One take on the brouhaha by a Times blogger.And another by "The University of California regent who got that institution to dump affirmative action and then spearheaded successful California and Washington ballot initiatives overturning those states' affirmative action policies" who wrote Creating equal: my fight against race preferences.
The comment – made to the authors of a new book on the presidential campaign – is not so different from remarks Mr. Obama has made himself while navigating the complicated intersection of race and politics in America during his rapid rise to the White House.
It was only two years ago, after all, that Mr. Obama was struggling to persuade some African-American voters that he was black enough. His electoral prospects did not rise among many Democrats in the South Carolina primary, where black voters are critical, until winning the Iowa caucuses, where the vast share of voters are white. As Mr. Obama moved from state to state in the long Democratic primary fight, his policy proposals sounded mainly the same. But it was not unusual for his inflection and mannerisms to be a bit different.
When he spoke to some black audiences, Mr. Obama’s consonants tended to linger a bit. He would speak with a certain staccato and rhythm – particularly in churches – that he had not used when addressing white audiences in Iowa or New Hampshire. This, of course, is hardly unique to Mr. Obama.
.
Bubba's and Al Gore's southern twang always seemed to get heavier south of the Line.
Other black politicians have followed a similar pattern. And the same is true for many white politicians – Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example – when a Southern accent suddenly is more pronounced during a campaign speech below the Mason-Dixon Line.
For Mr. Obama, the pattern began well before he started running for president. It was noticeable as he gave speeches across the country as a freshman senator. One day in 2005, after he delivered an address in Detroit at an anniversary celebration of the N.A.A.C.P., I asked Mr. Obama about the differences. “I know if I’m in an all-black audience that there’s going to be a certain rhythm coming back at me from the audience. They’re not just going to be sitting there,” Mr. Obama told me. “That creates a different rhythm in your speaking.”
Throughout his presidential campaign, and during his time in the White House, many observers have suggested that Mr. Obama is uncomfortable talking about race. A more nuanced view, however, finds that he does not want race to be a distraction.
Ward Connerly: I'm still trying to figure out what was offensive about the Senate majority leader's comment. Me too.
WC is a bit more biting in his comments about people: As if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid didn't have enough on his plate—trying to find sufficient cash to buy the 60 votes necessary for his health-care reform package—he's now found himself at the center of a race controversy.
Votes are always bought; that is what political compromise is about.
Leader Reid apologized to as many people as he could. Mr. Connerly has trhis to say: As I have observed coverage of this incident by the media and captains of the African-American community, I cannot help but be reminded of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who made remarks praising Strom Thurmond in 2002. Mr. Lott said of the segregationist: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either."
When Mr. Lott's controversy erupted, he apologized repeatedly and sincerely to one and all—even groveling on Black Entertainment Network—all to no avail. Black leaders were unforgiving and persisted in demanding that he either resign from his position or be removed. In the end, they got what they wanted.
All well and good, but the Republicans dumped him. The Bush White House dumped him. It wasn't just political correctness, but political calculation. Still, he does make good points.
For my part, I am having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive. Was it because he suggested that lighter-skinned blacks fare better in American life than their darker brothers and sisters? If so, ask blacks whether they find this to be true. Even the lighter-skinned ones, if they are honest with themselves, will agree that there is a different level of acceptance.
Or, finally, could it be viewed as offensive that Mr. Reid suggested that blacks often have a distinctive way of speaking? If that is, indeed, the offense, then I will offend a lot of individuals when I assert that I can tell in probably 90% of the cases whether an individual is black merely by talking to him on the telephone.
No one else has had the nerve to say that openly, except, perhaps, Stanley Crouch.
“We have a certain script in our politics, and one of the scripts for black politicians is that for them to be authentically black they have to somehow offend white people,” Mr. Obama said. “And then if he puts a multiracial coalition together, he must somehow be compromising the efforts of the African-American community.”
“To use a street term,” Mr. Obama added, “we flipped the script.”
Few would dispute that Mr. Obama is a far smoother speaker than Mr. Reid. But were they saying essentially the same thing?
Showing posts with label Race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Race. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Light-skinned, no accent
The latest brouhaha involves Harry Reid, Senate Democratic leader, quoted in a new book (Game Change) as referring to Barack Obama had a chance of being elected because of his light skin and lack of "Negro" accent. Republicans are equating this incident with Trent Lott's having said a few years back that perhaps the US would have been better off if Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat candidacy for the presidency had been successful.
Equating those two incidents is palpably absurd. But what the Republicans need is a wedge, and they will try everything to get one.
This piece appeared in the Daily Beast website.
Harry Reid Was Right
by Peter Beinart
January 10, 2010 | 11:07pm
Yes, the Senate leader’s “light-skinned” comments about Obama were uncomfortable. But that’s because he spoke the truth about white attitudes—a truth even Colin Powell concedes.
Hell, of course it's true.
There’s nothing Americans love more than demanding “honest talk” about race and then kicking the teeth out of anyone who engages in it. Thus the tale of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is now in political purgatory because he told authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann that white people were more open to voting for Barack Obama because he’s “light-skinned” and has “no Negro dialect.” Reid’s use of the word “Negro” was, to be sure, unpleasantly retro. But everything else about his statement is undeniably correct. Political scientists have proved it. Famous African Americans have testified to it. So now Reid must be punished, because he said things about the contours of white racism that you’re not supposed to say, except behind closed doors, where everyone knows that they’re true.
First, skin color. White people (and perhaps African Americans and other minorities as well) are more likely to vote for lighter-skinned blacks. In 2007, when Harvard’s Jennifer Hochschild and the University of Virginia’s Vesla Weaver surveyed every African-American governor, senator and member of Congress since 1865, they found that light-skinned blacks were dramatically overrepresented as a share of the black population. Similarly, they found that when light-skinned blacks run for office, they win at higher rates than their darker-skinned brethren.
It has been written about: even many blacks prefer a lighter skin color. But to talk about that is very difficult.
But how do we know that this particular species of racism informs people’s view of Obama? Because in 2009, Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, Emily Balcetis of New York University and Nicole Mead of Tilburg University in the Netherlands proved it. They showed three pictures of Obama—one lightened, one darkened and one undoctored—to people who planned to vote for him, and to people who did not. The Obama voters were significantly more likely to claim that the lightened photo was the real one. The McCain voters were more likely to claim that the darkened photo was.
How about “black” speech patterns? Yet again, social science is on Reid’s side. In 1999, Thomas Purnell of the University of Wisconsin, William Idsardi of the University of Delaware, and John Baugh of Stanford had people answer apartment-rental ads in the San Francisco area using a variety of dialects. The callers who “sounded black” were substantially less likely to secure an appointment to see the apartment than those who “sounded white.”
Is any of this really a surprise, in a country where the extent of one’s blackness, as well as the fact of one’s blackness, has been the basis of oppression for centuries? In the antebellum South, states like Louisiana even maintained special legal categories for “quadroons” and “octoroons,” blacks whose mixed-race ancestry allowed them rights denied their “full-blooded” brethren. And as African Americans generally understand better than whites, that legacy remains alive today. When asked in 1995 why white people liked him so much, Colin Powell replied that “I speak reasonably well, like a white person,” and, visually, “I ain’t that black.”
