The Mask in '08

[Rootsie]

The Mask in ‘08
by Rootsie

    WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
    It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
    This debt we pay to human guile;
    With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

    And mouth with myriad subtleties.
    Why should the world be over-wise,
    In counting all our tears and sighs?
    Nay, let them only see us, while
          We wear the mask.

    We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
    To thee from tortured souls arise.
    We sing, but oh the clay is vile
    Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
    But let the world dream otherwise,
            We wear the mask.
                                                          Paul Laurence Dunbar (1896)

I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
That’s money for dope
Money for rope
               John Lennon (197?)


Just what is this “Hope” Barack Obama has been peddling?

I think that, whether he is aware of it or not, it’s about Absolutely Free Painless Absolution for whites. We like it quick and painless.

“He’s so charismatic! So alive!” one white female admirer gushes.

“He’s about the future, not the past,” says another white fan.

A future of never having to think about race again, because we elected a black president. Well…not too black…that would be scary. But we want so very much to be good whites, to believe that this country has been morally transformed. We drink in Obama like a magic elixir: Abacadabra, the frog is a prince, racism is vanished…no… race itself is vanished.

The New York Times has referred to Obama’s candidacy as "post-racial."  Obama’s supporters, black and white, chant in unison: “Race Doesn’t Matter!”

Obama tells us this election is not about race, not about gender. The pundits in the media tell us this election is not about issues. Well what then?

It is about masks. This issueless campaign. at a moment of very real, very pressing issues, reflects a pervasive despair and exhaustion. Voting for the mask is about all we've got the energy left for.

The Obama phenomenon seems to have little to do with Obama himself. There’s a lot of white aspiration wrapped up in it somehow.  He’s got the white intellectual vote, for what that’s worth, the hippie vote, the liberal do-gooder vote...Obama has declared himself “post-ideological”, which seems to mean that we don’t need to know in any specific way what he believes about anything. All the ideology he needs is contained in his physical image, the fact of him as a viable candidate.

Blacks and whites in Obama’s campaign organization struggle (note that the higher-ups are white) day-by-day with presenting the mask that fits the constituency they want their candidate to appeal to: he avoided black churches until the Southern primaries came along. Michelle Obama is called upon apparently when someone more “authentically black” is needed.

Can a black politician in America afford to be forthright about who he really is and what he really thinks? The way blacks ‘make it’ is by assuring the comfort of whites in their presence. Think Oprah.

There is nothing new about Obama’s schtick: this is how blacks have survived for long stretches of American history, by being as vigilant as possible against insulting white sensibilities. How exhausting for him, and tragic for all of us.

Was it not crazy-making to listen to troubled white pundits the day after Obama’s South Carolina victory fretting that Obama might now be perceived as the black people’s  candidate? So Dems need blacks to vote for Obama in overwhelming numbers while not being too...well you know... black about it.

And such a strange, naive, generic refrain: “Hope!” For what? I guess hope for whatever each listener is hoping for, however craven or exalted. The great unspoken is of course all contained in the visual of Obama addressing his huge crowds: hope that we can put race behind us this simply.

My own hope is to have the integrity to bear black anger and black pain without needing it to be anything else than what it is, and, bit by bitter bit, to root out my white arrogance.

“Whiteness”, “Blackness”, “Race” are indeed human constructs, but there is no sense in denying their potency in a world where power is allotted according to skin-tone.

We (whites) choose the mask, and Obama has to wear it. It’s an ugly business—apparently the United States is ready for a black president as long as whites don’t have to look at any hard realities about the persistence and pervasiveness of racism, or in any other mode than through the distorting  mask of their own privilege.

a semi-interesting article:
"How 'blackness' has figured into the Obama campaign"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/11/america/obama/php

[Rootsie]

Obama to deliver major speech on race and politics
Ewen MacAskill in Washington guardian.co.uk,
 Monday March 17 2008

Barack Obama will tomorrow make his strongest attempt so far to defuse the race row that has scarred the Democratic presidential race when he tackles the issue head-on with a major speech in Pennsylvania, the scene of next month's hotly contested primary.

The Obama campaign said the speech in Philadelphia will address major issues including "race, politics and how we bring our country together at this important moment in our history".

It comes after a week in which he has taken a battering from Hillary Clinton's campaign team, particularly over incendiary remarks by his pastor about the US and discrimination.

The speech is comparable to one made last year by the former Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who felt a need to address a whispering campaign about his Mormon religion.

In interviews last night previewing tomorrow's speech, Obama described as "stupid" remarks about the US and whites by the preacher at his church in Chicago, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and admitted that the focus on race over the last week has been "a distraction".

America's claims to be a post-racial society have been undermined by the introduction of race into the Democratic campaign and the fracturing of the party vote in primaries in some states, where an overwhelming majority of African Americans have voted for Obama and a majority of whites for Clinton.


