Great Expectations

My May 1 column on stereotypes, which noted that Democratic mayoral candidate Michael Nutter is considered an “Oreo” by some African Americans, drew responses from white readers who felt personally offended by my use of that term.

One reader said it was as wrong for me to use the word “Oreo,” as it would be for a white writer to use the word “wigger” to describe a Caucasian person who aspires to act like an African American.

First of all, I didn’t call Nutter an Oreo. I said his poor polling among African American voters might in part be due to stereotyping of him as an Oreo — that is, black on the outside, white on the inside.

I further suggested that the stereotype was given new energy by Nutter’s calling for stop-and-frisk police powers in crime-prone neighborhoods where many blacks simply don’t trust the police.

A couple of white readers grieved that the term Oreo implied there is something “bad” about being white.

I disagreed, suggesting the word is merely an acknowledgment of a reality: Black and white are different, neither one being all good or all bad.

Oreo is a derogatory term, certainly. But it isn’t meant to have the venom of hate speech. It’s a cookie, after all.

Users of the word typically believe the person they are describing as an Oreo is only misguided and will “come home.”

Several white readers also suggested that blacks who use the word Oreo are proponents of Ebonics and are disdainful of learning and Western culture.

Not true. Successful African Americans in varied cultural and economic endeavors and who are careful grammarians might call someone an Oreo.

You see, the word’s not as much about what a person attaches himself to as it is about what he no longer embraces — his roots.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it’s like baseball allegiances: If a longtime fan of one team starts wearing the other team’s gear, his former friends will have much harsher feelings for that individual than for his new favorite team.

In an ideal world, there would be no such distinctions — no thinking white or thinking black. But although African Americans and white Americans are closer in thought than ever before, we have not reached that ideal.

Oreo is a newer term, but the categorizing of African Americans goes back to slave days when the white masters decided some blacks were more deserving of working near them than others — thus, the house slaves and the field slaves.

That African Americans are still being categorized — perhaps mostly by themselves — shows that the vestiges of slavery still do damage. Blacks have to work as hard as whites to move beyond their hurtful past.

When all the vestiges of slavery are finally gone, when people genuinely acknowledge each other as equals, blacks won’t feel threatened or betrayed by any individual’s perceived rejection of his race.

No Oreos then. No one acting white, or black. Just one big marble cake. Well, at least that’s the dream. And it sounds delicious.