If It Walks Like a Duck and Quacks.....

Obama in denial about racism, misses opportunity to address systemic issues

I understand that Obama has firmly planted himself in the middle. He wants to be president to everybody. I'm on board with that. He was elected by nearly everybody. However, the very vocal minority who didn't vote for him and even refuse to recognize his very human-ness, as well as his American-ness, have hijacked the national conversation.

Jimmy Carter, the former president who was not as bad a president as some would imagine, kicked the door wide open on the subject. All Obama had to do was to walk through and begin the discussion.

But he backed off, preferring instead to let Carter twist in the wind. Carter's problem, even when he was president, was that he usually spoke the truth..

People just didn't want to hear it.

If this country had taken the steps mandated by Carter, back in the day, we might not be paying $4 for gasoline and hundreds of dollars a month heat our homes.

If we had listened to Carter back then, America would probably be green today living on solar power instead of just getting into the ballgame with two out in the 9th and the score 10-1.

The problem with Obama is that he still thinks he is walking the hallways of academia breathing that rarified air of debate, discussion and civil discourse....

while a street fight has broken out around him....

The guns are literally out in full view......and he doesn't want to talk about it.....

First things first...let's deal with health care reform...or let's put wall street back on track....or let's look for alternatives solutions to our energy crisis...

Note to O.....the underlying cause of this stuff.....is racism...systemic...institutionalized racism...except now it has broken into the streets and some people are hiding behind the first amendment and threatening to invoke the second....

Whole Black people have had to deal with this scenario our entire lives..."you don't like what we sayin'....we will kill you!"

That is the message from the streets to the White House...

The problem with ducking the issue in hopes that it disappears is that it doesn't...It does what things do when pushed underground and ignored.....It grows and grows until it pushes itself into the light of day...and one day you trip over it...

Obama talks about the racism he heard from his white grandmother....it is one thing to hear it from a white relative....

This is his way of showing off his so called Black credibility....see I'm really one of ya'll....

But it is another thing completely to experience it over and over again from strangers....His grandmother loved him and protected him from it as he lived in her world...even as she spoke it and practiced it against others....

He needs to step to the plate and deal with a problem that still has a strangle hold on this country.....

No amount of ducking the issue or shushing former presidents is going to make it go away..

Aftermath, Dr. Henry Louis Gates

By now you've heard that the disorderly conduct charges against Dr Henry Gates have been dropped with a sorta-kinda apology from the prosecutor. I've spent much of the day reading and thinking about the various opinions put forth by my colleagues in the blogosphere, as well as those comments generated by the many posts that have been written in the wake of yet another racial collision in America.

I've been tired of having to deal with racism for a very long time, long before it hit this ODS level where we currently find ourselves. ODS stands for Obama Derangement Syndrome. I don't know who coined the phrase but it is very apropos for the times.

Throughout the day, I have been surprised at the reaction from Black people to this latest incident. On one hand, everyone says they are not surprised that it happened-only that it happened to probably the most distinguished of our scholars. Many even cite the quote made 40 years ago by Malcolm X....”what do you call a Black man with a PhD”

I don't have to finish it...you know the punchline.

All of us, who are close to my age have lived that joke our entire lives. So Skip Gates getting arrested in his own home should not have surprised any of us, of a certain age.

Yet, I think it did. And I think it startled us, because on some unconscious level, despite our gut feelings, we really and truly wanted to believe in this myth of a post racial American era heralded by the coming of Barack Obama.

From what I have discerned from the media reports, the only crime that Dr. Gates committed was that of raising his voice to a white man. It still gets us killed if we're not careful. Usually though, it leads to lots of discomfort for us, as Dr. Gates discovered.

Racism is one stresser that we can all do without. When you're stressed, you can't relax. You can't sleep. You get a stomach ache that never goes away. ...always looking over your shoulder to see if some pale and arrogant MF with an attitude...male or female doesn't matter...is coming up on you pissed off because you eye balled em the wrong way...

And if you're Bougie...and you've played the game the way they want you to play the game...grown up quiet..gone to school..stayed out of trouble...accomplished more then they ever dreamed....made more money then they ever imagined....

Watched as they daily co opt your culture...your music...your way of dancing...your way of talking...your way of dressing......the way you wear your hair....

Watched them as they resort to needles full of silicon to plump their lips like the ones God gave you... or drop mass amounts of money for butt implants to mimic the roundness of your ass.....spending all day in the sun to imitate the very color of your skin...some even spraying it on from a bottle...

