I don’t expect to see an end to racism or sexism in my life time, but I think we’ll continue to move forward, slowly, often times painfully. It goes beyond just the mere establishment of a part of the vernacular as taboo, far beyond, and will involve a cultural and social evolution that will have to center around shifting the common further and further into the extreme until it is pushed off the map completely.

But this is a momentous step, and one that I think will have ripple effects for generations to come.

Hehe, rawdawg, it is that serious. I’m sick of seeing this happen whenever a woman of color accomplishes something.

I think I know the article you’re talking about, Kyle, and I don’t necessarily agree with the comic’s viewpoint that the Obama presidency will forever change how people view black Americans or how black Americans view themselves. It will perhaps place things into a lot more perspective and make incidences like these glaring. But we have a lot more changes to implement culturally, beyond just a symbolic and historic election, to really root out the racism and sexism that goes on daily.

I don’t usually participate much in the comments section of posts, but this really did strike a chord in me, and had me instantly thinking about something Chris Matthews had said.

It was right after Obama ran his thirty minute ad spot, and after some of the commentary Chris Matthews went in to full on rant mode and was talking about people who weren’t going to vote for Obama based on race, finally building to a crescendo of, “What more do you want?!”

I know it’s a little different, but there’s a common thread here; one that also ties in with what a COC (comic of color) recently said; I can’t remember his name. That being that President Obama will likely have a serious affect on black humor because the kinds of routines that many African American stand up comics use tend to play off of these similar black cultural idiosyncracies, and with the election of a Obama it’s likely that you’re going to have a lot of people stand up and say, “That’s not us!”

I guess what I’m getting at is this same rant from Chris Matthews, and the point you’re making as well. This is a highly educated woman who will in sixty-two days be our first lady, can we finally dispense with any kind of talk about whether her ass is suitably big enough to be stereotypically black? It was never right to begin with, but the Obamas have done everything they possibly could to not be objectified and codified according to racial and gender based stereotypes; what more do some of these people want?