President-elect Obama has selected Rick Warren, the most prominent evangelical preacher of the post-Billy Graham generation, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. The decision was announced today by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
Thank you, President Obama. Finally someone is not playing the culture war, and even more significant that it is our elected President.
Already those vested and committed to the culture war are blurting out their disapproval of Obama's selection of Rick Warren.
American Way President Kathryn Kolbert -commenting that choosing an abortion and gay marriage opponent is a disappointment, and also Andrew Sullivan -a pro-gay rights blogger, and many others are voicing their discord with Obama.
These haters of Conservative Christianity think Left, Liberal, and Democrat are the banner for their army. They think that when a Democrat finally gains the White House, that Conservative/Suburban Christians are, in a very real sense, thrust out of power.
This war-like attitude on the part of left-leaning special interest groups helps perpetuate the worst abuses on the right side of politics. The Right, whether they be pro-military, Libertarian, anti-abortion, or just plain anti-urban; know they are out of power when a typical Liberal gains power. SO THE RIGHT FIGHT HARDER, AND BUILD UP GRASS ROOT COALITIONS BECAUSE THEY ARE TRULY UNDER-REPRESENTED.
The war culture crime here is under-representation. When an old-style conservative comes to power -its all military, Protestant Christianity, and urban environments/issues are disdained. When an old-style liberal comes to power -lesbians get to go out into the hinterland appointed as socialistic nurses/teachers or city planners; and tell girls to skip church, screw both guys and girls, and get an abortion. My hyperbole is extreme, but in the 60's and 70's, before Conservatives learned how to kick holy ass by co-opting postmodernism and doing it better, the countercultural/Democratic machine pretty much did send their minions out to the backwaters of the nation, showing hillbillies and black sharecroppers the ways of Marx.
Unlike the liberal or countercultural agendas of the past, Obama realizes he is the leader of the whole country, and is offering an olive branch to suburban, typically white, America. Obama is a higher caliber human being, wanting everyone in America to do good, not just one side of America that supports leftist or typically liberal ideology.
"The country must be governed from the middle," Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday. "You have to bring people together to reach consensus on solutions that are sustainable and acceptable to the American people."
Nancy Pelosi has made this statement as a guiding principle for Democrats. Combined with President-elect Obama's constant assertion of centrist ideals, this should provide a great deal of clarity to the American people as to what to expect in the next two years. This message was sent out the day after the elections, in a style that both major parties in Washington D.C. use to announce to what ends their agenda will serve.
Nancy Pelosi just defeated a political challenger from the Far Left, Cindy Sheehan. See:Pelosi defeats Sheehan. SFGate. This in of itself should send a message to the center and center-right as to where San Francisco and Berkely liberals truly stand. And if San Fran is voting down the Far Left, then the Far Left really have no "base" of operations, and are thrust into the wilderness.
Note: I hope the Far Left die in that wilderness. Or better yet, start plenty of powerless non-profits, everyone of which will likely buy copying machines, computers, office furniture, hire a website programmer, and pay a graphics artist to create a logo. ( Hey Revolutionaries, Thanks for the $$, and good luck telling each other you are right(eous). - the Economy. )
I have an acquaintance who lives in Wasilla, Alaska, and wrote the day before the election with these fears that are being discussed in his local church: After Obama is elected, laws will be implemented that prevent people from speaking their beliefs, specifically people will not be able to say "I believe gay marriage is wrong, and against the wishes of God". The other thing some at his church are afraid of is gun rights being taken away. One of his local church leaders is buying extra ammunition, saying that if Obama wins then he may not be able to legally get more ammunition.
Here are my responses to all the above:
This is not "funny", and I think any big city liberals that make fun of such concerns exacerbate the cultural rifts and the potential cultural war.
I have attended the nation's most extreme left colleges over the last 8 years, and absolutely YES, there are leftist extremists in those schools who are after the things my conservative Wasilla friend is fearful of, and these extremists
almost always vote Democrat.
Most important point: With Obama and Pelosi's declared intentions, these extremists don't have representation. They are like the KKK who voted for George W. Bush, in that they may feel more resonate with one party than the other, but their agenda doesn't have traction anywhere it matters.
I believe the Democrats are going to rebuild the public part of this country -the parts that make all of our lives and livelihoods work. For too long we have had a fear of the Far Left, and run to shakedown artists feigning they give a sh_t about conservative values, or any values. We had to kill two birds with one stone to kill either one. With Obama, we did -the Far Left and the Republican shakedown artists are both swept into the dustbin of powerlessness. Tip for America: Keep both of them dead by keeping both of them dead.
