2
   

Fear of a Black President

 
 
Chai
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 07:45 pm
Mame wrote:
What makes you think one would aspire to be middle-class, Setanta? That is certainly not my desire.

quote]

Nothing wrong with being middle class. One would be in very good company.

if everyone got above that, they would then be considered the middle class.
0 Replies
 
ehBeth
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 07:46 pm
Mame wrote:
With the case of Aboriginals/First Nations here in BC it's exactly the same. Tax and education is free -- but how many go? I do understand that there are generations of being beaten down, but hey, these young people a) did not personally go through the Resident School problems and b) can DECIDE to change.
.


It really isn't that simple, Mame. While the current generation of First Nations did not go through the Residential School system, they were raised by generations of people who did - who were beaten down physically and emotionally simply because they were First Nations - who were told it was bad to be Innu - "the Indian was to be beaten out of them". Twenty years and an apology is not going to fix what's wrong in the First Nations communities across the country. Similarly a generation or two of not being beaten down, not being thought less of because you're black doesn't just clear things up.

The problems in Canada are slightly different because we didn't have a significant history of slavery, but we've got our own problems with communities that have been/are negatively impacted by the racism of the larger community.

There are going to be exceptions and anecdotes on all sides of this discussion (and there are way more than 2 sides to this), but overall the majority treated the minority like dirt - and the minority community won't recover in a sliver of time - and that's what we're talking about, a sliver of time.

I could write at much more length about the First Nations culture and what was done to it in Canada and the impact on the community, but this isn't the thread for it.
0 Replies
 
Mame
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 07:55 pm
ehBeth, I know it's not that simple. Twenty-thirty years ago I was involved with First Nations people before they called themselves that, and with prisoners, and with abused children and with mentally challenged people. I also worked within the "welfare" system and with the drug-addicted.

I just don't have the energy to write it all out so it does come out simplistically. I just say the bottom line.

I do know whereof I speak, no matter how it comes out. I understand the cycles, the vicious cycles, families and individuals endure. I know how hopeless some feel and I know how some have learned not to feel anything.

But the at the very end of things, the question we ask ourselves is: Do I want to be here?

And if you don't, you won't. If you don't care or don't ask, you will. It really IS a personal choice.

There ARE people who climbed out of their pit. They are testament to this. But they WANTED it.

And Chai, I agree - there's nothing wrong with middle-class. I just don't confine myself to any recognized label. That's all. I am what I am. Period. Whatever the hell label people want to put on that is their stuff. So I could financially be middle-class, but attitude-wise could be way out there, fringe-y... who knows? I don't, and I don't care what it's called.
0 Replies
 
Chai
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 08:32 pm
Well then by George, I don't either Mame! :wink:
0 Replies
 
Mame
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 08:39 pm
Very Happy
0 Replies
 
Finn dAbuzz
 
  1  
Reply Mon 23 Jun, 2008 10:38 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
I'm not familiar with Mr. Seth Graham Smith, the author of the piece Snood used to introduce this topic. However I do believe he indulged in some rather extreme acts of projection, implying that he was uniquely able in this piece to accurately describe the inner motivations of many others, as the relate to the present moment and the Obama candidacy.

While his writing of it was descriptive and skillful, I found - even after a good deal of introspection - that very little of it applies to me, and that he is himself indulging in some of the same stereotyping that he criticizes. This may merely confirm some of the prejudgements of others, but I ask them too to think twice about the matter.


As usual, you beat me to it george.

I found Grahame-Smith's piece to be smarmy, self-indulgent, and insulting.

He has taken the implied but unstated position that if he, an enlightened liberal, can realize, after much soul searching, that he is afraid of a black president, then this fear must be rampant among the lesser classes.

I disagree with your assessment of his skills however. Undoubtedly his writing will have the desired effect on people who wish to believe everyone who is opposed to Obama is secretly, even in only a tiny sliver of their being, a racist. If he were truly skilled he might be able to convince the people that weren't already solidly inclined to believe this tripe.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't, for a second, believe I am unique in this regard.

I feel neither grateful, nor guilty for being white. I have had my own set of hardships in my life which while not involving race have been formidable. I am absolutely certain there are any number of black people who have not had to overcome the hardships I have, just as I am absolutely certain that there are any number of people (black or otherwise) who have overcome hardships I've never faced.

