The Non-Conversation About Race

Ezra Klein claims that the Cone of Silence has dropped over any discussion of race:

...it's a tremendous indictment of our media that, given an opportunity, to push forward on that discussion, they made an affirmative decision to focus back in on the campaign. You wonder if Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley and all the rest got into journalism believing that, one day, they would decide to suppress a potentially historic and important conversation on race in order to talk about polling.

Well, then, it is a tremendous indictment of the Obama campaign as well - they made it clear on Wednesday that they had had their fill of this race talk; here is the NY Times:

Obama Works to Shift Campaign Back to Domestic Issues

By JEFF ZELENY

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Senator Barack Obama on Wednesday tried to steer his campaign from a focus on race that had threatened to envelop his candidacy and back to the economy, war and a host of other concerns.

One day after delivering a major address about the racial divide, Mr. Obama barely mentioned the topic on his first campaign visit to North Carolina. From a foreign policy address in Fayetteville to a public forum here, Mr. Obama made just a passing reference to race, after a voter broached the subject.

Dare we say it?  We are in or on the verge of a recession, folks are worried about keeping their jobs and their homes, and we are at war in Iraq.  Maybe voters who are not intent on a conversation about race do not have misplaced priorities:

In interviews, North Carolina voters and party officials across the country said they hoped that race would not stay at the forefront of the nominating contest with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. But they also said they were wary that the issue remained potent.

...By design, advisers said, Mr. Obama had no immediate plans to revisit the themes of the speech, which bluntly confronted divisions between black and white and urged both races to understand each other’s anger, resentment and division.

Party officials in states with coming primaries said Wednesday that race was not what most Democratic voters wanted to discuss.

“People in our state are worried about their jobs and their health care and their mortgage,” said Dan Parker, the Indiana Democratic chairman, who is preparing for the most competitive primary since 1968. “Race? We don’t really want to talk about that.”

Let's hold off on indicting the media for a moment.  Mr. Klein links to more laughs with this:

But read EJ Dionne today for some of the commentary that we should be hearing. He recalls that Martin Luther King Jr.'s preaching was also laced with anger towards White America, and towards much of American policy, but that these elements of his philosophy came out in black churches, not the public square.

Oh for heaven's sake - here is the inflammatory rhetoric presented by Mr. Dionne:

Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968: "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place." King then predicted this response from the Almighty: "And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power."

Martin Luther King was opposed to the Vietnam war, and thought the United States was engaging in war crimes and would lose.  My goodness, is that a race-based viewpoint?  Is it a viewpoint well out of the political mainstream?  Two years later Senator, Fool for Life and former Presidential nominee John Kerry would launch his political career on just such rhetoric.

For the sort of race-based hostility so over the top that it can only be found as a guest piece at the NY Times, try this, from the summer of 1967 - it is by Floyd McKissick, then head of the Congress of Racial Equality, one of the groups that organized the King "I Have A Dream" March on Washington.  The title is a giveaway - "Why The Negro Must Rebel".  McKissick calls for black rebellion and denounces the black leaders who speak out against rioting blacks:

Some so-called Negro leaders even have the audacity to join the man - by calling a liberation struggle a riot - his brothers hoodlums and criminals - and damning his brothers who seek to overthrow the yoke of oppression.

By comparison and in context, Martin Luther King sounds like a mainstream voice of moderation.  If McKissick was being given a platform in the Times, folks other than Messrs. Klein and Dionne may be left wondering what was being said in more polarized venues.

MORE:  The AIDS conspiracy theory has real, negative consequences, per these researchers and activists.  Trinity United Church is fortunate to have a United States Senator sitting in their pews (intermittently) and listening to the sermons (when they are not incendiary).

What are the prospects for racial reconciliation when thirty percent of blacks think the US government is trying to kill them?  So when does Barack take the lead on dispelling this myth?  That is a story Mr. Klein could report on as part of the conversation.

 

Comments

[bgates]

_______ was opposed to the ____war, and thought the United States was engaging in war crimes and would lose. My goodness, is that a race-based viewpoint? Is it a viewpoint well out of the political mainstream?...By comparison and in context, ______ sounds like a mainstream voice of moderation.
You weren't as sympathetic to that line of argument earlier in the week. (I'm not sympathetic to it whether the guy who fills in the blank has a federal holiday named for him or not.)