“We’re entering a new era – not only in terms of voting, we’re entering a new millennial presidency – it’s not only that young people turned out in big numbers, but also the way in which they were engaged in the process. There’s a whole new level of transparency and access that Obama as president will utilize to much more engage young people.”
That was evident in the way Obama reacted to his win. He chose first to send an email to supporters thanking them, before heading out to speak in the glare of television klieg lights to the throngs of tens of thousands of cheering - some tearing-up - supporters at Grant Park on Tuesday night.
Below is, too me, a scary description of what may happen in the US if the tax payer bailout goes forward. It is all a quote from MSNBC MCCAIN VS. OBAMA: BAILOUT POLITICS:
The New York Times’ David Brooks sees an ideological shift for the country coming, and it starts with the enactment of this plan: "The Paulson rescue plan is one chapter. But there will be others. Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders. Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks. For Republicans, people like Paulson. For Democrats, the guiding lights will be those establishment figures who advised Barack Obama last week — including Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett."
Brooks continues, "If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.”
David Brooks is brilliant, hip and honest. The only brilliant, hip and honest voice from the conservative side of American politics, in my opinion. So my vehemence is not aimed at him, but at those who would carry out the assessment Brooks has prophesized.
With more sadness than vehemence I read on the Barack Obama official campaign website that Obama is supporting the bailout, with conditionals that are a little more disciplined than the initial White House offering. I may not be voting for Obama now.
I think the red-blue state cultural divide may take a back seat to another cultural divide that is as yet unnamed. I cite this article to give some of its tectonic shape:
CNN: Fed's bailout plan met with skepticism out West. I will call the Pro-Bailout side the Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture. I brushed up against this class when I lived in Arkansas. There was a class of wealth who looked down on anyone 1) with a skill 2) that had to show up at a job. Even CEO's, bank presidents, and the state governor
were of the lower class to these people. All these people knew how to do was invest, to hedge massive amounts of abstract wealth in ways that insured their continued aristocratic lifestyle. Doubly emphasize one aspect: this hedge investing class viewed any skill or technical knowledge class of humans as expendable slaves. Now that you have this Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture in mind, look at another cultural tectonic landmass that is forming in the form of
I.T. intelligentsia: Door Number Three -Bob X. Cringely. I quote from the Cringley op-ed below to give a quick glance of this emerging cultural force, but emphasize my own schema first: the old redneck suburbanite or southerner versus urbane social justice redstate/bluestate may be slipping in relevance. The Giant Data Warehouses with Web Access Culture is on the West Coast ( Amazon and Google).
This culture has a new kind of person in their workers and their more adept users/customers. I think this new kind of person has the potential to subvert and take over, and the first and most appropriate target for destruction should be the Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture
We're in an important transition period not just for IT, but also for business in general. Everything seems to be in flux. And that means the old ways of doing things are changing and ought to. And in this way IT is leading -- or ought to lead -- the way. Later this week I'll be making a dramatic shift and proposing the Cringely Energy/Economic Policy, but first I need to drive home the point that, however different it is from the rest of the company, IT is generally the vanguard for a new corporate culture and whole new ways of doing business for the world.
We're in a mess. The world is screwed up and some of that can be traced to the improper use of IT as a financial weapon. But the people of IT actually present many of the answers we need, because they are living much deeper in technology than other parts of the company or of our society.
Think about it. There has nearly always been a class of eggheads showing us a path toward new business models, whether it was Edison and Firestone, Hewlett and Packard, Noyce and Moore, Gates and Allen, or Brin and Page. It takes in each case a generation to happen, but ultimately we all (and I mean ALL -- everyone in the total organization) come to look like the geeks of the generation before. So let's lean into that, get on with the transition, and get past this place we're in right now where nobody wants to be. Let's consciously embrace the next model that's generally running fitfully right now inside every company, down in the more functional parts of the IT department.
What I mean by this is that times have changed and the world can no longer afford even John Reed's world view with its needs analysis, design, debug, test, rollout strategy -- whether we're talking about a new app or a new marketing campaign. By the time the app (or the campaign) is rolled out, the world changed from HTML to Javascript/SOAP/Ajax (or from financial regulation is bad to financial regulation will save us).
