Former President Jimmy Carter (whose accomplishments in race relations as president escape me at the moment), declared the other day that most of the opposition to President Obama's policies and beliefs are driven by racism.
I agree that there are small minded people, who inject some form of discrimination into all of their views. This is true of Southerners and Northerners, New Yorkers and people from the Mid West. Do you know any white people from the North, and/or Media people, who almost instinctively lower their assessments of someone's IQ because that someone speaks with a southern accent? How many people stereotype people from the deep South as racist or ignorant? I grew up in New York, where many people referred to the part of the country where we live (middle America) as "the flyover zone", with a disdainful stereotyping of the people "out there" as not very intelligent, and the whole area as not worth stopping in on your way to the other cultured part of the country (California). Jews, homosexuals and blacks are still discriminated against in this society, as are most of us, by some, for one reason or another. Some types of discrimination have been much worse than others, for sure.
But, the point is that the discrimination against Jews, black Americans and homosexuals, while still painful and wrong, has diminished to the point that it is a very small obstacle to success, and almost irrelevant in political discussion. Further, it has gotten to a point where overemphasis is deleterious to those groups, rather than helpful. From the President of the U.S., to the supreme court, to Secretaries of State, to sports and media, to Oprah, to the corporate heads of giants like American Express and Wall Street firms to college admissions, to being lawyers or doctors...to owning homes or starting businesses...these three groups do better in America than anywhere else in the world, and their ethnic or sexual or religious grouping now amounts to a speed bump in the pursuit of success. Yes, my liberal friends (and I mean that), as you often say...let's debate "...President Obama about his beliefs and policies..", and not whip out the race card as soon as someone disagrees with those beliefs and policies, trying to marginalize disagreement by calling it racism.
As for Jimmy Carter...yes you do know about him...if you don't, look it up, it's a matter of public record. It is not just that President Carter's church "…didn't have any black members." It's that the church (Plains Baptist) actively voted to not allow blacks to be members (1976 or 1977), while Carter was president (not something from when he was in college or in his twenties), and while he was a Deacon and Elder (leader) in that church!! This is significantly different than attending a church where there were no black members. Some of his own family members quit that church in protest and started a new church…but not the holier than thou Jimmy. This makes him a bona fide hypocrite, and not worth listening to.
Th Old Man
Old Man,
ReplyDeleteWell said, some excellent points here. The second paragraph is especially strong.
For the record, however, gay men unfortunately have lower incomes than straights in this country (as I pointed out earlier to Fred) and discrimination against them is worse in the U.S. than in many wealthy countries.
Carter's comments aside, the racism against Obama plastered all over the internet is truly breathtaking, I could not believe the racist emails I was bombarded with during the 2008 campaign. (Some of it isn't racist but prejudiced fears that he is an Arab, a Muslim, a Kenyan, Indonesian, the "other".) It would be naive to dismiss this stuff entirely, given our nation's history.
It should go without saying, of course, that none of this has anything to do with the Obama administration's actions or whether a given policy is good or bad.
Freyguy