Hillary Clinton calls Bosnia sniper story a mistake

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by PLATO
I am astounded that some people here don't really understand racism. I guess that is probably because most of you have not spent a significant amount of time in the South. Not that racism doesn't/didn't exist outside the South, but it has been a particular topic of discussion and action here in ways that most other parts of the country are not really as aware as people who live here are.

Kid, you ask on what basis I can say the things I did? That is easy enough to answer. I have been involved in lending to so called "sub prime" people for most of my career. While a lot of the people who fall into this category are white, I believe that a disproportionate amount of them are minorities...specifically blacks. In a large part this is due to the overt discriminations of the past and to some extent the covert discriminations of the present. While great strides have been made in working toward equality, there is much left to be done. Working in Memphis, TN for a number of years allowed me to see this very clearly and up close (In case you were not aware, the population of Memphis is 70-75% African American).

In having this experience, I was able to see up close and personal the many types of discriminations that still go on. In speaking with and working with many leaders of the black community there, it also became clear that there is racism on both sides of this issue. One of the main differences was that the black community offered (nor was any requested from anyone) no apologies for overt acts of racism. I have been to movie theaters where I was asked to leave at knife point simply because I was white...while a black police officer looked on.

Without exception, these acts of racism are justified, by Blacks, due to treatment they have received from Whites in the past or feel like they are receiving now.

Barrack Obama's church falls into this justification system. The fact that Obama has made this his church home for twenty years speaks volumes to me. This church does not preach equality, it teaches Black supremacy. That is equally as bad as white supremacy. Everyone turns there head to that though because of past injustices. This is the mindset that Obama has embraced. He is politically correct enough to shout a message of unity, but clearly he believes the tenants of his church or he would not be attending there. By any real definition of a racist, Barrack Obama qualifies.

To say anything else is showing a lack of understanding of what racism really is. Now, the question is: Will Obama overcome his racism to preside over a government that promotes equality? This is the same question that could have been asked of many White candidates in the past as well.

In Obama's case, I like to think he can, but the issue is certainly worth exploring and questioning him on.

What?! Holy **** bud. Sorry about the racist threats on you, but you are way out of line, and I think your attitude is racist. You don't know these people. You are just assuming they are like the black people you have had experience with.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


I didn't put words in your mouth. I repeated some of the allegations of wright.

Face it you attempt to allow Wirght off the hook by claiming context (racial, societal context). But from every objective appearance it would seem to be a means to inflame already existing prejudices by preaching to the choir.

Objective? Man that's crap dude. You might as well form a possy and lynch the guy. That's about as objective as you have been.

[asleepathewheel]

so much for an open and honest dialog about race, I guess.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
so much for an open and honest dialog about race, I guess.

Is that what you wanted?

In interviews, parishioners say the true character of their church and pastor is distorted by the coverage of Wright and his words.

``It has to be put in the context of the black church, which grows out of a situation of slavery, where the message of Jesus Christ has always been linked to political and social issues,'' said Dwight Hopkins, a Trinity member and religion professor at the University of Chicago.

Trinity has posted full-length versions of Wright's sermons on the video-sharing Web site You Tube, which Moss said allows people to put the comments in context.

Obama's Church Battles `Negative Forces' in Uproar Over Pastor

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Conclusions? Instead of focusing on greed which pertains to all humans to some degree, he focused on "white" greed.

Because white greed is what hurt Black people as a group. That's not really hard to figure out, so either you're being deliberately stupid or it's just natural. Either way, it doesn't speak well for you.

[asleepathewheel]

from your linked article:

Moss, 37, has encouraged members not to talk to the media. Church personnel and volunteers police the lobby. The church bookstore stopped selling DVDs of Wright's preaching and wouldn't allow certain items to be purchased by anyone suspected of not being a member.

