Letters to the Editor
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shorter version: I think there are a lot of white folks who believe they would vote for a black candidate .. a black candidate who called them a racist, not so much ...
and I'm not certain that Obama's "keeping himself above the fray" helps him here much ...
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Honest Discussion on Race
Here's how honest discussions on race go between blacks and "liberal" whites:
WHITE: Let's have an honest discussion about race.
BLACK: Wow. It's about time!
WHITE: You start.
BLACK: Okay. We have a lot of problems with the white dominance of political and business sectors of American life. It leads to active and passive forms of racism. It engenders a deep feeling of hopelessness among our race as they rarely, if ever, see black people achieving the same levels of success as whites. Other than by dealing drugs, playing basketball (controlled by white owners), or becoming a misogynistic hiphop artist (owned by a white corporations). This is not to mention the overwhelming impact of the war on drugs and the obviously racist legal system, which results in nearly a third of all black men being incarcerated at one point in their lives. The discrepancy leads one to believe the deck is stacked, and not in our favor.
WHITE: But we gave you affirmative action. We gave you welfare.
BLACK: Yes, and those things helped, for a time. But even the effective application of those policies revealed a somewhat paternalistic - and racist - attitude towards our race. White liberals may have had the best intentions in creating those systems, but the end result is generations of dependency, poverty and hopelessness. What we really need are opportunities to help ourselves, rather than handouts which simply make us dependent on our old masters. We need black-owned businesses, black-owned banks, black-owned corporations. We don't need you to "give" them to us - but we need you to make it just as easy for a black American to do it as a white. And it just isn't so. The welfare system essentially created a new form of slavery, and little has been done to correct it.
WHITE: Now don't bring slavery into it. That was a hundred years ago. I don't own any slaves.
BLACK: It was a hundred years ago, and while you may not own slaves, your ancestors may have. Many white ancestors did. The economic power and success of America was built on the bloodied backs of black slaves, and we are still kept from enjoying those rewards in as great a degree as whites. Again, the disparity seems stacked; it may well be accidental or circumstantial, but the failure to correct it in 100 years is not an accident.
WHITE: Well I'm not a racist.
BLACK: Maybe not. But the system from which you derive the essentials of life rewards your race in far greater proportion than my race. While you yourself may not be a bigot, you benefit from a system which is bigoted.
WHITE: Well, there's nothing I can do about that. Giving up my privilege won't help anything.
BLACK: Perhaps not. But simply going along with it won't change anything either.
WHITE: Since I didn't do anything to create this system, and I cannot do anything to repair it, I simply cannot see any solution. I think it is time for your people to put the past behind us and work harder to get along with whites.
BLACK: Then we'll never find a solution.
WHITE: In the end, that's okay with me. I've still got my SUV, house in a nice neighborhood, 24-hour police protection, political leaders who look like me and think like me, businesses which will trust me on sight because of my skin color. I've still got my privilege.
BLACK: But I thought you wanted to have an honest dialog.
WHITE: We did. You go back to work now. I'm going to deposit my refund check and buy a new jet ski. See you on the beach!
BLACK: Yeah. See you on the beach. If they don't cancel the bus route from my neighborhood to the shore. Or if I don't get arrested for daring to walk around in a rich, all-white, beachfront neighborhood.
The biggest obstacle to any honest dialog on race is the refusal of whites to honestly face their part in the ongoing system of racism and privilege known as AMERICA.
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Joan...
...it's not about Obama getting "90 pct of the black vote" or Clinton getting "60 pct of the white vote." It's about a candidate who panders utilising the question of race and then using it to justify an almost surely lost cause.
I'd expect that of post-reconstruction, pre-1964 Southern Democrats; not Hillary Clinton.
Obama's "bitter" comments didn't touch the third rail of race; Clinton's did. And he didn't intend it for wide distribution [as Clinton has done with her "hard-working white voter" comments]...and one can also add that to a long list of arguably racial double-speak on the part of her campaign that has undeniably contributed to Clinton's current predicament with black voters.
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How to lobby for a former candidate, or the latest observation from Joan Walsh
So, Clinton says something offensive, and you don't write about her fuck-up, instead, you choose this moment to discuss DEMOCRATS and race.
Joan, you must agree that Obama can talk about race. No? His "race" speech was more forthright and honest than any discussion about race I've ever seen from a politician.
Can Clinton talk about race? I'm not so sure. If she can, she must be choosing not to. Can you talk about race? I'm not so sure.
So phony.
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Which demographic are you in?
My problem with this debate is that it is based on dividing people into groups, then theorizing that "this group is worried about the economy," and "that group is worried about inequality," and "that group wants America to kick butt," while "this group likes cucumber sandwiches."
I AM IN THE GROUP THAT DOES NOT LIKE BEING REDUCED TO A GROUP.
Whoever is the candidate must do well with key demographics. True. But how? Often times, concerted efforts to "reach out" to a group are indistinguishable from "pandering" to them.
I don't know why people say Obama hasn't reached out to white, working-class groups though. He goes to factories. He speaks to trade unions and labor groups. He wears the hardhats (or maybe that's to deflect criticism from Hillary Clinton). He speaks at length about the economy. What else is he supposed to do, drive the pace car at a Nascar race?