"You're a RACIST!"

Race-baiting is rarely productive--even when it is true. Because it always ends the discussion.

Liberals will absolutely never persuade conservatives of anything once they've called them a racist. All that's accomplished is making the other side furious--and making yourself look like a smug, self-righteous jerk in the eyes of those you seek to persuade.

Whereas if you challenge their assumptions or bring up relevant facts you actually might persuade that person.

Your choice--insult or persuade. Depends on maturity, I guess.

It should go without saying that when Conservatives calls Liberals "Socialist!" the same is true, conversely. Actually they've just about succeeded in making the term "Liberal" a curse word, such that many liberals call themselves "progressive"--a tribute to the success of the right-wing propaganda machine.

So I'm making a nonpartisan point.

Obama as racial bargainer?

Today's Wall St. Journal published an editorial by conservative writer Shelby Steele that described Obama as a "bargainer" like Oprah Winfrey--someone who, without ever saying so, offers whites absolution for their racist sins in exchange for whites' support. My spouse (unwaveringly Republican from birth) sent me the editorial. Here's a link to the editorial:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB120579535818243439-lMyQjAxMDI4MDE1ODcxOTg1Wj.html

And here's my reply to my spouse:

I’d pretty much agree with this. But I wonder why Steele didn’t avail himself of this opportunity to mention that Obama’s support for illegal immigration extends the bargaining past just white guilt over blacks but white guilt over Latinos as well. I wonder if Steele is so focused on black-white relations that he missed this? Of course it’s a point that the WSJ’s corporate-tool editorial position doesn’t want to talk about…

I do think he’s right (i.e. he agrees with what I’d already said to you) about Obama’s reasons for attending a black nationalist anti-white church—and marrying an “all black” woman—he was trying to become what others saw him as—black—despite his having been raised by a white in areas nowhere near black communities. I’m guessing he has unresolved inner conflict over his biraciality. I don’t think this disqualfies him for the presidency, but I’m sure he lacks inner peace because of it. I wonder what Michelle’s relationship with his mom was like?

One cavil—Obama’s first memoir is by all accounts extremely self-revelatory (while his second is standard P.R. fare). So he precluded being a cipher in this regard.

Let me add that assuming he gets the nomination, even if everything Steele says—and other things his detractors say that are factually correct (as opposed to all the Swiftboating that has already started), we still have to evaluate him vs. the GOP nominee—not against our abstract notions of who we’d like to have as our president.

Maybe the purely symbolic aspect of an Obama presidency would be worth it. The country won’t go to hell in a handbasket with either Obama or McCain—if it could, it would have after eight years of epic mismanagement under the biggest spendthrift in American history (when you take into account the long-term costs of the Iraq war and occupation and the long-term consequences of massive business deregulation).

My personal dilemma is that I get the impression that an Obama presidency would be better for you & me personally (via reforms in medical care especially) but a McCain presidency would be better for America in the long run (providing a check to opposite-party Congress).

Or to put it another way:

Being black is a disadvantage if you look and talk Ghetto. Being white is a disadvantage if you look and talk Hick. Being white is an advantage if you look and talk College Educated--and being black is an even bigger advantage if you look and talk College Educated. True, you'll still have trouble hailing a cab at midnight in D.C. But you'll have a leg up in corporate America, as any Human Resources pro will tell you in private.

American society, in various aspects, discriminates by dress, speech, race, gender, and other factors. Any of these factors can be an advantage or disadvantage in different circumstances. For example, even though uneducated-sounding speech generally hampers anyone in business regardless of race or gender, Bush's success depended in part in sounding like an ignorant yahoo (with a Harvard MBA). Hence "new-kew-lur" for "nuclear," along with innumerable malapropisms--none of which were apparent in public speeches and debates at the start of his political career.

Steele's comment on Obama's bargaining is true, I think, on a subliminal level, for many Americans. I regret that Steele apparently didn't see that Obama's support for illegal immigration extends this bargaining to Mexicans. Obama's candidacy must have a powerful psychological component--otherwise how could you explain so many people supporting Obama when his preference for illegal aliens undercuts the Democratic Party's traditional mainstay--blue-collar American workers, who have seen their wages depressed 10-20% due to competition from illegal aliens.

