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.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080321/NATION/243762495/1001>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.

[pst314]

When liberals say they want a "conversation on race" what they really mean is that they want everyone who disagrees with them to shut up.

[M. Simon]

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

Me too!

I prefer cracker.

[Neo]

What are the prospects for racial reconciliation when thirty percent of blacks think the US government is trying to kill them?

By all accounts, California is sitting, literally, on a pending disaster that will make Katrina look like a bad haircut, as the "Big One" is now overdue.

Imagine the shock when all forms of government fail those "victims", especially those "who think the government is out to kill them", when a hypothecial President Obama can't do any better (or worse given the most likely impact) than BusHilter.

The biggest lesson that I learn form Katrina was that "you are on your own."

Worse yet, considering that emergency service are far better today (or even at the time of Katrina) then they were when a President (whose initials were JFK) played nuclear chess with the Soviets. Imagine the aftermath. It's obvious now that "Civil Defense" was one big placebo.

Frankly, when the "Big One " comes to California, FEMA will seem like a placebo no matter who the POTUS happens to be.

[Jane]

I have a dream -

When "the big one" comes to CA, the marines tell Berkeley to fend for itself.

[Sue]

the marines tell Berkeley to fend for itself.

Can I have an amen sister?

[M. Simon]

Clarice,

It is too late for Hillary. If she gets the nod she loses the Black vote. She can't win without it. She is in it to win.

What she will do (where plausible denyability is possible) is to sabotage the Barry O campaign. Feeding the OPO rsch. she can't use to the Rs.

In fact what she can do - given her vindictiveness - is destroy the D Party. She will take the lot of them down - because it was supposed to be her year.

As some one pointed out. The Ds can get along without Obama. What they cannot get along without is their black foot soldiers. Like the Rev. Wright.

BTW some think Obama was a Rovian Plot. I provide some evidence.

Hillary will still be the NY Senator and former fist lady without the D party. Without the voters the D party is nothing.

And Karl - thanks! Brilliant. As usual.

[GMax]

I just thought the ratio of less likely to more likely was pretty well overwhelming and more the story than that a bare majority said "less". Its about 2.5 to 1. Tell us again about the greatest speech since the Emancipation Proclamation please. It did not register the first 100 times.

Less likely (52%)
More likely (19%)
About the same (27%)
No opinion (2%)

The poll was conducted March 19 among 1,051 Americans. After filtering out those not aware of Rev. Wright and Obama’s speech about him, the sample is 807, for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2%. The data have been weighted for age, race, gender and partisan affiliation.

[Neo]

If you run the 100 yard dash, are you a racist ?

If you play the ponies, are you a racist ?

[M. Simon]

BTW the excerpted quote from the first link I provide in the above referenced article should be read in its entirety.

Here it is:

The City Edition.

[clarice]

M.Simon--He is a Magnificent Bastard but in my heart of hearts I think the left did this to itself.

I've no doubt at this point Hill's oppo research is dumping stuff everywhere it can. Now it is easier to do that without traces than it used to be--Mobys on lots of blogs for example.

[memomachine]

Hmmmmm.

A quick question for anybody:

Have you taken a serious look at Black Liberation Theology or Black Value System?

Doing so nearly made my head pop.

[M. Simon]

Clarice - did you look at the evidence?

There is some evidence that Rs provided the Big O with seed money.

Of course you are right the Ds did it to themselves. I think Daschlle (sp?) pushed the Big O due to RW hatred. Still, a little push can make all the difference in path dependent situations. Like elections.

memo - I have looked at it. In fact I blogged it:

Liberation Theology.

As a child of the 60s (born in '44) I was very familiar with it. In fact since I was a communist back then (I've come a long way baby) I was very familiar with it.

However, I was more familiar with its more universal variant Liberation Theology. Black Liberation Theology is a perversion of a perversion.

A lot of Democrats think this election will destroy the party. I think so too.

[davod]

"Have you taken a serious look at Black Liberation Theology or Black Value System?"

This why Obama should ot be given a pass. His Church practices this theology.

