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Originally Posted by Baby Lee
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Very long but worth the read.
Part of the problem seems to be the whole "black enough" measurement stick. I never got the impression Whitlock wrote for black America - he wrote for an American sports audience.
Whitlock doesn't have to explain black life to black people - he says what he does to attract attention from all people. He wasn't hired to write for only one demographic. He's trying to translate his opinions to a wider audience and while doing that things get lost in translation.
What makes him smart is that even when they take him the wrong way his talking points are headline news. The conversation happens. The matter is discussed.
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Carlson called Whitlock brave, and it was a compliment that aligned with how Whitlock saw and sees himself. In truth, it was the opposite. Whitlock, in the name of "telling it like it is," was merely flattering the prerogatives of white people who preferred that any discussion of race begin with the pathologies of black people and their culture, not with the de jure and de facto system of oppression in America and its residue. Whitlock was chickenshit. He took the easy way out. He did what comes easiest to an American, even in the 21st century, even—especially—now in the age of Obama, himself no stranger to this sort of ahistorical rhetoric. He blamed the black folks.
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I'm just a white guy but I never took it that way. I saw it more as "while you fight your enemies surrounding you don't forget about the enemy within." It's not a black problem, it's an American problem that we have of refusing any responsibility at all when there's a conflict.
Cigarette and beer companies are to blame, not my gluttony. I'm a victim of AIDS even though I ran out and slept with as many women (unprotected) as possible. We can't have smoking in bars because I don't wan't you to poison me while I'm poisoning myself.
Whitlock throws words instead of stones. People are fine with that until a word or a stone is thrown their way...