Two years ago, Barack Obama infamously emphasized skin color above all other factors in his remarks about a boiling controversy, saying, “…my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Obama did the same thing again over a year later, immediately after the jury found George Zimmerman not guilty in that case–barging in front of the cameras for the explicit purpose of emphasizing skin color (instead of character and conduct) regarding issues of crime, justice, and public safety, Obama self-righteously prattled on for over 17 minutes in a rambling monologue centered around how he personally identified with Trayvon Martin (“…Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”), again based primarily on skin color. Martin Luther King had two sons, and aside from any surface resemblance to Barack Obama, Trayvon Martin, or anyone else, one wonders by what ingredient their children are to be judged in an era when a major news network gives Al Sharpton his own show in prime-time. In case you missed it, NBA star Kobe Bryant (who just happens to look like he could be Barack Obama’s son) recently stunned many by straying from the all-too-common racial script during an interview in The New Yorker magazine. To the seething mobs, Bryant committed the contemporary cultural sin of emphasizing character over skin color when it came to the death of Trayvon Martin. To the dismay of race-hustlers, Bryant sounded like a troublesome throwback to the politically-jettisoned dream of MLK himself. The interviewer, Ben McGrath, had asked L.A. Laker star Bryant about the racially-oriented activism by the Miami Heat basketball team two years ago, in late March of 2012, during the height of the controversy over the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin incident: Lebron James and the entire roster of Heat players put on dark gray “hoodies,” lowered their heads, and posed for a dramatically staged group picture as part of their overt demonstration of racial alignment with the media’s (and the Obama administration’s) shamefully distorted narrative which falsely depicted Trayvon as an innocent, small black child who’d been stalked and murdered in cold blood by a burly, viciously racist, overzealous “white hispanic” neighborhood watch volunteer. Referring to the Miami Heat “hoodie” stunt, McGrath asked Bryant, “Is that the kind of thing you could see yourself doing?” To his credit, Bryant replied to the question with dignified superiority: “I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American. That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and as a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, if we’ve progressed as a society, then you don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.” Pretty refreshing, eh? Exactly as Martin Luther King hoped; that there would come a day when his four little children would live in a nation where they’d be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Unlike the most prominent black voices of today in the fields of politics, punditry, and entertainment (and their more rabidly tribal followers), who cravenly and dishonestly emphasize skin color as a shield against any and all accountability, Bryant refused to reflexively support the Martin camp merely because he shares Trayvon’s epidermal hue, and he remarked that the merits of the case itself should determine whether anyone sided with the prosecution or the defense. Kobe went on, articulating a perfectly sane and rational, responsible approach: “I won’t say, ‘O.K., I’m going to vote for Obama just because he’s an African-American,’ I’m not going to do that in a million years. You got to sit and take everything as equal and pick the best candidate for the job. That’s it.” Bravo to Bryant. However, the moment of clarity, class, and character was short-lived. Over the last few days, Bryant has suffered a sudden, massive, vicious onslaught of racial backlash. Viral blowback from armies of outspoken race-baiters exploded in Bryant’s face. Noted black figures, from NFL Hall of Famer Jim Brown to commentator Roland Martin, black radio hosts and bloggers, have piled on with the Kobe-bashing, claiming that because of his upbringing, Bryant really cannot relate to the American black experience, and that he is calling for a color-blind America which simply cannot exist. Yet. Now that he’s been publicly cyber-horsewhipped, sent backpedaling and skulking back to the plantation, Kobe has posted a conciliatory Tweet, saying: “Trayvon was wronged... thats my opinion and thats what I believe the FACTS showed. The system did not work” Of course, it’s Bryant’s penitent way of showing the black lynch mobs that he’s “down for the struggle” after all, and that he’s back inside the sanctioned perimeter of the tribalistic victim hood mentality, despite all the evidence. Someone of any race says something factually true yet controversial regarding a non-white and/or non-whites (especially when it’s about blacks), then virtually overnight they are forced to issue a mea culpa and eat crow, even resign, quite often under boycotts and even death threats. Bryant merely took the honorable position that character is what is supposed to count, not color. His attackers, unfortunately, seem to have lashed him back onto the “damn the dream” ship of fools, of slavish identification with a culture of criminality because, in an era where Sharpton is deemed worthy of prime-time, it’s the black thing to do, not the right thing to do.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Apr 2014 18:33:33 +0000
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