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MICHELLE OBAMA AND WHITEYGATE.
Today's must-read is the New York Times profile of Michelle Obama, who responds on-the-record to claims that she once made a speech in church using the term "whitey."
“You are amazed sometimes at how deep the lies can be,” she says in an interview. Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom, she adds: “I mean, ‘whitey’? That’s something that George Jefferson would say. Anyone who says that doesn’t know me. They don’t know the life I’ve lived. They don’t know anything about me.”
Along the same lines, at The Root Kim McLaren has a nice essay on how nobody actually says "whitey."
I have spent the afternoon trying—with all the honesty and courage and humble introspection that is called for in this historic moment, with America poised to finally cast off its original sin and move into the full realization of those ringing words in the Declaration of Independence—to think about the terms black folks use when talking among themselves about white people.I could barely move my pencil tip. Probably because black folks spend a lot less time talking or even thinking about white people than most white, right-wing reactionaries and their black counterparts dream in their hot little dreams. I had trouble, and, after hours and hours, the best I could come up with was this:
White folks. Whites. White people. They.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (8)
"Whitey" is so 1970s. But thena again, people on the Raght who weren't born in the 60s go around talking as if we're still in the 60s.
Posted by: Rich | June 18, 2008 9:22 AM
George Jefferson my Aunt Fanny! The last African-American to use "whitey" in a non-ironic manner was Homey D. Clown.
Posted by: Marti Perez | June 18, 2008 9:45 AM
I think it is not exactly true that 'nobody says 'whitey' anymore. One reads it, when one troubles one's eyes with such dreck, on blogs where preponderance of posters are put-upon whites, in reference to themselves in the abstract.
Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?
Posted by: woody, tokin librul | June 18, 2008 10:51 AM
They don't want to know anything about her. They just want to trash her and her husband, because that's all they've got.
It's amazing that the Republican party still has any support at all in this country.
Posted by: Noam Sane | June 18, 2008 10:54 AM
Whether the term "whitey" is still used, whether Michelle once bumped into Louis Farrakan at a bus stop, whether Barack's neighbor once knew a guy whose cousin had a book written by someone who ate lunch at a coffee shop Malcom X once passed - is really all sort of beside the point. The point is that some sleazy idiot made a scurrilous and totally unfounded accusation about Michelle Obama that even HE hadn't (and hasn't) heard nor seen and couldn't (and can't) verify. This same slanderer also made a post on his blog that Barack once gave Hillary the finger - citing as evidence a photo still of Obama scratching the side of his face with (gasp) his MIDDLE FINGER!!!
Where's the video? No video = no issue.
Posted by: Skeptic | June 18, 2008 12:49 PM
What happened to the good ol standby - Honky? I'm waiting for Rushbo to dig up an 8-track tape with that one.
Posted by: CParis | June 18, 2008 1:30 PM
In "The Jerk", the father said "Never trust whitey" !
Movies are real life (like Reagan telling a heroic true-life story that was actually a scene from "Hellcats of the Navy" !
Posted by: H-Bob | June 18, 2008 4:20 PM
Referring to a character in a 1970s sitcom...
I love the Times.
Posted by: DonBoy | June 18, 2008 5:46 PM