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March 18, 2008

"The Speech": Obama Still Ducks the Most Urgent Question

Hatched by Dafydd

In what is now being hyped as "the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime" -- that last from Andrew Sullivan -- Barack Obama manages to meander through nearly five thousand words... yet he still evades answering the most important linked pair of questions: What did Obama know about Rev. Wright's despicable views, and when did he know it?

Read on to find out what I really think!

The transcript is now available, and in it we find the same lawyerly -- even Clintonian -- parsing of language anent what Obama knew about the bizarre rantings, the anti-Americanism, the virulent hatred of Whitey that permeates Jeremiah Wright's sermons. Here is what Obama says about what he did and didn't know:

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.

For heaven's sake, I "make remarks that could be considered controversial," and God knows I am "an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy." But I have never said anything remotely like "God damn America," or say we had it coming to us on 9/11, or accuse the government of creating AIDS in a laboratory to commit genocide against anyone, or cheer on the Palestinian terrorist murderers against the Israeli "war criminals," or say that America wants to put blacks into concentration camps, or any of the other poisonous slanders and creepy conspiracies that seem to flow so effortlessly from Jeremiah Wright's lips.

Can we please hear a little more about whether you heard or heard about those things, Senator Obama?

A few days ago, he made another Clintonian non-denial denial on that point:

In his Friday night [March 14th] cable mea culpas on the incendiary comments made by his spiritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., repeatedly said, "I wasn't in church during the time that these statement were made. I did not hear such incendiary language myself, personally. Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, he always preached the social gospel. [And what, exactly, is the "social gospel" according to Jeremiah Wright anyway?] ... If I had heard them repeated, I would have quit. ... If I thought that was the repeated tenor of the church, then I wouldn’t feel comfortable there."

The "social gospel," a.k.a. Christian socialism, typically means the post-millennialist Protestant version of Catholic liberation theology; both sat at the core of American progressivism (what Jonah Goldberg calls one version of liberal fascism): It's the idea that the alleviation of poverty -- typically by socialist redistribution of wealth -- is actually a holy duty of Christians. As a great many preachers of the social gospel were themselves white racists, there is no reason why "preach[ing] the social gospel" would preclude preaching black racism. So again, Obama is ambiguous about what he actually heard.

It's like saying, "Either in conversations with him or when I was in the pew, Father Coughlin always preached the social gospel" -- as if that innoculated the Jew-hating priest against the charge of antisemitism!

Obama told CNN that he "didn't know about all these statements. I knew about one or two of these statements that had been made. One or two statements would not lead me to distance myself from either my church or my pastor. ... If I had thought that was the tenor or tone on an ongoing basis, then yes, I don't think it would have been reflective of my values." [But would you have done anything about being a member of a church that was not "reflective of [your] values?"]

And Bill Clinton was never alone with Monica Lewinsky... after all, there were always other people somewhere in the White House.

Obama goes on to condemn the remarks, now that they have become a problem for his campaign:

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.

But he still won't tell us whether he already knew about them before the roof fell in! Without knowing even that much, how can we possibly judge whether or not such repugnant views outraged the candidate, or even made him squirm?

Why can't Barack Obama just answer a simple question: Did you know about these statements and beliefs, by any means at all, prior to March, 2008?

Did you know -- whether you heard it "personally" while "in the pews" or somewhere else -- that he said America deserved to get attacked on 9/11?

Did you know -- even if you had to see it on video or hear it from a friend -- that Wright believes that America deliberately released both crack cocaine and the human immunodeficiency virus into the black community to kill off the entire black race?

Did you know about his hatred and rejection of the very concept of middle-class blacks? Did you learn, by any means at all, that Wright called upon his congregation -- of which you are a member, even if you were absent that day -- to chant "God damn America?" Or that he considered Louis Farrakhan worthy of a lifetime achievement award for all the "good" he has done for the black community?

And if you really didn't know any of this, if you knew so little about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright... then how dare you call him your "spiritual advisor" and put him on a campaign advisory committee? If you are unable to spot a black racist, separatist, and America-hater even after twenty years of close contact, doesn't that indicate that you have truly appalling judgment?

