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

Sat Jan 26 16:39:23 PST 2008

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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