Black people never run out of conspiracy theories. This is because there’s no way we could have ended up in this position without diabolical whites plotting against us all the time. Usually, the theories are either just plain paranoid (e.g. the CIA floods the inner city with crack) or perhaps better explained by other facts (maybe you’re unemployed cuz you smoke dope in your mama’s basement all day and not cuz The Man won’t let a brother get ahead). But every now and then, they make me stop and go hmmm. Like this one. In the Daily Beast, Stanley Crouch writes:
“A fundamental aspect of black barbershop disparagement—what you might call a suspicion of things as they seem to be—is that white people never give any power toys over to black Americans until they are through with them. Or unless they are so rusty that only a fool could not see how far beyond repair those toys actually are.”
“The people taking those positions are not defeatists, or do not think of themselves that way. Their sense of the world is not based in Frederick Douglass’ observation that power does not give the opposition anything without a fight. They merely think that color rules are hard, fast, and very different. Power is never given or trusted in the hands of those who are not white.”
He is, of course, talking about Michael Steele’s so far disastrous run as RNC chair. One might even extend the theory to Barack Obama (remember the Onion’s classic summation of his election.)
So, brothers get to run a country and a political party brought to its knees by rich white men. Whites get to sit back and throw stones while they try to clean up someone else’s mess.
Hmmm…maybe we’re not paranoid after all.
