Miss Black America. The United Negro College Fund. Black Entertainment Network. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Congressional Black Caucus.

Try googling “African American Associations” and you will get 7,860,000 hits. Google “Association of Black” and you will get over 80 million hits.

Here are the first few hits: The National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Black Accountants, the National Association of Black Cardiologists, the National Black Nurses Association, the National Society of Black Engineers. And the list goes on and on and on.

This is usually the part where the writer says something to the effect of, “Now, understand, I am not a racist,” which is also the point where the reader says, “Bull, you sure are.” You really can’t win in writing about this stuff. It’s like being accused of being a child molester. You could be 100 percent innocent, framed by a vengeful ex-lover or ex-spouse, but everybody will look at you funny from now on.

So be it. I’m neither a child molester nor a racist, but this needs to be said.

I am so sick and tired of the double standard we are forced to live with in this society when it comes to racial attitudes. The thing that finally drove me over the edge is New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, that ubiquitous and not so charming mayor of New Orleans, who recently encouraged New Orleans to become “chocolate” again by having the city’s black families move back to the city.

Chocolate, Ray? Are you kidding me? Would you just for a minute picture the unimaginable uproar that would occur if a white mayor of a prominent city (or any city) called for the repopulation of his city with Snow White or whatever other term he might choose to imply Caucasians return to the city?

We would not only see riots in the streets, we would see the political career of said orator end in a nanosecond.

But not with good old Ray. People simply shrug and that’s the end of that.

What absolutely drives me nuts as much as the fact Nagin is a blatant racist is that there is no genuine uproar over it. Why not? How can we sit back and hear that kind of stuff and say, “Oh, well”? What has happened to our sense of fair play when it comes to racial remarks? Why aren’t blacks as equally outraged as whites? Have we become so accustomed to the double standard that we don’t even recognize it any more?

Oh, yes, I know he later apologized about the remark. But that was the end of that, wasn’t it? No repercussions, no real backlash, no outrage.

Well, I’m outraged. Ray Nagin is a self-centered, self-serving, whining politician, and we can now add the term “racist” to his resume.

We have come a long way in this country during my lifetime to correct the wrongs of the past and to promote equality and justice among black Americans. But the double standards must end if we are ever to achieve racial equality and racial harmony in this country.

If they don’t, I see a future with increased pent-up hostility and resentment that will only serve to turn back the strides we have made as a society over the past 40 years.

Until guys like Ray Nagin are unceremoniously dumped and until the likes of the National Association of Black Journalists disbands itself, we are doomed to live in a nation where there will always be an undercurrent of racial hostility. We’ll be stuck in the world of political correctness where thoughts, perhaps more than words, will make racial barriers that much harder to dismantle. America is too great for that.

By bringing this subject up, I want to do my part in addressing this sad social pitfall.

Rosa Parks wouldn’t stand for racial injustice. Neither would Martin Luther King, Jr. and a whole heck of a lot of other folks, both black and white. But if we’re ever going to be a color-blind society, we better have one standard to measure it by, not two.

Dan Tennant
DanTennant (at) aol.com

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