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Originally Posted by Seaver
Secret, you say we should discuss race and the problems instead of ignoring it. Race has been talked about since the day I was born. It had been talked about for 20 years before I was born when everyone received equal protection under the law thanks to MLK and others.
What do you plan to do about it other than talk? Talking about it has done nothing, lets actually treat everyone as equal and stop pointing out race every 30sec. THAT is how we are trying to deal with it. It sucked, it's in the past, while little bits of racism exist deal with it. Deal with it in the same way some atheists will never like a devout Christian and vice versa. Deal with it in the same way some of the poor will always resent the rich, and vice versa.
I'm dealing with Wright in the same way I deal with WTC Conspiracy Theorists (come to think of it, those who believe HIV/crack was government too). Talk to them, try to show them the light. If they don't see the light (they never do), then I'll classify them as loony in my head and ignore them.
You say I can't ignore them, I say I will.
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Seaver, it seems you're frankly ignorant just how
normal Rev. Wright's views are in the black community. If you're comfortable writing off large chunks of entire ethnicities, well then go ahead and choose to ignore it. Things will keep going as they have been, with blacks and whites politely tolerating each other for the most part, but still living in de facto segregation both geographically and economically, and maybe one day it'll reach a breaking point and you'll get to see first-hand the damage it causes. More likely, it'll be your grandchildren who see it.
Having lived in Chicago where the population is nearly 40% black, and having moved there from a Chicago suburb where the population was decidedly white (I knew of perhaps one or two dozen black kids in my 2000 student HS)...I know from firsthand experience that Rev. Wright is not unusual, and I have lived and experienced the extreme differences of environment that your typical white person and typical black person grow up in. I've gone to black churches, and visited neighborhoods, and it's no wonder race is a central issue to them.
Differences are not overcome by ignoring them. We can't just "stop talking about race" and then watch it magically disappear. That's exactly what we've been doing for so long, and you know what - I'm still instinctively more suspicious of a random black man when I'm walking alone down a city street than I am of a random white man. I know it's not rational, but it's still there. Racial tensions are not based on rational thought, they're based on a lack of understanding the other. We fear that which we do not understand.
And it's a funny thing about the poor resenting the rich. It could be that it has something to do with working two jobs at minimum wage and not being able to afford to raise a family and pay for health care and then turning on the news to find out some rich CEO who ran a company into the ground got a multi-million dollar package for
failing at his job. I'm
not poor and I resent that. Go to the schools in Chicago's black neighborhoods and you'll find buildings without air conditioning, without adequate computers (or maybe without computers at all), and with old textbooks. Then go to New Trier High School, which serves some nice, predominantly white Chicago suburbs, where they spend $15,000
per student. And this is the kind of institutional racism that people should just deal with? I'd recommend, among other things, that you read these
.
I always find it amusing when people bring up Martin Luther King as a counter-argument to things like this. His "I have a dream" speech was a great one, no doubt about that, but it has been coopted by movements who are likely the opposite of what he would stand for were he alive today. When he was assassinated, he had begun to see the plight of black people as closely linked to the plight of all poor people, and he had begun to speak out against issues that are
still problems today. As the link points out, "King knew that without economic justice, poor people of color would never reach the level playing field that he always saw as the final achievement of the civil rights movement." So, as much as some people would like to pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves that we've realized Dr. King's dream, and say that the reason black people live in such disproportionate poverty is because they "choose to," we have decidedly
not realized his dream, and we have a long way to go. Not just for black people, and not just for latinos, but for all poor people.
A quick anecdote that really doesn't mean all that much, but I still find it interesting: While driving from Chicago to Cincinatti a couple years ago, going through Indiana, we saw a sign along a highway exit. It said, pointing to one side, "Whitestown," and pointing in the other direction, it indicated "Brownsville." That such obvious demonstrations of our nation's oppressive legacy of slavery and racism remain demonstrates just how deep the undercurrent of racial tension goes. Even a
moderate amount of respect for our history should have lead those towns to be renamed, but they still persist. It's just a single anecdote...but even as a white, suburban kid, I found that exit sign to be a shocking display of persistent history.
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Originally Posted by debaser
Where was Obamas need to have this grand "discussion of race" prior to having his poll numbers smacked around by the Wright affair? Seems reactionary, not revolutionary to me...
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No one - not a
single person - has claimed that Obama's speech wasn't caused by the Rev. Wright situation. I'm positive he would have preferred not to make race an issue. But, it was made into an issue, and so Obama had to respond to it. What made his speech special (and I'm not interested in getting into hyperbolic declarations like calling it a speech that will go down in history, though perhaps it will) was what he chose to do with it. He chose not to take the easy way out and instead to speak openly and honestly. It was the first major speech self-written by a president or presidential candidate in decades. That demonstrates serious conviction, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the speech.