I
spent more than a decade as treasurer of a black Methodist church.
With a black minister and dozens of black staffers I knew I had one
important job: make sure the church was never seen messing around
with money.....no misuse of donor's money, member's money or grant
money. Stay clean as a whistle. Stay above reproach.
I knew and most mature adults know that there is a stereotype that blacks can't be trusted around money. Think Congressman William Jefferson with $90k in his freezer.
The
stereotype is not wrong. Stereotypes are a human mechanism for
clustering observations. There is a stereotype that chickens are
stupid, that they will stand in the rain until they die. Of course
there are smart chickens, but they are not the majority. If you
raise chickens you will be wise to use the stereotype.
Blacks
and financial corruption is a stereotype and a very strong one in
America. At my church job I had the power to stop the endless
approaches, many very cunning, that I was offered by black staffers
seeking to practice fraud. The stereotype is real.
Yesterday, Obama, who lied about the issue eight months ago, broke a 30 year tradition of setting campaign limits on the presidential race. McCain is a genuine leader in campaign finance reform and now stands in stark contrast to the phony "change candidate".
What
I can't believe is that Obama's staff can't see or appreciate the
importance of this stereotype. Obama, taking unlimited money is
walking into a self made stereotype disaster.
Watch. Investigators will now treat Obama as a stereotypical black man who's financial history will be thoroughly scoured and possibly found to include plenty of misuse and abuse of money.