The Lamp of Vigilance

Credit Liz Sidoti with one of the more anemic arguments to date, that this nation still has a long way to go to bridge the centuries old racial divide–even in this post Obama age. Writing for the Associated Press, Sidoti argues that in spite of the election of Barack Obama to the nation’s highest office, “old racial stereo-types and internet-fueled falsehoods flourish.” As evidence Sidoti offers the editorial cartoon which appeared in the New York Post showing two Police Officers standing over a dead Chimpanzee, an email forwarded by Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose of watermelons on the white house lawn and the internet chat surrounding Obama’s citizenship.

A little historical perspective is perhaps in order. This nation was born in a world of chattel slavery. On the heels of a bloody civil war that ended the institution of slavery came lynchings, Jim Crow Laws, separate but equal education and literacy tests at the polls. The fact that the best Sidoti could come up with to bolster her argument were a few off-color emails speaks volumes.

Ignorance, petty politics and downright human ugliness will always be with us. What is more telling is how a society responds to it. There was a time when jokes such as that passed along by Grose would be told in public and greeted with huge guffaws. Thankfully those times are long gone. Today such jokes are relegated to the anonymous and not-as-private-as-the -mayor-thought world of the internet. If and when such attitudes come to light they are met with outrage, ridicule and the indulger is bathed in public humiliation and suffers political ruin. Grose was not celebrated; he resigned in disgrace.

There are a vast number of Americans that are not even aware that there are ambiguities surrounding the president’s birth certificate or that those questions remain unanswered. The issue is not one promulgated by the opposition party, nor is it one entertained by any mainstream conservative or Republican writers. Sidoti herself writes that this is a conversation relegated to the fringe. This is hardly proof of the boogey-man.

Finally there is the well worn issue of the chimpanzee and the Post. I would love to comment. However, it seems a bit disingenuous for me to object to the portrayal of apes in relationship to this administration when my dear fraternity, the oldest and coldest Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. has adopted a gorilla as its mascot. I would have loved to be in the meeting in which that was decided. At the next national convention I really ought to leave the bar and attend the breakout sessions. Are all depictions of apes in connection with black folk racist or is it only racist when that connection – no matter how tenuous – is made by white people?

What is most distasteful about Sidoti’s article is that it continues to foster the notion that the primary impediment to black success is white racism, and we must therefore remain ever vigilant for signs of its existence– even if we must wander into the brush and beat the bushes to find it. That is not to say that racism no longer exists or that we must extinguish the lamp of vigilance. It is to say that the social power of racism is greatly diminished and that the lamp must now begin to illuminate those cultural and behavioral memes that are now the largest stumbling block to the black community’s finally reaching “the mountaintop.”

As repulsive as we all find ugly stereotypes and as bitter as the world of real politick may be- neither impacts the individual life as much as the rejection of marriage and the embracing of illegitimacy. Off color jokes told amongst a few idiots does not wreak havoc on a community the way a 50% drop out rate does or 40% violent crime rate does. Cartoons can’t steal the soul of a man the way drug abuse can and it is impossible for internet whispers to corrupt the moral intellect the way 40 years of cultural revolutionary defiance has.

No doubt some of the sensitive set will berate me with epithets because of my conclusions. However, if in the age of Obama we are going to bridge the racial divide it is clear we must decide that the focus on what “the man” is doing only distracts us from what we can and should be doing for ourselves.

Joseph C. Phillips is the author of “He Talk Like a White Boy” available wherever books are sold.