So if what Reid said was palpably true, why is he in so much trouble? Yes, his use of the word “negro” was unattractive. But overall, his statement was less an example of white racism than an analysis of white racism. He dared to discuss an aspect of race prejudice that people generally find too toxic to publicly discuss. But it should be publicly discussed. Because amid the triumphalism that has followed Barack Obama’s election—the insistence, particularly on the right, that his election proves that racism has all but died out—it is worth remembering that while Obama’s election constitutes racial progress, it is also, peculiarly, testament to how far America still has to go.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Equating those two incidents is palpably absurd. But what the Republicans need is a wedge, and they will try everything to get one.
This piece appeared in the Daily Beast website.
Harry Reid Was Right
January 10, 2010 | 11:07pm
Yes, the Senate leader’s “light-skinned” comments about Obama were uncomfortable. But that’s because he spoke the truth about white attitudes—a truth even Colin Powell concedes.
Hell, of course it's true.
There’s nothing Americans love more than demanding “honest talk” about race and then kicking the teeth out of anyone who engages in it. Thus the tale of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is now in political purgatory because he told authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann that white people were more open to voting for Barack Obama because he’s “light-skinned” and has “no Negro dialect.” Reid’s use of the word “Negro” was, to be sure, unpleasantly retro. But everything else about his statement is undeniably correct. Political scientists have proved it. Famous African Americans have testified to it. So now Reid must be punished, because he said things about the contours of white racism that you’re not supposed to say, except behind closed doors, where everyone knows that they’re true.
First, skin color. White people (and perhaps African Americans and other minorities as well) are more likely to vote for lighter-skinned blacks. In 2007, when Harvard’s Jennifer Hochschild and the University of Virginia’s Vesla Weaver surveyed every African-American governor, senator and member of Congress since 1865, they found that light-skinned blacks were dramatically overrepresented as a share of the black population. Similarly, they found that when light-skinned blacks run for office, they win at higher rates than their darker-skinned brethren.
It has been written about: even many blacks prefer a lighter skin color. But to talk about that is very difficult.
Reid’s statement was less an example of white racism than an analysis of white racism. He dared to discuss an aspect of race prejudice that people generally find too toxic to publicly discuss.
But how do we know that this particular species of racism informs people’s view of Obama? Because in 2009, Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, Emily Balcetis of New York University and Nicole Mead of Tilburg University in the Netherlands proved it. They showed three pictures of Obama—one lightened, one darkened and one undoctored—to people who planned to vote for him, and to people who did not. The Obama voters were significantly more likely to claim that the lightened photo was the real one. The McCain voters were more likely to claim that the darkened photo was.
How about “black” speech patterns? Yet again, social science is on Reid’s side. In 1999, Thomas Purnell of the University of Wisconsin, William Idsardi of the University of Delaware, and John Baugh of Stanford had people answer apartment-rental ads in the San Francisco area using a variety of dialects. The callers who “sounded black” were substantially less likely to secure an appointment to see the apartment than those who “sounded white.”
Is any of this really a surprise, in a country where the extent of one’s blackness, as well as the fact of one’s blackness, has been the basis of oppression for centuries? In the antebellum South, states like Louisiana even maintained special legal categories for “quadroons” and “octoroons,” blacks whose mixed-race ancestry allowed them rights denied their “full-blooded” brethren. And as African Americans generally understand better than whites, that legacy remains alive today. When asked in 1995 why white people liked him so much, Colin Powell replied that “I speak reasonably well, like a white person,” and, visually, “I ain’t that black.”
So if what Reid said was palpably true, why is he in so much trouble? Yes, his use of the word “negro” was unattractive. But overall, his statement was less an example of white racism than an analysis of white racism. He dared to discuss an aspect of race prejudice that people generally find too toxic to publicly discuss. But it should be publicly discussed. Because amid the triumphalism that has followed Barack Obama’s election—the insistence, particularly on the right, that his election proves that racism has all but died out—it is worth remembering that while Obama’s election constitutes racial progress, it is also, peculiarly, testament to how far America still has to go.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is associate professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
I voted against him
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg celebrated his re-election Tuesday night at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers
For the first time in years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finds himself governing New York City from a most unaccustomed vantage point: Vulnerability.
Ninety million dollars and a near-constant loop of negative commercials about his opponent later, the mayor ended election night in possession of a surprisingly modest margin of victory — far narrower than pollsters had predicted and with 100,000 fewer votes than he won in 2005. This could have profound implications for the tenor of a third Bloomberg term, not least that it is likely to hinder the mayor’s well-honed ability to cow Democrats and liberal interest groups.
Somebody should stand up to him; hopefully John Liu will have the spine to do so.
What perhaps was missing all along, and what will be his challenge now, is to find a more tactile, emotional connection with New Yorkers.
It is not in his DNA to be emotional. He is the remote technocrat.
“It’s not a vote of repudiation; it’s a vote of no confidence,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at the Cooper Union and a longtime chronicler of urban America. “A lot of people are going to think twice before showing him deference.”
Hopefully.
New Yorkers Have Their Say
Slide Show
Election Day 2009
Graphic
Profile of New York City Voters
For the first time in years, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg finds himself governing New York City from a most unaccustomed vantage point: Vulnerability.
Ninety million dollars and a near-constant loop of negative commercials about his opponent later, the mayor ended election night in possession of a surprisingly modest margin of victory — far narrower than pollsters had predicted and with 100,000 fewer votes than he won in 2005. This could have profound implications for the tenor of a third Bloomberg term, not least that it is likely to hinder the mayor’s well-honed ability to cow Democrats and liberal interest groups.
Somebody should stand up to him; hopefully John Liu will have the spine to do so.
What perhaps was missing all along, and what will be his challenge now, is to find a more tactile, emotional connection with New Yorkers.
It is not in his DNA to be emotional. He is the remote technocrat.
“It’s not a vote of repudiation; it’s a vote of no confidence,” said Fred Siegel, a history professor at the Cooper Union and a longtime chronicler of urban America. “A lot of people are going to think twice before showing him deference.”
Hopefully.
New Yorkers Have Their Say
Slide Show
Election Day 2009
Graphic Profile of New York City Voters
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Carter’s Racism Charge Sparks War of Words
Perhaps only Jimmy Carter has the nerve to be as blunt as this; his blunt comments on Israeli apartheid drew similarly passionate reactions.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s view that some of the recent protests against President Obama, including the “You Lie!” outburst by Representative Joe Wilson last week, are “based on racism,” has fueled a new war of words over this already charged issue.
The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
I agree with him, and not always, but I see the racism.
He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”
The rancor against the person, the fundamental questioning of his legitimacy, the labeling him a socialist, a Nazi, un-American, it all smacks of hatred of the person, and it is quite disturbing. Perhaps the rancor against Bush went too far, too, but his legitimacy wasn't questioned (other, of course, than his winning the 2000 election because of the Supreme Court's decision, itself a topic for debate).
Mr. Carter’s criticisms drew a sharp response from Michael Steele, the African-American chairman of the Republican party, who called the remarks an “outrage.” In a statement, Mr. Steele said: “President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn’t about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president’s wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn’t create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation.”
Carter isn't wrong. It is not the ex-President who injected race into the public domain. And the President's health care plan is not "wildly unpopular" nor is it a government-run health care plan.
