President Jimmy Carter is stating what I’ve been saying for a while (and was “taken to task” for in the comment section of the last post). Namely, many of the attacks, both in the “substance” and tone, against President Barack Obama, are thinly veiled expressions of racist disbelief that a black man is POTUS. And while I was compiling my evidence and articulating a reply, it suddenly dawned on me that I can lead horses (or elephants) to water, but I can’t make them drink. Understand that this is not simply Republican-bashing. It is simply a realization that while there are many independents and Democrats (and some Republicans) who disagree with the President’s ideological and practical governance of the United States, the extreme ideas by fearful and ignorant people are gaining traction with the not so ignorant because they hold one thing in common: Fear of a black planet.
There are groups of people angry and scared and confused whose sole similarity with each other is their hatred of the President. Elderly people who will benefit from changing the manner in which their medical insurance is billed and their prescriptions are screaming at their elected representatives that President Obama is a socialist; people are saying “they want their country back,” but when asked what they means answer, “I don’t know”; Glenn Beck is on “national television” saying that the half-white President has a problem with white people…the President’s birth/legitimacy is still being questioned, by “concerned” almost-citizens and echoed by members of Congress – where were they when Senator McCain was running for the office? And if you don’t know why that’s relevant, you’ve proven my point.
But alas, people who are in the majority rarely acquiesce that their domination of societal and cultural norms without confrontation and overwhelming evidence (and many times not even then). Whether that is white people in the United States, men on the planet earth, English speakers, heterosexuals, the non-disabled… the domination doesn’t matter. From our language to our institutions, the codified methods of discrimination are not rewritten without cataclysm.
Sorry… I got a little carried away. Maureen Dowd, President Carter, and many others are beginning to speak the truth to power. How long will it take before the people who disagree with the President’s policies, but don’t ascribe to the fearful racist elements that show themselves in screaming fits at town halls an as mouthpieces for economic predators acknowledge and disavow the people that drown out their legitimate arguments?
Just some final thoughts: Here is the post I was beginning to write. I’m including it more for the articles linked…
Unpacking the Knapsack
In critiquing the critics of the President, I have been accused of: a) playing the race card, b) being racist, c) loving a good stereotype, and d) falling back on hyperbole when I didn’t have any facts to back up my assertions. Hence, I will attempt for those who, in good faith, misunderstand how race plays a part of the wildly aggressive campaign to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama, and in doing so simply acknowledge the symptoms without diagnosing the disease, thereby insuring the nation continues to suffer from the illness.
The ridiculous combination of conspiracies being hurled at President Obama are not new ground. The level of serious consideration that they’ve gained in Congress, though, are. From Republican Senators and Congresspeople questioning the President’s birthplace, to the continued lie that is “death panels”
Representative Joe Wilson is an illiterate jackass. Here is the text of the health care reform bill in the House of Representatives (where he “works”.) HR3200, Section 246I guess the plain simple English is too much for him. But he’s doing his job brilliantly, while he still has it. Not only has he shown other white supremacists from South Carolina (what is wrong with that state, btw?) that he can confront the uppity Negro, but he’s distracted from the President’s great speech. And now the other sharks are swimming up and dropping off more chum for him. His freedom of speech became freedom of idiocy … screaming a lie at the President of the United States.
More and more, as the untruths are piled on top of each other like corpses in front of outnumbered and scared invaders beating a slow and forced retreat, I am unnerved by the inability of rational people, conservatives, liberals and progressives alike, to stem the tide. This latest objection against the President speaking to schoolchildren and encouraging them to do well in school is merely another straw (although the camel’s back is noticeably strained). On top of the birthers, the deathers, the death panels, “Obamacare”, the bailout of the banks (which was President Bush, but what are facts?), the negotiations with terrorists (I mean the diplomacy with Iran), the failure of the war in Afghanistan (that President Bush began and forgot), the stimulus package which is saving the deregulated orgy that was wall street, and the reform of the for-profit health insurance industry into an actual health-care industry, the white people who wanted John McCain to be president are proving to be sore losers.
