Kanye said both he doesn’t care and then, after Mike Meyers read his lines, said (rather emphatically) “President Bush hates black people.”
What makes you say that? How can you tell?
He was referring to **Askia’s ** statement.
I’m not trying to start a fight here but I just re-watched the clip. The only time Kanye West mentions Bush is right before they cut off his mike and turn the camera to Chris Tucker (I believe that’s who it is). His line right before they cut away is: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
I understand that it’s not much different than saying “hates black people.” But I wouldn’t want people to read the title of the thread and come away thinking that’s what West said.
No, the last thing Kanye said before they cut to Chris Tucker was “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” When he started, he did say “I hate the way they portray us in the media.”
link to Crooks and Liars blog entry with links to transcript and video clips.
And for the record, I don’t believe George Bush cares about anybody but himself.
It’s grounded in the fact that Bush is not conversant in, or comfortable with, traditional black culture, and thus people --wrongly – sterotype that he must be racist or indifferent.
It’s the same thing that often confronts a white social worker when you first come into a black community: you may have the purest intentions in the world, but there are a lot of defensive barriers and a lot of assumptions that come just from your being white (and obviously, there are historical reasons for those fears). It’s worse if you are not familiar or “at home” with black culture, it’s very much worse if you’re saying things they don’t want to hear, and I’d imagine (this part is not from experience) it’s worse if you’ve got a southern accent.
You can overcome those assumptions, but it takes a lot of time, a lot of personal contact, and it’s very easily undermined. A politician won’t have the opportunity for much personal contact with voters, and he will always have an opposition eager to undermine him.
Thus: Bush is, in fact, far less familiar with black culture than (for example) Bill Clinton was, due to their backgrounds, and black citizens are likely to be very aware of that cultural divide. It does not follow that he therefore hates or is indifferent to them; nonetheless it is not surprising that that perception exists, especially if he is advocating policy that they do not like.
Whatever; read the entire passage again, delete the hyphenated clause, and the point stands: You’re asking him to support policies he thinks are bad solely because they will make him more popular.
Where does the “wrongly” come from? If he isn’t conversant withi black culture, that’s evidence of indifference to it, what else?. If he isn’t comfortable around blacks, isn’t that similarly prima facie evidence of racism? What other possibilities are there, and what makes you think they’re the real truth?
Delete the “solely” and perhaps we can have a worthwhile discussion of an elected official’s proper duties. Excluded middles get so tiring here.
If you are to define racism as "being uncomfortable around … then you have diluted its definition beyond useful meaning. You cannot be serious.
It’s all on a scale, isn’t it? Of course discomfort is not the same thing as lynching. Give me a break.
But someone who doesn’t see other human beings as fully equal, on the basis of skin color, is open to a charge of being on that scale. A claim that he is not must be supported by evidence to the contrary, and that has so far not been offered.
So being uncomfortable around someone is seeing that person as not fully equal? Not trying to a smartass, but I think you left out a few steps. I can posit plenty of scenarios where a person could be uncomfortable around a group of other people and racism would never enter the picture.
Look, I’m no defender of Bush. But I think statements like the OP, which have been shown to be false (Kanye West never said that,) and yours do more harm than good. How can someone take you seriously if you define racism as “a particular level of discomfort?”
A claim that he is must also be supported by evidence, and that has so far not been offered either.
Errrt. Reread. I never said anyone was “uncomfortable around blacks” – I was referring to “black culture.”
Or to put this in very concrete terms: When I first began working in inner-city areas I:
– Did not understand spoken Black English
– Did not understand African-American rhetorical styles
– Did not share the same tastes in music or entertainment
– Did not share the same tastes in food
and so on…
None of those things constituted racism on my part; the fact that I was working to help in the inner-city for peanuts should have given the lie to that. Nonetheless, being from an almost-all-white background, I very obviously didn’t fit in, and, quite reasonably, I and the people I worked with were uncomfortable with each other for a while. This is part of the normal process one goes through in cross-cultural relationships: I had similar moments while living in Asia.
What makes you think they aren’t? As noted before, Bush seems to have had no problem working with blacks. If you have any cites of people who know him personally alleging racism, I’d like to see them.