By stepping into the debate in such an explicit way, Mr. Carter used labels that the White House and others have clearly tried to avoid in the wake of Mr. Wilson’s remarks and last weekend’s angry demonstration on the Washington Mall. White House aides and some lawmakers had earlier deflected or dismissed questions centered on whether a racially tinged prism was underfoot, in what seemed a concerted effort to try to stay above the fray.
Above the fray? Race is a subject no one has the nerve to discuss openly, for too many people could get offended.
In a television interview on Sunday, Mr. Wilson, who was officially rebuked by the House on Tuesday, dismissed suggestions that his actions were racially motivated. One of his sons sprung to his defense after Mr. Carter’s remarks were publicized, saying his father didn’t have a “racist bone” in his body.
No one is a racist. There is no racism. We live in a racial Eden. The White House will not approach it openly, for it would be political dynamite, and would draw attention away from policies.
Other prominent officials however, like Representative James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip from Mr. Wilson’s home state, have publicly implored the White House to directly confront what they view as an unseemly element aimed at, in Mr. Clyburn’s words “delegitimizing” the president. Don’t let it fester, he warned.
There are many people who do not accept President Obama's legitimacy, or even his citizenship. Black skin, a Muslim name.
Nearly all agree that the level of hostility aimed at Mr. Obama runs extremely high. Mr. Hoyer termed it unusually harsh. Some attribute part of the volume to the 24/7, Web-and-cable news driven world that we live in. Mr. Hoyer also noted policy divisions, including those who are also angered by how their tax dollars are being used, given the bank and auto bailouts by the government.
What would have been the alternative? And President Bush was not charged with being a socialist.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s view that some of the recent protests against President Obama, including the “You Lie!” outburst by Representative Joe Wilson last week, are “based on racism,” has fueled a new war of words over this already charged issue.
The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.”
I agree with him, and not always, but I see the racism.
He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”
The rancor against the person, the fundamental questioning of his legitimacy, the labeling him a socialist, a Nazi, un-American, it all smacks of hatred of the person, and it is quite disturbing. Perhaps the rancor against Bush went too far, too, but his legitimacy wasn't questioned (other, of course, than his winning the 2000 election because of the Supreme Court's decision, itself a topic for debate).
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Mr. Carter’s criticisms drew a sharp response from Michael Steele, the African-American chairman of the Republican party, who called the remarks an “outrage.” In a statement, Mr. Steele said: “President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn’t about race. It is about policy. This is a pathetic distraction by Democrats to shift attention away from the president’s wildly unpopular government-run health care plan that the American people simply oppose. Injecting race into the debate over critical issues facing American families doesn’t create jobs, reform our health care system or reduce the growing deficit. It only divides Americans rather than uniting us to find solutions to challenges facing our nation.”
Carter isn't wrong. It is not the ex-President who injected race into the public domain. And the President's health care plan is not "wildly unpopular" nor is it a government-run health care plan.
By stepping into the debate in such an explicit way, Mr. Carter used labels that the White House and others have clearly tried to avoid in the wake of Mr. Wilson’s remarks and last weekend’s angry demonstration on the Washington Mall. White House aides and some lawmakers had earlier deflected or dismissed questions centered on whether a racially tinged prism was underfoot, in what seemed a concerted effort to try to stay above the fray.
Above the fray? Race is a subject no one has the nerve to discuss openly, for too many people could get offended.
In a television interview on Sunday, Mr. Wilson, who was officially rebuked by the House on Tuesday, dismissed suggestions that his actions were racially motivated. One of his sons sprung to his defense after Mr. Carter’s remarks were publicized, saying his father didn’t have a “racist bone” in his body.
No one is a racist. There is no racism. We live in a racial Eden. The White House will not approach it openly, for it would be political dynamite, and would draw attention away from policies.
Other prominent officials however, like Representative James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip from Mr. Wilson’s home state, have publicly implored the White House to directly confront what they view as an unseemly element aimed at, in Mr. Clyburn’s words “delegitimizing” the president. Don’t let it fester, he warned.
There are many people who do not accept President Obama's legitimacy, or even his citizenship. Black skin, a Muslim name.
Nearly all agree that the level of hostility aimed at Mr. Obama runs extremely high. Mr. Hoyer termed it unusually harsh. Some attribute part of the volume to the 24/7, Web-and-cable news driven world that we live in. Mr. Hoyer also noted policy divisions, including those who are also angered by how their tax dollars are being used, given the bank and auto bailouts by the government.
What would have been the alternative? And President Bush was not charged with being a socialist.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Don’t accuse your critics of racism
David N. Dinkins
August 25, 2009
Dinkins Advises Paterson: Stop Calling Your Critics Racist
By SAM ROBERTS
David N. Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, offered some blunt advice on Monday to David A. Paterson, New York State’s first black governor: Don’t accuse your critics of racism.
Mr. Dinkins was reacting to comments Mr. Paterson made in a radio interview on Friday that he was the victim of a racially motivated news media campaign to keep him from running for election next year.
“We’re not in the post-racial period,” Mr. Paterson said in the interview. “My feeling is it’s being orchestrated, it’s a game, and people who pay attention know that.”
Mr. Dinkins, who has been close to the Paterson family for decades, took issue with the governor’s comments.
“Definitely he should get off the racist thing,” Mr. Dinkins said. “Right or wrong, it’s a fight you sure can’t win.”
Mr. Dinkins also questioned whether Mr. Paterson really believed there was an orchestrated, biased campaign against him in the news media. “I don’t think he means they’re picking on him because he is black,” Mr. Dinkins said. “I suspect he more means, were he not black — and maybe it’s pretty hard to make the distinction — those kind of comments would not have been made.”
In explaining the distinction, Mr. Dinkins, who spoke to Mr. Paterson’s aides but not Mr. Paterson over the weekend, said: “One is a very positive effort to attack, to demean. The other is more an analysis after the fact.”
On Monday, a White House spokesman told reporters that President Obama disagreed with Governor Paterson’s suggestion in the radio interview that the president would also be subjected to racially tinged news media attacks.
The spokesman, Bill Burton, said that Mr. Obama realized that there would always be those in the news media who agreed and disagreed with him. “Whether or not race plays into that, I don’t think is the case,” Mr. Burton said. “The president doesn’t think it’s the case.”
On Friday, Patrick Gaspard, President Obama’s political director, telephoned the governor’s secretary, Larry S. Schwartz, to express displeasure at the remarks, said a person who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to be seen as breaking a confidence.
Though Mr. Paterson issued a statement after the radio interview that not all the attacks against him could be attributed to race, he raised the issue of bias again in an interview on Saturday with Gerson Borrero, a political commentator, that was posted on the Internet on Monday.
He said that he was particularly upset at being labeled an “accidental governor” after Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal, and that he believed he had never been given a fair chance by many New Yorkers.
“I have been quiet for 17 months on this issue,” he was quoted as saying. “I played by the rules. It was a very difficult position to find myself in, and I’ve given it my best. I’ve done the best I can under the very trying circumstances the state is facing.”
“The media is trying to control the politics,” he added. “There are some folks in the media who think that it’s all right to racially stereotype.”
Then, apparently referring to Mr. Obama, he added: “Part of what I feel is that one very successful minority is permissible, but when you see too many success stories, then some people get nervous.”