Or did you know and just not care... until it suddenly erupted into the body politic?

Excuse me for doubting Obama's sincerity when he earnestly tries to persuade us -- without actually coming out and saying it in so many words -- that he had absolutely no idea that Wright was such a racialist. And, one presumes, absolutely no idea where his wife Michelle got her visceral dislike of America and the huge chip on her overprivileged shoulder.

More evasion:

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.

Every denial is qualified, hedged about with terms of limitation and narrowness of scope. Did he ever hear Wright derrogate an ethnic group in a situation other than a private conversation? Did Wright treat badly whites with whom he didn't interact?

But even more troubling than Obama's carefully parsed and skillful bobbing and weaving to avoid answering the real question -- is the way he casually equates the vile and pernicious hysteria of Wright with ordinary observations and non-incendiary comments by whites. Here is one example that really troubles me:

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.

The ABC piece above quoted from a Rolling Stone profile of Rev. Wright; Wright, speaking about the United States, said, "We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. ... We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. ... We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!"

Evidently, Obama equates that to his grandmother being afraid when "black men passed by her on the street." You mean mean-looking black guys who act like gang bangers? I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of black grandmothers are equally afraid of young, black hooligans. How can any sane person believe this is the same as what Wright bellows during his sermons?

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.

Goodness knows I have no love for Mrs. Ferraro; but what she said was not evidence of a "deep-seated racial bias." It was the simple -- and true, if clumsily expressed -- recognition that the only thing Barack Obama has going for him is his persona as our first "post-racial candidate." Yes, he's a poseur; clearly, he is not post-racial; but that is his pose.

A candidate cannot pose as post-racial unless he or she is, in fact, a racial minority.

John McCain cannot call himself a post-racial candidate; the Obama camp (including his spiritual advisor and mentor) would be first in line, even ahead of Jesse and Al, to say that by "post racial," McCain means he wants to lock in "white privilege." Therefore, were it not for Obama being black, he would not be the Democratic frontrunner.

That is hardly the same thing as the separatist, paranoid drivel that spews from Jeremiah Wright like a fire hose that's lost its nozzle.

These completely unsupportable comparisons pave the path for Obama's main argument, where he tries to wrench the discussion away from the racist anti-Americanism of his spiritual advisor for the last two decades and onto more familiar ground: the endemic racism of America (so much for being post-racial!)

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.

There you go... Barack Obama's "post-racial" position is that the problems blacks suffer are just legacies of America's racism, which "we've never really worked through" and "have yet to perfect."

He goes on to cite school segregation as being the cause of black underachievement in schools today. What was his position on Ward Connerly's incredibly successful efforts to make "affirmative action" illegal?

Obama cites Jim Crow laws that, he claims, cause "the wealth and income gap between black and white" today, which leads directly to "the erosion of black families." But why look back to the 1950s and early 1960s? Plenty of poor immigrants have managed to start from nothing and build great prosperity... even with the terrible disadvantage of not speaking English. Why have so many fewer blacks done so?

And why were black families more intact at the beginning of the century, within living memory of slavery and in the full blooming of the deadly flower of Jim Crow, and more blacks living middle-class lifestyles, than today? How does Obama's racism explanation explain that?

If you're less than 44 years old, then you never lived under legal segregation; what's your excuse for underachieving economically today, or fathering children today with various women to whom you're not married?

To Obama, as to W.E.B. DuBois, it all traces back to racist America. All the problems of black culture (not race), from out of wedlock birth to a destructive rejection of education to poor work habits, are caused by slavery (which ended 143 years ago) and Jim Crow (which ended 44 years ago):

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.

When he turns to solutions, Obama manages, at last, to rise above racialism; he finds a very effective voice as a populist demagogue, dividing us by class instead of race:

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 what's the solution? As is common on the Left, the most urgent task our "change agent" is to find a group of people to demonize:

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.