They’re showing up to public discussion with arms, misunderstanding both the first and second amendments to the Constitution. They’re arguing the primacy of the tenth amendment, or the Reserve Clause, and stating the federal government doesn’t have the power to legislate to the states. They’re abusing the very rights they “cherish” because they lost to a black man, who’s aiming to keep the promises he made when he was campaigning.
I’ve said before I hate stupid people. But that hate is beginning to eat me up. So I’m working on understanding that Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are simply expressing a different point of view based on insecurity and challenges to white male domination of this country that they are unable to fathom. I’m working on being more like Senator Franken who is able to address people who disagree without displaying the frustration at their idiocy and unfounded accusations that I’m simply unable to do at this point.
Keeping your kids home so that they won’t hear the President say go to school and do your work so you can grow up and be big and strong and successful is stoopid. And I don’t hate the parents for being stoopid.
The United States of America has in its two-hundred-plus year history been forced repeatedly to hew back to its ideals when it gets off track. Whether by a missive written by slaves during the American Revolution including themselves in that “all men that [were] created equal” concept; or the thrashing of Southern secession by Union Troops; or the Seneca Falls Convention and the Iron Angels’ protests for suffrage; or imprisoned Japanese Americans saying NoNo; or Rosa Parks and Martin King sitting and standing for their just deserts; or Cesar Chavez refusing to eat until migrant farm workers had bread; or Barack Obama being elected President of the United States to cleanse the infested wounds of disaster capitalism and war profiteering and economic tsunami that was the Bush/Cheney administration. (and now Attorney General Eric Holder is opening investigations of the torturers who went “beyond their guidelines”)
Like one of the stubborn ghouls in a bad scary movie, the former Vice President just won’t go away. He’s already pushed a devastating agenda on the United States and by extension, the world. He’s already authorized assassination from the office of the Vice President. He’s already waged a “War on Terror” which we should truly call a “War on the Constitution”, as he claimed that the VP is not part of the executive branch of the government, even as he gathered more and more power to the executive branch and refused to be held accountable. He was the first and loudest to mouth the fictitious claim in public that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, and that the invasion of that country was justified. And he’s been lying more since he left office, saying that “torture worked and kept us safe” in order to cover his crimes and the crimes of others.
Dick Cheney thinks torture is okay. So does his daughter. Unfortunately, they aren’t brave enough to stand up and simply say that. Instead they hint that its legal, that its okay, that its American to do. It’s obvious that they believe it, because they won’t stop torturing the American people – they’re on television or in the newspaper daily screeching about how the current administration is making us as a country less safe, and how holding them or the people who worked for them responsible is “bad.” Simply put, they’re wrong.
Torture is bad. It’s against the American Way. And it doesn’t work or keep us safe.
We are once again as a nation losing our moral bearings, dimming that bright light on a hill for the Almighty dollar. We are bearing false witness as a country in order to maintain a status quo which should shame us all.
The debate about our health and how we collectively remain healthy has been infused with hate and fear, confused with dollars and cents, and driven off the cliff of conversation by the forces of inanity.
Okay, enough poetry. Health care is a right, and providing it is one of the six purposes of the government as delineated in the Constitution (see preamble). A single payer system is the best way for the government to do its job. Period. Representative Weiner (D-NY) is right, and the Democratic majority in Congress needs to get on board. Similarly, the President was elected to lead. He needs to do that. All the money in the world and the people yelling at elected offixials don’t change the fact that this is the chamge they were elected to enact, and they have the votes RIGHT NOW to pass this legislation. Bipartisanship means listening to your opponents, not legislating for them in their numerical absence.
As you may know, right-wing talk show hosts have been bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream, but FOX’s Glenn Beck just took it to another level. On Tuesday, Beck said:
This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people… this guy is, I believe, a racist.
