Politics
Is Allen West being smeared with the ‘angry black man’ brush?
OPINION – While Rep. West went a tad over-the-top in his response, there is a larger issue here about racial and gender stereotypes of black men…
Outside of military combat, the former Army lieutenant colonel has no documented history of physical conflict. Nevertheless, white liberals’ first instinct is to associate this black politician with wife-beaters and deranged psycho-killers. It serves as a tactic to trivialize both the man for defending himself and his political agenda which threatens their orthodoxy.
A black man, especially a conservative one, is never supposed to get angry in the public square. Black conservatives are supposed to be quiet, and defer to liberals. They aren’t supposed to challenge the impact of liberalism on black communities or question Democratic policies, as Rep. West does.
Despite their ideological differences, it is ironic that Rep. West represents the sort of black man that many liberals claim that they want President Obama to be, expressive, a staunch advocate of his views, and a person who is willing to directly address adversaries. Yet even the Congressional Black Caucus is castigating Rep. West for displaying exactly these qualities, because of his political ideology.
Meanwhile, whites who have expressed themselves much more harshly get a pass. Before he left Congress in January, former Rep. Alan Grayson was infamous for rants that included referring to other Congressional members as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals” and referring to former Vice President Dick Cheney (then in office) as a blood-sucking vampire.
Then there are former Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s (D-Ill.) actions such as sending a dead fish to a pollster, his profanity-laced tirades at other Congressional members, and other infamous antics that have earned the former White House chief of staff the nickname “Rahmbo”. Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) has a well-documented history of angry outbursts.
Whereas white men have the luxury of being angry with little or no sanction no matter how outrageous their conduct, the double standard results in a similarly situated black man who has even a mild emotional response risking far more sanction.
In the future, Rep. West will have to better reconcile some blacks’ frustration with Democratic policies and tactics with white liberal fear of any black person who challenges their orthodoxy. As controversies involving Professor Henry Louis Gates, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Juan Williams have shown, black liberal men have also had to deal with the “Angry Black Man” double standard. It’s high time that black males are treated as individuals possessing the range of personalities found in black America.
