DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
Racism is an inherent part of the Democrat Party, probably more so today then at any time in its sordid history.
APP - Can America EVER unite behind a black President?
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Part of my confronting it is confronting people who want their "race" defined as part of the blessed.
Litmus
Verified User
In the current context of the way the laws work, that is the only way of achieving actual legal equality.
Your argument failed last time you trotted it out.
cawacko
Well-known member
If we want unity why don't we address partisanship? Why do people support an act when 'their side' does it but not support and act when the 'other side' does it? Why are so many of us political hacks?
I mean if Hillary Clinton were doing exactly what Obama is doing do we think people wouldn't be reacting the same? Or better yet if a rich white man John Edwards were President would people be saying its ok?
Only in your fantasy where you think that being part of the list makes you "equal"...
The government is not the source of your rights any more than it can be the measure of your "equalness"... supporting what is wrong because you feel it is too hard to fight is surrender.
They would, but you would then be "sexist."
Litmus
Verified User
Being part of the list of protected classes does offer you the equal protection. It's not a fantasy.
I believe adding male and white to the list of protected classes would be the easiest and quickest way to undo the currently ongoing discrimination.
Your faux patriotic/idealistic bullsnaz is just your way of defending the status quo so you can seem the "ever reasonable" moderate.
TuTu Monroe
A Realist
Fascinating article by Gavin Esler in today's Daily Mail on the subject of racism in the USA.
The ugly question that won't go away... Can America EVER unite behind a black President?
By Gavin Esler
Last updated at 9:39 AM on 17th September 2009
Race issue: Barack Obama
One of the greatest hopes for the Obama presidency was that it would finally heal America's worst wound - racism. This week has shown that for all the good press Barack Obama has enjoyed at home and abroad, the wound is still there, just beneath the surface, and it takes very little to open it up again.
In the months since the first African-American President was sworn into office in January this year, American commentators have tip-toed around the race issue. Some have pretended it is no longer even relevant.
Others have rejoiced that a clearly loving and successful black family in the White House is providing a role model for others in a society in which black families have often been portrayed negatively.
But former U.S. President Jimmy Carter caused the issue to explode into the open again this week with his claims that much of the vitriol directed at Obama's ambitious healthcare-reform plan is 'based on racism'.
If Carter is correct - and I have spoken to white as well as black Americans who broadly agree he is - then simply putting an African-American President in office has not been enough to reverse the bitterest legacy of America's original sin, slavery.
Even worse, it has now tainted the most difficult issue Obama faces, changing the U.S. healthcare system. As Carter put it: there is 'an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be President'.
Certainly, the healthcare debate has created a far wider ideological battleground than the rights and wrongs of Obama's policy proposals. In sometimes furious town-hall meetings, anti-Obama protesters have talked about 'taking back' their country.
Some have portrayed Obama with a Hitler moustache - in a crude suggestion that he has totalitarian ambitions.
Others have suggested that he is not really an American citizen - pointing to his Kenyan father and childhood in Indonesia - and is therefore ineligible for office, not a 'real' President with 'real' American values.
Despite the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is a practising Christian, there are even those who still claim he is a Muslim. It would be tempting to dismiss such hysteria as belonging to a lunatic fringe element. But then came the 'Wilson outburst'.
When President Obama made his big televised speech on healthcare to Congress last week, one Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, screamed out 'you lie'.
This was shocking and unprecedented to Americans of both parties and of all racial backgrounds. The President of the United States is not simply, like a British prime minister, the head of a government. He is also, like the Queen, the head of state.
'You lie': Joe Wilson
Even in the rough-and-tumble of American political debates, I cannot think of an American president who has been heckled in such a way during such a major address. It was crude politics, and obviously rude. But was it racism, as Jimmy Carter claims?
Wilson has since apologised for his outburst - and the President has been gracious enough to accept it.
But in Washington they are noting that years ago Congressman Wilson worked for a segregationist politician in the South and more recently voted in favour of flying the Confederate flag - a favoured symbol of white rule.
Moreover, the controversy comes hot on the heels of a similar inflammatory episode involving the arrest of an old friend of President Obama's, Henry Gates - a prominent black academic.
Professor Gates was observed by a police officer acting suspiciously outside a property in Massachusetts that subsequently turned out to be his own home. When questioned by the officer, Professor Gates became verbally abusive, accusing the police of being racist, and was thus arrested at the scene.
Yet when the story became public, the President waded into the debate, stating that the officer concerned had 'acted stupidly' with regards to his friend. This, said his opponents, was proof of Obama's inherent racial loyalties, even at the expense of a police officer performing his normal duties.
