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He finally nails down why I’m a Republican:
White resistance to supporting Democratic presidential candidates is troubling partly because much of that resistance is a lingering reaction to Johnson’s passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
I nail an effigy of LBJ to every cross I burn.
Apollo posted this at 7:19 PM EST on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 as Race
Two students have been arrested for hanging a presidential candidate in effigy. It seems the actual arrest is for stealing the things to make the effigy, but I’m curious how many times something gets stolen from a frat house and it results in a prosecution.
UK President Lee Todd said the effigy violates the university’s code of ethics, and Fischer faces punishment that could include expulsion.
“As outrageous and offensive an act as the effigy was, I truly believe it has mobilized our campus, the community and the state in an effort to battle racism,” Todd said Thursday.
Go to hell, Lee. Making and harming effigies of presidential candidates is an old American hobby, and if we’re going to live in an age when black people are going to run for president, we’ve got to tone down our racial sensitivity when people make political statements about black politicians.
UK police said the two men told them the act was in response to news reports of an effigy of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in California.
I guess prosecuting them for the theft could be called for (again, though, from the information released, this sounds like a pretty minor thing to give someone a criminal record over). But the university president’s jump to “now let’s fight racism” is the idiotic crap you’d expect from a university president. And the sort of racial overkill you’d expect in the Age of Obama.
Apollo posted this at 8:50 PM EDT on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 as Race, Audacity of Hype
The policemen quoted in this story do a valiant job of diverting attention from what they mean to say. They mean to say that they’re afraid that blacks will riot if Obama loses*. What they wind up saying is:
“I think it is a big deal — you got an African-American running and [a] woman running,” he added, in reference to Obama and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. “Whoever wins it, it will be a national event. We will have more officers on the street in anticipation that things may go south.”
Yes, because there are legitimate concerns that if McCain loses, women across the country will riot. That’s what everyone worries about — women rioting. I think the Greeks wrote about that. Perhaps we should consult them.
*I don’t think I condone what it is they mean to say. Objectively speaking, riots may be more likely this election than in past years because of race. However, the maintenance of an egalitarian democracy entails lots of noble lies, even if those noble lies create real-world consequences. Whether or not black people are more likely to riot after this election, it seems unfortunate to preemptively act like they are. A civil society requires not only non-violence on the part of all citizens, but, equally as important, the presumption of non-violence toward fellow citizens.
The story says rumors of riots are circulating on “right-wing” websites. That may or may not be true; I don’t really get around that much in the blogosphere. The story also quotes a black Republican from Massachusetts, though I have statistics refuting the possibility that such a person exists, so I’ll just presume The Hill made up that quote. Whoever’s circulating the rumors, I can’t say as I approve.
Apollo posted this at 9:39 PM EDT on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 as Politics, Race
Socialist is now a code word for black.
You have got to be kidding me. Post-Racial my ass.
Edited: I just realized this but is the article implying that it is now a bad thing to call Obama black?
Jamie posted this at 5:47 PM EDT on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 as Race, Audacity of Hype
See if you can spot any substance in this op-ed, or a reason for the Post to publish it. There’s an impressive amount of insinuation that McCain is doing something wrong and nefarious, but other than hiring a guy who did one thing two years ago that the author doesn’t like, there’s no actual assertion of what McCain’s doing wrong. It’s a whole bunch of airy nothings, but it leaves the impression that perhaps the McCain camp is doing something slightly racist. In that way, I guess, it’s a perfect representation of the Obama campaign.
P.S. I have yet to figure out why the anti-Ford ad was considered so out of bounds. If Ford had such an aversion to being associated with “scantily clad white wom[e]n,” what was he doing at Playboy parties? Not that I frequent such soirées, but it’s never been my impression that they were brimming with women of color.
P.P.S. The only mention of race in the op-ed is that the woman in the ad was white. If you didn’t know that Ford was black, this would seem like a very odd thing nto mention. If you do know that Ford is black but don’t know that the ad was based on Ford’s attending Playboy parties, the ad would seem like a pointless injection of race into the campaign. If, on the other hand, you know what the ad was about and that the ad was done with a humorous tone, then you’d realize that it was Ford and his supporters, not the Republicans, who needlessly injected race as an issue in that campaign. Of course, then you wouldn’t be getting your information from the Washington Post, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this op-ed to begin with.
Apollo posted this at 9:28 PM EDT on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 as Journalism, Race
Is Khaled Hossani unaware that Barrack Hussein Obama used to bring up his middle name as a reason for Democrat primary voters to vote for him?
Are the editors at the Post? Because if McCain-Palin is “playing with fire” by broaching the issue, they should probably take the Obama campaign to task for doing it first. I will now hold my breath until they do so.
Apollo posted this at 9:14 PM EDT on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 as Journalism, Race
From the AP:
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago. With Obama a relative unknown when he began his campaign, the Internet hummed with false e-mails about ties to radical Islam of a foreign-born candidate.
Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as “not like us” is another potential appeal to racism. It suggests that the Hawaiian-born Christian is, at heart, un-American.
Most troubling, however, is how allowing racism to creep into the discussion serves McCain’s purpose so well. As the fallout from Wright’s sermons showed earlier this year, forcing Obama to abandon issues to talk about race leads to unresolved arguments about America’s promise to treat all people equally.
If pointing out that Obama was “palling around” with an unsavory white man is a secret appeal to racism, then what isn’t? Because of Obama’s tendency to hide behind his race, or promote himself using his race, he has encouraged this sort of thing.
Ask yourself this: Which campaign has an interest in racial politics at this point? To the extent there are people in America who are going to vote against a candidate because of his race, they’re probably not in the undecided column at this point. But there are a lot of people in the undecided column who would be extremely turned off if they thought one campaign was using racial tactics. Since there’s zero chance that the media would call out Obama even if he made explicit appeals to race (he has come close on several occasions, and it took the McCain campaign, not the media, to call him out on it), only Obama benefits from talk of race at this point.
So watch for the media to turn this campaign to a conversation about race. Neither they nor the Obama campaign have the slightest compunction about tearing apart old wounds if it helps their candidate.
Apollo posted this at 10:29 AM EDT on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 as Journalism, Race, Audacity of Hype