*sigh* Obama is not a "racist" (and neither is Rev. Wright, really)

[BrainGlutton]

@Lemur866

But that’s simply winning by definition. Obviously Obama can never be part of the white overclass, since he isn’t white. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a part of a putative “overclass”.

Can any putative overclass that doesn’t include Senators, congressmen, governors, fortune 500 CEOs, presidents, cabinet members, supreme court justices and so forth really be called an “overclass”? If black Senators and governors aren’t part of the overclass, then there is no such thing as an overclass.

The overclass is what provides most but not all of our political leaders and others in the institutional elite, which is a different entity:

A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about “the political class” or, with C. Wright Mills, about “the power elite,” are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite – top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country’s class system.

The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and – though this is uncommon – a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live.

As for its being white . . . it just worked out that way. It might change, but there are no signs on the horizon. Regarding the relationship between class and race in America generally, Lind says in the same book:

The chief danger confronting the twenty-first century United States is not Balkanization [fragmentation of society along ethnic lines] but what might be called Brazilianization. By Brazilianization I mean not the separation of cultures by race, but the separation of races by class. As in Brazil, a common American culture could be indefinitely compatible with a blurry, informal caste system in which most of those at the top of the social hierarchy are white, and most brown and black Americans are on the bottom – forever. Behind all the boosterish talk about the wonders of the new American rainbow is the reality of enduring racial division by class, something that multicultural education initiatives and racial preference policies do not begin to address.

In the absence of sustained popular pressure from below or concern about America’s international status, the white overclass has no incentive to combat Brazilianization in the United States. For one thing, any serious effort to reduce racial separation by class would inevitably mean higher taxes on the affluent – not just the rich, but the politically powerful upper-middle class. What is more, the dominance of the white oligarchy in American politics is strengthened by the emergent dynamics of a polarized society. In a more homogeneous society, the increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top might produce a populist reaction by the majority. But in a society like that of present-day America where a small, homogeneous oligarchy confronts a diverse population that shares a common national culture but remains divided along racial lines, the position of the outnumbered elite can be very secure. This is because the resentments caused by economic decline are likely to be expressed as hostility between the groups at the bottom, rather than as a rebellion against the top. In the Los Angeles riot, black, Hispanic, and white rioters turned on Korean middlemen, rather than march on Beverly Hills.

And:

Five hundred years of racial preference will not integrate the United States. At most, it will enlarge new black and Hispanic overclasses, dependent on government patronage and white overclass paternalism, while doing little or nothing for most black and Hispanic Americans. The social mobility of black and Hispanic Americans is impeded by three quite different kinds of obstacles – active racism, barriers to entry in the economy and politics, and acquired disabilities. No single strategy is appropriate for all three obstacles. Active racism against individuals must be neutralized by rigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination law. Barriers to entry in the economy and politics have to be dismantled by sweeping legislative reforms of how business is done and how elections are carried out in the United States. Acquired disabilities – by which I mean the very real culture of poverty that equips many children of the ghetto and barrio with attitudes making them unfit for the mainstream, workaday community – are the most difficult, because the most subtle, of all obstacles. Nothing less than a program to liberate denizens of the ghettos and barrios from those environments, family by family, is likely to succeed.

To the solution of all these problems, racial preference is irrelevant. Indeed it is dangerous, to the extent that the proliferation of racial preference programs lulls white liberals into the comforting belief that, after all, something serious is being done to alleviate the enduring separation of race by class. Most white conservatives simply do not care.

A serious attempt to integrate American society, then, would consist of coordinated efforts in different spheres – the judicial (antidiscrimination law), the political (legislative reform of education, the professions, electoral methods, and government structures) and the economic (targeted programs to liberate the hereditary poor, as well as broader programs like universal health care and public education benefiting all wage-earning Americans).

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Captain Amazing

If you claim, though, that there’s an organized conspiracy by the government, though, to kill off black people

I would call it mistaken and paranoid in the instance of AIDS, but it’s a fear that’s not without justifcation since the US government HAS, in fact, intentionally given black people diseases before and it’s not an irrationally racist fear, it’s an irrational fear of racism.

and when you start condemning America as evil and a nation deserving of eternal damnation, that’s not a racist attitude, exactly, but it is a remarkably troubling one

All evangelical preachers do that, though. They ALL say that America’s going to hell in a handbasket. It’s a routine rant. Wright focused on foreign policy. Others focus on prnography and homos and the ACLU, but it’s all just “sinners in the hands of an angry God” hype and demanding that people examine their government critically and hold it responsible disturbs me a lot less than blaming all the world’s ills on Heather having tow mommies.

