No honey, you don't get it.

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http://www.spike.com/video/mad-real-world-katie/2795938

keep saying it, that might make it true!

what would convince you that I "got it?" If I suddenly saw the light and didn't think Obama was a lying hypocrite anymore, despite all evidence to the contrary?

I'll vote for him if he's the nominee, but I'll continue to think he's a complete phoney. But good work spreading the love and understanding! I can see how he is bringing us together already.

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be aware that what the GOP says does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great! (ms. e)

I'm assuming that we're close to the same aga ans the facts that you equate your grandmother not being able to vote with my dad having to go to a segregated school, use segregated pools, sit at the back of the bus, and worry about getting lynched if he said the wrong thing to a what person demonstrates that you do not get it. It also demonstrates that you do not know many black people from that generation. I'm through with this inane conversation.

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http://www.spike.com/video/mad-real-world-katie/2795938

It doesn't matter who "gets it" or who doesn't. If you want to see Obama get the nomination, as I do, what Obama needs to do is denounce those views and distance himself from them and hope the Hannity type windbags are ignored. History lessons about how hard it was and still is, turn people off. It's like campaigning for Hilary.

I didn't equate my grandmother's experience with your father's. (and how do you know she was white? or American? maybe she was a Jew in Nazi Germany. Would she win the victim sweepstakes, then?)

I used her to point out that other people have experienced institutionalized discrimination. It doesn't turn them all into haters. You're saying every black person who experienced institutionalized discrimination has to hate? I doubt that. I know plenty of people that age who would disagree. I admire those people.

I said I was sympathetic, and I am, despite the fact that you keep telling me I'm not. I don't blame people for being personally bitter, even hating white people. I get it. I just don't translate that into a free pass for people like Wright, who don't just feel personally bitter, they try to pass it on and keep it alive in the next generation.

I'm sorry you can't have a rational discussion with people who respectfully disagree with you. It's hard to find "unity" without that ability.

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be aware that what the GOP says does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great! (ms. e)

Hate and questioning whether a white person can be 100% without racism are two different things. You're not black, your grandmother isn' black, and you can't begin to understand what it was like to be black in this country in the 40's, 50's, and 60's. I'm done talking to you -- it's an exercis in futility.

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http://www.spike.com/video/mad-real-world-katie/2795938

Where did I say a white person can be 100% without racism? I actually don't think that at all...or that a black person can be.

That wasn't the point I was making at all. You were trying to say that we must accept Wright because he experienced institutionalized racism. I disagree. If you made a logical point, I would agree with it.

If no one white can "get it" why do you bother trying to explain it? what kind of dialogue are you trying to have?

Is this the "unity" and "honest conversation" Obama is promising? You're modelling it well.

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be aware that what the GOP says does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great! (ms. e)

To quote Obama, Brooklyn Cat you probably cant get it cause you are a "typical white person". It appears Mr. Brightside thinks that getting "it" makes it ok to damn America, compare our people and government to the KKK, and say we deserved 9/11. I can tell you that I gladly dont get it and wish to never get it.

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~Lets cut taxes and pensions out of Philadelphia.
http://www.philadelphiaforward.org

Well, I'll give Obama a pass on that one as it was probably just a very unfortunate slip of the tongue.

What his supporters seem to miss is that he didn't get "outed" as a white-hater. Nobody thinks that, that's stupid. He got outed as a total hypocrite who preaches "unity" and "post-racialism" while being mentored by a very old-school "we are victims" pastor with a prediliction for pushing discredited left-wing conspiracy theories. He didn't even have the guts to take on his church and make it a better, more honest place and we think he's going to transform America just by getting voted into office? I got a bridge to sell you too.

Brightside had this good advice for Nik:

Substitute "bitching about teleprompters" with "bitching about how my dad was more discriminated against than your grandma" and there's some advice he should be taking himself.

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be aware that what the GOP says does not mean what it reads and what We perceive as to what THEY say is or isn't, is not what THEY mean. You dig....Great! (ms. e)

Warning: What follows is about THE PAST. But I suspect this is an aspect of the past many following this discussion may not know that well. It certainly neither applies to those now living and reading this nor makes those clips from Rev. Wright true or defensible, but I think it may help explain some of the reaction:

There was a time, within the memory of some now living, when the KKK actually was a political force to be reckoned with. Some state legislatures, most notably Indiana's, were in the Klan's pocket, and they made endorsements in national elections. Their membership soared into the hundreds of thousands, topping one million at its peak, and they staged an impressive march down Pennsylvania Avenue to demonstrate their power. Not long before this march, the President of the United States praised D.W. Griffith's KKK apologetic Birth of a Nation as "like writing history with lightning."

Now, the time I'm speaking of is the decade following the First World War, and the President in question Woodrow Wilson, so we can, I believe, say that this has no bearing on the behavior of our government now. But this still falls in that category of those "million injustices recalled by the blacks."

Now, to proceed from where we are now, continuing to make white folks of goodwill wrong is hardly good strategy, and suggesting that the government that all of us now have a say in electing is little better than the Klan is way over the top, not to mention insulting to Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas* and Condoleeza Rice.

*As I mentioned in another post on one of these threads, one of the most useful insights I gained from reading Randall Kennedy's Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal was his explanation of Clarence Thomas' world view. As Kennedy explained it based on reading Thomas' opinions, Thomas is very much a "race man", every bit as much as Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrakhan or Rev. Wright. Uppermost in his mind in his opinions are the effect they will have on blacks. He only differs from the bulk of "race men" and "race women" today is that his views of what would help advance the race the most are almost 180 degrees opposite those of the black political Establishment.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008