Today, I am pleased to post a "Guest Viewpoint"  contributed by community activist and fellow blogger, Enhager, whose website www.leimertparkbeat.com typifies the type of community that is slowly disappearing from our fast-paced world. He is responding to my previous post, "There Are Black Professionals and Professional Blacks: Cynthia McKinney Comes to California." The nice thing about having guest viewpoints is not only do they represent another viewpoint, but they can also fill-in knowledge gaps and allow our mutual readers to develop a more informed opinion.

Here is Enhager...

There are white professionals and professional whites … how does that sound? Could I make an argument comparing the Minute Men, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott and George Allen to Justice John Roberts and Rob Reiner. Wouldn’t be difficult, but what would it prove? 

The issue I have with this post isn’t the end result – “Decide for yourself which politicians have extremely suspicious backgrounds and who promote hate, intolerance and bigotry” - but that Steve is perpetuating many of the very problems he’s complaining about.

He’s allowing one person to represent a whole class or race of people, and lumping the rest together. You don’t make Cynthia  McKinney the spokeswoman for the Green Party, 9-11 conspiracy theorists or anti-war activists. But you do note, she’s black.

This leads to stereotypes, then prejudices, then discrimination, then racism because you are treating individuals that have an easy to identify trait (such as color, but it could be a lisp, cross eyes or a style of clothes) on a preconceived notion of what you think “those people” are like.

Now I haven’t followed McKinney’s trials and tribulations – but it seems reading the Wikipedia and Slate entries that she doesn’t make everything about race. But you do.

Her 9-11 stance was a conspiracy that, as much as I read, had nothing to do with color. But because she’s black, you go one step farther and now it’s a black conspiracy theory. And while she does have some kooky sounding ideas and her criticisms of Dems and Reps are a bit over the top, the recent stories about the Jena 6, the young Georgia man serving decades in prison for consensual statutory rape and others, illustrates that it’s not so kooky to cry racism in the South in 2007. Maybe she’s gone far professionally, but there are plenty of people who still need a voice.

Which brings me to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Boy do they seem opportunistic and media needy. On the other hand, they have the clout to make people pay attention on a national level to things that most would usually rather ignore.

That’s the fault of the media, I think. The media should be paying attention to what’s happening to the oppressed of any color or class. But without a big or controversial name attached who “represents” a whole people, the coverage is less likely to occur.

Except for Jackson and a lesser extent Sharpton, the media chooses to anoint the spokesperson, not the people. In Los Angeles, the spokesman that TV gravitates to is Najee Ali. He says the most outlandish things, and they get recorded and snapped up. The pro is that people pay attention to what is often a good cause he’s promoting, the con is that he and sometimes his cause looks foolish.

I’ve talked to Ali, and in person he is a thoughtful, bright smart person who doesn’t seem extreme. But he knows what the media beast requires to cover an issue in the black community – they want much more than an articulate sound byte. They want drama, and he does what he feels he has to do.

Yet when you allow a person to speak for an entire group, or allow that person to bias your opinion of a whole group or class, you then say things like, but this one guy is different, he’s not like the rest of them – “These are professional blacks as opposed to the type of black professional typified by Bill Cosby.”

Cosby is an American entertain and educator. He is a unique, cultural treasure and icon, an inspiration for all of us. But you feel the need to characterize him as a black professional, and by inference say he’s different than the others.

He is an almost impossible standard to reach. But while you list at least four negative black leaders, you only list one positive. Why is that? I submit, it’s because it is easier to think of the pot stirrers because they get all the ink. Remember in L.A, there’s Connie Rice, John Mack, Erin Aubry Kaplan. Nationally there’s the spectrum from Harry Belafonte to Barack Obama to Colin Powell.

None of these people can represent a population of millions of diverse people, just like David Duke and Anne Coulter don't speak for all whites.

Still I think people can celebrate their culture and backgrounds, because that diversity – Irish, Italian, Mexican, Nigerian, Egyptian, Laotian, Cherokee – is what this country is made of and what we as individuals have to figure out how to live with.

Thanks to Enhager...

Enhager makes a great point about over-generalization. However, it is my dislike, and frankly disgust, with specific people like Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson  who make everything about their self-interest and race -- jetting in to trouble spots to capture the media spotlight and leaving little or nothing behind. It is the way they play up "race" when they present their odious or hard-left positions  that bugs me. However, this is the great thing about the blogging community, between our collective efforts, we can present a multiplicity of opinions with everyone having an opportunity to make their points and leaving it up to the reader to decide how relevant or useful the information becomes.

What can YOU do?

Celebrate the diversity of opinion and be sure to visit Enhager at www.leimertparkbeat.com to see a strong, vibrant community at work.

Feel fee to respond with a different viewpoint or your comments. Your well-reasoned replies will only add to the conversation. Remember: the rule is to be polite.

-- steve

A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius