Letters to the Editor
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Bumbling Rose
My guess is you got an MBA from a matchbook cover. "Progressive" was in popular use in the late nineteenth century. Such bastions of pinko thinking like the MInnesota Farmer Labor Party were examples. Read a book, for Christ's sake- literally. And the whole notion of self-governance, taken the in proper context, which is worldwide political thought, is LIBERAL. The founding fathers were, yes, liberal. Radical, even. Revolutionary. That didn't go away when the Constitution was finally ratified. It's still in progress, with or without you. fortunately for you, roses do well with applications of manure (watch out for the feed lot varieties, when tend toward salinity). Thanks to the fascist media, goosestepping radio hosts, and mutinational warmongering conglomerates, what passes for "liberal" these days would have been a Rockefeller/Scranton/Percy republikan a generation ago. We've drifted so far reich, uh, right, that any modestly progressive notion brings piss and moan cries of socialism. You don't know jack. Ma'am.
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black-brown
Clinton has the "brown" vote because most "brown" people are supporting her core democrat stance. Most blacks as some say are voting for Obama because of "black pride". I didn't see a tremendous amount of support from black people for Richardson who is "Hispanic or brown or whatever political correct word is being used by the press". If Obama wasn't black, the black community would probably be voting for Clinton, but when Obama used the race card they quickly jumped on the band wagon and did the same. Nice bit of loyalty there...although a small percentage stayed with Clinton.
The "Hispanic" community is now the number one minority and it appears a lot of blacks are not happy with that. I guess Tavis Smiley is one of them. My uncle hired a woman at the MTA in NYC and his boss a black woman said "we only hire minorities", when he pointed out that she was his boss said "she isn't the right kind of minority". Reverse discrimination? Looks like it.
If I were Hispanic I'd be more concerned that my vote didn't garner as many delegates in Texas even though the population would warrant it. Black communities there get more delegates. Blacks have more people represented on television and have all black shows, and black colleges, etc..., It seems that now that their are "brown" coalitions and advocates out there, black folks aren't too happy...not all though as some don't look at race as much. They aren't worrying like Michelle Obama that they will lose their blackness, they just live their life like everyone else, one day at a time.
It's time people started to stop calling themselves black or brown but just American.
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tom payne
You are wrong payneman. Most people waving degrees are not MBAs as is evident from the posts. Some degrees in Astro-neuroticology maybe judging from the content of their writing than content of their actual character.
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Madam
Of course, I could be wrong. But Georgie Porgie is an MBA. How dumb is that stump? It just sets me off when ignorami blather about "liberal". Abolishing slavery was liberal. Extending the franchise to women was liberal. Unions are liberal. the minimum wage. The very idea of health care as a job benefit, or paid vacations, and on and on. Arggghhh. With Bushie, the MBA might stand for Mighty Big .... uh, you know the rest. tom
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Hold on a minute
Everyone in this forum asserting that blacks somehow gained civil rights on the backs of other is pure fallacy. One example of this is the misnomer that blacks have benefited more from civil rights programs like affirmative action. White women actually benefited most. Blacks are still, percentage-wise, one of the most poverty-stricken groups in this coutry. Blacks, while percentage-wise commiting less violent crime, are more likely to be jailed and comprises the largest percentage of our prison population. Blacks have less access to good education.
Let's not all start saying it's time to move on. It seems as if just because some advances have been made (there is evidence of an actual middle class) that all problems have been solved for black Americans.
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Payneman
Ain't that the truth. People calling themselves liberal, progressive and all, still not understanding race. Here is something to tweek dem with
William Wilberforce (August 24, 1759–July 29, 1833) was a British politician and philanthropist. A native of Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780 and became Member of Parliament for Yorkshire (1784–1812), and independent supporter of the Tory party (Remember Dame Thatcher?). A close friend of Prime Minister William Pitt, in 1785 he underwent a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. In 1787 he came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of anti-slave trade activists, including Granville Sharp, Beilby Porteus, Hannah More, and Lord Middleton.
At their suggestion, Wilberforce was persuaded to take on the cause. He became one of the leading English abolitionists, heading the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade, which he saw through to the eventual passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.
In our times, who would have thunk that evangelicals would vote so mightily for the dummy.
Change comes in different forms and those afraid of change, will languish in the same old same old.
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madam
History is so inconvenient. Lincoln was the first Republican president. Regarding the post preceding yours, I have no idea how anyone could assert that blacks did not gain their long delayed rights by the merit of their own struggle. Of course, the Acts of 64 and 65 regarding civil rights and voting rights had unintended consequence (among them making the Confederacy the cornerstone of today's repellent version of the once proud GOP). And, yes, we have a long way yet to go. Thus, this forum, and of infinitely greater import, this election.
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@Pammy 61……
You bring up some interesting, and much overlooked (in my opinion) points. I, and my family, are immigrants (naturalized) and so I have a certain sensitivity to most of the issues being discussed here. We arrived here (1950’s) and literally landed without the proverbial nickel to our name. My father, a Polish Jew, engineered our escape from Russia where he and my mother, a Russian National, had fled in order to get away from the German attack on Poland. Now, being a skinny little Russian Jewish kid in NYC in the ‘50’s, the height of the Cold War wasn’t the coolest thing a kid would wish for. (It took many years to discover that Jew-Bastard was two words) Note: Just for the record, I’m not equating in any way the bigotry I faced with the bigotry the folks of African or Hispanic ancestry faced. We were white. They had to know our religion and nationality, and then they could hate us. To be hated from across the street as soon as one walks out of his or her apartment because of their flesh tone is a feeling that is impossible to express. Oh sure, we can “imagine," we can “sympathize,” we can “empathize,” and we can condemn; but the one thing we can’t do is “experience” it. And therein lays the crux of the problem.
Racism and every other “ism” will never be eradicated, nor even be greatly diminished. It was just as bad in Europe, even among folks of the same nationality, religion, etc. It’s just the way humans are wired. We immediately coagulate into tribes based on, oh just about any difference one could imagine. America is not a “Melting Pot.” Maybe holding that up as a goal is one of the problems. We’re more a jar of marbles. But there is, I believe, hope for a better future.
The difference between European bigotry and the American variety is that, within a generation or two, we’re all immigrants here. Europeans have been bigots for thousands of years. We’re still babies, and with a more realistic expectation, we can do much, much better. I used to ask my mother what to answer when strangers asked what nationality I was. She, being a Cossack, said, “You stare them in the face, and say “’I’M AN AH-MERR-IH-KAHN!” Knowing I spoke with a strong Russian Jewish accent, I asked, “what if they laugh at me?” “Then,” she said (Cossack through and through) “you smash them in their (Russian for fucking) face!” “They won’t laugh any more….or ask you where you’re from again.”
O.k. a little poetic license maybe, but not much. My folks, having suffered through two world wars, knew that only a complete love and allegiance to our new country would level things out for us. They forbid speaking our native Russian in the home until we spoke English fluently. They made us memorize all the Presidents, the States, and most of the songs and folk lore of our new country. I still wake up singing “My Bonnie lies over the Ocean and Oh My Darlin Clementine.”
I guess the lesson is; we’ll never get over our differences, but we can improve on the one thing we all share…..our country. Someone said a while back that the differences are more of class than race, religion, nationality, etc. I believe that. And while I still catch myself once in a while muttering a pejorative under my breath about a person from a different background, it’s more with a smile than a hatred.
It’s a start.