So much for 'conversation' on race

[gilliam]

The election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, was supposed to be a sign of our national maturity, a chance to transform the charged, stilted “national conversation” about race into a smarter and more authentic dialogue, led by a president who was also one of the nation’s subtlest thinkers and writers on the topic.

Instead, the conversation just got dumber.

The America of 2010 is dominated by racial images out of farce and parody, caricatures not seen since the glory days of Shaft. Fox News often stars a leather-clad New Black Panther, while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America. Obama’s own, sole foray into the issue of race involved calling a police officer “stupid,” and regretting his own words. Conservative leaders and the NAACP, the venerable civil-rights group, recently engaged in a round of bitter name-calling that left both groups wounded and crying foul. Political correctness continues to reign in parts of the left, and now has a match in the belligerent grievance of conservatives demanding that hair-trigger allegations of racism be proven.

“I thought we were going to move beyond this,” said Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative historian of race and a Bush appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who called the current racial climate “a catastrophe.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40007.html#ixzz0uMC3f9sN

I blaim the 24 hour news cycle, both conservative and liberal talk shows, and probably the influence of blogs and forums on the Internet.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Up until Andrew Breitbart posted the snippet of Shirley Sherrod’s speech, the right never engaged in the racecard mud slinging, I think Breitbart was just masterfully giving them a taste of their own medicine, and watching them screw up and overreact, about time someone snookered those race-baiters.

As far as Fox and the New Black Panthers, it *should *have been a story and they *should *have been prosecuted, and the Justice Department’s actions *should *be a scandal, Fox is only reporting on it because no one else will, the fact that no one will simply makes it more of a story, more of the “Mainstream Media in the tank for Obama” modus operandi that is so obvious and sickening. Can you imagine if a couple of New KKK had stood outside a polling place harassing black people as they tried to vote? And if a Republican administration had given them a pass? ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/Wapo/NYTimes/etc. would be having nightly conniption fits about it. But once again the MSM does what they can to cover the tracks for this fool we have in the White House.

 

[ChadS]

I blaim the 24 hour news cycle, both conservative and liberal talk shows, and probably the influence of blogs and forums on the Internet.

I agree with your assessment completely. Yes, we have access to 24 hour news, but the funny thing is that less and less gets covered in that same time period. Everything needs to fit between the commercials and they try to get at least two segments in between each commercial break. So if you try to get a conservative and liberal talking there’s only enough time for them to make a point or two and hit the highlights. Nothing in depth or of much substance and then there is the obligatory talking over each other – where nothing is accomplished. So ironically for all the access to news we have we really don’t learn anymore.

ChadS

 

[Darryl1958]

The election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, was supposed to be a sign of our national maturity, a chance to transform the charged, stilted “national conversation” about race into a smarter and more authentic dialogue, led by a president who was also one of the nation’s subtlest thinkers and writers on the topic.

Instead, the conversation just got dumber.

The America of 2010 is dominated by racial images out of farce and parody, caricatures not seen since the glory days of Shaft. Fox News often stars a leather-clad New Black Panther, while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America. Obama’s own, sole foray into the issue of race involved calling a police officer “stupid,” and regretting his own words. Conservative leaders and the NAACP, the venerable civil-rights group, recently engaged in a round of bitter name-calling that left both groups wounded and crying foul. Political correctness continues to reign in parts of the left, and now has a match in the belligerent grievance of conservatives demanding that hair-trigger allegations of racism be proven.

“I thought we were going to move beyond this,” said Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative historian of race and a Bush appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who called the current racial climate “a catastrophe.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40007.html#ixzz0uMC3f9sN

I blame the 24 hour news cycle, both conservative and liberal talk shows, and probably the influence of blogs and forums on the Internet.

With Obama sitting in the White House, being politically correct and continuing to pound out the message that being black in america means being oppressed and powerless, cannot help but be seen as farcical.

There comes a time when defining the oppressed in terms of color would be seen as being rather ridiculous, and that time arrived when Obama was elected by a majority of whites even into the position of POTUS, and most powerful man in the world.

To continue to play the role of the oppressed is becoming that mouse that roared.

I have to agree with Ronnie. Andrew really snookered the preposterous nature of this situation with his latest antics. It is not catastrophe,but farce within a farce.

The Obama administration could have chosen to either become the first post-racial presidency, or pass their years in the most powerful House in the land as the characters of a farce.

