Tag Archives: Obama

Who are we? A dialogue on mixed [and 1st-generation] Ameicans

The problem isn’t just mixed Americans (black & white, latino & black, white & latino) it’s also First Generation Americans. From the NYT:

Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

But you may remember I recently wrote about this same issue:

We have no one to relate to. We are not fully (Mexican, Nigerian, Korean) but we are also not white Americans. We cannot blend in anywhere we go; we can never truly be accepted. When we go home to our families, we are made fun of by cousins, nephews, and aunts alike for being a “gringo” or “oyimbo” or “muzungu” which in three different languages, essentially means a white person, and not a pleasant term for one at that. I had a friend in my Spanish class (for bilinguals and native speakers) who is Venezuelan but was raised here in the US and speaks English with a slight accent. When she ‘goes home’ to Venezuela, her compatriots ridicule her for being a ‘gringa’ while here in the US of A she can’t escape the hate and racism against her as people mistakenly assume Mexican heritage. In a mostly western-European descended world, if your name isn’t Jessica Alba or Eva Longoria, olive-shaded skin often times does not bode well. Although this society, this country, worships stars of many different racial upbringings on the stage, silver screen, and playing field, up close and personal it is a very different story.

That is the country we live in, and we must choose to embrace that which makes us different.

Or fail as a nation.

So apparently, there is a slight difference in their policies

An interesting piece by Paul Krugman

Maybe the most notable contrast between Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton involves the problem of restructuring mortgages. Mr. McCain called for voluntary action on the part of lenders — that is, he proposed doing nothing. Mrs. Clinton wants a modern version of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, the New Deal institution that acquired the mortgages of people whose homes were worth less than their debts, then reduced payments to a level the homeowners could afford.

Finally, Barack Obama’s speech on the economy on Thursday followed the cautious pattern of his earlier statements on economic issues.

I was pleased that Mr. Obama came out strongly for broader financial regulation, which might help avert future crises. But his proposals for aid to the victims of the current crisis, though significant, are less sweeping than Mrs. Clinton’s: he wants to nudge private lenders into restructuring mortgages rather than having the government simply step in and get the job done.

Mr. Obama also continues to make permanent tax cuts — middle-class tax cuts, to be sure — a centerpiece of his economic plan. It’s not clear how he would pay both for these tax cuts and for initiatives like health care reform, so his tax-cut promises raise questions about how determined he really is to pursue a strongly progressive agenda.

While Obama talks about “hope and opportunity”

Does anybody know how he will derail the recession?

Bring the troops out of Iraq (after all he never supported the war ya know?)

Honestly, the more I hear and see about Obama is just disappointment.

He is a politician first, his orations on hope and opportunity don’t mean squat — there are serious problems in the US that need answering to, and while they play egotistical maniacs, the economy needs serious help, as well as a host of other problems.

let’s put it like this, if the situation was reverse, would Obama step down for the good of the country?

No — he has a super-ego just like HRC or McCain or any other presidential election.

The only thing that separates him is not the fact he will accomplish anything, but that he inspires people — but don’t go comparing him to a MLK or anything — Obama has no weight behind his words.

He can talk about race and international community, sure, by the nature of who and how he was raised, but honestly the question about Obama should not be “do you have experience?” but the question should be

What did you do in the last 8 years you were a politician.

Not, how long, but how MUCH did you do with the few years you had?

That’s the question we should be asking.

I have no doubt Obama will be elected, but this country will be in for a rude awakening when they realize oratory only takes you so far when you realize Greenspan has hamstringed the economy and Bernanke can’t save it.

When GEN Petraeus comes back and says the surge has done little to nothing in Iraq.

When we still have millions of uninsured americans, senators taking billions in pork projects (including Obama himself who took $300 million I believe, much of which was alotted to his mentor who gave him free pass in Illinois Senate), and those same black kids he talked about who are the victim of years of segregation will languish in their crummy, poor neighberhoods meanwhile his family sits comfortable in their $1.65 million house.

