Black leaders, be wary. If you eschew the Obama phenomenon, you may have to pay a price. On Feb. 10, Sen. Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Ill., the Land of Lincoln. The Obama train has left the station and it ain’t comin’ back. Playing petty plantation politics may feather a few nests and puff up some chests,… return to article
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Reader Comments (18)Page 1 of 1 pagesI must say, Obama seems to be pushing all the right buttons. Even though his moves are becoming more obviously calculated they seem to be the right moves nonetheless. I think if he wins the nomination it will be because he and the people around him are just much smarter than their competition.
And to piss off a bunch of entrenched DC ass kissers gives me a new found respect for Emil (ComEd rate hike) Jones.
Posted by theloneous on Mar 2, 2007 at 2:23 PM I guess it’s safe to assume that when Cornel West said, African Americans should ask Obama, “How deep is your love for the people,” he wasn’t referring to all the American people.
Sharpton’s scolding for “...making his announcement before a predominantly white crowd and asking “what’s his embrace of our agenda.” isn’t helping things either.I’m hoping Obama is too smart to go down that path. Since he is half black and half white he may be the one to finally get beyond this dead end.
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 2, 2007 at 3:29 PM WTH, we can’t get beyond race because it is a part of objective reality.
But Rev Al ain’t getting no reparations from me. As an atheist I’m personally ready to baptize him.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 2, 2007 at 7:40 PM Take a look at Barack Obama because he has a father from Africa; or, if you are from Kansas, because his mother was from Topeka; or, if you are in Hawaii, because he lived with his grandparents there. Take a look at Hillary Clinton if you are a woman; or, if you went to Yale; or, if you live in Arkansas; or, if you were born in Chicago. Then, take a look at their issues and listen to them talk.
Obama is relatively new to the national scene so has had less time to be observed than Clinton. I was able to hear him talk in person. He does not have the experience of government that many other candidates have. His knowledge proferred reminds me of many young men’s reaction to certain computer programs...they are thrilled with the bells and whistles and in disbelief if told another program already does what they admire or that the work done is itself nothing new. His vision is to tell us we should have a vision like JFK gave us with the space program, but he does not mention his own specific vision. Commentators who claim to apply a vision to him claim it to be some artificial concept of bringing us together, apparently in some mass love affair and brainwashing into uniform belief.
In Massachusetts, when people elected Deval Patrick to the governor’s office, his skin color and background were less important than his experience and vision. It seems to me that we as a nation are obsessed with the level of blackness in Barack Obama because he does not have the experience and vision to be president, at least not in 2008. Yet, people are also excited by his candidacy because he is allowed to discuss topics other than Iraq, which says more about the people and the news media than it does about the candidate.
Posted by SillyLeftist on Mar 3, 2007 at 6:42 AM Mike,
Yes, objectively there is a difference, but what both Sharpton and West are introducing into the mix is their SUBjective slant. Whoever runs for office had better avoid that prejudiced “special interest” battle cry if they want to win.
Rev. Sharpton never had a prayer (preacher or not) of winning anything except talk show status — even after the haircut. He could have the map “to the promised land” and never get past GO to collect his $200 with his “embrace of our agenda” attitude.
SillyLeftist,
I agree Obama is lacking in experience, but if he can inject some serious debate on real national issues into the 2008 campaign we will all be better for his participaton.
He’s young enough to learn from this time around and we can learn whether he has what it takes. So far I give him more points in handling the trivial BS than most of the “experienced” candidates.
Posted by whattheheck on Mar 3, 2007 at 8:27 AM There’s only one race, blindmoke, and that’s the human race. Any other classification is just another ignorant attempt to assert the fictitious superiority of one group of people over another. And don’t bother citing the authority of Cornelius “Cracker” Coon, the Great White Hope of American anthropologists. People who constantly cite “authorities” are generally obsessed with their own absence of “authority”.