Mr. Dinkins, as a candidate and as mayor from 1990 through 1993, often bristled privately at slights that he attributed to race, but rarely complained publicly.
After criticism provoked by his passion for tennis, he once maintained that his detractors weren’t biased because of his race but were expressing another prejudice altogether. “If I had gone to a basketball game, it would be all right,” Mr. Dinkins said, straight-faced. “I think there’s a bias against tennis.”
But on Monday, he acknowledged that before the rise of black figures like Colin L. Powell and Mr. Obama, racism did play a role in his political career.
In 1989, he recalled, he handily won a Democratic primary, but then barely defeated Rudolph W. Giuliani that November.
“How does one figure?” Mr. Dinkins said, echoing, virtually word for word, a rhetorical question he has posed more often and publicly in recent years. “Whatever frailties, whatever shortcomings I had were certainly not evident at that point, and whatever greatness there was in Rudy had not yet been revealed. So how come 1.9 million votes, and I win by the skin of my teeth?”
“The press used to ask me, ‘Why?’ ” Mr. Dinkins recalled. “My response was, ‘Why ask?’ ”
The racial dynamics today are far different, Mr. Dinkins said.
“Circumstances have vastly improved in our country over time,” he said. “I have always said that there’s a legacy of slavery and we live in a racist society, but things are eminently superior to what they once were. I am very pleased with our country and the way things are.”
Mr. Dinkins suggested that Mr. Paterson was at a political disadvantage because he had never been toughened by a competitive statewide campaign of his own.
“I don’t know where it goes from here, except that it’s my hope that the most skillful and more fair-minded writers among our media in New York will give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Dinkins said. “Time will tell what kind of governor he will be. It’s a little early. He’s been a as good a governor as he can be under the circumstances.”
As for whether Mr. Paterson should run next year, Mr. Dinkins said, “Absolutely, if he chooses to serve further.”
For Mr. Paterson’s supporters, one worrisome trend reflected in recent polls is the governor’s lack of popularity among black voters, a sentiment expressed by several black New Yorkers interviewed on Monday. Matthew Lenon, a 26-year-old mail carrier, interviewed in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, said: “He should focus on doing his job instead of using race as a cop-out. Albany’s looking horrible right now, and he’s not helping the situation.”
But Solomon Ben-Yahudah, a 50-year-old restaurateur in the same neighborhood, said Mr. Paterson had a point. “Those saying he is pulling the race card are not looking at the places they work,” he said. “The deck is a racist deck.”
Nicholas Confessore, Danny Hakim and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.
August 25, 2009
Dinkins Advises Paterson: Stop Calling Your Critics Racist
By SAM ROBERTS
David N. Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, offered some blunt advice on Monday to David A. Paterson, New York State’s first black governor: Don’t accuse your critics of racism.
Mr. Dinkins was reacting to comments Mr. Paterson made in a radio interview on Friday that he was the victim of a racially motivated news media campaign to keep him from running for election next year.
“We’re not in the post-racial period,” Mr. Paterson said in the interview. “My feeling is it’s being orchestrated, it’s a game, and people who pay attention know that.”
Mr. Dinkins, who has been close to the Paterson family for decades, took issue with the governor’s comments.
“Definitely he should get off the racist thing,” Mr. Dinkins said. “Right or wrong, it’s a fight you sure can’t win.”
Mr. Dinkins also questioned whether Mr. Paterson really believed there was an orchestrated, biased campaign against him in the news media. “I don’t think he means they’re picking on him because he is black,” Mr. Dinkins said. “I suspect he more means, were he not black — and maybe it’s pretty hard to make the distinction — those kind of comments would not have been made.”
In explaining the distinction, Mr. Dinkins, who spoke to Mr. Paterson’s aides but not Mr. Paterson over the weekend, said: “One is a very positive effort to attack, to demean. The other is more an analysis after the fact.”
On Monday, a White House spokesman told reporters that President Obama disagreed with Governor Paterson’s suggestion in the radio interview that the president would also be subjected to racially tinged news media attacks.
The spokesman, Bill Burton, said that Mr. Obama realized that there would always be those in the news media who agreed and disagreed with him. “Whether or not race plays into that, I don’t think is the case,” Mr. Burton said. “The president doesn’t think it’s the case.”
On Friday, Patrick Gaspard, President Obama’s political director, telephoned the governor’s secretary, Larry S. Schwartz, to express displeasure at the remarks, said a person who insisted on anonymity because he did not want to be seen as breaking a confidence.
Though Mr. Paterson issued a statement after the radio interview that not all the attacks against him could be attributed to race, he raised the issue of bias again in an interview on Saturday with Gerson Borrero, a political commentator, that was posted on the Internet on Monday.
He said that he was particularly upset at being labeled an “accidental governor” after Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal, and that he believed he had never been given a fair chance by many New Yorkers.
“I have been quiet for 17 months on this issue,” he was quoted as saying. “I played by the rules. It was a very difficult position to find myself in, and I’ve given it my best. I’ve done the best I can under the very trying circumstances the state is facing.”
“The media is trying to control the politics,” he added. “There are some folks in the media who think that it’s all right to racially stereotype.”
Then, apparently referring to Mr. Obama, he added: “Part of what I feel is that one very successful minority is permissible, but when you see too many success stories, then some people get nervous.”
Mr. Dinkins, as a candidate and as mayor from 1990 through 1993, often bristled privately at slights that he attributed to race, but rarely complained publicly.
After criticism provoked by his passion for tennis, he once maintained that his detractors weren’t biased because of his race but were expressing another prejudice altogether. “If I had gone to a basketball game, it would be all right,” Mr. Dinkins said, straight-faced. “I think there’s a bias against tennis.”
But on Monday, he acknowledged that before the rise of black figures like Colin L. Powell and Mr. Obama, racism did play a role in his political career.
In 1989, he recalled, he handily won a Democratic primary, but then barely defeated Rudolph W. Giuliani that November.
“How does one figure?” Mr. Dinkins said, echoing, virtually word for word, a rhetorical question he has posed more often and publicly in recent years. “Whatever frailties, whatever shortcomings I had were certainly not evident at that point, and whatever greatness there was in Rudy had not yet been revealed. So how come 1.9 million votes, and I win by the skin of my teeth?”
“The press used to ask me, ‘Why?’ ” Mr. Dinkins recalled. “My response was, ‘Why ask?’ ”
The racial dynamics today are far different, Mr. Dinkins said.
“Circumstances have vastly improved in our country over time,” he said. “I have always said that there’s a legacy of slavery and we live in a racist society, but things are eminently superior to what they once were. I am very pleased with our country and the way things are.”
Mr. Dinkins suggested that Mr. Paterson was at a political disadvantage because he had never been toughened by a competitive statewide campaign of his own.
“I don’t know where it goes from here, except that it’s my hope that the most skillful and more fair-minded writers among our media in New York will give him the benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Dinkins said. “Time will tell what kind of governor he will be. It’s a little early. He’s been a as good a governor as he can be under the circumstances.”
As for whether Mr. Paterson should run next year, Mr. Dinkins said, “Absolutely, if he chooses to serve further.”
