causeandeffectworld.com Blog

What black people call white people

It’s been a while since I’ve written here (so many issues, so little time), but this caught my eye and made me laugh…

“The campaign of Barack Obama has had to rebut, not once but several times, the wild rumors that his wife Michelle used an insulting term for white people while railing from the pulpit of Trinity United Church in Chicago. His campaign has had to set up a website to refute the charge, and Obama himself has had to chastise mainstream reporters for spreading the lie.

What he hasn’t done—because he cannot if he wants to win the presidency—is roll out the clearest and most obvious knockdown of Whiteygate. Namely this: ‘When the hell was the last time you heard a black person call somebody ‘whitey?”

I mean, come on. White man, please.

Speaking as a person who has been black all of my 40-plus years on the planet, I can say with some authority that no self-respecting black, African-American, Negro, colored or even ‘there’s only one race: the human race’ person I know would use the word.”

I can honestly say, the only people I ever hear saying the word ‘whitey’ are white people accusing black people of racism. And why are these people fixated on the word? Well, I happen to know a small number of these people, and they are still using the N-word in their private whites-only conversations.  So, maybe they can’t believe that black people aren’t at the same sorry, low level of existence as they are. Maybe they heard it on some tv show years ago. Who knows? But, I personally have not heard any black person, in all my years, use that term.

Which is not to say that there aren’t black people who look down on white people. They certainly exist. They just don’t call us ‘whitey.’