Constant replays on US television of Wright shouting, "God damn America" and railing about discrimination against blacks risk alienating some white voters. A Rasmussen poll published yesterday said Wright's comments made 56 per cent of the electorate in general less likely to vote for Obama.
The focus on Wright came only days after Clinton was forced to break ties with a longtime supporter, Geraldine Ferraro, over her claim that Obama would not have done as well as he has if he had been white.

In an interview with Jim Lehrer's Newshour last night, Obama portrayed Wright as a product of the 1960s and 1970s and Ferraro as a similar product of the feminist battles of the same era, but called on America to move on.

"Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I'm not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that's part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let's acknowledge a difficult history, but let's move on," he said.

Asked if the row has damaged his campaign, he admitted it had diverted attention from his prime message about reconciliation. "And so, to the extent that, you know, the conversation over the last couple of days has been dominated by some stupid statements that were made by Reverend Wright, but also caricatures of Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ - which, by the way, is part of a denomination that is overwhelmingly white - you know, I think that that has distracted us from the possibilities of moving beyond some of these arguments."

Obama rarely spoke about race last year as his campaign team tried to present him as a candidate that transcends race. But he has positioned himself as a champion of black rights, an heir to the mantle of the Reverend Martin Luther King.

In a speech last year and again in Atlanta in January on Martin Luther King day, he spoke about the progress that had been made since the 1960s civil rights movement and the need to build on that. But he also criticised those sections of the black community where antisemitism and anti-homosexuality were rife.

The race issue has been festering since Bill Clinton first raised it during the South Carolina primary in January. Clinton over the last 48 hours has given a series of interviews claiming that he was not responsible for introducing race into the contest and blamed the media.

[Rootsie]

OBAMA SPEECH IN FULL: A MORE PERFECT UNION
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008/ 10:17:53 ET
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

[Rootsie]

I am glad that Barack Obama was forced to let the cat out of the bag. I like the line about 'wide-eyed liberals' purchasing reconciliation 'on the cheap.' And I agree whole-heartedly that engaging the race issue would turn this presidential campaign into a truly momentous event.

If we read the actual remarks of Rev. Wright, we see that he doesn't say anything Dr. King himself would not have said, things many of us have been saying for a long time now. I am sad that Sen. Obama had to sacrifice the integrity of his mentor on the altar of blanket support for Israel, the altar of denial of U.S. complicity in events that have galvanized radical Islam. I understand why he felt he had to. I thought the comparison of Rev. Wright and his grandmother was unfortunate. Rev. Wright's views and the views of millions like him are not reflective of simple bigotry and stereotyping, but instead reflect black history and black experience in this country.

But in many ways, it was a masterful speech, the best a man who wants to be president here could do. I am glad he raised the spectre of black anger without condemning or minimizing it. I wish with all my heart that I could believe that we are ready to engage the issue of race in this country. The fact that whites feel threatened by ones like Rev. Wright and basically demanded that Sen. Obama distance himself tells me that we still have a wide wide river to cross.

[three_sixty]

interesting analysis here:

http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia03202008.html


". . . Racism is an instinctive tool to capture resources and deny them to competitor "species." This is why Obama is backed by the Wall Street bankers. To them, he is a tool to safeguard their fortunes against the rising tide of public resentment. They are excellent psychologists, and psychic abusers of the popular Black mind. They know, through their experts in PR (advertising and the management of the public mind), how the popular Black mind pines for symbols of "hope," for action heros on basketball courts and on the big screen -- Will Smith saving the fantasy worlds Hollywood conjures with smoke and mirrors. Any hero in any arena can be produced to distract and quell the masses, so long as it is not an actual hero in any arena of actual power.

Look at our Black "symbols" in those real arenas today: Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell; they've done precious little for Blacks in America, and have cashed in handsomely for precisely that reason. Most blacks are "supporting" (deluding themselves over) Obama for the same reason that older spoiled whiney white women are "supporting" Hillary: identification, they want what they see in the mirror to be honored, to be loved, to get attention, to be in control.

Obama may have some decent intentions beyond his blatant careerism, but clearly the careerism is primary, and for that he must reassure his sponsors that he can quell the public. The job he is applying for is to keep public affairs calm enough so the same select businesses and the same select gamesters can continue to make the same government-backed mega-profits. In business circles, this is called "maintaining a stable business environment." Obama says "change" but his sponsors know this to mean "stability." "Change" is what we'll get from the billions we are forced to pay into taxes and inflated prices that profit all too few.