But there is no going back to those heady days of Black Liberation Theology and the mentor Reverend Wright and pretending that to be black is to be oppressed. winning the presidency of the United States has its consequences, and that is just one those consequences.

 

[mary_bobo]

Thomas Sowell has a good editorial on this subject in my morning paper. Perhaps someone who knows how to attach to the forum can do so.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

So ironically for all the access to news we have we really don’t learn anymore.

That’s because we don’t get much news anymore. We get hours of ideologues giving their opinions and pundits clubbing eachother and when there is something that deserves to be reported it gets tossed by the wayside because some lady found a finger in her Wendy’s chili or because the President can’t open a door in China.

 

[Darryl1958]

Thomas Sowell has a good editorial on this subject in my morning paper. Perhaps someone who knows how to attach to the forum can do so.

Here is one by Sowell
townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/07/20/race_card_fraud

and one by VDH

townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/07/22/the_new_racial_mess

 

[IHeartAquinas]

Douglas Adams, in his phenomenal five part trilogy* “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, mentions that the government of the galaxy elected a president semi-regularly not to govern, but to distract the galaxy while the real government can govern in peace.

The media, both Fox and the other networks, do this whenever their favored guy is in office. CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc. will do everything they can to distract us when a Democrat is in office, and Fox will do everything in its power to distract us when a Republican is in office. The Republicans and Democrats are really just the same party leaning in slightly different directions. The constituents they represent, however, are on vastly different playing fields. And so the media feeds into the people’s vitriol for each other and effectively distracts us from that one simple truth: democracy in America is dead.

Any “conversation” that happens is going to be nothing but distraction to keep our minds off certain House Resolutions and Senate Bills, such as the one that would give Monsanto a monopoly on food-production in this country under the guise of “food safety.” Yes, the people we elect are more concerned about putting an end to private gardening than they are about having real dialogue about race.

 

[Brooklyn]

I blaim the 24 hour news cycle, both conservative and liberal talk shows, and probably the influence of blogs and forums on the Internet.

This may have something to do with it, but the real reason is that the Left chooses racism as their weapon of choice. I think that is one reason why they wanted so much have to a black president. If you disagree with anything he says or does, they can just yell “racist.” Our society that a racist is the worst thing anyone can be, so to paint a person or group with that label is to, in effect, destroy them. That is why it is being used on the Tea Party.

But it absolutely is starting to backfire on them, and I think that will happen more and more.

 

[Brooklyn]

That’s because we don’t get much news anymore. We get hours of ideologues giving their opinions and pundits clubbing eachother and when there is something that deserves to be reported it gets tossed by the wayside because some lady found a finger in her Wendy’s chili or because the President can’t open a door in China.

Try going to C-Span. You can see things as they happen with no commentary whatsoever. And when they do have discussions, it is always balanced, with both sides represented. Best place on TV to get information.

 

[EmperorNapoleon]

Try going to C-Span. You can see things as they happen with no commentary whatsoever. And when they do have discussions, it is always balanced, with both sides represented. Best place on TV to get information.

C-Span is good for legislative matters but, even so, 99% what you’re getting is opinion. That is, if you manage to sit through stupid House Resolutions like how to pronounce “Iran” and honoring the Corvette (yes, the car). It’s amazing how much time Congress spends, under the leadership of both parties, on asinine legislation like that.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The other day it came out that a bunch of liberal journalists had discussed calling conservatives racists as a tactic of deflecting attention away from Obama’s 20 year relationship with the racist preacher “Reverend” White.

dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/

And one of the men they mentioned smearing was columnists Fred Barnes, and Barnes says it best in today’s Wall Street Journal

“What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama’s critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It’s now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.”

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704684604575381083191313448.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

 

[Alan55]

With Obama sitting in the White House, being politically correct and continuing to pound out the message that being black in america means being oppressed and powerless, cannot help but be seen as farcical.

There comes a time when defining the oppressed in terms of color would be seen as being rather ridiculous, and that time arrived when Obama was elected by a majority of whites even into the position of POTUS, and most powerful man in the world.

To continue to play the role of the oppressed is becoming that mouse that roared.

I have to agree with Ronnie. Andrew really snookered the preposterous nature of this situation with his latest antics. It is not catastrophe,but farce within a farce.

