Pardon the slow loading of the page. My little hosting company got overwhelmed by the Instalanche and Hot Air explosion.
Do you want to know why the race card — or at least the 21st century manifestation of it — is the most powerful, most effective political weapon in America?
There is no response possible. There is no answer to an African-American’s charge that what you are saying, or hinting, or thinking, or wishing, or unconsciously dreaming is racist.
Any attempt to defend yourself gives credence to the charge. Ignoring the smear is tantamount to an acknowledgement of guilt.
One may ask why all of a sudden Obama himself, his campaign, his surrogates, and his sycophants in the press are throwing the race card around with such abandon? Why the speeches, statements, editorials, op-eds, columns, and blog posts taking McCain to task for “allowing” or “enabling” or “causing” or “encouraging” racism to rear its ugly head at political rallies?
The answer is simple; use it or lose it when it comes to the race card. Short on specific charges of mass hate being whipped up at McCain political events while long on scurrilous, baseless, smears, Black legislators, columnists, and luminaries have taken up the tactics of the Night Rider in order to terrorize people into keeping their mouths shut while casting nauseating aspersions on the GOP candidate for president and his supporters.
Yeah, I know exactly what I’m saying. And the people I’m saying it to royally deserve it. I am fully aware of the history involved. I am using the term “Night Rider” deliberately and for full, unmitigated effect. For if we cannot call out these besmirches of the democratic process and put them in their place (another loaded phrase that I am fully cognizant of its history and meaning and am using deliberately), then they will have been allowed to get away with a smear so calumnious in its form and implication that the very nature of American elections will be altered and free speech as we know it and understand it will be gone.
I am not going to let that happen without a fight. And if I have to throw political correctness to the winds and compare the tactics of African Americans who play the race card with those of their mortal enemies, then so be it.
Congressman John Lewis - perhaps at the behest of Obama himself - donned the white robes and hood in order to let loose this, the most vicious and unprincipled attack on an American politician I have seen in quite a while:
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” said Lewis, who is black. “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”
At bottom, it is not credible to believe that John Lewis thinks for one second that John McCain’s tactics ape those of George Wallace and could lead to the deaths of innocents. If he does, then he makes himself out to be an idiot. And John Lewis is no fool. He is not only a man who fought for civil rights (and has the physical scars to prove it) but he was a savvy enough pol to advance the cause in the face of the most stringent and violent opposition.
Since Lewis can no more believe that McCain is using the tactics of Wallace than I believe in a flat earth, that makes his “critique” of the McCain campaign a lie - a deliberate, careful, decision by Lewis to bear false witness. And he has done it knowing full well the effect it will have on decent people everywhere.
Even Obama found Lewis’s lies too much and distanced himself - slightly- from the implication that McCain was the reincarnation of Wallace. In effect, Obama embraced Lewis’s lie while separating himself from the Wallace implication. He did it by agreeing with Lewis’s critique but piously giving McCain the benefit of the doubt that he was not possessed by the spirit of George Wallace.
“Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies,” said the campaign statement.”
“John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night.”
Right? Wrong? Which is it Obama? It certainly appears that Obama wants the benefits accrued by Lewis smearing McCain and his supporters without the baggage associated with its more problematic implications.
Lewis himself backtracked slightly from his original statement but still lied through his teeth:
“My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior,” he said. “I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation.”
I guess there’s “toxic language” and then there’s the race card. No double standard there, Congressman.
If it were only Lewis advancing this meme of McCain and his supporters being racist pigs, one might conclude that the Congressman was some kind of loose cannon, firing off on his own accord and not part of any concerted effort to outrageously brand the Democrat’s political opponents as Kluxers.
Ah, but the sheets that terrorize need not only be hiding white faces. Here’s Adam Sewrer writing in The American Prospect, equating calling Obama a “socialist” with racism:
The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like “socialism” are used to describe the threat.
