A MONTH after the election of Barack Obama, Elizabeth Wright, the black conservative who died last year and who was a commenter at this blog, made some predictions in an entry at her website. The post was titled “The Everlasting Quest: To Transform Whites.” She wrote:
I believe that blacks will take this Obama victory as a mandate, not to straighten out the mess in their own backyards, but to continue the job of “fixing” white folks. This means stepping up the crusade designed to keep whites in the habit of working to exterminate the “guilt” and “shame” that supposedly taints their hearts and souls. And it will not matter how you label these blacks. You may call them “liberal” or “radical” or even “conservative,” but their quest will be the same. If there is one thing that unites blacks across all politics, religious attachments, and classes, it is the desire to control the attitudes and behavior of whites.
Our exalted black movers and shakers – heads of academia, civil rights mountebanks, government functionaries and elected officials – are sure to support even more vigorous integration policies. These will be necessary in order to reach those white holdouts, who are not actively working to de-racinate themselves for the coming “post-racial” world. That is, the world as devised by the coloreds, along with their white professional “anti-racists.”
From the most trivial pop culture junk, to the gravest issues, whites are expected to pay attention when blacks are the principals involved. Take the concern of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, for example. His very first column for the world’s most prestigious newspaper is one I have never forgotten, if for nothing more than its unmitigated shallowness.
The column was a sermon scolding whites for neglecting to pick up on a piece of jargon that was popular for about ten minutes in 1993. Entitled, “In America, There It Is!,” Herbert (a leading black “intellectual” pundit) expressed dismay over the fact that he kept encountering whites who had never heard the bit of black doggerel that went, “Whoomp, there it is!,” and explains further, “Or, if you prefer, “Whoot, there it is!” (He offers the alternative spelling of this important contribution to the American vocabulary, because slang tends to get transformed from place to place; in this case, from black ghetto to black ghetto.)
About this piece of slang, Herbert exults:
It’s the joyous cry of the streets and the clubs in the big cities, the cry of the young who refuse to succumb to their troubles and grief. “Whoot, there it is!”
Enraptured with this notion, he continues:
Little kids can’t stop saying it. A 10-year-old boy in Detroit opened his birthday package and pulled out a new Nintendo game. “Whoomp!” he shouted. “There it is!” A little girl in Atlanta was striving for an A on an English test. When her graded paper came back, she jumped up in the classroom. “Whoot,” she said, “there it is!” It’s a phrase that makes you feel good. It gets the endorphins going. It’s much better than a cigarette or a cocktail. Whoomp, there it is!
And then Herbert gets to the point of this brilliant first essay for the eminent New York Times. He claims to be “amazed” that very few people outside of the “black urban environment” (we know who they are) possess an awareness of this endorphin-rousing expression, “although the phrases have launched two hit songs.” (Obviously, everyone is expected to share his interest in simple-minded popular music.) He then educates his readers:
The number two song in the country is by the rap duo Tag Team. It’s called “Whoomp! (There It Is).” Also on the charts is “Whoot, There It Is,” an altogether different – and blatantly risque – song by the rap group 95 South.
We also learn that a Manhattan bowling alley plays the song whenever someone scores a strike, and that a special version was recorded for the Chicago Bulls. Yet, in spite of all this outstanding acclaim, so many Americans (you know who) are oblivious to this verbal expression, which Herbert, several times, calls a “phenomenon.” He writes:
In other words, the whoomp-whoot phenomenon is very big. But as it comes primarily from black kids, much of the country remains absolutely unaware of it. The media have stayed away from it big time. These are America’s youngsters, but it’s as if America can’t hear them.
Oh, wicked, indifferent America! And, he continues:
On Capitol Hill, where Congressmen are shadowboxing with the big issues of our time, you’ll get a dumbfounded stare if you happen to mention, “Whoot, there it is!” Several blocks away, in the D.C. neighborhoods, the phrase is everywhere, but hardly anyone on the Hill has heard it.
Calling such ignorance “a shame,” Herbert offers the names of a couple of Congressmen who could benefit “from a little loosening up.” Of course, they just happen to be Republicans: Senator Robert Dole, who has a “gloomy view of the world,” along with the “exasperated” Senator Orrin Hatch.
And then the philosopher Herbert caps off his words of wisdom with observations about what disregard of this creative argot by “America’s youngsters” says about black-white relations. How can one miss viewing “Whoomp!” as metaphor?
The whoomp-whoot phenomenon is a terrific example of how most blacks and whites in the U.S. continue to lead separate existences, looking past each other, not seeing one another, not hearing one another, except on those days when, inevitably, we collide and it’s time to fight.
So, even ridiculous black slang must be respectfully acknowledged by the mainstream population, if Americans are to avoid leading “separate existences,” a choice that is troublesome to Herbert and which he implies no one should have the freedom to make. The implication is that whites are culpable for their negligence of not learning about all aspects of “black culture,” even that which an intelligent mind would dismiss as worthless rubbish.
Forbidden to whites
As Herbert so clearly demonstrates, whites are expected always to be thinking about and worrying over blacks. Are blacks happy or discontented? Can more be done to satisfy them? Just what is it that whites are expected to do to finally make blacks feel “equal” and certain that they are not neglected? Well, several black conservatives are happy to offer the key to this dilemma. They share the same principal quest as their liberal counterparts, that is, the longing to bring equality between blacks and whites at every level of economic and social interaction – most especially in the social realm of physical intimacy. [cont.]
— Comments —-
Paul writes:
Blacks refuse to accept their difference from whites. The talented Ms. Wright must have understood this to write what she did. She called it like it is. Blacks behave as some white Christians do in refusing to accept their difference from white Jews and East Asians.
Answers are plentiful if only people would accept the truth. So Jews are disproportionately represented in many fields. Non-Jews need to accept this as non-negotiable and move on to a morally fitting solution. The solution might be a separate state or it might be as it is today in America. Jews certainly accept their minority status, in America at least.
But blacks behave, as a group, as moronic savages. They are apparently incapable of forming a civilized society among themselves, not to mention among nonblacks. They relegate themselves to the status of eternal victims. Imagine if Moses had accepted eternal victimhood.