Good to have a bunch of new recruits for the anti-racist movement. It would have been good to have you on board during the first year and a half of the admin and during the campaign, but better late than never. I'm sure we can count on you to defend the O Administration against extreme rightwing racist "attacks" from now on.
You might want to do some more homework. Start out reading Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia, during the campaign. Then review my posts on Reaganite racism to the several lists here over the last 12 years. The signal characterisitcs of Reaganite racism is the denial that racism still exists and holding that Black "racism" is just as serious a problem, now, as white racism. The latter gives rise to the pernicious "reverse discrimination" doctrine by which the US Supreme Court has basically destroyed the _Brown v Bd of Ed._ case and outlawed affirmative action. Overall Reaganite racism to one degree or another has seized the thinking of the majority of white Americans. Racism is a very complex and in many ways perverted phenomenon in the US. So, I can understand why as novices to the topic you don't get the O admin's response to the Sherrod matter. Briefly, it is the acceptance of the principles of Reaganite racism by such a large portion of the white population that forces Obama, who is Black, to bend over backwards not to express any of the characteristics of an "angry Black man". He won with so many whites because he is _not_ Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or a civil rights advocate. He ends up having to be less an opponent of racism against himself or other Black people than progressive Whites can be. That's where the new White anti-racist recruits come in . The main job of fighting racism , as I have said often on LBO-talk and other lists, lies with Whites, not Blacks, like Obama. Only White people can defeat racism. This is why so many Whites voting for O was an historical anti-racist advance. But obviously more must be done , but most of it cannot be done by Obama. That's the lesson for class today. Carry on ! Anti -racist militants ! Take on the Tea Party racists on behalf of Sherrod and Obama. Frederick Douglass and Coleman Young _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