This phenomenon extends beyond Obama’s candidacy. The conservative explanation for the mortgage crisis falls neatly into this narrative, too; the country is at risk because Democrats allowed minorities to disrupt the natural social order by becoming homeowners. Never mind that this defies all data, logic, and history, the narrative resonates because it allows Obama, a living symbol of black folks rising above “their station,” to become a focus for conservative economic anxieties.
At least this guy comes by his blithering ignorance honestly. Unlike Lewis whose calculated smear was meant to damage the McCain campaign with moderates and more conservative Democrats, Sewrer’s twisted, tortured analysis starts from the bogus premise that “hysterical” accusations of socialism against Obama are rooted in a historical narrative that has white people denigrating “the otherness” of Blacks who dare to seek power and influence and that when the crowds shout “socialist” they really mean “n***er!”
I have made it clear that I do not believe Obama is a socialist. Others, either because they don’t understand the term or because they see Obama’s far left redistributive ideas and efforts at reform as “creeping socialism” disagree with me.
Whatever epithets hurled at Malcolm X or Dr. King in the past — however people viewed their problematic associations with individuals who were committed to overthrowing the government of the United States — have nothing to do with Republicans today trying to keep America “white.” It is a baseless, thoughtless, ignorant charge made by someone so intellectually besotted with identity politics that history itself gets turned on its head in service to this false and capricious theme. Did Mr. Sewrer ever dream for one moment that people might actually be sincere in their belief that Obama’s stated policies (not to mention his past and present associations with true radicals and communists) are a indicative of a form of “stealth socialism?”
People of good faith - an animal rare indeed in this race - can argue the merits of such a position. But Sewrer isn’t interested in good faith, he is interested in advancing his racialist worldview where nothing else matters save a reading of history and our present politics through the broken kaleidoscope of his own black bigotry. It is probably emotionally satisfying but as a talisman of truth, it hardly stands up to rigorous scrutiny.
The thought that there are some people who might actually believe Obama is a socialist never crossed his mind because in his narrow, intellectual construct there is race, and then there is race, and if you run out of those, you always have race to fall back on. There is no history, only race. There is no American narrative that doesn’t place race front and center. This is where our obsession with identity politics has led us: A skewing of history and politics so profound that playing the race card becomes an easy shortcut to silencing one’s opponents no matter what argument they advance.
If you can’t beat ‘em, gag ‘em.
So when Mr. Sewrer plays the race card - as he does in his article - he does it with a clear conscience. Put simply, the fool doesn’t know any better. But there are fools, and then there are coldly calculating bigots who take more pleasure than people like Lewis in throwing race in our faces (Lewis, after all, was only playing dirty politics) while gleefully setting crosses afire all across the political landscape.
There is no other way to describe this Les Payne column in Newsday except political terrorism:
Palin’s bland ferocity lends itself easily to vitriol of the type that inflames half-wits. A bald-pated Florida sheriff, one Mike Scott, got carried away under the swoon last week in Estero, Fla., in introducing Palin. Stressing Obama’s middle name, Sheriff Scott paced the stage, in violation of police rules, while inciting the crowd in his full uniform adorned with colorful patches, stars and medals befitting a grand wizard of some mystic order of white knights.
At Clearwater, Gov. Palin lathered up the crowd herself. “You’re going to have to hang on to your hats,” Palin told the rally, according to The Washington Post, “because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough.” Linking Sen. Obama to a reformed radical of the ’60s, Palin shrieked her signature smut line, “he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
“Kill him!” a man in the crowd reportedly responded to Palin’s rabble-rousing. Her related attacks on the media had already whipped a frenzy among the crowd of about 3,000. Tempers rose to a boil when she blamed Katie Couric’s questions for tripping her up as a seeming dimwit. The Post wrote, “Palin supporters turned on reporters … waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. … One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
I have written twice about the incredibly exaggerated reports of “rage” at McCain campaign events. Payne goes a step further by equating a sheriff uttering the sacrilege of Obama’s middle name with a Kluxer.
Who’s the ignoramus here? A sheriff (who was fully within his rights to be at a political rally dressed as he was despite what Payne infers) who dared mention The Messiah’s middle name while introducing Palin to the crowd? I’ve seen the video of this event and the use of “Hussein” got a roar from those assembled. But was it because he used the candidate’s middle name or was it because of the context he used it in?
