Disagree With Obama? Are You a Racist?

[SF-TX]

A MINORITY VIEW
Is disagreement with Obama racism?
Walter E. Williams combats 'nonsense' of leftists tying protests to skin color

By Walter Williams

Former President Jimmy Carter said, "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man." That's from a man who earlier referred to Obama as "This black boy" on the Jim Lehrer "News Hour." New York Times social critic Maureen Dowd said, in reference to Rep. Joe Wilson's shouting "You lie" during Obama's address on health care before the joint session of Congress, "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." Washington Post's Howard Kurtz said he "began to suspect that race was a factor for at least some critics when I heard them shouting about 'the Constitution' and 'taking our country back.'" Kurtz asked whether the massive tea parties and other public protests reflect a "distinct discomfort with the country's first black president." House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, New York Gov. David Paterson, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and other leftists claim that racism is behind criticism of President Obama.

For these people, it is inconceivable that many Americans are outraged by the president's spending policies, budget deficits, industry takeovers, not to mention the appointment of czars, a term that ought to be alien and offensive to American values whether used by a Republican or Democratic president.

Obama's presidency is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we've come in resolving matters of race. Obama convincingly won votes in states with insignificant black populations, such as the New England states, Iowa and Minnesota. For the nation as a whole, he managed 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 of the Electoral College votes when he only needed 270 to win. So now Jimmy Carter, Dowd, Rangel and other race-carders want us to believe that the massive discontent with Obama is racism. I say nonsense!

Speaking for the president, Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, in no uncertain terms said that the president did not think the criticism directed at him and his policies was based on the color of his skin. President Obama refused to answer a reporter who queried him about Carter's comments. When Obama did respond, and much to his credit, he insisted that the "biggest driver" of the vitriol was distrust of government. His response was not only correct, but the nation is better off as a result of it. We don't need the kind of divisiveness that would surely arise if Obama himself played the race card.

Race is no longer the problem that it once was. That doesn't mean there are not white and black bigots and that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. What little racial discrimination remains is nowhere near the insurmountable barrier it once was. For the most part, white bigots are no longer respected among whites, and I look forward to the day when black bigots are no longer respected among blacks.

When one says that race is no longer the problem it once was, it is not the same as saying that there are not major problems that confront a large segment of the black population. Grossly fraudulent education is a major problem, but it has nothing to do with racial discrimination as evidenced by the fact that the worse education received is in the very cities where blacks dominate the political structure. Crime is a major problem, but it has nothing to do with racial discrimination, particularly in light of the fact that blacks commit most of the violent crime in America and well over 90 percent of their victims are black. The fact of a 70 percent illegitimacy rate and only 35 percent of black children raised in two-parent homes is a major problem, but it has nothing to do with racial discrimination.

Americans should disavow and not fall prey to the racial rope-a-dope being played on us by the nation's race hustlers.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=111407

[SF0]

Interesting article. Thank you.

[abc_123]

Jimmy Carter is a Jackass who has lived way past his usefulness on ths earth.

What is the date in this country that we can truely move beyond race?

When do we declare that institutional racisim has come to an end? What is the "exit strategy" from affirmative action programs? What are the metrics that we're using to make that decision? Or, are we hoping for Jessee and Al to tell us?

[kimberly]

I am not a racist at all and do not agree with Obama on anything. It would have made more sense for him to audition for a movie (since Hollywood finds him so attractive) than president. He would have been more effective.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by abc_123

What is the date in this country that we can truly move beyond race?

When do we declare that institutional racism has come to an end? What is the "exit strategy" from affirmative action programs? What are the metrics that we're using to make that decision? Or, are we hoping for Jessee and Al to tell us?

Are we looking for political and economic solutions for issues that are now largely about culture, gender, ideology, and psychology?

Do we turn the corner by talking (or not talking) about the issues with those who agree with our position? Or might there be some merit to making the effort to have conversations with those who disagree?

With candor, I'll say that the latter approach has been very helpful to me. Especially when the conversations are with people who are my betters.* They could have easily replied "I don't want to hear it" and walked away.

My $0.02

______________________________
* Yeah, I know, that doesn't cut down the crop much.

[LongWire]

Another good article~


http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...6/980zlght.asp

The Post-Postracial Presidency
What we learned at the teachable moment.
by Jonathan V. Last
09/28/2009, Volume 015, Issue 02

Barack Obama is, you might have heard, America's first postracial president. In his celebrated speech to the 2004 Democratic convention, he assured viewers that "There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America." And, early in 2007, he humbly acknowledged that

In the history of African-American politics in this country there has always been some tension between speaking in universal terms and speaking in very race-specific terms about the plight of the African-American community. By virtue of my background, you know, I am more likely to speak in universal terms.

Lots of people agreed. Everyone from Newsweek to the New York Times commended Obama for his "'post-racial' approach" and the manner in which he "transcended race." Even George Will cooed about the political implications of the Obama's "transcendence of confining categories."

