THE RACE DISCUSSION: WE SHOULDA STARTED SOONER BUT WE CAN AT LEAST START NOW!
It just can't be ignored any longer. Hillary wins by 41% in a fundamentally white state. Obama is winning about 92% of black people primary-wide.
Still, until Rev. Wright made us do it, we didn't talk about race and its effect on how the primary votes will travel to the general. For that matter, we didn't talk about how it impacts the way we build other coalitions in our lives.
Maybe its time for local leaders in politics to quit worrying about race being a "third rail" topic and to actually start a dialog. Maybe the discussion could go beyond "black issues" and go to "democrat issues" or even "American Issues". Maybe we can all agree we have a greater interest in the price of gas and the cost of education than we do in racial profiling stats and where the poverty standard is set by the Federal Government.
We've done ourselves and Senator Obama a disservice by not talking about the obvious. We've done the same disservice by thinking, if we just nominate him, the race question will be behind us as a party or as a society. The really odd thing about that last assumption is it comes from the supposed "best and brightest" among us, the folks with advanced degrees and some level of wealth (Half of McGovern's two-legged stool).
How this plays out would probably be different in every county. But such an intiative would play out to the benefit of the democrat party and, likely, all Americans. It is past time for some grown up leadership on this issue. Our approach recently has been naive. It's not too late for this to be a seminal moment in American History.
My purpose here is to criticize none of us and all of us. Doesn't really matter whose fault this is. There's still time to fix it.
(BTW, enlightened folks in this community are already on this. I urge our party to adopt its own version of discussion circles)
posted by UMRBlog @ 07:57
6 comments
6 Comments:
I agree that race is an issue - 92% voting for Obama should have tipped everyone off to this. WV put the race-issue into the 'common knowledge' spectrum.
However, how does one have a dialogue on this?
Jimmy-The-Greek tried and they fired him for telling a historical truth.
Two things, I believe, are givens -
1. No amount of dialogue is going to change someone's heart, and
2. As long as there remains a double standard on how the race tolic can be discussed, there can be no dialogue.
My point, Rev. Wright has people defending his garbage - because he is black.
Jesse Jackson has gotten away with extortion for years - because he is black.
Sharpton, Farakhan and others have gotten a 'pass' because they are black.
But heaven forbid a white person say a historical fact (Jimmy the Greek) and he gets fired.
We need to stop living in a world of double standards, living in a world where all people are treated equal, living in a world where we don't judge each others - based on skin color...both ways.
We don't need dialogue - we need to, each one of us, deal with reason and love for our neighbor.
Gee, I can't believe no one wants to jump into the snakepit of a "race discussion"--- and neither do I, but I do have some questions:
1. Speaking for the foreigners who come here, could you either recap or link what "enlightened folks" are saying in their "discussion circles"?
2. I'm sure you'll remember more about this than I do, but didn't The First Black President initiate a national Dialogue/Discussion/Conversation/etc. on Race sometime in the 90s when he was POTUS, and wasn't it a gigantic bust? What happened?
3. One of the many excuses Obama gave for the extremist views of his beloved pastor was that Wright was just some old guy stuck in the '60s Black Panther intellectual quigmire and he just couldn't help himself. I have no idea if Obama really believes this or if it is just spin, but if it is true, wouldn't that mean that any meaningful "race discussion" would be futile until the last of the Boomer Dinosaurs waddled off to the tar pits?
Just askin'.
Eldrick,
You do see that your two numbered points create an endless loop, don't you?
TYFCB
QCE,
Our Human Rights Commission here has sponsored two sets of discussion circles, involving the gamut of views and folks. They overlay various topics and ask people to walk a few miles in the other guy's loafers. There is no acceptable or unacceptable doctrinal viewpoint. The discussion leaders are folks trained for the job. Very useful.
You did, of course, note that my principal point was the effect of race on the primary vote transporting itself into the general.
More later and TYFCB.
TIGER,
Are you a registered voter in the State of IL?
I let 0430 so I could emphasize that the Basin doesn't give a rat's rear end where Eldrick lives or votes.
He's welcome here, no matter how many times his rhetoric comes up either lame or self-contradictory. In the Basin we try to measure thoughts on their merits, not decide who the coolest kid is in the 7th grade.
TYFCB
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