Man of great ideas, great speaking abilities, and great cogency he certainly is — but a man of the words he preaches he has not been seen.

Change I don’t believe in.

Generation Obama

A politician is a politician is a politician.

Again, real change does not come from the top, it comes from each one of us on the bottom.

This doesn’t mean that Obama agrees with Wright’s thoroughgoing and conspiracy-heavy anti-Americanism. Rather, Obama seems to have seen, early in his career, the utility of joining a prominent church that would help him establish political roots in the community in which he lives. Now he sees the utility of distancing himself from that church. Obama’s behavior in dealing with Wright is consistent with that of a politician who often voted “present” in the Illinois State Legislature for the sake of his future political viability.

The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different.

Kristof Agrees with me

Nick Kristof wrote something very similar to me:

The ugliest prejudices in this campaign season are not directly about race. Barack Obama’s skin color may cost him some working-class white voters, but it’s also winning some votes among blacks and among whites eager to signal their open-mindedness.

Sexism seems more of a factor. Americans have typically said in polls that they are less willing to vote for a woman than a black, and Shirley Chisholm (a black woman who ran for president in 1972) always said that she encountered more prejudice because of her sex than her race.

Yet the most monstrous bigotry in this election isn’t about either race or sex. It’s about religion.

The whispering campaigns allege that Mr. Obama is a secret Muslim planning to impose Islamic law on the country. Incredibly, he is even accused — in earnest! — of being the Antichrist.

Proponents of this theory offer detailed theological explanations for why he is the Antichrist, and the proof is that he claims to be Christian — after all, the Antichrist would say that, wouldn’t he? The rumors circulate enough that Glenn Beck of CNN asked the Rev. John Hagee, a conservative evangelical, what the odds are that Mr. Obama is the Antichrist.

These charges are fanatical, America’s own equivalent of the vicious accusations about Jews that circulate in some Muslim countries. They are less a swipe at one candidate than a calumny against an entire religion. They underscore that for many bigoted Americans in the 21st century, calling someone a Muslim is still a slur.

There is a parallel with presidential campaigns in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when one of the most common ways to attack a candidate was to suggest that he was partly black, or at least favored racial intermarriage. For example, the Federalists charged that Thomas Jefferson was “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” And the word “miscegenation” was coined in 1863 and 1864 in charges that Abraham Lincoln secretly plotted for blacks to marry whites, especially Irish-Americans.

This is what I wrote Yesterday:

I’d wager a good deal of my networth (which is negative btw) and say that ALL OTHER THINGS HELD EQUAL, (looks, politics, style, career, family, etc. etc. etc.) Barack Obama would not be a Presidential candidate right now.

I don’t care what anybody says, in America, it does matter where your parents were born, what color your skin is, and which sexual reproductive organs you were born with.

Not to all people, all dreams and to all occupations.

But in the case of President it most certainly does.

So I ask, if Barack Obama’s dad was from the middle east, as opposed to Kenya, and all other things were held equal (including the exact same skin tone) would YOU vote for him?

Don’t kid yourself, America is not ready for that.

Why Obama is having problem with Asian voters.

I told you guys about this before:

But Wang also suspects that race lurks among the possible reasons behind Asian immigrants’ reticence to back Obama. “The images of African Americans that get exported to other cultures is not often positive,” says Wang, who teaches about pop culture and race. “It’s not unusual to find new immigrants who have never had a meaningful, personal encounter with an African American. So there’s a very uninformed bias,” says Wang.

That is very disturbing. My question to anyone reading this — how do we change that hideous depiction of Blacks in the media?

Why Obama will win the Presidency

This is a contrast to the other piece I wrote : Why Obama WON”T win in a national election.

To tell you the truth, I was more highlighting issues in this country, than saying why or why not Obama would win. I like to point out stuff not many people are willing to talk about, and challenge popular opinion — even if its for a black candidate — in fact, especially for one.