[anduril]

Ann Coulter says it best:

Obama gave a nice speech, except for everything he said about race. He apparently believes we're not talking enough about race. This is like hearing Britney Spears say we're not talking enough about pop-tarts with substance-abuse problems.

By now, the country has spent more time talking about race than John Kerry has talked about Vietnam, John McCain has talked about being a POW, John Edwards has talked about his dead son, and Al Franken has talked about his USO tours.

But the "post-racial candidate" thinks we need to talk yet more about race. How much more? I had had my fill by around 1974. How long must we all marinate in the angry resentment of black people?

As an authentic post-racial American, I will not patronize blacks by pretending Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is anything other than a raving racist loon. If a white pastor had said what Rev. Wright said -- not about black people, but literally, the exact same things -- I think we'd notice that he's crazier than Ward Churchill and David Duke's love child. (Indeed, both Churchill and the Rev. Wright referred to the attacks of 9/11 as the chickens coming "home to roost.")

Imagine a white pastor saying: "Racism is the American way. Racism is how this country was founded, and how this country is still run. ... We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority. And believe it more than we believe in God."

[Porchlight]

It certainly wasn't the Obama campaign pushing for a Great National Conversation About Race, since Obama made that Major Speech only when forced to as a result of the Wright revelations. If he'd wanted to talk about it earlier, one presumes he would have.

Relentless disingenuity, thy name is Ezra Klein.

[Tom T.]

Is Klein supporting Clinton? Certainly, the more the spotlight stays focused on race and Trinity Church, she benefits.

[Sara]

Since no one else will say it, I will. I do not for one minute think that the "anointed one" does not want this to be about race. It is all about race and it is only us stupid, racist "typical white" people who don't get it. They want this to be 1968 all over again. Obama has been steeped in black hatred and all his pretty talk doesn't camouflage the buzz words or the sentiment.

[clarice]

Forget the theme of the post for the minute..I adore Fool for Life..Who better to wear that epithet.

[Barney Frank]

It certainly wasn't the Obama campaign pushing for a Great National Conversation About Race

Of course it wasn't; that way there be dragons and he knows it.

He'd much rather subtly use race rather than overtly talk about it.
That way there be endless pools of latent white guilt to be poured over and mixed with simmering black anger to build some weird co-dependent coalition of hope on.

[SteveMG]

Dionne knows - he must - that a Reverend Wright could never write something like this where the appeals to "white brothers" and "Christians of all races" are repeatedly made.

To compare the radicalism of King to that of Wright is frankly astonishing.

[narciso]

Clearly, it was ill-though out and over the top, but not particularly race conscious. King's comments in '67, which were derided by the future 'pistol packin' Carl Rowan; were the thin edge of future oratory by Jackson, referring to presidents as Pharoah;
Sharpton's nihilism, Farrakhan's lunacy and yes Wright's diatribes.

[hit and run]

Well, for the first time in my adult life, I am going to disagree with TM.

I sympathize with Ezra here.

I mean, come on, if I thought that a politician giving a political speech could touch me so deeply that I would say of that politician: "He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."

Then I too would be pissed everyone else wasn't feeling the tingle up their legs.

Cut him some break and give him some slack.

[Sara]

We ignore at our peril the corollaries between Wright's rhetoric and Obama's apologetics to Obama's friend, William Ayers and his group:

Weatherman issued a “manifesto” eschewing nonviolence and calling instead for armed opposition to U.S. policies; advocating the overthrow of capitalism; exhorting white radicals to trigger a worldwide revolution by fighting in the streets of the “mother country”; and proclaiming that the time had come to launch a race war against the “white” United States on behalf of the non-white Third World.

Grounded in identity politics, Weatherman ideology and rhetoric rebelled against what later came to be known as America’s “white skin privilege.”

We ignore at our peril Trinity's pubblishing the HAMAS terrorist manifesto!

We ignore at our peril the message reported by McClatchy today:

McClatchey:

WASHINGTON — Jesus is black. Merging Marxism with Christian Gospel may show the way to a better tomorrow. The white church in America is the Antichrist because it supported slavery and segregation.

Those are some of the more provocative doctrines that animate the theology at the core of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Barack Obama’s church.

If Obama claims he doesn't believe in any of these things after 20+ years of brainwashing, then he is either too stupid to be president or he is a big fat liar and has an agenda that I doubt most of us will welcome.