[chequita guevara]

Obama: Truth and Denial in Modern Amerikkka

by Mike Ely

Let’s start with some truths:

How rare it is to turn on TV and see someone state the simple truth that the U.S. is a racist country run by rich white men. It has been remarkable to hear the suddenly-famous Rev. Jeremiah Wright describe how leaders in the U.S. have no sense of the lives of the oppressed, especially African American people. To hear passionate denunciation of the import of drugs with high-level complicity, of the Three-Strikes law and of the prison warehousing of young Black men. It was startling to hear someone say that we can’t understand 9/11 and the reaction of the world without looking deeply at U.S. mass murder at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and a hundred places since. It was a rare moment where very basic truths were powerfully expressed in public view, on TV, in a way that saturates national discussion for a week.

But it all comes with enforced denial:

It is the method of this system (its media, its official commentators, the minders of its official politics) to only allow such truths into public to demonize them — to mock them as absurd, extremist, even racist.

Rev. Wright’s Black Liberation Theology views were allowed into the spotlight – just this once – in order to command a massive denunciation.

How dare anyone make the U.S. the moral equivalent of its enemies, they said?

How dare anyone talk of U.S. killings, killers, and war crimes in the same breath as 9/11?

How dare anyone connect Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with the acts of attack on the U.S.?

How dare anyone point to the racist experiments in Tuskegee that allowed Black men to die of syphilis, and then wonder publicly if the spread and neglect of the AIDS epidemic included a conscious genocidal edge?

How dare a state senator, a U.S. senator, or a Presidential contender even sit in the pews while such things are hinted? How dare Obama remain friends with a man who could say and believe such things?

And none of this denunciation was done with any respect or integrity: Did anyone investigate the theology of James Cone? Did anyone explain to the public what happened at Tuskegee, or what “killers” the U.S. had sent into the world?

And that brings us to the second set of truth and denial:

The truth is that elections are not held mainly to hear “what the voters think.” Let’s be clear: These ruthless monsters of empire, profit and war don’t suddenly stop (for a few months every four years) and turn over all their power and disputes for “millions of ordinary voters” to decide. That isn’t what happens. That isn’t what elections are for.

The truth is that elections are mainly held as a process of indoctrination and legitimization. This is when the usually-tuned-out broad population is instructed in how to think about major issues. This is a time for defining and enforcing the official limits of political thought. This is how the ruling establishment tests and picks a contending set of new rulers. And then the winning clique is legitimized by the ritual of popular approval.

In U.S. elections, those outside the confines of “responsible thought” are in for a public whupping. Nader was crushed and then blamed for Bush – and millions were instructed to never stray from the Democratic Party again (however reactionary, warlike, and semi-Republican those Democrats get). Kucinich was portrayed as a silly gnome, as a joke, as someone ridiculously outside the realm of the possible (because he was actually against all of these wars, because he supported nationalized health care, because he supported gay marriage etc.)

It is now widely said that the Democrats are self-destructing – in today’s New York Times one oped piece compared them to the Donner Party (the pioneers who ate each other in a snowstorm).

But the reality is that they are being skewered on their defining contradiction: Their party, leadership and candidates want to rule an empire, while their own base thinks that is wrong. Their party, leadership and candidates want to service the drug and insurance companies, while their own core base wants generalized affordable health care.

And so, the price of admission into the White House itself becomes (for Democratic contenders) the tortured repudiation of many things that are actually popular and true. In particular, the Democratic plans for “ending the war” must be “responsible” – that means protracted withdrawal, leaving troops behind (or just “over the horizon). And it generally means planning to end the U.S. occupation while still controlling Iraq through a “Iraqi army” made up of vicious mercenaries and committed religious sectarians (led by puppet generals who imagine themselves the next U.S.-backed Saddam Hussein).

The “discussion of race” has now been “broached”… and framed as a discussion over the essential goodness of the U.S.! Wright is portrayed as an America-hater who must be repudiated by all — especially those close to him. The bitterness, suspicion, anger and alienation felt by many Black people is portrayed as something malignant, repulsive, dangerous, and perverse. (Just watch John Stewart’s shout of “Yikes” after running a Wright clip.)