For Mr. Paterson’s supporters, one worrisome trend reflected in recent polls is the governor’s lack of popularity among black voters, a sentiment expressed by several black New Yorkers interviewed on Monday. Matthew Lenon, a 26-year-old mail carrier, interviewed in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, said: “He should focus on doing his job instead of using race as a cop-out. Albany’s looking horrible right now, and he’s not helping the situation.”
But Solomon Ben-Yahudah, a 50-year-old restaurateur in the same neighborhood, said Mr. Paterson had a point. “Those saying he is pulling the race card are not looking at the places they work,” he said. “The deck is a racist deck.”
Nicholas Confessore, Danny Hakim and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.
Friday, August 14, 2009
From Hookers to Health Care
Sen. David Vitter seemed finished after his brush with the D.C. Madam, but his new ploy to provoke the Obama-hating town-hall mobs just might get him re-elected.
Socialism? Can anybody spell Medicare? Social Security?
ObamaCare? Legislation is being crafted in Congress, not by the black guy (well, not openly, anyway, something those placard-holders may have trouble grasping.)
While Democratic members of Congress confront indignant town-hall crowds opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care policies, Republican Sen. David Vitter is enjoying a Louisiana love fest. Vitter is barnstorming through the Bayou backwoods, hosting town-halls meetings before packed houses of ferociously anti-Obama audiences. They come to praise rather than shout. Billed as public forums to discuss Obama’s health-care proposals, or what Vitter has derisively referred to as “Obamacare,” the pre-screened events appear to be functioning effectively as surrogate campaign rallies for the scandal-scarred senator’s 2010 reelection bid.
Black health care, is perhaps what the Senator and his supporters are discussing.
"Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation. In the back of the chapel, an elderly woman waved a placard reading, “Send Obama & congress back to USSR.”
Whip up the natives. The USSR? Perhaps the news has not yet reached the Louisiana backwoods, but the Soviet Empire is no more.
Many of those attending Vitter’s town halls have been shepherded to the events by local chapters of TeaPartyPatriots.org, a supposedly grassroots network of national activists that happens to “partner” with the health-care and insurance industry-funded lobbying firm Freedom Works, which has directed angry mobs to Democratic events. At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.
Why didn't he invite the mob over to his place for some iced tea?
Vitter has good reason to fear public scrutiny. Had he not pre-screened his audiences, some wily constituent might have asked the senator to address his affair with Wendy Cortez, a high-priced New Orleans escort, or asked how his name showed up on the client list of Jeanne Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, who killed herself in May 2008 after being convicted of money laundering. The constituent could have framed the question in terms of the health-care debate by asking Vitter why he reportedly wore a condom when he visited Cortez but subsequently tried to introduce an amendment barring health-care providers that offer free STD testing and contraception from receiving federal funds.
Well, he is white, at least.
Socialism? Can anybody spell Medicare? Social Security?
ObamaCare? Legislation is being crafted in Congress, not by the black guy (well, not openly, anyway, something those placard-holders may have trouble grasping.)
While Democratic members of Congress confront indignant town-hall crowds opposed to President Barack Obama’s health-care policies, Republican Sen. David Vitter is enjoying a Louisiana love fest. Vitter is barnstorming through the Bayou backwoods, hosting town-halls meetings before packed houses of ferociously anti-Obama audiences. They come to praise rather than shout. Billed as public forums to discuss Obama’s health-care proposals, or what Vitter has derisively referred to as “Obamacare,” the pre-screened events appear to be functioning effectively as surrogate campaign rallies for the scandal-scarred senator’s 2010 reelection bid.
Black health care, is perhaps what the Senator and his supporters are discussing.
"Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation. In the back of the chapel, an elderly woman waved a placard reading, “Send Obama & congress back to USSR.”
Whip up the natives. The USSR? Perhaps the news has not yet reached the Louisiana backwoods, but the Soviet Empire is no more.
Many of those attending Vitter’s town halls have been shepherded to the events by local chapters of TeaPartyPatriots.org, a supposedly grassroots network of national activists that happens to “partner” with the health-care and insurance industry-funded lobbying firm Freedom Works, which has directed angry mobs to Democratic events. At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.
Why didn't he invite the mob over to his place for some iced tea?
Vitter has good reason to fear public scrutiny. Had he not pre-screened his audiences, some wily constituent might have asked the senator to address his affair with Wendy Cortez, a high-priced New Orleans escort, or asked how his name showed up on the client list of Jeanne Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, who killed herself in May 2008 after being convicted of money laundering. The constituent could have framed the question in terms of the health-care debate by asking Vitter why he reportedly wore a condom when he visited Cortez but subsequently tried to introduce an amendment barring health-care providers that offer free STD testing and contraception from receiving federal funds.
Well, he is white, at least.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
More beer
One more take on the Sargeant, the Professore and the President. Stanley Crouch is honet, smart, and blunt.
Nothing brings out more American madness than race and nothing is more available for exaggeration than the “plight” of black people, especially black men, most especially those now behind bars. They are the most authentic because real black men always run afoul of the law or are forced by poverty to murder, rape, and brutalize other black people when not selling them drugs. Authentic black men are not academic milquetoasts. They wake up angry, they go to bed angry, and they sleep in anger.
But if one listens to conservative race-baiters like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — professionals who are loons on demand and for pay — one notices that they also live inside of shared toxic exaggerations. Or at least spout them. As they speak of Barack Obama’s supposed hatred of white people, the red seems to grow from their necks and rise under the skin on the backs of their heads until continuing to their faces which then take on the kind of purple white people call “wine stain.” I doubt a brew will calm them down. Nor will a pain killer.
This is a weird moment.
All three beer drinkers have Irish blood in their ancestry.
This moment of ethnic trivia made molten by our media but also unavoidably high profile by Obama’s choosing to answer an inappropriate question about the arrest at the end of a press conference on health care! His choice showed the President to be far more vulnerable to lack of discipline than at nearly any moment during his long, long march to election.
The public confessions of “me and my gal on the side” made by Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign have pulled us closer to a formerly secret Washington, D.C., prayer group on C Street. The Christian group is called, like Charles Manson’s followers, The Family. It has an ominous philosophy that transcends morality with a small first letter in favor of a heavenly Morality out of which God chooses men for the execution of power rather than to act by the standards used to assess men with lesser positions of authority. According to Malcolm X in his Autobiography, this was the explanation Elijah Muhammad gave him to explain having impregnated a few of his young secretaries. As it was once said in the streets, “Either it is what it is, or it ain’t what it ain’t.”
Sgt. Crowley will have been happy every second that he was there. Arresting a Negro doesn’t always get you to the White House.
Both Sanford and Ensign pray—or some would say prey—with those men who gather on C Street. They have been counseled by the group in matters of the spirit and the booty—I mean the body.
Ishmael Reed’s extended diatribe in Counter Punch lays out all of the black complaints most often made about Gates behind his back. Like most academics, the black ones are distinguished more by their cowardice than any dedication to intellectual rigor. Gates has long been under attack for being trendish, for selling out to feminists, to homosexual liberation, and to whatever point of view comes up if aligning himself with it will guarantee his further success. A disreputable brother, mostly because he makes so much goddamn money and is on television more than his mediocre colleagues.
Where Reed’s logic veers into ethnic solidarity rather than substantial ideas or opinions is very obvious, but his charges are much more common than those reading about the Gates arrest would assume because he is so often referred to as “America’s top black intellectual.” Reed correctly asks just who might be the most prominent white intellectual. Hmm. No answer. Silent night.