It's as if Obama has taken a page out of the Republican Party's playbook--developing emotional appeals strong enough to get people to vote against their economic self-interest. And he is an apt student, isn't he?

on L'affaire Ferraro (when she said Obama benefitted from being Black)

Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote an editorial lambasting Geraldine Ferraro for her remarks about how Obama benefits from being black. See it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403017.html Here's my response to the column and the reams of reader comments on it:

Unlike most commentors here, I don't have a dog in this fight. All three contenders believe Mexico's ruling elite should be allowed to determine America's demographics by outsourcing their overpopulation problem and their social services infrastructure to this country. That said, neither this columnist nor most commentors have acknowledged a simple fact in America today: a Black man with a college education who looks and talks like a network news anchor has it made, even if a homie with dreads whose pants are saggin' and draggin' doesn't. Sure, maybe a college grad Black will still have trouble catching a cab in D.C. at midnight--but every corporation will be dying to hand him a plum position. And though he may have trouble reaching the very top...well, so would most people, regardless of skin color or gender.

And that's what Ferraro meant.

Moreover, if you follow the fountains of invective burbling over this campaign, you'll see bloggers and media commentators treating Clinton way more viciously than Obama. I'm not talking about legitimate issues--conflicts of interest, voting records etc. I'm talking about stuff like Limbaugh saying nobody wants a wrinkled old woman in the White House, or nasty remarks about Chelsea Clinton's looks (those have simmered down now that she's grown up beautiful, but it was a different story when she was an awkward teen).

I've concluded that misogyny is still acceptable to a remarkable extent, while overt racism isn't. Yes, yes, yes, there's plenty of covert racism. But survey the blogosphere and the editorials and you'll see that I'm telling the truth.

It even goes so far as names. In the Old South, judges and cops always addressed Blacks by their first names--a condescending, false familiarity. No one dares do that now. Unless it's a woman. The pundits are constantly referring to Clinton as "Hillary," while Obama gets the dignity of being called "Obama." Just as Whites are called "Whites"--never "European Americans" while Blacks are usually referred to as "African Americans"--even when their racial heritage is 50% White, as is the case with Obama.

Decades ago Tom Wolfe wrote a fine piece of journalism titled "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" in which he described the how well-spoken Blacks are privileged in liberal circles (again, not in the eyes of cabbies, to be sure), and how some Blacks make a living from race-baiting government agencies, politicians, and vulnerable corporations.

Obama hasn't done that, which is why he's a viable candidate and the Al Sharptons and Jess Jacksons of the world aren't.

I might add that lower-class Whites are heavily discriminated against because of the way they talk and look--often far more than educated, well-spoken Blacks are.

In other words, classism often trumps racism, and sexism also often trumps racism. Racism exists but it ain't the only -ism we should be worried about.

So many people who've suffered from discrimination seem to think that only the group they belong to has truly suffered. Feminists, paraplegics, Blacks, you name it. I'm in none of those groups, yet I suffered from intense discrimination up to and including physical abuse due to being raised in blue-collar communities and having a high IQ. Of course that high IQ has served me well since then. So how is my experience any different from what a smart Black might have experienced growing up in the prejudiced White communities I lived in, before going on to college and corporate success? Or a smart woman? Etc.

It's not. Blacks have legitimate grievances. But so do lots of other people. And Blacks do themselves no favor by playing the race card constantly. Save it for the real deal. Because even when you do succeed in browbeating Whites and Women and others into shutting up, they will say what they think when they vote and when they make decisions in private.

King's excoriation of Ferraro is such an example. The clamor of you and your co-religionists got Ferraro dumped, all right. But you did Obama's campaign no favor. He will only succeed by avoiding the kind of race-baiting that so many Black politicians do daily.

He might well say "God save me from my friends. I can handle my enemies myself."