- Share This Post
- submit
- 7
-
Sparkle (0)
The was President Obama's weak-ass excuse to defend the charges of racist rhetoric (via President jimmy Carter's assertion last week) by "Birthers" Town-Hall crackpots and extreme-right wingers whom...yes, you guessed it, are using 'creative' ways to basically say that they have a problem - and some flat-out deny - that their President is an African-American. From Racialicious: (you can watch the interview here).
What are the chances that Obama actually DISAGREES with Carter? Sure “I was black before the election” is quintessential Obama (witty! charming! irreverent!) but it’s also, well, snarky. It’s just a wee bit dismissive of what Carter had to say, and what many of us believe.
Definitely the comment is meant to emphasize Obama’s continuing faith in Americans – a cornerstone of his presidency – but to me it also has the effect of essentially making fun of Carter’s very real claim.
From Racewire:
“It’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election,” Obama pointed out. “That tells you a lot, I think, about where the country is at.”
I think Barack Obama agrees with Jimmy Carter’s statement, but can’t say so because it would fuel even more animosity against him. If he were to say he agreed with Carter we’d probably see him forced to take his words back, just like he “could have calibrated” his words more carefully in the racially-charged controversy over the arrest of a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.
To be honest, I think that (and I've said this before on this site) that President Obama is in a conundrum. He cannot say what he personally thinks ( and I really do believe he is flat out lying here) for fear of starting a race war. Yeah, I said it - a RACE WAR. Or getting his ass shot. But in doing so, he is not only disrespecting President Carter's courage in standing up and stating how he feels; for becoming the spokesperson on racism and its effects ( because you need a white man to say it for assertions of racism to be seen as valid in the public eye), but he also has probably disenfranchised millions of black voters and supporters ( like me) by 'playing it safe.'
What Obama is saying with the above statement ( if you don't mind me paraphrasing) is that, 'hey, these crazy nuts weren't around during the election, so it doesn't make any sense that they are causing a ruckus now.' And he is, to a point, right. Where were these people? Hell, even Dan Savage thought something smelled funny:
So our first black president can't call clearly racist insults or acts or motives racist. He needs a crazy ol' cracker like Jimmy Carter to do that for him—and then he needs to go on TV and dismiss and downplay Carter's comments. And Americans are simultaneously upset with Carter because he's right and grateful to the president for letting them—and the country—off the hook.
Crazy.
The crazy nuts weren't voting for him, which is in their right. But perhaps these people were also hidden, not wanting to make a statement until after the elections were over. Or they could be like this guy, whom I was told about this weekend.
There is this man, who is very well-known and well-respected in certain circles, who armed his wife and his 7 year-old son with loaded AK-47's and 9mm's and told them to place them in the front of their house, and to shoot any black people that came on their property. He felt that there would be a race war if Obama was elected and felt that all the blacks would come gunning for innocent Americans like him. The person that told me this story was with him when he told his family this, and I believe this person. And yes, the guy taught his 7 year-old son how to load the rifles.
But let's look on the flip side - what does Obama's assertion on Letterman say about black people? Does it say that we should dismiss racial discrimination that we face, or that other's face? Should we just conveniently ignore it, stop fighting for equality and justice? Stop trying to publicize racial inequalities via social networking because mainstream media doesn't care?
Thembi Ford from What Would Thembi Do? doesn't believe it either:
You’d think that living with the knowledge that there are millions of people who’d love to
