is black a race? or a culture?

Is it offensive to talk about evangelicals voting as a bloc?

Well - we do it. And of course we know that not all evangelicals belong to this bloc. There are rules to the language. We make certain assumptions. And it's only offensive to use those rules to talk about one voting bloc group, because that particular group fought for and won...not the right to equality, but the right to control the use of the word 'black'. Which is supposed to be a step on the way to equality.

Quite frankly, they would have done better to shoot for real equality, skipping the identity politics crap.

But there it is: it's offensive to talk about blacks voting as a bloc, or its converse (whites voting as a bloc in a race against a black) - but even then, we have to qualify: there's an exemption to the rule if you yourself are for the black candidate.

So the real rule is, white people can't talk about blacks as a bloc, or whites as a bloc in a race against a black - unless the white people are for the black man.

Sounds like more than equality - but it's not, because it tends to backfire. These rules have their basis in courtesy, and everyone hates people who try to exploit graciousness. This is behavior that gets punished - and that probably looks a lot like racism to people who don't understand why people are angry with them.

You just don't hear this stuff when whites are running against other ethnic groups, or men are running against women, or one religion is set up against another.

All this is going to be tested this election cycle. The rules that govern what the word 'bloc' means, and how and when that word can be used, are being twisted and contorted by different sets of rules governing what the word 'black' can mean.

Specifically: is black a race? or is it a culture?

And does the skin color of the speaker affect the word's possible meanings?

I predict that when this is all over, we will have new rules to help us determine when race refers to skin color, vs. when it is cultural - something you can choose, embrace, or disown.

As it stands, we allow whatever definition is most generous to the black community. But the exploitation is going too far.

If Barack Obama has a problem that Condi Rice would not have, or Colin Powell would not have, why do we describe this as a "race" problem? Are conservative black people "not really black", as Rev. Wright has suggested?

I have told our congregation for thirty-five years, "Everybody your color ain't your kind and everybody not your color is not necessarily your enemy." Some of Asa's enemies are Africans.

We've got some Ghanaian chiefs here. We've got the Council of Ghanaian chiefs here, yeah! But we also got some Africans who can out-white, white folks. Make no mistake about it. They're British all down in their bones, born raised and living (as Ashanti) in Ghana not just Liverpool!

White supremacist brainwashing passing itself off as education, is not restricted to the United States of America or white European cultures. White supremacy is not restricted to any particular country or any particular color. We got some Africans who are whiter in their thinking than George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Does Rev. Wright own the definition of what it means to be a black person in America? Does he have the power to excommunicate?

Maybe, once we started talking about black kids "acting white" and white kids "acting black", just maybe "race" became this thing that stopped being about the color of your skin and started being more about a set of cultural assumptions and rules and behaviors.

Because in the neighborhoods where I've lived - and I've lived in some bad neighborhoods - the word 'black' is frequently used as meaning 'antisocial', a sort of fashionably hostile attitude of cynicism in most cases, whereas 'white' is synonymous with toady or kissing up or the unfair price of success.

Look - I realize that daring to challenge who owns this language and how they're allowed to use it makes me (a) a Republican and (b) a racist. But quite frankly both those terms have narrowed down so that if you don't support Barack Obama, you are both, anyway. So those of you who worked for decades building up all that political capital Obama is now spending as if it were birthday cash - enjoy what he is doing with that legacy. It took many years to make the word 'racist' into a horrible insult, universally dreaded by all decent people, but it only takes one election cycle to change the meaning of a word. Permanently. Racist is now being remade into "anyone who rejects the affirmative action Presidency", which isn't the same as rejecting equality.

And, yes, this became an affirmative action Presidency when the only reason left to vote for the man with no experience, no qualifications, and a noticeable lack of party values, was because of The Threat: if you don't, you are assumed to be racist. And this accusation has been accompanied by some pretty hardcore attempts at shaming.

