Letters to the Editor
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Not good enough
Illinois grows corn, too.
A senator from Illinois is going to back ethanol even if he's not planning to go after votes in Iowa. Corn and coal both employ a lot of people in the state.
-- Pudnhead
Sorry, this smacks of old school politics, and Obama is suppose to be something new....if he was, he would support new technologies, and not cowtowing to local, special interests...we need NEW attitudes in Washington, not the same old same old. Barack lost me because of this and because he disses the baby boom generation, which he really is a part of...1961 is very much part of the baby boom time--HELLOOOO!. To jettison and trash the issues baby boomers care about is dangerous waters to tread in, since that group is a huge, if not the largest, voting block and they aren't going to tolerate such crap. I certainly am not.
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Wow! Wow!!
I don't think I ever said, or insinuated, or ever meant to say that my perspective was ”the only valid one," or that anyone who thinks we are "really past race issues" is "deluded, stupid, or insane." Nor did I say, or mean to say that those who disagreed with me are “deluded, idiotic sheep and fools that would have so very much to learn from [my] far superior intellect and perspective.” Nor did I suggest that “black, brown and yellow people, Jews, and Muslims, are no longer restricted from living in certain neighborhoods because of [your???] color or religion; are elected every two years to offices such as Mayor, Governor, Congressman, and, uh, Senator, as in Senator Obama; and have children who attend school with one another and socialize perfectly unselfconsciously,” or that any of those who disagree with me are “just deluded--SCARILY deluded—lunatic[s], who should be locked up and everything, or reeducated by someone like [me] who knows better.”
Wow!!! Where did that come from? Projection much? (Thanks, Maxine, for helping field the response to my last post!)
I said I like Barack Obama, and don't *hate* Debra Dickerson (an African American woman) for raising questions about his candidacy.
"Give ME a break's" over-the-top reaction to my question as to whether we are all really "past" race issues is all the proof I need that we are not . . .
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who says who's black?
I had the unusual experience of listening to one of Rush Limbaugh's rants on the radio. I was driving in a benighted part of the East Bay where reception of my PBS radio station deteriorated, and as I switched to AM I encountered the Rush. He assured the world that, if elected, Barack Obama would not be the first black president, that Bill Clinton has that honor. Apparently the man never says anything once, so I got his point--but not the point of his repeatedly abridging Jesse Jackson's name to Jesse Jack-SNORT. I mean the snort was a sound effect, not a pronounced word. Probably Limbaugh's regular listeners know his verbal tics well and know what they mean. Maybe there are actually people who care.
Joan Strand
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Why whites continue to be clueless...
I do not give a damn with which racial groups Obama indentifies, and I am even less interested in the parsing of heritage, family history and even skin tone that one frequently sees emerging from the African-American "community."
Good, and that's why you will never understand why blacks feel the way they do. One more person saying more about themselves than about what Dickerson writes. Dickerson is right when she sees white America feeling "safe" with Obama, and also about what she says about "house negroes". It's the same way America felt safe with Colin Powell or Nat King Cole...you just are reconfirming all she is saying.
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I'm Not Actually White!
Applying Debra’s amazing racial litmus test, I have come to the conclusion that despite my pasty pink complexion and decidedly WASP appearance—I’m not actually white!
White," in our political and social reality, means those descended from English, German or other genetically related Anglo Saxon or Caucasian stock. Involuntary immigrants of European descent (even those descended from voluntary great-grandparents) are just that, involuntary immigrants of European descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics (and I didn’t volunteer to be an American). At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a cab driver named Declan O’Donnaly from South Philly that has only been in the U.S for twenty years and a fifth-generation scion of the Cincinnati Smith’s have more in common than the fact that Zhang Yiping from Beijing can't tell them apart. They're both "white" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the guy from Cincinatti, for better or worse, is politically and culturally white, as we use the term.
Yes, I know it sounds stupid, but its Debra’s argument not mine. I just switched some of the terms around to make the fallacies more glaring than they already were (if that’s possible).
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obnoxious article
What is Debra J. Dickerson yammering about? I don't see any substance to this article. Is the black caucus really tearing Obama down for not being black enough? What a scoop Dickerson has! Nobody else has the access and and insight to report on this growing controversy in Dickerson's imagination.
On the environment Dickerson complains about Obama's support for clean coal and ethanol. Well, his environmental credentials are pretty damn good.
We'll not have a renewable zero emission energy economy for a long time, several decades in the best case scenario. In the meanwhile there are incremental steps including: hybrids, clean coal, ethanol, energy efficient appliances and regulation, etc. Solar is on the verge of technological breakthroughs to cut costs exponentially, as are other renewable energy sources gaining political momentum. But until those are researched and built, we need transitional technologies, especially when they produce American jobs. Obama has an optimal energy policy within realistic constraints, and is favored by many environmental advocacy groups. So I really don't see Dickerson's problem.
On race Dickerson says:
"Whites, on the other hand, are engaged in a paroxysm of self-congratulation; he's the equivalent of Stephen Colbert's "black friend." Swooning over nice, safe Obama means you aren't a racist. I honestly can't look without feeling pity, and indeed mercy, at whites' need for absolution."
That makes me sick. Obama is a self made man of great accomplishment. That he's mixed and black isn't primarially an opportunity for repentance from guilty whites. Frankly, it's beautiful in it's own right and at the heart of the American dream. The American ideal is that people come together and somehow wind up being greater than the sum of the parts. If you haven't figured that out then I feel sorry for you as you're missing out on one of the world's most beautiful aspirations.
Dickerson, you have issues. Your insight is skin deep.