Black Kenneth

Black Kenneth

Something I Said-Black Conservatives

Something I Said
Black Conservatives Ain't All Uncle Toms
Dwight Hobbes Minnesota Law & Politics I'm at the library, reading Black and Right: The Bold New Voice of Black Conservatives in America. Kevin, a friendly acquaintance, happens by, sees the title, looks at me funny and says, "I know you're not a conservative." Gauging his expression, I reply, "Research, man, for a gig." "Oh." Relieved, he extends perfunctory pleasantries and, still a bit quizzical, goes his way. I look after, realizing, just like that, my integrity's been questioned. My legitimacy, so to speak, as a bonafide black person. This brotha, with whom I've been fairly cool going on a few years, was ready to judge me in a given light and, accordingly, lower his opinion. For all I know, he still might,, wonder whether a Klansman's heart beats beneath my skin. Watching Kevin leave, I wonder how the real McCoy – honest-to-goodness black conservatives – feel when they're judged out of hand. What's it like to be thusly stigmatized? Despite the historic prominence of folk like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice – in some ways because of it -- African Americans aren't supposed to admit to being conservative. Especially not after the advent of liberal poster boy President Barack Obama. Let someone black say something against affirmative action, for instance, at a cocktail party among politically correct white folk and watch noses wrinkle like somebody farted. The response isn't as stark among privileged, mainstream blacks, but you won't be exactly putting your best foot forward. Kevin is by no means an aberration. We blacks conventionally view our conservatives as misguided members of the race who, instead of supporting the ongoing struggle for social equality sadly sabotage same. It's a not an altogether hard to understand response. Our stakes, after all, are a hell of a lot higher than right- or left-wing whites. It isn't all that many decades that our standard of living has included viable education, worthwhile employment and the freedom to be lynched on the whim of someone white. We want, on top of keeping what minimal gains that can be confidently passed on to our children, to cease being grateful for small favors and, in the foreseeable future, realize an America where those children learn about racism as history instead of encountering it firsthand. On the other hand, blacks who accept our conservatives are likely to view them as comrades in arms against debilitating social programs, an addiction to charity that keeps many of us too busy main-lining white good will to go cold turkey and, by self-determination, do something our damned selves about transcending second-class citizenry. Note: You get Republican clowns like US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who acts like he's never seen a mirror and seems so convinced he's white that it's a wonder he never applied for membership in the Ku Klux Klan, but we're not talking about that kind of idiocy, here. We're talking about one set of African Americans who want what's good for African American, they just don't agree with another particular set of African Americans on how to go about getting it. Conservative blacks aren't generally known for a desire to burn liberal blacks at the stake. The same cannot be said the other way around. More than a few of us who understandably despise institutionalized oppression go off a deep end, vehemently disparaging conservatives of color. Many of us cease to reason when we perceive one of our own as threatening social progress. Or being too critical of black folk for not doing enough of their own part about socially progressing. Some get downright narrow-minded, vengefully shouting down what we don't want to ear. Jesse Peterson, conservative and head of Brother of a New Destiny (BOND), was in Los Angeles, addressing a group of liberal black ministers and community wheeler-dealers in church. He was not chanting the popular mantra along the lines that everything wrong with black people's lives is mean, hateful white folk's fault. Which, apparently, had been the tone of the day. "Why is it", he had the audacity to ask, "that every speaker here spoke about how bad white people are, but nobody spoke about the decline of morals in many black communities?" Considering drugs, homicide, robbery and prostitution are entrenched in so many black neighborhoods as to be a fact of life, the question was reasonable. Additionally, the dilemma he cited entails not only gang-banging thugs and other news-making miscreants but victims who don't make it to the public eye and that black communities determinedly keep as closeted as possible. Innumerable females, for instance, who, raped by fathers, uncles, brothers and friends of the family, grow up to be hookers smoking their pain away with crack. It encompasses kids regularly beaten to within an inch of their innocent lives who, if they survive to adulthood, can't wait find someone to turn around and beat the hell out of on a regular basis – be it domestic abuse, child abuse or just plain bullying whoever they can get away with abusing. Black people everywhere know damned good and well it goes on. Black people everywhere also come with that don't-air-dirty-laundry-in-public crap which sweeps tortured lives under the rug so we don't look any worse to white people than we already do. The group Peterson was addressing, though, responded with a lot of shifting in their seats before the minister, conducting the closing prayer, took pot shots, snidely denouncing Jesse Peterson as a "trouble-maker" in league with the enemies of God against the good of black America. That knee-jerk, ostrich-act gesture was all it took. The minister's condemnation inspired rapturous rejoinders from the amen corner as the ridiculed Peterson was all but hounded from their midst. It's sad, but it's a fact. You can't tell black people a single, damn thing they don't want to hear. They simply will not listen. Venerated icon Jesse Jackson landed neck-deep in hot water, acknowledging back in 1993, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street, hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around, see somebody white and feel relieved." Not that there aren't white muggers, but, again, black people everywhere know Jackson was just being candid. And making perfectly good sense. Condemned for perpetuating a stereotype – never mind its accuracy – Jackson tucked tail and never opened his mouth on the subject again. That this internationally renowned figure can be promptly silenced is profound testament to the power of censure in black America. Never mind that, corroborating his statement, our urban streets crawl with black criminals: acknowledging root ills in our communities is secondary to saving face. If you can't say something nice about black people, don't say anything at all or you're a race traitor. Even if you're Brother Jesse. If Jackson can get jumped on and gagged, what hope have mere mortals of speaking freely? There's a saying among black folk, "Free your mind and your ass will follow." How the hell are you going to free your mind to realistically assess what ails black communities when we, who should be slower than anyone to indulge reactionary thought, sit on our ass and decry the least bit of dissension. We forbid dissenters to express their hearts and minds instead of living up to our ideas of who they should be. Doesn't always work, though. There are those of us who don't give a damn about getting public permission, who are quite willing to be politically incorrect. Those who do so go hard against the grain, here, in Minnesota, lauded bastion of liberal thought. It didn't surprise at all that out of roughly a dozen people I called for this essay, only four called back with three agreeing to be interviewed. And one of them was so cagey, it rendered the conversation useless. Attorney Kenneth Udoibok of the Minneapolis firm Smith & Udoibok, P.A. emphatically states, "Because I espouse many conservative ideas doesn't make me an uncle tom." For instance, he's not a fan of affirmative action and believes that, instead of