The point is that there is no overriding luck associated with being white nor any overriding curse with being black. There is life, and we each get to make the most of our advantages and to do our best in overcoming our hardships.

I don't doubt that Grahame-Smith takes comfort in being part of a perceived elite class, because like many other Liberals, I suspect he has no fondness for competition.

I truly wish, as impossible as it is, for all racial barricades to be eliminated in a heartbeat. It is right, it would put to rest all sorts of inane and unproductive bickering, and I doubt it wouldn't impact my life in the least.

I'm confident in my abilities and don't at all ascribe my achievements to being white. If I could wave a wand and instantly render the world color-blind, I like my chances for being precisely where I am today.

I'm not who I am because I am white or male or Irish. These things are part of who I am but they are not the totality.

If Michael Steele were running against Barrack Obama I would happily vote for Steele and rejoice when he won. Despite Grahame-Smith's projection, I am not at all afraid of a black president. I am, however, afraid of a Liberal president.

Now, do I want to be part of an oppressed minority? Of course not. Who does?

I don't believe, however, that the advancement of blacks or hispanics in our society requires me to fall into a second class citizenship.

Certainly there are people who are afraid of losing the edge of their whiteness but these are people who are already near the bottom of our society and want an artificial barrier to prevent them from being at the lowest point. There aren't enough of them to prevent Obama from becoming president.

Then there are the others, perhaps like Grahame-Smith, who are uneasy about additional competition. They don't want to work all that hard and are happy to have a leg up on any sizeable segment of the populace. There may be enough of them to keep Obama out of the White House, but they won't all be conservatives.

Our society is fixated on race and whether this a good thing or not; is understandable or not, I'll leave to other threads, but like any other major subject it is not so easily explained as "I like being white."

Obama is now considered black (although he is half black and half white) and yet it wasn't that long ago that blacks in America were wondering if he were black enough. This suggests there is a bit more complication to the issue than Grahame-Smith would concede.

If Obama loses in November will it be proof of America's enduring racism?

If he were a duplicate of McCain, the argument might have some strength but he is not. Am I or anyone else required to vote for a liberal Democrat to prove I am not a racist, that I am not "afraid" of a black president?

Seth Grahame-Smith has set up a ridiculous Hobson's Choice.
0 Replies
 
Bi-Polar Bear
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 04:14 am
Rockhead wrote:
I gotta agree with Squinney a bit here. I am Kansas raised, and USA traveled, but the Southeast is still lagging WAY behind in attitudes, and educational equality.

RH


that's why I moved here Rh. I knew that with merely average intelligence I could live like a god among the natives. :wink:
0 Replies
 
sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 05:31 am
Very nice post, ehBeth. I do agree with "more than two sides," too.
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 05:32 am
Mame wrote:
Please don't even deign to talk about me or my life; you have absolutely no idea where I've been or what I've lived through. You can take your negative attitude elsewhere. I am up for all kinds of discussions with all kinds of people, but not with those who pre-judge.

edit: and my comments were not said in a snotty tone. It's merely where I'm coming from. I don't aspire to be middle-class or any other label.


I don't "prejudge" you. Children of poverty don't talk about pithy assessments or what their aspirations are. You "label" yourself as middle class by the very manner in which you communicate. What you "aspire" to has nothing to do with it. In North America, north of the Rio Grande, the white English-speaking Protestant middle class provides the dominant culture. The manner in which you express yourself "labels" you that way, for whatever silly protestations you make to the contrary. For however you lived as a child and a young woman, it produced someone who communicates in the standard English of the white, Protestant middle class which dominates North American culture.

You can deny that to your heart's content--unconvincingly.
0 Replies
 
snood
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 05:34 am
Hey Set - it almost sounds like you're saying you can judge a book by its (verbal) cover. How does this accomodate those who by their own effort evolve and refine the way they relate and communicate?
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 05:45 am
I'm saying that people do judge books by their verbal covers. I'm not going to repeat them here, but perhaps you'll recall another thread in which i told of a black woman from New York, who spoke in the accent of an educated, middle-class New Yorker, and who always shocked people who had spoken to her on the telephone, but had not met her in person. Perhaps you'll recall that i told of two black college girls i met in a department stores, who were the inevitable products of their economic background, and who spoke "Valley Girl speak" because that was what middle class girls sounded like then--their race had nothing to do with it.

