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12 Nov 08

In poll, African-Americans say election a 'dream come true' - CNN.com

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obama poll race election 2008

"Polls show that whites and blacks tend to have different views on the amount of racism in the U.S." said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "So it's not surprising that they would have different views on the likelihood of an African-American president."
"A majority of blacks now believe that a solution to the country's racial problems will eventually be found," Holland said. "In every previous poll on this topic dating back to 1993, black respondents had always said that racial problems were a permanent part of the American landscape."

14 Oct 08

Quiet Political Shifts as More Blacks Are Elected

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race elected officials

In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.
“There’s a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates,” said Dr. Hajnal, whose book about white experiences with black mayors, “Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership,” was published last year by Cambridge University Press.

12 Oct 08

Marcia G. Yerman: Race, Gender and the Media in the 2008 Elections

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gender race election debate

Several themes coalesced over the two-day period. A prominent one was the oft repeated, "Did race trump gender?" Dr. Cynthia Neal-Spence, Associate Professor of Sociology at Spelman College, spoke about the dilemma of the black female. Asking, "Are we as a group more gender conscious or race conscious?" she then suggested "the media coverage had helped black women to choose sides." Despite Obama offering a post-racial approach, she sensed the same "tensions resurfacing that were in place during the suffragette movement." She also saw the media's analyzation as being "racialized."
However, Vojdik said, "Those in the media insisted on gendering her candidacy, taking her from the public sphere to the private construction of her identity as a wife and a mother." This was often accomplished through the use of specific language. She gave as examples the terms, "shrill, emasculating, castrating," with oft used analogies of Hillary as "the hectoring mother,"

or "the wife as ball-buster." Hillary was not male, but she "had failed as a female."

On the other hand, Vojdik saw Sarah Palin as seeking to be elected because she was a woman

in the "good wife and mother" mode. Projecting herself as stereotypically feminine, albeit a

"pit bull with lipstick," she "appeals to the 80's concept of the superwoman." "But," Vojdik asked, "where are the supports for ordinary women?"
3 more annotations...
- Although feminine for Sarah Palin is an asset, "feminine" attributes in general are considered a negative. "The process of gender," as phrased by Vojdik, is a methodology employed by the Republicans where they "feminize" a male candidate -- to his detriment.
- Frank Rudy Cooper, Associate Professor of Law at Suffolk University, spelled out that "Obama had to deal with the media representation of black masculinity." He posited that Obama had to be "a unisex president." Despite trying to run a "post-racial campaign, Obama had to be careful avoid "the angry black male" stereotype by not being too aggressive. Cooper explained that in pitting McCain against Obama, the masculine vs. feminine style is emphasized. Obama's empathetic style has been criticized, and as "feminization is a slur," he is forced into a precarious balancing act.
- That concept was illuminated by Anthony E. Varona, Associate Professor of Law at American University. He pointed out why the 2004 Karl Rove election strategy based on the "unease felt by religious and social conservatives" wasn't going to work in 2008. Plainly put, "Things have changed. New media and the blogosphere have made it impossible."

09 Apr 08

Hak Pak Sak

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race obama politics

America in flames? Sound familiar? The closing lines of Grine Kuzine are really no different from Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” paraphrase of Irving Berlin’s maudlin patriotic tune God Bless America. As a singer of Grine Kuzine, and as a not-too-distant descendant of her fellow immigrant workers, I do not understand the recent hysteria over the U-Tube posting of an out-of-context video excerpt of one of Wright’s old sermons. Jews and Blacks and even the whitest-of-white Americans have the right — and maybe the obligation — to be enraged at polities and policies that misuse or deceive them or that fail to live up to their potential or rhetoric. The hyperbole of songs and of sermons generates reflection and vents steam and diffuses rage even as it broadcasts it.
Far more interesting and insidious than the slips-of-the-lips of members of Obama’s confessional circles is Hillary Clinton’s decades-long involvement in an oligarchical right-wing prayer breakfast group called The Fellowship, Sound like the stuff of crank conspiracy theories? Writer Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, a New York University weblog covering religion and the media, has just completed a book on the subject. Will apologies and statements of distancing and denunciation of The Fellowship be forthcoming from the Clinton campaign? I doubt it.

Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com

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spike lee race

What do you think of Obama?

