Former San Jose State University literature professor Shelby Steele, now a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is in the news today for taking issue with the GOP’s distribution of a racially inappropriate video, Barack, the Magic Negro. Steele, an African-American and a Republican, concocted theories about Obama’s appeal to white liberals in a recent column suggesting that Obama “fellow-traveled” with Afrocentric extremists because he was “driven by insecurity, by a need to “be black.” Still, when Mike Huckabee‘s former campaign manager, political operative Chip Saltsman, distributed the decidedly un-PC video, Steele felt that was over-the-line, and called the stunt a “boneheaded move” in an interview.
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Name-calling and stupid racial slurs seem to be on the increase.
The other Steele (Michael S. Steele), former Republican Lt. Governor of Maryland and now candidate to head up the national Republican organization, called the Euro-Americans in the Republican Party “white-bread” which is a strange dehumanizing slur that smothers diversity, and is based on a supremacist claim to have the right to name the other. His remark was quoted on Politico on 12/9/08.
And Jeb Bush has gotten into the slurring contest. He characterized the members of the Republican Party as “old white guys” which is freaky for a former Governor of Florida when you consider that his slur was ageist, anti-beige skin, and sexist. His remark was published in a Newsmax interview 11/30/08, and in The Atlantic Monthly in its 12/2/08 issue.
Locally, and not so long ago on 11/30/07, the local President of United Way, Carol Leigh Hutton, when she was Executive Editor of the Mercury News allowed the use of the well known slur term “gringo” to be used in a front-page story.
The beat goes on.
That video decries itself just fine.
Its hard to find fault with any of the comments on this topic. I myself have made comments to others about how strange it is that minorities complain non-stop about being stereotyped and racism, yet most feel no compunction whatsoever when either they or someone they know cuts loose with a tirade against “Whitey”, “Peck-A-Wood”, or (my personal non-favorite) “The Man”. Since I was a little boy, my parents always taught me, if you want to get respect you have to give it first.
#3- Miguel,
Nicely said, and amen to that!