Letters to the Editor
banyantree
Published Letters: 173 Editor's Choice: 3
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Obama, Edwards and Clinton, the anointed ones, yes, but
[Read the article: Chris Dodd's perfect squelch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]not the appointed ones despite Clinton's (most especially) best efforts to assume the role.
Dodd, Biden and Richardson really do know something, and they do suffer because of media predisposition to the anointed ones...
Yet, the media's overexposure of Clinton, certainly has had a negative effect on me and others, if anecdote holds true.
We are tired of seeing her sparkle and spin so much, in a way that plays peek-a-boo with the gender card cleverly, but it clearly is, on close inspection, a card game...
As an African-American female professional, with a long record of activity within the democratic party, I find Hillary a bit too smug,and yes, excessively bureaucratic. It is the way of the women within the DNC arena...So, I don't think she can help it. She has been socialized in this manner and it is destined to bring her what she wants.
She reminds me of the female MBA I met some years ago at a company picnic, who in her quest to ascend the corporate ladder arrived at the company picnic wearing panty-hose under her carefully turned socks and white sneakers. Just bizarre. She spoke with certainty and conviction (and non-stop zeal) about the "company."
I, a young law student accompanying my husband to the gathering, was astounded at her cyclonic jabbering, and so I attempted to engage her on one issue, any issue. She kept talking and dismissed me as if I were the help. This woman survived many a lay-off in this mega-corporation. She had no social skills, no emotional intelligence, but she could recite and recite and recite...She was the one they promoted...because she knew to send every issue to committee.
The thing is, just as the ceo of the Children's Defense Fund has distanced herself from Hillary, so too have many women like me, who actually have had to work for a living, and who really think about how to solve the issues. We are the ones Hillary, and women like her, turn too with far too much frequency, to follow through or send in a check, and we get very, very little credit...
This is a DNC debate/issue as much as it is a Hillary one, but she sure does wear those socks and stockings with far too smug an attitude for this black woman of a certain age.
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There is no post-9/11 racial rapproachment: African Americans, the USA's Maori tribe
[Read the article: Fantasies in black and white]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The notion of some sort of post- 9/11 racial rapproachnment is ridiculous.
It is whistling "Dixie" for those who desperately want America
to fit their easy, no muss, no fuss version of reality...
It is, perhaps, the Gotham City version of how America should be.
The truth, certainly in most of America (defined as three hours southwest of NYC, and likely much closer)is that the status of African Americans has settled into an dessicated version of the Maori, in which the "Once Were`Warriors" ethos has ossified into a freeze-dried parable about hope and despair, which is hung and dusted beside the photos of MLK and JFK...
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In Harrisburg, PA, where I live, people of color (our new name) have been under the thumb of a mayor with a 26 year tenure. Last evening I attended his budget address to City Council. Despite having a population that is more than majority minority, the mayor walked in with a phalanx of white men, and a few white women. This tells you something...
And, the mayor controls the schools, which are majority "minority" and which are among the worst in the country, and which are governed by a white male superintendent who has hired only one (out of seven or more) African American deputy superintendents...Eyeballing the scene tells you something. We are a mess, but nobody cares...
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Then we move on to state government, which, although organized under a democratic, "reform-minded" governor, is rife with political patronage and deal-making to such a degree that it relegates African Americans to positions as little more than the pooper-scoopers in the capitol...Survey the scene and it tells you something...
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Then there is the PA Turnpike Commission, run presumably by the state, where people of color are nobodies, and where the ethnic folk of the little town of Steelton rule, (as if there were rules) and the governor says "I'm not going there," leaving the joint to an indicted senator from Philadelphia, who puts his goombas in place...including the goombas from Steelton...Everybody knows...blacks have been frozen out forever, and it will continue to happen. In the history of the turnpike, there has never been a Black commissioner. Never. Go figure...
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There is no "level playing field" in places like Harrisburg, PA...three hours from Gotham..none.
I see Black people working hard all day, every day, and I see that they never get a break, unless they are whores for a white politician...White folks are "promoted" because...well...come check it out for your damn self...
By the way, I wasn't born here, I'm merely recording what I see...Shock! Horrors!
Survey the scenario and draw your own conclusions....
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The point is that when you get out of the major metro areas, you see that the situation for many black Americans is blighted and bleak...
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We are the Maori of America. No one, and I mean, no one who has any decion-making authority, really wants to see this stuff up close. Remember when Paula Zahn would do her two second spiel on "the state of Black America, " and then cut to break?
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And, yes, it has everything to do with race, when you cut to the bone. This is what the next American president will have to deal with. Trust me. I live in Harrisburg.
And, I am merely recording what I see.
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Still recording.