Obama's speech on race

changing definitions of eloquence.

"It once meant a talent for powerfully, persuasively and elegantly communicating ideas. Now it is used to describe the use of pretty words to obscure meaning."
 
I think Obama's speech and his follow up interviews on the subject have been brilliant. He is addressing the issue head on, not taking the easy way out. I think he's done a great job of easing concerns with the independents, and frankly that is his target audience. His base is solid within the Democratic party and the target audience of both McCain and Obama is that group of independent voters who are willing to vote for either party depending on the candidate. Obama is smart enough to know that he must have that block of voters to win the election, and in my opinion he is doing an excellent job of defusing this issue. Kudos to him.

I agree. His handling of the "politics as usual" candidates proves to me that he has a lot more ability AND experience in dealing with things than either of the other potentials... And he has a hell of a lot more aptitude than the last 4 or 5 presidents.
 
New Black Panther Party on Obama Site - Approved by Campaign?


Barack Obama’s campaign web site has a section where supporters can register and form groups (like a mini-MySpace), and Fox News reported yesterday on a group started by the New Black Panther Party, which of course embarrassed the Obama campaign into removing it. They issued a statement (typically blaming Fox News for pointing it out) that says they have no control over the groups that are formed:

My.BarackObama.com has been at the core of our bottom-up organizing strategy. The tools available have been put to work by a community of supporters that is bigger and more powerful than anything presidential politics has ever seen.

Evidently, Fox News didn’t think it was a big deal that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are participating in the democratic process creating groups and local events in communities all across the country.

But they did think it was a big deal that one random person on the Internet, without the knowledge of the Obama campaign, posted a profile in the system with the image of the New Black Panther Party on it.

When we were alerted of the existence of this page, we pulled it down. Yet even after we pulled the page, Fox News continues to disingenuously and prominently feature this “story” on their homepage.

OK, fair enough. That’s actually why I didn’t make a big deal of this, because I know from first-hand experience how easy it is for jokers to misuse these kinds of “social networking” systems.

But now BKGodfrey at Yellow Limes has a twist that makes it more interesting.

He registered and started a group at my.barackobama.com, and at the end of the process he received this message: “This group will be published online once it is approved by a site administrator.”

The statement above claims that the New Black Pather Party group was established “without the knowledge of the Obama campaign.” So who is approving those groups, if not the Obama campaign?

It’s possible that this moderation feature was only recently implemented, but if the people running my.barackobama.com know what they’re doing, they would never allow unmoderated groups to be formed on a campaign web site; the potential for abuse is enormous, as John F. Kerry discovered in the last presidential election, when pranksters created hundreds of pages at his site. So I doubt this is a recent addition.
 
New Black Panther Party on Obama Site - Approved by Campaign?


Barack Obama’s campaign web site has a section where supporters can register and form groups (like a mini-MySpace), and Fox News reported yesterday on a group started by the New Black Panther Party, which of course embarrassed the Obama campaign into removing it. They issued a statement (typically blaming Fox News for pointing it out) that says they have no control over the groups that are formed:

My.BarackObama.com has been at the core of our bottom-up organizing strategy. The tools available have been put to work by a community of supporters that is bigger and more powerful than anything presidential politics has ever seen.

Evidently, Fox News didn’t think it was a big deal that hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans are participating in the democratic process creating groups and local events in communities all across the country.

But they did think it was a big deal that one random person on the Internet, without the knowledge of the Obama campaign, posted a profile in the system with the image of the New Black Panther Party on it.

When we were alerted of the existence of this page, we pulled it down. Yet even after we pulled the page, Fox News continues to disingenuously and prominently feature this “story” on their homepage.

OK, fair enough. That’s actually why I didn’t make a big deal of this, because I know from first-hand experience how easy it is for jokers to misuse these kinds of “social networking” systems.

But now BKGodfrey at Yellow Limes has a twist that makes it more interesting.

He registered and started a group at my.barackobama.com, and at the end of the process he received this message: “This group will be published online once it is approved by a site administrator.”

The statement above claims that the New Black Pather Party group was established “without the knowledge of the Obama campaign.” So who is approving those groups, if not the Obama campaign?

It’s possible that this moderation feature was only recently implemented, but if the people running my.barackobama.com know what they’re doing, they would never allow unmoderated groups to be formed on a campaign web site; the potential for abuse is enormous, as John F. Kerry discovered in the last presidential election, when pranksters created hundreds of pages at his site. So I doubt this is a recent addition.


All I did was register and it logged me right in.

Funny thing too, all my friends in my 'hood there are white.
 
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What the candidate should have said about race.
By Michael Meyers
March 20, 2008
Tim Rutten's column, "Obama's Lincoln moment" and The Times editorial, "Obama on race" both miss the mark.

