LEONARD PITTS COMMENTARY: Is This The End Of Black?

In a post-racial USA, now that President-Elect Obama will be sworn in next week? No, argues the moderate-liberal commentator, but rather its evolution: "In the public mind, black has long represented a politics of grievance and lament -- think Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Martin Luther King. But the elections of men like Carl Stokes (mayor of Cleveland) and Tom Bradley (mayor of Los Angeles) four decades ago presaged the rise of a new generation that sought to make black not invisible, but incidental. Bradley, for instance, did not campaign on the fact of being black but, rather, on a promise to improve mass transit. He sold competence and let race take care of itself. Years later, the Bradley model has been reflected in the careers of everyone from L. Douglas Wilder to Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice to Michael Steele to J.C. Watts to David Dinkins. It reaches its apogee in the president-elect who, it is worth noting, seldom addressed race unprompted during the campaign."

He continues his commentary: "We are so comfortable defining black in certain ways, in restricting it to the politics of grievance and lament, that we sometimes do not recognize it when it takes other forms. One is reminded how people used to say 'The Cosby Show' was not black enough and never mind all those cultural signifiers, never mind the anti-apartheid sign on Theo's wall, Cliff's penchant for sweaters from historically-black colleges, all those guest appearances from elder statesmen of jazz and R&B, that episode saluting the 1963 March on Washington. Not black? No, what they meant was, this is not the kind of black we expect, not the black of violence, ignorance, poverty and clownishness."

Booker Rising response: As others and I across the ideological spectrum have commented, it's long overdue. The promotion of thuggishness, ignorance, and clownishness as "authentic" blackness is out. Authentic blackness promotes positive culture, about progress and education and staying connected with your family. Stragglers, get in where you fit in and show some class. Oh yeah, young uns, pull up those pants and put on some clothes.