Letters to the Editor
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don't get angry people
These republcain trolls want that. i suggest you ignore the rush limbaugh sabotuer trolls. don't give her what she wants. Let her toil in irrelevance with her neo-cons for thirty years. That outta stop her running her mouth with this nonsense. She who cares about your nonsense in nov. When the gop is ended, due to their criminality incompetance and treason.
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you summed it up calgodot
great post. The crux of the issue.
way to think above the fray. Are you a professor? :) If not you should be.
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@calgodot
"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."
Wow, you have a distorted view of the world. The black person goes back to work while the white person goes to the beach? White people don't work? And, while we're at it, why do you automatically assume that the black person depends on public transportation. Black people do buy cars, you know. They often live in rich, not so all white, beachfront neighborhoods. Go...walk around your neighborhood. You'll probably see a few black people.
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@ Susuan Sunflower
Thanks for a helpful post about an important topic. These things are difficult to examine because so much of subtle racist terminology has gone mainstream, often without the ill-intentions of the speaker who has picked up common parlance. For example, I have a teenaged cousin who called her friends. "n---ah" thinking it was all right. She had to be told why she could not coopt this word, with no concept of its volatile history. It is hard to make excuses for politicians who are far more aware of the power of words.
I have to say, I blinked when Clinton uttered her seeingly innocuous phrase- in my gut, I understood that it was racist, whether in her mind or not. Thanks to the unending commentary since the Rev. Wright brouhaha, these discussion have filled MSM programing and the blogosphere ad infinitum. Always posited on false arguments, these distracting discussions never get to the heart of the issue; for whatever reasons (ratings, corporate bosses), they dance around the edges and retreat to the superfluous. The conversation must start elsewhere.
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@Henry Hotspur
What was "groundbreaking" about Obama's speech? I read every word of it, and all I took home was "Don't blame me for Wright because it's a black think and I'm black". There was nothing "goundbreaking" about it, except that a black Presidential candidate was making it. That alone seems to make everything Obama does "groundbreaking".
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from someone who wrote this jeb
"Great ending
[Read the article: Thank you, Rush Limbaugh!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]
I've come to be a bit obsessed about the campaign, especially the overt sexism toward Clinton and the manipulation of anti-racist sentiment to benefit Obama. But the very worst part of all of this is seeing so-called "progressives" either tolerating or actively participating in attacks on a fellow progressive. The level of hatred toward Clinton surpasses anything I've seen toward anybody, with the possible exception of Bush and Cheney. Clinton has never done anything I can see to incite this hatred, but I still see people acting as if she has done something egregious to deserve the kind of anger directed at her. "She voted for Iraq" doesn't cut it, folks. So did Edwards, and you overwhelmingly support him.
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i'll take your opinion with a grain of salt and what it's worth.
Take yoru meds. your bipolar or getting you angry and looking for a target. Please stop the divide and conquer. Your candidate lost. If you are going to join the gop do it. Please stop sabtoage your 'opposition' party.
A one party govenrment is slavery. you have yoru candidate gop. Let the democrats select ours without your sabotage. Treason
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I thought only foreign workers were 'hard-working'
The most surprising thing to me about Hillary's statement is that she complimented American citizens as 'hard-working'.
Americans working the longest hours with the least time off of any workers in the developed world and are generally treated as disposable as dirt. Yet, in the last seven-eight years the only workers in America I've heard referred to as 'talented', 'hard-working', or 'indispensable' have been the foreign ones. That's by the likes of such a diverse group as Thomas Friedman, George Bush, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
No wonder there's a 'xenophobic' anti-immigration backlash.
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Proud Texas Girl
Do you even realize how you sound with all of that "Go back to Africa" bullshit. You sound like a racist.
Since I don't know you, I'm not going to say you are a racist, but damn girl.
And another thing...
Not all black people are on welfare. Not all black people are "getting paid" to have babies. Not all black people need the help of a social worker.
Sometimes white people go on welfare. I know, shocking. Sometimes hispanic people. Heck, there are young women in both groups who are getting paid to have babies.
I understand that working in the trenches can make you crazy, but I don't think you can be an effective social worker if you only see your clients in terms of their race, and not as individuals.
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the letters section of Salon is extraordinary in the internet world
There is no other place I've found on the web that I feel like I'm in an intelligent discussion with thoughtful people as here.
On that note, calgodot what a great post!
extraordinary. Have you read the book by Jonathon Kozol on apartheid in education? I am convinced that we need to change the country systematically at the education level first in order to tap into our full potential as a nation. The tricky part is the give and take...if there is one pie then white people may not want their slice to be smaller (As AKA once succinctly put it) even if it makes things more "equal." We need to tap into civic pride as a nation in order to stop squabbling with one another about what we need to do to create true change that is good for all of us and necessary for all of us. So see you on the beach (I'm kidding...education is a field I'm planning to return to...this issue matters to me on a gut level that I hope never disappears into some unasked for scrim of privilege...)
And Susan Sunflower, thank-you for your thoughtful post as well. I wonder, for curiosity's sake, which part of the country you're from?
You touch on many things that resonate to me. Have you ever read the book "Black Like me" by John Howard Griffen? It is a memoir written by a white journalist in the 1950's who takes a drug to make his complexion darker, shaves his head and takes the identity of a black man and travels through the South. The most haunting moment of the book is when he catches his reflection in a mirror and thinks "I don't like the looks of that guy."
I read it recently and it keeps resonating as I watch this election unfold....we as a society are catching glimpses of our own reflection in the mirror....and it isn't always a pretty image.
How do we reach across these barriers to talk to people who are convinced that racism no longer exists (except perhaps in Rev. Wright's pulpit)? Is it worth it to try to explain, or should we encourage people to vote for the candidate of change and think about racism--later?