This is pure populism, unadulterated by a love of liberty, respect for Capitalist economics, or the slightest comprehension that property rights are human rights. This is the same line the Left has peddled here since the early nineteenth century... in fact, it was imported directly from the French revolution of 1789 and the anti-Capitalist, mob rule of the Terror that ran rampant until crushed under the heel of Bonapartism.

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.

Obama demands bread and medicine for the masses. But where is the call for freedom, liberty, and personal responsibility? Where is support for the free market, or even the recognition that it is not the responsibility of government to supply all necessities to all people?

That last is a workable definition of socialism, whether international -- Marxism, Communism -- or national socialism; I have no idea which of the two Obama embraces, but one of them is his sweetheart. Here is the closest he comes to recognizing that individuals have the right and responsiblity to run their own lives; but this one throw-away line strikes me as simple lip-service:

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.

Vapid, ambiguous, generalized and unspecific... there's the Barack Obama we've all grown to know and expect! Then for nine long paragraphs, we hear about the "crumbling schools," "the lines in the Emergency Room," the "shuttered mills" and "homes for sale" (wait -- what's wrong with selling your house?)... the corporations that ship your job overseas, bringing all the soldiers home from a war "that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged," and "show[ing] our patriotism" by giving these soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines government benefits instead.

One almost expects a peroration about a poor little match girl who hasn't even a warm winter coat. I had to flip up top to make sure I wasn't reading a speech by John "Two Americas" Edwards. (Instead, he closes with a pointless anecdote about a young lady who joined his campaign because she had to eat mustard and relish sandwiches as a poor kid. Don't ask.)

Meet the new Left, same as the old Left.

Barack Obama has given us absolutely nothing new in this speech, the transcript of which I suffered through from beginning to end. He still hasn't told us how much of these bizarre Wrightian rants he knew about in previous years or why he remained so close to the man.

He still hasn't gotten specific about how he will bring us all together; nor has he talked about anything that hasn't been Democratic Party boilerplate since Andrew Jackson.

I'm sure that Obamaniacs will continue to swoon when he speaks and throw their underwear up onto the stage; but I don't believe anybody else is going to be blown away by this lengthy exercise in vacuity. But we shall shortly find out.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, March 18, 2008, at the time of 8:30 PM

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» 弁明演説で正体がばれたバラク・オバマ from In the Strawberry Field
先日から、恩師の過激発言について厳しい批判を受けていたバラク・オバマ議員民主党大統領候補は１８日、ライト牧師の見解について３０分にわたる弁明演説を行った。これを受けてオバマ氏は当地の国立憲法センターで演説し、こうした発言を受け入れない姿勢を明言。自身がケニア出身で黒人の父と、カンザス州出身で白人の母を持ち、米国人として育った点を強調した。星条旗を背景に１人で演台に立った同氏は、「この国が寄せ集め以上であり、多くの人々が真に団結しているとの考えは、わたしの生い立ちにさかのぼる」と語った。オバマ氏は... [Read More]

Tracked on March 21, 2008 5:00 PM

Comments

The following hissed in response by: FredTownWard

Stick a fork in Obama; he's done, though he doesn't know it yet. The Obamamaniacs will continue to swoon of course, but this sad business has ensured that their ranks will not swell enough to propel Obama to the White House even if Hillary now falls short in her revived attempts to steal the nomination from him.

With this Obama has just destroyed a key part of the coalition he required for victory: whites voting out of guilt in order to receive absolution for what other white people did to other black people in the past. Now he's exposed for all to see as just another race hustling phony, a "clean[er] more articulate" one as Joe Biden would say, but nothing more.

He has given white independents and white Democrats a way to "feel good" while voting AGAINST him, something they needed, and for someone with so few other reasons to deserve support, that is going to be the end.

What's more, McCain-hating conservatives considering sitting out the 2008 elections if Obama was the nominee will now be scared to the polls almost as badly as if Hillary was the nominee.

For better or worse hello President John McCain.