They want to be us but only with their privilege intact.

It is truly a wonder why we as a people haven't gone postal...We continue to stifle our outrage, even now.

Because if we ever as a people acted toward them the way they continue to act toward us...There would be some seriously ugly stuff going down....

The comments from those who chose to identify themselves as white also show that they will never get it. They will never understand, and at this point in my life, I don't care whether they understand or not.

We just need to get over it. Put it past us like we've done so many times before.

The upside to all this....they are disappearing...period...

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Smitherman vs the LGBT Community

I want to say up front that I am a "johnny-come-lately to this topic, basically because I have problems with both the LGBT community and the Black Community for the very reasons being debated, racism and homophobia.

I also have a problem with Mr. Smitherman...When he talks, I turn off, because I have yet to find him credible on any topic. I am mystified by his election to head the NAACP. I am mystified that so many others apparently find him to be a man worth following.

I found Jill Benavides comments after the meeting at City Hall to be patronizing, and condescendingly PC with regard to Smitherman. It was as if she were talking about a child. In other words..."let him have his temper tantrum, we love him anyway."

Having said all that......Let’s go there...shall we...

Nowhere on either side of this clueless conversation has the Black LGBT community been talked about or included in the conversation. Smitherman talked about his one white gay male NAACP member, as if having one represents all. That is the same way the white LGBT community talks about Blacks...you know..."some of my best friends are....."

The conversation that took place at City Hall obscures the fact that Black gays and lesbians are totally invisible in Cincinnati. And it’s like that across the country. Much of it due to the queer hatred within the Black community, in addition to the racism in the LGBT community

As Black people..we spend most of our lives being beaten up because of the color of our skin. It’s been a very difficult road to electing our first Black president. We have been killed for simply wanting to be treated equally. Laws were passed to make that happen, yet it’s still a problem in 2009, and you have only to look at two recent incidents of men, white men, killing their families and police for fear of a Black man in the White House.

You’ve got white governors talking of secession...that has got to be the ultimate in white flight..think about it...the same thing happens when a black family moves into a previously all white neighborhood...still....that’s not past history...that’s last week....

Now compound skin color with being gay or lesbian and you go from being beaten down on a national level to somebody, maybe your own brother, sister, mother, father, neighborhood, kicking your ass because you’re a sissy or you’re a bulldagger. You get tired of being a target, you get tired of being called names....for Black gays and lesbians...being called a nigger is not much different than being called queer or fag or bulldagger.

Trust me, you’re not going to run out and join the very community organizations that want you dead...

The white LGBT community doesn’t feel it’s racist, but it is no different, really than liberal whites who like using that.."some of my best friends are....." phrase. Blacks are not taken seriously within the LGBT community, usually being dismissed with a patronizing pat on the top of our fuzzy little heads, with a "thank you for coming...but we know better, what’s good for you..."

The prop 8 vote in California exposed the LGBT racism, when it was erroneously reported that Blacks were the reason it passed....Blacks gays and lesbians who took to the streets to protest the vote, were attacked by white gays and lesbians.....called niggers among other things....The white LGBT community has yet to apologize for their assumptions during that time...

Being Black gay and lesbian means you’re caught up between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Not feeling accepted by anyone can be a very lonely way to grow up and to live.

Smitherman and the NAACP need to realize that there have always been Black gays and lesbians active within his organization and the civil rights movement. What they need to do is to recognize that the NAACP and other Black organizations are also not inclusive organizations working for all Blacks.

There is no mention of the devastation of HIV/AIDS on the Black Community. In fact Smitherman as a straight man is probably more susceptible to getting the virus than any gay black man at this stage, not because he is gay or down-lo, but because Black straight women are the ones being infected at record breaking rates.

Black women are sleeping with down-lo men and taking the germ back to their straight boyfriends...

And why are men down-lo...because they stand to be judged not men, if they come out..being labeled soft is worse than being called a nigger in the Black community. Witness the death a couple of weeks ago of a 12 year old Black youth, who hanged himself, after being repeatedly called a fag at school.

Why was he called a fag, or labeled soft.....he liked school and his mother taught him to comport himself like a gentleman...he was not gay, by the way....just a clean cut little boy...dead...

It is killing our community...yet....I hear nothing from the NAACP about this massive problem. If the women die...who is going to bear your sons? Or will any white or J-Lo looking Latina woman do?

It is no proof of your so called inclusive tendencies if all you can talk about is one gay white boy as a member. Remember, he can always go back to his community in which by birth he is a master of the universe.