After saying that “there were three kinds of people in the world; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happen, Sheriff Scott threw the crowd a piece of raw meat when he said “On election day, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened.”
Was the crowd roaring because of the use of “Hussein” or was it due to the punchline - a pretty damned effective one if you ask me.? Only your psychic knows for sure. If the crowd roared because of Scott’s allusion to victory on election day, it destroys Payne’s entire narrative of the event - including Scott as another Republican closet Kluxer. (What an extraordinary personal smear by Payne).
No matter. Never stop a bigot when they’re on a roll. Scott’s use of “Hussein” was out of line because John McCain believes that saying Obama’s real name is wrong. I agree.
But the implication is that he is Muslim not that he is black so how Payne and his racialist cohorts can twist what is clearly a tweak at Obama’s father and the idea that Obama is a closet Muslim is a mystery. Except that when you are playing the race card, even giving a weather report can be construed as racist.
I think it a smear to use Obama’s middle name and I wish Scott and other McCain supporters would realize it and stop it. It is questionable hardball politics not racial bigotry. And Payne mindlessly repeats the false notion that the crowd at the event and other McCain/Palin rallies was “angry” or hateful. Payne was obviously too lazy to watch the videos himself. They were happy. They were excited. And for people like Payne to take out of context the mouthings of one or two idiots at a rally attended by thousands is absolute lunacy.
I see absolutely no difference at Obama rallies when he or Biden tosses the rhetorical red meat out into the crowd. The roar becomes deafening. People are laughing and whooping it up. When Bush or McCain is mentioned, they are booed. This is politics. And anyone who would deliberately construe malice or unreasonable emotions by referring to Bush/Palin gatherings as “angry mobs” or intimate anything unusual at all is a liar - or a simple minded fool.
These hooded riders of the night might obscure their false, misleading, and vile calumnious rhetoric with pious words designed to horrify decent Americans and equate voting for John McCain with voting for a racist. But they are trying to terrorize voters into supporting Obama by smearing his opponent with the most nauseating, the stickiest label one can slap on to a candidate in American politics.
Take off your hoods and look in the mirror, those of you - all of you - who are shamelessly and so easily playing the race card. It is all of you who are playing with fire, not McCain. By your words, you are stifling free expression by trying to intimidate people you disagree with through a false and wholly misleading narrative.
And I submit that this is infinitely more dangerous than your fantasies and lies about McCain whipping up a racist mob.
9:03 am
Racism is alive and well in America. I was visiting my grandparents who live in a small town in the middle of Illinois last weekend. All I could do was shake my head in awe at some of the things I heard while I was there. If anyone thinks race isn’t an issue in this election, they’re in extreme denial.
10:00 am
Chuck (comment #), you are correct, racism is very much alive in America. Just listen to a couple of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons, or maybe listen to Farakhan for a few minutes.
Pot, meet kettle.
10:55 am
[...] of voters who don’t bother to work around the media to discover the truth on their own. As Rick Moran notes, the McCarthyite tactic of accusing opponents of latent racism has no rebuttal that works [...]
11:30 am
The corrupt two party system continues to mud sling because there is little difference between the candidates positions. Both will increase military spending, both are neocons, both support nationalizing bad debt, neither stands for the constitution and both are sock puppets for the ruling elite.
The saddest part of the mudslinging is that most of the terrible things the candidates say about one another is true.
12:08 pm
Ah yes, the old tried and true Wallace-esque tactic of blaming the victim. I would expect nothing less from conservatives.
12:09 pm
Or should I say, I would expect nothing less than the party that wants women to pay for their own rape kits.
12:25 pm
America is still filled with racism. Neither Dr.Wright nor Farakhan ancestors institutionalized racism in America. But both of them were denied access to opportunities because of race. Tell me, what did McCain mean when he referred to Obama as “that one”?
12:32 pm
lionheart
***”Pot, meet kettle.”***
Meh. More like apples, meet oranges.
