Blame it on the White Guy….
This Cynthia McKinney thing has me thinking of how often, black Americans (myself included), often fail to correct our flaws because WE are blinded by race. Many of us have either been victims of racism or have heard gross stories of racism and perceive many things that are not race related as being racist.
I’ll give a personal example. When I was in law school, I had an interview at a law firm in Seattle, Washington. I went to school in New Orleans, LA and was the only person selected to interview in person out of many applicants both white and black. I interviewed in Seattle and thought the interview went ok, however, I did not get the job. My first thoughts……”I didn’t get the job because I’m black”. This despite the fact that they flew me all the way 900 miles away to interview, whined and dined me, and put me up in a lush hotel. But it is so much easier to blame your failures on others by claiming racism then by looking at yourself to see why you did not succeed.
Looking back, I realized several things. I never wrote any thank you notes to any of my interviewers (big no no). I told the hiring partner (using bad advice from a book) that I was interested in something I really wasn’t and that was all I ever wanted to do (thus demonstrating my inflexibility as a new associate) I was not myself but what I thought I should be (again bad advice from a book). I had no real reason for why I wanted to live or work in Seattle being from Philly and having no family or friends on the west coast. Finally, I just didn’t interview well.
Had I based that failure on my shortcomings, I could have quickly corrected them. However, I made it a racial issue, placed the blame on others and continued those same mistakes in future interviews. Fortunately, wisdom came with time and I looked at the real reasons for my shortcomings and have tried to correct them.
Racism does exist. But everything, every failure, every shortcoming, cannot be explained away by racism. To do so not only harms those legitimate cries of racism, but it also causes us not to really examine the real problem which in many cases is within. Cynthia McKinney is another example of blame shifting. Instead of apologizing for her clearly inappropriate behaviour, she is calling racism and the NAACP and Black Clergy are foolish enough to support her. But let Bill Cosby criticize his own people for things that we should be criticized for (bad English, profanity, degrading women, black on black violence, ect). Then he’s criticized for airing our “dirty laundry”. Well, if you ask me, the stench of Cynthia McKinney and her “race blaming” is enough dirty laundry for us all.
