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January 10, 2005

More on Black Bigotry

Ricky in comments just doesn't think it's kosher for black liberals to call Armstrong Williams an uncle Tom for pimping on behalf of the Bush administration:

It was ugly and bigoted and represents the lowest form of debate and debases the blogosphere...I wasn't trying to be anal, but there are some things that all sides should agree on, and the case of someone attempting to "Sambo" another human being is one of those cases....and the color of the person doing it matters not.

Here's why I don't agree about Williams. He is not a conservative commentator who happens to be black (the way Condi Rice is a foreign policy expert who happens to be black.) He is a conservative who traffics in his own blackness in order to attack other blacks -- cause he supposedly knows of what he speaks.

And when Williams goes on payroll to do that service for white conservatives, it's not unreasonable for him to be criticized based on his race, since that was the rhetorical coin which he himself used in making his case.

Black conservatives can't get the best of all worlds-- asserting their blackness when it's useful for attacking other people, then crying bigotry when their use of that blackness in their rhetoric is cited by others.

Posted by Nathan at January 10, 2005 06:31 PM