That is the starting point for a official “discussion of race.” The discussion of the actual truth is treated like the “third rail”: you insist that this is a profoundly racist country where the oppression of Black people has been built in as a structural defining dynamic of society, then you are (by official proclamation) far outside disqualified from holding power (or even speaking in the official media spotlights).

Deep truth runs into harshly enforced denial.

I will not analyse Obama’s speech responding to this challenge here. He has been twisting in the wind, while pretending to be rising above the fray. He tried to remain personally loyal to his friend Wright, while joining the political repudiation of Wright’s views. And even that hint of holding back (of seeming to tolerate the views of Rev. Wright) may yet end Obama’s political life – either before or after the nomination.

And that is a truth about America and its elections laid bare here: The price of admission is the denial of the truth. It is an upholding of the empire and the basic structures of this society – even while promises of change and transcendence are written into the scripts.

This country was founded on slavery, genocide and conquest. And the continued enforcement of caste-like oppression of millions of Black and immigrant peoples is central to how the U.S. functions and thrives (as a capitalist power). And that is why people in the 60s (and people like Wright from the 60s) sometimes write Amerikkka with three Ks (connecting the country itself with white supremacy). The KKK itself may be gone with the particular system of Jim Crow. But the modern forms and morphings of white supremacy demand to be exposed and overturned — while the official approach is to defend them by denying their existance.

This needs to be is a simple, basic starting point for understanding this place, and grappling with what it will take to really change it.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
from your linked article:

They've spoken to the media anyway, maybe before they were asked not to.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Because white greed is what hurt Black people as a group. That's not really hard to figure out, so either you're being deliberately stupid or it's just natural. Either way, it doesn't speak well for you.

No, I just don't subscribe to the thought that others are to blame for my troubles. apparently, rather than working to better themselves, some are taking, as they usually do, to blaming whites or the jews, or whomever is not like them for their difficulties.

At some point, one has to take responsibility for themselves and not blame a boogeyman for their predicament in life.

How does focusing on white greed serve a community in a positive fashion?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by PLATO
In having this experience, I was able to see up close and personal the many types of discriminations that still go on. In speaking with and working with many leaders of the black community there, it also became clear that there is racism on both sides of this issue. One of the main differences was that the black community offered (nor was any requested from anyone) no apologies for overt acts of racism. I have been to movie theaters where I was asked to leave at knife point simply because I was white...while a black police officer looked on.

The difference between you, PLATO, and Rev. Wright and most Black Americas, is that you feel alienated in the Black parts of town. Black people feel alienated in the whole of America. In order for you to escape Black hatred, you simply need not go to the ghetto. In order for Black people to escape White racism, they need to leave the country and try and find someplace where white people don't run the system, but imperialism is a global system, and there's no where they can go on this Earth that isn't under the influence of white power.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
No, I just don't subscribe to the thought that others are to blame for my troubles.

Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean others need to join you in your ignorance. You don't live on a desert island. What others do effects you, even if they never have any direct contact with you.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel

No, I just don't subscribe to the thought that others are to blame for my troubles. apparently, rather than working to better themselves, some are taking, as they usually do, to blaming whites or the jews, or whomever is not like them for their difficulties.

At some point, one has to take responsibility for themselves and not blame a boogeyman for their predicament in life.

How does focusing on white greed serve a community in a positive fashion?

Obama handles all of these points in his speech. You should listen to it. In large part, he agrees with you. Remember, it is Obama -- not Wright -- who is running for President.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Obama handles all of these points in his speech. You should listen to it. In large part, he agrees with you. Remember, it is Obama -- not Wright -- who is running for President.

I have listened to it. And while he says good things for the most part, he attended the church for 20 years, a waive of the hand can't get rid of that for me.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
How does focusing on white greed serve a community in a positive fashion?

How does ignoring it serve the community?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Kidicious


How does ignoring it serve the community?

I'm not saying ignore greed, please listen, I'm saying that its not a white issue, its a human issue. segmenting into groups of people based on race only serves to further the divides between us. Blaming others for our problems doesn't get to the root of anything, and goes against everything that I've been taught in church, albeit a predominately white one.