115 replies to this topic

[Castel]

The Iceman of the North, on 04 September 2012 - 12:53 PM, said:

There's still Clint Eastwood.

Can't tell if joking...

[Arthmail]

DanteGabriel, on 04 September 2012 - 12:34 AM, said:

I still think my initial summary of the article was good enough to give people a decent idea of what was in it.  It's a long, complicated article.  I posted excerpts.  I mentioned the Shirley Sherrod bit.  I'm not sure what would satisfy Raidne except maybe a fucking outline.

Honestly if my summary of the article is an example of liberal sloppiness, I think Raidne is trying too hard to be "fair and balanced" or something.

Well, don't you know, every post in this section of the board needs to be thesis level material. Because it is important, or something.

Of course, considering that the Republicans are in a protracted race to see who can lie the most (there was an article listing at least 533 lies that Romney has spewed out in some 30 weeks), we would hate to be accused of cutting corners on an internet forum for the sake of brevity. Or, perhaps, because we have other places to be, which is completely irrelevent to furthering our causes with sustained critical thought and analysis as is not currently seen almost anywhere on a national level save for a few instances.

I mean come on, these forums have to have some fucking standards.

Edited by Arthmail, 04 September 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[The Progressive]

It's quite obvious that Obama faced an uphill battle when crusty white teabaggers started emsembling en  masse to protest deficit spending, lol.

[Raidne]

Arthmail, on 04 September 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

Well, don't you know, every post in this section of the board needs to be thesis level material. Because it is important, or something.

No need, truly - I would happy settle for a basic standard where we wouldn't say, summarize the Grapes of Wrath as being about, amongst other things, the many possibilities for breast-feeding. Technically correct, I know, but it's just not going to get it placed in the right section of the card catalogue. Not that anything here is "important," including whether people are sloppy.

On that note, for those who do care about the historical issues addressed in the Coates' article, there is an overview of the theoretical conflict on race in America between Washington and DuBois here: http://www.yale.edu/...78.02.02.x.html

Quote

Negro leadership near the turn of the century was divided between...the economic strategy and the political strategy. The...controversy...raged between...Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois. The major spokesman for the gradualist economic strategy was Washington. DuBois was the primary advocate of the gradualist political strategy.

Booker T. Washington...is remembered chiefly for this Atlanta Compromise address [, where] he called on white America to provide jobs and industrial-agricultural education for Negroes. In exchange, blacks would give up demands for social equality and civil rights...The philosophy of Washington was one of accommodation to white oppression...Washington counseled blacks to remain in the South, obtain a useful education, save their money, work hard, and purchase property. By doing such things, Washington believed, the Negro could ultimately earn full citizenship rights.

White Americans responded with enthusiasm to Washington's racial policies...Because Washington's program conciliated whites, substantial contributions from white philanthropists were given to Tuskegee and other institutions that adopted the Washington philosophy. Washington's prestige grew to the point where he was regarded as the spokesman for the entire Negro community.

Several Negro leaders voiced their opposition to Washington's Atlanta Compromise...W. E. B. DuBois...noted that Washington's accommodating program produced little real gain for the race...DuBois launched a[n] attack on Washington's program in his classic collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903...[which] took the position that...Washington's policies had directly or indirectly resulted in three trends: the disfranchisement of the Negro, the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro, and steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher training of the Negro. DuBois charged that Washington's program tacitly accepted the alleged inferiority of the Negro...DuBois demanded for all black citizens 1) the right to vote, 2) civic equality, and 3) the education of Negro youth according to ability.

Both Washington and DuBois wanted the same thing for blacks - first-class citizenship - but their methods for obtaining it differed. Because of the interest in immediate goals contained in Washington's economic approach, whites did not realize that he anticipated the complete acceptance and integration of Negroes into American life. He believed blacks, starting with so little, would have to begin at the bottom and work up gradually to achieve positions of power and responsibility before they could demand equal citizenship - even if it meant temporarily assuming a position of inferiority. DuBois understood Washington's program, but believed that it was not the solution to the "race problem"...Blacks, DuBois believed, should not have to sacrifice their constitutional rights in order to achieve a status that was already guaranteed.

Coates, I believe, says the same has happened here with the Presidency. We have a President who is black, but in order to get there, he had to "give up demands for social equality and civil rights" for the black community. Has Obama taken a stance of the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters through the state laws passed in the lead-up to the current election? Even though it will ultimately directly negatively impact his chances of getting re-elected? No, because he can't. They sued in Ohio in order to extend the three days of early voting afforded to military personnel and citizens who reside overseas to all voters, but that's all I've got, despite the fact that he directed Project Vote in Illinois in 1992. Can anybody else find anything? I'm not exactly certain about this.

