By Linda Felaco
What is the origin of this quote?
"Our blacks are so much better than their blacks."
a) Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852.
b) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884.
c) George Wallace at the door of the University of Alabama, 1963.
d) Ann Coulter, Fox News, 2011.
(answer appears below the fold)
Yup, believe it or not, that quote is conservative pundit Ann Coulter's way of defending Herman Cain against charges of sexual harassment. You see,
Ann told Sean Hannity in an appearance on Fox News on Monday, liberals just hate conservative blacks and will do anything to take them down. Then she went on to say, "Our blacks are so much better than their
blacks. To become a black Republican, you don't just roll into it. You're not going with the flow. You have fought against probably your family
members, probably your neighbors, you have thought everything out and that's why we have very impressive blacks in our party."
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| Running Godfather's Pizza: Impressive. Serving in Congress? Not so much. |
Now, Ann should know better than to use possessive pronouns when referring to blacks. After all, she lives in a black-majority city to
which many Southern blacks fled during Reconstruction. But she got me wondering about her premise: Is one's political stance somehow more valid if it's
in opposition to that of family and friends? Are Ann's parents liberals, or was her conservatism passed down through her bloodline? It appears that her
blue-state blood runs as deep as mine; she was born in New York City and raised in New Canaan, Connecticut. And she attended
Cornell, a notorious hotbed of liberalism. So perhaps she did come by her conservatism the hard way.
And Coulter won't back down from her "our blacks are better than your blacks," either. When Joy Behar asked her if she thought "all the African Americans who are Democrats are stupid," she retorted, "I'm saying Google Maxine Waters, Cynthia McKinney, John Conyers, and then Google Allen West, Michael Steele or Herman Cain. …
Ours are more impressive. There's no question about it."
OK, let's leave aside the assumption that Google is an all-knowing, infallible, unbiased information source (as if!) and look at her list. Maxine
Waters, Cynthia McKinney, and John Conyers are all current or former U.S. congressional representatives. Sounds pretty impressive to me.
Allen West is
also a member of Congress. Also impressive. Michael Steele … OK, he was the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland and
the first African American chair of the Republican National Committee. Impressive feats. But then he got into a leadership dispute with Rush Limbaugh,
of all people. And I have yet to figure out what Herman Cain has ever actually done besides sexually harass women and sell pizza. Crappy pizza, at
that. Godfather's Pizza lost in a blind taste test against four other pizzas
including Papa John's and Pizza Hut, for crying out loud. I mean, you have to suck really bad to make worse pizza than Papa John's or Pizza Hut.
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| Henry Louis Gates, not a victim of racism. (photo courtesy Cambridge, Massachusetts, Police Dept.) |
So I may be biased, but I gotta give the liberal blacks the edge here on Coulter's impressiveness scale. But she doesn't stop there. "The only racism
you hear in America is against conservative blacks," Coulter says.
Um … I can think of a liberal black or two who might beg to differ with her on that one. Like Henry Louis Gates, maybe? In case you missed it when the story was all
over the news and are too lazy to click the link, he's the Harvard professor who was arrested for "breaking into" HIS OWN HOME when he came back from a
trip and couldn't get his front door to open.
Yup, with friends like Ann Coulter, who needs enemies.