Yet Obama was never as post-racial as advertised. Despite its charms, Obama's first memoir, Dreams from My Father, is filled with racialist moments--from his attraction to Jeremiah Wright's church to the admission that he once broke up with a girlfriend because she was white. Even during the presidential campaign, Obama would occasionally lapse into race-consciousness. The week before the South Carolina primary, the first contest with a substantial number of black voters, he worked a direct reference to Malcolm X into his stump speech, telling predominantly black audiences, "That's what they do. They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you."

During the presidential campaign, Obama made noise about how McCain and Republicans were going to attack him for his race. After the McCain campaign ran its "Celebrity" ad, suggesting that the Democratic nominee was famous for being famous, like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, Obama suggested that the ad was a racial provocation. "What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," he said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills." At an earlier rally, Obama was even more explicit: "They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

It was a successful strategy, and when the Reverend Joseph Lowery used the benediction at Obama's inauguration to pray, "We ask You to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right," people laughed, thinking it was a charmingly homespun tribute to the end of the race issue.

But the first black president has been anything but postracial as chief executive. His first major piece of legislation, the $800 billion stimulus bill attached racial considerations to some of its largesse. In February, Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, said in a speech to Justice Department employees that America is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to discussing race. Obama disavowed Holder's choice of words, but later told the New York Times, "We're oftentimes uncomfortable with talking about race until there's some sort of racial flare-up or conflict. We could probably be more constructive in facing up to sort of the painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination." When a vacancy opened on the Supreme Court, Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor without even pretending that she was the most impressive liberal legal mind available. Her primary qualification was her "life experience" which made her a "wise Latina."

Another of Obama's hires was now-departed Van Jones as the "green jobs czar." Jones was forced to spend more time with his family because he showed sympathy for a group which believes that the Bush administration was complicit in 9/11. But Jones' background as a community organizer and radical environmentalist was just as disturbing. He founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which made a business out of launching race-based complaints against the San Francisco police department in the late 1990s. Shortly before Obama appointed him, Jones explained environmental racism thus: "White polluters and white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people-of-color communities because they don't have a racial-justice frame."
Obama's Justice Department has also been quite keen on racial justice. The president's budget requested an 18 percent increase for the department's civil rights division for the express purpose of hiring more lawyers to work the racial discrimination beat. During the Bush administration, the office had shied away from the blanket pursuit of racial discrimination law, choosing to tackle individual discrimination cases as they arose and focusing on other kinds of crime, including human trafficking and religious discrimination. Holder told the New York Times that the civil rights division was now "getting back to doing what it has traditionally done." Namely, sussing out "disparate impact" violations in housing, employment, lending, voting rights, and other areas of American life.

Obama's nominee to head the division, Tom Perez, is certainly preoccupied with race and quotas. (He worked in the civil rights division during the Clinton years before entering Maryland state politics.) In 2003, as a councilman in Montgomery County, Perez pushed for quotas. "We have made great strides in attracting minorities to the county within the last 30 years," Perez said at the time. "We need a workforce in the Department of Fire and Rescue Services that reflects the diversity of the county."
The reason Perez was so concerned was that 46 of the 48 members of the fire department's recruiting class that year were white. The class was chosen based on an aptitude test, in which the white applicants scored highest. "These statistics are unacceptable," Perez said. "But I have confidence that we can get back up to the original number of minorities in the department, and develop a comprehensive plan to recruit diversity."

Three years later Perez published an article in the University of Maryland's Journal of Health Care Law and Policy in which he argued for a more rigorous quota system as part of medical school admissions. Perez's stated goal was not just to buttress the current affirmative-action regime, but to erect a new system of quotas should the diversity rationale eventually run afoul of the Supreme Court. He proposed an "access" rationale: Since minority doctors tend to serve minority patients, medical school quotas weren't just important for would-be minority doctors. Not having quotas for minority medical school students would create a disparate impact for all minority patients.

Perez's confirmation has lingered in the Senate, but the acting head of the civil rights division, Loretta King, has already filed 10 amicus briefs in private discrimination lawsuits. In July, she sent a memo to all federal agencies calling for more aggressive enforcement of Title VI regulations--forbidding discrimination by federal agencies. King encouraged "each federal agency to examine anew all aspects of its compliance program." The highest-profile matter to come across her desk is the case of three New Black Panther party members who were charged with voter intimidation at a polling place in Philadelphia last November. (Video surfaced of the thugs harassing voters and brandishing a weapon.) After consulting with another senior official at Justice, King decided to downgrade the charges against the Black Panthers.

Obama's most celebrated presidential moment of race consciousness came this summer when he eagerly injected himself into the dispute between Harvard's Skip Gates and the Cambridge police department. Asked about the incident in which a white police officer arrested Gates, Obama said the officer had acted stupidly and added, "What I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact." After the officer in question was defended by numerous black colleagues, a "beer summit" ensued with Obama, Gates, the officer, and Joe Biden--heretofore totally unconnected with the affair--called in as racial ballast.

Shortly before the summit, Obama had spoken to the NAACP, where he claimed that while discrimination may be at an all-time low, it's still a terrible burden:

I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today. I think we can say that.

But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America. [Applause.] By African American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and a different gender. [Laughter.] By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. [Applause.] By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion simply because they kneel down to pray to their God. [Applause.] By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights. [Applause.]

