“Don’t people trying to play the racial victim card look kind of silly from ths point forward?”
This is poorly worded, I think. Individuals may continue to face racism. They won’t be “silly” for playing the race card when there is actual discrimination against them.
However, the larger point is that racism is no longer an acceptable excuse for black failures in general. If a black man can become POTUS, then any black man can succeed in anything he sets his mind to. If he fails, he can’t blame a racist society. That is not to say racism won’t crop up in individual cases. He may be justified in accusing a specific person, or institution, for a specific infraction. The notion that “America” is racist is effectively dead.
Yeah, I just don’t understand it. It’s like a necessary qualifier, but a qualifier of what? “Don’t be afraid, I’m only half-black?” “Don’t get excited, you didn’t elect a black president, just a halfie.” What is it?
This is conclusion is so bizarre to me. Did you watch the same campaign that I did?
But forget about the obvious: the name-calling, the monkey dolls and “Obama bucks”, the slurs and innuendo. Consider that McCain had everything going against him in this race. He was running uphill just on the basis of his relationship to a very unpopular incubent and his own lukewarm popularity within the GOP. When you throw Palin and the economy into the mix, McCain’s loss was inevitable. A donkey could have won this election. And when I say donkey, I don’t mean the symbol of the Dems. I’m saying an actual donkey could have won against McCain.
Given this, Obama’s victory doesn’t defy reasonable expectations, and all it proves is that Americans as a group find the idea of a McCain White House less preferable to that of an Obama White House…either because they like Obama or because they hate McCain to the extent that they’d rather hold their nose and elect black man (“hey, he’s only half black, I might could live with that”).
Concluding that racism is dead because Obama won is like concluding sexism is dead because Bhuto was elected in Pakistan.
You’re misreading me. I didn’t say racism is dead. Racism will probably be with us forever. Most likely, to the end of days one can always find some jerk who hates for the sake of hating. My point is that, when Obama won the election, the United States of America ceased to be racist as a country - almost by definition.
Besides, you sell the electorate short, and assume facts not in evidence. If the market hadn’t taken a nose dive, Obama may very well have lost.
When you make this statement, you’re implying that on Nov 3 “America” was racist but on Nov 4, it suddenly wasn’t. Can you flesh this out more? To me, the lack of a black president wasn’t evidence America was racist. So that’s why the presence of one doesn’t automatically prove it’s not racist.
Well it did take a nose dive. It hardly make sense to base conclusions about America’s race relations when objectively speaking, McCain had very little going for him and the new guy–irrespective of his race–did.