Comments on: It’s Not About Racism, It’s About Payback

By: WickedWitchofBakersfield

WickedWitchofBakersfield — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:06:43 +0000

Stop! You’re both right — er, correct! The racism is the cream cheese frosting on the carrot cake of indignant payback. I believe that if Colin Powell had run and been elected as a Republican, this would not be happening. Democratic president + black president = perfect target for the now-dominant idiot wing of the Republican party. And since they claim that the left said and did worse about the Shrub, everything that they say and do about Obama is okay — just part of a spirited dialogue. It is impossible to have an honest discussion of the issues with those who believe that Obama is turning the executive over to czars who will run everything and answer to no one, that a fascist, a socialist and a communist are the same thing and Obama is all three, that Obama is a Moslem, a terrorist and a traitor, that health care reform will kill their granny, impoverish their grandchildren and deny them their god-given right to sody-pop, fried pork rinds and beer and/or that health care reform is code for reparations to blacks over slavery. (Yeah, I have actually heard all of that, here in California’s answer to redneck-Christian-right central.) The Stalinists and radical agorist Libertarians I knew back in the 60s were sane compared to these people — they at least knew the difference between a fascist and a communist. The difference between wanting to see ShrubCo tried for war crimes (the most extreme thing I have heard from the left) and wanting to see Obama lynched (which I have heard from the wingnuts) is more than just the indignation of loss, it’s racism, but I still do not believe that the same amount of racist venom would be directed at a black Republican president — no cake to frost.

By: majii

majii — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:01:06 +0000

Unless one has walked in another one’s shoes, one cannot begin to imagine what it is like for that person. I am an African American female, over 50, college-educated, retired with excellent benefits, including health insurance. Here in GA, among many whites, my accomplishments mean absolutely nothing. I am judged instantaneously on sight and deemed inferior. I lived through segregation and the civil rights era and experienced all of it. Someone who is not a member of a minority group, and who hasn’t lived life in these United States and hasn’t experienced what I have experienced and continue to experience, wouldn’t understand how I’ve had to live for over 50 years. In fact, IMO, they are incapable of really understanding issues of racism. It is easy to dismiss charges of racism if you’re not a target of it. It doesn’t always have to be overt in nature, and if you’re in a minority group, it doesn’t take very long to recognize it in its’ overt and covert forms. My daughter began to experience it when she was 4, and she was born in 1981. The the election of Obama as POTUS did not usher in a post-racial America. I don’t believe that all who oppose President Obama are racists, but based on my experience, the majority of them are. America has always run away from discussing the issue of racism, and in many places in the South, whites who have many members of minority groups they call “friend” are discouraged from forming these types of relationships. It’s generally taboo. Even in 2009. I live in a white/black/hispanic neighborhood, and the fact that my white neighbors don’t accept my family has been made obvious time after time. When people you’ve lived with in the same neighborhood for over 20 years still act like they don’t see you as you pass by in your car and wave at them all you can conclude is that they don’t ever want to acknowledge that you are there. Same thing when you see that only the white neighbors are invited to the neighborhood barbecues and other events. What conclusion do you reach when your 5 year old who plays with the neighbors’ children is not good enough to be invited to the birthday party? How do you explain to this kid that the children you thought were your friends’ parents didn’t think you were good enough to attend their child’s birthday party? How do you explain to your kid that when one of her best friends in neighborhood who happens to be white tells him/her that she wanted to invite her to her birthday party, but that her mom says it’s a whites’ only party? America needs to stop denying that people don’t discriminate against others in these modern times on the basis of race. It’s a lie.

By: Pokey

Pokey — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:55:34 +0000

Anyone who ignores the racial overtones of the antipathy for Obama is either hopelessly naive or willfully ignorant. The White House wants to believe that race is not a factor, and there are good political reasons to adopt that stance. But if you watch the clips of the teabagers and cannot see brimming redneckism, you are blind.

By the way, as a longtime resident of northeast Louisiana, I know a little something about rednecks.