The above hissed in response by: FredTownWard at March 19, 2008 4:58 AM

The following hissed in response by: wtanksleyjr

I 100% agree that Obama is a race-baiting huckster, but I don't agree that he's exposed; most people won't even hear the speech, only the summary. And the summary from the MSM is unanimous: he's nice to both sides but disavows his pastor's controversial views.

In actual fact, the details of his speech are like every other speech he gives: he starts by philosophically conceding everything a conservative could possibly want, and then asserts the extreme liberal action as the only possible course. In this case, he admits that we should treat people equally, and admits that race-baiters are bad; but he then goes on to say that we should be giving blacks more favors to make up for their horrid treatment.

In the past I've heard him assert that the constitution protects an individual right to own guns, and then continue to say that the government should and must regulate all gun ownership.

He wants it both ways, and he's smooth enough to pull it off, so long as nobody's digging. Right now it's not possible for anyone to dig; the Democratic primary is about promised actions, not about philosophies and ideas, so they can't even SEE the conservative philosophies he's expressing, much less can they see the contradiction between the professed philosophy and the promised action. But McCain will dig, and hopefully he'll have a conservative amongst his advisers (anything's possible), so he'll find the contradiction.

The above hissed in response by: wtanksleyjr at March 19, 2008 7:30 AM

The following hissed in response by: BarbaraS

The way Obama would push racial equality is to have these separatists in the WH, the cabinet, etc. Just think of Louis Farakhan as secretary of state, Jesse Jackson and Al sharpton in the cabinet. These are the kind of people he knows and trusts. Why would he put any whites on his staff or in his cabinet? Once president he can do as he pleases. Maybe Rexko in charge of HUD. The list could go on and on. Just think of Obama as the button pusher in a nuclear war. Liberals are crazy to want this guy as our president. Maybe they think they can rule him. I've got news for them his agenda is black separatism and that is where his loyalties lie.

The above hissed in response by: BarbaraS at March 19, 2008 8:23 AM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

Dafydd, it seems to me that your issues with Obama's speech can be divided into two parts: 1) How he deals with Wright, and 2) he's a lefty wacko. Since we agree on 2), I won't add anything.
On 1) I think we get the idea, though (as you pointed out) Obama was as fuzzy as could be. He knew all about what his preacher says, though (since we wouldn't want to think he was lying till now) he may not have heard the specific stuff that's been on youtube. He heard the preacher say these kind of things. Nevertheless, he didn't quit in disgust, because this is an extremely common attitude in the black community. Sad but true; lots of black people hate America and whites. He won't reject them for that, and he can't, without rejecting much of black America. In fact, though they are racists, these people can have very positive contributions to make within their communities.
(Obviously, no one is going to say that about white racists, not sure why, and Obama carefully didn't.) Anyhow, that's what he said.
I understand what he means, because I feel the same way with some of my Jewish community. There are lots of people from the Old Country, who still are hateful and fearful of "goyim" and the government. They grew up in Poland or Lithuania around WWII time, and were right to be fearful. They still see the world that way, even in America. Yes, one of them could be my "spiritual leader"; I can have tremendous respect for what these people did in rebuilding their lives and their communities here in America. Don't ask me to distance them; I won't do it. All I will do is dodge around the racist parts of them. For those for whom no racist can be positive, sorry. Obviously, if my hypothetical rabbi would make this the basis of the majority of his sermons, I would indeed have to leave; I expect to gain from his sermons, not dodge nonsense all the time. (It would be relevant to know what fraction of the time Wright spouts hateful nonsense.)

The above hissed in response by: MikeR at March 19, 2008 9:14 AM

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

I'd add that the tragedy to me is that Obama didn't go further, as Bill Cosby has. "If we're the movement for Change, my own black people have to begin to stop this nonsense. It is crippling our position in American society. And I'm telling you it's a lie. Look: I'm running for President and white people are voting for me. And those that aren't, it's because they disagree with my politics."
But then Obama would lose, so he won't do it.