At the heart of this is a concept completely foreign to traditional business -- Open Source. What the open source community has demonstrated is the superiority of a strategy that emphasizes early proof of concept, early release, and frequent releases with features added as needed -- probably totaling 20 percent of the features identified in a needs assessment.
This is the new IT strategy we live with every day -- 80 percent solutions because they are fast, increasingly reliable, and keep the end users in the loop from almost the beginning. All made possible because of an open Internet (at least until Comcast succeeds and enslaves us), easily grasped standards and impressive demonstrations by companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and a ton of start-ups. Wall Street back offices figured this out long ago, they just never got their boss's bosses to understand.
Last week's column was a utopian vision that simply requires all the old managers to be reprogrammed or accept a bullet in the head. But it is not at all utopian if applied solely (or initially) to IT, where this stuff actually works pretty well.
IT people are most of the time building fortresses or feeling unappreciated -- often both at the same time. Yet to our discredit, we've done a very poor job of explaining or demonstrating or outright selling our utility to the broader organization. Where are our Geek Appreciation Days? Take a Geek to Lunch? Bring Your Geek to School? Taciturn, we disparage our co-workers for not appreciating us while giving them little obvious reason why they should appreciate us.
That has to change.
Door Number Three isn't just an escape hatch for nerds, it is the way business and culture and civic life will be for most of us a generation further into this information age. We're just leading the way. And if we're leading the way let's embrace that role and become leaders.
If, like me, you are likely to be fired, anyway, there's no real downside to this strategy. Let's give it a try.
Giant Data Warehouses with Web Access Culture.....march forward and don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes!
I should add that those strongly invested in the redneck Protestant suburbanite or urbane Catholic social justice cultures are like the peasants and indigenous peoples during WW2 -spectators, soldiers or victims in a battle they do not guide. This won't be about valuing all humans equally and giving them equal access to food and housing, and it won't be about giving white rednecks a default safe haven. Both those agendas will only live on in the minds of the old or irrelevant.
Eastern US Useless Moneychangers Culture in the news with their views:
I am one of the millions who find your candidacy for President exhilarating. Across the board on issues and nuanced perceptions of America's needs, I feel you have potential no other politician has offered us in my 46 years of life. I support you way beyond the context of this one Presidential election. I hope to be seeing the effects of your vision long into the future.
Unfortunately, I have some precise business to write you about. The issue of taxpayer bailouts of private investment banking firms. I am absolutely against these bailouts. In the November 2008 election I will not vote for any one running for a national office who voted for the bailouts. With your historic run for the Presidency, I have had an ill feeling about standing absolutely on one issue and voting, or not voting, for you based solely on your Senate voting record with the bailout. In final summation I cannot cheapen our relationship -I must vote or not vote for you based on our agreement on issues.
I heartily encourage you to coordinate with Congressional ( especially GOP ) leaders who are standing up against White House pressure,
and articulate a resounding no to this amazing attempt to swindle tax dollars to reward failed market risks in the private sector.
Comment by Leonard Steinhorn, Prof, School of Communication, American University
Getting Old Versus Keeping Current
Concerns about Senator John McCain's age may be less important than how he keeps himself current and young, and on that account we must ask some relevant questions. Senator McCain seems physically vigorous, and his medical reports all point to a generally healthy man who gets regular check-ups. And despite his occasional gaffes and verbal slip-ups, which some suggest may be a sign of a tired mind, he appears to remain sharp and mentally focused. But general health isn't really the issue. When Senator McCain admits that he really doesn't get the Internet and describes on-line searching as "a Google," it suggests that he doesn't have even a rudimentary appreciation of the new economy and the next generation he hopes to lead. Arguably, our economic vitality these last two decades has been built on an information and knowledge society structured around high technology, social networks, and the Internet. It's not that Senator McCain doesn't have the capacity to understand our new economy, but it's his lack of curiosity and interest that should give voters pause. How will he inspire young people who navigate a different communication and information universe than his? He claims to speak for small business, but how will he lead the many start-ups that advance the frontiers of on-line communication or at a minimum depend on it. The United States is the first nation in history to seek its wisdom from youth rather than its elders, and that's largely because we've been the most technologically advanced and dynamic society in history, and youth adapt to that far faster than their seniors. A president needs to be cognizant of these trends and currents, or at least interested in them, because policy that flows from the White House has consequences on our culture, society, and economy. So the real test for Senator McCain has nothing to do with his age. It has everything to do with the youthfulness of his thinking.
