Via Andrew, we have this observation from the liberal blogger Publius:
But the bigger problem here is that the Race Card Chorus plays on white resentment -- which remains a poisonous brew. I'm a child of the rural South. But you know what? Actual racism is a lot less common there -- we have a ways to go, but there has been real progress on that front.The more serious problem is white resentment. A lot of white people honestly think they have been significantly deprived of various things because of minorities. And it's hard to overstate how deeply these feelings run. It's not so much animosity toward people who are different -- it's the animosity of the aggrieved. They feel like they are the victims.
That's why race is a losing issue for Obama -- it's not so much that people are racist, but that they feel they are being punished because they're white (yes, I know how completely absurd this must sound to the black community).
With that in mind, take in this comment from Jim Pinkerton, excerpted here:
I hold in my hand proof that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell wants Barack Obama to lose the presidential election this November.What do I have? I have a July 31 press release announcing that Rendell has established a "Chief Diversity Officer" for the Keystone State backed up by the legal force of the state government.
Rendell's action is great news, of course, for the leftist-multiculturalist cause of "diversity." But Rendell's action is also an early warning indicator: It's a signal to non-leftists, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, of what an even greater emphasis on "diversity" might look like. That is to say, Rendell's action in Pennsylvania is a preview of what could happen next in Barack Obama's America. And that realization could be enough to put the 21 electoral votes of normally "blue" Pennsylvania in play.
Whoa there, Pinkerton, you might be saying. Rendell is a Democrat, and Democrats, as a party, are the leading proponents of "diversity"--also known as affirmative action, racial preferences, and, most bluntly of all, quotas. Moreover, Rendell, who strongly supported Hillary Rodham Clinton in the recent Democratic primary campaign, might simply be trying to get in good with Obama by "getting with the program," diversity-wise.
So by that reckoning, it makes perfect sense for Rendell to name a "Diversity Czar," Trent Hargrove, who would solemnly declare, "We will prepare a strategic plan that will make Pennsylvania a national leader in diversity management." No doubt the progressives of Philadelphia--not to mention Washington D.C. and San Francisco--will love such brave talk about "diversity management," but how will that sort of lefty boilerplate play in Allentown? In Aliquippa? In Altoona? Not well. Because the blue collars and ethnics in "Deer Hunter" Pennsylvania have learned, from bitter experience, that "diversity" and all its code-word synonyms have simply become a way to provide government aid to "fashionable" minorities at the expense of the hardscrabble majority.
If Obama were openly and credibly against affirmative action, this wouldn't be an issue. But he isn't, so it will be. Then again, McCain is unreliable on this issue (most Business Republican types are complete squishes on "diversity"). Obama is all too reliable on it, though, and that's probably going to cost him votes.
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DavidTC | August 6, 2008 10:13 PM, you write: the actual fact is, between the end of the civil war and the start of the civil rights movement, the rights for black people went steadily downhill as more and more mostly imagined slights happened to whites, who then took their anger out on them.
I think you're missing the fact that the war ended legal bondage. Most consider that to be a considerable improvement in the human rights of black Americans.
And if the pre-slavery white people weren't racist, why did they start importing African slaves in the first place, and then make and enforce laws to ensure that those people who escaped slavery were returned?
Um...so they'd have slaves? I think 'having slaves' is pretty much the point of all slavery.
Plenty of US states actually had involuntary servitude called 'indentured servants' that applied to other people coming over from England, and while that contract expired after about seven years, while it existed they didn't have any more rights than slaves.
England, the originator of American slavery, had slavery throughout most of the middle ages, of 'their own people', first as actual 'chattel slavery' where people were property, and later as serfdom, where people had almost no rights outside of those granted by their Land Lord, although at least could not be sold to others.
This stopped during the end of the middle ages, but was sadly revived at the Renaissance, using non-citizens. (As English citizens had managed to get their rights codified.) 'non-citizens' did not always mean 'black' or even 'not white'.
People throughout history have had slaves, of various colors often their own. It doesn't take any sort of racism to do it.
Now, opposition to ending slavery in the US was often based on racist grounds, simply because that was the only ground left. But the existence of slavery in the US does not need racism to explain it.
I understand why people want it to be so, they like to think the great moral evil that was slavery only existed because of ignorance, out of a belief that black people were inferior. I'd like to think so. But it's not so. In fact, that's almost exactly backwards...people seized on that idea to justify slavery as abolitionists started pushing in the middle of the 19th century.
I think you're missing the fact that the war ended legal bondage. Most consider that to be a considerable improvement in the human rights of black Americans.
I clearly said 'the end of the civil war'. I'm not repeating myself again, and won't respond to another post that pretends I'm talking about their rights during it.
And anyone who thinks that things weren't better for black people in 1870 than in 1930 has no concept of history. Jim Crow laws didn't show up until 1875, segregation did not exist in large amounts until around 1900, etc.
The civil rights of black people, after they were freed, was on a decline, all the way until the start of WWII, where they got, for the first time, pulled into the white labor pool. Attempting to send them back is what started the civil right's movement, although it took almost a generation to get up to speed.
DavidTC | August 7, 2008 11:49 AM, you write: Now, opposition to ending slavery in the US was often based on racist grounds, simply because that was the only ground left. But the existence of slavery in the US does not need racism to explain it.
You've got your history wrong. By the time black slavery started in the colonies, indentured servitude was long ended in England itself. The colonial slavery existed for some years and then was ended by Act of Parliament. Slavery remained in the former colonies of the United States because English law at that time no longer applied.
Colonial slavery was always justified on both racial and biblical grounds. It did not derive from the earlier bonded servitude form that had died out in the early moden era.
You've got your history wrong. By the time black slavery started in the colonies, indentured servitude was long ended in England itself. The colonial slavery existed for some years and then was ended by Act of Parliament. Slavery remained in the former colonies of the United States because English law at that time no longer applied.
Huh? I didn't say they happened at the same time...I didn't even mention indentured servitude in England at all. Although it's worth pointing out that almost all indentured servants before the American revolution were sold into servitude in England (For being debtors or thieves, i.e., people who ran out of money), and then shipped here, it seems unlikely they had stopped at any meaningful amount of time previously. (Unless by 'ended in England itself' you mean something entirely different.)
In fact, at least 50%, and possibly more, of all people who moved to America before revolution arrived as indentured servants from England. And it's worth pointing out the US constitution explicitly mentions indentured servants. 'those bound to Service for a Term of Years' count as full people. Obviously, indentured servitude had not ended at that time.
Considering African slavery started in the colonies as early as the 1600, and indentured servitude appeared to exist, from England, as late as the American revolution, I fail to see how you can assert that the former didn't start until the later had ended.
Racism exist in all cultures even among the so called minorities
Lack of honesty is unfair
The amount of speech codes had gag the rational and analytical abilities of many Americans , regarding if they are 'progressive, conservative , centrist etc
Because free minds , inquisitive mind flourish when they are not mold by
Self restrain and barriers which enclosed them in
reduce field of reasoning and self discovery
the level of indoctrination which have inoculated generations of Americans is real and the consequences are all over the place
More when it is constantly reinforce in all areas of our lives. School, house of worships, media, news commercials, programs , business, government
How come
most American can escape the trap when everywhere they turned they get target
So demagogery bread counter demagogery
And our nation has being divided and populated largely by 'communities' who bunker themselves in their similarities , creating outsider of the ones who does not share their same profile
No longer America is a land where Individualism counted
Where people connect to others in less closed minded way, Now group thinking is the norm from race to social cultural, gender, sex etc
Which have atomized the American mind almost close to be beyond recognition? Is there still one nation, one nationality one identity?
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