Black Men in Politics
So, there’s President Obama. There’s Allen West. There’s Herman Cain. One of these three people I really like, even though I don’t like what they do all the time. The other one I’ve discovered is a thug through and through. The last guy is an entrepreneur who sounds thuggish, but I don’t know what he would do in a crunch.
One guy is not doing too well with a lot of working-class (on the lower end of the scale) White Americans, but is rocking with the other White Americans (until you get to the elitist parts of the left wing, and those White people who feel he needs to do everything they tell him to do because, damn it, they proved they weren’t racist by voting for him and now he needs to pay them back for taking that risk!), and most minority groups. One guy was elected largely by a group of fed-up White Americans, and the other guy is keeping his name in the running for President of the United States (POTUS), thanks to the many fed up White people who are part of the larger group that elected the other guy.
One man has a hard road to reelection in 2012. Another has a hard road to election the more we know about him. The last one has a hard road to reelection based upon one vote that went against what the people that put him in office wanted, even though he came through for them on everything else.
I mentioned White people earlier because it was important to note them in this instance. It appears that two of the men, West and Cain, fit into a box of what I hear in the media of what White people think of Black men – angry and loud. I am not saying all Whites believe this about Black men, but some do whether liberal or conservative. I’ve heard it from Harry Reid, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill Maher.
Harry Reid said that Obama doesn’t speak “Negro” and Rush Limbaugh has stated that Ross Perot addressing the NAACP as “you people” was just A-OK. Bill Maher wants Obama to whip Congress into shape by yelling at them and acting like a thug. So, apparently, these men are used to thinking of black men in a certain way. That’s fine. I’ll allow men like Obama to keep you guessing and remain hard-to-define as he continues to blow your mind in this way. I do not want a leader who is a thug and sounds angry all the time. They tend to have a singular focus and don’t take into account all sides of a story to get their points across.
Thus, I think some are comfortable with West. He’s proven himself to be a thug. He says very repulsive things about others with whom he does not agree. He’s had detractors arrested at his town hall at a church and even bragged about it on Twitter, essentially saying that detractors will be stopped and “taken care of” if they speak out against what he is doing. He has since deleted the tweet (of course).
Cain sounds like an angry black man most times. He sounds so frustrated every time he speaks and I haven’t heard him say anything as far as solutions to the problems we’re hav…wait. Is he still in the race?
So, I don’t want Obama to be the angry black man just to fit a mold that some people have about men like me. While I do get angry, just like anyone else, I do not fit the stereotype of the angry black man, the thug, the drug dealer, the gangster. I may be from Baltimore City, but I keep it buried most times.
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Category: Politics
