Letters to the Editor
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deeper truth - the same old garbage from Ferraro
"If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race," she said.
Washington Post, April 15 1988
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0308/A_Ferraro_flashback.html
Keep up the good work, spinning the garbage.
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ok i'm out now
trolls and snipes and playground bullies.
i can only speak for myself, but this isn't even about the election or the candidates. this is about one speech that moved many. i don't even believe in a messiah, but that isn't the point. i'm not a obamabot or whatever other little pigeon-hole you want to stuff me in.
you either get it or you don't. call me sanctimonious if it makes you feel better. i have friends across cultures and would like to expand that.
i do know that some people here posted true feelings of anger and dismay at racial/cultural relations in the US and want to know if there is a way we can talk about this that doesn't come off sounding offensive or xenophobic, for lack of a better word: race religion sexuality whatever it is that is dividing us.
i don't care about changing anyone's mind if it is already made up. go to my posts and find my email address if you'd like to talk over the divide, not over each other.
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@Deeper Truth
I appreciate the case you're making, but I would urge you to consider that perhaps you present a false dichotomy.
Whether or not the "race card" has been played, and we can argue about that, I don't think the evidence you martial is germane.
Whether the Clintons have advocated for civil rights, employ black campaign staffers, etc. is not relevant to the question at hand, which is whether the "race card" has been played.
Your argument is more appropriate to the question of whether or not the Clintons are "racists" in some deep and sinister way.
If we are ever to be honest and reflective about the legacy of racism, it will be necessary to abandon the racist/not racist false dichotomy.
Does that make sense?
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deeper truth
The deeper you go, the deeper the shit you dig yourself into. Bury your B.S. in the backyard and be done with it. You split so many hairs you should be bald by now.
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Deeper Piles
The three a m ad was this year's Willie Horton. Protect them white wimmin (implicitly from darkies and rag heads). Oddly, Billary's white house schedule doesn't show her doing jack while Bill was doing Jill. Her "experience" is Platte River style, very wide and extremely shallow. Meanwhile, the Klingon Kintonistas paint an honorable public servant, whose endorsement they had avidly cultivated, as "Judas". Jew baiting, there Car-vile? What a pack of triangulating hypocrites.
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racist/not racist dichotomy
Weeping for Brunhilde is right. We need to have better semantic tools here. There are racially influenced thoughts, words, and actions that are clearly not racist in terms of overt actions that cause severe damage to those of other races.
Geraldine Ferraro is not a "racist" and I think Obama tried to make that clear, whether he succeeded I don't know. She expresses racially influenced opinions that are not productive in the process of perfecting our society, the process that we desperately need to have happen.
"Racism" occurs when those of other races are denied life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness directly because of the actions of another.
What should we then call these racially influenced opinions that are harmful to the process but that don't directly deprive others of their essential liberties? I think they could rightly be termed racial prejudices, as long as we understand that all of us harboring these prejudices are then not racist. I mean, can't we all agree that we probably all harbor some degree of racial prejudices? Can't we agree that it is okay to help someone else to recognize their racial prejudices if they fail to see them in themselves?
I related in my comments to Joan's last blog on this topic about a step-mother who was awakened to her prejudices as she watched Barack's Unity speech and listened to the grandmother section. She realized so many things about her relationship with the biracial relative she is raising as a single mom that she had failed to see before--the intense conflicts and where their source might be; his need for Obama-as-hero that she had been trying to extinguish and denigrate. She thanked me for helping her to have a more open mind about Obama because she might otherwise have not even watched the speech.
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This is a historic race
All the white male candidates are gone this time... This is a historic race - it is part of the appeal of both candidates.
You're the one spinning the garbage, John.
Geraldine Ferraro is not racist.
She thinks no less of Barack. She said she thinks he holds a lot of promise.
Ferraro believes that when she was chosen to be the Vice-Presidential nominee, it was because she was a woman.
Does that make her sexist?
This time she happens to think Hillary is the most qualified of the candidates because of all of Hillary's years of experience which CBS's "For the Record" proves that she has had.
Most people agree that gender and color are playing factors in the dynamics and historic nature of this race.
Geraldine Ferraro could/should have been more careful with her phrasing, but again - she respects both Barack and Jesse Jackson.
You are providing an example of just what I am talking about John. This is an example where you are the one playing the race card for Obama and against the Clintons. But it's not the truth.
Geraldine Ferraro worked with David Axelrod - Obama's spin master - on campaigns for other minority canidates. David Axelrod knows that both the Clintons and Geraldine Ferraro are not racists.
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Obama's pastor and grandmother...
...are equally deserving of being judged for the totality of their acts, not just a few unfortunate comments that reflect more fear than belief.
You could argue that the grandmother's fear of other dark-skinned men is MORE hurtful. After all, she had a living, breathing example of how wrong it was to paint an entire race with the same fear-based paintbrush. And yet she raised her grandson - a fairly selfless act - so maybe her comments about race should be taken in the context of her nevertheless putting aside her prejudices to raise her grandson with love and honesty.
You could also argue that the works of Obama's pastor show him to be a kind and giving person who devotes his time as much to works as words, and that any comments about race that he made should be taken into the context of a life that has clearly been more about service than fear-mongering stereotyping of whites.
Obama loves his pastor, and his grandmother. He has refused to reject them on the basis of some of the racist things they've said or did, because he knows them well and therefore has the werewithal to judge them in the context of their lives and works, not just for a few random sentences. His speech was an attempt to let us see them as he sees them, not compare which was is more racist, which one has been more hurtful, which one is more deserving of a 'pass'.
We live in a sound bite world, and I suppose it's inevitable that people start to make actual judgements about entire lives and works based on a single sound bite. It's intellectually lazy. Every person reading this board could probably have a quote trotted out that would suggest beliefs, ethics, morality that simply aren't the case...every one of us could easily lose friends, families and jobs if something we said were taken out of context and blown up to represent the totality of our lives, thoughts and actions.
Give the guy a break. He is not responsible for the actions or deeds of his pastor, nor his grandmother. He simply explained the role these people have had in his lives, and how he refuses to judge them for isolated instances of racism that do not reflect who he knows them to really be. If there is one thing to take away from his speech, it is that we should all follow that example - only then can we hope to make racism a thing of the past.