Race Traitor Update: Negro Dialect

"Negro dialect."

If the language wasn't so archaic, I would have a better chance at being insulted. Really. I mean, granted, it's a little boorish for a politician to say something like that, but it isn't as if he wasn't telling the truth. White America wouldn't have elected Wesley Snipes. Barack Obama's demeanor was so harmless, so cultured, that anyone who wasn't charmed by him was shamed into casting their ballot at him.

Now, don't get me wrong. The first time that I heard "he's so well spoken", my flesh crawled so much that I expected to have to feed and burp it. It's an insulting thing to assume that Black people lack the basic capabilities of English speech and polite behavior. This is partly due to the media, but much of the blame does, in fact, lay upon the shoulders of Black people. Granted, Blacks are portrayed, and as a result, perceived as a violent, angry, and disenfranchised people, either to be feared and shied away from, or deserving of pity and in need of saving.

Both are insulting and largely false. Black people are as strong, independent, proud, and intelligent as anyone else, but the media as a whole is startlingly comfortable with opting on pitifully stupid, dangerously promiscuous, and seething with indignant rage.

This paints and entire group of people worldwide as being so, even when the majority are not. Even though there are more Blacks in college, and owning their own businesses than ever before, and now one in the Oval Office, the portrayal of a people that make up 12% of the population hasn't really changed.

I'll take it to the box office, for now. The most recent movies with Black leads were what? Precious and The Blind Side. Poor. Not just food stamp-poor. Worst case scenario-poor. Precious was about a girl who was raped as a young teen by her father, and her struggles. The Blind Side is one of my most favorite sort of depictions of Black people in which their only hope for success is that of a White person on a magic horse of money and stability. Oh, and the only reason that the story has any real weight is because he's an athlete.

Now to bring it all together a bit, Senator Reid wasn't entirely wrong, because the language and demeanor that President Obama used on the campaign trail rarely included slang, and the only times that he used anything less than impeccable language skills where when he was unless he was making a joke, or a serious point.

What he did was avert political suicide, and show the world a different kind of Black man. There are so few positive examples that I am eagerly awaiting a time when acting like a respectable adult doesn't mean that you are trying to “act White”, and will finally mean something along the lines of “being polite”. Reading books and sounding like it shouldn't be something that you should feel like you have to hide, or feel like a race traitor.