ETA: Does anybody want to have this discussion? Because all I'm seeing are a bunch of "likes" whenever somebody wants to bitch and moan about me picking on DG when asked to list specific examples of liberal sloppiness in the U.S. Politics thread. I picked the first few colorable examples I saw, only going two pages in. Is this exciting stuff these days?

Edited by Raidne, 04 September 2012 - 03:42 PM.

[DanteGabriel]

Raidne, on 04 September 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

No need, truly - I would happy settle for a basic standard where we wouldn't say, summarize the Grapes of Wrath as being about, amongst other things, the many possibilities for breast-feeding. Technically correct, I know, but it's just not going to get it placed in the right section of the card catalogue.

A sloppily constructed equivalency.  Seems like you're willing to take the same rhetorical shortcuts you decry in others, and the whining about people "bitching and moaning" at you is a little overwrought.  Physician, heal thyself.

Edited by DanteGabriel, 04 September 2012 - 05:02 PM.

[Sci-2]

Quote

Coates, I believe, says the same has happened here with the Presidency. We have a President who is black, but in order to get there, he had to "give up demands for social equality and civil rights" for the black community. Has Obama taken a stance of the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters through the state laws passed in the lead-up to the current election? Even though it will ultimately directly negatively impact his chances of getting re-elected? No, because he can't. They sued in Ohio in order to extend the three days of early voting afforded to military personnel and citizens who reside overseas to all voters, but that's all I've got, despite the fact that he directed Project Vote in Illinois in 1992. Can anybody else find anything? I'm not exactly certain about this.

I wouldn't frame Obama as the modern Booker T. Washington, but I would in general [agree] he did have to sacrifice a connection to what [I] believe is the very legitimate problem of institutional racism. It goes back to the idea that racists are, for many Amercians, "over there".

People don't want to acknowledge racism as an institution, and I'd extend the usual [somewhat cliched] condemnation of the Straight White Male to much larger swaths of society that seem to turn a blind eye toward the racism directed against African Americans (and to an extent Latinos) in their own communities.

So Obama's victory allows people to make the argument that racism as an institution doesn't exist, as does the initial high polling of Herman Cain and/or praise of Rice. [Instead of being seen as the outliers they rightly are they are taken as a conclusive sample.]

But this isn't something foreign to any historically marginalized group, and the quiet on Obama's part is to an extent, IMO, simply highlighted because he's President. Many of us know we don't want to complain too much or too loudly among our friends or co-workers about the little cuts of prejudice we experience directly or come to hear about.

You asked if we are ready for a black Preisent as opposed to a President who is black? Many people aren't even ready for a minority lead in an SFF novel. ;-)

Edited by sciborg2, 04 September 2012 - 05:12 PM.

[DanteGabriel]

While we're having the race discussion, and sciborg brought up her name, I'm going to venture an opinion that may incite some anger.  I think the elevation and lionization of Condoleezza Rice is an example of GOP tokenism.  They like having a black woman on stage who's speaking for their team, and would have us ignore the fact that she was incredibly, abysmally, historically terrible at her job.  She was the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in an administration that was incompetent at foreign policy.  Doesn't anyone remember her dire "mushroom cloud" remarks when trying to hoodwink the UN into believing Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat?  As National Security Adviser, the ignored "Bin Laden intends to use commercial aircraft to strike at US" memo was as much on her as anyone else.

Shit, my Stanford-educated friends thought she was a shitty provost when she was there.

So why the fuck are we being spoon-fed this idea of Condi Rice as some kind of hyper-competent person?

Edited by DanteGabriel, 04 September 2012 - 05:21 PM.

[Raidne]

Relativity. Glad you decided to join the discussion.

Sci - I wouldn't either, but Coates makes a good argument. After all, Obama did a LOT with race before he was President - wrote a best-selling book casting his whole LIFE in terms of race, you know?

Edited by Raidne, 04 September 2012 - 05:25 PM.

[mythsandstuff]

Raidne, on 04 September 2012 - 03:41 PM, said:

On that note, for those who do care about the historical issues addressed in the Coates' article, there is an overview of the theoretical conflict on race in America between Washington and DuBois here: http://www.yale.edu/...78.02.02.x.html


Coates, I believe, says the same has happened here with the Presidency. We have a President who is black, but in order to get there, he had to "give up demands for social equality and civil rights" for the black community. Has Obama taken a stance of the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters through the state laws passed in the lead-up to the current election? Even though it will ultimately directly negatively impact his chances of getting re-elected? No, because he can't. They sued in Ohio in order to extend the three days of early voting afforded to military personnel and citizens who reside overseas to all voters, but that's all I've got, despite the fact that he directed Project Vote in Illinois in 1992. Can anybody else find anything? I'm not exactly certain about this.

