Who’s Really Clueless?
Stacey Dash, a woman many of my male friends grew up adoring and now my adult friends still think of her as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful women has thrown her name into the socio political debate. Dash, recently on her Twitter account came out and showed support for Mitt Romney as opposed to the apparently black-mandated President Barack Obama. While 94% of African Americans did support Obama, perhaps Dash represents the 6% of blacks that do not. Shortly after her public support for Romney, her Twitter account was met with predictably ignorant and knee-jerk reactions from black people who were quick to dismiss her as a sellout, Oreo (black on the outside, white on the inside) and overall shame to the race.
This criticism from blacks is something that shows our ugliest and most divisive characteristics—we are so quick to shun someone who goes against the delusional groupthink and declare that person as a traitor to the race but in the same breath that validates that we do not pride ourselves on independently thinking and decision-making. If the majority of black people were more objective about their leaders, it would allow us to progress to the point where we can validate someone by not only the color of their skin, but the content of their character. For a large part of Obama’s presidency, blacks have suffered at nearly twice the unemployment rate than that of whites with little to no empathy from the White House. At the 2011 Congressional Black Caucus where he was speaking to a largely black audience, Obama told them to “Stop complaining. Stop grumbling. Stop crying.” This is something he wouldn’t dare say on a State of the Union speech or Town Hall Meeting to a mainstream (white) audience. Given these circumstances, it is that much more apparent of how much blind loyalty African Americans have for the President and are able to overlook his glaring deficiencies in policy and targeted condescension. Most importantly, it speaks to the arrogance of the President of his knowledge that we aren’t going anywhere because black people, like no other, will support their leaders to the death.
Dash is free like all of us to choose which side of the political spectrum she will support and no one because of the skin color should be stereotyped and marginalized to any one choice in our democracy. Historically, African Americans voted Republican and over time we switched to Democratic, how long will it take for us to switch our cultural mindset that we all do not have to believe in the same religion, eat the same foods, watch the same T.V. shows and vote for the same party?
