He Wears The Mask - Op-Ed by Ta-Nehisi Coates for NYT

[poet]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/opinion/coates-he-wears-the-mask.html?_r=0

(Excerpt):
"Last week, Carson came under attack for comparing advocates of same-sex marriage with advocates of bestiality and the North American Man/Boy Love Association. He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are” — who could not countenance his heterodoxy and wanted to keep him on the “plantation.”

The plantation metaphor refers to a popular theory on the right. It holds that the 95 percent of African-Americans who voted for a Democratic president are not normal Americans voting their beliefs, but slaves. A corollary to the plantation theory is the legend of the Conservative Black Hope, a lonesome outsider, willing to stare down the party of Obamacare and stand up for the party of voter ID. Does it matter that this abolitionist truth-teller serves at the leisure of an audience that is overwhelmingly white? Not really. Blacks are brainwashed slaves; you can’t expect them to know what’s in their interest...Not all black conservatives see it as their job to tell white racists that they embody the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. It is certainly possible to oppose Obamacare in good conscience. No one knows this more than Ben Carson. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, he may have been the most celebrated figure in the black communities of Baltimore. Carson responded to that adulation by regularly giving his time to talk to young people, who needed to know that there was so much more beyond the streets.

I was one of those young people. I don’t doubt that Carson was a conservative even then. I knew plenty of black people who loved their community and hated welfare. But white conservatives were never interested in them, and they were never as interested in Ben Carson as they are right now. When the presidency was an unbroken string of white men, there were no calls for him to run for the White House. And then he put on the mask."

Well-said. Lord knows the GOP has their chocolate "flavors of the month"...more recent have been among them, Herman Cain and Allen West, both who failed to pass the competency test. In Ben Carson, they see an accomplished "upper crust" negro, a "rags-to-riches"-by way of "hard work" success story...speaking their brand of conservative-speak...so much so, the party regulars see him as a multi-edged sword, one who would give Barack Obama a "run for his money" as far as principles and "smarts", and relieve them of the label of "racists", which they otherwise, can hardly live down. But like Justice John Roberts, whom everyone thought would stay "staunchly" on the extreme right, Carson cannot be trusted to tout the party line over the stark reality of race in America. If anyone thinks he is going to allow himself to be discarded and dismissed as Herman Cain and Michael Steele were for showing their "true black asses", after being "set up", then I'd say another think would be in the offering. Be careful the Frankenstein you create. He tore all that shit up, before he was through. LOL.