[Sosfbay-discuss] Let's Talk About Race? NO! Let's Not

[Andrea Dorey]

Here's another interesting perspective, Alex.
Have you seen this from TOM PAINE, blog by David Sirota writing about  
the 2008 Class War?  What's your take on his comments?

---------------------------------
The two taboo subjects in American politics, class and race, are now  
front and center in the Democratic nominating contest. As my new  
nationally syndicated newspaper column shows, the former is driving  
voting behavior and the biases against the latter are making it more  
difficult for Barack Obama to court lower-income voters.

Exit polls show Hillary Clinton winning votes from those making under  
$50,000 a year. She is the candidate of NAFTA, the candidate on the  
cover of Fortune magazine, the candidate of Big Money. And yet, she  
is winning the working class. Much of that, as I say, has to do with  
Obama not running an economically populist or class-based campaign.  
He simply hasn't been appealing to working-class voters in any direct  
way.

That tactical decision, of course, has at least something to do with  
the fact that Obama, too, raises huge amounts of corporate cash—cash  
that would not necessarily come to him if he started talking about  
corporate power, inequality and greed.

But the decision also likely has to do with the fact that Obama knows  
that if he voiced a more full-throated populism, he would be depicted  
in the media as a race-centric candidate—even if his populism was  
race-blind. As my column shows, power-challenging African-American  
politicians have been marginalized in this way for the better part of  
a half century. The moment a black leader talks about class or  
threatens the Establishment, he or she is billed as a race-centric  
radical.

The best contemporary example of this came from Time Magazine's Joe  
Klein. In a 2006 column that no one other than the blogosphere  
flagged as wildly offensive, Klein called populist Rep. John Conyers as:

"An African American of a certain age and ideology, easily  
stereotyped [and] one of the ancient band of left-liberals who grew  
up in the angry hothouse of inner-city, racial-preference politics."

<clip>

The problem for Obama is the big states coming up in the contest. As  
National Journal's Ron Brownstein reports, the key contests on March  
4th are Texas and Ohio. "In both states, the upscale white voters who  
have bolstered Obama are scarce," Brownstein reports. Put another  
way, Obama needs to make some sort of populist pitch to speak  
directly to these voters, but is constrained by his knowledge that  
the media and the Clinton machine will quickly label him "the black  
candidate" if he does just that.

That last point about the Clintons is very important. It was no  
coincidence that the moment Obama started talking about NAFTA and  
class in South Carolina, Bill Clinton made an unprompted remark  
likening Obama to Jesse Jackson, and an unnamed Clinton aide told the  
Associated Press Obama is "the black candidate." The Clintons are  
playing an ugly game.



On Jan 26, 2008, at 4:39 PM, alexcathy at aol.com wrote:

> Dear Friends,
>
> See below excerpts and a link to my blog post.
>
> Let's Talk About Race? NO! Let's Not
>
> by Alex Walker
> Sat, 01/26/2008 - 7:26pm.
>
> Barack Obama says: "The press has been focused, almost, you know,  
> maniacally, on the issue of race." Meanwhile, a chorus of self- 
> serving, neurotic black intellectuals who supposedly love Brother  
> Barack, bleat: "Let's talk about race!"
>
> No. Let's not.
>
> The New York Times endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for the  
> Democratic nomination. This pompous, condescending, intellectually- 
> dishonest, hypocritical editorial reminded me of all the things I  
> disliked about New York "liberals" when I lived in New York through  
> the "Reagan Revolution." It reminded me of Murray Kempton's  
> observation about New York Times editors waiting "till after the  
> battle to come down from the hills to shoot the wounded." While  
> gently urging Clinton "to take the lead in changing the tone of the  
> campaign," the supposedly "ultra-liberal" NYT sneered at the "raw  
> populism" of John Edwards and contrasted the "incandescent" Obama  
> with the "brilliant" Clinton. Never mind that Hillary may be the  
> most polarizing, hate-inspiring politician today, the NYT says "We  
> know" Clinton is "capable of both uniting and leading."
> One of the juiciest parts was the way the New York Times trashed  
> Rudy Giuliani:
> The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and  
> mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who  
> saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much  
> a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.
> Almost eight years after Giuliani left office as Mayor and more  
> than ten years after they enthusiastically endorsed Rudy for  
> reelection in 1997, the so-called Newspaper of Record finally  
> discovered that a crypto-fascist was running their own city for  
> eight years.
>
> .  .  .
>
> We know we cannot trust the media to deal fairly with the race  
> question within this context because of the way they continue to  
> indulge their irrational hatred of Jesse Jackson.
>
> .  .  .
>
> In 1988 Jesse Jackson won 11 primaries and 4 caucuses, including a  
> 55% landslide in Michigan. On "Super Tuesday" Jackson won Virginia,  
> Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. His second place  
> showing in Wisconsin, a state with a small black population,  
> garnered more votes than Gary Hart's win in 1984. At one point  
> Jackson led in delegates and in the polls. Jesse stirred white  
> farmers in Minnesota, white miners in West Virginia, and Latino  
> trade unionists in Colorado, another state with few blacks. Gentle  
> reader, here's a good rule: Whenever a media blowhard says Jesse  
> was "just a black leader" and Barack is "the first serious black  
> candidate" you know this is a person too blinded by prejudice and  
> ideology to deal honestly with the race question in America.
>
> I have pondered this while considered Uzodinma Iweala's Op-Ed in  
> the Los Angeles Times criticizing the "media-concocted fiction"  
> that "not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress"  
> in race relations
>
> . . .
>
> US Income inequality has reached the highest levels since the  
> 1920s. The US today is the most unequal society in the  
> industrialized West. Funny, that even though class matters the  
> media never trots out bloviators crying "Let's talk about class."
>
> The awful truth is nearly 100% of prominent black intellectuals  
> advocate "race talk" because they all rose to prominence doing  
> "race talk" (including "color-blind" conservative hypocrites like  
> Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele). Los Angeles journalist Larry  
> Aubry and his daughter Erin Aubry-Kaplan are two generations of  
> race-talkers. The "media-concocted fiction" is that superficial  
> "race talk" is good for you.
>
> One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and  
> over expecting a different result and in recent years we've been  
> led down this same path a dozen times:
> 1992 Rodney King violence.
> 1994 Anti-immigrant Proposition 187.
> 1995 O. J. Simpson case.
> 1996 Anti-affirmative action Proposition 209.
> 1998 President Clinton's "Conversation About Race."
> 1999 Amadou Diallo, unarmed innocent man, killed by 41-shots from  
> N.Y.P.D.
> 1999 Ramparts scandal at L.A.P.D.
> 2000 Election in Florida - massive black disenfranchisement.
> 2001 September 11th attack --- Our national slogan: "United We Stand."
> 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroys New Orleans.
> 2006 Immigration issue draws thousands into the streets.
> 2008 L.A.F.D. discrimination case; L.A.P.D. MacArthur Park police  
> riot.
>
> Each time "race talk" quickly degenerated into a bunch of clichés  
> and stereotypes.
>
> .  .  .
>
> As a black active Green Party man, I have no dog in this Barack -  
> Hillary fight. It's true Hillary shilled for Wal-Mart like  
> Inglewood, California's black Democratic Mayor Roosevelt Dorn. It's  
> true Barack carried water for a slumlord like Los Angeles  
> Democratic State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas carried water for Anschutz  
> Entertainment Group. You can't be a successful Democratic  
> politician in Little Rock or Chicago or New Orleans (or San  
> Francisco or Los Angeles) without playing ball with sleazy interests.
>
> Hillary and Barack agree with McCain and Romney about maintaining a  
> permanent US military presence in Iraq, which is all about our  
> planet-killing oil addiction.
>
> Hillary, Barack, and California Democrat Fabian Núñez agree with  
> McCain, Romney, and California Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger  
> that the first principle of health care is profit.
>
> Talk about “change” and the Democratic Party in one-party  
> Democratic Los Angeles is a contradiction in terms. The  
> Establishment is, sure enough, kicking Barack Obama to the curb,  
> but not because of his race or his radicalism. The main "threat"  
> from Obama is the independent young voters he inspires which  
> strikes terror into the bipartisan Establishment.
>
> Let's talk about race?
>
> No.
>
> Let's not.
>
> Read More and Leave a Comment At:
>
> http://www.greencommons.org/node/952
>
>
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