The above hissed in response by: MikeR at March 19, 2008 9:22 AM

The following hissed in response by: Geoman

"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." Truer words were never said. So, to put it more bluntly, black anger about race keeping them down, holding them back, sounds like a whole lot of self-pitying rationalization to the rest of America.

Funny how the Democrats have selected possibly the worst two presidential candidates possible for the next election. My theory is that they feel so sure they are going to win no matter what, they can indulge all their own worst impulses.

McCain is going to clean up. Eespecially if he gets a solid, articulate conservative on the ticket.

The above hissed in response by: Geoman at March 19, 2008 10:08 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Geoman:

McCain is going to clean up. Eespecially if he gets a solid, articulate conservative on the ticket.

Solid, articulate, and clean; don't forget the all-important personal-hygiene qualification!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at March 19, 2008 2:42 PM

The following hissed in response by: leftnomore

I would post something basically concurrent, except the first comment is spot-on... just re-read FredTownWard again.

The above hissed in response by: leftnomore at March 19, 2008 5:21 PM

The following hissed in response by: Mr. Michael

MikeR's parenthetical comment is probably the most important point for me on this issue:

(It would be relevant to know what fraction of the time Wright spouts hateful nonsense.)

If Preacher Wright BASED his teachings on the idea that America is evil and the Black RACE must politically or violently overthrow Whitey, then Obama has nothing, he might prevail against Mrs. Clinton, but he's toast in the General. If it's just the rare pandering to a crowd once he's 'way off topic and worked up into a sweat? There is a phrase about "When the cat is away..." The Preacher Wright may have felt liberated to say crazy crap if there were no VIPs in the house, and more restricted with the Senator and his reputation attending. Could Obama's mere attendance have have a 'calming' effect on the Preacher's monologues?

However, the little I know about 'Black Liberation Theology' means that the extreme separation of the Black Community from the current power structure, i.e. America, was an integral part of his teaching, not a rare deviance. And if that's the case, Obama isn't just throwing his mentor under the Bus, he's disavowing his Church's basic theology when it became politically expedient to do so. Would you vote for a man who would choose a job over Christ? That may be what Obama is asking you to decide here.

Now let's assume that this type of hatred is commonly being taught from the Lectern at these kinds of Black Churches. Will Obama's refutation of their Gospel make him more popular, or less? Or will they hate Hillary so much because of her position, wealth and race that they'd vote for Obama no matter how rudely he described their religious leaders?

The above hissed in response by: Mr. Michael at March 20, 2008 12:58 AM

The following hissed in response by: Chris G.

I've spent two days now reading everyone's comments on Obama's speech, and I have yet to read notice of this gaffe: "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..." If they're in an emergency room, then they have health care!

I'm certain he meant "health insurance", but such a pass would not have been granted to McCain had he said it. Just look at what's been said about the Iran/AQI training comment. At this point I'd say that if Obama doesn't vote for McCain, it shows Obama is ageist.

The above hissed in response by: Chris G. at March 20, 2008 6:50 PM

The following hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn

Obama cites Jim Crow laws that, he claims, cause "the wealth and income gap between black and white" today, which leads directly to "the erosion of black families." But why look back to the 1950s and early 1960s? Plenty of poor immigrants have managed to start from nothing and build great prosperity... even with the terrible disadvantage of not speaking English. Why have so many fewer blacks done so?
And why were black families more intact at the beginning of the century, within living memory of slavery and in the full blooming of the deadly flower of Jim Crow, and more blacks living middle-class lifestyles, than today? How does Obama's racism explanation explain that?

If you're less than 44 years old, then you never lived under legal segregation; what's your excuse for underachieving economically today, or fathering children today with various women to whom you're not married?

I wish you would come out and say what you think the problem is here. There's a very specific undercurrent here, of course, but you appear afraid (just as you claim Obama is) to answer your own questions.

And then you are upset that Obama addresses the very concerns you have:

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.

Vapid, ambiguous, generalized and unspecific...

How can you say these things with a straight face? What is Obama supposed to do? Create a Bureau of Dads Who Love Their Kids? Pass a bill enacting compulsory bedtime reading?