Coates did a Reddit AMA about the article last week, and the Booker T. Washington parallel came up:

Quote

[–]natthedem 9 points 8 days ago
First, my sincere kudos on a wonderful piece in the Atlantic...it was a truly incredible piece of work. One question, though:
The parallel you drew between Booker T. Washington and the president felt troublesome to me. I mean, Obama might have fallen short in some areas on race, but he's not a segregationist seeking to undermine black citizenship. Can you explain your logic in drawing that parallel?

Tanehisi[ 19 points 8 days ago
Football also isn't a game wherein people routinely score 90 points, and you are allowed to dribble the ball. This does not mean that no parallels can be drawn between the two sports.
I think the problem is that Washington has come to mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I don't really buy him as "a segregationist seeking to undermine black citizenship." I buy him as a political leader working under the constraints of segregation and violent white terrorism, who did some really problematic and questionable things.
The comparison is between black leaders who forgo broad critique of white supremacy, in favor of moral appeal, not two people sold us out.

So, that's not really what Coates is saying - he's not arguing that Obama has "given up" anything, but rather that he has not been as forceful in demanding it as he could have been.

Edited because I forgot to cut the part of Raidne's post that wasn't relevant and the Reddit stuff pasted in wonky.

Edited by mythsandstuff, 04 September 2012 - 06:21 PM.

[TerraPrime]

DanteGabriel, on 04 September 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

While we're having the race discussion, and sciborg brought up her name, I'm going to venture an opinion that may incite some anger.  I think the elevation and lionization of Condoleezza Rice is an example of GOP tokenism.  They like having a black woman on stage who's speaking for their team, and would have us ignore the fact that she was incredibly, abysmally, historically terrible at her job.  She was the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in an administration that was incompetent at foreign policy.  Doesn't anyone remember her dire "mushroom cloud" remarks when trying to hoodwink the UN into believing Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat?  As National Security Adviser, the ignored "Bin Laden intends to use commercial aircraft to strike at US" memo was as much on her as anyone else.

Shit, my Stanford-educated friends thought she was a shitty provost when she was there.

So why the fuck are we being spoon-fed this idea of Condi Rice as some kind of hyper-competent person?

I do worry that I might have put Rice in a category of incompetence as a result of my general low opinion of W. She certainly wasn't the most bulls-eye-target worthy of W.'s advisors and staff. Like, you know, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Rove and Cheney. So I sort of have a neutral impression of her, if I try to take away those negative, guilty-by-association type vibe.

[DanteGabriel]

TerraPrime, on 04 September 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

I do worry that I might have put Rice in a category of incompetence as a result of my general low opinion of W. She certainly wasn't the most bulls-eye-target worthy of W.'s advisors and staff. Like, you know, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and Rove and Cheney. So I sort of have a neutral impression of her, if I try to take away those negative, guilty-by-association type vibe.

The most generous interpretation I can come up with for her time in Bush the Lesser's administration is that she was merely overruled and marginalized by the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, which doesn't speak well to her operational competence either, but I suppose would at least keep her out of the top tier of dangerous idiots.  Still, it's funny that the GOP scrupulously avoided all mention of Bush II (except for Jeb's revisionist defense of his brother) but put Rice front and center.

[mythsandstuff]

There's also this, which Alyssa Rosenberg wrote about here.

Quote

Key and Peele do similar work in perhaps their best concept: the idea that Obama, in an effort to answer the frustration of his liberal critics, has hired a man named Luther to be his anger translator. When the President says he wants his critics to know his "intentions are coming from the right place," Luther explains that he actually means that "They're coming from Hawaii, which is where I'm from, which is in the United States of America, y'all. This is ridiculous. I have a birth certificate!" And when Obama says "I am on your side," Luther translates that statement, with help from a bullhorn, as "I am not a Muslim!" The scene is so cathartic because it's simultaneously an answer to the wishes of the Drew Westens of the world, who would like to see Obama in the scrum, and an explanation of why the President can't gratify them. While it's nice to hear reaffirmed that the President shares our rage about certain irrationalities, Luther is a weaker figure than no-drama Obama, literally shaky with the force of his anger.

The president, Key and Peele explain, is also the bridge to the future where much of the rest of their comedy is located—even if we're not there yet. "A lot of people say that somehow because Obama's elected, we're in a post-race world," Peele says, but he suggests that people need to consider another test: "I would say if you prefer that your son or daughter marries someone of a specific type, I think that's what racism is in its core." But even if that hesitancy persists for some people, the trend line is clear. "The president is a symbol of what is to come in the future, which is more and more and more interracial people," Key says. "Give it about 100 years and everybody's going to look like us.""I think [the presidency] is a miserable straightjacket for anybody," Key said in a recent interview. "The president frames things in a much more 18th-century way, [saying] 'you're reasonable people and I expect you to look at facts.' He'll do that through actions as well as words, and that's threatening to people."