Especially e, especially for someone who wants to be president of the US and head of that very government. And when you see that the Rev. Wright has those opinions, and that Obama is so close to him, it raises the question, to what extent does Obama share his friend and mentor’s opinions.

Obama has answered those questions himself, multiple time.

Now, Obama has said he doesn’t share those opinions, and personally I believe him, but I don’think there’s anything wrong with asking the question. It’s the old saying, “You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

It has yet to be proven that Wright is a “dog.” The man has been distorted and villified beyond all reason.

[Shodan]

I suppose white folks are as welcome in Trinity as a black Uncle Tom would be in a church where the pastor preached white supremacy from the pulpit. Anyone wracked with white guilt may enjoy the masochistic thrill of hearing yourself excoriated; normal people probably not.

I have been a member of Trinity, a church with an almost entirely African-American congregation, for more than 25 years. I am, however, a white male.

We used to call this kind of tokenism, “tokenism”. It’s the moral equivalent of saying “some of my best friends are n*ggers”.

I’m not sure which part is more troubling - that Obama supporters don’t really believe that hate speech from black racists is different from hate speech from white ones, or that they do, but still excuse it.

Regards,
Shodan

[Richard_Parker]

@Ludovic

Just because no one has came up with such a term doesn’t mean there isn’t still time.

Do you subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Why can non-whites not harbor attitudes that are just as racist as whites simply because they haven’t come up with terms for them yet?

I’m not sure what you’re arguing here. I do not subscribe to Sapir-Whorf, which I understand to have been fairly thoroughly discredited.

My point is that, for many people, racism is about more than terms and attitudes. It is socio-cultural. It is bound up with history and power. For these people (much of the left), it isn’t racist to call a white person a cracker–at least not in the same way that the reverse is. I’m not saying I necessarily buy that view of racism; I’m not sure. But it is a genuine disconnect that has to be remembered in discussions like this.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Richard Parker

You have to keep a couple of things in mind. First, the people labeling Rev. Wright a racist come from the school of thought that says that calling a white man a cracker is the same as calling a black man a nigger.

Wright hasn’t even said anything that rises to that level, though.

So when Rev. Wright calls Italians “garlic noses,” that language makes Wright a racist, regardless of any context, any power behind the phrase “garlic nose,” etc.

I addressed this “garlic nose” thing in the other thread and I think it deserves a little more context in this one. Wright was talking about the ancient Romans who crucified Jesus. He said the Romans were “italians” (they were) who “looked down their garlic noses at Galileans.” (they did). Like I said in the other thread, I suppose that this could be seen as a mild imprecation against ancient Romans but he was not talking about modern italians and Italians are not a race in any case. Like I said in the other thread, I am a grandson of Italian immigrants, I have an Italian last name and I would really have to be trying to feel offended by Wright’s dclaration that the ancient Romans “looked down their garlic noses at Galileans.” The fact that this particular line is the absolute best that anyone can do to cite Wright as saying anything racist proves the OP’s thesis all by itself.

[Lemur866]

So I suppose you’ve got a cite that Wright preached black supremacy from the pulpit, Shodan?

It’s not racism for a black preacher to condemn white America for racism, it’s simple observation.

Racism against black people exists, and it’s a serious problem. It’s not 1860 anymore, it’s not 1960 anymore, but anyone who pretends that racism is problem of the past is fooling themselves. Now, you and I and Wright and Obama and Diogenes and BrainGlutton all might disagree about what, if anything, we should about the problem of racism, but that doesn’t make the problem go away.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Shodan

I suppose white folks are as welcome in Trinity as a black Uncle Tom would be in a church where the pastor preached white supremacy from the pulpit. Anyone wracked with white guilt may enjoy the masochistic thrill of hearing yourself excoriated; normal people probably not.
We used to call this kind of tokenism, “tokenism”. It’s the moral equivalent of saying “some of my best friends are n*ggers”.

I’m not sure which part is more troubling - that Obama supporters don’t really believe that hate speech from black racists is different from hate speech from white ones, or that they do, but still excuse it.

Cite that racism or hate speech has ever been “preached from the pulpit” at Trinity?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Ludovic

Just because no one has came up with such a term doesn’t mean there isn’t still time.

Do you subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Why can non-whites not harbor attitudes that are just as racist as whites simply because they haven’t come up with terms for them yet?