[clarice]

narciso, you wrote that in complete simple sentences so I could understand everything you meant! And it was pithy and there was a great deal of truth in what you said--not that there isn't else wise, but I miss too much of it when you revert to the other way of writing.

[Jane]

Okay here is my question:

Imagine Obama gets the nomination. The race is fierce and close, and in the end, McCain wins - not with a SJC vote but in both the popular vote and the electoral college. A race war breaks out - with blacks and Kos kids declaring all the things George Soros tells them to declare.

Does Obama come out and try and stop it? Or is it mission accomplished?

[Sara]

Oh and BTW, if my attitude paints me as a racist white woman, than so be it. I lived through 1968 once and I'm in no mood at this late age to live through it again. We can either look forward or we can live in the past. The past was ugly, violent, and full of hate. You can wallow in those old wounds and keep picking at them and picking at them while they fester and infect us all.

[MayBee]

As Mark Halperin said today on The Page:

7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.

10.[Hillary] can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.
-----
This big national debate about race isn't going to happen in the media because there are just certain things people aren't allowed to say. To pretend otherwise is simply disingenuous.

Furthermore, Paula Zahn had a CNN show last year that attempted to focus on race issues every day. She had a round table discussion every day. Nobody watched it and Paula was sent packing. The kind of debate the people that want to have this big politically-motivated media-managed national debate isn't interesting to regular people.
Real people can discuss race with other real people all the time.

[SteveMG]

Real people can discuss race with other real people all the time.

Exactly.

The discussion of race as engineered by the press or elites is that we must have some sort of government program or public policy that will address the racial divide. Or that we must create national conferences or commissions (shades of Kerner) that too often are hijacked by interest groups with their own (non-racial) agendas.

Racial animosities will gradually disappear as black and whites interact with each other, date one another and marry one another.

Those Burkean "little platoons" (familes, schools) are powerful forces.

[clarice]

Today Obama says he didn't know some of the stuff Wright had been preaching--like the AIDS stuf--and condemned it as kooky. Doesn't sound like it's exactly over to anyone but the media.

[Ann]

The media doesn't want to talk about race until Obama has the nomination. Watch how that will be change when it is St. Obama vs. McCain the bigoted, republican war monger.

[centralcal]

"I had had my fill by around 1974."

YES, Anduril! So did most Americans, of every color! We worked hard to MOVE-ON!

No, we have not erased bigotry, but, truth be told, we never will completely. Anymore than we eradicate poverty, or ignorance, or crime, or all disease, et al.

Obama has made a really big mistake. The polls are indicative of that. Most of us have a full plate of issues and, hopefully, race is one of the ones that has been shrinking in importance (not eradicated, but diminishing).

[PeterUK]

TM,
"Dare we say it? We are in or on the verge of a recession, folks are worried about keeping their jobs and their homes, and we are at war in Iraq. Maybe voters who are not intent on a conversation about race do not have misplaced priorities:"

Glad you mentioned this,it has been falling on audio challenged ears.You might also include the utterly insane policy which ate being proposed to combat global warming,climate change,algorephilia,to wit,the wrong solution is being applied to the wrong problem.If this is allowed to proceed we are all going to have to cook our puppies on dung fires.

[Sara]

Wow!

From a Larwyn email notice today:

ROVE: I get Mike Allen's overnight summary from Politico, I cruise RealClearPolitics.com, I get Taranto from the Wall Street Journal, I visit the Corner. I check Drudge, I check Fox News, I have a list of favorites that I sort of thumb through if I've got the time. I obviously read papers, the New York Times; the Wall Street Journal; when in Washington, the Washington Post if not, I get it online. I check out, most days, Instapundit, Power Line, Hugh Hewitt. Occasionally I'll dip into Just One Minute or visit the Captain's Quarters, I check out Michael Barone's blog, and I look forward to getting Opinion Journal, and I get the NCPA summary. And I also get a news summary, a news clip early in the morning of all the clips.

[SteveMG]

From a Larwyn email notice today:

Did Lord Rove give you permission to post this?

(Any bets that some fine upstanding person from Balloon Juice will take me seriously?)

[Neo]

So let me get this straight .. you are saying that Mustard-Boy is calling John "Loser for Life" Kerry a racist for saying the same things as Martin Luther King Jr. ?