Black gays and lesbians must go home to the same hate that they suffer from in the streets.

The entire Smitherman statement left women out the conversation, altogether. That is typical of the misogyny that also permeates the Black Community.

So, to put an end to this ramble.....

NAACP....you need to talk to Black gays and lesbians first.....you need to address the number one killer of Black people in this country and the world....second only to gun violence...which is another problem in and of itself...

Opening the tent to include all Black people will send a bigger message than a useless conversation with white gay and lesbian organizations with issues of their own to deal with..

It doesn’t matter who turns out to support what....until we recognize the problem within our own community, we will be having this worthless conversation in 2010, 2011, 2012.....

Raising Racists

Like many blacks of my generation, as well as those who are older, I fear for the safety of Barack Obama. It has been our history that whenever one of us rises up and speaks, we get shot down, sometimes literally losing our life. I think of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and a host of others who were brutalized because they stood up to challenge the powers that be in our time.

Obama was justifiably given secret service agents long before anyone else because of the racial situation in this country. A racial situation that has not really changed since his election and scheduled ascension to the White House.

The secret service reported that the death threats have increased rather than decreased. You can read it here. Threats were even documented in my own back yard, in the Cincinnati, Ohio suburb of Mt. Washington, at the hardware store on Salem (tried to include the link, but it keeps disappearing, sorry.)

I haven’t written previously in depth about the threats or my feelings because, frankly I’m tired of talking about race and racism. I’m tired, after nearly 60 years on this earth of having to justify my very existence through that prism. I look forward to the day when it is no longer necessary for people like me to have to work twice as hard to prove that we are merely equal.

I’d hoped that Obama’s election would, and ultimately, will change the racial climate in America. But, I’m still not yet convinced that it will. Especially when I see stories like the ones I’ve just mentioned.

I was particularly upset by reports of the 9 year olds on the school bus chanting “kill” Obama, “assassinate” Obama. Public response to this story prompted the mayor to speak out. He wrote a letter to local parents, you can read it here.

I was not surprised by the kids and their chants, because I know that racists are bred not born. Little kids like this are strictly nurtured, not natured. They don’t come out of the womb hating. Kids are like little tape recorders. Families and parents know that you have to be careful about what you say around them.

I remember an incident from my own past, when I was maybe eleven or twelve. I was downtown in Pogues, a high end department store, in a dress, a very pretty dress, dress shoes, hair done, very clean, church going clean, because that was the only way I could go to downtown Cincinnati with my parents or as in this case, with my grandmother. There was a white family standing next to us as a clerk waited on my grandmother. They had a small child who kept staring at me. I had long ago been taught not to stare back. But the kid kept looking and finally turned to her mother, I assume, and asked out loud...

”mommy, is she a nigger?”

I looked up at her mother. She turned crimson in the face and snatched the kid away from our proximity, as if we were the threatening ones. She never apologized, nor answered her daughter’s question, at least within my hearing. The clerk behind the counter turned red, too. But she didn’t say anything either. Nor did my grandmother, but then she had been hearing it longer than I had, and we never talked about it until she got drunk one night at a family party, later that year. Up until that party, I assumed that my grandmother really liked white people. But it was actually liberating for me to find out that she didn’t. She survived by going along and she’d taught me to go along, too, in order to survive. Looking back, I realize that the little girl was trying to figure out her world. She needed to be taught and she was, just not the get along way that we seek today.

Obama’s election is a start on the path to a post racial world. He represents the beginning. He was elected by a coalition of all people, who are making a strong statement that the incidents that I’ve just been talking about, are a thing of the past. I like this path that we are on now. It won’t be without adventure. Race and racism will always be with us in some form or other.

But this election has taught us that what we need to do when it does crop up, is to speak up and to educate our young. They do hear us and they do learn if taught.

And just maybe, like the fear of a black man in the white house, racism will fade away, too, taken to its grave when those of us who lived through it, pass on to our next plane of existence.

Race Card

You’ve seen those old 20th century postcards depicting lynchings in America. There are museum exhibits of these cards that were sent through the mails , just like you, or I would send a card from our latest vacation spot, like Las Vegas or the Virgin Islands.

When I look at those, it’s not the mangled man or woman, hands tied behind their back, dangling at the end of the rope, slowly twisting in the wind that horrifies me. It’s the crowd surrounding the spectacle that terrifies me. The looks on the faces of the men and women who had witnessed the killing of another human being, for no other reason than they were black and had offended some white woman or crossed some invisible line drawn in the dirt, by some white man.