-Leonard Steinhorn, Prof, School of Communication, American University
There is a rhetorical strategy you can play if you are a child or adult. The child's goal is this: she does not want to eat any vegetables of any kind. The child is smart, and knows if she announces her true goal the parent will see
the extremism of the stance and deal directly to nullify that goal. So the child sits passively waiting on a series of
sub-issue questions from the parent: "Do you want carrots?", child: "no"; parent: "Do you want spinach?", child: "no".
The parent figures out the brilliant rhetorical strategy of the child very quickly, and moves on to new methods to implement the oppressive hegemony of healthy eating.
Political activists have the same rhetorical tool. It is called "starving the issue". If the activists oppose the death penalty, and attempts at outright banning it failed, then they can change tactic to pursue legal courses banning each of the predominant methods of carrying out the death penalty.
Since September 11, 2001 there has been a predominance in the Not-Right-Wing in the USA towards this sort of issue starvation
when it comes to The War on Terror. Whether it be jailing of suspected terrorists, executing a war campaign on foreign soil to seek out and kill an enemy, or investigative work on domestic soil to find fund raising for terrorism -various nonprofit organizations provide the sub-issue "no" to specific methodologies in The War on Terror. In simple dialogue itself,
I have made statements pointing to the profile of the terrorists we are at war with ( Islamic + Extremism + Violence), and had progressives counter with horror that I did not include a long list of actions by white Americans in the profile of terrorist.
Thankfully, Barack Obama spells an end to the dominance of this class of activists in the progressive identity. He makes a grand and brilliantly nuanced stance not at all in league with the Neoconservative morons who couldn't command a war at their local golf course, and also not in league with the "No War, Ever, and Shut Down the Police Department" crowd
of humanistic anarchists. Obama is the best inconvenient truth to hit both the stereotypical right wing and stereotypical left wing in the USA. He is a brown man, and he would send the US military to foreign soil to kill brown people who are threats to Americans.
Way to go Charles Barkley! Exactly how I feel also. The good people in our world (the people who work hard, are nice to their neighbors) are a thoroughly mixed group, with homosexuals certainly included. Christians wanting to exclude these good people from the joys and benefits of legal marriage are not helping our world be a better place.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
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.
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.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. 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. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
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.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. 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.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
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.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
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. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
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 when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. 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. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
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. 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.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
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; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. -Barak Obama
OP ED: High Points of Barak Obama Speech:
Radical Islam is explicitly named as source of what is wrong with the Middle East, rather than U.S. alliance with Israel. See that point in speech here.
Backstory: In 2002 I was a delegate to a northwest student anti-war conference held at the University of Washington. I was repeatedly told by others in the delegation that Israel was absolutely wrong and Palestinians absolutely right on all issues. Radical Islam could never be named as wrong, sick, threatening, or worthy of police/military focus. Since that time I have seen on online Democratic Party discussion forums the same homogenous world-view orthodoxy enforced. Barak Obama just told this orthodoxy he is not serving them on this point.
I love it. The first black President of the United States named radical Islam as bad, alliance with Israel as good.
Blacks should all work for equal civil rights and social equality, but that work must intend to benefit whites and other races as well. No more fighting exclusively for one's own race. Obama's stance opposes single race agendas. This is real progress, for too long the left has encouraged KKK-like behavior in minority agendas. Obama calls for an end to this.See that point in speech here.
Conservatives have had a monopoly on cliches of self-help, work-hard, self-made-person. Obama broke the spell by being a black person admonishing blacks that discipline, hard work, and a goal to succeed are not optional but rather the default setting for all. See that point in speech here.
In my previous post I basically made a strongly negative appraisal of the Postmodern Left and Right, and praised the candidacy of Barak Obama is a sign of hope in rising above the Left and Right. I praised both political centrism and a minority representing its rise.
I posted the same blog entry to Craigslist Philosophy Forum. I got several nonsensical replies (which is the CL way of replying with a negative vote), and also got one reply that is on display here for some analysis (please post comments). Here it is:
Subject: PC Username:Bill_F_Buckley Time: 02/28 23:25:41
Centrism, like it's a good thing. my a**.
Tie goes to the government? sh**
our nation was founded on individual rights, not the rights of the government.
the postmodern age has confused rights of the criminal with rights of the individual. it is this cockeyed structure that creates a system biased in favor of the lawbreaking citizen at the expense of the law abiding citizen.
all other rights are abdicated to the government.
bullshit. Obama is not centrist, the hope that postmodern centrism is going to provide some sort of political balance is naive.
until the founding father's radical empowerment of the individual is recognized as the philosophy behind the founding of this country, conservatives will be at odds with the center and left.
thats what you commie f**** don't get.
