This was a comment in another thread and got kind of long and complicated.  So I am posting it here so as to not high-jack  his post with the vitriol that may come my way for saying this "out loud".  I expanded only slightly here.  For some reason, this post really makes me nervous.  It brings up fears that whites will not understand me as one of them and that blacks will resent me because I feel that I understand them but have had none of the social ramifications of being black.  Until 5th grade, I did.  I remember what that was like and yes, it is easier to pass.  But inside, I am no different from Amanda and Vornetta.  And I dedicate this post to Amanda, Yolanda, Vornetta, Carl, and Chris, my childhood friends.

Since Obama won't talk about this now that the real election has started, I will. 

In the 30 years in between 78 and 08, I have had some very strange racial journey.  I am trying to describe it below.

Let's define a few terms.  A "nigger" is an uneducated, powerless, socially uncouth, demeaned member of an underclass.  A "white nigger" is the same person, only white, (I can say that as I was perceived as such and called that for the first 15 years of my life.)  A white nigger is differentiated from trailer trash, because trailer trash is still considered purely white, and is sterotypically racist.  I moved out of my comfortable black/white/poor community and into a trailer park when I was very young, then moved off the grid into the deep country and worked fields and lived in extreme poverty.  I got out of all of it when I was 16 and accepted to NCSSM, a charter boarding school for 11-12 graders gifted in Math and Science.  That experience is another story.  I self-identify, according to a Harvard study on Race as a middle class black woman.  I am a middle class white woman, in actual fact.  But I sometimes don't agree with or understand white people.  Just like a lot of blacks do not understand or identify with media-induced stereotypes of blacks.

Bill Cosby is a PhD, powerful, socially smooth, beloved member of the middle and upperclass. The reason his remarks, several years ago now, about niggers sting is because he is not a lot different than a "white lady" trying to help at this point in his career.

He is so far removed from the problems of blacks, that he is not one of "them" anymore.  And his remarks distanced him even further.

He is clearly black, but not treated as such by society.  As far as his lifestyle is concerned, he has been part of the wealthy elite since the early days of the Cosby show, over 30 years ago.  Even in his early comedy career, he differentiated himself from the black community.

So if I were black, I might not listen to him with the same energy as I would from....I don't know who, because I am not black.

The leader black people need has to come from within. Charles Barkley is an example of someone out to institute change from within and is getting into politics.  He would be one to look to.

Spike Lee has problems, because while he profiles and exposes some aspects of black life and culture, it is filtered to get through to a generic audience for profit in the industry, which means that it is sanitized and removed from its source material.  The "Kings of Comedy" is his best work in terms of bringing the voice of black culture into the mainstream.

Bernie Mac was the most authentic voice to my ear, a white woman raised among blacks in rural NC.  He sounded the most like the "normal" black people I have known and loved. 

As to the rest of the Kings:  Hughley is a very angry man, so much so that his voice gets lost in his anger, too "urban" for me to understand.  Cedric is so "black" that white people can't understand him, he also is usually "in persona" which makes him hard to guage.  And Steve Harvey is so religious that he is not a person that I can understand.

Bernie Mac was a hero of mine.  I loved him because as he said himself, he was never going to pass, ever, but he was going to be a man and talk about reality, not some made-up dream world of black life.

Chris Rock is also acceptable to whites but I am not sure how accepted he is to blacks.  I could see his attitudes as somewhat grating to blacks, and he is kinda scary to a lot of white people, because he also is very "angry".

So who is left to provide roll models, music industry people? They are not real people.  They are people who fit the suit and entertain for a living.  Even when they do good, it seems weird.  Look at Brangelina, a good-doing team, yet really weird to white people.  I would imagine that many black artist/entertainers are as far removed from their communities as Brad and Angie are to whites.

It takes normal people to foment a radical uprising within a community, radicals are too easily taken down for being radical.

The trouble for Cosby is that he was radicalized for blacks.  He passed a little too long and a little too hard to be "one of their own",  and yet he is too black for many whites, as well.  Result: racial limbo.

Which brings us all round to Obama.  Same problem as Cosby, as I see it.

I am not some racist old white lady.  My upbringing was to have been raised alongside my mother's friends' children.  She worked in a sewing factory in a small town.  She had a lot of kids from different men and was seen as a sister by the whites.  She was part of the black community and I didn't know I was different from any of the other kids taken care of before and after school by Aunt Gert and Miss Nettie until I got to 5th grade.  On the bus one afternoon, an older black girl beat me up for playing with her sister and causing her problems ( making others dislike her even more than they did because she was very light skinned with freckles and "good" hair.  This was 35 years ago in a very small town in the south ).  A middle school segregationist. 

She was really just trying to avert grief her sister was getting for associating with a white girl, something that had not happened until middle school.  I imagine she told her about it at home and then decided to solve it for her.  I got the better of her in fight number two on the bus, but I knew when I had it literally beat into me that I could never be a sister with my blonde hair and super white skin. 

My friends, two black guys (twins) who were also in all of my art classes, were very dark.  I got seriously hostile vibes off the white kids when we sat together on the bus and drew together on the long ride home.  I heard them hiss, "nigger-lover" and "white nigger bitch".  Carl asked me once if I was a 'sister" when I was about 13.  I said, "Yeah, I guess so, I have three sisters."    He laughed at me and it took me another few years to put it together and understand what he was talking about.  His father made it clear that I was not to contact him again and that I should just find myself one of my own kind when I looked him up during one summer visit home from college.  I just wanted to talk to an old friend, but at least I understood what I was being told.  It hurt, but I was not going to cause him problems with his father.  He found out I had stopped by, and so he came over to visit me and he's doing well.

Funny how in the summer when my mother and I cropped tobacco alongside blacks and mexican migrants, we were all the same.  But as soon as we went to school, I had no friends because socio-economically, I was black.  But all the white kids thought I was one of them, so blacks didn't see me as an option.  As I have percolated up from poverty into the middle class, my "white-cred" has gone up and I am no longer in touch with the black community, although I have many friends of all ilks. 

I taught parks and rec classes for 10 years and the director of the program is black.  We are friends, but Beaufort is very segregated and so I am also in racial limbo.  I put my son into the local More at 4 preschool program instead of the local white church daycare so that he will get to know black kids in the neighborhood.  In the other program, he would never meet black people.  But I know this community and as soon as the pressure starts, he will be segregated with the white kids.  Not much has changed in 30 years.

But I still don't feel there is any difference between me and black people.  Bernie Mac was the most normal sounding man I heard coming from any arena of public discourse, bar none. 

Now that he is dead, who can take his place?