12:41 pm
It’s always unfair when one side loses its tactical advantage as the other side adapts. It’s an outrage when the victim smacks the bully with the bully’s own baseball bat. With all due respect: boo hoo. As you (generically) sow, so shall you reap.
Flag pins, Michelle Obama’s “whitey” tape, Muslim rumors, “Palling around with terrorists,” charges of treason and betrayal of the troops and 24/7 attacks on talk radio and in the blogosphere coming on the heels of Swift Boat, McCain’s illegitimate black baby and going back to the southern strategy and on and on and on, and now the GOP wants to complain?
I wish politics had not descended to this point. I wished it when Democrats were holding the crap end of that stick, and I wish it now. But it was all a lot of fun for Republicans when Hannity and Limbaugh and Savage and Coulter and Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Jerry Falwell were driving politics into the gutter. Occasionally we’d hear a Republican “tut tut,” but now that Republicans are getting beat we’re getting howls of pain that sound ever so much more sincere.
The Republican party has perfected the politics of personal attack, phony outrage, base-pandering, and division. Now mean old John Lewis is picking on Republicans?
Awww.
1:49 pm
DEMOCRATS KEEP BLACKS DOWN FOR 100 YEARS IN THE SOUTH AND REPUBLICANS OWN RACISM? ARE YOU REALLY THAT IGNORANT OF HISTORY, YOU DOLT?
While somewhat true, this statement is incredibly misleading.
2:17 pm
There is racism in both parties and when all of you are honest there is plenty of prejudices in all of us. Those kind of attitude are unfortunately always present when humans are around. Do I think a lot of the charges against McCain and Palin are totally overblown?-Absolutely, no doubt about it. Curiously, the Republican party actually stood for Civil Rights pretty much until the sixties and to hold a position in the “Democratic” South, you had to go through the Clan. Still, I wouldn’t hold it against Robert Byrd today. Then Nixon’s Southern Strategy and a lot of the segregationists switched sides. Anyway, this is all ancient history and honestly, I don’t believe dinosaurs from that time still have much relevance and that includes people like Wright and Sharpton.
However, especially because the history of the United States is always linked to slavery and the “Race” issue, this could also be a moment to honestly ‘look inside’. On the other hand, elections are probably not the best season for calm introspective.
Nice post!
2:21 pm
As an undecided voter I feel inclined to side with the candidate that will allow me to sleep better every night, meaning National Security.
Even if all the relationships that Obama has/had are “lies”, I’d still consider him to be the worst qualified and/or fit to be POTUS.
2:45 pm
Sorry Chuck I realize now you were quoting Rick… YEs - incredibly misleading. A very sorry argument. But being misleading seems to be the #1 tool for republicans:
“Homosexuality is threat to convential marriage” LOL!!!
“Iraq was linked to 9-11″ Wha-Wha
“We need to deregulate and let the markets police themselves” - Woops!
“Driling for oil will end the energy crisis” - Tell me in 20 years…
“Hey! Let’s put social security and health care on the stock market!” Let’s not and say we did.
Wrong Wrong Wrong…so incredibly wrong. Wrong then, wrong now..
That’s why you’re L-O-S-I-N-G!
2:45 pm
Indeed they are playing with fire. In my lifetime I have observed the change in the country where being a racist carried no real social stigma to today where it most certainly does.
My cheif concern is that this might diminish the sting of the stigma. If one is labeled as a racist for calling him a socialist is there any further downside to being a real racist? That’s my worry.
4:04 pm
I’m strongly in agreement with you on this one, Rick. McCain has bent over backwards to make sure that race is excluded from the campaign (to the detriment of his campaign, since attacks on Obama’s association with Wright would probably be very effective), and Obama uses the race card to preempt any criticism. It doesn’t seem fair, but its McCain’s choice, and he’ll almost certainly lose because of it (actually, only one of many reasons).
My observation on this point is more global than just the election. Society in general has acquiesced to a pervasive double standard, where it is acceptable for blacks to have special groups, call each other ugly names (one in particular), and get special consideration because of the color of their skin. I don’t agree with the dbl std, but it doesn’t really bother me either- I never wanted to use those words, or belong to those groups, and to my knowledge, have never been a victim of “reverse discrimination”.