[Tweetie]

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

Me too!

I prefer cracker.

Posted by: M. Simon | March 22, 2008 at 10:09 AM

"Honky" always gets my blood singing.

[Tom Maguire]

If this is allowed to proceed we are all going to have to cook our puppies on dung fires.

Then thank our media! Given their quality and focus we will never lack for dung.

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.)

Regardless of my sympathies, King was well in the liberal mainstream with his opposition to the war. Wright is in the kook mainstream with his AIDS theories and his drug theories.

As an historic footnote, in 1967/8 two Supreme Court justices wondered whether Johnson had a Constitutional basis for the war (the underlying case was some soldiers resisting the draft and the war as illegal.

I think it is easy to look back at King's rhetoric 40 years later and think it was heated. But IMHO there was a lot more anti-war heat back then relative to today.

[clarice]

M. Simon, at the heart of every successful scam is a mark at the other end who believes he can get away with more than he's entitled to. No?

[william]

Recently there was a report in the NY Times about the Minister of Health in South Africa. She read some book that expounds the theory that AIDS doesn't exist, that it's all a plot by drug companies to sell expensive drugs. The Minister withheld a retroviral drug from pregnant women and the children of these women passed the virus onto their children. The nutty theories of Rev Wright and the South African have real consequences in the world. The inability or unwillingness of informed people like Obama to speak out against blatant stupidity also has real consequences. There were a fair number of white people, including white southerners, who condemned and then marginalized people like Bull Connors. The fact that informed black people cannot find it in their hearts to condemn the Rev Wright (or, for that matter, even Michael Vicks) is more harmful to their own community than it is to whites.

[M. Simon]

I think it is easy to look back at King's rhetoric 40 years later and think it was heated. But IMHO there was a lot more anti-war heat back then relative to today.

King's rhetoric fit the tenor of the times. However, his opposition to the war was not pushed hard.

Wright is still living in that past. Even Barry O says so.

[M. Simon]

M. Simon, at the heart of every successful scam is a mark at the other end who believes he can get away with more than he's entitled to. No?

Yes.

BTW I am so glad they dumped Lieberman. There would be a hard candidate to beat. Heck, I might have even considered voting for him. He is a lefty to be sure. But he gets that without profit there are no goodies to hand out. And he gets the war.

Of course if they ran him it would mean running against a party that was not fundamentally insane.

The scam was playing into Dems fear of racism - we don't have to vet him because he is black. And he is such a fine speaker. And he is not too black. In fact he is half white. The perfect symbol of bringing us together.

[memomachine]

Hmmmm.

Yeah but have you looked at TUCC's website for Black Value System?

TUCC: Black Value System

# Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness.” Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

Those so identified are separated from the rest of the people by:

1. Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.

2. Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.

3. Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which, while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us.”

4. So, while it is permissible to chase “middleclassness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method – the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness.” If we avoid this snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright: the leadership, resourcefulness and example of their own talented persons.

...

Perhaps Obama can survive association with pastor Wright. But this stuff is a part of his church as a whole, not just pastor Wright.

And it's pretty ugly.

[GMax]

The fairly amazing thing for me on Trinity United C of C is that all reports are that this is a middle class to upper middle class swath of the Black community in Chicago. That why it was fashionable for Oprah to show up there, at least until her press agent read the website.

These are not folks scraping by, despite Michele Obama's multitudinous whines about tennis lesson and camp fees. No these folks like dissing potato faces, and hearing the carp about the Man standing on their necks, even when their own lives argued against that.

They invented their own reality, just like much of the left does. And then they wallowed in it.

[Jake Barnes]

Something that's not getting enough play in all of this "honest" dialog, aside from an acknowledgment that black-on-white crime is a genuine phenomenon, is that Wright (and his "black liberation" theologian predecessors) speak of whites as an enemy, with an implication that blacks shouldn't be killing each other. One can infer the Sista Souljah-like conclusion. Though the irony is that they act like blacks are committing horrendous crimes against whites already, just not enough I guess.

[kcom]

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

Ben, it's amazing what a little bubble world the NYT lives in, isn't it?

