heads like Melissa Perry on MSNBC or Soledad Obrien on CNN
Heck...In the surfing culture in Hawaii...if you were brown/black skinned...you were pretty much accepted. Didn't matter if you were Mexican, Chinese, etc...IF you had darker skin you weren't haole.
American Indians...( of which I am one...) bag on those that aren't near full blood. Look down on them.
Black are/were the same way...calling light skinned blacks...Yellow ni""ers....
It's all useless B.S. But it's out there.......
Good point.....
About every 2-3 years he's writes something worthwhile.
On one hand...he's going after Parker. But then bags on all the Redskin's fans........He just can't control his inner Progressive.
It gets worse. I have no natural rhythm, no criminal record and can correctly pronounce the word “ask.”
Funny...now if a white guy had wrote that...well, nevermind.
“isuddenly find myself concerned about my blackness. it had
never occured to me before.”
LIE!
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