But it seems particularly ironic to me that all of these things are the exact opposite of the teachings of Dr. King. He prayed for assimilation, not separation, and his greatest speech was that his children would NOT be judged or treated differently because of their skin color.
I wish we could uninvent the “n” word, or better yet, go back in time to erase the sins of our fathers. But the fact is, I don’t use the “n” word, I never committed the sin of slavery, and I’m getting to the point where I am starting to resent black people because I have to be so careful of what I say (lest I hurt somebody’s feelings, or worse, be accused of being a racist). I think that the remarks of Congressman Lewis may help Obama in the short term, but ultimately, he and others like him, are sowing seeds of resentment that will move race relations backwards in this country.
4:32 pm
lionheart,
I agree with a lot of your points but are you sure you are not painting a caricature of black people? I never really had any problem as a white man to voice my opinion in the black community. I didn’t have to use PC language when going to the barber shop (except the one N-word; not the other) or talking to whoever. It’s just that you have to be honest about how you really feel and believe me most White Americans have a problem doing this (in my experience). People always go racist this racist that but never how they truly feel. For example, a part of me doesn’t like it when I see a black or brown man with a white woman because they are ‘taking it’ from our herd.Of course, black men have similar sentiments. So you could say I’m racist even though I have been married for many years to a black woman. So you see, things are never as easy as they seem.
4:49 pm
lionheart,
“I’m getting to the point where I am starting to resent black people because I have to be so careful of what I say (lest I hurt somebody’s feelings, or worse, be accused of being a racist).”
Perhaps you need to try a new approach. Something to purge those deep down feelings that you fear might surface. I don’t believe any of what you just said. The only thing you forgot was to say, “I’ve got some black friends.”
5:09 pm
Honestly, it irritates the piss out of me to see the racism term thrown around in these discussions everywhere I turn. Racism isn’t the word for what is going on in the rage against Obama. It’s broader than that. If it must be given a catchy little name, it’s “different-ism”. It’s “he’s not American like us-ism”. It’s “be afraid: he’s risky-scary-dangerous-unknown-ism”. And McCain-Palin have spent the past week stoking those fires and lending credibility to the most willfully ignorant among us.
There is just no denying that.
5:38 pm
funny man, it’s no caricature- my comment (and Rick’s post) is based on the very real fact that the black community has bought into the association of Obama-criticism = racism; the fact that if you refer to a group of black men (who are members of an all-black association) as “you people”, you have drawn blood; refer to a black man as “boy” and you have insulted him greatly; I could go on.
Chuck- you don’t know a goddamn thing about me, and even if you did, I wouldn’t give 2 shits what you think. You can go f*ck yourself.
Sorry about the profanity Rick.
6:12 pm
I have to agree with several of the posters here; it’s not Obama’s race thats being tossed around by rapid McCain/Palin supporters, it’s his “different-ism”. (Thank you Jennifer for that new word!) In fact, “Hussein” is THE key epithet that we all see and hear being used every day now by many unhinged right-wingers to refer to Obama. For all the left-wing shills out there, I don’t hear them use “McSame” with quite the same level of HATE that “Hussein” receives. There is real anger out on right-leaning blogs that unhinged and fed-up people are expressing, and it isn’t pretty. While we all appreciate Rick not using that name to refer to Obama (just as we all refrain from calling McCain, “Sidney”), the fact that he even has to belabor the point is sad.
6:40 pm
Rick, this is another excellent post. I too have noticed an increased outcry in the past 3 days in all these commentaries and honestly, it is getting frightening. I can’t even go down the daily article lineup without seeing some racism hit piece. I was horrified when I read that piece in the American Prospect that you quoted–the one that claims anyone who accuses Obama of socialist leaning policies is being racist. Give me a break. So now economic debate with Obama is off limit too? Do we really want to live in a world where all disagreement is trampled down with cries of racism?
