So far it’s 43 1/2 - 1/2. Does that really mean nothing at all now that we have the 1/2?
When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball, it didn’t mean that there was no more racial bias in baseball–it just meant that the baseball community could start healing the wounds. Even when Larry Doby became the first black player in the American League years later, he still faced massive discrimination. The argument that racial oppression is over because we kinda elected a black man (sort of) is absurd on its face.
Don’t forget the single biggest incumbent-party disadvantage in a long, long time. The Senate and House results, not to mention the Obama victories in so-called red states, show us that a lot of people in this country are sick of the GOP and it would have taken an incredible Republican candidate to win.
No doubt, you have a cite for this extraordinary claim.
Yes, there has been great progress. Overt mainstream racism is largely dead in this country. But racism is not a monolithic entity; there are other ways in which racial prejudice continues to be a problem.
A few recent threads around here seemed to boil down to “It’s nice that y’all are about to elect a black man President, but this country is still as racist as it’s always been.”
So if the 64 million people who voted for Obama aren’t racist, does that mean the 56 million who voted for McCain are?No. It does not. The selection of a president is not in itself proof of the presence or absence of racism on a personal or individual level.Some of these people endorsed Obama. I guess they’re not racist.
In all seriousness, it’s absurd to suggest that U.S. race relations haven’t evolved considerably, from slavery through reconstruction through the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s to the election of the first black president, but it’s equally absurd to claim racism isn’t still relevant.
When people say this to me, I’m going to say, as earnestly as I can, without a hint of sarcasm, “Yes. Yes, I suppose, now that I think about it, racism is cured.” I am going to try to say that as convincingly as I can, because I know that it is not really what the person wants to believe.
They want to believe that Obama in office is not any true indicator of less racism in America. So I’m gonna try hard to sound like every black in America is satisfied that all racism is abolished forever more.
“The Hawaiian monarchy was illegally overthrown in 1893, making all decisions after that moot. Too bad they didn’t accept that when it came time to pay my income taxes.”
Irrelevant. Since the US illegally overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, all actions afterward by the US is also illegal. Including statehood. Therefore, Obama wasn’t really born in the USA, see?
No, I haven’t tried that defense to evade my income taxes.
Okay, seriously:
Hawaii became a state in 1959 and everyone was automatically grandfathered in as a US citizen. If you were born in Hawaii in 1955, you could still become president.
And the US didn’t overthrow the monarchy, it was an internal revolution by Hawaiian citizens. Hawaii was an independent republic for 6 years before US annexation.
I just want to say I’ve ignored this thread as too silly to bother with.
A 52% vote for a black man doesn’t mean there’s no oppression of other blacks in this country, especially the parts that voted overwhelmingly against that man. Reality doesn’t work that way.