And standing in the middle of all of this is the taboo that nobody dares speak: the language of race has become a euphemism for social class*.

The Republican party is going to have its permanent majority - and what will make it happen is the simple fact that most whites really don't respond well to "gimme what I want or else you're a racist!"

And there is no other reason to vote for Barack Obama.

I fully expect the Republicans will turn right around after the nomination is finished and use everything Obama has said. Suddenly people will be looking 24/7 at what the media is currently trying to downplay. Obama's flaws and faults. Obama's associates and attitudes and ideologies. And just how ugly his campaign against Clinton was.

Oh, and his race-baiting. Republicans aren't going to sit on their hands the way Clinton did.

Here is how it will suddenly be spun:

Nobody is against equality, of course. But we need to come together as Americans - we need to return to the ideology of the melting pot, which is the only thing that can counter racism. It is what ended bigotry against the Irish and it is what ended bigotry against the Italians - and it is the price of full membership in the USA.

The "melting pot" is code for "equality", for "united".

This conceptual framework has been used already to directly attack the idea of special entitlements for blacks, in Newt Gingrich's rebuttal to Obama's great race speech. And the issue of entitlements is worth revisiting, because the real secret to 'what is wrong with Kansas' is that Republicans have been using this issue to steal Democrats away - because special entitlements are bad both for those who receive them and for those who have to live next door to the one who receives them**. And that is going to become an issue in this election - in fact, it already is.

Marvin Olasky extended that critique in a brilliant book written in 1994 called The Tragedy of American Compassion. Olasky outlined the values and principles of the great nineteenth century social reformers who all believed that helping people out of poverty required tough love and work requirements. He cited reformer after reformer who condemned the compassionate wealthy who wanted to give people something for nothing. These people were convinced that giving away money—the reformers of the nineteenth century were convinced that giving away money subsidized bad behavior and encouraged people to remain dependent, and in many cases, to remain addicted to drugs and to alcohol. The modern redistributionist model of bureaucratic welfare was an outgrowth of a leftist social critique of society, according to Olasky. He documented the leftist desire to create a right to money without effort. He cited advocate after advocate on the twentieth century Left who insisted that a large underclass of permanently poor people was acceptable, and that it was cultural imperialism to insist that they acquire habits of discipline and self-management in order to lead full lives as independently productive citizens. The Tragedy of American Compassion made clear that the fight over welfare reform was at its heart a cultural and moral fight over the nature of being American and the requirements of a full and healthy citizenship. Understood on those terms, the existing welfare system was indefensible as bad government and bad culture. It was bad government and bad culture combined in a way that crippled the lives of people.

Newt takes on the entitlement thing directly, and he's got enough legitimate points that Democrats should get out of their bubble and be concerned. (The whole speech: "Answering the Obama Challenge: What Is the Right Change to Help All Americans Pursue Happiness and Create Prosperity?")

Let me start by talking about the concept of anger, because I do think there’s an authenticity and legitimacy of anger by many groups in America. Senator Obama said in his speech:

That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white coworkers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings. . . . That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition.

I think that that’s right, and I think that it’s important to recognize that anger can be a source of energy to create a better future—in which case it’s a very good thing. But if anger is a self-inflicted wound that limits us, it is a very bad and a very dangerous thing. And we have to be very careful about the role that anger plays in our culture. Tragically, what has happened is that cultural and political leaders have used anger as an excuse to avoid reality, as an excuse to avoid change, as an excuse to avoid accountability, because everything that is wrong is somehow somebody else’s fault.

Don't think race won't be an issue in the general. Obama has already given the conservatives the fuel they need to bring it up - by quoting Obama.

We are going to be hearing the phrase "reverse discrimination". We are going to have our attention re-drawn to the fact that Obama smacked down Geraldine Ferraro for saying a thing - but not John Kerry, not Maureen Dowd. It's apparently okay to say that being black is an advantage as well as being a liability - but only for some people.

