What prompted this question? As I write this I’m tuned into VPR – Vermont Public Radio on a discussion about race and racial issues in this election. As most know, Vermont is a small rural white state with few African-Americans – so few that we (I’m bi-racial hail from the near abroad) can be counted on your hands, feet, toes and fingers. Yet Obama won the state in the Primaries, collected a money haul, last figure – if memory serves – of $400,000 to Clinton’s $47,000.
Obama is of bi-racial descent; a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya. He has been smeared by Lieberman and McCain as unpatriotic and foreign and, and, and, Afro-American. Albeit Obama is intelligent enough to be promoted as the ‘One’ a “Moses’
What has Obama done to be so deserving of these smears and mockery?
OMG. he’s black, he’s scary black. Has anyone noticed that in every McCain ad Obama is surrounded only by white women? Begs the question,… are there’s no Afro-American women in America or has McCain written off every non-white vote.
Why is Obama not considered a patriotic half-white American? Why is he being overlooked as half-white?
McCain-Lieberman and friends, Cokie Roberts, the uncomfortable Juan Williams – NPR’s resident dishonest critics, – all will deny they’re playing the race card, playing from the bottom of the sewer. We’re not fooled. Yes, Williams is helping out in playing the race card. We can smell it tens of thousands of miles away.
I’ve always resented the hyphenated label: Afro-American, Hispanic-American, Chinese-American.
Frankly, we’re compelled to conclude “American” is a category, a label reserved for only Whites. We could say this hyphenated land feels much like 1970-80s South Africa or 1950-1960s America. The “Whytes Only” mindset has not disappeared. The message, the odor of this campaign tells me if you’re not pure white in your DNA, you cannot aspire to run for the Presidency of the United States. …even if you discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS, No. You. Won’t. be. allowed.
“you’re inexperienced” or “you’re elitist,” or “you’re foreign” or you’re not American” ..these are the new code words. Or hey, “you’re over-qualified” for the job (the old code). Just saying,… it’s all sanitized racial hate.
I highly recommend to McCain- Lieberman, Cokie Roberts, Mark Penn and all tag along bigots to an essay by One Drop, at Too Sense
I take liberties.
To Those Who Claim Obama Is Not American..
…you obviously have no idea of what being “American” really means.
Let’s consider one of the central American mythic archetypes, that of the hero who comes from a modest background, strikes out on his (or her) own, “pulls himself up by his bootstraps” and somehow makes a name for himself. The “self made man” of American legend. Think of Abraham Lincoln, the frontier lawyer born in a log cabin, who later became President of the United States, quite possibly the greatest of all of the Presidents who succeeded George Washington; Thomas Edison, the home-schooled boy who grew up to become one of history’s most prolific inventors, as well as the founder of General Electric; John D. Rockefeller, the son of an itinerant traveling salesmen, who went on to found Standard Oil, ultimately becoming the richest man in history; or Cornelius Vanderbilt, who worked on ferries in and around New York as a boy, quitting school at age 11 to start his own ferry business, and gradually expanding into steamships and later railroads (his son, William Henry Vanderbilt, inherited nearly $100 million from him when he died in 1877).
Obama’s life story is entirely consistent with the “self made man” mythos. Here is a man who came from modest financial cicrumstances, raised by a single mother and maternal grandparents, who worked his way into some of the most prestigious universities in the World and went on to become a best-selling author; the fifth African-American United States Senator (the third to be popularly elected); and later the first African-American nominated by a major party to be President of the United States. Nothing given to him on a silver spoon, no prominent family name upon which to rely, no great inheritance with which to support himself. Individual effort, amazing results. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the very embodiment of the American Dream.
Those who claim that Obama is “Not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values” are speaking either from a position of extreme ignorance regarding the meaning of American identity, or they are speaking from a position of racial chauvinism (at best) or outright racial hostility. Of course, there is also a fair bit of nativist thinking in this response to Obama, spurred by his African father and by the years he spent in Indonesia. Even his upbringing in Hawaii is somehow described as being too “foreign” or “exotic”, notwithstanding the fact that Hawaii is, you know, part of America.
You cannot logically review Obama’s life story and conclude that he is un-American unless you restrict your definition of “American” to white people, or people with two American parents, or people who have never lived abroad…or, better yet, all three.
The man has played by the rules that are supposedly laid out before all Americans: work hard, study hard, apply yourself, and great things can happen. Even if you come from limited financial means, you can achieve.
[.]I am not suggesting that all who oppose Obama’s candidacy do so for racial reasons. You can certainly find a lot of political issues upon which to disagree with Obama, and it is perfectly valid to oppose him on those grounds. There is nothing wrong with considering Obama and deciding that he is too young, too inexperienced, to shoulder the awesome burdens of the Presidency. One could even decide that somehow Obama seems “too good to be true.” None of those rationales have anything to do with race, and I’m sure they form the basis for a lot of people’s decisions not to support Obama. It is vitally important to recognize that not everything is about race in this campaign.[.]
That being said, suggesting that Obama is not American, that he is somehow “foreign” or “other”, that argument is entirely about heritage, about race..Nothing else differentiates Obama in any substantive way from the Abraham Lincolns and Cornelius Vanderbilts of American history. He has come from the same small beginnings…[.]
The only basis to separate him from that august group is the fact that they were white, and he is biracial.As a nation, we are supposed to be better than that. At least, in theory we are. But that theory is not self-executing. We have to work to make it true, we have to engage those who undermine it, stand against it. We cannot allow them to claim ownership of the meaning of being an “American”. We mustn’t cede to them the authority to determine who may or may not be American.
(highlights added)
So for Joe Lieberman, a person who, imho, displays dual loyalties – who puts Israel’s interest ahead of America’s – and for McCain to endorse Joe’s statement that:
Obama Has Not Always “Put The Country First” is hurtful and really, very offensive.
The New York Times International Herald Tribune has obliged to disseminate Lieberman’s attack. (HT: TPM)
Had this attack –“Not always putting the country first” been leveled at a Lieberman, a Cohen or Cantor, as the presumptive nominee, there would be howls of outrage. “That’s anti-semitism”…”that’s hate”
But no, we’re told to “relax and enjoy.”
Mockery is fun.
Joe Lieberman and John McCain owes ALL Americans a long apology.
Why?
McCain broke his promise to conduct a campaign with honor.
Guess it depends.