In a blog entry at News One, Dr. Boyce Watkins examines Ann Coulter's recent sound bite of "our blacks are better than their blacks" and disparages the treatment of African Americans by liberals and conservatives alike. Ultimately, Watkins says, black politics must go beyond choosing the better pimp.
Ann Coulter, the woman who makes her money with silly soundbites, decided to offend half the world by stating that "our blacks are better than their blacks," referring to conservatives vs. liberals. I wasn’t surprised to hear this kind of banter from Coulter, who is smart enough to know how to sell books by saying things that most decent human beings would not. Sadly for poor Ann, she is an embarrassment to serious conservatives, but all the while seems content engaging in the political promiscuity of a woman desperately seeking out her next gig.
"Nanny Annie" Coulter's remarks (which make her sound like a character from "Gone with the Wind") also spoke to the peculiar fight between liberals and conservatives, who are trying to toss around the Black community like two pimps arguing over a prostitute. Rather than adjusting their platforms to fit issues that matter to Black America, each party is only able to point out the fact that they believe the other group abuses Black people more than they do. In that regard, neither conservatives nor liberals are innocent when vying to put Black folks on their own plantation.
When Coulter makes reference to "her Blacks," which include the always-entertaining Herman Cain, she is referring to Black folks who embody the values that Coulter and her friends believe to be true. When someone like Cain attempts to genuinely lead the party in a different direction, he is spit out like a sex offender at a debutante ball. An example is when he challenged Rick Perry over the "niggerhead" controversy and was quickly told to sit down and shut up. Political analyst Yvette Carnell described things beautifully when she said, "The rendering of Black people as the ornaments of diversity, rather than incarnations of it, is one of the essential reasons why Blacks clash with conservatism."
Read Dr. Boyce Watkins' entire blog entry at News One.