The Race Issue
CBS did a great segment on the issue of race in the election. Check it out. (H/T: Joe Windish)
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As Obama himself said in Claudia’s clip, sure some people will not vote for him because he is of the color of his skin and based on “Implicit bias” (as also noted in this clip). Percentages aside, the same goes for McCain and the color of his skin.
That’s pretty clear. But the most annoying part of this presidential race now, is that some are tying Obama’s associations with Acorn, Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers (a white guy), et al. and through subtle means, very weakly take these legitimate questions and the media repackages them as “race” related questions. After hearing some of this propaganda, and I don’t know if it is just me, but you start to question weather you feel safe asking these questions, (gee, are my criticisms of Obama associations now off limits? Will I be labeled as a “racist” if I continue asking these legitimate questions?)
Why is it so much for the direct questions to be answered by Obama? McCain has done it with the Keating 5 association. So has Palin with her Daughter (and she didn’t have to in my opinion, that is a family matter) If Obama has nothing to hide, and the American people have the chance to actually list to his answers, and can reasonably conclude that all these associations are really just a coincidence then we would see it is much ado about nothing, and I think Obama would actually gather a lot more votes by just laying all his cards on the table, and just coming clean once and for all. Maybe that is what he is doing in that 30 minute piece he plans on doing, I’m not sure) As James T. Harris says in this clip. We know more about Palin’s pregant Daughter, than we know about Obama and the above associations. From 8:21 on in Claudia’s clip, that pretty much sums it up for me, but first I need to hear Obama’s answers to all these associations.
I think Jay_C is absolutely correct- race is being used as a shield. It was said that Reagan was the teflon president, but it seems that black is the new teflon.
And the left likes to complain about conservatives using ‘dog whistles’ to drum up racial fears- but can someone explain to me how Obama’s riff about “Hoodwinkin’” and “Bamboozlin” is any different (other than that it stirs up fears of racism rather than fears of someone who is black?)
On a related note, I saw a guy on Fox this am named James T Harris. He’s a black conservative talk show host in Milwaukee and apparently he appeared at a recent rally there with McCain/Palin.
I thought he made some interesting comments so I googled to see if he had a blog- turns out he does but it’s not updated frequently…the last real entry was in June. However, it looks like his appearance at the rally instigated an avalanche of comments to that blog post, and what I read there shocked me.
I knew that black conservatives take a lot of heat, but this is ridiculous- 136 comments, and almost every single one is a hate filled screed along the “Uncle Tom” lines but in much more vitriolic terms. Take a look.
thanks C Stanley,
The other thing going on is thtat the media will cover some of these stories /accusations, but only from the questioning standpoint of “Is it ok / productive that these accusations are being made?” rather than from a “Hmm, good question, let’s look into that..” standpoint That drives me nuts.
Actually I’d say it’s even worse than that, Jay_C, because anything that could be considered an inflammatory accusation that comes from the GOP side is looked at one way (”How dangerous that they’re stirring up this racial anger!”), while anything that comes from the other side is handled the other way (downplayed as just, “well, these accusations are being made, that’s kind of interesting”)
Good point.