Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

One thing I have in common with Barack Obama:

Being called "articulate." A lot has already been written about the whole Biden incident, which I will leave to you to Google. As usual, I am too late to blog-commenting to offer something substantial or new. Instead, I offer this nice explanation from the NYT for folks who may not understand why some (certainly not all) Black people bristle at this characterization.

As Lynette Clemetson notes:

There are not enough column inches on this page to parse interpretations of each of Mr. Biden’s chosen adjectives. But among his string of loaded words, one is so pervasive — and is generally used and viewed so differently by blacks and whites — that it calls out for a national chat, perhaps a national therapy session.

It is amazing that this still requires clarification, but here it is. Black people get a little testy when white people call them “articulate.”

Again, I would only qualify by saying "some" (perhaps, "many") Black people. And perhaps this is a phenomenon confined more to those of us who work in "white collar"-type professional jobs in which we are the minority. And perhaps this is also a generational thing. That is, I do not know if well educated younger Blacks moving in majority White academic and professional circles experience the same thing, and with the same reaction. (Perhaps they are more likely to confront Blackface from their peers than the "compliment" of being articulate.) I do understand that many times when I have been the recipient of this characterization, people thought they were praising me. What is so wrong with that? As the NYT columnist notes in Obama's case:

What faint praise, indeed. Being articulate must surely be a baseline requirement for a former president of The Harvard Law Review. After all, Webster’s definitions of the word include “able to speak” and “expressing oneself easily and clearly.” It would be more incredible, more of a phenomenon, to borrow two more of the senator’s puzzling words, if Mr. Obama were inarticulate.

That is the core of the issue. When whites use the word in reference to blacks, it often carries a subtext of amazement, even bewilderment. It is similar to praising a female executive or politician by calling her “tough” or “a rational decision-maker.”

“When people say it, what they are really saying is that someone is articulate ... for a black person,” Ms. Perez [Anna Perez, the former communications counselor for Condoleezza Rice] said.

Such a subtext is inherently offensive because it suggests that the recipient of the “compliment” is notably different from other black people.

“Historically, it was meant to signal the exceptional Negro,” Mr. Dyson [Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania] said. “The implication is that most black people do not have the capacity to engage in articulate speech, when white people are automatically assumed to be articulate.”

As this is Black History Month, I feel it is enough for me to document here this ongoing facet of life for certain Black Americans. Surely it is not as big a deal as other struggles we face as a People. Insead, it is just another annoyance, another paper cut that you learn to ignore. Still, with all the talk about Obama not being "Black Like Me" it is nice to note one area where the two of us are clearly two peas in a pod.

Posted by perry032 at February 4, 2007 08:22 PM | TrackBack
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