To mention a person’s race either directly or indirectly today can raise more hackles than politics or religion combined.
My grandfather often repeated the old saw that people should never discuss religion or politics since those topics often resulted in endless conflict with never a chance of resolution.
That advice goes back a good while since I’m a gramps myself now. I’ve never abided by it anyway since both religion and politics are sources of excellent discussion.
The advice is passe’ today but if politics and religion were still off-limits in 2008, another more volatile subject would have to be added to the injunction, namely, race.
To mention a person’s race either directly or indirectly today can raise more hackles than politics or religion combined. In fact, to say virtually anything about a Black candidate for public office in America, even if the reference were to his or her hobbies, printer paper, or favorite beverage, runs the risk of charges of racism nowadays.
Comments about Whites or Asians carry http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4547, for some reason.Yet, volatile or not, and moreso now that we have the first serious Black candidate for president, discussion of race has become a top discussion topic mainly because Senator Obama and many Blacks mention it so often.
Obama himself initially brought up his race, (recall his line about not having a face that’s featured on our currency when he also, casually, mentioned that he’s Black), for a reason, not to discount his race but rather to accent it and suggest that Whites who voted against him were out and out racists.
A perfect stranger at a Fourth of July party I attended, having imbibed a few adult beverages, sat near the entrance to the backyard and asked everyone who passed through the gate, “Are you voting for Obama?” If the new arrivals said, “No,” he then said, “Well, you’re a racist!”
Funny or not, Mr. Adult Beverage was making a valid point, Obama’s point, that if Whites don’t vote for him then we’re racists, a transparent appeal to White Guilt which he’s banking on to win the Oval Office.
The chief problem with that shameless, underhanded tactic are Blacks themselves.
A very pertinent article about Black-White relations in the United States is “Blacks, Whites Show Prejudices Along Racial Divide,” in which two AP reporters examine racism in and around Detroit, Michigan.
Perhaps unintentionally, the reporters unveil their focus and intent in this passage, “And how can it be that in 2008 – 143 years after slavery was abolished, decades after the civil rights movement – an AP-Yahoo News poll could find that racial misgivings could cost Sen. Barack Obama the election?”
Focus and intent? http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5658!
A few excerpts of their liberal point of view with my conservative point of view rebuttal:
“Whites say their neighbors consider blacks to be violent and solely responsible for problems in the black community. Blacks say many of their own consider whites to be spoiled and condescending.” (Statistics prove Blacks are violent. Read the papers and consult FBI stats. As for being “spoiled and condescending,” do those flaws, if real, compare with murder and mayhem?)
“Four of every 10 white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, calling them ‘lazy,’ or ‘violent’ or blaming them for the ills of black America. …Such surveys draw criticism from whites who say the numbers are exaggerated and from blacks who say the numbers are too low.” (Again, see the stats, or in lieu of that, drive your car through a Black neigborhood with the windows down and witness first hand that “exaggeration.”)
http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/