All in a Tif
Newt Gingrich, an old white rich man who wants to be the next US President, thinks poor black kids should become janitors.
Gene Marks, a middle class white man who writes for Forbes Magazine, thinks poor black kids might be better off diving into a computer to look for opportunities, among other things.
John Ridley, a presumably middle class black guy who Wikipedia lists as a “North American Writer” but for the purposes of this article is a commentator for NPR, thinks Gene Marks is laughable, as he is not a poor black kid and therefore has no right to write about them at all, as it sounds in this interview.
Newt Gingrich is a jackass and his statements prove it. Gene Marks is a guy who has some opinions and gets paid to write them. John Ridley is a black man, and so he was born with the authority to say who can and can’t write about black people.
Wait a minute…what? Isn’t it about time we gave up on this “only black people can talk about / criticize / make good-intentioned suggestions toward other black people”? Just because Gene Marks isn’t black, or isn’t a boy, doesn’t mean he can’t write about them and express his opinions. Hilariously, if this was the case, the world of the written word would be incredibly boring. Was Dickens a sick young boy when he wrote about Tiny Tim Cratchet? No, he wasn’t, and yes, he was making recommendations for how groups of people whom he did not belong to might improve their lives. President Obama isn’t an unemployed white woman, but he can still make comments and decisions and recommendations on how those people might improve their lives.
John Ridley is entitled to his position as well, but anyone who advocates that a particular community should be the only one who looks out for that particular community is plain and simply advocating segregation, and I’m pretty sure our country had a helluva time when that was going on. As a middle class white man myself, and as an American, I am free to discuss, criticize and make recommendations to black men, asian women, robotic babies and mutant puppies alike, just as they are allowed to do the same to me. And you’d better believe they do.
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