It’s part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama wants to serve the needs of Black communities at White people’s expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate, and it can lead to violence.
I’ve joined ColorOfChange.org’s effort to stop Glenn Beck. ColorOfChange is already putting calls into Beck’s advertisers, asking them if they want to be associated with this kind of racist hate and fear-mongering. When the advertisers see that tens of thousands of us are behind that question, I believe they’ll move their advertising dollars elsewhere, and his show and platform will be history.
Will you take a stand and be counted, and invite your friends and family to do the same? It takes just a moment:
Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some Americans refuse to accept the fact that our president is Black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. But the only way these views fade away is if they’re not reinforced by mainstream society. Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh are exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.
The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. It resulted in an unprecedented number of threats on Obama’s life, a rise in the number of hate groups, and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and Black people.
FOX has a horrible track record on pushing racist propaganda, but Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He’s trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter–like health care and the economy.
The good news is that we have the power to stop this. All major media is funded by advertising. And advertisers care more than anything what consumers think. If we want to change what’s happening and put an end to folks like Glenn Beck having a platform, we can do it.
It’s up to us, and it can start now. Please join me:
It’s hard to hold on to a scepter when it is lubricated. No matter how hard you squeeze, it continues to slip from your fingers; no raising of the voice, entreaties to the beyond, historical references or inherited privilege will keep one’s hand on the rudder or help the power stay at home.
Such are the straights of white men in the United States in 2009. With the minority population of the United States becoming the majority, the tide of equality and justice is turning. A multiracial coalition elected a biracial president to preside over the United States of America. Since power and justice are never willingly shared or granted by the powerful, racial animus has begun to seep (once again) into public discourse in frighteningly obvious and increasingly desperate ways. Over the course of the last month, we have seen:
a white man eject a group of black children from a swimming pool in Philadelphia;
a white man accuse a Puerto Rican nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States of being racist (when that’s the reason he was denied the federal bench) because she acknowledges her heritage and the role race and gender have played in her life;
white firefighters vindicated by the SCOTUS when the discriminatory test they passed was validated; (a NY judge recently ruled differently in a different case)
nine white men introduce legislation into the Legislature of the United States requiring presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship before they run in a veiled reference to the ludicrous notion that the first black POTUS isn’t a citizen of the United States;
Race is no longer the third rail of American politics. It can’t be, with a black man as POTUS. His presence, as demonstrated by the overloud and uncomfortable laughter at his press conference on Wednesday evening by the predominantly white press corps when he stated that if he tried to force his way into [his home] the White House, “I’d get shot,” forces the blind eye to see that we are not (and should not be) a colorblind nation. We are not post-racial because we have never dealt legitimately on a national level with race.
Just as candidate Obama claimed that in some places, people who had suffered through generations of economic neglect “cling to their guns and religion, to their antipathy of people foreign to them” to explain their plight, so too are these white men clinging to their white privilege and inherited station, to their unspoken benefits and fantastic position, by blaming affirmative action and racial minorities. From Indian wars to enslaved Africans, from Chinese exclusion laws to statutes forbidding interracial marriage, from the KKK to affirmative action, from Emmett Till to Jeff Sessions, race has been the tiller and the sail of “conservative politics” in the United States. The maintenance of the status quo has always rested on the back and shoulders of the oppressed and discriminated populations of this country. And the numbers of white people who continue to cling to this standard is increasingly vocal, even as it is numerically dwindling. You have only to watch Alexandra Pelosi’s “Right America: Feeling Wronged” to hear and see them.
On a national level, though, it remains okay for representatives from predominantly white districts and regions to spout off their racist affirmations of their own superiority. On a commercial level, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan are getting paid dragging their anger and dismay through the dirt to see what clings. The arrest of Professor Gates and the subsequent anger of the white establishment at President Obama’s characterization of the police officers as acting stupidly are both indications that the work of the (rasicst) founding fathers is not done, and the conversation amongst people of conscience (white, black, brown, red, yellow, etc.) not to mention the daily work of education and preparation must continue.