In my considered judgment as a race and civil rights specialist, I would say that Barack Obama's "momentous" speech on race settled on merely "explaining" so-called racial differences between blacks and whites -- and in so doing amplified deep-seated racial tensions and divisions. Instead of giving us a polarizing treatise on the "black experience," Obama should have reiterated the theme that has brought so many to his campaign: That race ain't what it used to be in America.


He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.

In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.

I waited in vain for our hybrid presidential candidate to speak the simple truth that there is no such thing as "race," that we all belong to the same race -- the human race. I waited for him to mesmerize us with a singular and focused appeal to hold all candidates to the same standards no matter their race or their sex or their age. But instead Obama gave us a full measure of racial rhetoric about how some of us with an "untrained ear" -- meaning whites and Asians and Latinos -- don't understand and can't relate to the so-called black experience.

Well, I am black, and I can't relate to a "black experience" that shields and explains old-style black ministers who rant and rave about supposed racial differences and about how America ought to be damned. I long ago broke away from all associations and churches that preached the gospel of hate and ethnic divisiveness -- including canceling my membership in 100 Black Men of America Inc., when they refused my motion to admit women and whites. They still don't. I was not going to stay in any group that assigned status or privileges of membership based solely on race or gender.

We and our leaders -- especially our candidates for the highest office in the land -- must repudiate all forms of racial idiocy and sexism, and be judged by whether we still belong to exclusionary or hateful groups. I don't know any church that respects, much less reflects, my personal beliefs in the absolute equality of all people, so I choose not to belong to any of them. And I would never -- as have some presidential candidates -- accept the endorsement of preachers of the gospel according to the most racist and sexist of doctrines.

But someone's race or religion is not mine or anybody else's concern. I couldn't care less that Wright is a Christian or that Louis Farrakhan professes to be a Muslim. I couldn't care less whether the hateful minister who endorsed John McCain is, deep inside, a decent man or a fundamentalist. But I do care about these pastors' divisive and crazed words; I do care that their "sermons" exploit and pander to the worst fears and passions of people based on perceptions and misperceptions about race. I hate that these preachers' sermons prejudge people's motives or behavior based on their race or ethnicity. I hate the haters, and I expected Obama to make a straightforward speech about what has become the Hate Hour -- and the most segregated hour -- in America on Sunday mornings.

I expected Obama, who up to now had been steering a perfect course away from the racial boxes of the past, to challenge racial labels and so-called black experiences. We're all mixed up, and if we haven't yet been by the process of miscegenation, trans-racial adoptions and interracial marriage, we sure ought to get used to how things will be in short order.

That would have been the forward-looking message of a visionary candidate. But Obama erred by looking backward -- as far back as slavery. What does slavery have to do with the price of milk at the grocery store? He referenced continuing segregation, especially segregated public schools, but stopped short. What is he going to do about them? How does he feel about public schools for black boys or single-sex public schools and classes? What does the gospel according to Wright say about such race-based and gender-specific schemes for getting around our civil rights laws?

We can't be united as a nation if we continue to think racially and give credence to racial experiences and differences based on ethnicity, past victim status and stereotypical categories. All of these prejudices surrounding tribe-against-tribe are old-hat and dysfunctional -- especially the rants of ministers, of whatever skin color or religion, who appeal to our base prejudices and to superstitions about our supposed racial differences. The man or woman who talks plainly about our commonality as a race of human beings, about our future as one nation indivisible, rather than about our discredited and disunited past, is, I predict, likely to finish ahead of the pack and do us a great public service.

Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP. These views are his own.
 
More spin

What he said about his grandmother on Tuesday:

3/18/2008

"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."


What he said about his grandmother today:
3/20

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person.
If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know,there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."






Dreams of My Father" excerpts:

"I took her into the other room and asked her what had happened.
“A man asked me for money yesterday. While I was waiting for the bus.”

“That’s all?”

Her lips pursed with irritation. “He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn’t come, I think he might have hit me over the head.”

I returned to the kitchen. Gramps was rinsing his cup, his back turned to me. “Listen,” I said, “why don’t you just let me give her a ride. She seems pretty upset.”

“By a panhandler?”

“Yeah, I know — but it’s probably a little scary for her, seeing some big man block her way. It’s really no big deal.”

He turned around and I saw now that he was shaking. “It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. She’s been bothered by men before. You know why she’s so scared this time? I’ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.” He whispered the word. “That’s the real reason why she’s bothered. And I just don’t think that’s right.”

The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but assured him that Toot’s fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.

We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and struggled up from his seat to get dressed. After they left, I sat on the edge of my bed and thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears."



So his grandmother went to great pains to not tell Barry that the man who was trying to intimidate her was black, but his grandfather, who loved this half black child with everything in his being, would be so insensitive as to tell him that the panhandler was black in a way that would insult Obama? Somehow, I don’t think we are getting the rest of the story.






Who has the real problem with racism here?


From Dreams of my Father:

“I ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.”

“I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s race.”

“The emotion between the races could never be pure..... The other race (white) would always remain just that: Menacing, alien and apart.”

