Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch, #69

Someone tell me what the fuck year it is again, because I just got an email from Shaker rrp linking to an article about veteran political and cultural journalist John McLaughlin calling Senator Barack Obama a motherfucking oreo, like that's some kind of appropriate shit for a nationally-televised discussion in the year 2008, which makes me think I must've entered some kind of time warp.

Referencing [Jesse Jackson's assertion that Obama has been talking down to black people], McLaughlin said Obama "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo — a black on the outside, a white on the inside."

"Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that…an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?" McLaughlin asked his panelists.

For the record, even his question is offensive, even without the epithet, given that it ignores the realities of what being "black on the outside" means in terms of an individual's need for the protections secured by the civil rights movement, and the fact that it effectively casts Jackson as not giving a shit about POC who aren't black. (It's called the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, dumbass.)

Meanwhile, I don't know what the hell CNN wanker Roland Martin is thinking defending that shit:

"If John McLaughlin was an African American and who had made the comment, people would have said, well, he probably understands what he's talking about."

No, if John McLaughlin were an African-American, (some) people would have said he has the right to use the epithet in that context—an argument based on the idea of reclamation and ownership of oppressive language by and of the people it potentially oppresses. That's not language for anyone to use in any context, which would be painfully obvious if the word had been only slightly more incendiary.

[Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty, Thirty-One, Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, Thirty-Four, Thirty-Five, Thirty-Six, Thirty-Seven, Thirty-Eight, Thirty-Nine, Forty, Forty-One, Forty-Two, Forty-Three, Forty-Four, Forty-Five, Forty-Six, Forty-Seven, Forty-Eight, Forty-Nine, Fifty, Fifty-One, Fifty-Two, Fifty-Three, Fifty-Four, Fifty-Five, Fifty-Six, Fifty-Seven, Fifty-Eight, Fifty-Nine, Sixty, Sixty-One, Sixty-Two, Sixty-Three, Sixty-Four, Sixty-Five, Sixty-Six, Sixty-Seven, Sixty-Eight.]