Thanks to Sabiyha Prince for sending this satire my way. It’s really well done, I think. Much better than The New Yorker cover, which (and this is the thing you gotta get right with comedy) just wasn’t funny.
This is. And smart.
Everything below is written by Shannon Joyce from BlackAgendaReport.com:
What Obama Might Say to White Fathers
Presidential Politics 2008 – Obama
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
What if statistics showed that “white young people are over twice as likely than black young people to drive drunk, a third more likely to carry a weapon, three times more likely to binge drink, and twice to four times more likely (depending on the drug) to use cocaine, coke, inhalants, steroids, hallucinogens, and methamphetamines?” That’s precisely what the statistics say – which should be a signal for Barack Obama to begin paying visits to white churches to low-rate the fathers of the congregations. We can hear it now: “Clearly you, white parents, need to stop being shiftless and take care of your responsibilities. You are failing your children.” But don’t bet on it. Things like that only happen in works of satire.
What Obama Might Say to White Fathers
by Shannon Joyce Prince
“It is young white men and women who are more likely to engage in a plethora of destructive and often criminal behaviors.”
On Father’s Day Senator Barack Obama walked into a white church and stepped up to pulpit, absent his charismatic smile. He adjusted the microphone and straightened his silken tie, before resting his bistre colored hands on the pulpit. After staring out sternly over the pale faces of the congregation, he began to speak.
“White fathers,” he intoned ominously. “You have abandoned your responsibilities. You are acting like boys and not men. You and I know this is true. It’s reflected in the fact that according to the Center for Disease Control white young people are over twice as likely than black young people to drive drunk, a third more likely to carry a weapon, three times more likely to binge drink, and twice to four times more likely (depending on the drug) to use cocaine, coke, inhalants, steroids, hallucinogens, and methamphetamines. Furthermore, according to the conservative Manhattan Institute, your polo-shirted, loafer-wearing, suburban sons and daughters are more likely than their urban school counterparts to smoke cigarettes, have sex at an early age, and have commitment-free sex. They are also more likely to sell drugs than urban students. Clearly, the absence of white men from far too many families is taking a toll on white youths. As for those of you who are not absentee fathers, it’s a wonderful thing if you are married and living in a home with your children, but don’t just sit in the house and watch HGTV all weekend long. Do some parenting.
“White young people are over twice as likely than black young people to drive drunk, a third more likely to carry a weapon, three times more likely to binge drink, and twice to four times more likely … to use cocaine, coke, inhalants, steroids, hallucinogens, and methamphetamines.”
“You know, sometimes I’ll go to an eighth-grade graduation and there’s all that pomp and circumstance and gowns and flowers. And I think to myself, it’s just eighth grade. It is time for white parents to take action against the rampant anti-intellectualism in the white community. According to the National Center for Education Statistics white parents are half as likely as blacks to help their children with homework. It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ?Do good in school,’ and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don’t check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you’ve got the video game playing.
“Perhaps the disinterest of white parents in education is the reason that white twelfth graders are only half as likely as black twelfth graders to have perfect attendance. Remember how I told black parents that ?parents have to parent, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.’ It is time for white mothers and fathers to act black, to switch off American Idol and help their children with homework, to make sure that unless their children are sick with the mumps they are sitting in their homeroom at 8 AM ready to learn. According to the Departments of Education and Justice, instead of studying attentively in school, your white children are more likely than black ones to bring a weapon there. It’s up to white fathers to tell their sons, those songs on the radio may glorify violence, but in my house we give glory to achievement, self respect, and hard work.
“Now I know that racism is your usual opiate, I know that you take comfort in attributing dysfunction to black and brown hip hoppers, baby mamas, and thugs, but as the above statistics show it is young white men and women who are more likely to engage in a plethora of destructive and often criminal behaviors. Clearly you, white parents, need to stop being shiftless and take care of your responsibilities. You are failing your children.”
* * *
“Whites were baffled at being singled out as a race for their failings and felt unduly stereotyped.”
Not long after Obama made his speech, widely lauded by blacks who were tired of seeing all the dysfunction in the white community, but, not being half-white, weren’t able to address white failings with such candor, whites expressed outrage at Obama’s words. They were baffled at being singled out as a race for their failings and felt unduly stereotyped. After all, Obama had given little if any acknowledgement to good white parents. A cartoonist name Pat Oliphant lost patience with the recalcitrance of whites. He drew a suit-wearing Obama saying the following words to a white man, “When are you going to get up and take some responsibility for all of the children you’ve fathered?” The object of his address, a white man with stringy hair, features thin and pointed until they resembled a rodent’s, was lounging in a trucker cap and stained wife beater. The man, clearly from the most impoverished part of Appalachia, looked up at Obama scornfully, replying, “Hey, Obama! Stop talkin’ that hate-filled, Jeremiah Wright talk, n*gg*r. Or you ain’t gonna get my very precious vote in the fall. Honestly, we whites are the last group of people it’s okay for y’all to discriminate against.” Oliphant wrote his doubt, in a corner of the comic strip, that such people vote at all.
Whites protested that while the half-white figure was portrayed as sensible, moral, and attractive, the fully white character spoke in dialect, was ignorant, associated criticism of white failings with black radicalism, and had a stereotypically lower class appearance. Blacks pooh-poohed their claims. Oliphant and Obama are only telling it like it is, they said. It’s time to stop being politically correct and address the disproportionate failings of whites. And since no one really has to listen to whites or takes pains not to cast aspersions on their humanity in this country, their criticism were largely ignored and America resumed its business as usual.