The first part I bolded would seem to be an explanation of why Obama can't be the W.E.B. Du Bois figure in this dichotomy (if we're comfortable restricting him to that dichotomy, and the reduction of Washington and DuBois to caricatures of themselves that it appears to require, which I don't think I am, but whatever, I'll play along). In the second bolded section, Key suggests the same kind of fear, and the restrictions it places on Obama, that is the actual thesis of Coates' piece.

Edited because : FUCK. I saw the Atlantic Header and assumed Coates. It was Rosenberg.

Edited by mythsandstuff, 04 September 2012 - 07:25 PM.

[DanteGabriel]

I suppose the reason I didn't include the "Uncle Tom" angle in my summary of the Coates piece is that I didn't see it as the central thesis, either.  Yes, Obama hasn't been as activist as his past history suggested he might be, because he's trapped by white America's desire for Bill Cosby rather than Richard Pryor.  Just look at what he's had to contend with.  Liberals don't think he's done enough on race, but the few halting opinions he has ventured on race have caused Republicans to suggest that this man, abandoned by his black father and raised by his white mother and grandparents, is racist against white people.

To me, the main point of Coates' article is that Obama is still subject to racism and has to act harmless and non-racial rather than embrace his blackness more openly.  The speech he gave on race while the Jeremiah Wright stuff was going on in 2008 still strikes me as one of the bravest and most thoughtful speeches any politician has given in the last couple of generations.  I was surprised by that speech, and I'd frankly never expect to see anything like it again.

[mythsandstuff]

DanteGabriel, on 04 September 2012 - 07:53 PM, said:

I suppose the reason I didn't include the "Uncle Tom" angle in my summary of the Coates piece is that I didn't see it as the central thesis, either.  Yes, Obama hasn't been as activist as his past history suggested he might be, because he's trapped by white America's desire for Bill Cosby rather than Richard Pryor.  Just look at what he's had to contend with.  Liberals don't think he's done enough on race, but the few halting opinions he has ventured on race have caused Republicans to suggest that this man, abandoned by his black father and raised by his white mother and grandparents, is racist against white people.

To me, the main point of Coates' article is that Obama is still subject to racism and has to act harmless and non-racial rather than embrace his blackness more openly.  The speech he gave on race while the Jeremiah Wright stuff was going on in 2008 still strikes me as one of the bravest and most thoughtful speeches any politician has given in the last couple of generations.  I was surprised by that speech, and I'd frankly never expect to see anything like it again.

Yup. It's white America that insists both on the dichotomy and which side is acceptable.

[Sci-2]

It's not just white America, as much as we might like to believe that. [Members of other minority groups are also wary of a black President, preferring the one who happens to be black.]

Edited by sciborg2, 04 September 2012 - 08:17 PM.

[DanteGabriel]

sciborg2, on 04 September 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

It's not just white America, as much as we might like to believe that. [Members of other minority groups are also wary of a black President, preferring the one who happens to be black.]

True enough.  I've seen it in my Filipino relatives.

Edited by DanteGabriel, 04 September 2012 - 08:18 PM.

[Triskele]

DanteGabriel - Let me slightly push back on what you said about Condi.  I don't think that she was great at her job, but most insider accounts say that Dick really wanted to strike Iran or possibly even invade (would you doubt it?) and Gates and Condi Rice pushed back and ultimately won.

I have to give her credit where credit is due on that one.  I don't really disagree with your overall point.

[DanteGabriel]

Triskele, on 04 September 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

DanteGabriel - Let me slightly push back on what you said about Condi.  I don't think that she was great at her job, but most insider accounts say that Dick really wanted to strike Iran or possibly even invade (would you doubt it?) and Gates and Condi Rice pushed back and ultimately won.

I have to give her credit where credit is due on that one.  I don't really disagree with your overall point.

That's fair, Trisk, because we don't know what actually went on there.  Do you know when this argument over Iran occurred?  Was it later in the presidency?

The argument for sparing Condi Rice can only go so far.  Since our knowledge of the daily workings of Bush the Lesser's administration are limited, all we can do is judge it from the outside, and from the outside it was an endless shit-show that constantly one-upped itself in absurdity.  I'm just wondering why Rice gets to be remembered warmly despite her position as a senior official for a President that left office at 22% popularity.  Why didn't Rumsfeld or Cheney speak at the convention this year?

[Raidne]

Quote

So, that's not really what Coates is saying - he's not arguing that Obama has "given up" anything, but rather that he has not been as forceful in demanding it as he could have been.

I would have to ask for clarification regarding your understanding of the meaning of "forgo" to take this any farther.

[Raidne]

DG - Do you really think liberals think he hasn't done enough on racial issues? I don't think white liberals have really thought about it. I don't know what I want Obama to do on racial issues, or what should be done. I suspect HE knows, but he isn't saying - not since he was elected.