Letters to the Editor
weeping for brunnhilde
Published Letters: 1150 Editor's Choice: 3
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@RealityCounts
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for your thoughts.
I appreciate what you say about needing to get to know Obama and puzzling out his every utterance in an effort to do that.
That's fair enough.
But what we're doing then is a hermeneutical exercise.
Hermeneutics is simply a fancy way of saying "intepretation."
One of the basic rules of hermeneutics is to let the parts inform the whole and the whole inform the parts.
In this context, seizing on the "typical white person" utterance suggests a failure to let the whole inform the part.
Rather than seizing on that one utterance, I'd suggest (not to you, per se, but in general) a greater attention to the message of Obama's speech.
He really laid it all out on the table and frankly, if that didn't clarify for people just what kind of a guy we're dealing with, nothing will.
When he referred to "a typical white person" he was speaking with the same generality as when people speak of "the American people."
Only when they speak of the latter, they're usually pandering so no one gets worked up over the fact that generalizations are being made.
It's just really clear to me that by "typical white person" he meant "typical in that she's not immune to the legacy of racism and more to the point, she's a good person despite such vulnerabilities."
He was trying to alleviate white guilt, not inflame it.
It was indeed a love the sinner hate the sin kind of message.
That something so straightforward should be used to cast doubt on...on what, exactly?
On whether Obama likes white people?
On whether he talks about unity now to get elected but once in the White House he'll appoint Louis Farakkhan Secretary of State?
Really, I don't get it.
In fact, in keeping with the charge to understand one another, let me ask: anyone who was offended by the comment "typical white person," would you explain to me, with as much honesty as you can, the nature of the offense?
Not because you "have to explain yourself," but because this is precisely the nature of the stalemate Obama mentioned.
To get past it, we'll have to stop speaking glibly and with bitterness and in a zero-sum way and have to start actually talking to each other from a place of charity and a genuine desire to understand one another.
We'll get nowhere without empathy.
That way madness lies.
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@Mmelcher
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is it ever the right time to talk honestly about race?
Or for that matter, is it ever the right time to talk honestly about anything of public or national import?
What sort of golden moment did you have in mind?
(Sorry to be facetious, but it sounds as if your premise is that there might be some more propitious opportunity for this topic to be addressed.)
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back off Joan
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everyone, can we please resist the urge to wax vitriolic against Joan?
It's legitimate to criticize her writing, her apparent lack of perspective, her opinions, etc.
But please, can we show some human decency?
The woman is a human being and what's more, she's clearly trying to engage and to respond to her critics, which is very much to her credit.
I agree that her musings are frustratingly obtuse, but please, can we all try to be guided by our better angels?
Really, how can we expect to create a peaceful world if we can't even be peaceful with one another in a forum such as this?
And by "peaceful" please don't read "tepid" or "banal."
That's not what I mean at all.
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*hhatchet
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amen.
Thank you for your honesty and eloquence.
One of your points in particular I'd like to comment on.
You write:
Black people are suppose to be thankful for all the great things America has done for us. What white people are really mad about is the ungratfulness Rev. Wright showed in denouncing America. "How can that uppity nigger say such things."
There was a lot of this mindset in the "discussion" over whether the 3am spot was racist.
A dismaying amount of the argument against it possibly being racist amounted to (and this is a caricature, a light satire, but an apt one): "How could that spot have been racist? Are you saying Hillary's a racist? That's absurd--who's done more for the negro than Bill Clinton?"
Really.
People can't wrap their heads around the idea that one can work on behalf of a constituency and make genuine efforts towards redressing the legacy of racism and yet, at the very same time still succumb to racist or racialized patterns of thought, behavior, response, etc.
This is especially dismaying to see among those who otherwise decry the infantile manichaeanism of George Bush and argue for a more nuanced worldview.
Yet with this issue, they're incapable of entertaining the notion that one can be racist and not racist all it the same time.
We contain multitudes.
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@hhatchet
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is amazing how they are able to find conservative and liberal blacks to talk about race but never have them speak about anything else.
Yup.
Same in academia.
It's rare to find black people (in the arts and humanities--I'm not talking professional school) who are there to study things other than race or maybe leftist political stuff like imperialism.
I'm a medievalist. There are many things that led me here, but one of them is certainly the deep desire to not be pigeonholed.
I didn't want to be ghettoized, even as a member of the "elite" or "intelligentia."
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@Lisa Michele
[Read the article: Moving beyond Obama and race]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow.
I'm deeply humbled.
Really.
Thank you.