Letters to the Editor
Rocky57
Published Letters: 213 Editor's Choice: 4
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Same as it ever was
[Read the article: Why Jeremiah Wright is so wrong]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wright is hurting Barack[?] [that's an excuse for those who don't want to point out the (usual) elephant in the room]; social reality is hurting Barack. Interestingly enough, there's Louis Bayard's trenchant article on the Flag "spearing" of Teddy Landsmark by south boston Irish toughies, in the wake of Arthur Garrity's busing order as an accompanyment to Joan's column.
The problem is, as I've said before, Obama had to "draw to an inside straight" if he wanted to win the nomination and the presidency and that has not changed. Wright just provides the fig leaf alot of working class whites can use to justify their voting against Obama in a general election [should Obama get that far] and doing it against their interest is business as usual [those S. Boston toughs had, after all, an antecedant in the Scotch-Irish of the South who, again, as I never fail to point out here and elsewhere, voted/agitated against schools for their children and roads to get to them and the marketplace, in the wake of Reconstruction, if it meant having those children go to school with "negras."
Their latter-day counterparts, many from traditional chauvinistic households, would risk continual war, a draft, more regressive policies leading to Max Headroom rat-dining in abandoned parking lots and a woman/over the hill, possibly traumatised war hero as leader of the free world if it mean't keeping that "negra" out of the White House.
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@ajcalhoun
[Read the article: Flagging America's racial divide]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not convinced that much has changed in many white enclaves in Boston and elsewhere above the Mason-Dixon line. The only reason it troubled me then and continues to is the fact that so much of New England was so deeply involved in the founding of the nation
It shouldn't. The boston brahmins who despised the Irish, in 18th and 19th century beantown, championed blacks as model citisens [and abhorred the institution of slavery] much as the upstanding New Yorkers of late 20th century NYC brandished hard-working Koreans as exemplars to the black underclass of the Apple. The Irish never got over their treatment by "proper bostonians;" hence, the rise of the [all but pro-slavery] Democratic party there and in New York while the gentry of both places were abolitionist Republicans.
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@RBatty024(would that "R" be for "Roy"*)
[Read the article: I was wrong about Wright]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The question is, do most whites understand the history of the United States well enough to understand why Wright would be upset at the country?..."
That'd be a stretch---as you've more or less indicated in your follow-up.
*(apt handle, considering the subject matter since, for my money, the sympathetic center of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" is the replicant, [R]oy Batty and not the hollow Harrison Ford's Deckard. I've never tired of saying that for the 20th century, at least, the three most penetrating filmic dissertations on race are "Blade Runner," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and the first 15 minutes of Romero's original "Dawn of the Dead.")
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@Sajwan
[Read the article: I was wrong about Wright]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...With over 90% of blacks voting for Obama, the only people Wright and Obama has unified is blacks. I am sure this has always been one of Wrights and Obamas goals (again Obama shows dishonesty in not declaring this, at least Wright is honest about it), and a minority unified can be a much stronger minority. On the other hand it can bring further polarization between blacks and whites...."
Nonsense. Obama tried to steer clear of race but [and I say, predictably] got hoisted by the petard of racial attitudes vis a vis blacks in this country--with an assist from the Clintons and, later, Rev. Wright.
Anyone who thinks a serious black candidate for President would traffick in the politics of race to acquire the nomination is not in his or her right mind or disingenuous. It would blow up in said candidate's face, every time. Wright is tempestuous, in style, but no more so than most black ministers have been traditionally; it's his politics that make the difference--although the trend has apparently been toward a more politically aware pastorate most of those churches have historically run the gamut from conservative to moderate to politically sensitive, if not afro-centric [anyone attending black churches in, say, mid-20th century upstate New York was exposed to--let us say--a far more accomodating ministry and one that didn't mind working hand in hand with the corrupt, heavily ethnic political machines that dominated the landscape of that region from Buffalo to Albany and did so in a manner not always to the benefit of the community it allegedly served]. I'd argue that Wright is far more honest about his community and the context it finds itself in than more traditional ministers and there's much to commend about such a position.
The problem is Wright's timing and Obama's lack of political horse sense: the former is, as Joan has pointed out, narcissistic to an extreme; the latter's situation is inexplicable if you don't consider the [not quite] dead horse I've never tired of beating--the fact that neither of Obama's lines of parentage had anything to do with the "butt-end of slavery." Consequently, He doesn't have the savvy re race of a Michelle Obama who, knowing the conundrum Obama's candidacy would present to Obama and the nation, adamantly didn't want him to run [and, subconsciously, may be as bent on sabotaging Obama's campaign as Wright appears to be]. For all of Obama's smarts he never saw the sh-tstorm coming his way, after Iowa, and regarding his membership in Wright's church. He's an apparent naif, a Valentine Michael Smith, if you will, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of what race really means in America.
It's both his strength and his achilles heel. He, even more than the abstract "serious black presidential aspirant" mentioned above, wanted to stay away from the third rail of race, not because he feared it but because he honestly believed he could transcend it. And, that commendable aspiration may result in tragedy, as far as his presidential ambitions are concerned.