Letters to the Editor
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Here we go again
90% of black voters choose Obama because what……he was President of the Harvard Law Review? So score one for Ferraro on the facts.
Now here’s one for the white voters. Pssst, a clue, Obama isn’t black. Clarence Thomas is black, Marion Barry is black, Al Sharpton is black. Obama is Halle Barre black. We’re not talking biological, number of pigment cells here. We’re talking acceptability and attractiveness. Many a racist would toss their hoods for a toss with Mz Barre, and I would suspect that many whites who would never vote for a black who looked like the stereotypical black find it easier to vote for Obama for the same reason; he doesn’t look the part.
Is it the only reason for his popularity? Of course not. But when Ferraro said he’s “lucky” to be black, that’s 100% true relative to black voters. She didn’t say it, I’m saying it; he’s lucky to be Halle Barre black relative to white voters.
You see, that’s the problem with so many issues today. Because we live in a black/white (sorry), one liner, snapshot era, we’ve lost the fact that things are just much more complicated than that; nuances, motives, shades of gray, context, etc. If you took a poll asking the question, “given the choice, would you rather be born black or white? I don’t think I’d get much of an argument that “white” would be the overwhelming choice. But if the question was “would you rather be born looking like (white) Squiggy or (black) Denzel Washington?” I think you’d have a lot of head scratching taking place.
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Why belittle your readership?
Your defense of Ferraro's indefensible comments belittles both Obama as well as your readership. Instead of diminishing or decrying the justified rage that people of color like myself felt when we read Ferraro's hyperbolic comparison of herself to Barack Obama -- a comparison that does not stand up to even the most cursory examination -- it seems astonishing to this reader that you utterly fail to ask the more fundamental question, which I assume to be your job as a pundit: why are so many people voting for BOTH Barack AND Hilary in the first place??? Certainly not, as your article suggests, because Barack is black and good looking (do you think people voted for Bush because he was good looking?), or because Hilary is a woman. It is because something is very wrong with America, and Americans are trying to do something to address it. When people like me hear statements like those of Ferraro, we are reminded of what the government has been telling us for the last eight years. Stay in your place. Be grateful for what the government has given you. Your grievances are a form of propaganda.
Now, the fact that you did NOT understand Ferraro's words in this way can only lead me to the conclusion that you must be white. Because it's obvious to me that your opinion could not have been written by someone who has never experienced racial discrimination -- a random curse, an arbitrary decision against you, based on no rational explanation but somehow coinciding with similar experiences by people in your neighborhood or city who happen to be the same dark color as you. Instead of wasting your time playing "devil's advocate" by peddling your red herrings and polls that putatively demonstrate the stupidity of average Americans, go back to school and learn how to write an argument.
John D. Blanco