Posted on 08/17/2013 8:57:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Recent comments by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul and by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have me thinking about the taboo subject of race in America.
Reid was asked about the monolithic opposition by Congressional Republicans to anything proposed by Barack Obama, America’s first African American president.
“I hope – and I say this seriously – I hope that’s based on substance and not the fact that he’s African American,” Reid answered.
Republicans howled and accused Reid of playing “the race card.” South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott – the Senate’s only African American – called Reid’s comments “shameful.”
Still, consider this. One 2008 presidential candidate was born outside the United States: John McCain was born in Panama. But it was the candidate from Hawaii whose eligibility was questioned.
Paul was asked about election laws passed in some southern states in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. He rightly called Jim Crow-era literacy tests “an abomination,” but went on to say that there is “no objective evidence” of current efforts to suppress African American voters.
Last summer the Pennsylvania House Majority Leader, Republican Mike Turzai, said that state’s new voter registration and I.D. law would “allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” (Courts threw the law out prior to the election.)
I’m not accusing anyone of racism. I genuinely believe Paul’s political philosophy is based on his belief that his positions are intellectually justified and not based in anyway on caste or social superiority.
But my life is full of personal examples of how whites and blacks perceive the world very differently.
A couple of months ago, I pulled into a parking lot to take a call on my cell phone. As I talked, I absent-mindedly flipped the lock-unlock button. Suddenly, there was an angry young black man yelling outside my car. At first I was confused – until it suddenly occurred to me why.
It was something I’d never thought about. A couple of weeks later, I heard Obama talking about how common it is for young black men to hear car locks clicking as they walk by.
Years ago, while visiting a rural high school, I noticed several pickups with Confederate “Stars and Bars” plates in the student parking lot. I knew some of those kids and I asked them why they displayed the plates. They all told me the same thing: it was about pride in their southern heritage and had nothing to do with race, and I believed most of them.
But I also knew that slavery was the foundation on which that heritage was constructed and that every African American who saw those plates interpreted an entirely different message.
A friend of mine asks me if it’s not equally racist for an African American to vote for Obama simply because he’s black as it is for a white person to vote against Obama for the same reason.
Both are obviously racial responses. But there’s a big difference between having the chance for the first time in your life to vote for someone “who looks like me” than rejecting someone simply because he doesn’t.
Be honest. If the first 43 presidents had been black, would it surprise you that I – as a white man – might relish the opportunity to vote for a white candidate?
If Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, don’t you think there’ll be at least some Republican women who vote for her?
We live side by side in the same world but usually in two absolutely different realities. We all should try much harder to see the other one.
Isn’t the mulatto 0bama really an American-African (as opposed to JF’nK’s African American wife)?
Years ago while attending a suburban/rural southern HS, I remember long guns on the rack in the rear windows of pickups ( and a handgun under the driver's seat of a VW bug driven by a friend).
No, Ronnie. We live in the same reality, but only one side suffers from a profound level of cognitive dissonance. Here's a clue: It's the side that elevated a drug-addled, hoodie-wearing, gangsta thug to sainthood.
There are just a whole lots of us who vote for a person because of what we share in common. In my case, and that of my family members, it has nothing to do with color but with culture, the way they live their personal life and their past record on issues that are important to me over the long haul, not just the year before the election. Except for Obama, I generally ignore all the promises as most make promises that anyone with half a brain knows they can’t keep.
I’m also not sure why any female, particularly one who is alone, would ever unlock a car door until they are ready to get out of the car. The door glass does not provide much protection but it does give you a little time to react defensively. So someone is offended because I lock the door as they are going by. Their problem, not mine. Get over it.
So blacks had the chance for the first time in their life to vote for someone “who looks like them” and that's OK. But the Democrats have had a white bread slate of presidential candidates forever. When have they ever had a black candidate that made it through the primaries? It was certainly the first time in my life that I had an opportunity to reject someone simply because he doesn’t look like me. (Usually I reject them because the clod is a communist and that was true this time as well.) But for once I had a unique opportunity that the Democrats had deliberately deprived all white Americans of in the past.
“”It’s the side that elevated a drug-addled, hoodie-wearing, gangsta thug to sainthood. “”
this will soon be referred to as RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY!
Taking their position, if Hitler were Black, we would all be speaking German.
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For the past half century white people have tried much, much harder than black people to see the other side. Yet, despite this greater effort, it's whites and not blacks that continue to get the lecture that they have to try harder to see the other side. Many whites are getting tired of this abusive, one-way relationship.
I’ll let the younger generation engage that struggle. I just avoid ferals as much as possible.
What the hell, I'll take this one.
Barack Obama's father was not an American citizen. At age 18, Obama's mother was one year too young to have conveyed her U.S. citizenship to her son if he was born outside the United States. The rules in place at that time specified that at least one parent must have been an American citizen for five years after age 14 to convey citizenship in the event of a birth outside the U.S.
John McCain's parents were both native born Americans. When he was born, John McCain's mother was 24 and his father was 25. John McCain could have been born anywhere in the world and there would have been no question that he acquired American citizenship at birth.
Now do you understand why Obama's eligibility was questioned and McCain's was not?
Of course you do! Gotta be that RACISM! It's the only game you know how to play.
To add to their self charged atmosphere are our black politicians supporting, incouraging and protecting the thug life style.
Perhaps we should encourage voluntary deportation of our unhappy masses to the country reserved for ex-slaves: Liberia. Liberia was established as a colony in 1820 by ex-American slaves. It was seen as a refuge for those fleeing the curse of slavery. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia
I suspect you could get a lot of people to donate to a fund that would give one way free air transportation to blacks willing to leave for Liberia. On arrival, their passports would be seized so they could never leave.
If voluntary deportation proves ineffective, then we start deporting our welfare addicts to a place where they will have to work or starve. Make certain that the Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, Barry Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan are among the first deportees.
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