You’re a disgrace to atheists throughout the world.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 3, 2007 at 7:12 PM Racism is rooted in Economic Class and the Culture associated with it.
Barak Obama is an example of just how obvious this is.
Skin color have functioned as the blinders that prevent everyone, even black people from seeing this through this.
While all groups in the USA, white, black, Hispanic Asian Etc., have segments mired in multi-generational poverty. ONLY BLACKS are defined strictly and solely by that segment.
The “Black Individual” man and woman, regardless of his actual economic achievements is always measured by how he measures up to the “Ghetto standard.”
The traits most people use to describe a culture, the food people eat, the activities they enjoy, the creative arts of the people, their religious beliefs Etc. are used as covers to beat down any black person who doesn’t accept that “Ghetto = real, 100% black.”
If a black individual falls short, then he is declared “inauthentic, a wanna be white.” A real black person speaks “ghetto.” A real black person intuitively and instinctively identifies with people in the projects and their depravation, and no matter how educated and well-off can walk into the toughest housing project and “fit in perfectly.” Yeah right, what nonsense. Unfortunately so many believe this, all people, blacks and whites.
The present leadership is threatened by Obama, because his mere visibility to all threatens to unravel their base of power by revealing to all the deception they depend on to stay in power.
So many of today’s black leadership’s power rest on the “inner city” ghettos. The exceptions to that, like Obama, are always excluded, rejected, because they are declared NOT authentic. They are not authentic, because usually its strongly inferred, their white way of talking shows they have broken their connection to their roots.... in the Ghetto. He can’t understand “black problems” read “he can’t understand how it is to live ni the Ghetto.” “He doesn’t speak street, but the white man’s language.” Speaking proper English is NOT a white thing. It’s a English thing. Every nation tries to teach its citizens to speak properly. Only here is it considered an attempt to destroy the black culture - read Ghetto.
The majority of blacks, who are middle class and better by the way, do not live in ghettos, nor do they create separate existences like ghetto dwellers do. They’re dispersed and much more intermixed, and as a result cannot coalesce into the local voter base these leaders need to stay in power.
As a result they are delegitimized or ignored, and the Ghetto Icon is raised for all as “the authentic black experience.”
for Racism to end as a major issue, blacks must demand that the media and their leaders stop foisting on them and the nation the “ghetto black man” as the “one true 100% black individual” to which all others must measure up to or be considered real.
When that happens, whites will follow, just as they eagerly follow Obama.
His skin color is proving to be utterly irrelevant, NOT because he acts white. First off he is NOT acting. Rather, his behavior reflects a man of integrity, honor, intelligence and learning
It is not defined by or exclusive to being white, but somehow someway it became something that became definitively not black.
Blacks I hope one day start to celebrate those that have made it just like all other groups do. One day they’ll be happy that they have more in common with the White Lawyer, the South Asian Doctor, or a Latin College Professor, and have absolutely nothing in common with the Ghetto Black Gangsta.
I think Obama after initial resistance created by the self-serving black leadership is starting to make this happen. The latest polls show him getting more black support than any other candidate. Considering that just a month ago, Hillary was in the lead, that’s a dramatic change.
Obama represents success on all levels can be achieved quickly in black skin, a message that Black America never hears.
He’s going to be in the news ad nauseam, but that’s a good thing. That is what it will take to shake the image of Black America that everyone holds as the one true real one - the ghetto gangsta.
The millions of reasons why this is true are utterly irrelevant, what is relevant is it must end, before racism will, and be replaced by the more accurate image of the typical black person who works hard, pays taxes (but hates them just like white people) is a patriotic person despite the history of oppression, actually owns a home or is trying to get one Etc.
Obama shows the rest of America that Black person is real, is there and is just like them but Obama is still black, and about as authentically African as one can get to boot. We all have so much to learn from him. I hope we all at least give him a listen, unlike the black leadership did.