Perhaps many of us were lulled into comfort by the election of the first African American President of the United States. Let us then, return to the posture and postulation of Frederick Douglass, “Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.” Unlike Pat Buchanan, I am clear that this country was built by millions of men and women, black and white and brown and yellow and red. And it is our responsibility to continue to build it, to reach toward its ultimate potential. Those confused and scared people who “want their country back”, that white, christian, uncomplicated and racially stratified utopia are living in a fantasy – that country never existed.
Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl, Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and Sean Hannity, James Crowley and the rest will learn and understand that when the scepter has shattered on the floor.
“. . . no I’m not European, bein’ all I can . . .”
-Snoop Dogg
White men DID NOT build the United States. No matter what Pat Buchanan, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions, or Jon Kyl would like to believe. Yes, they were instrumental in its creation and conception, but there have been a myriad of people from Abigail Adams to Crispus Attucks to Helen Keller to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Cesar Chavez to Dolores Huerta to Gloria Steinem to the Iron Angels to the Massachusetts 54th Infantry to the Windtalkers who have put life and limb on the line for the fulfillment of the promise and potential signaled by the “100% white men”-created Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. It is amazing to note, though, that both of these documents used, according to white man Thomas Jefferson, the founding documents of the Iroquois Confederacy as templates.
The confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court of the United States, though, gave these Southern Dixiecrats (oops! now they’re Republicans from the party of Lincoln) a huge microphone from which to spout even more invective toward racial minorities and women who have been the foundations of this nation since before its inception. From Graham’s “do you have a temperament problem” to Session’s open mouth, the Republican members of the confirmation committee walked what they saw as an acceptable line, attacking Sotomayor’s pride in her heritage, work for the Puerto Rican legal defense fund, and everything except her judicial record. That’s Pat, though, took it even further across the line. Both online and on television, this white man actually argued that she wasn’t qualified because she was Latina, that because she acknowledged not only her race but the role that affirmative action played in her education, somehow that makes her inferior. His spouting invective wasn’t simply restrained to the written word . . . he had the temerity, the sheer arrogance, to take his knapsack of white privilege and racial superiority on television for the broadcast world to see.
I do agree with Malcom X, for I would rather have racists stating that they are racist rather than hiding under a veneer of reasonable opposition. The arguments made by Pat Buchanan (and to a more timid extent, the members of the confirmation committee) are lasts grasps at a position of power in the hierarchy of social dominance in the United States. The stranglehold that white men have had on power (106 of the 110 justices on the SCOTUS have been white men; 43 of 44 POTUS have been white men; 413 of 535 members of Congress today are white men) flies in the face of the “rational insecurity” from which Mitch McConnell and others question Sotomayor’s work and philosophy, attack her family and community, and preach their colorblind message which means they are blind to every color but their own. And it has given some of them a false sense of security, a belief in their own superiority which is not only undeserved and a f*&^ing joke, but is offensive in the extreme to say the least.
Unrestrained by elected office, Pat Buchanan has become David Duke in a suit instead of a robe. He is in the running, like Audra Shay, on a platform which seeks to secure the white working class vote by telling them how special they are and how much the darkies are taking away from them, to be king of the klansmen. And he wants the party of Lincoln to follow him. Maybe he’ll pick Sarah Palin as a runningmate, too. Fortunately, thinking Republicans are seeing these racial attacks for what they are, more bullshit from little men seeking to attain or maintain power in a changing world.
Why is Jeff Sessions so thick? Rather than listening to the answers given by Justice Sotomayor to his questions, he is stating questions, allowing her to begin answering, interrupting her, and then reading the rest of his prepared objection upon which he based the question. It’s as if she isn’t speaking at all, and he’s back to his day 1 opening statement mischaracterizing her judicial record, misrepresenting her stated ideas and conclusions, and then finishing with, “isn’t that true?”
