Letters to the Editor
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Joan, Sounds Like an Interesting Conference
Too bad you have framed and headlined it in a tawdry politicized way. It was a thought provoking conference on race in America. Now, it is your personal prism for having yet another lurid gander at party politics. Oh, and perfect bait for more ugly racialized partisan troll fights.
You, and Salon.com generally, seem to have sold out to sensationalism over substance at every opportunity of late.
You probably don't even recognize that the horrible board battles you have been having are directly connected to how you are now defining "content," but from all of us, I just want to extend a warm thanks.
It's been such an uplifting experience for us all. Really.
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A Few Thoughts Of My Own
Thanks for sharing your insight and thoughts about this conference. It certainly sounds like a good model, though I'm not sure I share your optimism.
For starters, the letters threads here at Salon seem to be getting nastier by the day between Clinton and Obama supporters. I have actually felt intimidated posting this week because of what I have seen and experienced in the way of blatant sexism and racism from several of the posters. There are obviously a few well-intentioned posters who do not engage in this, but they seem to be in the minority.
On another front, when I lived and worked in Washington I was on the boards of many progressive groups to address income inequality, gender inequality, age inequality, as well as other "inequalities" faced by so many. I also worked on issues that crossed these boundaries: pay equity, union organizing efforts, child care and family leave, and job/employment opportunities.
From my perspective, we have lost ground on "black-brown" equality and we have lost ground on wage and job issues generally. We had difficult economic times under the Reagan Administration and combined with his anti-regulation, anti-union, anti-affirmative action agenda, we have been trying to rebuild ever since. What we lost during that time has been heaped-upon by the incompetency, neglect and arrogance of the current administration.
The "black-brown" divide is clearly one that needs attention. We faced this during Reagan, Bush I and Clinton, in part because Latinos were a growing force in the job market and in politics -- though clearly not as much a force as they have become. There was tremendous tension between Blacks and Latinos then, too. Blacks felt that an already-small pie would be even smaller if Latinos started getting a "piece" of it. Sounds to me like this is still the case, although perhaps now with even greater tension, particulary in areas hard-hit by economic woes, natural disasters, and just plain prejudice. The prejudice is fueled, in part, by people like Lou Dobbs and right-wing Republicans. I don't think we should ever underestimate or underutilize our ability to hold the media (Dobbs and others) and right-wing or left-wing bigotry to account. This has to be part of a strategy, as well.
I have to agree with Echeveste, though, in the way she defines the underlying problem as one of class and not race. The last eight years have widened this gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots", regardless of their race. Although I know this is only a piece of it.
The campaigns have also raised other troubling concerns that nobody seems willing to address: an age divide and a growing gender divide. The people who will fare the worst during a recession (which is now "official") are children of all races; the elderly of all races; and women of all races. It seems to me that a "black-brown" divide is way too limiting, particularly in light of the tsunami of economic and social problems heading our way in the months to come.
Just my thoughts and my take, from my limited experience and perspective.
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miss. walker
I can't believe any sane sentient human being would actually feel "intimidated" to post a coment on an internet forum. Perhaps you feel intimidated because you have flamed some furious emotions on the boards with your borish defamations of Barack Obama, and his "Obama maniacs" as you so curtly call them. Yes, it has been noticed them some have felt insulted and answered in kind for your seemingly smug sense of white entitlement and "righteous" racism. If as you say you are intidated, then perhaps you should turn your computer off so nobody can leap through the screen to smack you.
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thank-you for this article
Joan,
I love your style of reporting and your nuanced, thoughtful way of looking at things. I can see why you would think that obama and clinton supporters are at eachothers' throats because of the posts here. Online we are anonymous even with a screen name, and so it becomes a game. The abstract blogosphere. But in the real world, most of us I would think have family members and close friends who are supporting each of the three candidates still running--yes, I'm including McCain (my dad is definitely voting for him). So it doesn't surprise me that although people are passionate about the election, I hope that we're also passionate about issues like addressing poverty. The article about Joseph Stiglitz made me feel the same way. How can we help solve problems like poverty and health care without ending a costly moral failure of a war that is three trillion dollars and counting? Star power, no matter who is at the top, won't solve grassroots issues.
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manos99
Do you think personal attacks are going to help your candidate to win?
I'm just wondering. I've seen you attack AKA Smith too on personal grounds. If you don't want to be labeled as any of the adjectives you bring up, then try to be more respectful I haven't seen AKA Smith lately. Do you really think that this forum will be more fun without women because we're all turned off by your sexist remarks?
Seriously.
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Hope gap and letters
Joan, an interesting article. I'd be keen have an expansion on this portion:
Gaspard [..] said that although many on the left tried to get a jump on this year, "The candidates who are running right now don't have the vocabulary to address these issues. The important work that needed to happen on the ground hasn't happened."
What does Gaspard mean? Is he talking about a media to express new concepts, or a repackaging of existing thoughts? When I look at our society, I think part of the problem is that we already have many vocabularies, many of them inconsistent with each other. One faction picks the dialect they want in order to gain advantage over the others. I'm skeptical and curious at the same time.
On the letters topic, I'm finding myself in agreement with ZipCascade and wondering if the journalism here isn't shading a tad yellow. Some of it, particularly headlines, does seem like throwing red meat into a shark tank. No suprise what happens then. For example, I found the "darkening" story to be pointless, yet incendiary speculation.
Maybe I'm just projecting and need to resend this letter to Carry instead. I know that Salon is partially in a no-win situation and a large part of this is just human tribal crap coming to the surface and it will blow over at somepoint, hopefully way before november. And I'm not into censorship. But if you look at the current thread from 'Some free advice for Obama', it's pretty toxic. I really only have a problem with one poster there, mainly for his inability to be civil and respond faithfully and constructively. He must have a rather large spleen. There are certainly other idiots for sure, maybe I'm one of them at times. I'm sure everyone else will have a different list of trolls. But I think if one or two folks tone it down a notch, things will be in much better shape. We might engage in an exchange of ideas.