I would pose this question: how are we really helping minorities in this country if the Left is shouting to the hills each time we disagree with a minority candidate? It’s almost as if the Left wants to keep finding examples of racism, because as long as they can do that, the longer the Republicans can be made out to be Boogey Men (and Women). I consider myself an intellectual conservative who is open to debate and discussion. I don’t dislike Democrats. But this–these wild accusations of racism have got to stop. It is going to harm our country worse than the tiny vein of racism that is still running through our country ever could.
You know what’s really ironic though is 3 days ago I was really trying to understand where Democrats were coming from when they cried “Racism”. I was commenting on your site that Democrats usually cry “racism!” because of the concept of “otherness”, and how they interpret attacks on Obama as attempts to “otherize” him. I can certainly understand how that is not acceptable. But you know, this whole thing is going too far now. I feel like I might as well not even try to understand the other side anymore and that to me is sad. If liberals want a world like this–where debate about economic policies are instantly stamped as racist attacks–then so be it. What do they think will happen in an Obama administration? Heaven forbid someone argue with Obama!! I mean, debate just might lead to better policy! Better to just let him decide policy without any debate whatsoever, right? We’ve all seen what happens to Presidents who don’t take to varied opinions warmly…
7:05 pm
Presidential Odds:
Obama 1-5
McCain 3-1
McCain can’t win, he has no base. The best thing about McCain; to his supporters, is that he is not Obama. Transversely, Obama has a motivated base.
7:47 pm
This will continue until one side wins a decisive victory. However, in all likelihood, neither side will.
One small lesson from history. At the start of WWII, England warplanes only targeted military targets. By wars end, after each side escalating attacks and responses in kind, we had the fire bombing of German cities, V-2 missiles raining down on England mostly at random since missle targeting was extremely poor, fire bombing of German and Japanese cities and wholesale slaughter with the A bomb.
Another small lesson from history. By most scholars estimations, Moses led the Jews out of Egypt about 4,000 years ago. After all the time that has past, the Jews still celebrate their freedom from slavery.
These two examples are intertwined. Since Africans identify themselves as a group and are identified as such by non-Africans, slavery and racism will just go away. Slavery in the consciousness of the Africans and any affront Africans feel (real, implied, or imagined) will be suspected to be “racism” or “racist”. Since politics is a type of warfare (credit to CArl Von Clausewitz, On War), somewhere around 1954 (Brown v Bd of Education), race was publicly thrust into the political arena as a weapon. This weapon not only has been used but has escalated. This weapon has been reserved for use only by the Democrat Party and Africans. I use the term “Africans” so that people not born from a slave ancestor is included in the group. Otherwise Obama and Powell would be excluded from using the weapon. As time progressed, racism has been expanded (i.e., escalated) to include “invidious”, “thought”, and ending in adding additional criminal punishment if proven to be a crime motivated by “hate”.
We now have entire generations of non-Africans that have been found guilty of racism, from birth, by a moral bill of attainder applied to every non-African at birth.
Obama and the Democrats will continue to use this weapon since there has not been a counter weapon. The only risk is overusing racism to the point of ridicule. While the Democrats may not win using the race card, what they will accomplish is running time down on the campaign clock.
I disagree not using Obama’s middle name. His Muslim parentage and how he’s viewed in Islamic countries is very important to foreign policy. The only way it would not be is if one has a very tiny understanding of Islamic teachings and the Quran. I’ll concede it may be a minor issue, but it’s an issue nonetheless, especially if he would be viewed as an apostate (which I believe he would be).
Also, although you don’t consider Obama a “socialist” I really think you have not the foggiest idea what he really should be classified. Without any in depth questioning by the media, one is left placing him into some form of Marxism. Black theology, liberation theology, Rev. Wright, his CPUSA mentor, Bill Ayers, et al, all point to Marxism. The only question is which form.
