What's Love Got To Do With It?: A Blog Post On Race (And From The Heart) To Chauncey DeVegas Of "We Are Respectable Negroes"

Dear Chauncey,

We just read your Salon.com post "Why I Called Herman Cain's CPAC Speech a Minstrel Show" and, while we have a lot to say about it, race in America, liberalism, conservatism, and many other things (including answering your question of black conservatives, "Where is the love?") what we want to know most is why you explained the "Minstrel Show" jab but didn't submit one word - not one word - about this one:

We always need a monkey in the window, for he/she reminds us of our humanity while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of our own superiority. Sadly, there are always folks who are willing to play that role because it pays so well.

We think that is revealing. We mean, Chauncey, saying a black professional has put on a "Minstrel Show" is pretty bad, but to call him a "monkey" could be seen as far worse - especially when delivered by another black person. Don't get us wrong:

We're not suggesting either charge might be troubling to someone of Herman Cain's stature and achievement, but - when delivered by you about any other black person - such a charge could be said to reveal a deep-seated self-hatred of "your own people".

Thankfully for you, we wouldn't suggest such a thing because TMR doesn't engage in the kind of bogus psychologically-oriented racial BS political analysis your original column sprang from. You're welcome.


Now, to answer your question for black conservatives - "Where is the love?" - Dude, we don't know. As readers of TMR are aware, we were once married to a woman who left us for a quack doctor and the two of them went on to kill three people - and they're not even in prison! (Forget love, where is the justice?)

But, to answer your question more specifically, where is the love even in the so-called black "community"?

We put "community" in scare quotes because, recently, we were reminiscing with an old friend we hadn't talked to in a while about the whereabouts of the brothers we grew up with, and, out of twenty (20) men, only four of us are still alive. Most of the others died from a gunshot wound to the head and - we guarantee you - not one of those bullets got there because a white man pulled the trigger.

Where is the love, Chauncey?

For the reasons stated above, we think love is pretty important, so we don't go throwing it around too freely - and race is the least important criteria for who receives it from us.

You might even say, also for the reasons stated above, these days we find it much more reasonable to fall into the "We hate everyone equally" category, until someone shows us a reason to think otherwise.

Hey - it works for us.

You see, unlike most conservative blogs, TMR is dedicated to anti-cultism and run by a black conservative atheist, so we're unique in a lot of ways, including our extremely-politically-incorrect willingness to throw the words NewAge and Nazi around pretty freely, because we see the two subjects as intimately related despite many other's unwillingness to acknowledge or investigate it.

We also don't think it's a coincidence that most NewAge cultists are Democrats, since the Democratic Party was the party of the KKK, and - while they've abandoned the overt white-on-black racism of the past - they're still obsessed with issues of race and blood, and content to play the angles of those issues to gain political advantage.

However clumsily.

First the Democrats were for whites, and now it's blacks, and next it's predicted to be hispanics, and then it'll be asians if they can figure out a way to win power by using them.

It's unending.

The truth is, we came to our conservatism through Bush, so out of all the subjects we blog about, race is the one we touch on the least because A) it's the one we like the least B) as a reflection of the United States, it's the stupidest C) there are never any "winners" and D) we sincerely agree with Morgan Freeman that everyone ought to just stop talking about it:



But, occasionally, something happens that gets the chattering classes to chattering, and, if we feel we have something to say on the subject, we'll allow ourselves to be drawn into the discussion enough to, hopefully, shed some light instead of bringing more heat.

Unfortunately, because of your original post, this is just such a time, so, without further ado - as we see it - here goes nothing:

Right now many of our fellow conservatives are all aflutter over your original blog post, and that by Alexander Burns, which both took aim at black Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Yours came in for the harshest criticism because you referred to Cain as a "monkey" and said Cain's excellent CPAC speech was actually a well-rehearsed "minstrel show". We'll let others decide if that's true here:



Pardon us if we don't don't join with our fellows in getting whipped into a fury, but compared to, say, techies raising money for Jenny McCarthy's child-killing group - which is the kind of serious NewAge life-and-death issue none of our conservative brethren will join us in condemning - we just can't get too upset over simple-minded name-calling,...an activity we gladly engage in, in case no one's noticed. We've got several reasons for our stance on this, starting with a couple of specifics:

First, it's pretty obvious that Herman Cain - radio host, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, and national chairman for The Business & Media Institute - is not a monkey.

Second - we being experts at this name-calling thing - it should've been obvious to you that, if you were going to call Cain a monkey, then - rather than saying he's putting on a minstrel show - you should've said Cain's employer, the conservative Media Research Center, was his organ grinder. Face it, Chauncey:

If you're so ignorant you can't even get your metaphors correct - why should we consider what you write a threat?

Your very lack of power brings us to our more general reasons for not joining in the conservative pile-on - which, we're sure, not even our fellow conservatives are going to like:

As we mentioned before, with our Jenny McCarthy example, the more popular bloggers have what appears, to us, to be a strange set of priorities. A well-known liberal woman leading a fruitcake movement that's killed kids (and whose members voted for Obama, we might add) gets hardly a peep out of any of them, but let a nobody from Alternet call a successful businessman a "monkey" and all hell breaks loose - even to the point he feels it necessary to do a follow up.

