Jack & Jill Politics

With the election of Barack Obama, and the immediate double standards in covering him by the Traditional media that has followed, I started thinking:  When will ethnic people be able to Eff-Up and get an immediate second chance, just like white people do?

I mean, it’s inherently understood, not only by African-Americans, but Latinos, Asians, Native Americans and members of the LGBT crowd, that if you ascend to heights in whatever avenue – be it political or professional sports, you, as the first African-American/Latino/Asian/Native American/LGBT; you’re expected to be PERFECT, or damned near it, because if you Eff-Up, no one else from your crowd will get a shot at the title for the next 20-50 years.

From my line of work, this ploy is almost always used when Corporations want to get their “diversity” on.  What I mean by that is, when they want to set up Affirmative Action/Civil Rights efforts on a path to failure, they’ll pick a member of a protected group, don’t give them what’s needed for success; watch them fail, and then pronounce Affirmative Action a “Failure”, thereby providing the excuse not to hire or promote an ethnic person or a woman for the next 10-15 years, if at all.  By the same token, when we see a Don Imus or Dog the Bounty Hunter Eff-Up; they don’t get punished the same way Al Sharpton or Rachel Maddow would.  They get put on ice – and the powers that be wait for shyt to cool off before restoring them to their power bases.  They don’t feel the pain of consequences for their infractions, like you or I would.

Don’t believe me?  Then ask yourself why is Don Imus back on the air less than six months after calling the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team “Nappy Headed Hos”?

Why is “Dog the Bounty Hunter” back on the air less than a year on A & E after his son released a taped rant of the ol’ hound going off about his pup being engaged to a sista?

Why is Stan O’Neal getting the blame for the failure of Merrill Lynch?  Wasn’t it in a financial shythole when he was appointed CEO?

College football coaches aren’t immune, either.  Over on the Field Negro’s blog, Field reports on how Auburn University fired a successful white head coach; interviewed an equally successful African-American head coach in Turner Gill, rejected him in favor of a white coach from Iowa State; a white coach who was about to be fired by Iowa State because they couldn’t stomach dude’s 5-19 win-loss record.

Even my favorite Brit Chef, Gordon Ramsay, engaged in a little of this shyt when he was in America trying to help a restaurant regain business down in Southern California.  The head chef was a brotha – Ramsay had him demoted in favor of a white sou chef who couldn’t handle the heat on Opening Day and melted down to the point he WALKED OFF THE JOB.

Ramsay turned to the brotha – guess what?  That brotha put everything right in the kitchen and the customers went home happy.  Although the brotha regained his position as head chef – the lil’ punk sou chef was allowed to come back to his job, as if that shyt didn’t go down on TV. Y’all know if the brotha pulled that shyt, his ass would have been CANNED.

But Arsenio Hall has Louis Farrakhan on his show, and lo and behold, his show gets CANCELLED and we haven’t hardly heard from Arsenio since – and get this, HIS SHOW INTRODUCED the sax-playing’ cool white guy from Arkansas who became our 42nd POTUS, Bill Clinton.

If you watched the HBO Documentary, “BlackList”, Chris Rock put the discussion out there when he said: “We will have ‘made it’ when a guy like me can Eff-Up and not worry about getting another chance because I KNOW I’ll get another chance like a white guy would.  A white guy can Eff-Up and knows he will get another chance to probably Eff-Up again (I’m paraphrasing because on the documentary, Chris actually toned down his words) Until then, brothas like me have to worry about Effing it Up for another brotha…”

So, I’m gonna get in trouble (AGAIN) by throwing this out there for discussion and debate.  When can we Eff-Up and get another chance, just like white men (and I’m saying white men, because there’s a few white women who Effed-Up, too, and haven’t been heard from since they did {Linda Ellerbee comes to mind here}).

It’s not like we plan to Eff-Up – usually, we’re bringing our “A” game to whatever we do, but we are Human, and humans are prone to Effing-Up from time to time, but I swear it’s blown out of proportion when WE do, and played down when it’s the White Guy.

When that question of “Why is That?” can be honestly answered, then we will have come a long, long way in Uniting this country and starting to put discrmination, bigotry and hatred BEHIND us.