Get it straight: Obama agrees with you here, believe it or not.

The above hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn at March 20, 2008 8:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Jacob Lynn:

How can you say these things with a straight face? What is Obama supposed to do? Create a Bureau of Dads Who Love Their Kids? Pass a bill enacting compulsory bedtime reading?

Well for starters, he could get at least as specific as Larry Elder and Bill Cosby... both of whom have come right out and said that blacks today don't have it any harder than whites -- except for the difficulties they make themselves with their lousy cultural attitudes towards education, work habits, and civilized behavior.

Those blacks who succeed are precisely those who reject the culture of whining, panhandling, and acting out, in favor of the inaptly dubbed "white culture," which whites are no more "born into" than are blacks: Everybody of every race must learn to conform to "white culture," at least in public.

Call it the culture of self-reliance coupled with the Protestant work ethic: Enculturate yourself into that, and you won't be one of those young black men who are more likely to end up in prison than at university.

That is what Obama needed to say... not those generalities that at first seem vague, but are in fact meaningless:

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.

...My eye!

Get it straight: Obama agrees with you here, believe it or not.

No he doesn't. He knows he has to make some sort of nod towards blacks doing something, anything, to get themselves out of their self-built prison. It's the least he can do.

And that, indeed, was the least he could do: One pathetic paragraph with not a single specific call to action. For cripes sake, even Louis Farrakhan is more detailed and specific than Barack Obama.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at March 21, 2008 3:35 AM

The following hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn

Well for starters, he could get at least as specific as Larry Elder and Bill Cosby... both of whom have come right out and said that blacks today don't have it any harder than whites -- except for the difficulties they make themselves with their lousy cultural attitudes towards education, work habits, and civilized behavior.

So you're another one of the people that pretends that racism doesn't exist?

I mean, honestly. I grew up in Alabama. I currently live in New York City. And to pretend that racism doesn't exist is the dumbest thing you've written in this entire post.

Those blacks who succeed are precisely those who reject the culture of whining, panhandling, and acting out, in favor of the inaptly dubbed "white culture," which whites are no more "born into" than are blacks: Everybody of every race must learn to conform to "white culture," at least in public.

This is true, in a certain sense.

However, consider that the richest (or second richest) African-American, Robert L. Johnson, made his fortune peddling negative images of black culture to the black community.

Consider that Jay-Z, P Diddy, Russell Simmons (founder of Def Jam records), and Master P are all among the 20 richest black Americans, as are Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Don King.

I think it's clear that the public image of success in the black community is not to join "white culture". I agree with you (and with Obama) that this is a problem. But ignoring the facts of the situation will not get you to a solution.

The above hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn at March 21, 2008 2:12 PM

The following hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn

I suppose I could add that I think electing Barack Obama president would be the most productive step we could possibly take with respect to providing positive role models for young blacks who think thug culture is a path to success.

The above hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn at March 21, 2008 2:15 PM

The following hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn

Sorry for the post diarrhea, but I couldn't help myself here...

You say:

Call it the culture of self-reliance coupled with the Protestant work ethic: Enculturate yourself into that, and you won't be one of those young black men who are more likely to end up in prison than at university.

And then you make fun of Obama for saying exactly that! Unbelievable! How is a "culture of self-reliance" any different from the belief that "they can write their own destiny"?

The above hissed in response by: Jacob Lynn at March 21, 2008 2:18 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Jacob Lynn:

So you're another one of the people that pretends that racism doesn't exist?

I said no such thing. But I'm not surprised that an Obama supporter would think that I did.

And to pretend that racism doesn't exist is the dumbest thing you've written in this entire post.

Of course, I didn't write it anywhere in this entire post. Next time, try sticking to what I actually wrote.

Of course racism -- or more appropriately, tribalism -- exists; but it exists for every group. I'm Jewish (by culture, not religion); I have to deal with antisemitism. Christians have to deal with anti-Christian bias (which is real and growing). Whites have to deal with liberals who think whiteness is a disease.

