Bourgeois blues

Exactly.

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

It's about time.

In a subsequent post, Ta-Nehisi notes the "disappointment" expressed in comments to the report that Bill Cosby agreed with Jimmy Carter, that the rudeness towards Obama and the efforts to undermine his legitimacy reflects a racism that will not say its name. I guess Cosby should just sell pudding and not expose deep and lingering fears about the black man.