living by trick laws, the idea is to make the existing ones work. He is, by the way, a civil rights lawyer. "Civil rights and conservatives [are not] inconsistent. Civil rights, in and of itself, is conservative. Conservatism limits government intrusion in our lives. By civil rights we also mean our rights must not be intruded upon by government or any other party." How does he protect civil rights while opposing affirmative action? "If the ideal is equal legal protection, [it] defeats that idea, lending itself to compartmentalization. If we admit slavery was wrong, if society' goal is to continue in a opposite direction, it would be immoral to validate acts that define us according to race." None of this means Udoibok hops on the Republican bandwagon that grinds black lives beneath its wheels. "Republicans' lack of recognition that race consciousness is significant in this country, the denial of race's influence, is myopic." Black conservatives, presumption to the contrary, don't all think alike. "I disagree with Peter Bell's [board member, Twin Cities based and nationally prominent the American Experiment] strident argument that race does not have significant force for both conservatives and liberals. I disagree with Warren Grantham [former Executive Director of the Minnesota Education League] on school vouchers. He thinks vouchers would create another bad public school system and I [see it as] probably the first tool that would educationally elevate the black underclass." Peter Bell states, "Race is our nation's number one unresolved issue. The important question is ‘What is an appropriate governmental and societal response?' Can we have race as a factor in government policy? I am doubtful. I'm not sure how we calibrate that as a component of government policy in a way where the cure isn't worse than the disease." Grantham ran a merry-go-round of voicemail tag, ultimately unavailable to respond to Udoibok's comments or account for himself at all. What can I say: this is an essay about being conservative not about having the guts to go on record. You can't talk realistically about black communities without mentioning police. God knows it's our communities that deal with them the most. In 1999, Minneapolis beat cops hit the street with CODEFOR, an initiative that swept through black neighborhoods, acting on even minor infractions of the law, including jaywalking, littering, loitering, you name it. The idea was to come down with such a sledgehammer that everybody felt it, from harmless layabouts to poison-pedaling drug dealers. There's no arguing about one thing, it cleaned up the streets. If you had business being on the avenue – going to and from work, stuff like that – you tended to it as usual, perhaps with a bit more care not to cross across the light. If you had no business being out there, suddenly nobody saw you anymore. However, there was the usual barking and braying from self-anointed saviors -- so-called activists and community spokesperson, public figures who basically are the Al Sharptons of Minneapolis and St. Paul, making a livelihood by complaining about racism both real and imagined. Bell's position on the controversy wasn't what the crowd particularly wanted to hear. "A major impediment to developing African American communities is the presence of crime. The difficulty is that black communities have more people involved in criminal activities. We have to look at the role we play." Retired MN State Representative Richard Jefferson, a Democrat and proven champion of black progress, doesn't share echo Bell's perspective. Their sentiments, it turns out, are not entirely dissimilar. Says Jefferson, "Without a doubt there's probably been abusing. The argument is about how [CODEFOR] has been implemented. Investigating crime in high-crime areas is not necessarily a bad ting. If don't have to worry about anybody but white people committing crimes against me, I wouldn't have to lock my door. Until, as a community, we say black-on-black crime is something we have to deal with we're never going to have the type of [neighborhoods] we want." Evincing yet one more politically incorrect attitude and the point of view of Janice McKinney, an entrepreneur who has a definite problem with affirmative action. How, you can't help but ask, can someone who is black and a woman oppose affirmative action? McKinney flatly asserts, "My gender and race don't dictate who I am." She relates being taken for a ride as a two-for-one token. "State Farm Insurance somewhat courted me. They were excited when I qualified as a trainee agent for my own quasi-franchise. Unbeknownst to me, they didn't use the same requirements everybody else met to become licensed, having 1,000 prospects to advance in the process. I went to the next level with an inadequate number of leads. It was like having a store with no inventory. Six months later I found myself struggling to meet the sales quota. Then we got into ‘Janice, you're not able to do the work.' It all stemmed from the fact that I didn't have that solid foundation, was just moved along to met their needs. I believe that's been the case in many instances of affirmative action where people were hired without necessary qualifications. Or were moved on before having satisfied the criteria. The company say, ‘See? We told you they can't do it.' I don't profess to have the answer, but [affirmative action] is a stopgap that's been manipulated, bastardized by agendas and done a great deal of harm." McKinney, intelligent, articulate, personable and attractive, could, thanks to her conservative outlook, stand a happier social life. "I'm shunned. I have difficulty making and maintaining [friendships]. I don't even have a sound circle of friends because of my views. We want white people not view us one-dimensionally, but we way to each other, ‘Sister, how can you feel that way?' I have to be true to myself." Have black conservatives sold out? Do liberal black sheep faithfully bleat "We shall overcome" as Democratic Party shepherds effect useless, so-called social progress, snickering behind African American's backs, "Not if we can help it, you won't."? McKinney's being so ruthlessly exploited shows how handily opportunists can manipulate a well-intentioned process to serve insidious ends. She also sees public assistance as a social eyesore, summing up, "[Welfare] helps people creative victims of themselves." Bell also has found himself – on the social outside, looking in. "I get ostracized when I'm identified as a conservative." Some blacks simply are no longer willing to be led around by the nose. After years of expensive, tax-funded, half-assed gestures that keep impoverished blacks hamstrung by pitiful incomes, preventing employment and forbidding men to provide family support to women and children on the relief rolls, Democrats followed up by decisively pulling the rug out from under people with financial ground on which to stand. Some programs have been curtailed, limiting, for instance, welfare queens' ability to pump out babies and sit around on their asses, watching television and stuffing their faces at taxpayer expense. Some programs were flat-out eliminated, as in government-issued disability checks for crackheads who, instead of treating their chemical dependency, saw a golden opportunity to get high and have somebody else pay for it. Democrats knew damned good and well America's heart wasn't bleeding half as bad as its wallet and, aware that public sentiment grew less and less charitable, acted before Republicans, historically averse to handouts, beat them to the punch. The principle of pulling one's own weight echoes a pragmatic, age-old adage of the black South that goes, "Root hog, or die." This is the gut-stubborn credo of self-sufficiency by which generations of Afri9can Americans have persevered against the worst racism, building themselves up from less than nothing. Still, conservative blacks who insist that black communities account for black-on-crime and advocate for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps are denounced as villains. Simply for being different. So much for black people doing unto our own as we would have done unto us.
About the Author