After my decade of deeply embedded activity on the Left I thought my pro-centrism on this blog was sort of....right-wing. Then this CL poster gives a good expression of the true right-wing. "The postmodern age has confused rights of the criminal with rights of the individual. it is this cockeyed structure that creates a system biased in favor of the lawbreaking citizen at the expense of the law abiding citizen". I charge this is a half-truth that enables another wrong. I think the statement is true of the Postmodern Left, that they more often fight for the criminal because he/she is an individual, rather than than fighting for the individual's right to the pursuit of happiness ( which is bounded within both not being a criminal and not being a victim of crime). But notice the CL poster's hatred of government? Why? Because the Postmodern Right has their own class of criminals they are trying to defend
and keep from behind bars.
The USA now has the dystopic distinction of having 1 in 100 citizens behind bars. The Postmodern Left encouraged the pursuit of life as a criminal, and the Postmodern Right encouraged the ruination of the same people's lives through poverty and incarceration. This is a formula for exponential unhappiness in middle to lower class society.
Their are signs of hope. Barak Obama represents them. Also, I noticed this news story, and within its semiotics is an instance of the right thing. In the story minorities physically stopped a fugitive, tying him up for the police to pick up. Chinese community catches America's Most Wanted fugitive.
Most minority empowerment before the death of Martin Luther King Jr
was about allowing minorities full access to the monoculture, to
the economy. Around the time of MLK's death, a new American Left was
coincidentally coming into existence. This was a critical mass
of ( usually white ) academics or pop visionaries. They were opportunists in a wave of truly experimental
sonic exploration and widespread use of somatic drugs. While it should
be kept in mind that the FBI, Nixon, and the assassins of
Kennedys and MLK where mean people supporting an unfair status quo;
it is also plausible that the new American Left was prone to societal abuse
because of their distance (per their professions) from such mundane
pragmatics as running a Fire Department or building durable Interstate
bridges. In short, the new American Left lacked exposure to the
practical, making the development of their ideas prone to pathos,
prone to malformations, prone to deformations.
When this Postmodern Left took on the fight for minorities, they locked those
minorities out of engineering schools, medical schools, and running
the Fire Department. To the new Left, those schools are superficial
manifestations of the disease. The "disease" is the monocultural
economy. This new Postmodern Left had a case of very fundamental worship of a
horrible, white, romantic idea from earlier centuries
-the noble savage. The Postmodern Left assumes non-whites of the world are
better, always, because, always, they are more strongly bonded with
something humans did 10,000 years ago. In short the Postmodern Left believes
the dark skinned person is always more savage, and that savagery is
always better. (Equally despicable, the Postmodern Right equate the same as always savage and that savage is always worse.)
Fortunately this idealization called "noble savage" doesn't really map
onto the world I've seen. From my experience in life, the world is
full of many people that are the top candidates for engineering
schools, medical schools, and the Fire Department. An inconvenient
truth for the KKK, myself the white guy, and the Postmodern Left is most of
these top candidates are East African, Vietnamese, Indian, Arabian,
Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.
This fact about the real world castrates every hateful scumbag KKK
member, and every loving scumbag Postmodern Left revolutionary.
And like everyone that is castrated, the KKK types and the Postmodern
Left won't have representatives later in this century.
For anyone noticing the excitement around Senator Obama, here is a label to put on that excitement:
He is representative of the minorities I speak of, and the symbolic demise of the Postmodern Left and Right.
He is the rise of a Postmodern Center, with the discussion of minority inclusion or exclusion negated by a real world asserted over privileged people's idealizations.
I'm voting for him this year.
As long as he does these things I will vote for him in 2012:
Adapt the US to 4th generation warfare.
Not impose his voter base's values on regions/communities/people who are
Right-Wing Protestant Religious fundamentalists.
Anti-union.
For strict law enforcement.
Against social justice ideologies implemented in their schools and city code.
The reason I say the above is that he is supposed to be a bridge for former divisions,
which is the opposite of the political type that takes the Federal government for a ride in
the direction of his voter base, angering the rest of the country, and enabling the next cycle of
backlash.
I want a sustainable "progressive" movement, which will require subtle executive administration.
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