Now, there we go, a very good point. Who is the smartest white guy? George Will? By Yahweh, no!
Nothing brings out more American madness than race and nothing is more available for exaggeration than the “plight” of black people, especially black men, most especially those now behind bars. They are the most authentic because real black men always run afoul of the law or are forced by poverty to murder, rape, and brutalize other black people when not selling them drugs. Authentic black men are not academic milquetoasts. They wake up angry, they go to bed angry, and they sleep in anger.
But if one listens to conservative race-baiters like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — professionals who are loons on demand and for pay — one notices that they also live inside of shared toxic exaggerations. Or at least spout them. As they speak of Barack Obama’s supposed hatred of white people, the red seems to grow from their necks and rise under the skin on the backs of their heads until continuing to their faces which then take on the kind of purple white people call “wine stain.” I doubt a brew will calm them down. Nor will a pain killer.
This is a weird moment.
All three beer drinkers have Irish blood in their ancestry.
This moment of ethnic trivia made molten by our media but also unavoidably high profile by Obama’s choosing to answer an inappropriate question about the arrest at the end of a press conference on health care! His choice showed the President to be far more vulnerable to lack of discipline than at nearly any moment during his long, long march to election.
The public confessions of “me and my gal on the side” made by Gov. Mark Sanford and Sen. John Ensign have pulled us closer to a formerly secret Washington, D.C., prayer group on C Street. The Christian group is called, like Charles Manson’s followers, The Family. It has an ominous philosophy that transcends morality with a small first letter in favor of a heavenly Morality out of which God chooses men for the execution of power rather than to act by the standards used to assess men with lesser positions of authority. According to Malcolm X in his Autobiography, this was the explanation Elijah Muhammad gave him to explain having impregnated a few of his young secretaries. As it was once said in the streets, “Either it is what it is, or it ain’t what it ain’t.”
Sgt. Crowley will have been happy every second that he was there. Arresting a Negro doesn’t always get you to the White House.
Both Sanford and Ensign pray—or some would say prey—with those men who gather on C Street. They have been counseled by the group in matters of the spirit and the booty—I mean the body.
Ishmael Reed’s extended diatribe in Counter Punch lays out all of the black complaints most often made about Gates behind his back. Like most academics, the black ones are distinguished more by their cowardice than any dedication to intellectual rigor. Gates has long been under attack for being trendish, for selling out to feminists, to homosexual liberation, and to whatever point of view comes up if aligning himself with it will guarantee his further success. A disreputable brother, mostly because he makes so much goddamn money and is on television more than his mediocre colleagues.
Where Reed’s logic veers into ethnic solidarity rather than substantial ideas or opinions is very obvious, but his charges are much more common than those reading about the Gates arrest would assume because he is so often referred to as “America’s top black intellectual.” Reed correctly asks just who might be the most prominent white intellectual. Hmm. No answer. Silent night.
Now, there we go, a very good point. Who is the smartest white guy? George Will? By Yahweh, no!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Decision Reflects Court's Deep Division
Sonia Sotomayor, the New York appellate judge President Barack Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court, has credited her success in part to postwar America's efforts to correct centuries of racial discrimination.
If, as expected, her nomination is confirmed, the self-described "affirmative-action baby" will join a court divided on that very topic.
Chief Justice John Roberts came to the court with a deep-seated skepticism of race-conscious policies. In a number of cases his court has ruled, often 5-4, in favor of limiting the scope of civil-rights laws and practices devised to address racial discrimination.
"It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Justice Roberts wrote in a 2006 concurring opinion rejecting a Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas' congressional redistricting.
No more sordid than racism.
"This is an area where there are sharply divergent intuitions about the role of race in American society, and sharply divergent views about what should be done about it," says Goodwin Liu, co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the University of California, Berkeley.
Will she, as expected and predicted by so many pundits, be predictably liberal?
It also is possible that she could seek to hammer out a middle ground. Still, sometimes justices' views change, if subtly, over time. The chief justice himself has displayed a more moderate streak this term. Earlier this month, he wrote an opinion joined by seven other justices that left alive a bedrock provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Roberts moderating? What an interesting comment.
The Supreme Court's decision Monday in the New Haven firefighters' case highlights the justices' split. The four liberals would have upheld the city's decision to toss out test results that it worried were discriminatory. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion.
A concurring opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, effectively accused New Haven's leadership of pandering to a local black political leader in throwing out the test results. Notably, Chief Justice Roberts didn't join that toughly worded opinion.
Well, it is all relative.
If, as expected, her nomination is confirmed, the self-described "affirmative-action baby" will join a court divided on that very topic.
Chief Justice John Roberts came to the court with a deep-seated skepticism of race-conscious policies. In a number of cases his court has ruled, often 5-4, in favor of limiting the scope of civil-rights laws and practices devised to address racial discrimination.
"It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Justice Roberts wrote in a 2006 concurring opinion rejecting a Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas' congressional redistricting.
No more sordid than racism.
"This is an area where there are sharply divergent intuitions about the role of race in American society, and sharply divergent views about what should be done about it," says Goodwin Liu, co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the University of California, Berkeley.
Will she, as expected and predicted by so many pundits, be predictably liberal?
It also is possible that she could seek to hammer out a middle ground. Still, sometimes justices' views change, if subtly, over time. The chief justice himself has displayed a more moderate streak this term. Earlier this month, he wrote an opinion joined by seven other justices that left alive a bedrock provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Roberts moderating? What an interesting comment.
The Supreme Court's decision Monday in the New Haven firefighters' case highlights the justices' split. The four liberals would have upheld the city's decision to toss out test results that it worried were discriminatory. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion.
A concurring opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, effectively accused New Haven's leadership of pandering to a local black political leader in throwing out the test results. Notably, Chief Justice Roberts didn't join that toughly worded opinion.
Well, it is all relative.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
After U.S. Breakthrough, Europe Looks in Mirror
From afar, Europeans and others are hailing Obama's election.
In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.
Europeans will no longer be able to lecture America on its failings with its own blacks. No one will be able to do it any longer.
“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.
No more. “But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.
For many immigrants to Europe, Mr. Obama’s victory is “a small revolution” toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. “It will never be the same,” she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart. Her sister, Cherine, 29, is a computer engineer. Mr. Obama “really represents the dream of America — if you work, you can make it,” she said. “It’s a hope for the entire world.”
In a suburb of Paris, people watched election returns from the United States last week
In Rome, a poster from the Italian Democratic Party said, “The World Changes.” The only black member of the Italian Parliament saw the Obama victory as a “provocation” to Europeans
In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.
Europeans will no longer be able to lecture America on its failings with its own blacks. No one will be able to do it any longer.
“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.
No more. “But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.
For many immigrants to Europe, Mr. Obama’s victory is “a small revolution” toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. “It will never be the same,” she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart. Her sister, Cherine, 29, is a computer engineer. Mr. Obama “really represents the dream of America — if you work, you can make it,” she said. “It’s a hope for the entire world.”
In a suburb of Paris, people watched election returns from the United States last week
In Rome, a poster from the Italian Democratic Party said, “The World Changes.” The only black member of the Italian Parliament saw the Obama victory as a “provocation” to Europeans
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
What role race in race?
