village voice > news > Hillary Attack Ads For the Obama Team by Tom Robbins

Dave Myers on Sun May 4, 2008, 20:59, says:

This is the link to a "very interesting" dialogue:

http://www.strategytalk.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=62184#62184

Mark Jeffery Koch on Sat Mar 22, 2008, 22:02, says:

I found Pastor Wright's comment's distasteful and his embrace of Louis Farrakhan abhorent. That being said, trying to belittle the anger of Black Americans is not only misguided, it is wrong. The worst evil the world faced was the Nazi's in World War II. Black soldiers fought and gave their lives but were not allowed to stay in the same barracks with White soldiers and were treated like third class citizens at best. Yet, when they died, their blood was no different than their White counterparts. They returned home to water fountains they were not allowed to drink from, restaurants they were not allowed to eat in, and had to sit in the back of the bus. The Tuskegee episode had the American government using Blacks as experimental guinea pigs. While I too find accusations of the government manufacturing the HIV virus to murder Blacks outrageous any Black American that was taught about the Tuskegee disgrace has reason to doubt their government. Voter suppression of Blacks was rampant and even as recently as the 2000 election for President there were allegations of attempts to turn away Black voters. The entire world saw Black bodies floating down the flooded streets of New Orleans as the federal government stood by and did nothing as the Black neighborhoods of New Orleans were destroyed. Today, in 2008, Black men are still stopped at random by policemen for the sole reason they are Black. A Black man trying to catch a taxi in most major cities in America has a less than 50% chance the taxi will stop for them. Yes, I abhor what Reverend Wright says. I am White and I am Jewish but I still can understand his anger and the anger and doubts of most Black Americans. We can criticize him all we want for hating us but history shows his animosity is most definitely not make believe. There were wrongs that were righted and wrongs and injustice that still must be righted, but we do our country a great disservice by dismissing everything the man said as ranting and raving. We cannot move forward if we cannot understand our past and we must embrace each other as equals and treat each other as we would like others to treat us.

Lynn Levine on Sat Mar 22, 2008, 15:09, says:

Dear threedee,

For once in my life, I had nothing to add. If you could read, the punctuation would have clued you in to my meaning. I have a lot to add to knee jerk responders like you, but I will simply just hope that your mind will open a bit, at least enough for you to understand what you are reacting to.

johncp on Thu Mar 20, 2008, 21:42, says:

It's amusing and tragic to see how desperately you're waiting for an Obama nomination, and how you are, even more desperately, promoting a quick end to this maddening nomination process. Why, do you suppose, you're so anxious to see it come to an end? Because it will "hurt the party," or are your intentions a bit less honorable? Could it be, that you fear that media, sloppy as they are, will stumble at some point, and allow more of the truth to emerge about Obama, before he has the nomination absolutely tied up?

Cactusflower on Thu Mar 20, 2008, 21:30, says:

Oh Tom Robbins - I needed this piece today!

it would be so fun to go negative this wry way...

Dave Myers on Thu Mar 20, 2008, 17:57, says:

I'll start from early on in my evolution... I am a biracial man whose father is African-American and mother is Caucasian. My parents met in 1959 when my un-wed mother was in a nursing school where my father was employed as a nurses aide... my mother was engaged to a white man who was attending engineering school. My father had an African-American wife and (5) children at the time of his extra-marital relationship with my mother. At some early point of my mothers pregnancy with me she made the decision to marry her fiance, and to lie to everyone about who the father of her un-born child was... she achieved this by claiming that I had been afflicted with a skin-disease called "melanism".

My mother and step-father had four more children together in the space of nine years after I was born, and we grew up together in a middle-class household in white america where the subject of "race" was never discussed. My earliest recollections of having to be aware of race was when I was asked questions about the color of my skin by other classmates in first grade... "Why was my skin dark?", "Was I adopted?" race was certainly a hot-button issue in 1965-66 when I began school , but any awareness that my mother and step-father had achieved from growing up in their white neighborhoods in the 40's and 50's was insufficient in preparing them for raising a biracial child... and to complicate things, they were both in complete denial of their complicity in my mis-education. When I came home from school after having been asked questions by fellow students from my all-white school district, my mother then explained "the skin-disease story" to me... "other kids with this disease usually have dark blotches all over their bodies, so you should feel fortunate". When I would tell my mother about other boys and girls who would call me names or act aggressively for no apparent reason, I began to understand that I would get no further assistance from her to explain this rationale... my step-father was even more removed from the conversation and would only add, "You know what your mother said".

