Slave Blood...or, Let's talk Race!

Well, there's never a shortage of controversy from the Obama apologists and - mark my words - RACE TALK will be prevalent throughout his tenure as president. In not talking about RACE, or TALKING ABOUT RACE, we're going to get so fed through the nose with RACE, RACE NEWS, RACIAL GRIEVANCES, CRITICAL RACE THEORY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, and SLAVERY, it will be difficult to discuss real issues having to do with policy and governance. The media, the blogosphere, and government are going to be awash in RACE TALK 24/7. Not that this is by definition a bad thing. It will begin in good faith, but will spin off into unhelpful tangents of grievances, retelling of historical atrocities, and the highlighting of our nation's differences at the expense of what unites us. Make no mistake about it, Black America wants this long conversation as do Black nationalists and some academicians , but the rest of America is justifiably wary of opening this Pandora's box.

The Reverend Wright controversy was only the starting gun of this long Obama-inspired marathon. And go figure. Race, after all, is a purely non-scientific, social categorization. It is artificial nomenclature given the power of being from a by-gone era. Yet we talk about it as if it has ding an sich - real thing-in-itself stuff; essence. What else to preoccupy our minds whilst the national ship spirals ever-so-slowly, downward into the abyss?

Now, we have the SCLC president Charles Steele, Jr.'s remarks regarding the media's attacks of Michelle Obama. What has sparked outrage is his contention that the reason why Barack doesn't get criticized as much as Michelle by conservatives and the media is because Obama doesn't have any slave blood. Yes, that's right, not African blood - slave blood. And this is coming from the head of the SCLC - not from some barber or hairdresser in da hood. Wow. And the upshot of this is that Barack's white ancestors were slaveowners. We can expect many more race based stories in an Obama presidency. Though, incidentally, the article cautions about drawing too hasty a conclusion:

"You just can't casually throw some documents together and make a sophisticated analysis," said Tony Burroughs, author of "Black Roots: A Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree" and a consultant on a New York Daily News project that found that relatives of former Sen. Strom Thurmond appear to have owned the ancestors of civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton."

Let us redeem the time for the days are evil.

Baruch Hashem and Soli Deo Gloria!