Misty sent me the following story from CNN.com more after the break…
“We had a dream. Now it’s a reality.”
That’s the slogan on a popular T-shirt linking Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential run to the Rev. Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality. It’s one of several T-shirts — including “Barack is my homeboy”– that reflect African-Americans’ euphoria over Obama’s White House bid.
But there are others who warn that an Obama presidency could hurt African-Americans. They say an Obama victory could cause white Americans to ignore entrenched racial divisions while claiming that America has reached the racial Promised Land.
Paul Street, author of the forthcoming book “Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics,” says Obama risks becoming an Oval Office version of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. She and former Secretary of State Colin Powell are African-American figures whose popularity allows some white Americans to congratulate themselves for not being racist, he says
“They’re cited as proof that racism is no longer a significant barrier to black advancement and interracial equality,” Street said.
“This isn’t new. Go to the 19th century, and Southern aristocrats would point to a certain African-American landowner who was doing well to prove that whites are not racist.”
Nick Shapiro, an Obama spokesman, says Obama believes that America has made tremendous progress in the past 50 years. iReport.com: Biggest challenges for black America
“However, the suggestion that somehow Senator Obama’s campaign represents an easy shortcut is not realistic,” Shapiro said in a statement. “Senator Obama believes that we still have a lot of work to do, and that’s not just true for the issues facing blacks or Latinos, but for women and other communities struggling to secure the basic necessities in life like jobs, housing, health care and quality education.”
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
***********************************
First of all this story is a precursor to the two party CNN special they are having about called: Black in America.
First the CNN program is in my estimation embarrassing and insulting.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on this because this program is just another attempt to put us all in categories or groups. Will CNN run a series on Asians in America, or Hispanics in America highlighting their uniqueness. CNN obviously believes that white folks racism through their collective ignorance of Negros needs to be addressed. Lookie here whitey, these Negros are more like you than not, but they ARE different.
I said it a million times I hate the notion that I am on some fucken Negro team as if all black folks have my best interest at heart.
Niggas are incarcerated at an alarming rate, Niggas are killing each other still at an alarming rate, and they are not going to school, not even managing to graduate from high school.
The reality is shows like this are in my mind extremely divisive. It tells other ethnic groups that the “black” experience is different and irreconcilable with the American experience. Blacks are the only group in America that has the benefit of
constant excuses and explanations, which is not really a benefit. It serves to the detriment of black folks.
As for this web story “Could an Obama presidency hurt black Americans?” Hurt Negros, of course not, but what I have said before and I will no doubt repeat often if Obama is elected Negros will act like damm fools. I can see the ghettoized types partying in the streets, becoming more belligerent towards law enforcement and just about any other white authority figure. You will see more discrimination lawsuits as racial tension builds in workplaces.
Just think about the utter stupidity displayed by Negros after the OJ verdict and magnify that times ten.
Oh don’t get me wrong your uneducated silly idiot whitey redneck attitudes towards black will become more strained and the typical glares and looks rednecks give me anytime I walk into certain establishments will no doubt last a bit longer, however my take is basically black folks will no doubt see and Obama presidency as an invitation to engage in more societal retardation than normal.
The Magic Negros presidency will be seen and an invitation for black folks to exert their new found “perceived” power and status. As the story states a Magic Negro presidency is payback and “atonement for America’s ugly racial past.” You racist ass white people owe us, no doubt some ridiculous call for “black unity” will arise and every community in the country will be called on the carpet to address racial injustices having a Negro president will be the symbolic club to beat the racism in injustice out of you racist white people.
Anywho, this reminded me of a good blog piece I posted some time ago “The Old Guy Perspective” Obama and race from Instapunk.
This CNN web article and the CNN TV program is just the beginning of the barrage you white people will have to endure if the Magic Negro is elected.
More of you white folks will no doubt be echoing the sentiments in this piece.
***********************************
This is from Instapunk, interesting read.
Some liberal bloggers are having a cow, but I get dudes vibe. Check it out.