Populations that have histories of being oppressed are easily duped, because they are so desperate for "relief," for "salvation." This is why I labeled the PR machinery behind White power, including the White power with the Obama nameplate, as "abusers." They are preying on Black prayers, they are hooking many desperate fish with baitless flashy lures. Someone like Wright states the plain facts, and it messes up the con-job of the PR hucksters luring the wanting masses. It also messes up the pleasurable delusions of those self-same wanting masses, having psychic orgasms they don't want stopped and which are based on the swallowing of political placebos.

Reality can be too much for many people, especially when they have gaping holes of unfulfilled wants leaking psychological vitality and robust rationality out of their psyches. For every type of victim there is a highly specialized predator, especially when the prey form in vast herds. So it is in America, which worships in the faith of mega-profits from mono-culture, at the Church of Ford, as Aldous Huxley penned for Brave New World, where the continent-wide herds of the wanting are vaster than ever were those of the buffalo, and where the profits to be gained by directing this herd are vaster than the dreams of Croesus. Who better than Barack Obama to galvanize that attention of the wanting public mind? The genius of the American psychological predation industry is that it herds its prey in as a mass rather then chasing it down individually. Our Croesusian aristocrats will probably discipline themselves sufficiently to give the public the lure it has favored because he resonates and reflects so many of its fondest fantasies. The people have spoken, and our gods will guide us accordingly.

True believers in the Obama campaign may find this analysis repellant, because those gripped by an irrational faith do not like to see the dissection of their fantasies. Obama, they might say, is better than McCain, and we should back Obama to overturn Bush-Cheney-McCainist control of the Empire. But if so, we still have the Empire, and Obama has come to prominence precisely because of a demonstrated loyalty to that Empire, not because of a revolutionary fervor to topple it. The lesser evil is still no good for far too many people and, empire being intrinsically racist, it will disproportionately injure disfavored minorities.

So Obama is "change," Obama is "hope" when we shrink-wrap our minds with elastic and impenetrable delusions. Obama is not Thurgood Marshall, nor Martin Luther King, Jr., nor Malcolm X, which is why you see him in our televised Pantheon. This is also why Jeremiah Wright must be dispatched with contempt from public consideration, and why Barack Obama must elevate himself stratospherically from his once upon a time pastor, and once upon a time flock.

I think commentary on racism is most incisive when it keeps its focus on the economic dimension -- which I believe is central -- rather than the emotionalism about "hate" wallowed in to excess by infotainment for the unthinking. It is better to focus on the intent and the purposes of the racism, which are to create and maintain economic disparities. From such focal points, one can advance policy and law enforcement arguments to eliminate these imbalances. Then, you are speaking about the here and now in a clear, unvarnished and rational manner. This can be extremely hard-hitting without being pitiful and cloying. This is in the spirit of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, and that is momentum, that is self-respect, that is pride. If we got enough of this, it might also be revolution."

[discipleofmaat]

I give thanks for the opportunity to voice my opinion on this forum.

In regards to Obama, I think he is the "new age" in a nutshell.  I have reasoned on another forum that new age seems to serve as amnesia from the painful truth of the lies, suppressions and otherwise uncomfortable implementations done in the previous time period.

Instead of the PROPER way to solve a problem which is to engage it at its source, the Obama-mania (no different than Beatles mania) simply has ones looking forward...in fact, straight forward like a horse with blinders.  This reminds me of Rootsie's comments regarding the hippie movement and it's shortcomings.

Reality is composed of the past, present and future.  Those 3 components, (perspectives actually) must all be practically analyzed (acknowledged) and affirmed (acted upon) in order to become Whole/Healed.

Obviously Obama is being used to cover up the racial wounds without healing them.  That is no mystery.  When is the last time white/male supremacy appeared as if it was dwindling.  In fact, it is almost at its zenith.  Its zenith will be when Women and Non-Whites across the ENTIRE GLOBE are the VOLUNTARY support of its pyramidal capstone.

A-HA!!!

So that's the whole trick, isn't it?  In order to successfully implement another phase, a previous phase must be completed.  Racism is the last scar on America's smiling face and they are using Obama to be the cosmetic surgeon.

Once racism is cosmetically removed and appears to vanish into thin air, America will then be unified and powerful enough to engage the remaining dissenters of the Planet Earth.  (Iran and China and a few other stragglers)

It is the European Discovery/Enlightenment/Expansionalism all over again.

As we know, the global seekers established the Piscean Age's empire of Christianity/Catholicism in order to unite Europe for the "enslavement of infidels and their conquest of their lands".  Today, the same folk are establishing the Aquarian Age's egotism and self-KRST/enlightenment (in contrast to external Christ salvation)  for the same objective.

I will have more to add later or with the addition of an replies.

[three_sixty]

http://www.bushslastday.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8208810/

*wink**wink*

peace and love . . .
liberty equality fraternity . . .