Their Ancestors’ Ghosts
By pm317 on September 21, 2009 at 3:20 PM in Current Affairs
I think the recent race-baiting strategy of Obama (his are footprints in the sand) and his cronies backfired royally. Carter and many of Obama’s minions in the media went around casting every American who is questioning Obama’s reckless policies and his inability to communicate them in coherent terms (fired up, ready to go is not coherent) as a racist.
Nancy Pelosi even went in front of camera and cried fearing violence from the purported racists, I said cried — I would post the video but I can’t stand her. Instead I will give you a link where you can see the video and read additional commentary.
The realization that all this was backfiring came quite soon when Obama started acting like the good cop with his bad cop actors pushed to the side. He must have also sent a memo to his other media minions because they started talking about how it is not racism but just change. I am of course alarmed at their tactics but also watching the race dynamics in this country with some intellectual curiosity.
As an immigrant from India, I am new to this black/white dynamic in America.
I don’t look at myself as a colored person, even though someone in my work environment once referred to me as such in a conversation which felt strange to me. I don’t acknowledge my skin color status here in America through the black experience because that is not my heritage. In fact, I saw this same confidence in my foreign students coming from Africa. They did not want to be mistaken for the local AAs. They were proud to highlight their heritage and their distinct identity. What would it take for that kind of confidence to build in certain factions on both sides of the black and white divide in America, that they don’t have to be chained to their ancestors’ legacy?
I deplore anybody using stereotype or prejudice. I am also uncomfortable with the other two phenomena — the “white man’s burden” on the one hand and the racial bias on the other. Both equally cripple true democratic discourse. For instance, in people like Senator Byrd, there is evidence of bigoted behavior from the past. Did it have an impact in his decision to dismiss Hillary Clinton’s candidacy during the Democratic primary? Was it fear of being accused of racism if he didn’t support Obama and the specter of his KKK days being plastered on TV? Senator Byrd surely ignored that Hillary Clinton won WV handily and that she was the more experienced candidate. He must have known that Obama was an empty suit but still endorsed him. How many others suffered from this disease of white man’s guilt or fear before they voted for Obama?
On the other side of the divide, we had AAs voting for him in droves without the slightest regard for his merit or lack of it as a candidate. Even now, majority of them feel that the recent opposition to him is based on racism. In their racial bias, they did not pay attention to his lack of qualifications or experience and now feel that he should be given a pass. While a state senator in Chicago, he did not necessarily take good care of his constituents who were predominantly AA — see this fantastic Flineo video for a bit of evidence on that. In a nutshell what you see in that video is Obama’s grand accomplishment. With the incoming fire on ACORN these days, and Obama as a champion community organizer who propped that organization up, you have to wonder what he really did accomplish. Where are the results?
This much is certain. He used chicanery of the first rate to manipulate these diffident people in perpetuation of their own fears and false pride. He recognized that he can get more votes by crying racism than not.
Obama has squandered a wonderful opportunity in helping people on either side of the black and white divide come to terms with their ancestral ghosts. Imagine a different scenario where he would be truly race agnostic and encouraged people to be as such, wouldn’t that have been a confidence building measure for true racial progress? If he thought he needed to stoke race flames during the campaign to win, shame on him. But what is his excuse now?
While everyone reflects on this new race dynamic intruding on our democracy, we can’t let Obama and his minions off the hook for politicizing a grave and tragic national history (Bob Herbert of the NY Times is still at it, he didn’t get the WH memo).
In that context, ridicule is a powerful tool for most of us who are not drawn into their distortion, pro or con, to call them out. One such tool, a visual aid is this interesting flowchart from missourah.com (click on the picture to enlarge) — an Obama guide to who is a racist. If enough of us, rational and sane people keep talking about how these politicians and the corrupt media are out to manipulate you even with as serious a topic as racism, may be someday they will stop using it as a weapon or a crutch.
A sidenote about the flowchart: It is a well done chart. A “brown” person like me will get stuck in that endless loop at the bottom right corner which makes me chuckle. The loop accurately highlights the fact that the racial minorities can’t be labeled racist unless they believe that the dominant race is in fact superior to their own which is rare.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Sara and Linda for digging up the flowchart for me and to Lisa for her observation that it would have been a lot easier a generation ago to dig up other names with bigoted personal history like Byrd’s. The task of finding more names is made difficult because law of the land holds in spite of some politicians shortchanging the progress we make.






