Or perhaps they don't really believe it but they just want it to be true and are trying to sell it like it is.

[ben]

"Ben, it's amazing what a little bubble world the NYT lives in, isn't it?"

Well, they think they are very influential, the beacon to which lesser media are guided by. So they throw out such definitive statements like "the speech put doubts about Obama to rest" and hope it gets picked up and disseminated. Those were they days, NYT, you thought they'd never end....

[bandit]

Liberals want to have a discussion about race like I like to have conversations with my dog. He has never disagreed with a word I said.

[kim]

Try to be the kind of man your liberal thinks you are.
================================

[clarice]

... the chance of just any person you see on the street murdering someone this year is about 5 of 100,000 (assuming you see a random sample of people). The same chance of a white person is 3.5 of 100,000. And the same chance for a black person is 19.7 of 100,000. That means a black person is 5.6 times more likely than a white person to be a murderer.

It is totally rational for a any person (including Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama's grandmother) to fear a black person more than a white one. In fact, you should fear them 5.6 times more.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/typical_white_factbased_reason.html> Some facts for grandma and Jesse

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

That's a rather disingenuous presentation. The numbers are correct but "should fear" is hype. You have a 1 in 6,881 chance of being killed in a car accident in a year. You have (if you're white) a 1 in 240,917 chance of being murdered by a black. Therefore, you should fear your car 35 times more than a black person.

The actual odds are:

Anybody being murdered - 1/28,086
White being murdered - 1/45,840
Black being murdered - 1/7,687
White by white - 1/39,501
White by black - 1/240,917
Black by white - 1/110,359
Black by black - 1/8,270

That's the probability over a year, not the probaility every time you leave the house. Drop out fatalitis between pharmaceutical distributors due to disputes over sales territories and the numbers will change significantly.

[boris]

Well Rick, your figures would encourage a typical white grandma to walk home through the black neighborhood rather than the white. If grandma fears violent street crime that is a rather different set of figures. That situation risk generally involves one potential victim and a small number of potential perps. Effectively it removes the higher white population odds and makes the AT type of risk assesment more relevant.

[Rick Ballard]

Boris,

"Encourage" is eisegesis - it ain't there. Risk assessment involves examination of actual probabilities, not relying on "5.6 times as likely". It would be very interesting to see the crime stats for the prog plantations in isolation. I don't expect to see them any time soon though. The overseers won't allow it because it would make control of flight more difficult.

[boris]

examination of actual probabilities, not relying on "5.6 times as likely

IMO the point of this discussion is perceived risk, which the AT numbers seem to validate. In a single given situation on a deserted street with one typical white grandma and a small number of possible perps of same or different race, the perceived risk differences are qualitively supported by statistics.

The same race situation may occur more often but the risk assesment of each incident does not take into account the overall frequency of grandmas and perps. Which your type of statistic includes.

[Rick Ballard]

"IMO the point of this discussion is perceived risk"

I agree but a more useful point would be that avoidance of location (prog plantations) is a much better means of risk minimization than avoidance of people based upon their race.

[boris]

is a much better means of risk minimization

Except that avoidance of race also includes avoidance of prog plantations. Arguendo, considering all typical white grandmas and perps it turns out there is an equal street crime risk over time from either race in deserted street stituations with a small group of potential perps. However that result is based on a factor of 10 greater frequency of the same race situation occuring. One simple way for a given grandma to cut her odds of being a victim in half, is to avoid any but the same race situation (basically white flight).

[clarice]

Boris and Rick are both right--it does depend on grandma, and Rick " avoidance of location " is precisely what his grandma was trying to do when she asked grandpa to drive her so she would no longer have to wait at the bus stop where she'd been accosted.

[boris]

(basically white flight)

Not saying that is the recommended approach, just that statistics validate the perception. Reduction of the factor of 10 difference would be a good thing and that would certainly require time and effort. Openly engaging in such effort would be a much better PR move than denial of the problem by blaming perceptions on talk radio and Lee Atwater.

[boris]

Directed at Obama and Co, not Rick of course.