Whenever race is mentioned, it hurts Barack Obama‘s presidency. The very basis of his presidency is that he is the post-racial president. Now he finds himself knee-deep into racial politics.
Some is of his own doing. In suing Arizona over immigration reform, he takes a step that alienates the three-quarters of Anglo voters who back the law. In refusing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for their blatant intimidation of white voters in 2008, he alienates fair-thinking people of both races. But in firing Shirley Sherrod, he showed African-Americans that he was caving in to pressure from Fox News and the conservatives. Then, by reversing field and reinstating her, the president and his agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, show whites and Republicans-independent voters that he is caving in to pressure from the African-American community.
There are two common denominators to this equation: race and weakness. Any involvement in racial politics has to hurt Obama at his core. It goes to his fundamental selling point: that he is post racial. By dealing with race repeatedly, he is vulnerable just as Bill Clinton was when he always had to deal with sexual scandal.
It is not his strength but can ultimately destroy his credibility.
And then there is weakness. By caving in first to the right and then to the left, Obama acts and looks indecisive and weak. He comes across as out of control and projects the same image of incapacity and chaos that he so amply demonstrated when the oil was gushing in the gulf. He reminds one of the opening days of the Clinton adminsitration, when it tied itself in knots over the issue of gays in the military. It looks like amateur hour at the White House.
Obama has two conflicting goals: He wants to expand his base among whites and heighten enthusiasm of blacks. Good goals, both. But if he uses racial issues to accomplish either objective — as he appears to do in the Sherrod controversy — he alienates one group in order to win the other. Not a good strategy.
Do you like this story?
There is absolutely nothing post-racial about his presidency. Race is the front card in just about everything.
What does surprise me is that there was no discussion of race during this Gulf oil spill. As I recall during the Katrina mess, many victims were poor black, so Bush was called a racist. Well, the face of the victims of this BP mess seem to be white (white fishermen, white owners of oil companies, etc.) and Obama seems to have sat on his hands. Maybe he has been so slow to respond because the victims seem to be white-had the color of the majority of victims been darker, perhaps he would not have done nothing for so long. I don't know…..
Starting a race war hasn't been seriously tried since … Charles Manson.
Here is a concern that I have: "Progressives" and "liberals" have used the the term "racist" so casually, carelessly, and cynically for the last few decades that the term is losing its power. Because of the slow gains in civil rights in the mid-20th century, the term once could check the uglier aspects of bigotry and prejudice. Now, however, the term has been used so often and so inaccurately that it is beginning to be like "the boy who cried 'wolf'". People may start saying, "So I am a racist – who cares?" And if that happens, it will be much more difficult to stop real racism. We need to be ready and active in stopping real racism; it is always there, and we don't want that monster on the lose again.
I'm at the point where I don't care. I've had the "racist" term flung at me and others so much, that the term doesn't bother me. There are worse things one can be called.
I've been living for many, many years -decades- as a white guy, hearing "honkey," "paddy-boy," "cracker," and the like. Over those years, I've rarely heard a white person call a black person "nigger" (I bet either my post or that word will be bleeped out). Dennis Prager has repeatedly said that he's never met a white racist. I can't say that, I've met a few in my time, but I agree with him that there don't seem to be very many and what few there are, are perceived by their fellow whites as 'way out of the mainstream. But I've heard lots of black people make racist remarks, not only about whites in general, but also Jews, Koreans, and others.
The term "racist" is more at home with black Americans than it is with white ones.
I KNEW that would happen!
Its great that you have found comfort in what you are, enjoy.
I really don't like these labels. I know that sounds simple, but it makes sense. That is why I am not real quick to throw the communist/sociaist term around. I don't really know what a racist is, except that, I suppose, you could define it as someone who believe in the superiority of one of the three races, i.e., Negro, Caucasian, or Mongolian over the others. However, that is not illegal, except in certain contexts where you act upon it. Likewise, it is not illegal to be a communist/socialist. These labels do indicate that the person may have an opinion with a biased point of view, and have an agenda, but most people, powerful and otherwise have an agenda and a bias. Even if we assume someone is "racist", or a "communist" or "socialist" doesn't mean that everything they say is untrue.
Obama's weird panic attack that supposedly caused him to order Vilsack to fire Sherrod isn't about weakness or indeciseness, it's about hair trigger stupidity.
Obama's actions were quick, decisive and, like all of his decisions, not based on any facts or logic. Obama bases all of his decisions on his pragmatized Marxist world view which says eliminate all threats quickly regardless of injustices done to innocent people.