Will whites for for a black candidate? Are poll respondents not telling the truth when asked?
Political strategists once assumed that polls might well overstate support for black candidates, since white voters might be reluctant to admit racially tinged sentiments to a pollster. Newer research has cast doubt on that assumption. Either way, the situation is confounding aides on both sides, who like everyone else are waiting to see what role race will play in the privacy of the voting booth.
It's often called the Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, mayor of LA, who lost the governor's race in California; polls showed him being comfortably in th elead.
“If he were white, this would be a blowout,” Mr. Ickes said. “I think the country has come a long, long, long way since the 1960s. I think everybody would agree with that. But if you talk to people in certain states, they will say there are impulses that do not benefit Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.”
If he were white he might not even be ahead; Obama's lead is because of who he is. And because of the economy's shape.
Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan, said he had become accustomed to whispered asides from voters suggesting they would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black. “We honestly don’t know how big an issue it is,” Mr. Anuzis said. But Representative Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat of Alabama, said race was no longer the automatic barrier to the White House that it once was.
America sure has come a long way in 20, let alone 40 years. Yet some things, and some people have not changed. Some old ideas remain in place; even youngsters share old prejudices.
Throughout this campaign season, many commentators and politicians have proclaimed today’s youth to be a colorblind generation in which racial prejudice has receded and diversity is embraced.
To make blanket generalizations is nonsense. The 1960s was supposed to be an age of young people embracing equality and dropping racial prejudice; that was simply not true.
But in two days of interviews here and north of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, most young people acknowledged — or even insisted — that race was still a powerful if subtle factor among their peers.
Prejudice is learned, at home.
At the University of Cincinnati, Anthony Galarza, a graduate student in urban planning, said he had heard off-color jokes about an Obama presidency that suggested the White House would become “more ghetto” with “barbecues on the front lawn.”
“I would think on a college campus we would be a little more liberal,” said Mr. Galarza, 29. “To hear it so openly talked about, it’s disturbing — it really is. I don’t think anyone who is colorblind would make a comment like that.”
Adam French, a 21-year-old white senior and supporter of Mr. McCain, said: “It would be interesting to consider if Barack Obama had the same credentials but was John Smith, a white guy from Texas, that he would be in the same position to run. I don’t think anyone with his credentials could come anywhere close to being on a presidential ticket” without being black.
Of all the students quoted in this article in the Times, this one jumps out at me: it misses the very point that being who he is makes Obama such an inspirational leader.
And then there are the yahoos that spout absolutely pure nonsense, the same sort of nonsense that was spouted 40 years ago, even if in slightly less offensive terms.
The McCain campaign’s depiction of Barack Obama as a mysterious “other” with an impenetrable background may not be resonating in the national polls, but it has found a receptive audience with many white Southern voters.
Not just in the South: here in New York there is plenty of opposition, which I consider to be racial prejudice, though the reasons expressed are indirect: lack of experience, not sure of his support for Israel, and so on.
Being the son of a white mother and a black father has come to symbolize Mr. Obama’s larger mysteries for many voters. When asked about his background, a substantial number of people interviewed said they believed his racial heritage was unclear, giving them another reason to vote against him.
“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.”
Say what? Can this bozo visualize, or understand, the mixing of the races throughout American history? Doubtful; it ain't in the Bible.
“I would think of him as I would of another of mixed race,” said Glenn Reynolds, 74, a retired textile worker in Martinsville, Va., and a former supervisor at a Goodyear plant. “God taught the children of Israel not to intermarry. You should be proud of what you are, and not intermarry.”
Clearly not just the young have such ridiculous ideas. I wonder what Master Reynolds thinks about Thomas Jefferson.
“He’s going to tear up the rose bushes and plant a watermelon patch,” said James Halsey, chuckling, while standing in the Wal-Mart parking lot with fellow workers in the environmental cleanup business. “I just don’t think we’ll ever have a black president.”
Some people don't bother with ambiguities. He only failed to use the word nigger, this jerk.
“He doesn’t come from the African-American perspective — he’s not of that tradition,” said Kimi Oaks, a prominent community volunteer in the Mobile area, with apparent approval. Ms. Oaks, along with about 15 others, had gathered after Sunday services at Mobile’s leading Methodist church to discuss the presidential campaign. “He’s not a product of any ghetto,” Ms. Oaks added.
Yet even some of those who support Obama can't see past their own prejudices: does Miss Kimi really believe that all US blacks come from a ghetto?
At the same time, however, she vigorously rejected the idea that race would be important in the election, a question met with general head-shaking from those assembled; Ms. Oaks said she was “terribly offended,” as a Southerner, at even being asked about this.
And then some have the issue become personal: Bud Rowell, a retired oil field worker interviewed at a Baptist church in Citronelle, Ala., north of Mobile, said he was uncertain about Mr. Obama’s racial identity, and was critical of him for being equivocal and indecisive. But Mr. Rowell also said that personal experience had made him more sympathetic to biracial people. “I’ve always been against the blacks,” said Mr. Rowell, who is in his 70s, recalling how he was arrested for throwing firecrackers in the black section of town. But now that he has three biracial grandchildren — “it was really rough on me” — he said he had “found out they were human beings, too.”
At least he thinks his grandchildren are people; nice of him.
“I would think on a college campus we would be a little more liberal. To hear it so openly talked about, it’s disturbing — it really is. I don’t think anyone who is colorblind would make a comment like that.” ANTHONY GALARZA, in Cincinnati, speaking of off-color jokes about an Obama presidency.
“He’s neither-nor. He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.” RICKY THOMPSON, in Mobile, Ala., speaking about Barack Obama
Political strategists once assumed that polls might well overstate support for black candidates, since white voters might be reluctant to admit racially tinged sentiments to a pollster. Newer research has cast doubt on that assumption. Either way, the situation is confounding aides on both sides, who like everyone else are waiting to see what role race will play in the privacy of the voting booth.
It's often called the Bradley effect, named after Tom Bradley, mayor of LA, who lost the governor's race in California; polls showed him being comfortably in th elead.
“If he were white, this would be a blowout,” Mr. Ickes said. “I think the country has come a long, long, long way since the 1960s. I think everybody would agree with that. But if you talk to people in certain states, they will say there are impulses that do not benefit Barack Obama because of the color of his skin.”
If he were white he might not even be ahead; Obama's lead is because of who he is. And because of the economy's shape.
Saul Anuzis, the Republican chairman in Michigan, said he had become accustomed to whispered asides from voters suggesting they would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black. “We honestly don’t know how big an issue it is,” Mr. Anuzis said. But Representative Artur Davis, an African-American Democrat of Alabama, said race was no longer the automatic barrier to the White House that it once was.
America sure has come a long way in 20, let alone 40 years. Yet some things, and some people have not changed. Some old ideas remain in place; even youngsters share old prejudices.
Throughout this campaign season, many commentators and politicians have proclaimed today’s youth to be a colorblind generation in which racial prejudice has receded and diversity is embraced.
To make blanket generalizations is nonsense. The 1960s was supposed to be an age of young people embracing equality and dropping racial prejudice; that was simply not true.
But in two days of interviews here and north of the Ohio River in Cincinnati, most young people acknowledged — or even insisted — that race was still a powerful if subtle factor among their peers.
