Bush's Blacks: Race Traitors?

The Black World Today ^ | December 9, 2002 | Manning Marable

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I'd say Marable's "race problem" is self imposed.

[martin_fierro]

Black Conservative Ping.

[LibFreeUSA]

You want to see "racism" and see a very 'articulate' "racist"? - Then read this article.

[TontoKowalski]

How very sad. I come from a rural southern background. My very best childhood friend now drives a bread truck (not that work of any kind is dishonorable, but he could have done so much more with his life).

So, while I'm not black, I do come from a background where academic achievement and a desire to succeed in worldly matters is not exactly driven into children's heads.

Still, my parents wanted more for me, they stressed schoolwork, and I knew growing up that I would attend college. It was just expected.

By the author's reasoning, I should be not be proud of the moderate success I've achieved. I should consider myself a traitor to other poor rural Southerners. Hogwash.

[dirtboy]

This conservative wing of the black middle class during the 1980s and 1990s, in effect, committed "racial suicide," in the sense that it disavowed any sense of obligation, or "linked fates," with what happens to the masses of disadvantaged African Americans. There is no sense of personal responsibility or accountability to a political project that is race-based. They wish to be judged as "individuals," not as part of the larger "black community."

I do not feel any obligation to other whites to promote their interests, other than their right to be treated equally under the law with all races - does that make me a "traitor" to the white race? And if I were to promote a position to be part of the larger "white community", and promote white racial positions, I would IMMEDIATELY be branded by this writer as a bigot - and rightly so. But if Clarence Thomas in turn pursues a position of racial equality under the law, with no preference to his own race, he is branded as a traitor - which means that this writer is a rank hypocrite, and that his problem is not so much with Thomas as with the underlying concept of equal protection.

[wideawake]

So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the black political elite has stopped being "black" in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against racism.

Manning Marable should just change his name to Marxist Marable after penning this sentence, in the interests of truth in advertising.

Let's just translate:

So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the vanguard elite has stopped being "proletarian" in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against capitalism.

[pgyanke]

Is this garbage even worth a comment?

... I guess so. For evil to flourish, good men must do nothing...

Who is a traitor to their race:

- Those who affirm the victimhood of an entire segment of society. Those who remove all semblance of personal responsibility and individuality and impose pluralism and a socialist model in spreading misery equally. Those who band together to support the vile, the immoral, the illegal, the subversive and the degenerate in society solely on the basis of their skin color. Those who vilify members of their own race for success and personal achievement and actively encourage successive generations to shun their example...?

- Or those who support equality for all regardless of skin color. Those who rise to the top of their profession through hard work, faith and adherence to standards. Those who give back to their communities through charity of time, talents and treasures. Those who give hope and heroes to children as examples of what can be?

There is a line drawn before us. Those who are attempting to frame the debate are calling patriots traitors and traitors patriots. As our Good Lord told us, woe be unto them who call good evil and evil good.

[BuddhaBoy]

Sign me up as a "race-traitor".

I am happy to have been a traitor to my culture of failure, with no respect for education and success. A culture that has embraced victimization as it's stock and trade, which it uses to extort a higher and higher percentage of my taxs to fund feel-good gimme programs that do nothing but inforce that victim status.

If my personal success makes me a traitor, then I wear the badge proudly, because the black race doesnt own me, and will never tell me what to think, or how to vote, who I should date, or who my heros are.

[shadowman99]

"black bourgeoisie?!?

Stalin wouldn't have the time of day for this commie-wannabe. Show me a black man or woman who has ever enjoyed any level of prosperity in the major communist countries.

[caa26]

This is about the most vile, digusting article I ever read. Disagree with NAACP or Democrats, you're not really black. If the media had any real worth, they would once and for all call out people like Manning Marable as the real racists.

Isn't it lovely that Manning Marable is a professor at Columbia University, and to think of all the parents spending $30,000+ so their kids can be indoctrinated with this crap.

[Physicist]

They wish to be judged as "individuals," not as part of the larger "black community."

The author has correctly identified the "Antietam bridge" of this intellectual war: should people be judged as individuals, or by the color of their skin? It's interesting to see how prevailing opinions on this changed after 1964.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Race Traitor (as per Dr. Manning Marable)

[MHGinTN]

The first Bush administration's most prominent "race traitor" a decade ago was unquestionably Clarence Thomas. Isn't this fun, attacking a MAN with racists remarks designed to maintain racial separation in the mind of the reader but touted as an effort to forward greater racial equality. Is it any wonder that blacks fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones succeed? This writer uses the very same sleazy methods! The same methodology appears to work well with soccer moms, NOW, abortion worshippers, unions, and a long list of other constituencies. If this racists crap didn't work so well with black voters, it would be a novelty but hardly worth debate. That it works so well to enslave a racial group of their own volition is telling of the extent to which democrats are willing to lie and dissemble (and thus disenfranchise those willing to question despotic democrat bilge) in order to gain and hold power. Clarence Thomas is attacked for being simply a successful man who doesn't feel the necessity to remind americans of the race he carries so well ... how ironic, since ignoring race as a causative or identity when considering employment, education, military service, political career, etc. is what these racists pretend to want, yet they attack Justice Tjomas for achieving such non-racial identity!

[pgyanke]

"Isn't it lovely that Manning Marable is a professor at Columbia University, and to think of all the parents spending $30,000+ so their kids can be indoctrinated with this crap."

---

In a perfect world, this article would find its way to the parental and alumni mailing list of Columbia University.

[MHGinTN]

Is it any wonder that blacks fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones succeed? Well, let's try that sentence again: Is it any wonder that black people fall for the lies and spin of the despotic 'plantation' democrats, democrats who work tirelessly to keep blacks on the democrat plantation and out of non-racially defined zones?

[Doug Loss]

There's some cause for pleasure in this piece, too. "Thomas, the 'race traitor,' unfortunately represents a growing list of conservative blacks who actively oppose the black community's interests," tells us that Marable is bothered by the fact that increasing numbers of blacks are throwing off the bonds of their collectivist masters and beginning to think for themselves.

[headsonpikes]

"Marxist Marable"...BINGO!

The commie swill just never stops flowing from the Academy.

[Nat Turner]

You know Dr Marable is a self descibed SOCIALIST.....

[Right Wing Professor]

There are also white Americans who speak of race-traitors. They are the racist and Nazi members of groups like Aryan Nation. So it appears that Dr. Marable is the black equivalent of a white supremacist.