Talk show diva (and now OWN Network CEO) Oprah Winfrey actually campaigned for Obama while promoting NewAge rip-offs like The Secret, charlatans like sweatlodge killer James Arthur Ray, and enough medical quackery to fill a pseudoscience museum, and our fellow bloggers say hardly anything - even if it's to conservatism's political advantage to take out this powerful liberal force in the media. But let Alexander Burns (to us, just "some guy") say he thought a black speaker at CPAC was boring and even Glenn Reynolds will get down in the racial gutter to attack him.

There is no "love" - from anyone, Chauncey - and it makes no sense. Well, actually, it does. A little. Racially.

You see, from where we sit, it looks like (contrary to what we, or Morgan Freeman, want) everyone's determined to play The Race Game™ - including The Special Conservative/Libertarian Edition. You know The Race Game™, don't you, Chauncey? That's the one where everyone gets to pretend they're not playing the race card while getting congratulations, and (most importantly) patting themselves on the back, for being so damned good at it? It's really popular with every political type except true post-racialists. This president's a pro.

What's really annoying about The Race Game™ ( especially The Special Conservative/Libertarian Edition) is that - while the players act like they're making this big contribution to civil rights in 2011 - in truth, they're risking absolutely nothing. Sure, it was stupid for you to call Herman Cain a "monkey" but, really, who's going to come to your defense? No one but you. And, once you got called on it, do you seriously see your reply - minus the most offending comment and apologizing for nothing - as fighting back? Of course not. There's nothing at stake - because there's no threat. There's no threat because - unless they're a street-level black conservative, and not a liberal, or a successful, and thus insulated CEO, or even a white conservative pundit - nobody's out to get you or trying to physically stop you in any way.

It's we rank-and-file black conservatives, like Kenneth Gladney, who have the most unique form of "skin in the game".

The increased bias against black conservatives, including black-on-black anti-conservative bias, is a real threat - and a dangerous one - everyone else is generally spared. There is no love. Death threats, physical altercations, charges of disloyalty to the race (and the country) and subversive attempts to undermine one's convictions - by friend and foe alike - are all par for the course for the black conservative. Here's an emailed message we received from a friend earlier this month for defending conservative ideals:

"You are a Black ass nigger born in South Central. Stop playing politics in [an] arena where you're not welcomed but used."

We bet your friends, or Glenn Reynolds', don't send many emails like that. (And, by the way, that friend was discussing a post we sent them by Glenn Reynolds.) According to our friend, people like the Instapundit are our puppeteers because it's impossible for a black conservative to think for himself. And if we insist we can, or are in a position where no one can stop us, well, we all heard the recent threats against Clarence Thomas at the Common Cause rally. It seemed like everyone was surprised by that - except for Clarence Thomas and other black conservatives. That's because few have to endure such racially-charged hatred as par for the course.



Black conservatives confront this type of danger all-the-time - and few acknowledge what we're up against, beyond stating we're hated more than other conservatives.

As a matter of fact, black conservative's increased passion (as a result of being under more pressure) can (and many times will) be used against us - by everyone, including white conservatives and libertarians - to marginalize us as crazy (which, needless to say, can also be twisted into a possibly racist tactic to help certain individuals maintain their sphere of influence without outside interference). Where is the love, Chauncey? Where is the love,...anybody?



Alphonso Rachel (AKA "Macho Sauce") of Pajamas Media, above, addressed black anti-conservative bias early in his career and we find it ironic that, like us, what he seemed to be acknowledging - even more than race - are assumptions about what black people can think. You, Chauncey, seem to assume that, if we don't join with the Democrats, we have no love for other blacks - like all other blacks are Democrats when (by our own example) that's clearly not that case. Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer gave us a pretty definitive illustration of this erroneous mindset in this infamous clip:



Please, Chauncey, explain to us how you - a black man looking for "love" from black conservatives - have come to agree with this white woman, so completely, on the idea a free American can't think independently of others he or she merely shares a skin color with.

Are Americans a free people or are we not? And, if we are, why aren't you fighting for that?

Where is the love, Chauncey?

We think part of the reason there's no love is the lack of outreach to blacks such as ourselves, from conservatives and libertarians - a goal we've been campaigning, for some time, to achieve. But the black experience can be so different, even when sharing the same country with whites, outreach can be difficult. (We recently got an email from a popular blogger that read: "Hey, I've got nothing against you, Crack. But I really don't get your blog, and God knows I've tried. Sorry." Yea, a triple murder, coupled with an artistic outlook honed in the ghetto can make it tough - but, as we wrote back, not even asking how to bridge that gap gets us nowhere,...) Seriously, aside from Macho Sauce (and a few others) on Pajamas Media, we haven't seen one dime going toward achieving the conservative's black outreach goals or toward changing the culture, artistically, to a conservative platform. We've heard a lot about the desire for it, though, like these statements from Andrew Klavan:



And, Chauncey, before you think "Aha! See - conservatives won't even help you when you're down with them!" we'd like to remind you that your determined race mongering is no more welcome. As we said at the beginning, we can't stand talk of race, for a variety of reasons, but the worst one is having to face all the assumptions everyone seems to have about what a modern black person should be. Like we said, we're with Morgan Freeman, and we can define ourselves:



All this particular black conservative wants - whether you're on the Right or the Left - is assistance in expressing that (as, for instance, we're getting from iOwnTheWorld.com) because we don't feel any "love" when being told who or what we should be.

That, we know already.

Take care,

The Crack Emcee
The Macho Response

P.S.

We love you, man.