I’m riding my man Obama. I think he’s a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, “Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, ‘What’s wrong with this brother?’ ”

Does this mean you’re down on the Clintons?

The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bulls***. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean.

Eugene Robinson - Two Black Americas - washingtonpost.com

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race black poor wealth

On April 4, 1968, it was possible to make the generalization that being black in this country meant being poor; fully 40 percent of black Americans lived below the poverty line, according to census data, with another 20 percent barely keeping their heads above water.
Today, about 25 percent of African Americans are mired in poverty. In many ways, being black and poor is a more desperate and hopeless condition now than it was 40 years ago. For those who managed to enter the middle class, however, most of the old generalizations no longer apply.
4 more annotations...
- But the gap in wealth, or net worth, is huge, even when you control for education, age, family size and whatever else you want to throw in. Still, African Americans control an estimated $800 billion in purchasing power. If that were translated into gross domestic product, a sovereign "Black America" would be the 15th- or 16th-richest nation on earth.
- Then again, if "The Jeffersons" were being produced today, George and Louise probably wouldn't live in an apartment at all. More realistically, they'd be on a cul-de-sac in a suburban community. In Washington and a growing number of cities, more African Americans now live in the suburbs than within the city limits.
- That's not to minimize the prospect that a nation midwifed by slavery could soon have its first black president. But O'Neal did something that would have been equally unimaginable 40 years ago. He rose to become chief executive of Merrill Lynch, one of Wall Street's biggest firms; by all accounts, he was a taskmaster of a boss who cared less about whether subordinates liked him than he did about the bottom line.
- The African American poor are a smaller segment than they were 40 years ago, but arguably they are further from full participation in society than they were in King's era. It's not that they have no interest in climbing the ladder, it's that too many rungs are missin

06 Apr 08

Billy Jack’s Blog » Response To The Guest Post

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black panther conversation billy race

Unlike you, I assume you are an honest hearted and intelligent man with a point of view that is drastically different from mine.
only points you’ve made
10 more annotations...
- I am truly embarrassed for you
- Then, a reader wrote and said I took his comments out of context ( a task difficult to accomplish if I never talked about what Obama said). Of course, that same reader never cited a single incident of that, nor did he offer any proof for his accusation.
- Obama’s speech, you changed the subject by getting into the white supremacist accusation. By the way, when you describe yourself as a “Black Revolutionary,” doesn’t that make you a black supremacist?
- Black Revolutionary refers back to the Black Panther days wherein it’s proponents were preaching black supremacy from the roof tops
- post I talked about Dr. King’s dream of people not being judged by the color of their skin.
- Black Revolutionary ideas certainly contradict everything Dr. King stood for. Why don’t you honestly tell us what you think of Dr. King’s dream and then harmonize it with your own “Black Revolutionary” vision for the black community.
- Later in my second post I ask a series of equally pointed questions which I predict you will also ignore.
- But please don’t embarrass yourself any more by saying things that clearly prove you are neither reading nor considering what I am saying. It is truly sad when you do that.
- exercise in existentialism
- Or should we just blindly follow him because he is black? Is that the answer? I have never in my life voted for someone or refused to vote for someone because of the person’s skin color or gender. But that’s just me. I’m sure my “whiteness” is probably the reason for that!

05 Apr 08

HaloScan.com - Comments

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comment reply obama conversation race whiteness

There is no denying the atrocities that took place against black folks in those days. There is also no denying that discrimination still exists to some extent today. I admit all of those things, and I am sorry about them. I wonder if you are just as willing to admit that things are much better for black people today?
you need to wake up
6 more annotations...
- let's get on with solving race problems that exist today. Remembering the past is fine. We can learn from it. But dwelling exclusively on the past is not productive of any useful solutions. Rather, it stirs up more hatred and resentment and the negative cycle continues into the next generation. Someone has to stop the insanity. I am willing to do my part. Are you???
- Billy Jack says, "Far too many white people are filled with hatred and bitterness toward people of other races. Far too many black people find their identity, personality and even careers in their blackness..."
- Once upon a time -- not so very long ago -- there was no such thing as whiteness or the white race, just as there was no such thing as blackness or the black race. Those unscientific distinctions and associated invidious stereotypes had to be invented. It so happens that they were invented by folks who invented their own identity of whiteness to establish their moral superiority to people being held in slavery.
- And you know what? It wasn't just about skin color. It was always first and foremost about accepting an identity of racial supremacy. Even the Irish in America were "black" before they were "white." Don't believe it? Look it up.
- Wow, no wonder white folks are bitter. Having to carry around all that self-deception willful ignorance all those years. And for what? A lousy seat at the front of the bus and a place at the front of the job queue that are no longer even guaranteed by law!
- When I was kid there was this committee of Congress called the "House Un-American Activities Committee". To be an "American" you had to believe in certain things and not believe in other things. The things you couldn't believe in included socialism or self-determination for people in other countries where American corporations had business investments or, sometimes, just being against Jim Crow segregation