The generation of your grandparents understood that equation. I don't for a moment say that they were so naive as to believe that all their problems could be solved by the way they spoke. But once upon a time, speaking standard English fluently, elegantly, persuasively was an "aspiration" of Americans of African descent--they knew it would remove one of the hurdles which Jim Crow threw at their feet. The eloquence of M. L. King (and to a lesser extent, still displayed by Jesse Jackson) was a part of that heritage of language.

Those who evolve and refine the way they related and communicate are not accommodated by dominant cultures. You can speak the street language of hip-hop fluently, but it won't help you in a job interview, unless you're applying for a job in a club, or hope to sample cuts for an established group. There are only so many employment opportunities in entertainment, in sports, and only so many niches for entrepreneurs to exploit (because everyone's chasing the same money). The majority of people of any "racial" description end up working for someone else. How well the express themselves will be a major determinant factor in their employment prospects. To rise into the ranks of management, the "aspirant" will need not only to speak like the members of the dominant culture, he or she will need to reliably behave as do the members of the dominant culture. How they acquire that knowledge is irrelevant--is is possessing it so surely that it is second nature to one that gives one that entry into those career paths.

People judge books by covers every day. I've never considered anything so foolish as the constant claim by people that they don't judge, that they aren't judgmental. We make judgments from the time we arise in the morning until we go to bed at night. And there's nothing wrong with that. The most one might speak against is judging others unfairly, and even then, it's foolish to ignore facts of life.
0 Replies
 
dlowan
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 06:45 am
ehBeth wrote:
Mame wrote:
With the case of Aboriginals/First Nations here in BC it's exactly the same. Tax and education is free -- but how many go? I do understand that there are generations of being beaten down, but hey, these young people a) did not personally go through the Resident School problems and b) can DECIDE to change.
.


It really isn't that simple, Mame. While the current generation of First Nations did not go through the Residential School system, they were raised by generations of people who did - who were beaten down physically and emotionally simply because they were First Nations - who were told it was bad to be Innu - "the Indian was to be beaten out of them". Twenty years and an apology is not going to fix what's wrong in the First Nations communities across the country. Similarly a generation or two of not being beaten down, not being thought less of because you're black doesn't just clear things up.

The problems in Canada are slightly different because we didn't have a significant history of slavery, but we've got our own problems with communities that have been/are negatively impacted by the racism of the larger community.

There are going to be exceptions and anecdotes on all sides of this discussion (and there are way more than 2 sides to this), but overall the majority treated the minority like dirt - and the minority community won't recover in a sliver of time - and that's what we're talking about, a sliver of time.

I could write at much more length about the First Nations culture and what was done to it in Canada and the impact on the community, but this isn't the thread for it.



Halleluljah, and ditto here.
0 Replies
 
squinney
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 06:53 am
Caught an HBO Documentary (Info HERE) last night about Douglass High in Baltimore.

MAN! If you get a chance, it's worth watching.
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 09:27 am
snood--what initiatives might Obama "push" that would only help the black community?
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 11:34 am
Good question, and a better question would be what power would he have to implement such initiatives without reference to the Congress.
0 Replies
 
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 11:40 am
I can't speak for snood or Obama, but, it seems likely he might lean in the direction of an initiative if it were largely beneficial to the black community, so long as it did not interfere with his overall presidential style. I don't see him mounting any MLK style campaigns.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 11:47 am
I'm wondering what such an initiative would look like.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 12:12 pm
I can see him using the "bully pulpit" to raise peoples' awareness of how minorities (all of them, not just blacks) live in this country--but to suggest that he should or even can sponsor initiatives which specifically intend to benefit blacks because they are black, that is beyond the pale. No President can exercise that kind of power, and attempting to do so would harm his effectiveness in office, and raise a great deal of justifiable resentment.
0 Replies
 
cjhsa
 
  0  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 12:42 pm
Cycloptichorn wrote:
I'm wondering what such an initiative would look like.

Cycloptichorn


Mike Tyson offering up moist towelettes?
0 Replies
 
edgarblythe
 
  1  
Reply Tue 24 Jun, 2008 12:43 pm
edgarblythe wrote:
I can't speak for snood or Obama, but, it seems likely he might lean in the direction of an initiative if it were largely beneficial to the black community, so long as it did not interfere with his overall presidential style. I don't see him mounting any MLK style campaigns.


I did not intend to specify a specifically black initiative, just meant something might come along he could support without deviating from his pursuit of his job.
0 Replies
 
 

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