Glenn Beck Concern Trolls Black America

Dave Neiwert has today's must read, and it's all about Glennsanity playing dumb while asking black conservatives about race.

And it let Beck lead exchanges like this, with Beck regular Charles Payne and talk-show host Lisa Fritsch:

Beck: How many people here identify themselves as African Americans? (About a third raise their hands) OK -- Why?

Payne: It's interchangeable.

Beck: But wait, wait. Why not identify yourself as Americans?

Fritsch: Well, people can look at you and tell you're black. You can't escape that.

Beck: Yeah, but I don't identify myself as white, or a white American.

Will Brown of the New York Republican Community Coalition points out, adroitly, that "African American" is an "evolution" from the "N word" -- and certainly is preferable. Moreover, it wasn't black people who invented the "N word" or the segregation from enjoying the full fruits of American citizenship it represented -- it was white people. "African American" represents the recognition of their dignity and their rights as Americans.

Oh Beck understands that point exactly, which is why he brought it up.  His implication is the same as it was months ago when he accused the President of it:  only racists identify themselves by racial identity, ergo African Americans, who identify themselves by race, are by definition racist.  In a very real sense, Beck is implying that being proud of being black (and that of course brings up the ghosts of Malcolm X, Huey Newton, "uppity" and the entire closet full of bad connotations) is racism in 2009.  "Aren't you over that by now?  We're looking at two generations raised outside Jim Crow at this point, so how are you possibly still harping on this?"

You have only to look at the 2008 campaign to see that racism against African Americans is not dead and gone.  Hell, it's still here today, now, here.

(More after the jump...)

Ahh, but it gets worse with Glenn:

This idiocy reached its apotheosis, though, when Beck played for his audience that audio tape of black Detroiters turning out for welfare assistance funds, originally promoted by Rush Limbaugh, which was nothing more than a nakedly racist bit of ugly stereotyping on the part of the radio talker, Ken Rogulski, who produced it. As King Crimson observed:

The conservo-talk reporter cherry picked through the audio booty until he found the absolute best soundbite that would most perfectly frame the city as one filled with Obama-fawning morons, black Sambos, and greedy welfare grabbers - precisely, as Limbaugh would later argue, the kind of rank idiots who would vote for someone like America's first black president.

And if you listen to the woman making the "Obama money" remarks, you can hear that she's cracking humorously on the humorless, stereotype-dependent white guy asking. He -- and Beck and Limbaugh, by extension -- are the butt of the joke and they don't even know it.
Well, we actually know where Beck thinks this talk comes from:

Beck: All right. These are the people who have been abused by the system. They've been taught they needed the government. They've been taught to be slaves, and their master is Washington! Both parties!

For some reason, those weren't the words he used yesterday. Hmmm. Wonder why not, don't you?

It's concern trolling as race baiting, and nobody is better at it than Glenn Beck.  Nobody.  Beck only proves two things here:  that his advice to the African American community should be ignored, and that black conservatives are just as mendacious as non-black conservatives.