03 Apr 08

Race, genes, and intelligence. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

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race

The first Wright sermon Obama heard. ... - By Mickey Kaus - Slate Magazine

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kaus race

"White Man's Greed"
He won't speak up against his own church's victim mentality until he absolutely has to (because he himself gets in political trouble). In the campaign he's done a whole lot of pandering

iZania.com - Obama's Speech on Race: Not Just Empty Words, or Another "Eloquent Speech"

This is what billy wants to have defened that I simply refuse - Barack is American and ANY ONE OF US!!!

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billy jack conversation izania obama race

it had discovered the bone in Obama’s closet that would derail his run for the Presidency, Barack kicked down the door of the closet that holds America’s worse skeletons, its race closet.
So the race closet, stacked to the top with 400 years of skeletons-from the Middle Passage through today’s colorblind racism, is closely guarded by those who know and understand this vile and twisted history. However, this time America started it by trying to radicalize Obama and racialize Obama’s Minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack finished it by stating that if you really want to have a conversation about somebody’s racial views - then let’s talk about America’s racial views, in its totality. It was substantive, and it was eloquent.
6 more annotations...
- Let Hillary Clinton call this speech “just empty words” or another “eloquent speech.” And let those who claim Barack ain’t “black enough” hang their hat on this speech while those who try to diss his “too black” pastor realize that Barack is “too black” to allow himself to be separated from his church and his community. It was a historic moment. We can truly say that after this week, “a black man” is running for President. And by most accounts, he’s still the best candidate in the race.
- They’re back to doubting that a black man can represent a white nation (don’t get it twisted-America is still 69% white). America was poised to default on Obama. The default position is, of course, that only a white can represent all the people. Well, name me one President in the history of America who has represented “all the people?”
- Only two, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, sought to eliminate the legalized race caste systems (of slavery and segregation), though both tolerated and participated in societal norms that affirmed racial inequality and separateness (while they were President).
- The thought here is, “White people know he’s black, no need to throw it up in their face” and never blame anything on race - even the obvious racial attacks or the codified ones. As authentic a person as Barack is, it’s his authenticity that has most come under attack from Whites and Blacks. From Whites - in no Black could possibly be this perfect (so hopeful yet non-critical); from Blacks, that no Black could really be “black” and not talk about race. Well, Obama showed how authentic he really is last week, in not running from race and not running from his own. The media could neither “blackball” nor “whitewash” Barack Obama after last week’s speech (and trust me, they were trying to do both). Barack pulled it off.
- For a country that always has something to say, most of it (except for the ideologues and the racial extremists) stood speechless and/or complimentary on the nation’s first publicly televised race speech by a Presidential candidate. There was nothing empty about the speech.
- We just needed someone “black enough” (and honest enough) to talk about it. In trying to castigate one man, the door to America’s race closet was opened by another. The man who would be President, if he would have just remained “post-racial.” Now, he’s black and America’s new race conscience. If America is willing to face up to its past and grow up in the race reality of its future (multi-racial nation), Barack Obama still might be elected President of the United States.

