Getting Beyond The Hair ...

I've got to give Al his props. He has been a real voice in this election season and says the things that 'electable' candidates wouldn't be able to get away with. I wanted to hurl when Dubya was trying to make nice with him at the Urban League Convention last week. Attendees at that conference were being polite (not accepting) of the Dubya so as not to get 'hostile' label that had been placed on the NAACP. It took a few days but I knew Al would break it on down sooner or later.

Just as the Democratic convention threatened to sink into a sleepy sea of optimism, the Rev. Al Sharpton stepped up to save the day with a smoking speech before the Black Caucus. With all of the emotion but none of the weirdness of Howard Dean's scream, Sharpton railed against George W. Bush for having the "audacity" to suggest -- as he did last week in an Urban League speech -- that African-Americans should consider the Republican Party as viable "alternative" for their votes.

"The insult there was that he acted like we have become Democrats by some unthinking process, rather than that we had been rejected and treated hostile by the Republican Party," Sharpton told an enthusiastic crowd. "They promised us 40 acres and a mule. We waited and nothing happened. The fact of the matter is, Mr. Bush, we waited around with the Republican Party through Herbert Hoover. Still didn't get the 40 acres. Didn't even get the mule. So we decided we'd ride this donkey as far as it would take us."
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The Dubya needs to understand. Black folks have 400+ years of practice of biting their tongues in front of his ilk. Just because they were nodding, didn't mean they were agreeing.