I assume that most of us are aware that during the solemn occasion of the Nelson Mandela funeral the president of the United States of America saw fit to cut-up and act like a juvenile, snapping a grinning group portrait selfie with a couple of other people. What class! What style! What maturity of public deportment during a world televised and solemn occasion performed for a fellow being eulogized by a significant portion of the world's current and former leaders! What an angry looking wife. Ooops! Now one has to be careful about such things since it's long been a Western culture racial stereotype that the steady state of Black women is anger. Anger at their juvenile acting and eye's roving men (another pair of racial stereotypes, by the way) and just angry at the world in general; just as it is a Western culture ethnic stereotype that Jewish women are spoiled nags and that Italian women are bimbos who become overly protective as mothers, just as Italian men are either all stupid or mafia thugs. What's the difference between racist and ethnic stereotypes? One's over all melanin count and how protective of your 'category' Left of Center progressives feel toward you in any given decade. The calculation for that judgement call process seems rather arcane and definitely complex. But then that's the waxing and waning fortunes of Political Correctness for you. I think it may simply have something to do with slow news days and how long leftwingers have gone without hauling out a Race Card or Ethnic Hysteria card lately, to tell you the truth. So, anyway, Obama -- in a typically juvenile and eye's roving manner for his particular categories of race and gender -- was supposedly responsible for Michelle Obama when she -- in a typically anger-based fail safe state for her particular category of race and gender -- got caught by photographers seemingly glaring at her man and his antics. Here's a BBC link, by the way, that defends the Obamas in this regard: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-25355881 The entire world (journalists and pundits, that is) commented on such observed activities -- and generally along those character trait and emotional activities lines -- and then the Politically Correct crowd's push-back and backlash (two different reactions, by the way) occurred. The obvious counter to this publicity fiasco? Anyone reaching the above interpretation for the observed activities . . . is a hate-based racist. Ah . . . the time-honored and traditional playing of the Race Card in defense of the Obama's and their generally low-class or no class activities from fist-bumps to wearing shorts on air-force one (when a First Lady shouldn't do that), to jetting to Vegas for a campaign fundraiser the morning after a U.S. ambassador and his people are brutally murdered. If you issue negative responses on anything connected to the Obamas then you ARE a racist. As it was in 2008, so it remains today -- the Obama's are auto-issued permanent press passes and a categorical 'get out of all criticism's free' card from the leftwing members of the United States and world press organizations. How nice for the Obamas! But is this wrong? After all we are talking about race-designated stereotypes and -- as it turns out, perhaps the fact that whenever she is relaxed and unmindful of the presence of camera's Michelle Obama's resting expression is one that most people would interpret as 'angry about something.' In other words, she's not necessarily angry; it's just the luck of the draw that she looks that way when relaxed and not paying attention to the fact that in public she is always going to be tracked by someone's camera lens. So it is quite possible that she is being accused of something that wasn't true on that day, and that she wasn't angry at her irresponsibly acting husband. She was simply relaxed and not consciously mindful of the surrounding sea of camera lenses. Sure, why not? No one can prove otherwise. Still it's a scary look to receive from a woman if you are her man -- just ask any long time married man. So the critics really are racists? Some probably are, but most of them probably are not. You see, most journalists and pundits operate under the dictate of Occam's Razor, which is that the simplest explanation for the observed event -- based on the currently available data of the observers -- is the likeliest one; and especially (an unofficial corollary to the rule) if said explanation agrees with the general life experiences of the observers. So let's transpose skin coloration here and fiddle with time and available technology for a couple of decades. You have a younger Bill Clinton at a thoroughly recorded public funeral for a very, very important person and he acts like a juvenile and a faintly randy (hey this IS Bill Clinton) fool and takes a group selfie while a younger Hillary Clinton gets caught looking on the proceedings with a VERY angry expression on her face. The resulting interpretation and conclusion by countless journalists and pundits -- themselves a mix of all races and both genders? 'Man oh man, if my wife glared at me like that at a funeral I'd be scared to enter our bedroom that night!' So are the defenders of the Obama's wrong about their claim of racism in regards to this event? Mostly, yes. The world media -- as a disparate group of events-conditioned professionals -- reacted according to observed cause and effect based on the information available to them when it happened and not -- generally speaking -- based on the skin coloration of the participants. The fact that the publicity fiasco happened to fall into, and enforce, the known history of stereotyping of Blacks in Western culture is an unfortunate coincidence. The conclusions reached by the media in general, however, were the correct ones based on what they observed and based on life observations regardless of skin coloration and racial stereotyping. It's just that they were probably wrong regarding their conclusions. So once again the race-based defenders of all things Obama . . . over-reacted with their knee-jerk cries of "Racist!" and "Racism!" pertaining to the motivations behind the rest of the world's intrigued journalists and pundits reaching their set of conclusions. But defenders of all things Obama in nature cannot help themselves as they are conditioned to reflexively play either the race card or the Ethnic Hysteria card for very nearly everything. It's become an addiction for them and like any junkie they will always reach for another potent hit. Some stereotypes are based on reality, after all. So it goes.
Of my essay? It's time for the left (in the United States anyway) to grow up regarding their knee jerk usage of racism.
The title of your thread, 'political correctness and the angry black woman,' brought back a memory from the Oprah Winfrey show from several years ago. Oprah was interviewing a white women who said, 'she was the black sheep of her family' upon which Oprah, obviously angry, responded, 'that's racist' The woman obviously confused asked what was racist, and Oprah responded, 'calling yourself the black sheep of your family is a derogatory statement towards African Americans'- LOL
I think you were making a pretty broad point, but I would like to narrow the focus a bit to the knee jerk way black women are treated. Now I'm no Michelle Obama fan, and for all I know, she really is angry all the time. However the angry black woman stereotype is not reflective of black women I knew in the service and in the workplace. They were professionals, just like you would expect anyone to be in the positions they held. But they do get s--t on in the media. I turn your attention to a recent Arsenio Hall bit: [video=youtube;u0bwsG6J-nw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0bwsG6J-nw[/video] Now, can you imagine Letterman or Leno doing something similar to white women on their shows? Of course not. The entire country would be outraged. But black women? Up for grabs. The thing is, this sort of stereotype is coming from the black community. Why they would want to treat their own women (their mothers, their sisters, their wives...) that way I can't imagine.
Well in this case it's professional comedians playing for ratings and such stuff. White comedians (or hosts) would cheerfully do the same thing with White women . . . and did do just that for decades; but played up the ethnic variations within the category of White. BUT they are leery of doing such things nowadays for fear of risking leftwinger generated backlash along the rigid line of Political Correctness. On the other hand Black comedians and hosts get away with their race-based playing to stereotypes because . . . leftwingers won't say boo to them regardless of what liberties they take, period. Ironically this refusal to hold them up to the same standards others are held at the 'gun point' of Political Correctness encourages them to continue wallowing in the promotion of stereotypes. Hang on a minute . . . I think I just threw my back out with all that convoluted rationalization. Ouch!
