Dan

Calabrese

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January 18, 2006

It's Harlem, They're Black, So Hillary's a Slave

Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Harlem. If that’s not the time for a rich, powerful white woman to put herself in the shoes of Kunta Kinte, I don’t know what is.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) knows what it is to be herded onto a boat from your home in Africa, chained, whipped, flogged and forced to pick cotton from sun-up to sundown. She can relate.

And it’s all because of those plantation-owning Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“The House of Representatives has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about," she explained to people whose ancestors were once property on plantations. "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard.”

Hillary was technically only talking about the House, and she is technically a Senator, but as she would say, you know what I'm talking about. It’s tough to be part of the Democratic minority in Congress. In fact, it’s just like slavery. Let’s count the ways.

Slaves, like Sen. Clinton, were allowed to leave their southern-state homes any time they wanted, move to a Yankee state and get elected to public office.

Slaves, like Sen. Clinton, ran their mouths as often as they wanted to, and when they said things that were transparently disingenuous, they were praised by major media for effective positioning.

Slaves, like Sen. Clinton, lived in and around big white houses, and upon leaving, were permitted to take all kinds of lovely items that didn’t belong to them as parting gifts.

Slavery and life in the congressional minority. Who can tell the difference?

Oops. It appears the folks in Harlem can. Their reaction to Sen. Clinton’s self-assignment as a sharecropper of pallor elicited what they call “polite applause,” which translated means, “I guess we need to feign clapping because if we do what we really want to do, er, she still has Secret Service, right?”

Sure does. Just like slaves used to, one presumes.

It can’t be easy for Sen. Clinton, whose job description is unlike any other member of the Senate, and as such presents her with no role model to follow. The other 99 senators are expected to, you know, be senators. Sponsor legislation. Vote on stuff. Make judicial nominees’ spouses cry. That kind of stuff.

Not Sen. Clinton. She is there to position herself to run for president. That’s her job. And her effectiveness at positioning herself to run for president is the measure by which she is judged by virtually everyone.

Vote for the war then embrace Cindy Sheehan? Shrewd! Draw up a plan for socialized medicine and then align yourself with Newt Gingrich on health care issues? Appealing to the middle while tipping her hat to the base! Well played!

Compare herself to slaves? What skillful . . . wait a minute. What was that?

That, if you must know, is the resounding but familiar sound of another Democrat not only taking black voters for granted, but assuming that they still associate themselves with the same sorry designations from which great men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked to deliver them.

Look! Black people! I’ll use an image from slavery. They always get revved up when you do that. Better yet, I’ll compare myself to a slave because I don’t get to chair committees.

The reaction of her audience says a lot about the growing sense among African-Americans that their destiny need not be forever connected to their history in bondage. Not the old plantation line again. We’re executives and stockholders now, Mrs. Clinton.

The primary problem with being on a plantation – a real one, back when there were real slaves – was the serious consequences involved in trying to leave. Sort of like what happens today when black people try to leave a certain party that considers them something like – oh, let’s say . . . indentured servants? Ask Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele, who had Oreo cookies thrown at him during a campaign appearance. Ask Condoleezza Rice, who was referred to in Doonsbury as “Brown Sugar.”

There is a political institution in America today that brings its fury upon black people who have the nerve to try to leave. It’s the same institution that may be preparing to nominate Sen. Clinton for president.

Because she is so very shrewd. Just ask the folks in Harlem.

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