Posted by johnnyincentx on Mar 3, 2007 at 7:51 PM Young, unemployed, violent gangbangers typically do not have the opportunity to work hard and pay taxes, let alone get married, buy a house and raise a family. The Irish, Italian and Appalachian ganbangers who terrorized the neighborhoods I grew up in typically got drafted. The military was the People’s University which directed their violent adolescent alienation at “foreign” enemies, and afterwards allowed the survivors to get a job, get married, buy a house and raise a family. At the time, military service was the only “affirmative action” available to them. Naturally, instead of making affirmative action available to all the children of the working class, our fearless leaders, liberals and conservatives, decided to abolish it altogether. In short, they decided to blame the blacks for the abolition of welfare programs which benefit the indigent. You gotta love these guys. They sure know how to run a railroad.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 4, 2007 at 9:20 AM Major, the human race is divided into three distinct races, negroid, mongoloid and caucasoid. Race is a big factor in life and it can’t be ignored. That someone gangbangs is per se proof of their criminality and it is not society’s or whitey’s fault. Stop your whiney excuse-making for black criminality. Blacks have been favored in every sector of government by affirmative discrimination in favor of them and against whites. Not just the military. Also many businesses have had the same pro-black racist discriminatory policies. Major, you are a debit to your race.
Johnny, where did you learn that “history” ? Nation of Islam ? Maybe Radio Moscow in the Soviet era ?
WTH, go to antiwar.com today, March 5 and see the column on Obama by Justin Raimondo. He links to Obama’s recent AIPAC speech, a real pandering performance, only topped by Queen Hillary a month earlier. Obama is all hat and no cattle. Skin color IS his only qualification.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 5, 2007 at 3:31 PM BlondeMike b4 you start impuning the learning of others, perhaps you should address your own profound ignorance as to the facts.
Anthropology, the branch of study that gave us that particular racial classification long ago abandoned it as nonsense, because ALL PEOPLE ARE MIXED.
Those terms ARE NOT scientific.
They are common terms that only someone of limited eduation would use as if they are “scientifically valid.” They are NOT.
Your response is the typically pathetic reply from someone who over his head in a discussion.
Rather than make the slightest attempt to understand, and then refute any point, you ridicule the person and make wild, just as ignorant assumptions re: his sources of information.
There is nothing to discuss or reply to in your post for it is absolutely idiotic, so much so that it discredits itself quite nicely.
So beyond pointing this out for your benefit, I see no point in responding to the rest of your FRight Wing Racist garbage
Posted by johnnyincentx on Mar 5, 2007 at 4:35 PM Johnny, regardless of whatever mixtures there have been there are distinct races and blacks would no more agree with you that there are no races than whites or Asians. As far as your pathetic namecalling goes, this is what the psychs call projection. You are incapable of serious debate because you FEEL very strongly about a subject to which you have given very little THOUGHT. A common failing to be sure but no less a failing for that. Nor are all peoples mixed or mixed to the same degree, blacks can run from very light to very dark and until the last 30 years there was very little intermarriage among Jews. There are also specifically racial diseases like sickle cell for blacks and tay-sachs for Jews. That in itself is proof of different races. If you read the most informed anthropologists like Carleton S. Coon and Roger Pearson you will see the very abundant documentation for different races. I asked you tongue in cheek about your sources, the hysteria you displayed above is your answer. Finally recognizing race is not rightwing, it’s merely the recognition of objective reality. Racism is increasingly looking like a dubious anti-concept intended to obliterate the reality of race but since it is a reality all such attempts inevitability fail. The terms I referred to are as scientific as they come. No reputable anthropologist will deny the reality of race. Which is why you are forced to rely on discredited Marxist hacks like Gould. Johhny, I’ll stop now because you are an inmate confined as we all can tell from your monicker. You’d better develop a more civil frame of mind if you hope to get paroled.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 5, 2007 at 7:24 PM BlondeMike:
Hey you took the bait, and in doing so you reveal yourself and what you truly are.
