Obama's Return to the Race Issue

[larrymeyer]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090...totheraceissue

Obama's Return to the Race Issue


Tue Jul 21, 5:33 pm ET
President Obama is focusing fresh attention on some of America's most grievous sins--slavery, segregation, and racial prejudice--as he tries once again to move the nation into a new era that celebrates common values and shared virtues.


In an often passionate address, Obama told the 100th anniversary conference of the NAACP in New York last week that his election as the first African-American president showed how far the nation has come, but he added that any remaining bigotry must be eradicated from society once and for all. "I believe that overall, there probably has never been less discrimination in America than there is today. I think we can say that," the president declared. "But make no mistake: The pain of discrimination is still felt in America," notably by African-Americans, Latinos, Muslims, and gays. He went on to call for a variety of social programs to remove social inequalities, such as expanded tax credits, an overhauled healthcare system, and strengthened education. [See photos of Obama behind the scenes]


Obama argued that America's racial problems reflect the fundamental flaws of prejudice and hatred in human nature--a theme he had emphasized during his trip to Russia, Italy, and Ghana earlier this month. On July 12, after touring the dungeons at Cape Coast Castle in Accra, Ghana, where captured Africans were shipped off to slavery in the Americas, he said the experience reminded him of his tour of a Nazi death camp a few weeks earlier. "It is reminiscent of the trip to Buchenwald because it reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil."


Obama seems to want, above all, to avoid portraying the race issue solely in terms of an aggrieved black minority seeing itself as the perpetual victim of the white establishment in the United States. Instead, he aims to find a broader human context for America's racial past--and future. [Read Obama's speech to the NAACP]


This is no doubt heartfelt on Obama's part. But it is also good politics because most voters at home are white, and they are alert to the possibility that Obama might play favorites with blacks, which would devastate his overall popularity. At least for now, race seems to have been neutralized as an issue for most white voters. "It's not particularly relevant to their lives," says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who adds that race doesn't come up in his focus groups. Most white voters consider Obama's White House "race neutral," Greenberg says.


Another common theme for Obama over the years that he repeated in his NAACP speech was self-help, as he called on African-Americans to "take responsibility" for their own future. "Government programs alone won't get our children to the promised land," he said in a preacherlike cadence. "We need a new mind-set, a new set of attitudes because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation: how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves."


It's a message Obama has preached many times before, notably in the memorable speech on race that he gave in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, amid rising criticism of his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial pastor in Chicago at the time. And aides say that he intends to keep preaching this gospel of reconciliation and personal responsibility for the rest of his presidency.

[larrymeyer]

Again I have to wonder out loud why is it only the USA that singled out for all the bad thing thats happened to Africans ? Where we the only country that had slaves ? Or is it that white America has let itself be push into self blame to the point we can't stand up and say enough. I wasn't part of the slave trade.

Racisms would die if people let them die. I never heard a red neck solider in a firefight say get out of here N I'll handle this. The same way I've never heard an (only to be PC) African American say beat it honky I can handle this. I've had friends of every race and I was proud they were my friends.

[1861]

Again I have to wonder out loud why is it only the USA that singled out for all the bad thing thats happened to Africans ? Where we the only country that had slaves ? Or is it that white America has let itself be push into self blame to the point we can't stand up and say enough. I wasn't part of the slave trade.

Racisms would die if people let them die. I never heard a red neck solider in a firefight say get out of here N I'll handle this. The same way I've never heard an (only to be PC) African American say beat it honky I can handle this. I've had friends of every race and I was proud they were my friends.

So called white guilt . I see it all the time . Some people only seem to feel good about themselves when they can feel more guilt than the next .

[Mohaa Player]

I wasn't born during the slave era and had nothing to do with it, so don't ask me to feel bad about what happened before my father was even born.If Obama feels bad I really don't give a shit.

[autotech6506]

Expanded tax credits? so is Obama planning on giving tax credits for being Black, Muslim, gay, etc.? This is BS. I read an article on msn that was questioning the need for the NAACP. yet Obama is saying that it will be going strong in another 100 years?