The Obama administration could have chosen to either become the first post-racial presidency, or pass their years in the most powerful House in the land as the characters of a farce.

But there is no going back to those heady days of Black Liberation Theology and the mentor Reverend Wright and pretending that to be black is to be oppressed. winning the presidency of the United States has its consequences, and that is just one those consequences.

Can you name an instance in which Obama “pounded out the message that being black in america means being oppressed and powerless”? That’s ridiculous. He has gotten into trouble mainly for bending over backwards to avoid precisely such a message. His legislative agenda has had zero focus on race and he’s made very few public statements on race, despite the obvious fact that race has played such a role in the right wing opposition to his presidency. What has been “pounded out” by the Right is the nonsensical notion that Obama is a racist who hates whites. That’s the real farce.

 

[Alan55]

This may have something to do with it, but the real reason is that the Left chooses racism as their weapon of choice. I think that is one reason why they wanted so much have to a black president. If you disagree with anything he says or does, they can just yell “racist.” Our society that a racist is the worst thing anyone can be, so to paint a person or group with that label is to, in effect, destroy them. That is why it is being used on the Tea Party. But it absolutely is starting to backfire on them, and I think that will happen more and more.

Another lame attempt to cast the Left as the racists in this debate. Black is white, up is down. You can’t make something true just by repeating it over and over. How does it even make sense that the right wing, which has its power base in the South, would be the enlightened victims of race-baiting?

 

[rlg94086]

Another lame attempt to cast the Left as the racists in this debate. Black is white, up is down. You can’t make something true just by repeating it over and over. How does it even make sense that the right wing, which has its power base in the South, would be the enlightened victims of race-baiting?

Haha…Brooklyn didn’t say that the Left are racists…rather that they use the race card as a bludgeon. You just did it, so I guess you just wanted to prove the point?

 

[Darryl1958]

Can you name an instance in which Obama “pounded out the message that being black in america means being oppressed and powerless”? That’s ridiculous. He has gotten into trouble mainly for bending over backwards to avoid precisely such a message. His legislative agenda has had zero focus on race and he’s made very few public statements on race, despite the obvious fact that race has played such a role in the right wing opposition to his presidency. What has been “pounded out” by the Right is the nonsensical notion that Obama is a racist who hates whites. That’s the real farce.

I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t saying that Obama was saying that. I was saying that the message that ‘being black means being oppressed’ is what is the farce. The fact that Obama is in the White House demonstrates that that message is a farce.

But no, he has not gotten into trouble for bending over backward to avoid that message. Where are the examples of that happening?

The Obama administration very much still plays the race card, from calling a white cop stupid, through opposing the Arizona immigration bill without even having read it.
These are a few examples of someone bending over backwards to exploit the race card for all it is worth.

Here is a commentary on the Obama administration in terms of race.
Refute this if you want your arguments to be believable.
article.nationalreview.com/438474/the-new-racial-mess/victor-davis-hanson?page=2

 

[Darryl1958]

Another lame attempt to cast the Left as the racists in this debate. Black is white, up is down. You can’t make something true just by repeating it over and over. How does it even make sense that the right wing, which has its power base in the South, would be the enlightened victims of race-baiting?

Ditto Rig’s message on this. Nobody says or even believes that the left are racists. The message of the left is to smear the right as being a bevy or racists. You obviously believe that line about the right wing being racists too.

Taht emssage has been a very successful one indeed. That is why the left continues to engage in delivering that message. It is their key to political power.

 

[Brooklyn]

I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t saying that Obama was saying that. I was saying that the message that ‘being black means being oppressed’ is what is the farce. The fact that Obama is in the White House demonstrates that that message is a farce.

But no, he has not gotten into trouble for bending over backward to avoid that message. Where are the examples of that happening?

The Obama administration very much still plays the race card, from calling a white cop stupid, through opposing the Arizona immigration bill without even having read it.
These are a few examples of someone bending over backwards to exploit the race card for all it is worth.

Here is a commentary on the Obama administration in terms of race.
Refute this if you want your arguments to be believable.
article.nationalreview.com/438474/the-new-racial-mess/victor-davis-hanson?page=2

I think Obama’s comment about his grandmother being a “typical white person” is one of the most racist comments I’ve ever heard from a politician. What if I said his wife is a “typical black person”? Obama has definitely driven more division between the races than any other modern president.