Lemme put it this way: I suspect that if Bill Clinton had tried to reach out for the Amish vote, it’d be pretty damned awkward. When John Kerry tried to reach out for the southern vote, it was pretty awkward. I don’t take that as prima facie evidence that either guy had anything against those groups.
Despite what xtisme says, race is an issue given lip service by some in this nation, but few conversations of substance take place on the issue outside of academic settings and coffee shops. (I frequent both.) That’s too bad, really.
For some reason the concept of race - socially constructed but all too real - makes many people uncomfortable. Further, the idea that people are treated poorly or granted privilege because of race, racism, makes people even more uncomfortable. It’s my feeling that this president is not at all eager to engage with those who disagree with him or make him uncomfortable. Yes, Rice, Powell, and Paige were/are prominent in his cabinet, but I would note that likely, all three subscribe to the “bootstraps” theory of self-reliance (I can say this with certainty about Powell and Paige as I’ve heard them make statements along these lines). In other words, you don’t complain about how things are, but you strive and try your hardest and let the responsibility of your own success rest on your shoulders.
This is a meme that many Black people subscribe to. I daresay it was a prevailing attitude among the Black middle class a generation ago, and also was popular among the working class and the poor. With limited access to stations in government or industry that could actually affect structural inequality, it makes sense to an extent. Alongside the “bootstraps” ethic, however, is the understanding that structural inequality makes life and success that much more difficult for Black Americans. I would argue this is part of what DuBois meant by “double consciousness” - the American consciousness subscribes to the Horation Alger-type success ideal, but the African consciousness knows the history of oppression towards people of African descent.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant discuss how the ideal of colorblindness, as advocated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was co-opted by the right during the 1980s as neoconservatives rolled back social and educational programs that attempted to rectify the fact that Blacks were “starting the race” well after Whites fired the starting gun, to paraphrase Lyndon Johnson. Any close analysis of the “I Have A Dream” speech by King, however, makes it clear that colorblindness is the ideal. That a nation with a 400 year history of slavery and nearly 100 years of legal apartheid can reach the ideal in twenty years is certainly a dubious notion.
One of the least-celebrated but most significant initiatives during Clinton’s administration was the President’s Commission on Racial Equality (I’m almost certain that that’s the wrong title…) - with folks like historian John Hope Franklin at the helm, Clinton gave visibililty to a festering issue at the heart of so many of the nation’s social and economic problems. As you might recall, he was a little distracted in his second term, so this initiative never really got off the ground. Not surprisingly, Bush didn’t continue this commission or its work in his administration.
I feel the president is guilty of prioritizing the needs of certain groups of Americans over the needs of others, and has failed to show any credible sign of reaching out to the groups that he was not successful in gaining support from as a candidate, but nevertheless now governs. He is the first president in seventy-five years to not address the NAACP, perhaps the most prominent organization dedicated to combating racism, and an organization that many African Americans hold in high esteem. Actions like these, and his inability to face his critics do nothing to arrest the suspicion that he does not care about Black people.
I dunno about proof but I can point to a consensus of opinion.
The best indicator of hypothetical behavior is past behavior.
“2004 - FEMA’s relatively quick response to the hurricanes has thus far won mostly high marks from Florida officials, who remember well a time when the disaster agency seemed the last party to show up after catastrophes. In addition, President Bush has paid multiple visits to assure storm victims they will get whatever help is needed, and he *promptly secured * more than $2 billion from Congress to fund Florida’s recovery.”
That makes about as much sense as “If New Orleans had a white mayor, the city would have been totally evacuated prior to the flood”
Hippy Hollow, except for the characterization of xtime’s remarks, for which I can find no support, I agree with everything you have said. As always, a well-reasoned response.
Well, if it were Rudy Guliani…
If it were Rudy, he would have gotten his stormtroopers to escort every man jack out of the city.
Many massive civil rights violations, but many fewer deaths.
[Moderator Hat ON]
Edited title to an accurate quote, since allowing clear misquotes in titles opens up a whole can of worms. I don’t think it was a deliberate misquote, though.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
I guess he could stop being a rich white guy, because such guys are easy targets for racism charges. I’m not sure what Bush can do to avoid comments like that aside from what he’s done. Now, as far as not caring about poor and underprivileged people… that might be a result of his policies, in part, and I’m not quite sure how you fix that.