Letters to the Editor
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How about moving beyond Hillary, for good?
Ms. Walsh,
You may be correct about the gaffe in Obama's speech, but I find it relatively minor, and hope others do as well. Obama has done a magnificent job of rising above the divisive politics of race. It's only because Hillary Clinton and her campaign have been so desperate that race has been an issue. She has run a disgraceful campaign. Early on, I actually was leaning towards Clinton, finding her policy positions on such issues as health care more appealing than Obama's. But her campaign has devolved into a status of sleaze and fear mongering. It feels like George Bush all over again. Obama has risen above that and my hope is that his message of "hope" will result in real policies and actions that transform our lives. If Hillary Clinton had a shred of dignity she would drop out now and support Obama and unite the party. She mathematically has almost no chance of winning. She would have to cut some back room deal to get the nomination, which is what she seems to be aiming at.
I have great respect for you, but feel your views on Clinton, aside from Iraq, a bit puzzling.
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Chill out your crap, Hhatchet
i want obama president. i don't want needed white voters scared off. capisce? and that's what i meant, Pyrrho, about the difference between how whites and blacks define racism. nevertheless, Hhatchet, black on white violent crime VASTLY outnumbers the reverse, so you can't use that as an example (you *can* use police brutality, since that is overwhelmingly anti-black, even by black police).
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Obama's credibility
Dear Editor,
I believe Senator Obama is a nice man who means well and has inspired a lot of people to get involved in politics. He has given them a reason to trust him and has given enough speeches to convince them that he will solve their problems and that he is a different kind of candidate.
However, I have my doubts. In the past few weeks, we have seen the real politician in Obama come out. It began with the wink, wink talk about NAFTA with the Canadian government. Followed by the talk from his surrogate about not pulling out of Iraq as the candidate claims. Then after denying he had a close relationship with Tony Rezko, he finally admitted last week, that indeed his relationship with Rezko was closer and that the contributions were larger than first reported. This was followed by the Reverend Wright issues, which he denied ever being present to witness. Of course, this was followed by another revision in which he acknowledged that indeed he was familiar with the inflammatory talk by his pastor but that he did not agree with it.
Call it like you want to call it, to me this dodging and positioning and triangulating is called lying.
I am concerned, Senator Obama does not have the honesty, integrity and guts to be our President. Furthermore, I love my grandmother. When Senator Obama threw his grandmother under the bus to score political points he lost me. I’m voting for Hillary.
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Joan Walsh vs Girl In Red Phone Ad Denounces Hillary And Her "Politics Of Fear"
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/girl_in_hillary_red_phone_ad_d.php
Joan, maybe you can learn something from the mouths of babes.
It is clear that you are in denial about Hillary losing the race.
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I once made babies cry
When I was 22 I went to live in a smallish city in South Korea that probably had less than 100 "foreigners" most white living in it. I was stared at on a daily basis by many who had never, except in movies, seen a white person before.
This is the closest I've ever had to being "other"--well and visiting certain segregated neighborhoods around the US. They say that intelligence is the ability to navigate conflicting truths...
I thought Obama was saying that it isn't necessarily wrong to worry about when a person walking down the street--but it is a stereotyping--some of it based on experiences or preconceptions. But white people need to be able to at the same time realize how hurtful it is to be stereotyped like this on a regular basis. How frustrating this could be over time when you have personally never done anything to deserve it. For this reason I try to intentionally look into the face of all people I pass--I don't meet their eye if they seem to be hostile of any race or gender.
But I will never forget what it was like when I lived in Korea that just my face alone, the color of it caused little Korean babies to cry at the sight of me. I was so frightening and albino looking to them. The way we look at one another (even though some of this is subconscious), the amount of respect we give one another at the outset matters. I for one wish that our neighborhoods were not so segregated in America, and our populations less easily intimidated by one another. Being able to understand one another better at a fundamental, basic level would not just benefit one population. It benefits us all.
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maybe she's senile.
(from wiki) "Although Barack Obama's paternal step-grandmother Sarah Obama has given a number of recent interviews, Madelyn Dunham's last interview was in 2004, on the occasion of Barack Obama's keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention."
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@Lisa Michele
Wow.
I'm deeply humbled.
Really.
Thank you.
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Implicit Association Test
Referring to the Implicit Association Test, Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji:
We've found that ordinary people, including ourselves, harbor negative associations toward particular social groups on 'implicit' measures of bias, even though they honestly report having no such bias at the conscious level.
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/12.16/09-prejudice.html
From a Washington Post piece referring to the IAT
The bias tests, which have now been taken by more than 2 million people, 90 percent of them American, and used in hundreds of research studies, have arguably revolutionized the study of prejudice…The results of the millions of tests that have been taken anonymously on the Harvard Web site and other sites hint at the potential impact of the research. Analyses of tens of thousands of tests found 88 percent of white people had a pro-white or anti-black implicit bias…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27067-2005Jan21.html
You can try the test and others like it (including one about the 2008 presidential candidates) here:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html