Barack, Wright, and Racism

I just read a diary stating that the attack on Barack is racism. This diary is based upon a couple of responses I made.

I do not believe that Barack is being singled out for abuse because he is black. America has shown that his skin color doesn't really matter to the majority of voters. It's the hope of what he offers that MOST people like and that has nothing to do with race. YES, there are those who only see a black man running for office and will vote against him for that reason only, but they are clearly not the majority.

If Barack is not nominated it will be because he missed an opportunity to denounce Rev. Wright when he first spoke to the national media. Instead, he went on TV and gave a wonderful speech about what Wright meant to him and his family. Unfortunately he is now linked at the hip with this man and there is very little he can do to break that bond. The cow is now out of the barn and no amount of denouncing Wright is going to put it back in the barn again. Rev. Wright is making that worse by using Barack's political coattails and fame to get his radical message to the public. He doesn't seem to care if he hurts Barack in the process. Every word out of the Rev. Wright's mouth is attributed back to Barack's real "hidden" beliefs in some way.

I like Barack and will vote for him because I know what he really stands for, but his personal persona is being diminished more and more each day, for potential voters that do not know what he stands for that well, by the Hon. Rev. Wright.  Hillary, the Right, and MSM are using Wright to define who Barack is. Is that fair? NO, but that is politics, not racism.

I would like to believe he can put the Wright affair behind him, but realistically know that it ain't gonna happen. For one thing, I don't believe Wright will shut up. He has a national audience now for his brand of "controversial speech". There is also no way Hillary or the rethuglicans are going to allow this to die. They will drain every ounce of political advantage out of it they can.

With Kerry it was continually calling him a "flip-flopper" even though he wasn't, and questioning his patriotism and heroism by "Swift Boating" him. There is no way the opposition will allow the Wright affair to die. These things don't have to be true, they just have to be stated over and over and over until people automatically associate the candidate with these negative lies. Even if they don't believe them, it causes doubt in the back of their minds. And for people who don't follow the issues that much, but might be inclined to vote for Barack, this may be enough to turn them against him.

I hate to say it, but I am becoming more skeptical each day that Barack will get the nomination even though he currently leads. The Democratic leadership may believe that Wright has made Barack "damaged goods". Since the object of this election is to get a Dem elected, they may begin moving to Hillary.

I hope this is not the case, but we'll just have to wait and see.

•  tips

  by TKH on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:41:03 AM PDT

•  Enough with the Obama/Wright Diaries

  If Obama loses, he loses because people didn't vote for him, not because of the Wright issue. These diaries are beginning to make my blood boil once again! What next will be asked of him? Should he denounce his black half to appeal to more voters?

  by biracial1 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:42:14 AM PDT

  •  Don't read them if you don't like them

    by TKH on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:44:08 AM PDT

  •  of course that is what is coming next....

    they baited, baited, then cooked him and now he is done!!

    People again, please prepare yourself.  They did not give until he denounced his church.  

    The next talking point is whether he is black or white.

    That is the next problem he must denounce the Black members of his church and the Black community that supported Rev. Wright.  It is not over. Until this Black man is standing alone.

    by OH NOT AGAIN on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:02:23 AM PDT

•  The attacks are racist in nature

  And by that I mean that although racism may not be the subjective motivation of the media and the McCain/Clinton campaign, these parties are content to capitalize on racism in order to unfairly attack Obama.  They are exploiting the racist belief that an African American is presumptively less patriotic.  They are exploiting the racist belief that an African American is inherently less "American" than a white person.

  by Thomas C on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:45:40 AM PDT

  •  The exploit their belief that the American voter

    is stupid and can't tell one black man from the next.
    Nobody is going to link McCain to Hagee since both are different men no matter what the NY Times says. McCain will simply state he is not responsible for the words of another and that will be that.
    Obama's response is motivated by the fact that he has worked so hard to avoid being associated with the angry black man image. He also has branded his campaign as bringing people together and anything that works against his message is bad for him. So he feels the need to denounce Wright. Which may have been the best move he could make at this point or not. I think most voters aren't going to vote for or against Obama because of what Wright did or did not say. I think that those that would link to the two men as one, would have had a hard time voting for Obama anyway.

    And all of this is pointless and stupid anyway.

    by pd1969 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:51:55 AM PDT

    •  yes pointless and stupid....

      but in today's America this is what is most important.  Never mind that we are about to attack Iran.  Why?  Because they, like Iraq want to come off the American dollar.

      That will in fact be the final nail in the coffin of America the Beautiful.

      George Bush knows this, but will not tell you this.

      by OH NOT AGAIN on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:04:23 AM PDT

  •  Well put. He is held to a completely different

    standard than the other candidates. We've seen it in a hundred different ways. I'm sick of it.

    by OR indie on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:12:51 AM PDT

  •  It's the 'Toussaint Louverture' effect...

    Bigotted Americans greatest fear is of blacks overthrowing the plantation and turning on their white overseers.

    Many of them remember the race riots of the 1960s. Especially in 1968: The conservatives benefited from the gunning down of MLK, RFK and the resulting race riots frightened millions of Americans, who voted Democrat in 1964, to vote for Nixon in 1968.  

    That's right, during the high tide of liberalism, the Republicans got Nixon elected.

    Many not so bigotted Americans have a fear of blacks overthrowing the plantation, even Obama pointed out his own grandmother had a fear of black men.