Roger Pearson: noted revisionist, anti-Semite, another kook who thinks Jews are responsible for all evil in the world, to the degree that they concocted the holocaust to manipulate the West. Uh huh yeah right He is also a big proponent of eugenics.
Carleton S. Coon: Noted DISCREDITED anthropological researcher who wasted valuable time fantasizing all sorts of theories re: the races and their origins.
Genetic research has resulted in the bulk of all his “speculation on race” to be thrown out like the garbage it is.
Not that genetics were necessary, logic and reason made most of his “ideas” look ludicrous to anyone with the least bit of understanding of the human condition beyond skin color.
He was allowed to do this and still work, because when he was alive genetics had yet to become a workable tool of research.
He never “proved” anything. All he did was speculate, based on his own subjective interpretation of what he saw. Back then that was ok, but not today with the modern tools of science.
You can theorize all you want, but if you have no way of proving it, then it’s considered nonsense, and that’s what happened with is “faiths.”
Exactly who’s toilet were you under when you retrieved this racist sh***t LOL
Oh and your “facts” they totally wrong.
Sickle Cell occurs in Mediterranean populations IN EUROPE. It is not as common, but it happens and it is indigenous to the populations, and they are NOT Africans.
Tay Sachs is NOT exclusively Jewish, there are non Jews who have it. Cajuns have the EXACT same genetic mutation. Irish people can get it.
So where is your proof now? A simple google search would have given you this info.
Thanks to your own words you’ve proven yourself to be just another bigot desperate for anything that sounds like a fact to make you feel good about being a racist.
The most humorous thing is you probably think you are a “credit to your own race.” If this were true, it wouldn’t be in terms of intelligence, and most fortunate for the USA the overwhelming majority of white people think your type are borderline insane. That’s why the Gov’t worries when your type and guns get together. LOL
Please feel free to post whatever you like in response. Say whatever you like
I will not respond.
Nothing I say can do as much damage to you as the stuff you type. ;-)
Oh and one more thing you’re NOT blonde when you have to regularly bleach it with peroxide or clorox LOL to make it so true. ;-)
Posted by johnnyincentx on Mar 5, 2007 at 9:19 PM Again, no reasoned arguments or facts from you, you read the ADL crib sheet on Roger as if anyone is supposed to take that garbage seriously. Nor did I take any bait, I simply responded to your previous imbecilic posting to correct the record. It’s always possible that some nonmorons may be reading this and it’s necessary to shovel away lots of excrement on occasion. Tay Sachs IS a Jewish disease. There is no dispute about that in the medical profession anymore than there is about Sickle Cell Anemia being a Black disease. Carleton Coon was NEVER discredited professionally, he was only smeared by morons like yourself. Irish people do not get Tay Sachs nor Europeans sickle cell. Holocaust revisionism is totally correct, read Butz, Rudolf, Faurisson, Berg, Rassinier, Sanning, Mattogno and several others. That is why they have to resort to imprisonment to stop it in Europe and elsewhere. Coon and Pearson both used scientific methodology in their anthropology textbooks, it was their opponents who reduced to mere assertions and ad hominem attacks. Race has much more to it than skin color alone as you would know if you were capable of reading an anthropology textbook. Who uses bleach ? What are you babbling about ? The last group I’d trust with guns is the government after reviewing all of their foreign and domestic policies. Frankly, what the state thinks about guns or anything else couldn’t interest me less. Finally, I don’t need your permission to post here, nor am I in the least interested in your views on anything. This is a public board and I’m correcting the record. How long are you in for ?
Posted by blondemike on Mar 6, 2007 at 2:40 PM Roger Pearson (born 1927) is a British eugenics advocate and editor of several scholarly journals published by the Institute for the Study of Man.