Everybody has to deal with the stupid prejudices of stupid people... blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Ancestral Americans, believers, atheists, businessmen, and actors. Your critical error is to assume that the load of garbage dumped on one group is so overwhelmingly more than on any other group that it constitutes a difference in kind.

(An awful lot of people like to believe they have it tougher than anyone else in the universe. It gives them something to brag about -- and something to blame besides themselves when they fail.)

That blacks are singled out for more abuse and irrational hatred than anyone else might have been true in 1958... but it is not true in 2008. The past half-century has seen an extraordinary change in American culture.

The only "legacy" left over from slavery and Jim Crow is the mental shadow-show that washes through some people's minds, telling them that race is immutable and its pernicious effects unavoidable and insurmountable.

All three are false. First of all, Barack Obama isn't black. Like Tiger Woods, he is of mixed "race" -- unlike Tiger Woods, he minimizes the genetic contribution of his mother (who raised him) in favor of that of his father (who abandoned him).

Race is presumed to correspond to culture. Do Poles, Celts, Serbians, French, and Swedes all have the same "culture" of whiteness? Why should Somalis, Kenyans, Masai, and Hutus all be lumped together by skin color? The categorization has no basis in science... it's entirely made up.

Therefore, "black culture" is arbitrary and made up as well, as is some putatative "white culture." They're affectations, JL; people volunteer to join "black culture" and be "black." They can just as jolly well volunteer to join so-called "white culture" and be "white."

Which, by the way, is exactly what every supposedly rich black guy on your list has done... every one of them! All of them -- Robert L. Johnson, Jay-Z, P Diddy, Russell Simmons, and Master P, not to mention Oprah, Donna Brazile, Michael Jackson, Charles Rangel, Samuel Jackson, Bill Cosby, Shelby Steele, Michael Steele, J.C. Watts, and yes, even Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Spike Lee -- wear business attire, speak proper English, are punctual, work long hours, are, you know, bright, articulate, and clean, hire lawyers to settle their disputes, and own a house (or more than one).

In every way (and very successfully) they are fully plugged into the so-called "white" culture... which is actually the American free-enterprise business culture. And it has rewarded them all with money, fame, and power. Just as it does for the inferior, lighter-skinned races.

It's irrelevant what kind of records or movies or politics they create as their commodity for sale; none of these people lives the supposedly "authentic" black culture (thug culture)... which is actually as inauthentic as you can imagine, being based upon fictional songs, movies, and unexamined fantasies.

Those blacks who made the dreadful mistake of trying to live the "authentic" culture they sang about -- like Suge Knight and Tupac... or for that matter, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, and Jimi Hendrix -- quickly found out why virtually all successful people in the free world had joined the free-enterprise business culture from an early age.

How is a "culture of self-reliance" any different from the belief that "they can write their own destiny"?

The same way that "the sum of the squares of the two smallest sides of a right triangle equals the square of the largest side" differs from "some triangles have an amazing geometric property"... specificity.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at March 22, 2008 3:07 AM

The following hissed in response by: cdquarles

Dafydd,

With all due respect, it is not the government's responsibility to provide any necessities of life to anyone not in the Armed Forces or in prison.

The above hissed in response by: cdquarles at March 22, 2008 5:09 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

CDQuarles:

With all due respect, it is not the government's responsibility to provide any necessities of life to anyone not in the Armed Forces or in prison.

Hold on there, partner... that's a pretty sweeping statement. Two necessities of life are breathable air and potable water; it's not obvious to me that ensuring that the air is at least breathable and the water drinkable isn't to a large extent the duty of the federal and state governments -- a duty that Red China is signally failing to discharge.

One might argue that since another necessity of life is food, and since food in a city must be trucked in, and since the roads and the railways are the government's responsibility, that the State bears a primary duty to build and maintain such infrastructure... which means that governments are spending a lot of tax money helping to provide the necessity of food to everyone who lives somewhere other than on a farm.

We must be much more careful and specific with our speech, lest we sink into a jangle of jingoisms and a slough of sloganeering.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at March 22, 2008 8:30 PM