Don’t Drink The Kool-Aid

“Naturally, being the human-loving hippie I am, I felt a little apprehensive that perhaps I had touched on some of your religious sensibilities, perhaps. So over the weekend, I decided to read up on the Odu Ifa to see if perhaps there were religious bases for your racial statements.”- Carlton on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 @ 4:11 AM

”Sure I understand your need to protect your interests. You must admit though that it’s quite the change though from when you were ready to give up your blog for the ‘great black movement’ and now one black peace loving hippie’s innocent exchanges of ideas are able to bring all that you’ve invested crashing down around you. I guess you should have taken your followers’ advice a little earlier than you did. I sincerely hope my that the two of us having gentleman’s discussions wouldn’t have ended this blog. I enjoy it. I hope my willingness to be open-minded hasn’t ‘infected’ your process (or those of your followers).
But you are in good company. This is the same kind of thing that Bill O’ Reilly does on his blog. And that guy earns a lot of money every year so he MUST know what he’s doing. And then, of course there’s Hitler. Now that guy knew how to shape an argument so he was always the ‘winner’ also.
I think we as a people need to explore this parallel with white conservatives for the close-minded way in which we sometimes approach the exchange of ideas. But you know, it was me that said I didn’t want blacks to be some kind of monolith. So in some perverse way, I got my wish. We can’t all be introspective and inquisitive. After all, it’s the worker bees that just blindly show up to work and churn out the same efforts day in and out that make the most honey. I always try to look on the bright side.”- Carlton on Friday, July 10, 2009 @ 11:09 PM

”This is really weird. I’m almost enjoying being deleted for absolutely nothing as much as you enjoy deleting me to keep up the facade that I’m saying something wrong. I’m starting to believe that a lot of the things others said that you deleted may not have been on the up and up, either. Did you get this idea of not showing your warts from the Wizard of Oz movie?” – Carlton on Friday, July 10, 2009 @ 11:48 AM

”Pretty smart to insinuate that I said something offensive to you. Anybody who’s read my comments know I am largely very respectful and that only someone looking to find an insult in my words will find one. But since you prefer to not not question yourself, I’ll relent. Just remember your Socrates(if you’d like; no pressure)-‘ The unexamined life is not worth living’.” – Friday, July 10, 2009 @ 8:25 AM

Now I thought I had the patience of a saint in many respects. I’m not perfect but I think I have a willingness to engage people I disagree with. I will admit that I don’t have much of a tolerance to being attacked from people, especially when people come to my blog to try to start trouble. So when my guest Carlton came here to disagree with my philosophy that the black community should do more to work with others in the black community, I engaged him like any other person who wants to discuss the issues of racism with respect to the black community. I do believe that I have bent over backwards to engage an alleged black man who thinks he works hard for the black community by promoting concepts that encourage black people to distance themselves from the common interests of the community. Then again, this is the same man who concludes his comments to me with the phrase, All my black love. If this is his idea of black love for me, then I’m beginning to understand his confusion about his black love for the black community.

If this man loves me and equates my behavior to Bill O’Reilly and Adolph Hitler then it’s a logical conclusion that with his love of the black community he probably equates black people to the Aryan Brotherhood and Neo Nazis. Why else would he feel that black people fighting for equality in the workplace and throughout America’s racially disparate culture to black people infringing on white people’s well being. This is supposedly a black man who thinks black people working for the common goal of equality is little more than black people fighting for the right to wear a dashiki to corporate America’s boardrooms. With this kind of black love who needs racists?

Carlton’s special brand of black community love has not been lost on some of my other visitors. Dark Frosty wrote, I’m surprised that you still even bother with Carlton. I particularly enjoyed theblacksentinel’s reflection of Carlton summed up as, I am so disgusted by these comments it makes me want to vomit. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around his logic. If I didn’t know better I would guess that he was crazy. Akinwole wrote, Carlton…lighten up some and uncock your weapons and be at peace with yourself. You will find we are not really in disagreement with you. But I think it was most telling when Shabazz responded to this man with the comment, That damn [C]arlton needs a bullet between the eyes, fucking coon. If these comments are any indication then I think I really did practice a lot of patience with this man. While I may not condone violence against people who work to undermine the black community, it is rather tempting to make one exception.

I do have to confess that my willingness to engage Carlton was not altogether some altruistic sense of trying to suffer an unenlightened black man who works to protect the white community’s interest from black people. Almost each and every time I received a comment from Carlton it was good for an article or two. There were even a couple of times I was able to produce four articles to his simple solution rhetoric that black people should be more willing to sell their souls to anyone in the dominant community who was willing to hire a black person to do whatever. When I was going through my worst writer’s block and wasn’t up to writing anything worth reading, here comes Carlton like cherry flavored Kool-Aid on crack, busting through the walls. OH YEAH!!! He was a godsend of contradictions and doublespeak that would make a politician stand and clap with an applause of admiration! All I had to do was sit back and read some of his nonsense.  He’d write something like, there’s no point in the black community working for a common goal because black unity is a monolith that demands leadership from the Zionist church.

Carlton would write that there’s no such thing as white unity.  Then two days later he would write a comment that he was a psychology major with a minor in sociology and was well versed in the Devah Pager study where white employers would hiring candidates most like them.  In effect, he would admit that white people are more inclined to hire and support other white people leading to racial preferences and disparity.  My replies came so easily they practically wrote themselves.  And I didn’t just drink his Kool-Aid, I greedily guzzled it down as if I was a thirsty fat kid with unlimited refills on a Kwiki-Mart big gulp.

Unfortunately, Carlton’s comments of late have been disappointing. Instead of doublespeak about how he protects black community’s interest by working to protect white people’s interest or how white people need his protection from black people or the white community has no unity but white people will hire other white people, Carlton focuses on personal attacks and uses his proclivity for doublespeak to deny it altogether. He wants me to believe that he’s being respectful.  Then again, if his respect of black people is anything like his love for black people then I do believe I might be in a little trouble.  Dude admits he gets a perverse pleasure from having his comments rejected.  And every time he gets a dose of rejection from me, with his claim that it induces pleasurable effects, Carlton feels like I’m the one lying to people.  A fair question would be that if he likes it so much why is he complaining?  Chances are this is just another manifestation of his self deluding contradictions.

It should be obvious that his rants professing his open mindedness are designed to simply goad a reaction. Instead of being inspiration for writing, his comments are little more than inspiration for the trash. Yet, if I don’t publish them then Carlton thinks I’m imitating Adolph Hitler trying to unfairly squash the protestations of anybody who disagrees with me. This from a man who wouldn’t recognize the unfairness of racial disparity if it bitched slapped him into the middle of last week.  What’s a brother to do?

Let this be a lesson to people. This is what can happen when you are willing to suffer fools. Take a warning from me! Don’t drink their Kool-Aid no matter how thirsty for inspiration you might be.  It simply may not be worth it.  The short term gains of having someone like Carlton around with his special brand of respect just may not be worth the long term headache.