Not disagreeing with you, but the question before us is whether Jeremiah Wright harbors racist or anti-white attitudes at all. Thus far, the evidence is lacking. The best anyone can do is that he once accused the ancient Romans of having “garlic noses.” On a scale of inflammatory racial remarks, I would rank that below Don Imus’ “nappy-headed ho’s,” remark and maybe somewhere roughly on a level with Trent Lott backslapping Strom Thurmond at his birthday party. A bit of mild political incorrectness, perhaps, but hardly a basis for categorical accusations of bone-deep racism (I defended Lott too, for the record).

[jayjay]

It’s the standard Right-wing lament that “racism isn’t a problem any longer, so black people who cry ‘racism!’ are being racist for bringing it up in front of us poor, put-upon white folk” again.

[Richard_Parker]

@Diogenes the Cynic

Wright hasn’t even said anything that rises to that level, though.

I didn’t mean to imply that he had. I was just using it as an example of the difference in views on race.

[Mr.Moto]

Nope. Racism is a problem. But people like Wright don’t help the problem, they make it a hell of a lot worse.

It hardly makes me a right-winger to state that Al Sharpton’s complaints of racism haven’t helped race relations in this country - that’s just a simple observation made by lots of people right and left.

[JohnnieEnigma]

I don’t think Wright is a racist either… when he said that God should damn america, he was referring to God condemning America for some of the things we’ve done is all. It was taken out of context…
You can’t judge a person by a few isolated controversial soundbites. That would be an extremely ignorant thing to do…

[jayjay]

@Mr. Moto

Nope. Racism is a problem. But people like Wright don’t help the problem, they make it a hell of a lot worse.

It hardly makes me a right-winger to state that Al Sharpton’s complaints of racism haven’t helped race relations in this country - that’s just a simple observation made by lots of people right and left.

“People like Wright”, whose 20 years of sermons and preaching you’ve heard about 3 minutes of over and over and apparently consider that 3 minutes the gist of his entire career.

And Al Sharpton isn’t derided because he keeps racism in the news. He’s derided because he’s a publicity-hound buffoon.

[mswas]

Black Liberation Theology is a racist ideology. There are no two ways around it.
From James Cone who Rev. Wright cited on Hannity and Colmes:

@James Cone

Christ is black therefore not because of some cultural or psychological need of black people, but because and only because Christ really enters into our world where the poor were despised and the black are, disclosing that he is with them enduring humiliation and pain and transforming oppressed slaves into liberating servants.

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

Brainglutton Rev. Wright is CERTAINLY a racist. Obama maybe not.

[Frylock]

@Mr. Moto

How welcome would a white person feel at a church where their country was compared with the Klan?

Black Americans’ country is compared to the Klan in those instances, and there are several Black Americans who feel very comfortable going to that church.

-FrL-

[Frylock]

@JohnnieEnigma

I don’t think Wright is a racist either… when he said that God should damn america, he was referring to God condemning America for some of the things we’ve done is all. It was taken out of context…
You can’t judge a person by a few isolated controversial soundbites. That would be an extremely ignorant thing to do…

Exactly. This is even in the tiny little soundbites we get to hear. “God Damn America as long as she [insert various offenses]. That’s in the Bible.”

He’s right. That is in the Bible. Nations that commit offenses against God’s way are deserving of damnation.*

-FrL-

*What it means for a nation to be damned is a little unclear. But it’s clearly very very bad.

[gonzomax]

Jshore says there is a white preacher at the church too. We must find out what she is preaching. Because Obama goes there her opinions and views are also his. Every preacher there must be speaking for all the parish attendees. Maybe we can dig up dirt on those preachers and claim their views are also his. So much dirt , so few shovels.

[BrainGlutton]

@mswas

Black Liberation Theology is a racist ideology. There are no two ways around it.
From James Cone who Rev. Wright cited on Hannity and Colmes:

Brainglutton Rev. Wright is CERTAINLY a racist. Obama maybe not.

The first quotation is not racist at all; read it again. The second may be spurious.

Spurious quotations can have their own power, especially in the Information Age (which makes it easier to debunk them but much, much easier to circulate them) – see this thread, post #6.

[BrainGlutton]

@Frylock

*What it means for a nation to be damned is a little unclear. But it’s clearly very very bad.

Based on the OT it’s not afterlife-damnation but is expressed in things like droughts, plagues, wars, even national destruction.

[mswas]

How is one supposed to take the bit about God destroying the white enemy?

Applying one’s own skin color to Christ is most certainly racist and is one of the most common forms of Christian heresy. IE, to identify your tribe as the chosen people as opposed to others.