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New Poll: Obama’s Race |
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With our race and politics issue premiering tomorrow, we want to know if you think race will play a role in this primary. But first, last week’s results:
Last week we asked you what you thought the best thing our government could do to stave off recession was. 47% of you felt cutting of foreign spending while at the same time decreasing domestic spending was the way to go. 24% of you thought cutting spending across the board was a better option. Interestingly, nobody thought cutting taxes would do the job.
A lot of ink has been spilled on Barack Obama’s race. First he disproved the Bradley effect by winning in white Iowa, then we might have been hurt by it in white New Hampshire. Oprah and Ted Kennedy have endorsed him, while Jesse Jackson has complained that he’s too white. It’s a muddled picture. With that in mind, do you think Barack Obama’s race will play a sizable role in affecting voter’s choices, both in the primary and possibly in the general election? Voting begins in the sidebar on the left.
Ha ha.
Well, apparently, I don’t think Barack’s “race” will play a role in his bid for the White House since I interpreted “race” in the sense of “campaign”. (He’s running for President, therefore I consider his racing abilities…)
And I didn’t just make that association once; I definitely read the title like that twice.
I see race playing a positive role among blacks and whites but a negative role among Asian and Latino. Sorry to say, but this has been my observation.
Obama is as strong a uniter as Clinton is a divider and it looks like the nation is definitely catching on slowly but surely. Hopefully his campaign can shore up support in these communities.
Fire up the Obama Train and let’s get on board and make this happen!
How would he pull it off? I wondered.
How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?
How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about %u201Cthe U.S. of K.K.K. America,%u201D and howled, %u201CGod damn America!%u201D
My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.
Yes, Barack agreed, Wright%u2019s statements were %u201Ccontroversial,%u201D and %u201Cdivisive,%u201D and %u201Cracially charged,%u201D reflecting a %u201Cdistorted view of America.%u201D
But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.
Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.
The %u201Cwhite community,%u201D said Barack, must start %u201Cacknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination %u2014 and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past %u2014 are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds %u2026 .%u201D
And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?
The %u201Cwhite community%u201D must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with %u201Cladders of opportunity%u201D that were %u201Cunavailable%u201D to Barack%u2019s and the Rev. Wright%u2019s generations.
What is wrong with Barack%u2019s prognosis and Barack%u2019s cure?
Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, %u201Ceverybody but the rioters themselves.%u201D
Was %u201Cwhite racism%u201D really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said %u2014 that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the %u201960s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks %u2014 with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas %u2014 to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Barack talks about new %u201Cladders of opportunity%u201D for blacks.
Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for %u201Cdeserving%u201D white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America%u2019s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
By Patrick J. Buchanan
I couldn’t let this be said without responding in some way:
As wrong and bigoted as most Seminal readers understand this attitude to be, it is more prevalent today than we want to believe. As a pastor in a semi-rural part of South Carolina, I encounter it on a fairly regular basis from folks who consider themselves to be good, Christian citizens. How can it be countered in a meaningful and effective way?