Life and work
Originally from Great Britain, in 1958 Pearson founded the Northern League “to foster the interests, friendship and solidarity of all Teutonic nations.” He recruited Hans GĂĽnther, who received awards under the National Socialist regime for his work on race, Ernest Cox of the Ku Klux Klan, and Dr. Wilhelm Kesserow, a former SS officer.
He joined the Eugenics Society in 1963 and became a fellow in 1977.
Pearson was brought to the United States in 1965 by Willis Carto, founder of the neo-fascist Institute for Historical Review (a Holocaust denial group) and the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, which publishes the weekly Spotlight newspaper.
In 1977, he joined the editorial board of Policy Review, the monthly Heritage Foundation publication. The Coors Connection notes in a caption under an illustration of Pearson’s Eugenics And Race: “Dr. Roger Pearson’s racialist theories are circulated worldwide by neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations.” (Bellant 1989)
Roger Pearson became chairman of the World Anti-Communist League and was responsible for flooding European chapters with Nazi sympathizers and former Nazi SS officers. In 1978 he organized the 11th Conference of the World Anti-Communist League, but he later resigned after being accused of membership in several Nazi groups. Pearson left the Heritage Foundation after a Washington Post expose of the racist/fascist orientation of the World Anti-Communist League. Pearson chaired the American branch, the Council on American Affairs from 1975-80, as well as the WACL from 1978-79.
Pearson also held the directorship of the Institute for the Study of Man, a group which received $869,500 between 1981 and 1996 from the Pioneer Fund (Mehler 1998) and which under Pearson acquired the peer-reviewed journal Mankind Quarterly in 1978. Pearson simultaneously took over as editor and has remained editor through to the present day, though his name has never appeared on the masthead. Pearson has used diverse pseudonyms to contribute to the journal including, J.W. Jamieson. Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele’s advisor, Otmar von Verschuer, was on the editorial advisory board of this journal before his death in 1970. The institute also prints the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies and the Journal of Indo-European Studies and has the Scott-Townsend book imprint. In the editing of the Journal of Indo-European Studies he is assisted by JP Mallory.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 6, 2007 at 8:16 PM Major, it’s holocaust revisionism, not “denial” and ANYONE can post anything on wikipedia. The “nazi” allegations are standard Stalinist bullshit.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 7, 2007 at 10:36 AM Your “revisionism” has reduced the Jewish holocaust to the pedestrian status of ordinary casualties of war, and thereby you deny that it ever occurred, implying that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist. therefore it’s OK to be anti-Semitic. You’ve done the same thing with racism, with the added twist that as you deny the existence of racism you simultaneously advocate the existence of race and the consequent superiority of one race over all the others. According to your logic, if racism and anti-Semitism do not exist, then it’s excusable and “natural” to express racist and anti-Semitic invective at the slightest personal or political provocation.
Posted by Major Major on Mar 8, 2007 at 5:56 PM No one said it was merely an ordinary casualty of war. I’m getting sick of your imbecilic strawman nonarguments. There is a long continuum from ordinary up to the worst events in history. If I say that 4-5 million more Jews survived than commonly thought the only people who should be depressed by that news are “anti-semites” or more accurately anti-Jews since Arabs are semites but not all Jews are. I never denied the existence of either race or racism. Nor did I write that any group was superior or inferior as a whole to any other group. It would break down into specifics anyway, superior in what way, inferior in what way and there would always be exceptions. You are a knave who deliberately twists things because you are incapable of sustaining a rational argument. I’m sorry if the fact that many blacks are racists disturbs you but your evasion of this fact does not wipe it out of existence. Personally I hope the “anti-racism” campaign of the left follows the “anti-communism” campaign of the right into extinction.
Posted by blondemike on Mar 8, 2007 at 6:17 PM Laura Washington’s use of “ain’t” here is disturbing. Not a good role model. If people want a look at Obama, go to Cockburn’s Counterpunch site and see his recent speech to AIPAC. Almost as bad as Hillary’s. All this shows is the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics.
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