A storm in a teacup? Not, it seems, when the issue of the President's race remains such a sensitive issue - as it undoubtedly does.
More...
An American journalist friend of mine said to me just last week that the atmosphere in the U.S. nowadays is 'as poisonous as anything I can remember since the early Nineties'.
Mr President: Jimmy Carter
He referred directly to the Oklahoma City outrage - a bomb planted by Timothy McVeigh that killed 168 people in a direct attack on the U.S. government. My friend shocked me by saying he would not be surprised if there were further acts of domestic terrorism spawned by hatred of Obama.
He is by no means the only one to detect an atmosphere of fear and suspicion.
At a recent conference I asked the African-American veteran civil rights campaigner Roger Wilkins - a man who marched with Martin Luther King - whether the election of Obama meant the end for racism in America.
Professor Wilkins, who worked for the Johnson administration in the Sixties, accepted that a black man in the White House was a great leap forward, but said that racism was still there, and black people knew it. So did white people.
For Obama this is, then, a very dangerous time - not just politically but personally.
Many Americans are worried that, sooner or later, some American, racist nutcase will try to shoot their President simply because of his skin colour.
The Secret Service is, of course, vigilant, though the white supremacist plots against him that have been discovered so far have been almost laughably incompetent.
As for his political enemies, Obama's success has been that from the outset of his presidential campaign he has been 'above race'. That is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge, as his opponents seek to highlight once again his colour, however far-fetched their accusations may be.
In all the enthusiasm for Barack Obama in Britain and Europe, we need to remember that even when up against John McCain - a relatively elderly candidate from a Republican party in disarray - he did not win in a landslide.
Demonstrators have equated Obama to Nazi leaders
For all his oratorical and political skills, Obama's victory was not overwhelming. He offended some working-class white people by talking of them 'clinging' to guns and God. Some Democrats I talked to simply refused to vote for him, though none would say openly that race was a factor.
And now in trying to reform healthcare - which amounts to almost 17 per cent of the American economy - Barack Obama is emerging as just the type of Big Government President that those on the American far-Right really loathes.
As he takes on healthcare reform, cracks down on the banks and spends government money trying to keep the economy afloat, there are plenty of political reasons for Barack Obama to be a controversial President, to be opposed, even to be defeated.
His race is not one of these - for most Americans. But for a minority, even in the 21st century, a black President is still unacceptable. Obama has changed much in America, but not even his oratory and skill can change that.
● Gavin Esler’s novel Power Play, about the potential collapse of the British-American 'special relationship', is published this month. He is a former BBC chief North America correspondent.
This is just another way to keep this crap going and you love it.
This author is putting gas on the fire. This made me want to puke when he said, I cannot think of an American president who has been heckled in such a way during such a major address. It was crude politics, and obviously rude. I wonder if he and your ilk said the same thing when it was done to Bush, only worse? Hypocrites, every one of you.
The fantasy lies in the belief that the government is the only means to secure what is right.
Litmus
Verified User
Oh yeah. you're such a revolutionary. Don't make me laugh, sold out hack.
cancel2 2022
Canceled
As if we were uniting under white presidents...
If race baiting is all you have, then you have nothing.
I found it to be a most perceptive and interesting article, but obviously you'd prefer to just sweep it all under the carpet.
Litmus
Verified User
Your judgement is off.
Thorn
Member
Excellent point. Somehow we have to encourage intelligent assessment of issues on their own merits. Sadly, I don't feel too optimistic for that in the near future at least.
cancel2 2022
Canceled
You are like a guy offering to hold someone's jacket prior to a fight commencing.
cancel2 2022
Canceled
It is so predictable how people on here will react to mostly anything, just so you know Gavin Esler wrote a eulogy for Ronald Regan in 2004 so pick the bits out of that!!
Cancel 2016.2
The Almighty
The true question is: When has America EVER united behind a President?(regardless of skin pigmentation)
The answer... is that while there have been brief times (immediately after 9/11 or Pearl Harbor) where the vast majority set aside differences and came together, the remainder of the time there has been animosity between the two primary parties. This has grown over the past couple of decades.
So pretending that people are not uniting behind Obama due to his skin pigmentation is nothing short of race baiting.
No, I'd rather confront race baiting idiocy directly. You think it is "perceptive" because your own nation has yet to have a black man in that same type of position in government. It would be like us asking if Britain could "unite" behind Maggie Thatcher because of all the sexism.
The nation voted for the man, they can obviously get behind him. End of story.