In order to win as President, you don’t need only the votes of “most of us” who were already in his camp. You need the votes of those who waiver between camps. It is there that the whole affair has done damage.
I agree, as you would see if you read my responses upthread.
My point is not that I, personally, think Obama is racist, or paranoid, or in any way thinks in the manner that the Rev. does - I believe his own expressed views. My point is that the affair has damaged his chances of election.
Moreover, my point is that those defending those views as understandable and indeed somewhat inevitable reactions to a history of racism are, if you will, amplifying that damage.
The reason is as follows: assume for the moment that the views of those in this thread are all true; it would follow that a Black person running for POTUS is as a matter of fact ‘unable to escape (racial) history’ [my paraphrase] and thus likely to be filled with entirely justified rage, hatred and paranoia - of the sort that the Rev. expressed. Is this the sort of person one would want in charge of the country?
Now, I imagine that some people would say “yes, certainly” - because such a person, having dealt with and overcome such emotions in his or her own life, would be best suited to deal with healing the divisions of the country.
However, a more likely reaction on the part of those not already committed to his cause would be “we don’t need that sort of risk”. Why vote for someone who has good reason to resent you or be paranoid about you?
Who is your mentor.? Who really has a mentor ? Wright does not speak for Obama.
A premise that Wright is a mentor allows you to dicsect Wrifghts life and claim it can be used to defame Obama. Wright is not Obama.
The premise is an attempt to damn Obama with connecting him to people who the Repubs don’t like. Feel free to attack Wright. But the implication is that obama is the same is dishonest.
Come here young Mr. Obama . Sit on my knee and I will teach you how to hate whitey. Obama is not Wright. The continued attention to Wright is to diminish Obama to the people who are afraid of blacks. It is race baiting.
Doubtful. You would still have the socioeconomic conditions and informal race-caste hierarchy that both result from racism and perpetuate it. Fixing that is possible but not easy or cheap. Suggest you reread post #21, especially the third quote block.
No. The premise is a fact. Obama connected himself to Wright. Just because someone might try to use that connection dishonestly doesn’t negate the connection.
Who in this thread is saying that they are the same? Why do you keep coming up with these strawman arguments.
In some cases, yes. But you’re still wrong about the other stuff. Please make your case without stating things that are factually incorrect.
Do you still live in Italy? Do you still live in Wales? Do those still effect your life?
Congratulations.
Good thing nobody said any different.
Good for them too. Everybody’s winning!!!
I agree. It would be a step.
I understand that you have a problem with affirmative action.
You see, your response is a great example of why discussions of race are so rough in this country, because almost everybody gets so defensive and everybody sees racism against themselves. And that means every kind of person. Liberals. Conservatives. Moderates. Blacks. Whites. Irish. That one guy sitting in the corner table at Applebees having a lousy steak. Too many members of the “black community” have a victimization mindset. The exact same thing is going on with this entire Wright thing, with so many members of the “white community” crying Racism! and showing their fear that they will be victimized if a “black” man is elected President.
My post pointed out that racism, and vestiges of racist policies, still exist in America. And I advocated open discussion of the issue of racism. And I thank you for responding respectfully. But, as usual, instead of talking about racism still existing or any attempt to understand the other side, your post turned into “affirmative action is bad and racist.” It’s stuff like that, the nigh but automatic responses of claims of racism by the other guy, that make it so difficult.
Also, comparing the white immigrant experience to the slavery/emancipation experience as proof of the black community’s problems seriously underestimate the difference in the things being compared.
While I agree that Wright was a spiritual mentor to Obama, I also think that gonzo is right that the entire controversy is nothing more than veiled attempts to make the electorate afraid of voting for Obama. And they do that by attacking Wright. Wright helped bring Obama to his Christianity. But Obama is a big boy and has made it absolutely clear in no uncertain terms that he does not agree with many statements made by Wright. That should have been the end of it. But, because of who Obama is, the attack has continued for weeks, with the whole “Obama” meme becoming shorthand for “Obama’s pastor”.
The thing is, the right (and HRC) can’t get Obama. He’s not a racist. He’s not a Muslim. He’s not a socialist, a terrorist or an anti-Semite. Since growing up and dealing with his issues, he’s been a community activist who has consistently worked for the betterment of all people.
But the right (and HRC) have to get him somehow (because God knows we actually talk about issues). So, since they can’t dirty Obama, they dirty everyone around him and hope something sticks to Obama. So far, his pastor and his wife have born the brunt of this politics of personal destruction. But I doubt it will stop there.