By the time that my step-father transferred jobs and our family of (7) had moved from the all-white Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Stow to the all-white school district of Portville in Western up-state N.Y. it was the spring of 1970 and I was in fourth grade, and already the veteran of many racial incidents and altercations between myself, classmates, and even some adults. My four younger siblings had also been told the same story, and had to explain the same things to their friends when asked why they had a brother who was black... "Hey, did your mother fool around a little bit??" I remember how much that hurt me when I heard it, and I'm sure that they felt just as badly when they did... nonetheless, this was a "subject" that we never discussed as a family, not once, at least in my presence.

I was taught through my observations of my mother and step-father to keep quiet about things that I wasn't sure about, and I was also taught to ignore the obvious.

As I matured into my teen-aged years and began to experience societies issues and insecurities in coming to terms with this countries racial in-equalities during the 70's, I felt an increasing need to rationalize and then codify the information that my mother had given me, regardless of what I was beginning to realize inside... I felt a growing discomfort/conflict, yet there was no one in my life to offer any other perspective... I had learned that black people were a part of society that we didn't talk about. ( There was a black family in my small town, and they were poor and lived in a run-down house near the river...I never had any opportunity or reason to associate with them)

I was a "B" student and also began taking an interest in sports where I was above average. Meeting other schools and student athletes were opportunities to then be exposed to populations that had not been inured by my story yet...I was just another black kid to them.

Communicating my experiences to my mother and step-father was difficult because they had no experience with racial prejudice, therefore when I had problems with other children it would be looked at as an issue that "I" had in getting along with others(as well as intra-family sibling issues).

Because "race" was being ruled-out entirely, by my mothers denial of my father, she could not logically use that rationale to explain any conflicts that I would have. My step-fathers complicity in this was to blindly support my mothers viewpoint.

The "white" viewpoint has always been that blacks(black society) were pretty well cared for, and what contact they did have would be polite and careful... What, with the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts being passed, the playing field had been leveled.(re: my mother and step-father's generation)

The feelings and comfort of my mother were apparently what was important, and her inculcation had to have been partly comprised of the idea that white society acted as the gate-keepers and care-takers of an infantilized black population.

questions:

How has black society formed its identity?

What role models have been used, and how does white society react to positive

black role models today? (Are they held to a more critical prism??)

Is there enough information readily available for black people to easily form a

positive racial identity?

Is it important that black society is able to connect accurately the dots of its social

evolution in America? and is it also important that white society can connect those

same dots??

What is White Privilege?

What is White awareness?

What is Whiteness?

What about Affirmative Action?

Is Race just a social construct?

How do we improve our society in America?

Is there any other way(besides the attrition of the old guard) to achieve this??

Dave Myers

www.discussrace.com

mrg14x on Wed Mar 19, 2008, 22:17, says:

the only thing that hillary is going to put forth over and over is this video of the reverand wright. it is amazing that this has just appeared. She is a tough opponent

http://www.ydito.com/showchannelimages/?searchstr=YTV9hPR5jnjtLo

pork on Wed Mar 19, 2008, 17:34, says:

blame your bosses all you want tom. it's still pathetic.

threedee on Wed Mar 19, 2008, 02:37, says:

for once in Lynn's life she has been cheered up, for the first time in Mrs. O's life she is proud of our country, Wow you guys get a lot of first from these dreamers. village voice, you have really stooped low. I don't expect this to show up on your comments area so I have nothing to lose by telling you that the National Enquirer is becoming far more credible than you.

Lynn Levine on Wed Mar 19, 2008, 01:18, says:

Thank you for this article. It really cheered me up. For once in my life, I have nothing to add. Your article and Obama's speech today have said it all.