Obama '08?

nappyheadedhohoho wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:

nappyheadedhohoho wrote:

Quote:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

And for 20 years Obama has known Wright's warped views that no progress has been made. Did he ever consider pointing this out to his mentor and close friend as he's now pointing it out to us?

No idea. I never tried explaining to my grandmother that "nigras" were just as good as white people either. She got as far as she could get for her time, then she passed on and left it to the rest of us to keep moving.

And Obama was just as willing to ignore Wright's 'profound mistake' and go with the status quo. For years. Now he wants to lecture us on it.

Did you hear a whoosh sound when the point passed you by?

nappyheadedhohoho wrote:

Quote:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

And for 20 years Obama has known Wright's warped views that no progress has been made. Did he ever consider pointing this out to his mentor and close friend as he's now pointing it out to us?

No idea. I never tried explaining to my grandmother that "nigras" were just as good as white people either. She got as far as she could get for her time, then she passed on and left it to the rest of us to keep moving.

Foxfyre wrote:

You don't achieve a color blind society by forcing people to focus on skin color and requiring 'sensitivity' to one race that is not afforded to another.

Why not? Given that America is very much a color-aware society today, progress towards a color-blind one will require reconciliation. I don't see how that's possible without talking about race. And as I understood Obama's speech, reconciliation is just what Obama attempted in his speech. Basically he explained to both sides that the grievances of the other side are valid.

I have a lot of reservations about Obama, but his church, his refusal to disown his referent, and this speech aren't among them. This was a very impressive speech.

Micheal Myers?



I think he'd have a hard time getting votes unless he can be bothered to clean him image up a little.

Cycloptichorn

But I think we will never be truly equal and racism will never be defeated until we are allowed to see and treat each other as equals instead of black people, white people, etc. who must be seen as different and/or accommodately differently because of their history or whatever.

Actually I have less problem with Obama's description of his white grandmother than some do here. My own mother was a product of the segregated south and "Nigra" was her preferred word for black people, for whom she had a great deal of affection, and "Negro" sounded really wierd to her and 'black' had negative connotations to her. She died before "African American' become the preferred designation.

She worked for a number of years with the New Mexico Tourist Division and for several years was directly supervised by a black man who was director of the Department. She described him as one of her better bosses. (Jerry Apodaca was her favorite though.)

I don't recall her ever saying that she was afraid of black people or that she had ever had any problem with a black person. But she would say things like "Have you noticed that as the 'Nigras' get more education and get better jobs, their skin is getting lighter?" or "Why do the black people WANT to live where the white people live?"

Talk about cringing re a remark from a loved one.

But she simply was unable to see how her point of view was in any way racist. She saw herself as open minded and tolerant. There is nothing she wouldn't have done for a black friend and to hurt or insult or harm a black person would have been unthinkable to her. Her culture had completely entrenched racist views into her psyche that she was unable to recognize as racist. Why we kids didn't inherit some of that, I can't say, but we didn't.

Bernie wrote-

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An outstanding part of what Obama did in that speech, to my thinking, is to very properly and bravely hold that position in the middle and say HERE is where we really are.

Something like Ferrovius in Androcles and the Lion.

"Mars overcame me and took back his own..The Christian God is not yet. He will come when Mars and I are dust; but meanwhile I must serve the gods that are, not the God that will be."

And then there was that experience with him in my synagogue in 2001. It was Yom Kippur. The rabbi was giving his sermon only to be interrupted by a bellowing obnoxious Krauthammer who was shouting him down for expressing a hope for peace between Israelis and Arabs.

So today's column comes as no surprise.

In it he bellows at Obama for tolerating (Kraut's view) the racism of Rev. Wright, Obama's pastor.

The irony here is that Krauthammer is every bit as racially paranoid as Wright. He hates the Arabs and says so publicly and privately. He believes that Israel must triumph in every situation because it is innately right while the Arabs are innately wrong.. He views the world as divided between Jews and gentiles and it is us Jews who are always the victims.

In short, he sees the world much as Wright does. It is just that with Krauthammer the actors assigned to the role of oppressed and oppressor are different.

Our occupation of Iraq and the fragile surge has been all but blacked out in the U.S. media, but thankfully, the foreign press is still out there trying to bring the truth to the rest of the world. A big part of the surge was the Awakening Project. The goal of the project was to pay Sunni and former insurgents to fight al Qaeda and drive them out of their towns. The result is 80,000 angry men and a surge on the brink of collapse.

Despite spending some $12 billion dollars a month in Iraq, the Bush administration has failed to pay most of the Awakening members and their patience is all but gone. Thousands of men have given up and walked away from the program and resentment toward the U.S. has reached a boiling point. This video from The Guardian is a real eye opener as they go inside these groups and let them tell their stories in their own words.

They hear news accounts that the U.S. military is taking credit for the surge and they are angered. They feel that they are doing the dirty work that Americans should be doing and they feel they're being used as propaganda to sway the U.S. presidential elections. Senator John McCain has staked his entire presidential campaign on Iraq and the success of the surge. I hope that he, along with all Americans, has the chance to watch this video and see the real surge.

Foxfyre wrote:

But I think we will never be truly equal and racism will never be defeated until we are allowed to see and treat each other as equals instead of black people, white people, etc. who must be seen as different and/or accommodately differently because of their history or whatever.

Maybe you can twang your magic twanger and reverse four hundred years of oppression. Gosh, where the f*** do you come up with such nonsense?

On his Fox News radio show, Tom Sullivan predicted that African-Americans would be rioting in the streets similar to what happened after the O.J. trial in the 1990s.

We do not have to be prisoners of our past nor slaves to our histories. I think when we are, we never allow ourselves to move beyond it and become better. Know and understand and learn from it yes. Be bound to it as inevitable. No.

We love a good American riot Bernie. It's dead tame here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXmYVRIpu2w

Cycloptichorn

The real danger of Obama is what black people will do if he doesn't win. They'll do this because they are dangerous people. Not far, really, from the trees.

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On his Fox News radio show, Tom Sullivan predicted that African-Americans would be rioting in the streets similar to what happened after the O.J. trial in the 1990s.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/