http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/photograph-of-bill-clinton-and-rev-wright-surfaces/

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3482425

After reading about the Tuskegee experiments, I wouldn’t put anything past anybody. It is a pretty sick world at times.

For all those who keep saying this: A black person in this country with any sort of degree from any sort of diploma mill is basically guaranteed a good-paying govermnet job. Of course, highly-trained and highly-skilled blacks are as highly sought after in competetive fields as anyone else, so what else are we suppose to do?

I wouldn’t have a problem at all with increased social security or some kind of benefits program for blacks over, say, 50. But ironically those are the blacks who I find the most agreement with. For the northern white liberals (who I suspect is saying this), there’s actually plenty of blacks in the south who agree with me. They, even more than me, are tired of people blaming whites for their problems, which recently are caused more by nevermarried mothers and a victim mentality than some shenanigans in a bocephus town in Louisiana.

Has anyone ever stopped to ask whether or not these reasons for being pissed off are valid?

Well, in the case of blacks in the U.S…. they are pretty damn valid. Several hundred years of slavery and oppression aren’t going to be forgotten about anytime soon.

On the flip side of that coin, whites in America aren’t going to forget it happened either. Therefore a lot of them don’t want to see blacks in a position where the can get revenge.

So the long and short of it is that racism exists, and it will continue to exist long after we’re dead and gone. Yes, it goes both ways, but the whites definitely have the better end of the deal. So if you’re white, better to keep your mouth shut and count your lucky stars that you’re on the winning side of the equation. The best we can do as a society is start the wheels of change turning for the better.

1) Racism did not end w/ the civil war.
2) Resentments built over centuries of oppression are not undone in a single generation.
3) Likewise, the economic consequences of that injustice are not undone in a single generation either.
4) While there are no doubt some black people out there who practice racist violence against other minorities, or harbor racist resentments against them, the fact is only whites are currently in a position to impose any sort of institutional racism on others.
5) Whites also perpetrated the most heinous acts of racism in this country’s history. And as I pointed out in 4, they’re also the only ones capable of repeating those atrocities, which is why discussions of racism today tend to focus on whites.

I say this because as a child of a white mother and a black father, I am pretty certain that he was not accepted fully by either side growing up. For that reason he could listen to both sides of the argument (or more likely defend attacks from both whites and blacks) to think about it on a more personal level of what makes sense to him instead of buying into the hate rhetoric. Conversely he could reason against hateful, blanket-statements from whites or blacks and his defense more likely to be listened to as he was straddling that line. He was not just on one side, even if only because he was forced to by reluctance on both sides to fully accept him. Hate all white people?!!? But his mom and that part of his family are white. Black people are not intelligent?!? But he’s learned things from his father and that side of the family. Another example is Tiger woods brushing off the magazine noose cover while black sports columnists were screaming for heads because of the insult to the black athlete. I’m reasonably sure that Tiger did not really feel accepted by either side growing up for the same reason as Obama. Basically I believe he didn’t care because he learned long ago to view things on a more personal level because he had to. And besides, Tiger knew what people were really judging him on, his superior golf talent. Racist or not, you can not deny that and what a wonderful thing it is to base your identity on universally logical standard.

It’s my understanding that Obama was not religious(or at least with Wrights church/ideology) until his first charge in Chicago. He was a community organizer/activist dealing with a predominantly African American population. Church ties grew as he saw that as one of the best ways to reach the community he was serving. Hence his association with the nutjob Wright. Not defending Wright at all as I believe his rhetoric is one of the main contributing factors that perpetuates the racial divide in this country, but his organization did do good things for the community. Good things for the community that were the charge of a young Obama, so naturally a synergy existed between the two. Not by goals created through some shared identity, but by goals created by some shared societal obligations.

Through his ideas and speeches, I believe Obama is an intelligent and reasonable person. Like many, I do not agree with some of his policies. However, I fail to see him as a self-loathing, brainwashed, idiot puppet of a radical church as Wright’s attacks on white America is also indirectly targeted on Obama. So far the intelligence of Obama has not been in question by Democratic or Republican rivals. And self awareness is an intrinsic human trait, which may be one of the factors for the levels of racial divide in this country. One always thinks of life through their terms or eyes, fearing and questioning things not seen through that lens. Not right or wrong, just human nature. If Obama is intelligent and self aware, how can he be on just one side of the race debate?