The sequence of events is remarkable. First Sherrod is fired for being a racist, then she is rehired because it seemed she wasn't a racist. Finally, it is revealed that Sherrod is, in fact, incapable of seeing things in other than racial terms and she is driven more by class warfare than racial animosity. All this, and the fact that her public statements since her firing/rehiring have shown her to have almost no perceptible intelligence at all.
We are fortunate that Obama is a fool. A really clever leftist president would be incomparably more dangerous.
I presume he was quick to fire her to prove he's colour blind, being sensitive to criticism about his rash implication that the Cambridge police dept was racist.
Please get your facts correct, the President didn't fire her, the head of the dept. fired her and merely sent a fyi memo to the white house whose response was okay. Why isn't anyone calling for an investigation of the usda and all the charges of race discrimination against Black farmers? Because you rednecks only care about attacking the President, there can be no racial harmony period.
Well said. Do I have permission to use these words in my next argument with a "progressive"?
Sure, go ahead.
Obama should divorce Michelle and marry Sherrod. Then he should then apply for membership in the New Black Panther Party and CAIR. He will have come full circle to becoming the person he really is.
American Christian Infidel
Michael Canzano
Boy, DICK, you are quick to eqivocate for Obamama. First, how do you know he was involved in the firing by Vilsack? Does that fit into the template of what he has done so far-using DOJ, Gates Gate, etc?? Nobody knows. But we can assume with a high degree of certainty that he was involved with the rehiring and promotion of Sherrod.
Second, where do you get the idea that he caved to the right? In what planet do you live on? Dear Leader would be the last progressive to listen to the right. Third, how do you know he wants to expand his white voting base? He got enough last time to win….So?? He knows he has lost many white voters-at least those who have minimal brain activity on an EEG and who voted for him last time. And what he loses in white voters he hopes to gain in brown and illegal voters.
SO DICK, unless you are trying to keep the door open for a position in a progressive administration please, next time, try not to eqivocate.
It was widely reported in the media that the White House called for the firing of Sherrod. On what planet do YOU live on?
Radical Democrats and other Progressives in general have resorted too frequently to using the "race card," as has Obama. I would also conclude that this "post-racial" President has done more to damage race relations than any other person, event or action in the last 25 years. From those seeking admission to the Coast Guard to which GM dealerships closed, to the appointment of "Communist" Van Jones, to the dropping of charges of three Black Panthers at a voting precinct, the Obama administration's policies are race based. The standard tool of demonization of the opponents is starting to sound like Chicken Little saying "the sky is falling." The "sky" may fall on Democrats in 2012, if their only Saul Alinsky response to Tea Partiers, Republicans and Libertarians is to call names.
You can lead a redneck to water , but you can't make it drink, Van Jones is still right.
Racist!
Take his finger off the trigger!
I guess the Symbionese Liberation Army's effort doesn't count.
You can lead a liberal to knowledge, but you can't make them think.
The noise made by a leftist/Marxist screaming "racist" is indistinguishable from that of a Nazi screaming "Jew!"
I hope that the right and left both pull on Obama and pull him apart.
I agree with most of the article except for the part about Shirley Sherrod. How can the author state that Obama fired her after caving in to pressure from Fox News when in fact the lady was fired several hours BEFORE Fox News reported the story? No one had ever heard of Shirley Sherrod, who is fairly low on the totem pole, until Breitbart reported the whole incident. It was then picked up by Fox hours later when the damage was already done.
To the author of this article, please fact check next time!
I feel really y bad that this has happened. We've tried to be as fair and open-minded as possible and he keeps sticing his foot in his mouth on race. Mr. President, please drop the topic, you're tearing us apart here.
I dissagree with the statement that Fox News pressured him. He is the President
We don't want racism on the looose the way it was after the Civil War when the Jim Crow Laws were enacted. We also don't want a repeat of the revisionists efforts to erase all the brilliant and brave black patriotw who fought alongside of their white counterparts either. Such bold daring men as Peter Salem, James Armistead who later changed his name to James Lafayette. These brave men fought for our country too. It's wrong to try to erase them from our history. Thank God Texas has fought to get them and many more back into the textbooks. What would have happened if Jonas Clark and his church had not responded to the call to battle? I don't think things would have gone well at all. The Late 18th century and early 19th century were the real time of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King was a part of the modern Civil Rights movement.