>
>Wait a minute. This seems to imply that a person in America can
escape
>much of the stigma of blackness by (quoting Ford) "not saying 'y'all'
in
>his normal discourse." But Ford is always standing up for the
principle
>that race -- race qua race, not as a mere correlate of something
else,
>like culture or class -- still matters, that it hasn't been
>"transcended." I think there's a deep contradiction here.
>
>Seth
Ford didn't write that, male cauc Paul Street did. Part of what Street is saying is that *Obama* apparently thinks you can escape the stigma since he said y'all in Selma and doesn't elsewhere.
^^^^
CB: I'm not sure if this matters much, but I don't think Martin Luther King said " y'all" in his speeches in front of white people. He probably did when he was eating barbque "on the corner" or in private in Selma. Part of the thing with King was that he was "very educated" , i.e. could speak "properly" ( white).
There is a deep contradiction. See W.E.B. Dubois on the double consciousness of the souls of Black folk in America - one Black and one white. Black Americans have an inherent, internal , soulful contradiction. "Blackness" consists in being both Black and white.
Obama has it perhaps more explictly than others because his parents were white and Black. By this, as an individual, this might push him to escape the stigma, and seek the ML King dream speech world ( where little White kids and Black kids play together) of integration more than most. Or at least escaping the stigma might seem more possible to him, since in a way he embodies escaping the stigma. Or in a way, what has he got to lose ? He _is_ an outlier, a Black Swan (See Nassim Taleb). Why not try to make the rest of the world like you have to live ?