Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
23 November 2010, a Tuesday
Some encouraging signs?
Two years after the onset of the financial crisis, the stock market is recovering and Wall Street’s elite are splurging.
Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter
American companies had their best quarter ever, according to a report that also showed the nation’s output growing faster than initial estimates.
Despite that, the Dow took a thumping today, supposedly because of Korea. Except tonight we read:
Stocks fell in South Korea and Japan on Wednesday in reaction to the flare-up of tensions on the Korean peninsula but the losses were muted, and some Asian markets even managed gains.
So what does that mean...up 250 points tomorrow?
No...there’s this, too:
New projections from the Federal Reserve indicate that more than 10 million Americans could remain jobless through the 2012 elections.
It's appalling that Palin and too many others fail to understand that fact - indeed so many facts of American history. They don't offer the slightest hint that they can appreciate the history of the Obama family and that in Michelle's case, her ancestors were slaves - Jim Robinson of South Carolina, her paternal great-great grandfather, being one.
I think it interesting that no one wants to even mention that in Barack’s case he has NO black ancestors who suffered under slavery, but he had white ancestors who OWNED slaves! My point is not to diminish Michelle’s but merely to say that if you want to have an intelligent on race and the role it played in American life then you need to look at all of it, not merely selected parts to suit your purpose. For instance, he continues:
Why do politicians such as Palin and commentators such as Glenn Beck insist that African Americans go blank on their own history - as blank as apparently Palin and Beck are themselves? Why must they insist that blacks join them in embracing a repellent history that once caused America to go to war with itself?
And the rest of that story would be...how many white people gave their lives fighting to free black slaves if they didn’t really give a damn? How many more white graves are there in Civil War battlefields than black ones? Hillary, an icon, not that long ago got in trouble for merely suggesting that LBJ also played a part in the Civil Rights legislation’s success, but the reaction was that she had somehow smeared Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even after they were freed they were consigned to peonage, second-class citizens, forbidden to vote in much of the South, dissuaded from doing so in some of the North, relegated to separate schools, restaurants, churches, hotels, waiting rooms of train stations, the back of the bus, the other side of the tracks, the mortuary, the cemetery and, if whites could manage it, heaven itself.
Likewise, we often read this side of the story...but where’s the praise for the millions of whites who sometimes gave their all in an attempt to rectify these abuses?
Michelle Obama said: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."
Michelle Obama quickly explained herself. She was proud of the turnout in the primaries - so many young people, etc. Evan Thomas, writing perceptively in Newsweek, thought - as I did - that she was saying something else. He dug into her senior thesis at Princeton - "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" - to find a young woman who felt, or was made to feel, "more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before." This was not a statement of racism. This was a statement of fact.
Fair enough, only why am I not making the same statement of fact when I describe inadvertently finding myself in an all-black section of Sacramento well after midnight and, judging by the verbal warning I was given as well as the looks that I got when I say that I felt suddenly more aware of my whiteness than ever before? I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar that will be called a racist statement, not explained away as just the statement of fact that it was.
Carol arrived in Stockton on the Greyhound bus very late one night a dozen years ago and was abruptly told this was the end of the line, although her ticket said Sacramento. All of the other people on the bus were Latins or blacks or Asians, and they collected their baggage and headed off into the night. The station agent would not allow Carol to even walk across the street to the motel unaccompanied. Racism, or fact?
Besides Princeton, Michelle Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law School. It's hardly possible that she is not knowledgeable about the history of African Americans...
Good point. So why then isn’t she knowledgeable about the history of White Americans who did not have the opportunity to go to Harvard Law School?
Sarah Palin teases that she might run for president. But she is unqualified - not just in the (let me count the) usual ways, but because she does not know the country. She could not be the president of black America nor of Hispanic America. She knows more about grizzlies than she does about African Americans - and she clearly has more interest in the former than the latter. Did she once just pick up the phone and ask Michelle Obama what she meant by her remark? Did she ask about her background? What it was like at Princeton? What it was like for her parents or her grandparents? I can offer a hint. If they were driving to Washington, they slowed down and stopped where the sign said "colored" - and the irritated Palins of the time angrily hit the horn and went on their way.
There’s prejudice for you. Does Richard know if the Palins actually talked about how horrible things were in Washington and how glad they were things were different in Alaska? No, since he heartily dislikes Palin he wouldn’t even begin to think like that.
If Palin is unqualified to be president of black or Hispanic America, then what qualifies Obama to be president of white America? People he has described as behaving like average white folks, clinging bitterly to guns and God, not thinking clearly when they are afraid...I could go on and on, his remarks have been quite revealing.
Palin was mocked severely for NOT having gone to Harvard...did Michelle pick up the phone and ask her how she felt about those negative remarks aimed at belittling the schools she attended? Did Michelle ask what it was like for Palin’s parents and grandparents? (Michelle’s slave ancestor was a great-great-grandparent...few among us ever knew any of those very well. Should I characterize myself and my behavior based on what little I know about my great-great-grandfather? Chances are that he was a descendant of Alexander Hamilton...but so what?)
I don’t think Palin is qualified to be president, either, but I know that she was mocked as a hick from the sticks who didn’t even have the proper clothes to wear to Washington, along with complaints about the money spent to buy her a satisfactory wardrobe, whereas Michelle was hailed as a fashion queen in threads with price tags which made Palin look like a refugee from J. C. Penny.
In uncomfortable point of fact, Michelle most likely lived a far more privileged and comfortable life growing up than did Sarah Palin. It is quite certain that Michelle’s privileged children will lead a live to which the Palin children can never aspire since the started with private schools from a gated Chicago mansion and the Palin home is still a style best called American Ordinary.
Eric Holder, a man I do not care for, said a true thing when he told us that Americans were cowards when it came to having an honest discussion about race. He was right. The street runs two ways, but only one way seems to be the topic of conversation.
PS: Discrimination is a complicated issue, Mr Cohen, but our adopted young son is a rather dark brown Hispanic and we are elderly white blue-eyed devils retired on social security, so I don’t think that I feel very vulnerable on the racism issue.