[Enlightened]

I am sick of being called whitey by people that believe they are entitled to denigrate me based on my skin color.

[anduril]

You people are way late--you need to follow the Bear threads if you want to be up to date. If you did you would have seen this exchange hours ago:

Off topic:

Karl Rove reads JustOneMinute.

Posted by: Foo Bar | March 21, 2008 at 06:55 PM

Wow congrats Tom on Rove's JOM affection. That's bigtime. Maybe he gives little snippets to Bush to read.

Posted by: sylvia | March 21, 2008 at 07:02 PM

Yeah, apparently one of the features he likes most are the lengthy extracts from interesting articles that some of the commenters here provide. He finds it an easy way to keep up on important topics.

Posted by: anduril | March 21, 2008 at 07:39 PM

Yeah, apparently one of the features he likes most are the lengthy extracts from interesting articles that some of the commenters here provide. He finds it an easy way to keep up on important topics.

LOL. From Karl's lips to Sue's ears.

Posted by: Barney Frank | March 21, 2008 at 07:55 PM

No idea what BF's rather cryptic post meant.

[Sara]

Via Instapundit:

Obama is giving us a "national conversation on race," but mostly by letting a lot of white people realize just what circulates, unremarked, in the black community. (Via Gateway Pundit.)

[Porchlight]

The Bear threads are beyond my understanding, anduril. I admit it, I'm an economic dunce. My finance-expert dad would be ashamed, but there it is.

[PeterUK]

Porchlight,
"I admit it, I'm an economic dunce. My finance-expert dad would be ashamed, but there it is."

Proof,if ever there needed to be, that these things are not inbred.

[anduril]

I admit it, too, Porchlight, but I keep plugging away anyhow. :-)

[Sara]

Economics makes my eyes glaze over and I've been lost since my econ guru died in 2004.

[Pofarmer]

beleive it or not, I had this conversation about needing to have a conversation about race today at the feed & Fertilizer coop. The topic of reparations came up. One of the guys pipes up "Reparations? 300,000 of us died in that war, I think that's reparations enough." I guess what I'm saying is, out here in flyover country, there ain't a whole lot of sympathy for folks like Rev Wright and his ravings. Talked to two people today who also mentioned watching Fox news. The word is getting out, whether BHO wants it to or not.

[Porchlight]

Well, I should try harder, no doubt. Dad says "read Mankiw's textbook on your lunch hour. This isn't that hard."

I hope I can at least recognize when the 'average voter' is not getting the right information. I guess what I'm trying to say is, as unedcuated as I am, there are others far worse off than I am. Last week one of them (a co-worker) tried to tell me that the price of bread just went up 50% because of the recession. Because he'd seen it on the news, you see. Uh, okay....

[Wgf]

There are some neat home blogs at you tube and there are some in foreign countries that have groups blogs. They might be able to help. There is also the church.

Jesus and the wafer. It's supposed to save the non luciferians from the luciferians that use human bodies; like eyes, ears, arms and the other stuff. The only problem is the luciferian gets the wafer anyway, says he's saved and goes out and uses another human. So, why would i want a wafer and to go to church with these things? Jesus saves these? I don't think so, but they do and maybe people don't go to church much and say Satan a lot to save their bodies.

So, if Obama is in charge what can foreign countries expect? Hillary, Bill's wife, was a major panic. Obama is really just Bill 2, but do you think they're panicking yet?

[bgates]

Don't you hate it when you go to comment and the last guy said the exact thing that was on your mind?

[cathyf]

HEH!

[clarice]

It is NOT Obama's week:
The State Department probe of improper computer access
to passport records of three presidential candidates
is focusing on the one remaining employee — a contract
worker with a company headed by an adviser to the
presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

The probe by State's inspector general will include
polygraph tests for supervisors in the passport
section to find out whether the three contract
employees who accessed the records had a political
motive or were part of a political operation to obtain
personal data on Mr. Obama, John McCain or Hillary
Rodham Clinton.

Two of the three contract employees had been fired
before The Washington Times first reported Thursday on
security breaches involving Mr. Obama's passport
records. The furor expanded yesterday to incidents
involving the passport records of Mr. McCain and Mrs.
Clinton.

The third employee, who has not been fired, worked for
the Analysis Corporation (TAC), which is headed by
John O. Brennan, a former CIA agent who is an adviser
to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign on intelligence
and foreign policy.

