Posted on 11/23/2010 6:58:09 AM PST by Libloather
Palin needs a history lesson
RICHARD COHEN
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
When I was 11, my father thought it was time to show my sister and me the nation's capital.
**SNIP**
It's appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact - indeed so many facts of American history. They don't offer the slightest hint that they can appreciate the history of the Obama family and that in Michelle's case, her ancestors were slaves - Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one. Even after they were freed they were consigned to peonage, second-class citizens, forbidden to vote in much of the South, dissuaded from doing so in some of the North, relegated to separate schools, restaurants, churches, hotels, waiting rooms of train stations, the back of the bus, the other side of the tracks, the mortuary, the cemetery and, if whites could manage it, heaven itself.
It was the government that oppressed blacks, enforcing the laws that imprisoned them and hanged them for crimes grave and trivial, whipped them if they bolted for freedom and, in the Civil War, massacred them if they were captured fighting for the North. And yet if African Americans hesitate in embracing the mythical wonderfulness of America, they are accused of racism - of having the gall to know more about their own experience and history than Palin and others think they should.
Why do politicians such as Palin and commentators such as Glenn Beck insist that African Americans go blank on their own history - as blank as apparently Palin and Beck are themselves?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’ve heard it said that Muhammed Ali realized how much better off he was living in America after he went to Africa.
It’s all in the way you look at it. I feel sorry that Black people are taught this way. It keeps them down and angry. It’s probably part of the Dem. plan, so unfortunately, it will probably continue.
LLS
Michelle is not nor ever was a slave. Next!
Michelle may have been “more aware of my ‘blackness’ than ever before” but she didn’t live through anything like her ancestors did. I am sure I would be “more aware of my ‘whiteness’ than ever before” if I were dropped off in certain neighborhoods.
I can’t imagine that an affirmative action black woman (who go a law degree and somehow “lost” it) in this day and age never saw a “proud of her country” moment before her knucklehead husband got elected.
"In 1959, Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organised by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya archives at Stanford University. Funds provided the following year by John F. Kennedy's family paid off old debts and subsidized student stipends, therefore indirectly benefiting Obama Sr. and other members of the 1959 cohort.""Facts are subborn things."
This article says a lot more about Richard Cohen than it does Sarah Palin. For people like Cohen, the glass is always half empty. As if white Americans didn’t know about the evils of slavery. The fact is Michelle Obama was not born a slave and has basically had many things handed to her. A great percentage of Black Americans live better than many middle class whites of the fifties and sixties. There is today a black middle class something that couldn’t be said forty or fifty years ago. Because in this country history doesn’t stand still. Cohen fails to grasp that obviously.
Good one!
The founder of FR was Wookie Obama’s great-great-grandpa???
... and that in Michelle’s case, her ancestors were slaves - Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one.
Hmmm, trouble wrapping my head around this one./s/
So Jackie Robinson(R) is partially responsible for Barry having a son in America?!
If I'm not mistaken I do believe one of O's great, great someone-or-other on his mother's side was a slave owner......
The brilliant, really really smart intellectual genius, whose intelligence is incomprehensible, speaks.
/s/
IMHO
I’m sure my great-great-great-grandfather had a rough life. In fact, he ended up dying.
Other than that, whatever he did or didn’t do doesn’t really matter a whole lot to me today.
Exactly! And why are the lefties so DETERMINED to miss every point in the place? This is one of my pettest peeves with these people, and one of the major reasons why I don't even attempt to have a discussion with one of them.
“It was the government that oppressed blacks, enforcing the laws that imprisoned them and hanged them for crimes grave and trivial, whipped them if they bolted for freedom”
Sounds like a good argument for limited government to me! (Don’t these morons ever listen to themselves?) FWIW-as an American of British/Saxon lineage, my ancestors were also enslaved, but I’ve managed to come to terms with the trauma.
It’s hardly possible that she is not knowledgeable about the history of African Americans - no Ellis Island for them, immigrants in their colorful native dress waving at the camera.
Apparently Mr. Cohen needs a history lesson himself. Ellis island was opened in the 1890’s. Had Michelle’s relatives come over at that time, they would have gone through Ellis island just like everyone else. The rest of us had no Ellis Island either.
She could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America.
I guess Obama failed at that too, wasn’t he supposed to change Black Amreica, White America, Hispanic America to the United States of America? I’m pretty sure that was the big message in one of his speeches.
Btt
Did Palin’s great great grandparents not own slaves like Barack’s did?
Is that why she doesn’t understand our history? That, or not have a marxist history prof in college?
BTW, correct response ... “You Betcha!”
Sarah rightfully focuses upon Michelle's revealing remark that exposes the hostility of the ruling elite. Despite her private feelings, even Michelle will not publicly defend her resentment against the country. Cohen apparently feels equal or greater malice and is not shy about proclaiming it. He is betting that shouts of racism will stop Sarah from shining a light on the unpatriotic hostility of the established elite.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.