Maybe he can learn from a wise white woman Senator Klobuchar, whose life experience has led her to listen when others are speaking, instead of simply waiting (or not) to say his piece. If he’s not going to listen to a woman, though, he can also look to former (and current) Senator Arlen Specter . . . another white man with a different perspective.
“Black people still catchin’ hell all over the world, you know.”
-Lawrence Fishburne, School Daze
President Obama wound up his seven day trip abroad in the African country of Ghana, going black to Africa as President not just as prodigal son. He gave a speech to the Ghanaian parliament, echoing many of his themes like responsibility. In Accra, he was met at the airport by the President of Ghana, the defeated opponent in the recent elections, and thousands of Ghanian citizens. The most powerful man in the world then ventured with his wife and daughters, like my parents only a year ago, through the Doors of No Return at Cape Coast Castle, from which Africans were sold and shipped by other Africans away from their lives and across an unknown ocean forever.
What does his return to Africa mean? Even as I write this, I’m not sure. I know that my own journey to the Mother Continent was filled with a desire to come home, the realization that Africa is a foreign land, the sublime joy of finding the connections between African and African American culture and heritage, and a deep affection for what was lost, and what I’d found. Does walking that earth impact Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha in that way? I believe so, since the President’s comments at the slave castle were noticeably “emotional”.
Why was his voyage only covered on the internet (thank you, Jake Tapper) and in ten second snippets on Fox News? The pictures of his alleged glance at a young woman’s backside provided forty-eight hours of wall to wall news, still pictures and video, morning shows and talk radio. But the powerful black man stepping off Air Force One, saying simply by standing at the top of those steps with the descendants of enslaved Africans, “Up You Mighty Race, Accomplish What You Will,” wasn’t sexy enough, though it was by volumes more important.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Columbian Exchange deposited Africans as a source of labor and social angst on North American shores two hundred years ago, and we as a society have been dealing with the echoes of that theft (racism, lynchings, discrimination, affirmative action, ghettoes, swimming clubs, etc.) ever since. The issues are writ large (Judge Sotomayor’s experience as a wise Latina is racist? but Senator Session’s calling a black man boy isn’t?) and small across our national psyche. In this new milennium, people who have been historically, educationally, economically and politically advantaged appear to believe that Barack Obama’s election means racism doesn’t exist anymore. The lack of coverage this weekend is a lagging indicator that this is not the case. Whether by omission or commission, blacking out the black president on the dark continent to show black people incarcerated is a statement which says much about the speaker and the subject.
From the doll experiment in the early 1950s to the Obama effect in two thousand nine, it is obvious that perception of one’s standing in society plays a role in the shaping of the individual and collective persona. President Obama inspires black people all over the world simply by continuing to excel, and it is frustrating that that inspiration was “blacked out” this weekend. It is curious that the First Hueman wasn’t, as he has continually been, present on the tv machine. And though he was, like in Iran and China, modern technology enabled those of us reflected is his gaze, his visage, his experience, to stay connected.
reading David Plouffe's Audacity to Win and reliving the entire 2008 presidential campaign...it feels good realizing that it wasn't a dream! 9 hours ago
He is dead because he had no code. He is dead necause he had no honor. And God was watching #afewgoodmen2 days ago
I guess the plain simple English is too much for him. But he’s doing his job brilliantly, 
Such are the straights of white men in the United States in 2009. With the minority population of the United States becoming the majority, the tide of equality and justice is turning. A multiracial coalition elected a biracial president to preside over the United States of America. Since power and justice are never willingly shared or granted by the powerful, racial animus has begun to seep (once again) into public discourse in frighteningly obvious and increasingly desperate ways. Over the course of the last month, we have seen:
First, he has objected (
President Obama wound up his seven day trip abroad in the African country of Ghana, going black to Africa as President not just as prodigal son. He gave a 