What I do see is someone more capable of positioning himself outside the lines of the nasty issue of race in America. Someone capable of bringing up the real concerns of race and not scared to go off party in his views for fear of being considered an Uncle Tom or a white, bleeding-heart, liberal hippie. Someone we have to listen to as he is as impartial as it gets (and with this statement keep in mid that I believe most on the forefront of this issue are not impartial at all). What I also see is hope that we can now address the real problems of race in America through reasonable and productive dialogue. No small order any way you look at it. And if, just if, he can make some leeway into that future (and let’s face it, no one on the white or black side has even come close since MLK), gives me more confidence he can do it for other decisive issues in our country. Is he the right man for the presidency? Still thinking about that myself. But in my opinion, he’s the first candidate from any party that seems sincere in his charge to change a system where to win means the other has to lose. And that in itself is pretty impressive.

Tribalism really has no place in Christianity.

Anyway, if you find that people won’t engage w/ you on that topic, it’s probably because neither you or they have any idea WTF you’re talking about.

But you do have an idea of WTF you are talking about. Oh please, Matt, educate me. I’m just begging to have my ignorance washed away with your wisdom and erudition…

Oh, so that’s why.

Anyway, if you find that people won’t engage w/ you on that topic, it’s probably because neither you or they have any idea WTF you’re talking about.

Herein lies the problem. Which is that minorities, particularly blacks in the US, ARE pissed off about the way they’ve been treated. I understand it, you understand it, Mike Huckabee understands it, yet we’re all supposed to ignore it. Blacks are urged to “get over it”, and whites are urged to believe that blacks have “gotten over it”. It’s the proverbial elephant in the room, everyone knows it’s there, but no one says anything about it.

Has anyone ever stopped to ask whether or not these reasons for being pissed off are valid?

See, no one really likes to talk about racism when it’s black racists attacking and murdering dark-skinned latinos and vice versa. Racism might as well not exist in polite white conversation when its “brown on brown” or “brown on asian.”

The real elephant in the room is that the only group in society that is expected to not be racist is whites. This is why I have largely lost all interest in racism as an issue. Virtually all talks about racism are about “whitey has done to X” when there is plenty of stuff to go around today.

Black on Korean violence? They’re just taking out pent up anger toward whitey on the next best thing!

Hispanic on black violence? They’re just enraged that whitey stole their land 160 some years ago.

It’s Louisiana. What did you expect? The only reason it’s still part of the United States is that if we released it back into the wild, it’d be such a banana republic that Mexico would look as cleanly governed as the Scandinavian countries.

Uhhh, you say that’s not what you believe? Maybe demeaning characterizations of libertarians are no more appropriate than those of Southern Baptists and other Christians.

This whole discussion over whether Wright’s remarks were on-target or completely daffy sort of misses the point.

1) There’s no reason to assume Obama agreed w/ everything he said.

2) Given his background and his popularity, I rather suspect that Wright had lots of interesting and more, ah, restrained commentary on other issues, which is probably what Obama found compelling about him. In fact, I suspect it’s similar to our attraction to Obama–I don’t agree w/ him on everything, and dislike some of his ideas, but overall, he seems thoughtful, intelligent, and engaging.

3) People’s feelings change and fluctuate from day to day, and most intelligent adults have complicated views on patriotism and such. It’s a bit unfair to judge someone on a couple cherry-picked remarks, and it’s batshit crazy to judge somebody else for simply having observed those remarks in a respectful manner.

The other thing that I think bears repeating–and you did touch on it–is that black racism, while unfortunate, carries no real threat. The reason white racism is a problem, and why we’re so sensitive to it, is that whites actually have the numbers, money, and political power to do serious harm to those they’ve a racist grudge against (and historically, have done just that–witness the slave trade, segregation, Jim Crow, the more horrific responses to the civil rights movement, etc). The worst thing black racism seems to be responsible for is… making white people uncomfortable. And as you and Huckabee alluded to, African Americans actually have a reason to dislike and distrust whites.

So many (almost exclusively white) commentators on the right (and, alas, in the Hillary half of the left) act as though there’s no longer any historical context to racism, or that the historical atrocities motivated or sanctioned by racism were somehow a joint partnership between blacks and whites, each with equal responsibility, so that today, racist statements from either group are equally abhorrent. Thus the facile analogizing between, you know, Obama and the Klan (seriously, go read the comments at, say, Althouse). But it’s absurd, and it’s really something they should be called on more often.

Anyone who takes this line should deal squarely with the particular strain of anti-Semitism in Black American culture now. If this argument is going to turn on history, then the Jews go to the head of the line by thousands of years.

The whole racial situation is a catch 22, in order to ease tensions, attitudes much change, yet in order for attitudes to change, the tensions have to be eased. Sure, we’re making progress, but barring some kind of zany event like and alien invasion or something farfetched like that. I think it will take hundreds of years of work to remove racism from human societies, if it can even be done at all.