Washington Post columnist, Charles Krauthammer, opened his column today, which he titled; “Who’s Playing the Race Card?” with these words:

“Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association -- with total strangers, mind you -- but worse: guilty according to the New York Times of "race-baiting and xenophobia."

Mr. Krauthammer goes on to argue that McCain and Palin are being vilified for injecting race into the campaign when actually it was Barack Obama who brought up the subject.. He maintains that McCain and Palin should be held guiltless when a couple of “yahoos” as he calls them, shout obscenities every time Palin or McCain say Obama. Continuing his reasoning, since McCain and Palin can be held accountable for these stranger actions, Obama should be held accountable for his past associations with William Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the organization ACORN.

Mr. Krauthammer’s argument is comparing apples to oranges. The McCain/Palin role in their campaign rallies is more like the one or two guys who beat the black man, found the rope and tree and strung him up as the crowd watches in not so silent approval.

If this scenario was also happening at Obama rallies when Obama/Biden invoked the names of McCain/Palin, then Krauthammer might have an argument. But I’ve personably attended these rallies on both sides, since I do live in the swing state of Ohio. There are no similarities.

Until shamed into speaking, McCain/Palin stood silently smiling, while the rage spread through their crowds. Obama’s press releases tell you up front “don’t bring homemade signs, and he shushes the crowd as soon as anyone tries to take his opponent’s names in vain.

I don’t worry about who surrounds me when I’m at an Obama rally. I do worry when the rhetoric starts to heat up at a McCain/Palin rally If the violent rhetoric was happening on both sides within the same type of situation, then Krauthammer would have an argument. He doesn’t. His column is merely a thinly veiled attack from the right attempting to paint Obama as a shady man with a shady past. The extreme right can’t beat him on issues, so they slam him with mud balls.

Now if Obama were to suddenly flood the market with campaign advertisements that talked about, say, Palin’s husband’s affiliations with the secessionists of Alaska, or her affiliations with the African witch doctor, or McCain’s past affiliations with General John Singlelaub or current affiliation with Oliver North, or pastor John Hagee, or even McCain’s past affiliation with ACORN, then Krauthammer would have had justification for some of the things he stated in his column. There is even a white supremacist group hiding in McCain’s past. But none of this has been brought up by the Obama campaign, in ads or at campaign rallies.

The scenario that I opened with, is ugly. It doesn’t feel good to even talk about or to write about. It is an open wound on all of us over the age of 45. But as long as the Charles Krauthammer’s of the world refuse to take responsibility for their own racial blindness while at the same time justifying the racist subtexts that still permeate American politics, I will continue to bring it up.

Obama may be our next president...a black man in the White House...But he is only the beginning of true racial healing in America. Columns like those written by Charles Krauthammer show us that we still have a very long way to go.





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An Open Letter to Barack

Dear Senator Obama,

In the beginning, I was not a supporter. I was not a believer, preferring to find comfort in my love for the Clintons, mainly Bill. Hillary, despite being a Senator, was not really on my radar. After all, I live in Ohio, and she was not my senator. She was just the wife of the last president I liked.

I heard your speech four years ago, when you burst onto the scene at the Democratic convention. I got chills when you talked. Didn’t know you from Adam, but you touched me then, for the first time.

When you declared for president, I was skeptical. I liked you, but not enough to support you. I was a Hillary girl. I thought she knew the questions and had the answers that I wanted to hear from my representatives. I also didn’t think a black man had a snowball’s chance in hell of being taken seriously enough, by black people, let alone whites.

I felt and still feel that whites, or I should say, many whites who take issue with you, do so because of color and inborn prejudices that “we” are somehow never up to the task of leading. The racists are the ones who are honest about these feelings. I’m not mad at them. They are, what they are. They can change. Judging by your poll numbers, a lot of them have changed.

Alleged liberals and the enlightened who are horrified by the racist label, are the ones who need to get real. We all have prejudices against others. We make change when we admit this and go on toward the common goal. We still haven’t done this, yet, as a country. The apology from Congress was a beginning. Your candidacy is a start. Your winning will not be the end, only another step on a very long journey.

I remember listening to your speech on race in my car on the radio. I sat in the parking lot of Circuit City in a rain storm with tears in my eyes, the emotion so strong that it’s welling up in me now as I write this. I called my sister in South Carolina after you finished...still in the car in the parking lot. She’d listened too and told me that she goes to church with the young woman you talked about in your speech. They are friends.