Back to Rev Wright

[ben]

"According to a new poll by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion, 82% knew about the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s speech about race in America. Of those who knew about the controversy and the speech, 52% said it made them less likely to vote for him. Moreover, 56% of blacks said the speech made them less likely to vote for him."

Sorry NYT, looks like the speech didn't exactly "put to rest any doubts about Obama".

[clarice]

Wow! Those are some survey results!
Both sides have retired to their respective corners for the Holiday--Hill hopes the slide continues so she can put the squeeze on the super delegates; Obama hopes to ride out the clock and argue voterss; choice when the time comes.

[clarice]

***voters' choice****

[ben]

Pretty amazing poll...here is the link.. and if you look at the crosstabs independents by 55% to 12% say the speech makes it less likely they will support Obama

http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_320_294.aspx

[narciso]

This is too weird for words; one of the employees used to work for John Brennan's
company, the linguistically illiterate
former Tenet aide who did support the
Terrorist Surveilance Program. You couldn't
write this in a novel and get it published.
Self sabotage or something more insidious.
It reeks of the campaign manipulations by employees of the fictional CIA successor agency, FIS in McCarry's long ago roman a clef, Better Angels.

Speaking of modern fiction Dan Fesperman,
former Baltimore Sun bureau chief who wrote
a BDS written anti-neocon screed on Gitmo;
follows up with a new tract; where the Palestinian protagonist, is seemingly excused from planning an atrocity on U.S. soil because of his grief at having lost
his daughter, in a post 9/11 accident. The
irony that such an attack would bring more
unwanted scrutiny on the Arab community doesn't ring a bell. There's something in the air that seems to condition espionage fiction to the most recondite conspiratorial
angles; and only those that implicate US institutions. David Ignatius's Body of Lies, soon to be a Ridley Scott film starring De Caprio and Crowe; is written in such a way as to denigrate all our efforts in Iraq or Afghanistan. A recent David Baldacci had a Rumsfeld type spymaster, executing all of his underlings, involved in a long ago intelligence operation. It's
the "Law & Order" view of corporations as
the mob, as Goldberg points out, transferred
to foreign policy. Some people like Tom Ricks, seem to condition their punditry
to fulfill his pre 9/11 dark tale of quagmire in Afghanistan,' A Soldier's Duty'. His one dimensional tome, 'Fiasco'
with an new afterword that ignored the
possibility of success of the surge is an example.

[clarice]

Iowahawk--in rare form on the gimp in his basement:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/03/its-time-for-so.html

[Sue]

an adviser to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign on intelligence and foreign policy.

Oh my goodness. After the words that came out of the Obama camp yesterday, this has to sting a little. ::grin::

[Soylent Red]

The third employee, who has not been fired, worked for the Analysis Corporation (TAC), which is headed by John O. Brennan, a former CIA agent who is an adviser to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign on intelligence and foreign policy.

OOOOOOH THE PLOT THICKENS!

According to Perky Katie Couric tonight, this was the employee who got caught looking at Hillarity's info!

Wouldn't it be sweet if both sides got burned on this?

[Topsecretk9]

Well if anyone can stomach it - Larry's Johnson, I mean blog, actually had the stones to utter this.....Denying Vets and Active Duty Military Votes in MI & FL »

They are currently putting together a task force to count the 06 vet and Active duty votes they tried to suppress in 2000- NOT!

Lying sacks of crap.

[Wdl]

It looks like he was a monitor. I bet the computer system divides passports by types and that's how they were perused. Like they are all no fee. No fees are military spouses and other government agencies, i just can't remember, but that's probably what set off their alarm. Congressmen probably have no fees, but I'd have to check.

[Elliott]

bgates,

That was beyond hilarious.

[Jane]

Ditto!

[syn]

I have no doubt that if Barack Obama was not in a race against Hillary Clinton, instead of being whacked over the head about 'racist America' we would all be whacked over the head with 'sexist America' and how whitey male Republicans are keeping the females stuck barefoot in the kitchen cooking slop for the master.

I'm 46,former feminist and in this election cycle the Democrats are making me feel like I'm stuck in the 1970's doing The Rocky Horror Picture Show loop of the 'Let's do the time warp again' song.

[Letalis Maximus, Esq.]

John Kerry - "Fool for Life"?

He married one rich woman, and one very rich woman.

That's more than I can say for myself.