And, in passing, one should read Nikki Giovanni poem “The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro” to feel the anger some Africans carry around:
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/pofidr_poetry_giovanni.html
After over 50 years of being a legally-defined racist, I’m just tired of the entire dialogue. I’m tired of pretending I’m guilty of something some ancestor of yours may have done to some slave they may have owned, I’m tired of some being guilty of some word someone of my race or even me may have used sometime, and I’m tired of being guilty of just being non-African. But mostly, I’m tired of anyone claiming racism and even more so of all this discussion about it.
8:00 pm
That’s the spirit Lionheart. Let it flow.
8:09 pm
Right on, Chuck.
11:08 pm
“One may ask why all of a sudden Obama himself, his campaign, his surrogates, and his sycophants in the press”
Kind of cutting close to home on that one there Ricky.
Now to Barack Obama. When I spent the day with him in Iowa over the weekend, you could sense the excitement he nearly always generates….Whatever he’s eating, it is working for Obama, as he is hitting his stride on the stump….Here as elsewhere, the crowd listens closely to Barack Obama’s real argument, that he is tomorrow, a fresh face who represents a real change from our bitter polarized politics….When you talk to Iowa voters who come to hear Obama, you get the sense they know they might be part of something big here, something historic.”
— ABC’s Terry Moran on Nightline, November 26, 2007
Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran: “Connections. That’s what is at the heart of Obama’s politics, the notion that divisions are artificial and can be overcome by an act of will and of imagination….[to Obama] It always seems that the biggest applause lines are those where you tell people, ‘Let’s come together.’”
Barack Obama: “Yeah. There’s enormous hunger for that.”
Moran: “A hunger for a politics that could dissolve the old categories, start a new story.”
— ABC’s Nightline, January 29, 2008
11:51 pm
Since I am originally from Germany let me tell you a little about our history. As is well documented we had good times and bad times but what people rightfully or not remember the most is WWII and the holocaust. BTW, we did not only kill Jews but also gypsies, Slaws etc. Now whether you actively were guilty or not we as a nation share that history and as a nation are guilty. That is just the way it is. Now I’m always bewildered why some Americans have such a problem with their past. Slavery was an integral (and evil) part of American history. Why is it so difficult to see that mostly whites benefited from this system and of course they made money through slavery.
It’s always: no it’s not me this is just white liberal guilt etc etc. After WWII there were also plenty of Germans proclaiming: no it’s not me it was Hitler and the Nazis. I’m innocent. Now I personally don’t think Germans are more racist than White or Black Americans. Good and evil are in everyone of us. However, history doesn’t just go away and “racism as a weapon” didn’t begin in 1954 but for economic reasons a couple hundred years earlier.
3:39 am
[...] down over whether Obama insulted Palin — the Obama campaign left the racist slandering to surrogates and their allies in the Leftist MSM. On September 16, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused [...]
11:24 am
This post highlights the use of dog whistle racism in today’s politics. And there may examples of this!
We’re tracking political race baiting at http://www.stopdogwhistleracism.com. We find the good, bad and ugly from the right, left and center about race in the race. Visit us today for a non-partisan take on the race card, and the race card card, in today’s politics.
Hope to see you at StopDog!
1:27 pm
“John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night.”
God, he’s such a … lawyer!
I swear, nearly everything he says (or approves) can be compared to that infamous “that depends on what the definition of is, is” statement by some other lawyer.
Regarding racism, I harbor some racist resentments myself, I know people who are openly racist, yet I know of no one who is bothered in the slightest by Obama’s genetics. It’s what he has done, says now, and promises to do if elected that has us royally pissed off. Since his supporters cannot fathom ANY disagreement with Obama’s politics, they MUST look for ANOTHER reason people are rejecting him, and the occasional racist comment gives them the brush they must have to paint everyone else with.
It’s your politics, Obama.
1:57 pm
Man, the stuff going on in these comments just proves Rick’s point.
@chuck tuscon: “Something to purge those deep down feelings that you fear might surface. I don’t believe any of what you just said.The only thing you forgot was to say, ‘I’ve got some black friends.’”
What’s the point of that comment, except to imply that Lionheart is, to some degree, being racist–and expect that that supposed racism can be used to silence or discredit his point. It’s an immediate example of exactly what Rick was talking about.