“Never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, the son of Africa, that I’d picked all the attributes I sought in myself.”
 
That's been quite obvious all through this thread. Anyone who voiced a different opinion, or questioned Obama's veracity, was then belittled and insulted. Helluva discussion when only one side is allowed to be heard without being bombarded with namecalling. Childish behavior which has become so typical of radical liberals. They've even resorted to doing it to their own now.


This "firestorm" has nothing whatever to do with race. It has to do with the hard radical left ideology: a virulent level of hate, anti-Americanism, conspiracy, paranoia, and the politics of victimization and grievance.


Let's not be diverted from the truth of what this issue is about. Most Americans are far past race. The majority of Americans would vote for someone of any race, but not of any ideology. Race is being used by the radicals to divert attention from a radical left belief system.


This is not about race or religion. This is about a senator running for president who refuses to disassociate himself with those who spew such hatred toward Americans and the US government. Obama showed lack of judgement and honesty in this matter.


Well said, excellent, right on point! If Ms. Rice or Mr Powell ran under a conservative to moderate platform, They would be an automatic shoe in against John Mccain for the republican candidate and race would not be an issue like the democratic left have made it.
 
Post under your own name, you pathetic, yellow, piece of shit. No-one takes a troll alt seriously, so why bother? Fucking loser.

What is your problem?

You know, I've been doing my best to ignore your stupid comments but you are really starting to annoy me.

I don't know why you have the mistaken opinion that I am some other poster, but I can assure you that I am not, nor have I ever been, the poster who goes by the nick "Ishmael"

You are wrong.

Now kindly, stop trolling me everywhere I post.
 
Well said, excellent, right on point! If Ms. Rice or Mr Powell ran under a conservative to moderate platform, They would be an automatic shoe in against John Mccain for the republican candidate and race would not be an issue like the democratic left have made it.

Thank you.

Not only that but race had not been an issue in THIS campaign until Obama made it so by his association with a radical pastor. Let's not forget that his magnificent support has been spread across a wide spectrum.
 
This will go down as one of the greatest speeches in American history. Long after people have forgotten this election and the preacher's name, they will still be quoting this speech and teaching it in schools. Obama, right along with Lincoln and MLK.

I'm not kidding. This is one for the ages.
 
This will go down as one of the greatest speeches in American history. Long after people have forgotten this election and the preacher's name, they will still be quoting this speech and teaching it in schools. Obama, right along with Lincoln and MLK.

I'm not kidding. This is one for the ages.

You have very low standards.
 
I have extremely high standards when it comes to oratory. It's kinda what I do for a living. Are you just sniping at Obama or do you have problems with the speech?

Both..I can not even phathom how you can compare this to MLK speech of judging a man by his charater not the color of his skin.
 
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He should have presented us a pathway out of our racial boxes and a road map for new thinking about race. He should have depicted his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as a symbol of the dysfunctional angry men who are stuck in the past and who must yield to a new generation of color-blind, hopeful Americans and to a new global economy in which we will look on our neighbors' skin color no differently than how we look on their eye color.

In fact, I'd say that considering the nation's undivided attention to this all-important speech, which gave him an unrivaled opportunity to lift us out of racial and racist thinking, Obama blew it.
Obama is saving that one for his re-election campaign.
 
Cap’n AMatrixca;26536202 said:
YOU need to go hang out at a blue-collar bar where all the Democrat Union Workers hang out...

They're hearing this too and having all their doubts and fears about Barry Hussein Osama confirmed...

;) ;)

Barry Hussein Osama? LOL!

Sorry, Charlie. This whole deal with Reverend Whats-his-name will be soon forgotten, as it should be. The speech won't, unless he comes up with a real doozie on Inauguration Day.

By the way, the only dumbasses in the bar that would be griping about this would be those too lazy and/or stubborn to listen to the speech, or read the news. Those types vote Republican...

Typical leftist bullshit. If you disagree with their myopic, touchy-feely world view, you're a bigoted, homophobic, racist asshole.

Well you are, but not for disagreeing with me.

You just are, and I realized long ago that you just can't help it.

Don't blame me...
 
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This speech was tremendous. When I heard he was going to discuss this issue, I was looking forward to it, because I was pretty sure it would be good. Honest, intelligent, perceptive, is what I expected. And it was just that. Anyone who doesn't recognize the importance and relevance of this speech won't because they don't want to: the people Obama referred to, black et white et cetera, who aren't interested in racial reconciliation.

That's been used in the past as a code word to mean "whites must pay." Obama is using it with a completely different meaning: a literal one.

I do hope this speech makes its way into schools. They're more likely to understand its meaning than older people whose ideas have fossilized.
 
Bye Ron

Soon you will be as DEAD as is the COLORED MUSLIM LYING CANDIDATE

No, the "speech" was all about

"We can say what we want and we will shove it down WHITEY's throat and its RACIST if you dont like it!"
 
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