Monkeyfist.com: The Global Privileges of Whiteness

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race riots whiteness

White America's attitudes about race and racism are a mixture of

self-congratulation and defensiveness -- ``Yes, we've had some

episodes of racism and bias, but that's all clearly in the

past.'' But, in truth, White racism hasn't gone anywhere. Its

tenor and tone have mutated; it's now expressed in carefully coded

messages rather than in crudely overt themes. White racism -- and the

White supremacist ideology it reflects and networks of White privilege

it maintains -- are alive and well.
The oppressive ideal is for privilege to be so deeply embedded and

entwined in the social order that it's hard to see and, thus, hard to

fight. One way that White privilege has been made invisible the

creation of a widely shared sense of aggrieved White victimhood. If

White people are victims of, say, affirmative action's so-called

reverse racism, the real claims of people of color and of women will

make little sense. False claims of oppression dilute the force of real

claims. White aggrieved victimhood is a smoke screen for White

privilege.
1 more annotations...
- The cult of aggrieved White victimhood was strengthened by media
  
  representations of the Oklahoma City Bombing, which enshrined the
  
  tragedy as "the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil" (now superseded,
  
  of course, by the 11 September attacks, to which most of the comments
  
  here apply equally well). According to the media, the victims and the
  
  institutions that McVeigh attacked were White, which is not to
  
  diminish the deaths of people of color in OKC, but only to recognize
  
  that the public face of the Oklahoma City Bombing constructed by the
  
  media was almost entirely a White face.
  
  But by any objective measure the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was a worse
  
  act of domestic terrorism than the Oklahoma City
  
  Bombing. White mobs in Tulsa killed about 250 African Americans,
  
  destroyed 1,400 homes, and devastated the Greenwood district of Tulsa,
  
  one of the most thriving and economically vibrant African American
  
  communities in the entire country at that time. (If you want to learn
  
  more about the Tulsa Race Riots, two books are newly
  
  available: Tim Madigan's The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and
  
  teh Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and Alfred L. Brophy's
  
  Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race,
  
  Reparations, and Reconciliation.) Most White people simply
  
  cannot comprehend the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot as rioting by
  
  White people, but that's precisely what happened. It's crass and
  
  insulting to compare the dimensions of human tragedy, but the media
  
  started the quantification game, and if they're going to play it, they
  
  should be made to play it fairly.

28 Mar 08

Allen: "On Roedigger's 'Wages of Whiteness'"

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marxist race roedigger whiteness

) "the role of race in defining how white
workers look not only at Blacks but at themselves"; 2) "the
pervasiveness of race"; 3) "the complex mixture of
hate, sadness and longing in the racist thought of white workers";
4) the relationship between race and ethnicity."2 "Marxism as presently theorized,"
he says, does not help us focus on "why so many workers
define themselves as white."3
He classifies Marxist and presumably Marx-influenced writings
into two categories, the "traditional Marxists," who
are distinguished by their emphasis on class, combined with a
subordination of "race;" and the "neo-Marxists,"
who subscribe to the perspectives of E. P. Thompson in Britain
and Herbert Gutman in the United States, whom he credits with
opening the way for the emergence of "a new labor history,"
particularly by "call[ing] into question any theory that
holds that racism simply trickles down the class structure from
the commanding heights at which it is created."
Part II introduces white identity
in "the language of class," wherein the European-American
artisans responded to the threat of extinction by capitalist
enterprise by an appeal to a "whites-only" republicanism.
Part III relates the growing industrialization to the development
of a "white" culture, the emergence of "whiteness."
Unskilled European immigrant peasant recruits, resentful of the
routine discipline of industrial employment, consoled themselves
with the social distinction of being free and citizens. Special
attention is given to laboring-class Irish-Americans who, the
author says, combined their political and economic motives with
an "unthinking decision" rooted in repressed sexual
fantasies which they projected onto their image of African-Americans.

VG: Critique: Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison

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race toni morrison

"I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World -- without the mandate for conquest."

25 Mar 08

Business Creativity and Happiness: Political Conversation - Billy Jack V Levy (Oldude59) Rivers

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billy conversation jack lev networking obama race rivers social speech

23 Mar 08

Obama Race Speech: Read The Full Text - Politics on The Huffington Post

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campaign divisive hope obama presidental race speech

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
24 more annotations...
- On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
- I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed
- They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
- wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity
- But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
- And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
- I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
- Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
- But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality
- a part of our union that we have yet to perfect.
- reality requires a reminder
- This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.
- Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.
- The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
- Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
- so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.
- Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
- racial stalemate
- Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
- The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation.
- For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
  
  We can do that.
- And nothing will change
- That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."
- This time