"Be Confident In Your Blackness"

In his recent commencement address at Howard University our president's racism-laced message to graduates strategically included the words, "Be Confident in your blackness." But what most got my attention was that his entire speech was presented in his own version of 'homeboy' with a clumsy Ebonic lilt/cadence. The down-home, laid-back talk that he couldn't quite pull off was, in my view, an embarrassing insult to the noble scholars and their parents, many of whom just wanted to enjoy the moment and honor the hard work it had taken both to achieve their goal. The forty-five minutes might have been better spent encouraging them to have confidence in their hard-earned skills and knowledge. Instead, he spent nearly an hour imitating some stereotype of a brutha' and hauled out his pitifully caricatured representation of "blackness." The racial unity of our so wounded nation was once more thrown in the backseat. It was a pitiful shuck.