Posted on 03/19/2008 5:41:49 AM PDT by Revelation 911
Sorry, Barack, it doesn't wash.
Your elderly white grandmother being afraid of black men who pass her on the street is not the moral equivalent of your pastor saying that black people should pray that God will “damn America.”
Your claim that you winced when your white grandmother bought into racial stereotypes does not excuse you for spending your entire adult life in the pews of a man who claims that white people in the United States government invented AIDS to “genocide” black people.
And the fact that your genealogy is racially diverse doesn't change the fact that since you got out of college you have chosen to worship at a church which preaches black nationalism. Your family history is racially diverse, but your life choices are not.
You were in the congregation, Barack, and that wasn't an accident. It wasn't a few sporadic insane rants, it was a fundamental philosophy. We've seen your church's website, we've heard your pastor preach.
And we've heard how the congregation reacted.
Because while you now – when it is politically essential to do so – disavow your closest spiritual advisor, it is clear from the videotape of him at the pulpit that the rest of the congregation heartily agreed with his most outlandish statements. His worst rantings were not greeted by embarrassed silence, they were met by rousing cheers.
How likely is it, Senator Obama, that you would have freely spent 20 years of your life in a church whose pastor and congregation were in fundamental disagreement with you?
It is not likely at all.
Your claim that you didn't hear your pastor's views on the United States is not credible. While you were a member of his church – a church you selected after a search of several – there were 20 Fourth of Julys, 20 Flag Days, 20 Memorial Days and 20 Veterans Days. It is inconceivable that your pastor's open contempt for the United States was not discernible to you on any of those 80 days of American patriotism.
If John McCain had been in the congregation, he would have walked up and punched the man. If Hillary Clinton had been in the congregation, she would have walked out. Barack Obama was in the congregation and he stayed for 20 years.
To claim that this man is a part of your family, but that you weren't aware of his most passionate political and racial views, is not believable. Seriously, is it your claim, Barack, that this man – your intimate friend and close spiritual advisor – never mentioned his political views to you as you became first an Illinois senator and then a United States senator?
He advised his congregants to write and call their representatives, but he didn't ever talk politics with the politician in his congregation?
How is that believable?
And how is it that a white politician is damned for a single visit to Jerry Falwell or Bob Jones but you are to go unquestioned for some 1,000 visits to a church whose leaders' racial views are far more strident?
And do you really expect anybody to believe that this black racial “anger” that you speak of is a phenomenon of just the older generation? Is it really your assertion, Barack, that that anger – or, to be more accurate, racism – is found only in African-Americans the age of your pastor? Do you think that's a credible claim?
And do you think that these barbershop and dinner-table conversations you say blacks have, the ones in which they express racial anger against whites, do you really think they are morally excusable or justified? Don't you think instead of explaining and condoning such attitudes that you should challenge and condemn them?
If racism among whites is worthy of condemnation, why isn't it among blacks?
And if your grandmother's supposed racial stereotypes made you wince, what do these barbershop and dinner-table racial stereotypes make you do? If racism is damaging to the people who have it in their hearts, why don't you save the folks having these barbershop conversations from the moral damage of their own prejudice and bigotry?
Why didn't you challenge the attitudes of the people you go to church with? For 20 years you were up to your eyeteeth in black separatism and black anger, and instead of challenging those attitudes, you either silently assented to them or went along with them. With that background, how do you honestly think you could be entrusted to “bridge America's racial divide?”
With all respect, senator, it seems like you've spent your adult life as a partisan on one side of the racial divide. Why should anybody on the other side, or anybody who doesn't share your view that racial division is our most pressing national concern, think you could be fair or objective?
Because it's clear you don't understand how white people feel or act.
In your remarks yesterday, just before you tried to unite whites and blacks in your Marxist hatred of corporations and rich people, you claimed that white people, when they get together, express “racial anger” against black people.
You got that wrong.
Not to be rude, but white people mostly don't give a damn. White people mostly don't see the great divide your pastor has based his ministry on. White people, when they are at the barbershop or dining-room table, usually talk about their families or sports or what they saw on TV or what their plans are for the weekend. While black people might be bubbling over with “racial anger” at white people, white people usually have something more interesting to talk about.
Sorry.
And I'm sorry that there is such a clear double standard in American society and politics. Racism among blacks is fine and racism among whites is condemned. No amount of racism among whites is tolerable and any amount of racism among blacks seems just fine. Called on it, the ridiculous argument is made that blacks cannot be racist because they don't control the institutions of power, or some such nonsense. That is simply preposterous.
While Barack Obama calls for bridging the racial divide, his own campaign benefits by it, and the double standard that underpins it.
Barack Obama is, for example, the “black candidate” -- if you are black. But if you are white, and you say that he is the “black candidate,” you are a racist. Just ask Geraldine Ferraro. Black supporters clearly and constantly support him on the basis of race, but if anyone who's not black points that out, they're a racist.
How does that make any sense?
The great challenge Barack Obama had yesterday was to keep the support of those who agree with his pastor while trying to get the support of those who don't.
The simple fact is that the views of his pastor have a significant following among American blacks. The pastor didn't build a national following among blacks by preaching about the Sermon on the Mount. What the pastor says resonates with a great many black people.
And those black people have been Barack Obama's margin of victory time and time again. When you're drawing 90 to 95 percent of the black vote in a Democratic primary, you know who you owe your success to.
Barack Obama's career and political success are based on a black-centered approach to life. That is his right. But to now claim some race-straddling position, bridging the gap between whites and blacks as a neutral mediator, is just not believable.
And neither does it reflect the fact that though blacks are America's longest-standing minority community, they are not its largest. There are blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians in this country, and Indians and Middle Easterners and Pacific Islanders.
And somebody worthy of being president would hold them all to the same standard and extend to them all the same respect and support.
And he would call them all the same thing.
Americans.
The problems with race in this country come from people forgetting that they are first and foremost Americans, with a bond of citizenship and brotherhood to all other Americans.
A president should teach that this is the greatest country on Earth and that its citizens are “created equal” and that this nation is “indivisible.”
And so should his pastor.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2008
It doesn’t ring true. I am afraid that the GOP may overplay this hand.
Great clear-sighted essay. Thanks for posting it!
Go to Bob’s column and read some of the excellent posts in response. Way to go, Bob! You said it extremely well!
he got real quiet when I asked him if he should be responsible for what Joe Smith preached
This seems like an excuse for failure to me. He implied that past racism, Jim Crow, slavery, on black ancestors put their decendents at a disadvantage today. Well, you can either work for a solution or use an excuse, and Obama chose the latter.
Here is the problem I have:
According to his autobiography, his grandmother became scared when a black man at the bus stop demanded money. She gave him some, but he said it wasn’t enough and started shouting at her. She said that she was glad the bus arrived when it did, because she was afraid the man was going to hit her.
According to The Speech, that sort of racism from the grandmother who raised her black grandchild is the reason his pastor’s rage against America and whites is understandable.
This white guy thinks Barack’s grandmother wasn’t acting racist at all. If Barack thinks she was, then he has a racist chip on his shoulder every bit as large as his wife’s and his pastor’s!
Geez, good catch! Another Barrack lie/spin. His poor gramma gets shaken down by a thug and now she becomes the white posterwoman for racial hatred, equivalent to his vile black pastor. In all reality, an old woman should be fearful of ANY man approaching her in that way, but statistically speaking even more so a black man.
I said something very similar to this yesterday. Bob really nailed this one.
Awesome article.
bump
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