Barack Obama Called “Oreo” by TV Host John McLaughlin
On Sunday’s the McLaughlin Group, the host John McLaughlin said that Obama “fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo—a black on the outside , white on the inside.” He went on to say to the panelists “Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that…an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?” Panelists included Michelle Bernard, president of the Independent Women’s Forum and MSNBC News Contributor and Peter Beinart, senior fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, both of them disagreed with the Oreo characterization. Bernard said “If Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African-Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our rights, and all of us say that you cannot blame ‘the man’ or white racism for everything that ails the black community.” McLaughlin is an old man who made an unfortunate word choice. This is what happens when people use terms that they can not truly understand. It does not seem to be a case of racism it just seems to be just plain stupid.
Being a retired teacher who taught in mostly minority “majority” schools in Texas, I often heard “oreo” used by some black students to define other blacks. Likewise, Latin children would call others coconuts or bolillos (Mexican baguette….brown crust over white) meaning the same. Such terms would be most often used by the lazy students, those who were failing, towards those students of their own ethnic/racial group who worked hard and made good grades, so there was an element of envy and jealousy. I had one black student who was an A student but school wasn’t easy for him. He worked very hard and I was always eager to offer tutoring to him and anyone else who came in after school. But he quit coming for extra help and his grades started falling. I called him in for a conference and it turned out other boys were riding him for making good grades, telling him he was kissing up the teacher, trying to be “like whitey”. I told him to pay no attention to his peers, keep studying hard and some day the boys who were harassing him would be coming to his desk somewhere and begging for a job.
BTW, I didn’t have nearly the same peer pressure problems with many of my female students. Females were my best students and I taught the science and math, a discipline where males are supposed to excel. We have a problem with too many of our young males in this nation and this extends across all races.
Barack Obama values education and hopefully our youth will become inspired to follow the hard road that Barack AND Michelle have modeled for them.