Trouble in Paradise (Part One)

A healthy sign, indeed.

Of Chris Rock’s stint as Oscar emcee this past weekend, La Shawn writes:

Rock is his own man and what he says or does is no reflection on me. But I’m embarrassed by his behavior, his very persona, nonetheless. His antics are the sort that should make a mother bow her head in shame that she’d raised such a fool. [SNIP]

Under Hollywood’s de facto affirmative action policy, this is what they come up with. Such behavior would be unacceptable for anyone else, but when a black big-mouth does it, people snicker. They’re not really laughing with him; they’re laughing at him, but he’s too busy clowning to the know the difference.

They couldn’t find a dignified black person, one who exuded grace and charm, for the occasion? Or one who wouldn’t dream of playing to the stereotype of the ignorant Negro in a monkey suit, loud and obnoxious, profanity spewing out of his mouth?

And Solomon responds:

Yes, he's obviously a reflection on you. Why? Cause you demonized him because of his blackness! Your embarrassed because he is black and you are black. Like Chris Rock is "bringing down the race".

Well, guess what? They’re both right. Wait! Don’t accuse me of not wanting to tick off two people whom I consider on-line friends just yet. ;-) A while back I wrote this:

[A Jewish lady] mentioned a familiar phenomenon. She said that when she hears a news report of a human misbehavior, she always hopes that said human isn’t Jewish. Well, guess what? Every single time that some nitwit kills a bunch of people, rapes anyone, or just generally screws up, nearly every black person I know will say to self: “Please don’t let that fool be black.” (Too often, our hopes are in vain.)

So when a public figure who happens to be black repeatedly demonstrates that she is just really not that smart and really not that nice, black people cringe, even rugged individualists like yours truly. We do this because we know that there are still some who erroneously hold black people like [US Representative Sheila]Jackson Lee [D-TX] up as an example of our alleged across-the-board inferiority and incompetence.

It’s a fine line that the black individualist walks, especially in his/her own mind: part idealism and part realism. On one hand, we want to be accepted for own personal merits and justly derided for our own personal character-flaws, without having to deal with the “you people” accusation. On the other hand, we know that many of our fortunes ride on perception in the minds of others, based on the behavior of those who share our skin color. Thus, when we see black people exhibiting behavior of which we disapprove—especially in front of millions of people—there’s a part of the black individualist that wants to shout, “hey, that ain’t me!” nonetheless.

But Cobb, channeling that other Solomon, has hope for the future:

There will soon come a day in American history when it will be clear that everything blacks promised each other and the world will come to pass and simultaneously become irrelevant. There will soon come a day when the actual Negro Problem will be forgotten. It will be renamed and redefined of course. Some minority within the minority will claim the stage and continue to shout while the overwhelming majority will have gone home. But all of the symbols and signs of struggle will seem odd, clunky and distant - like what fingers look like after a day of picking cotton. Like the adjective 'cotton-picking'.

When that day comes, the ability for people to represent black desire will be indistinguishable from their ability to represent human desire. It will be the day everyone recognizes blackfolks as humans. Today, there are lots of folks on both sides of the color line who can't, because that fixed thing that is Black, that Negro Problem, still substitutes for the actual real complexities of actual real people.