Letters to the Editor
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@softdog (to Joan's credit)
You can look back at her responses to me; Joan has always been aware that my saracasm is directed at her coverage. She thinks I crossed a certain line in the particular post you quote and I do agree with her. I don't think my point was wrong. In fact, I think this comment section and what I'm seeing on the news today makes the point as well. But it was the timing that I took issue with and assumed that's what she was commenting on.
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I know whereof you speak.
Weeping, when you say
It's not as some kind of "black partisan" that I was infuriated, but rather as a liberal who believes in diversity and tolerance and a healthy skepticism of mainstream narratives.
I know what you mean. You don't need to explain that your opinion is not couched in your blackness to me because I agree with it and I'm Irish white.
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not that it's any of your business thrasher, but
my wife converted, orthodox rite - no question, israeli or american, the kids are jewish. why she converted? here it is, from Ruth:
thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:
the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. -
I have to second lateagain's opinion on TRenee's post.
I Joan gave out stars, that one should get one.
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for example
I've argued elsewhere that, despite the fact that I consider "the radical right," fundamentalists, etc., scary and hateful, I don't actually know any of them as people and so I discourage my fellow progressives from their knee-jerk dismissals of them.
I want to understand the people in the Bible belt, too. Even if I disagree with them, I want to see them as human beings, not caricatures.
Many people here, for instance, resort to facile slogans about religion being the opiate of the masses.
I think this is destructive too, though it's a critique I'm broadly sympathetic to. I am religious, but I also am a secular humanist and have been an atheist, so culturally I tend to find myself more in the secular-humanist/atheist camp than the "religious" camp. (I don't think this is a helpful dichotomy, though I recognize it exists.)
I just firmly believe that the path to learning to get along lies in, well, learning to get along.
Rejecting whole groups of people out of hand (e.g., members of the Nation of Islam) is simply unproductive. It distorts reality.
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@AKA Smith (don'tskipthisone)
We are similiar and i think you should like me! Start now. Please. I've been more focused ever since you pointed out that you have trouble following my point. And I can be even more focuseder if I try harder...
As far as I am concerned, you and I are friends now.
'nuff said.
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@AKA Smith (by the way)
I'm not saying you have to think I'm funny or that I don't whine too much. I think you and I each have a tendency to be, at times, overly serious and somewhat repetitive (which can strike people as whining). But that should not get in the way of our new friendship, right?
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Weeping and David Sugarman
I think it's about environment rather than whether you're mixed or straight black (which we can debate because, really, black people are historically mixed). I think everyone can have a diverse view if they try.
Technically, I'm mixed. But since my father was absent I was raised "black" and consider myself as much (so I don't mind Obama embracing his blackness). I wasn't exposed to anyone white as a small child unless it was a teacher or on a passenger on a bus and was always treated as if I were black; there was no knowledge, even on my part, that I was mixed.
I was tracked and in the third grade was sent to a classical school for smart kids. Basically I was one of the few black kids around. This was tough, but it taught me to get along well with others; my best friend was Korean. In junior high, I was sent to Kenwood Academy, which is in Hyde Park and is primarily black. I got along with the black kids, too, even though the program through which I was tracked was more diverse.
Perhaps I'll change my mind about this after I have a kid with my betrothed, who is white, but I am not inclined to think that I will.
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Carol Richards, has anyone ever told you . . .
that you make friends too easily?
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@TRenee, David, weeping, etc.
The funny thing is, I just did some major research on evolutionary theory and was reminded that we quite literally descend from a single man and woman. I mean, quite literally, they (the famous "they") have traced every woman to the same mitochondria and every man to whoever gave them that universal Y chromosome.
When you step back like this and look at the really, really big picture--and believe me, I did; I was immersed in the "ancestral population" of 50,000 years ago--this white/black thing feels plain silly.
PS Surely you can guess what anthropologists call this mitochondrial woman and y-donor man, can't you?
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@Yehlaina
What did Obama just do if not throw his pastor and spiritual leader under the bus?? Wright said nothing new these past few days. He just said it on a bigger pulpit to a wider audience. This man's beliefs probably haven't changed significantly on these issues in 20 years.
Why do you still support Obama if you're so hung up on the fact that the Clintons did the same thing to political appointees? In the political environment in which Bill Clinton was governing, when Lani Guinier's writings became puiblic, there was NO WAY she was going to become assistant attorney general. They gave her a try, her beliefs turned out to be way out of step with the mainstream (Ted Kennedy even said she wasn't going to be approved), and they backed down.
Tell me exactly how this is different from what happened today. And tell me why you think Obama won't do the same thing with a political appointee who gets in trouble.
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Do any of the rest of you
ignore your children, skip important obligations, and not make dinner when you're on salon?
Gotta run.