Inadvertently, you drew closer to me and you don’t even know me. That day, I wholeheartedly changed my allegiance. I was already leaning when Caroline Kennedy became a supporter. I lived Camelot and like all good memories, I want them back. I wanted to feel good about this country again. I haven’t felt good about this country since the days of the Kennedys. Clinton came close, and I think that is what led me to Hillary in the beginning.

Now you have the nomination (or will, officially, later this week). You have it because we, the people want change. We hear you and believe that you are the beginning of change. We can’t take another four years, yea even another year of the stuff running off capital hill in Washington.

What I need now is to know how you intend to affect the change that you have begun. Your selection of Joe Biden is a good thing. Let him do the attack dog thing on McCain. Let McCain hang himself, as he has done, over and over with his Rovian attacks on you. If McCain were really listening to the stuff coming out of his mouth, albeit written by others, he might not be saying it. I think his campaign speaks volumes about the kind of president he would be and therefore not worth my support. I’m glad you haven’t stooped all the way down to his level. But I do think you need to fight back. The Bulls couldn’t get past Detroit in the playoffs until they learned to play Piston basketball. You know that. You can play with a dog without getting dirty. It can be done. But let Joe do it. You need to sharpen your message.

Is there something you can do on January 20th....I don’t know....an executive order, maybe..repealing the Patriot Act..to show us you mean business about change....How about abolishing the Department of Homeland Security...

How about closing Guantanamo and restoring Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus.

How about sending the message that leadership in the House and Senate needs to be changed, Walking wastes of oxygen like Pelosi and Reid need not apply.

How about giving us a Justice Department for all the people, not just politically appointed hacks.

How about bringing back General Colin Powell or the likes of Madeleine Albright to help you out of this mess.

Your campaign keeps getting compared to Camelot...how about a New Deal to jumpstart things like work and jobs for people who don’t have them. How about programs like some type of peace corp to work nationally and internationally to bolster our reputation with our neighbors.

I would really like to see a revamp of the Veterans Administration. I don’t for the life of me understand why Vets have to go through what they do, after coming home from protecting us. In my mind, if you’re a Vet, all you need to do is to present your ID at any hospital, to any doctor, any dentist, whoever...and get treatment. Paperwork not necessary. It should be our way of thanking them for what they do for us.

The GI Bill built the middle class in this country...how about rolling out a new version to help the guys and girls mired in Iraq and Afghanistan..

I can go on and on and on, but I won’t. There are thousands of things that need to be done now and in the near future. I understand you have to be elected first. I think that is going to happen.

As a people, we need honest effort...from you and from those you choose to help you. The lies and prevarications of the past eight years must be relegated to the past. Open communication between the president and the people is what is needed.

We believe.....Now make it so...


Jo Anne Moore

Running for President

The possibility of a Barack Obama candidacy for president raises a lot of questions about the American people. The first and foremost, or course, is whether or not whites and some blacks, would be willing to support a black man in his quest for this country’s highest office.

Obama represents the second black man who actually has the opportunity to pursue the presidency with the potential for success. The first was General Colin Powell. General Powell opted not to throw his hat into the ring, reportedly because his wife feared for his safety.

The Obama camp reportedly is also considering or has considered the safety factor. The bogeyman for blacks seeking higher office remains the white man with the sniper rifle.

Safety is not something usually discussed with white candidates. They don’t fear for their life when seeking higher office. The average white candidate doesn’t need to fear for his life in politics. They only worry about whether or not they have or can raise money for the campaign.

And that speaks to the underlying racism still permeating this country. For blacks, it’s the knowledge that going down some streets or traveling through some neighborhoods can still get you assaulted or killed in America. It’s not about being a politician. It’s about having power over whites, something that some whites simply will not allow.

As a country, we have not dealt with our racial feelings. We think we have. We respond to the racism polls as if we’ve put racism and racial thinking behind us, but we really haven’t.

A recent CNN poll reveals the deep disparity on race between blacks and whites. Whites think the problem is solved. Blacks are nearly united in thinking racism is still a very real problem in America.

Racism has changed. It’s not about slavery, jim crow, or segregation of the races. The laws of the land have done away with these concrete situations. The perception of racial inequality has been slower to change and therein lies the problem.

Just because the law says everyone is equal doesn’t mean that folks think that way. Mindset, just like morality, cannot be legislated away. It has to die off.

So until that happens, black presidential candidates will worry about their safety first and their fundraising abilities second while being twice as qualified as the white guy to handle the job.