Comment

Hope, Change, and the Egg of Power

516
Cato the Elder1/27/2009 7:31:59 pm PST

re: #242 Joan

Many African-American people I know have versions of this egg sculpture in their homes—it is, I think, based on some traditional wood carving styles from West Africa (Ghana?). It isn’t sinister or uncommon. As for the dang “blue book” that is sheer capitalist entrepreneurship—and, no more sinister than the hero-worship of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at MLK-Day gatherings.

I think African-American people are among the most resilient, loyal, enduring, faith-filled people in our country. It has been a privilege for me to work on various “team oriented” civic and service projects with them—they know how to organize, how to “make a way when there ain’t know way!” and they do find inspiration in Africa-centric artwork, mythology, traditions.

These are also fierce, fearsomely passionate individuals, and I would never want to come between them and a cherished, beloved member of the great extended family of black people in America. I don’t think I will ever understand, and Obama is their son, their darling, their pride. Therefore my dissent—even here, my free-speech “home” on LGF—needs to be dissent from policies, anger at bad ideas and failed ideology. We are on very thin ice and on dangerous ground. I have to watch myself, speaking just for myself, because sometimes I shoot from the lip.

If I could give multiple updings, you’d get them.

And to come right out and say it, some of the comments on this and other Obama-mocking threads not only go right up to the edge of racism, but step boldly across that boundary.

I’m all for mockery, and there’s no reason why anyone should hold back on what Obama says or does that’s ridiculous, but snarking on the African tchotchkes he chooses to own (and I’m referring to some of the comments here, not to the thread as a whole) is, well, stepping on eggshells.