It would be nice if our first -postracial president would begin the postracial phase of his presidency.

Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

[nmap]

Originally Posted by abc_123

What is the date in this country that we can truely move beyond race?

When do we declare that institutional racisim has come to an end? What is the "exit strategy" from affirmative action programs? What are the metrics that we're using to make that decision? Or, are we hoping for Jessee and Al to tell us?

The date? Shortly after it ceases to be a useful and profitable tool. A sly politician can reward one group, punish another, and intimidate yet another - all to the politician's benefit.

So long as the various groups fear and distrust each other, so long as they cannot coalesce, control is easy. As Machiavelli said:

Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.

All MOO, YMMV.

[LarryW]

What is racism?

Is it refusing to hear anything a person of a particular race says? Does it have anything to do with race at all? Is it belittling a person based on the color of their skin, or the way they dress, or the music they listen to, the clothes they wear? Is it something that revolves around actions or is it something deeper than that? Is racism a feeling that comes from a weakness of character, a momentary loss of personal courage? Is it like alcoholism; a kind of disease of the spirit that affects a person's behavior? Can a person get over racism? Seriously, the older I get the less sure I am of the answer. I know what it feels like to have a person assume things about me because I have or haven't had the same experiences they've had, and I know the pitiful feeling in my heart when I see dumb arrogance take the place of self-respect, honor, pride, and human compassion. Because sometimes I am weak, I sometimes I look on these things and get confused and then turn lazy, and end up hanging all my frustration on a single nail...lump my distrust or displeasure or misunderstanding with a person's behavior into one uncompromising assumption and say, "Ah-ha! This is it! Here's the reason!". You see, that's a lot easier for me to manage as a feeling, rather than think with the brains of something greater than a piss-ant. When I come to those kinds of conclusions (and I admit that I have) I am wrong, and in my heart I know it, regardless of what it's called. I'm just flatassed wrong.

After all the struggle and fight of the last 60 years, IMHO I don't think as a country we've found the answer to that question.

[incarcerated]

The 'Postracial' was all smoke. There is plenty of hate on the Left.

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by incarcerated

The 'Postracial' was all smoke. There is plenty of hate on the Left.

Yeah, it is just politics. Source is here.

Racial bias

In 2007, law enforcement agencies reported that 4,724 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses:

* 69.3 percent were motivated by anti-black bias.
* 18.4 percent stemmed from anti-white bias.
* 6.0 percent were a result of bias against groups of individuals consisting of more than one race (anti-multiple races, group).
* 4.6 percent resulted from anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias.
* 1.6 percent were motivated by anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native bias. (Based on Table 1.)

Table 1 is attached in PDF format.

[ryno]

Obama, Colon Powell, Condolezza Rice, Clarence Thomas are just a few of the many examples that make it hard for me to believe in rampamt racism anymore. Once Obama became "the man" that should have ended the racial dispute once and for all. BTW-Michael Steele disagrees with the President so is he racist also?

[Richard]

President Obama as a Rorschach Test for America.

Richard

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Sigaba

Yeah, it is just politics. Source is here.

Table 1 is attached in PDF format.

Sigaba;

You posted data on hate crimes but that leads to the question "What is a hate crime?" and then that leads to "Who decides if a crime is a hate crime?"

Until the listing requirements are equal and fair the numbers you posted are very questionable and subject to the bias of the listing agency.

Just because a white does it to a black does not make it a hate crime and just because it was a black that does it to a white does not make it not a hate crime.

Next thing you know people holding anti Obama protest signs will be charged with a hate crime

Pete

[Paslode]

JMO....

1. If you want to go out and inflict physical pain and suffering on a person because of the skin color, ethnic background or Religion. That is racism in my book.

2. If you call me a White or Cracker M F-r and I call you a N$@Ger. That is name calling. It is not acceptable behavior but is no more than a harmless insult in my book.


If you happen to be of a different skin color, ethnic background or Religion than myself and we do not agree on a matter, and I voice my opinion or discontent. I am not racist, I just don't agree with your line of thinking.

[Paslode]

Originally Posted by ryno

Obama, Colon Powell, Condolezza Rice, Clarence Thomas are just a few of the many examples that make it hard for me to believe in rampamt racism anymore. Once Obama became "the man" that should have ended the racial dispute once and for all. BTW-Michael Steele disagrees with the President so is he racist also?

When is the last time you witnessed in the US:

1. White Only Bathrooms
2. White Only Restaurants
3. Blacks required to sit in the back of the Bus.
4. White people in general conversation, openly referring to Blacks as the N-WORD?
5. When is the last time a main stream White Singer or Band used the N-Word in their lyrics? Or sing about killing blacks?
6. When is the last time a White Mob unleashed their anger on innocent Blacks?
7. Do you know of any 'White Only' clubs, religions or political groups?
8. Is there a "White' Entertainment Channel?
9. Is there a 'White', 'Whitey' or Caucasian magazine?


While racism isn't what it used to be, it still exists and always will. And if you ask me the roles of those discriminated against have reversed radically.

JMO