Black People Is Crazy

At last, kind words about Senator Hillary Clinton on the Wall Street Journal editorial page -- Hillary probably isn't a despicable racist. But this kind view is advanced to target people even more loathed by the WSJ editorial page -- uppity black folk who challenge what they percieve as racism.

In today's WSJ, James McWhorter wonders:

There are many people in our great land aggrieved over the idea that Hillary Clinton thinks Martin Luther King Jr. was not the hero of the civil rights movement....

Why do people like op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn and countless black bloggers hear a grievous insult in her simple observation? The outcry is so disproportionate to the stimulus that one can barely help suspecting something outright irregular.

I think of a study published last year in the Journal of Black Psychology. It documented that the extent to which black Americans perceive their lives to be affected by racism correlates with symptoms of general paranoia disconnected from racial issues.

To be able to hold in one's mind the notion that Mrs. Clinton would attack King suggests a bone-deep hypersensitivity that overrides sequential reasoning.

Why do black people hear such things? Mental defectiveness is one possibility, and no doubt McWhorter's favorite explanation for all things African-American.

But maybe, just maybe, it's because the media repeatedly misrepresented Clinton's statement in a way which made it look bad. Or maybe its because they've heard McWhorter, the Journal and their ilk for years arguing that Clinton is a phony and a sociopath who, like all Dems, secretly despises African-Americans and cynically manipulates them to keep them on the liberal plantation, living in dependency. Or maybe because Clinton's supporters and staffers have been quoted (and sometimes misquoted) as saying some less-than-liberal things about Clinton's African-American opponent. Or maybe it's because, like a lot of white people who are doing the same thing (including many in the press), they prefer another candidate to Clinton or just hate Clinton and are looking for excuses to bash her.

Naw. Can't be any of those. Black people is crazy.

Because, after all,

This idea seems so illogical that the only way to understand it is to approach it as a puzzle. After all, why would a white person running for president in 2008 dismiss the legacy of King near his birthday, which is celebrated as a national holiday, and right before a primary in a state with a large black vote?

Yes, and why would a white person running for President in 2008 have voted against a national holiday honoring King? Why, indeed? It makes almost as much sense as a bunch of white people running for President in 2008 incessantly claiming that they are the reincarnation of a white person who was President in 1980s and who opposed a King holiday. Or a white person running for President in 2008 who published a racist newsletter in the 1990s. And why would white people running for President in 2008 fall all over themselves to welcome back a tired old racist disk jockey?

McWhorter is paranoid and lacks the ability to reason, but it has nothing to do with his race.