(Read PG’s essay on charisma.)

Again, I don’t support any candidate right now (PA primaries aren’t for a while now, so I don’t really have to either) and am just giving my thoughts.

“His problem – and it’s a big one – is among Latino voters, and older women. He got crushed by Hillary among Hispanics in California and New Mexico. To win the West, Latinos have to be in your camp.”

Well — they’ve gone after this problem hard, with a spanish phone bank for his supporters to call Latinos en espanol.

Smart move Mr. Obama

Considering I am going to pay almost $1000 for my fiancee to get a dental operation, I still want to know how you will attack the health care problem and make it affordable for every American to have it.

Also, I do give you props on your work in the Veteran Affairs Committee — if you know me, you know how close this is to my heart.

I believe you will one day garner my full support Mr. Obama, but for now I have the biggest beef with your cult-like followers who worship you. I also want to hear detailed plans and am confused about your conformity issue — you said on Sixty Minutes that you used to talk about issues, but that people wanted to hear inspirational message, not detailed plans — I don’t care what people want to hear, how the heck do we know if you can really affect change if we don’t know what change that will be?

George W. Bush affected great changes in this country — and nobody below the $200k income level would agree that those changes have been for the better.

You aren’t Jesus — and you haven’t affected great change across America … yet.

I still think every single woman should vote for Hillary Clinton, but that’s just my opinion. They may not like her personally, or claim some history with Bill as the bottom line, but I know very much that it is not about any of those things — it’s about her sex, and that’s all there is to it. You either like a powerful woman, or you don’t.

But there is always hope, right?

But again, change — change we can believe in — does not start at the top, it starts with us.

The Loftiest poetry won’t change anything…

I saw a great quote today in an LA times op-ed piece, written by three of RFK’s kids, supporting HRC whilst speaking on some pertinent issues in this country, stating “the loftiest poetry won’t solve these issues.

Well the loftiest politics won’t change this country either.

While I admonish all the Presidential candidates for their lofty aspirations and goals to change this country, and put us back on the right path, the whole Presidential race underscores one key thought: Americans put way too much stock in politics as the vessel for change.

How many of my friends have I seen supporting Senators Obama or R. Paul because they feel those two, for their respective parties, represent new ideas and change.

Hmm, I’ve been to some of the poorest areas in the world, and in fact I’m writing this from the poorest city in the United States, and I haven’t seen a positive effect from politics improving the plight of the people that inhabit these hope-forsaken blots on a map.

We need to understand one thing: if change is coming, it is a change in the hearts and minds of the people, not to go out to the ballot box and put their 50 cents in to decide who should be President of the “greatest nation” on the face of the planet.

Change comes from each and every one of us — it is within us, the power to change — by changing the way we think, by changing the way we speak, and by changing the way we DO.

Another great op-ed by Nicolas Kristof in the NYT, citing how the number one issue in Evangelical America is fighting poverty (distantly followed by abortion and thirdly fighting genocide.) Kristof also wrote a great article about this same issue: how politics aren’t necessarily the vessel for change.

This shift in thought could be the thing that finally unites this country — the desire for social change.

I once read that this society works in cycles — 30 years of a “me” focus, followed by 15 years of a “we” and “us” focus.

Well, if you haven’t noticed the “green” revolution, outcry for an environment that has become “inconvenient,” or the push for sponsoring businessmen and women in other countries (read: kiva.org), than you must have been in hiding for the last 5 years.

Change is here, and I’ll tell you what, if you’re looking at politics — you’ve got your eyes set on the right thing, and it’s time to “get your mind right.”

I just read a recent article in which it infers that the Director of Ashoka , an organization that supports social entrepreneurs, believes “such people neither hand out fish nor teach people to fish; their aim is to revolutionize the fishing industry.”

Revolutionize the fishing industry indeed.

Now that’s change I can believe in.