Samuel Johnson - not the daddy of those no-account Johnsons who used to live next door to me with the barking dogs, but the English writer - called patriotism "the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Not quite.

Too many times, black politicians cloak themselves in the comforting dashiki of "racism" when they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Even when the crumbs are all over their mouths.

State Rep. Thomas Wright, known by some -- OK, just by me -- as Big Money Grip, is the latest to portray himself as a hapless victim of The Man.

When a panel of Wright's legislative colleagues last week voted unanimously that he should be expelled from their ranks, his attorneys barely raised a defense. They're saving exculpatory evidence, they say, for his criminal trial.

Sound legal strategy, sure, but in the meantime, they had no problem attributing Wright's woes to racial animus.

Now, only a fool, or Clarence Thomas, will pretend that racism no longer exists. Even ol' Clarence himself, a man who has fled his blackness the way a roach flees a switched-on light in the kitchen at midnight, tried to portray himself as the victim of "a high-tech lynching" when he was accused of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Justice Clarence was full of it, and Rep. Wright appears to be, as well. The latter compared his case with that of state Rep. Pryor Gibson, whom legislators refused to prosecute when he was accused of falsifying information.

I thought the dude should've at least been rapped across the knuckles, but he wasn't. The only thing Wright's team could fathom was that race -- Gibson is white -- was the reason.

Oh, so because Gibson may have gotten away with something, Wright should be able to, too?

That's the rationale I used once as a teenager in Rockingham while trying to hit on a girl of easy virtue -- "easy" except when it came to me -- named Sandra. When my clumsy seduction moves failed, I resorted to this desperate plea: "But you let Billy Ray do it."

Her response: "But you ain't Billy Ray." Ouch.

That's what I say to Wright as he bemoans what he considers disparate treatment: T., you ain't Billy Ray or Pryor Gibson.

Wright knows better than anyone that invoking race willy-nilly makes it harder for real victims to be taken seriously, especially when there are copious amounts of evidence that your persecution and prosecution are justified.

He was, to his everlasting credit, at the forefront in the effort to refocus attention on an act of genuine racism that most of us never knew about, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot (although only one race rioted). By getting caught up in this mess of his own making, he has neutralized his ability to wage that fight and relegated the riot to the back burner.

Without him, it'll be taken off the stove completely.

Wright is entitled to his day in court and may prove, for instance, that he didn't bogart someone into writing a letter enabling him to get an undeserved loan.

Even if that occurs, though, he has done his race -- yes, we all still represent the entire race, whether we like it or not -- and himself a disservice by reflexively attributing his current misfortunes to racism.

Face it, Grip. Blaming "The Man" for trying to keep you down is hard. Especially when, for so many years, you were "The Man."