The very worst one could honestly say about Obama is that he showed poor judgment in not turning his back on the man who guided his spiritual life over a few minutes of rhetoric out of decades of service. That’s not going to carry the day, So, instead, the attacks become guilt by association with reliance on racial fears. Personally, I find the whole thing as reprehensible as I find Wright’s race baiting.
Well, I pretty much already agreed with that last part, but you don’t win that argument by claiming there is no connection between Obama and Wright or that people are “pretending” that Wright was Obama’s spiritual mentor.
If I come into a thread and say that Bush is a terrible president because he planned the 9/11 attacks, I hope those who agree with me about Bush will correct me where my facts are screwed up.
My point was that vestiges of lots of things exist, not just racism or slavery. And many of these things are pervasive as well - I don’t think anyone can argue that the folks in coal communities in West Virginia and Kentucky are similarly trapped by their history or economic circumstances - just as trapped in most cases as the residents of inner cities.
And I wasn’t just comparing the white immigrant experience - I was comparing also the Asian immigrant experience. I think this is important to note - many Vietnamese refugees in this country after the Vietnam War spoke little English, lived in marginal neighborhoods, sent their kids to public schools in the city and took crappy jobs. In many cases their kids were denied affirmative action preferences, and had to compete for admission purely on merit. They seem to have been successful for the most part in doing so.
A friend of mine born in the Philippines was told when he applied to college that he was considered a non-disadvantaged minority - never mind that his folks cleaned offices for a living.
So yeah - vestiges of lots of things exist. And while I think there is an awful lot we have to do as a people to get over all of them, for the most part individuals have to decide how much history is going to hold them back. Because it is possible indeed to break out of the Mon Valley, or Appalachia, or Anacostia. But it will take a lot of work in any case, and governments can’t entirely change that.
I don’t have a problem accepting Wright as a mentor to Obama. I think the falsity lies in the characterization of Wright himself as evil or sinister or racist or that the few quotes being looped in conservative media outlets represent anything like an accurate picture of the man. The demonization of Wright has been over-the-top and ridiculous and – yes — racist.
Barack Obama has no reason to be ashamed of being mentored by Jeremiah Wright and we, as voters, have no legitimate reason to be disturbed by it. I think we’ve pretty well established that the accusations of racism against Wright are without foundation, and Obama has consistently said that Wright’s influence on him lay in his preaching on social justice and on other non-political aspects of Christian faith. Obama and other members of Trinity have said that the vast majority of Wright’s sermons focused on the same kinds of things you’d see in any other church – love, equality, helping the poor, personal atonement for sins, etc. The media’s characterization of Reverend Wright as nothing but a raving radical is a gross distortion of the real person.
I still think the black emancipation experience is qualitatively different from any of the immigrant experiences. But that’s verging on the topic of another thread. In general, I don’t think there’s a lot to object to in your above statements, but that’s because these arguments are insufficient to carry the larger point that color-blind policy is good or that black people just need to get over it. You’re right that this is partly about culture and mindset. And hope and hard work. There’s only so much that be done by government. I don’t think anyone disagrees with those things–including Obama, who talks about those things more than any politician in recent memory.
But the possibility of breaking out of bad circumstances is not the same as a fair playing field free from those circumstances. The fact that there are many vestiges of history acting as obstacles does not mean we ought not try to remove them. And sometimes removing them, heck seeing them at all, requires race-based analysis.
So this is how its going to be, eh? McCain doesn’t know shit from Shia, Sunni from Shinola, he supports a needlessly aggressive political posture wrt Iran, he panders shamelessly to the worst public figures of our time, and his health care proposals ensucken dead donkey balls…
While race-based analysis may be appropriate sometimes, at this point in our history I believe it is inappropriate for affirmative action - and ought to be replaced by income considerations primarily.
You agree that breaking out of bad circumstances is paramount here - yet there are plenty of people in those circumstances to whom affirmative action does not apply, and some prosperous people to whom it does. Affirmative action is now used to unsure diversity and not to give people a break.
I can’t support it for that goal. Now, for small company contracting affirmative action for minority owned firms (and veteran owned firms) has a role, and I’d support that for a time. But for educational policy we ought to broaden affirmative action’s mission to get people into college who wouldn’t have had that opportunity in the past. That certainly includes black students, but it includes lots of others.
In The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again, conservative pundit Michael Barone characterizes African-Americans as in effect recent immigrants, who only began to leave the Old Country – which in their case is not Africa but the Old South – a few decades ago.
I didn’t realize we were arguing over affirmative action specifically. Its a little hard to follow the tangent back to something that addresses the thread topic, but I thought we were discussing the general view that race matters and that politics needs to be discussed without colorblinders.
FWIW, I tend to agree that income-based affirmative action is a good idea.