DEALING WITH IT. Obama says we should talk about race. He thinks that will help him. It won’t. Most of us have spent a lifetime absorbing the lesson that seeing what we see automatically makes us racist. Do you want to talk about it? Do you? Really?There are a few areas where, by virtue of age and experience, I think I can speak for the overwhelming majority of Americans. We want to get past racial problems. We recognize that slavery was a sin and that we have a moral obligation to see to it that our institutions and our own behavior are fair to everyone. We share a yearning so fierce that it amounts to an ache for a color-blind society in which all may prosper on the basis of abilities, not skin color. It is this intense emotion which facilitated the honeymoon period of Obama’s campaign for the presidency.
But the color-blind society has not been achieved. What’s more, we are constantly told — lectured, hectored, propagandized — that this state of affairs is our fault. We tend to accept the charge because the truth is we don’t spend all our time thinking about race, and so we defer to those who think about nothing else because, well, we almost never get up in the morning thinking about how privileged we are to be white, which we’ve come to accept as yet another of our endless insensitivities about race.
We’ve come to accept a lot of things, in fact. Although no one alive in America has ever owned a slave, we accept that we are all somehow guilty for slavery in the American past. We accept that in our lifetimes racial discrimination has become a routine official practice against those of us whose remote ancestors were not slaves. We accept that there are doctors and lawyers and police officers and firefighters whose credentials may not be completely up to snuff because of the top-secret compromises associated with affirmative action. We accept the popular — and tiresomely repeated stereotypes — that black people are more gifted at sports and dancing and music and sexuality, although there is no other arena in which it is fair to say that white or yellow people are better than black people. We accept the premise that there exists some kind of super black woman who is a naturally better mother, matriarch, empirical philosopher, and leader of men than 5,000 years of civilization has produced in other cultures through education, discipline, and morality. We accept that any fear we feel of young black men on the sidewalk is more a reflection of our own prejudice than the cold statistics of crime. We accept that it’s improper for us to object to obscene rap recordings, thug sports stars, flagrantly corrupt politicians, and hypocritical clergy if any of these happen to be black people. We accept that the first major inroads against the hallowed First Amendment began with a political correctness about matters of race that have since ballooned to a distortion of all human interactions. We accept that everything we disapprove of in black behavior is derived from our own lack of understanding about what they’ve been through.
But Obama has invited us to talk about race.
Okay. I’m accepting the invitation. He can regret it at his leisure.
I don’t hate black people. I can’t pretend to be color-blind because absolutely nothing in my culture will allow me to be. I admire Thomas Sowell, Duke Ellington, Roberto Clemente, Muhammed Ali, Alexandre Dumas, Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Count Basie, Tiger Woods, and Bill Cosby. There are many others but that’s a sampling of the famous folks whose courage, genius, character, and achievements I would be proud if I could get anywhere in the vicinity of. The bald truth of the matter is that they’re better than I am, and it doesn’t arouse a flicker of racial feeling in me to acknowledge it. They have enriched and elevated my own experience of life.
On the other hand, I am sick to death of black people as a group. The truth. That is part of the conversation Obama is asking for, isn’t it? I live in an eastern state almost exactly on the fabled Mason-Dixon line. Every day I see young black males wearing tee shirts down to their knees — and jeans belted just above their knees. I’m an old guy. I want to smack them. All of them. They are egregious stereotypes. It’s impossible not to think the unthinkable N-Word when they roll up beside you at a stoplight in their trashed old Hondas with 19-inch spinner wheels and rap recordings that shake the foundations of the buildings. It’s like a broadcast dare: Go ahead! Call me a nigger! And then I’ll cap your ass.
Here’s the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE niggers. Black people know it. White people know it. And only black people are allowed to notice and pronounce the truth of it. Which would be fine. Except that black people are not a community but a political party. They can squabble with each other in caucus but they absolutely refuse to speak the truth in public.
Read it all and his response here
Sphere: Related Content