Prejudice is learned, at home.
At the University of Cincinnati, Anthony Galarza, a graduate student in urban planning, said he had heard off-color jokes about an Obama presidency that suggested the White House would become “more ghetto” with “barbecues on the front lawn.”
“I would think on a college campus we would be a little more liberal,” said Mr. Galarza, 29. “To hear it so openly talked about, it’s disturbing — it really is. I don’t think anyone who is colorblind would make a comment like that.”
Adam French, a 21-year-old white senior and supporter of Mr. McCain, said: “It would be interesting to consider if Barack Obama had the same credentials but was John Smith, a white guy from Texas, that he would be in the same position to run. I don’t think anyone with his credentials could come anywhere close to being on a presidential ticket” without being black.
Of all the students quoted in this article in the Times, this one jumps out at me: it misses the very point that being who he is makes Obama such an inspirational leader.
And then there are the yahoos that spout absolutely pure nonsense, the same sort of nonsense that was spouted 40 years ago, even if in slightly less offensive terms.
The McCain campaign’s depiction of Barack Obama as a mysterious “other” with an impenetrable background may not be resonating in the national polls, but it has found a receptive audience with many white Southern voters.
Not just in the South: here in New York there is plenty of opposition, which I consider to be racial prejudice, though the reasons expressed are indirect: lack of experience, not sure of his support for Israel, and so on.
Being the son of a white mother and a black father has come to symbolize Mr. Obama’s larger mysteries for many voters. When asked about his background, a substantial number of people interviewed said they believed his racial heritage was unclear, giving them another reason to vote against him.
“He’s neither-nor,” said Ricky Thompson, a pipe fitter who works at a factory north of Mobile, while standing in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store just north of here. “He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.”
Say what? Can this bozo visualize, or understand, the mixing of the races throughout American history? Doubtful; it ain't in the Bible.
“I would think of him as I would of another of mixed race,” said Glenn Reynolds, 74, a retired textile worker in Martinsville, Va., and a former supervisor at a Goodyear plant. “God taught the children of Israel not to intermarry. You should be proud of what you are, and not intermarry.”
Clearly not just the young have such ridiculous ideas. I wonder what Master Reynolds thinks about Thomas Jefferson.
“He’s going to tear up the rose bushes and plant a watermelon patch,” said James Halsey, chuckling, while standing in the Wal-Mart parking lot with fellow workers in the environmental cleanup business. “I just don’t think we’ll ever have a black president.”
Some people don't bother with ambiguities. He only failed to use the word nigger, this jerk.
“He doesn’t come from the African-American perspective — he’s not of that tradition,” said Kimi Oaks, a prominent community volunteer in the Mobile area, with apparent approval. Ms. Oaks, along with about 15 others, had gathered after Sunday services at Mobile’s leading Methodist church to discuss the presidential campaign. “He’s not a product of any ghetto,” Ms. Oaks added.
Yet even some of those who support Obama can't see past their own prejudices: does Miss Kimi really believe that all US blacks come from a ghetto?
At the same time, however, she vigorously rejected the idea that race would be important in the election, a question met with general head-shaking from those assembled; Ms. Oaks said she was “terribly offended,” as a Southerner, at even being asked about this.
And then some have the issue become personal: Bud Rowell, a retired oil field worker interviewed at a Baptist church in Citronelle, Ala., north of Mobile, said he was uncertain about Mr. Obama’s racial identity, and was critical of him for being equivocal and indecisive. But Mr. Rowell also said that personal experience had made him more sympathetic to biracial people. “I’ve always been against the blacks,” said Mr. Rowell, who is in his 70s, recalling how he was arrested for throwing firecrackers in the black section of town. But now that he has three biracial grandchildren — “it was really rough on me” — he said he had “found out they were human beings, too.”
At least he thinks his grandchildren are people; nice of him.
“I would think on a college campus we would be a little more liberal. To hear it so openly talked about, it’s disturbing — it really is. I don’t think anyone who is colorblind would make a comment like that.” ANTHONY GALARZA, in Cincinnati, speaking of off-color jokes about an Obama presidency.
“He’s neither-nor. He’s other. It’s in the Bible. Come as one. Don’t create other breeds.” RICKY THOMPSON, in Mobile, Ala., speaking about Barack Obama
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Running While Black
Bob Herbert exemplifies hard-hitting, unabashed opinion column writing. This column is so very much on the mark, it makes pieces written by other columnists seem trivial.
Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.
That sets the stage, as it were. Why, I wondered, when the McCain campaign run the infamous celebrity ad this past week, did they choose Britney and Paris? Why not Angeline, or Brad?
Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.
The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”
That ad helped Ford lose; it was despicable.Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.
Consciously, or subconsciously, that is the fear that is being addressed: uppity black men taking white women sexually.
Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.
If he complains, he'll come across as a whiner, be charged with inventing slights, with not addressing important issues.
Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation.
Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.
He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Garden Paradise
Bishopville SC is about 50 miles away from Columbia, SC.
First picture is of downtown Bishopville, 26 May 2007; the next one is of Pearl Fryar.
A visit to Pearl Fryar's garden isn't a typical stroll in the park. Those who reach this tiny town in the heart of former cotton country will notice a live oak carved into a cube, boxwoods spelling out the word "love" and geometric shapes scattered throughout the three acres surrounding a modest ranch home. His dogwood – a tree that isn't supposed to be able to be made into topiary – looks like a pile of snowballs when in full bloom. And his signature piece – a Leyland cypress pruned and twisted into something resembling a fish skeleton – dominates his side yard. But what is most striking is that this piece of cultivated land is transforming Bishopville, bridging racial divides and becoming a source of inspiration for the thousands of people who visit it each year.
In college, Mr. Fryar joined civil-rights protests, during a time he now refers to as the "social revolution." After college and a brief stint in the Army, he worked for the National Can company in Long Island City, N.Y.
It was indeed social revolution. That is the other, the better, side of the Sixties so many people now denigrate.
In 1975, the company moved him south and eventually placed him at a manual-labor job at a factory in Bishopville. Even by the early 1980s, though, he found that the South of his youth hadn't changed as much as he had hoped. Trying to buy a house, he ran into resistance when his real-estate agent started inquiring about homes for sale. One resident, who didn't want to be his neighbor, told his agent that the problem was that blacks don't keep up their yards.
1980s!
For more than two decades, Mr. Fryar has been doing much more than proving that objection wrong. He began his project with a simple goal: to win "Garden of the Month" honors from Bishopville's Iris Garden Club. He didn't know anything about gardening, though. He worked long hours at the factory and didn't have any money to spend on plants. Someone did give him a set of gardening books, which he leafed through only to discard. "If you do what's in a book," he told me, "it won't be yours. You'll just be following what someone else has already done."
Exactly.He has created a sanctuary that has transformed not only the acres surrounding his modest home but also the community at large. Where there once was resistance to his purchase of a home, there now is love of his garden. His creation is one place in Bishopville where people black and white regularly interact. The town is even looking to revive its economy by encouraging people who come to see his garden to visit local shops. Several of his plants are now sprucing up downtown, too.
Proved the racists wrong.
"I knew I might have something here," he told me while standing in the shade of a cube-shaped live oak, "when people started to tell me I was losing it."
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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