Twin Cities Daily Planet articles archived at www.tcdailyplanet.net/profiles/dwight-hobbes. Dwight Hobbes has written for ESSENCE, Reader's Digest, Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul, MN Law & Politics, Pulse of the Twin Cities, Twin Cities Daily Planet, Women & Word, San Diego Union-Tribune and Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (where he contributes the commentary column Something I Said). He's spoken his mind over National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Blog Talk Radio's UNOBSTRUCTED and KMOJ in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Was regularly featured as guest commentator on NewsNight Minnesota (KTCA-Minneapolis/St. Paul) and Spectator (Minneapolis Television Network). His monthly column "Hobbes In The House" in MN Spokesman Recorder speaks to domestic abuse and rape. His plays are Shelter - produced at Mixed Blood Theatre by Pangea World Theater, Dues - produced by Mixed Blood Theatre, University of Southern Illinois in Point of Revue, selected for Bedlam Theatre's 10-Minute Play Festival and published by Playscripts, Inc. You Can't Always Sometimes Never Tell - produced by Theater Center Philadelphia, Long Island University, reading at The Kennedy Center and published in the anthology CENTER STAGE, In the Midst - produced by Long Island University, starring Samuel E. Wright. Hobbes spoke on the panel "Farewell To August Wilson" at the Guthrie Theater, broadcast on Conversations With Al McFarlane (KFAI, KMOJ). Singer-songwriter Dwight Hobbes recorded the single "Atlanta Children" (BeatBad Records) and gigged 10 years in the Long Island/NYC area, including The Other End, Kenny's Castaways and My Fathers Place. He fronted the Boston blues band Midlight. In Minneapolis, Hobbes opened for David Daniels at First Street Entry, James Curry at Terminal Bar, sat in with Yohannes Tona, Alicia Wiley at Sol Testimony's Soul Jam, The New Congress at Babalu, Willie Murphy at the Viking Bar and Wain McFarlane & Jahz at Lucille's Kitchen. Dwight Hobbes still drops in at the occasional open mic around town. www.myspace.com/dwighthobbesmusic

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