Obama acknowledged when he arrived in the Senate that he got more attention, his big book deal and his celebrity, because he is not white

Two standards? One for me and one for you?

And that's a legitimate grievance. That's a grievance that is going to hurt in the fall. Because that ain't about the color of your skin. That's the rules you're playing by - and if someone doesn't like you because of that, is it really fair to say that what they don't like about you is determined by the color of your skin?

The Rev. Wrights say so. To Rev. Wright, and Al Sharpton, the arguments are all tangled up together, so that one equals the other equals the third. They argue that certain things are inherent to being black, and that anything we don't like about that is our own fault, for causing the problems in the first place, which are now permanent until we find the solution for it. Deep beneath it all is this insinuation that things can't be right until there has been payback of some sort, enough to make up for all the bad things that happened.

And the problem with that is that all the things white people have already done - all of it combined - is treated as collectively so insignificant that it is insulting even to mention it. No - payback means big, so big that everything that has ever been done is not even a drop in the bucket compared with what is owed.

But if payback is what this is really all about, everyone needs to stop talking about Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream, as if that dream had anything to do with it.

This ain't a race thing, if by race we mean something you are born with and cannot change. People can talk all they like about how Dr. King was discouraged toward the end of his life - but today we have a black man running for President of the USA, and even Rev. Wright is having a 10,000 square foot home custom built. Michelle Obama criticizes her Ivy League school for not accepting her blackness - it isn't enough to be granted opportunity; she is now entitled...to what? What is it that would make this woman happy?

I don't mean to suggest discrimination does not exist, because clearly it does. However, Ms. Obama is not being realistic if she expects hearts to bleed for her poor Ivy League-educated suffering.

And if someone comes into that or any other school with a different culture - no matter which different culture - and then tries to cling to that culture, in defiance of local norms, isn't that the very essence of setting oneself up for rejection?

Conservatives such as Condi Rice are put in one hell of a position when asked about "black culture" (as if it were monolithic) or affirmative action. On the one hand, Rice clearly accepts the "American deal" - the part about working hard, assimilating, and above all taking personal responsibility for herself and her own actions and her own life course. So how could she approve of the way Al Sharpton behaves?

But, on the other hand, discrimination really is real, and Condi Rice wouldn't be anywhere if she hadn't been given a chance to show what she is capable of.

"Race" is not a choice you make. It is something you are born with. So that's why it drives me nuts that people keep ascribing to "race" things that are clearly cultural - stumbling blocks for Obama that would not exist if Condi Rice were the nominee.

And then we hear loudly-voiced concerns over whether people will accuse Obama of not being "black enough". Black enough for what? Personally, I'd be willing to bet that black voters are no more inherently racist than white ones.

Is it race, or is it something else, when a candidate like Obama has a problem that Colin Powell or Condi Rice would not have, if they were the ones running?
____________________________
*And, furthermore, we use these words to differentiate between what Doolittle in My Fair Lady might call the "deserving" from "undeserving" poor - those who are poor because of white oppression, vs. those who are poor because they're just trash. Because, with the amazingly and even amusingly slippery use of these words, "white" means success! And, again, blacks do not realize the backlash - because they do not realize how their own identity politics games feed into white hate groups. By denying that white people have any right to an identity that does not include the concept of trash, they are ironically bolstering groups that offer, first and foremost, an identity that rejects white guilt and white shaming. Think about what that means. Think of the feedback loops that make the pretty swirlies in Al Gore hurricane flicks.

**Please note that the difference between conservative and liberal does not have to be that one clings to solutions that are proven to not work while the other doesn't. There's another possibility - that everyone could recognize when programs or even entire approaches don't work, and there could be legitimate disagreement about what to do instead, with conservatives (and, interestingly, Obama) pushing 'faith-based' charity approaches, while Democrats push approaches that do not leave peoples' fate to the goodwill of the wealthy, but in opportunity - having a fair chance.