No disrespect whatsoever to Brendan Loy, but this is the sort of thing that white people who don't spend much time around black folks say:
This is the promise of the Obama candidacy, encapsulated and made real. Obama is urging blacks to leave behind, once and for all, the politics of conspiratorial victimhood -- the politics of Jeremiah Wright and, although Obama can't afford politically to say so explicitly, of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- and embrace the politics of unity and hope and, ultimately, self-empowerment.
OK, so some black people say that too. But the point I want to make is that to the extent that there are "politics of conspiratorial victimhood" at work in the black community, its because black people have been--and still are--victims of conspiracies. OK, so not much lately, you say? Well we're still suffering from yesterday's BS. Furthermore, forgive us if after centuries of slavery, racial terrorism, police brutality and otherwise wanton discrimination, if we can no longer tell the difference between conspiracy and plain old ineptitude.
Beyond all that, the truth is that the notion that the ideology of victimhood holds some great truck in the black community is consistently overstated by people, who frankly, aren't qualified to speak on this. In fact, as I wrote in my Cosby piece, when black folks were asked to list who they thought had a positive impact on black people, know who finished first and second? Those great paragons of "blaming the white man" Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby.
We don't need Barack Obama to lead us out of victimhood. What we need is white people to stop listening to a few Al Sharpton speeches and concluding that they've peered into the heart of black America. For right and wrong, African-Americans are the original Americans, the only true natives of this country, the only people whose history truly begins here. We have fought and died in every major war this country has fought. If we're guilty of anything it's too much optimism, it's too much belief in American exceptionalism. We are the ones who had to get the shit kicked out us in Selma simply to use a water fountain, and we held up the Bible and the Declaration of Independence while doing it. To the extent that Obama is attracting near universal support among black people, it's a reflection that people who thought that we were zombies marching lockstep with Sharpton and Jackson need to check themselves. Our problem was never that that we thought we thought we were victims, it's always been that we thought we were citizens.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Ta-Nehisi-
Reading through your links, and stumbled across this nugget of foolishness from Brendan Loy's Jeremiah Wright post.
"Right now, at this very moment, we have an African-American candidate for president who commands overwhelming support within the black community, who has just explicitly and firmly denounced the radical and hateful nonsense that is all too often accepted and repeated without question within that selfsame black community. That's a very good thing."
Who said? I'm unsure as to how an "Irish Trojan in Tennessee" has any idea what the pulse of the black community is, or who it overwhelmingly supports.
That's what makes Barack's ideology so problematic in the first place. Why does "Can't-we-all-just-get-along" speak always have to devolve into some body outside of the black community knowing what's going on in the black community. ( I know that that one's on the list of Stuff White People Like: "Knowing Your Culture Better Than You Do").
I wish somewhere in all this denunciation madness, Barack would be explicit enough to say that it's 2008, and in addition to learning to read, we can actually speak for ourselves too. Funny how they praise him for being articulate, and yet the first time he really speaks clearly is when he has to slay his father.
Fred (Go Bison)
Posted by Fred McKindra | April 30, 2008 1:03 PM