Max Sawicky : It doesn't have to be worse, but if you agree that ideas matter, what happened to LG, which pissed me off royally then and still does now, was a milestone in its own right.
A different kind of principle was involved this time, one of knee-jerk validation of the right's reverse racism canard, which CB seems to downplay, to my eternal mystification. ^^^^^^^ CB: Obama _must_ act as if he has the consciousness of an average _white_ American on issues of race, otherwise he'll get about as much support from the vast majority of whites as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton would. The average white American has a knee-jerk validation of the reverse racism canard. Ergo, Obama must , too. You may not have read any of my discussion of racism over the last twelve years on these lists. Here's a quick summary of categories pertient to this episode: 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. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