@will: “America is still filled with racism. Neither Dr.Wright nor Farakhan ancestors institutionalized racism in America.”
Good golly. What does that even mean? Black Panthers who advocated that the oppressed brother rise-up and kill whitey may not have been able to “institutionalize” the sentiment, and may not have been that great on the execution, and may have even had some sort of legitimate grievance behind wanting to kill whitey–but that doesn’t make any less racists.
Black Africans were sold as slaves to European and Portuguese traders by other Black Africans. Thus, the initiators and enablers of slavery were black Africans that, from their perspective, saw slavery as a convenient way to make money, consolidate power, or dispose of enemies while building trade alliances, rather than a racial issue, per se. Surely, if the ancestors of white folks (many of whom did not participate in slave ownership, many of whom actively opposed it, as did their fathers and fathers’ fathers, and many of whom trace their ancestry to Europe or elsewhere after slavery ended in America) are guilty by derivation, those Black Africans–and their ancestors–and the middle-eastern and indo-European and South Americans who also participated–are as guilty of the institution of slavery as white folks are today. But, for the most part, only one particular ancesteral group gets the blame.
I ramble. I just don’t see it as being a clear cut issue that African Americans, presently or ancestorly, as a collective group are somehow innocent on all fonts by group association, while caucasians are guilty on all fronts, due to group association.
Unfortunately, the pendulum swings. It never stops in the middle. There was slavery, there was Jim Crow, there were Whites Only drinking fountains. And don’t forget, an entire dominant political party–the Democrats–that referred to themselves as The White Man’s Party.
Now, the pendulum has swung. Just as a little caucasian baby born a few moments ago is born into the original sin of racism (one for which there is no redemption, apparently), there will never be a point where whites won’t be racists and African Americans won’t be aggrieved victims. Racism is essentially defined as being white and ever disagreeing with or disobeying a black person. I expect, eventually, the pendulum will swing again, but somehow I’m dubious that the disagreements and the antipathy and the accusations will go away.
BTW, describing racism as “institutionalized” has become a rhetorical trick that says hateful race-based rhetoric from black people, or from white people speaking against white people, is okay, but criticism of liberal African Americans is racism.
I’m betting Obama is going to win. And if we think we’re racists now, just wait until we’ve had 4 years of Obama. We’ll find out how racist we really are.
One thing I do agree with Chuck Tuscon about. Anybody who thinks race is not a huge factor in this election (or won’t be afterwards) is in major denial.
2:03 pm
I wish someone could fill me in on thier theory of why the Monumental story of Obama and Odinga is not being reported. Is it fear of violence or charges of racism? I hope this information gets out.
5:20 pm
[...] Rick Moran made the same point yesterday. It’s a particularly vicious smear, simply because it attacks presumed motives, not actual actions. Somehow mentioning Ayers, who is white, is racist not because of Ayers himself but because the critic supposedly operates from hate and therefore every possible criticism is racist. And because it’s racist, the criticism requires no answer. [...]
6:37 pm
I note that John Lewis does not expect his own toxic language to lead to violence from white people. He just expects to be able to insult us and kick us around verbally without any response from us at all. ‘Cause we don’t ever respond. Ever.
AT least that’s how it has been so far.
11:58 pm
Sure there is.
You tell them they are full of it. That neither your family nor, even more importantly, you have anything to apologize for. Then you counterattack, as you have done.
The problem is not inability to respond to such demogoguery, it is illogical or otherwise afraid people who fail to. They allow themselves to be browbeaten, even though the majority of people are sick and tired of being leachured to, in particular by someone who sees race everywhere themself.
12:18 am
I think the most terrifying thing of all about this is that Obama will win the election based on his race, not on his views. I thought this when Oprah rallied as a supporter, which she always does with influential black people, whether worthy or not.
I’m tired of the double-standards in America that make it okay for “black” people to make fun of “white” people, but if a white person makes a single comment like “that one”, it’s automatically assumed that it’s a racist comment.
This shouldn’t be about race. It should be about our country. We’re all in this together. If Obama supported the conservative side, he would have my vote.