    This is the kind of shit the Republicans are trying to manipulate. They can't win on an intellectual level. But they do know how to win on an emotional level.  An old saleman once said to me, all decisions to 'buy' are based upon an emotion.

    Amping up the Rev. Wright stuff is all about plucking white peoples deepest fears. White people will instinctively not support or vote for an angry  African American.  What makes Obama so different is he is not an 'angry' black man. You can see it in his demeanor and in his body actions. So white people will vote for him (which makes him special because he's uniquely situated to help America evolve much of its racial problems)

    There's a reason for his lack of anger... he was raised in Hawaii (the only state where whites are a minority), Indonesia and Kansas, largely shielded away from the narrative that provokes black anger. He was raised remote from most of white prejudice and discrimination, and the signaling to blacks that they just aren't good enough no matter what they do or how they do it (the real reason for black anger is in that last one). As Chris Rock once said on stage to his white audience "aint not white people here will to trade places with me because it means becoming black...and I am rich and famous!

    Obama is special. He can take us past a lot of this stuff.

    by The Wonder Moron on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:20:46 AM PDT

•  None of this matters.

  This matters most to the media.

  This whole sad affair speaks volumes about freedom of speech in our country and how thin skinned our media claims to be.

  We have real problems in this country. The fact that Obama feels the need to play the victim here when real people are facing real adversities is a symptom of the real problem with the modern political process. The corporate controlled media, the GOP and yea even allot of Democrats, don't want the public thinking for themselves. Instead  they seek to divert our attention to things that don't matter.

  Rev.Wright may have offended some.
  Didn't offend this white guy.
  Nor did I disagree with most of what he had to say.
  Our bombs do kill children.
  That is a fact and why war is a big deal and not something to be taken lightly.
  And yes these ideas are not Rev. Wright's but Jesus Christ's.
  All of us Christians know this.
  Let's not pretend that Christ would advocate war.

  But hey if you took Christ's words out of context...

  by pd1969 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 07:47:34 AM PDT

•  I've been saying this for the past week.

  We need to let the race issue alone and focus on other things.  MSM has made this an issue, let's show them we can change the subject.  It's like they think Americans don't know Obama's Black unless they tell them.

  Let's quit this nonsense and get back to getting Obama elected.

  by Char on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:02:34 AM PDT

•  if Obama loses...

  it will be because of Diebold and rethuglican theivery... not because he is black even though there are hundreds of thousands of people who wont vote for him because he is black.

  by Agrippa on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:04:26 AM PDT

•  Somebody here

  is carrying water ,undercover for the bigots in this country who find that a person of color can be chastised by his association with a pastor. Prove to me that you are not a bigot by asking  McCain to explain Hagee,Parsley Robertson and Falweel( R.I.P.) and Hillary her relationship[ with Doug Coe. You do that and I will retract my statement .

  by AVillamil on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:14:24 AM PDT

  •  I don't have to prove shit to you,

    but I do wonder about people like you who make ridiculous statements about someone without a clue as to the Legitimacy of who they are or what they feel about anything.

    It seems you, like the rethuglicans, are willing to throw out lies and assumptions about someone without any facts whatsoever.

    If you are that damn pious, why don't you write your own diaries instead of just criticizing others.

    by TKH on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 09:06:53 AM PDT

  •  Do you have enough balls to

    to put how you feel about ANYTHING into a diary or is it just that you incapable of writing one?

    by TKH on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 09:08:35 AM PDT

•  let's flip it for a moment...

  say McCain's white preacher claimed blacks invented cancer to kill all the whites. in a videotaped speech a couple of years ago.

  McCain gives a speech saying he despises the remarks, but he can't disown the man, who's a part of his life.

  then the preacher goes back on TV, repeats the claim and more, and says McCain only said what he said for politics.

  would the issue go away.

  by ron ray on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:16:51 AM PDT

•  Listen folks...

  Barack Obama has laid out a wonderful vision for this country. If he is not elected President, it will be mainly because he is a Black man. "We" the people don't determine the outcome of the elections, the "powers that be" do... unless there is a huge revolt against the establishment. The MSM has thrown out everything they could to make something stick to Obama and most of it has pointed to his race in one form or another. People will vote against their best interests if there are enough distractions thrown in the air. Sad fact.

  by TexasTD on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:26:37 AM PDT

•  As the current media frenzy has shown

  Obama would have had to execute Rev. Wright in front of cameras in order to satisfy nearly everyone. He said what he said and left it at that. It is the media and their controversy seeking need to create false issues that is the problem here. Also complicit in this kerfluffle is the constant ragging on how Obama is now doomed over this. Hell I guess he should just fold up his tent and let Hillary get trounced by McCain. After all the GOP has spent a lot of money building warehouses of attack ads against her and believe they should get their money's worth.

  by pwrmac5 on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 09:35:22 AM PDT

  •  I don't want him to fold up his tent....

    Quite the contrary, I want him to come out swinging, but I'm scared it may be too late. Their is now blood in the water and the political sharks are on a feeding frenzy.  

    He recently disavowed his association with the Rev. I just hope it's not too late to persuade those voters on the fence that he does not hold the Rev's views and the Rev's not helping him, one bit.

    by TKH on Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 09:52:21 AM PDT

    •  In order for Obama to keep swinging

      we the voting public need to stop tying to two men together at the wrist in the same manner we do to candidate who have white supremacists in their corner.

      If you believe in Obama then do it, if you had doubts then your faith wasn't all that strong as you would like to believe.

      by pwrmac5 on Thu May 01, 2008 at 07:10:00 AM PDT