The Black Card

In the midst of all the current unrest about race relations, mainly black and white relations, especially the brouhaha over blacks in the NFL choosing not to stand for the national anthem, I must point out that some blacks do more to hurt race relations than to help it. I’m talking about those in television who keep playing the black card because they want to show other blacks that they’re cool, they’re still in the street rappin’ “gangsta” black club. In one of my blogs, I’ve already mentioned Steve Harvey on Family Feud and his deliberate caricature of black speech patterns and physical mannerisms when he has a black family as one of the contestant groups. He falls into a broad black vernacular, rolls his eyes like Steppin Fetchit, and glad hands the young black males in intricate high-low-in-between fives. Young impressionable blacks will watch him do it and take it as acceptable, and he’s doing them a grave disservice by perpetuating those very stereotypes that most whites as well as most blacks object to. And now I see Jennifer Hudson on The Voice doing the same thing. One minute she’s this refined woman who sings like an angel and acts like an Oscar winner (which she is). And then she resorts to a stereotypical woman doing the Steve Harvey moves. Too many of the black NFL color commentators on television do the same. Too many in the music industry do the same, especially black rappers. They seem to want to continue a black fraternal order that bans whites but they also want to protest what they consider racial discrimination. Just look at the blacks who wouldn’t be caught dead playing the black card—Michael Strayhan, Mike Tiriko, Larry Fitzgerald, Michelle and Barack Obama, and the list could go on and on. I do believe that we should all cherish our racial and ethnic identities but that we shouldn’t display them when the outcome might be detrimental.

Wiley, I love you. This Sunday you did it again, humorously take a swipe at Trump and his adoring fan club. "Knowledge just ruins everything."