http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/04/black_history_month/

She muses:

During February, my mailbox is overflowing. Most of the mail wants me to represent "my people" for some worthwhile organization in February and February only. Sometimes the tone is pleasant. I generally accept those. Most often the tone is not pleasant.

I group the mail into categories of "accept for sure," "decline for sure," "maybe" and "I'll get back to you."

I've had letters that point out (if not in so many words) that their tax dollars pay my salary and they rightfully deserve a piece of me. The least I can do, these letters imply, is come and be black for them. I dump those requests in my recycling bin.

I also get numerous calls. A pleasant woman from the arts council needed someone to attend her luncheon book-club meeting at her house. One of my colleagues, whom I haven't even met, gave her my telephone number. Her group is thinking of including a black writer on its reading list next year. I accept her pleasant invitation. It doesn't conflict with my calendar. I can be black that Wednesday.

Come January, we'll all start sending her words around again, even as we scour our in boxes for last-minute solicitations and fill our send boxes with indignant forwards of "come be black for me" invites from white people we've never met. The ones we forward and mock are those from people who expect us to come be black for free. The others, the paying ones, we hoard and reply to promptly.

What I most appreciated about Smith's essay was its nuance, its lack of bile and its appreciation of the absurd; dealing with race is hard for everyone. We think you're racist if you ignore BHM and mock you when you honor it. Unless we get paid. Avoiding embarrassment, let alone offense either experienced or inflicted, is damned tricky.

Actually, dealing with race isn't hard at all for old fashioned White racists.

Articles like these give us something to be glad of -- one thing we don't have to worry about. Around coloreds, we don't try to be their buddy, we don't try to make jokes, we just keep a polite social distance until the situation is White again. Works like a charm!

I heard a story on NPR the other day. Some pet negro small town hero was feted and celebrated by the local government school employees. Teachers didn't make him come to class, etc. But then he was kind of disappointed when he didn't actually graduate in time

What came across was the town had made him into this idealized pet negro, and then he was supposed to live up to it. Of course it didn't work out this way. In this case it didn't end up in rape and murder, that's why it was on NPR.

Seeing these stories of pet negroes (and the invisible but large presence of the moneyed white liberal in the background) reminds me of my college days.

I remember the "message" of college quite well. The message was, "Whitey, your life only has meaning to the extent that you are wet-nursing the colored races of the World."

In other words, you are only worthy if you have a pet negro. I saw many college students, esp. college girls and castrated males, doing the pet negro thing.

What a shame for all the White kids who want to get a college education and have to live under such a false ideology. We need to get the message out there that Whitey just being Whitey is quite enough. We don't need any meaning beyond our own People.