I originally posted portions of this diary on Sunday, September 11th, 2011 as 'To Boycott or Not To Boycott. What About the Jobs?'
This is Day 1 of my series this week that is committed to a discussion about race and respect within the Progressive Community -- at least within THIS progressive community.
I decided that this conversation needs to happen.
I will reply to some comments, but not all of them. I kinda will have other things to do outside of these 'internets'.
If you say something interesting, I will engage. If you partake in the usual hyperbole, meta, pie, 'fill in the blank'... umm... I won't.
If none of you read this at all, then I've said my say and I will leave it at that.
Follow me ov'r...
~~Progressives should not condone bigotry.~~
~~Progressives should not condone the disrespect of other DKers.~~
~~Progressives should not condone the disrespect of President Obama.~~
I was having a conservation with another DK'er about racism and the progressive movement. This person posted something that I felt compelled to respond to right away. This in part, was the punchline that got me to typing (and I hope that this person doesn't mind me repeating his/her comments here):
The fact is that some degree of racial insensitivity, lack of racial consciousness, racial ignorance, whatever you want to call [it], has to be sort of papered over in the broader interest of uniting behind the common progressive agenda, and electing more and better Democrats.
Emphasis mine.
An epiphany has occurred this week on the DK. A number of people of color have decided that enough is enough for them and they will step away from this site for a while -- perhaps permanently.
As a person of color and female, I have decided not to do this. Why? Because when things are the bleakest is when I choose to step up more. There is no need to go through the history of how we have gotten to this point --- I think we all know. Frustrations have boiled over to the extent that the owner and administrator of Daily Kos felt compelled to step in and take action.
I can respect that. After all, this is Marko's site. He built it up, he basically put his seed money into it and although we all like to espouse freedom of speech -- on a privately owned website, there is no such thing. I do understand that as well. The fact that Markos have allowed a great level of leeway in folk expressing themselves says a lot about actually practicing such freedom of speech, rather than enforcing some version of it through the rules of this website.
I have said on a number of occasions that I have the expectation that adults will practice adult behavior. While it can be fun and somewhat amusing to 'one up' another in the heat of an argument, it ceases to be entertainment when we start to lose sight of the mission of this site.
The President of the United States gave an important speech to the Joint Session of Congress, his Cabinet, the Supremes, and, well, to all of us Americans about Jobs.
Jobs, or the lack of having one, is on the top of the list for most Americans in terms of righting this wrong economy. For those who have criticized the President for
-- not going hard enough;
-- not being progressive enough;
-- not being a peacenik enough;
-- not enforcing the law enough;
-- not being environmental enough;
-- not protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid enough;
-- not ending all wars fast enough;
You get the point -- for all of those who have had their criticisms -- legitimate or not, I as a Democrat and a Progressive, do expect for the office of the Presidency to be respected. I don't care if you don't like the person who is serving as President or you don't like his policies or his politics. We as Progressives should not stand for Mr. Obama being disrespected, because racism is at the heart of it.
I think that is all a lot of Black Kossers have been trying to convey. However, getting back to the quote above, if there are folk on here who truly believe that such racial insensitivities -- including that shown toward the President, should be tabled in favor of promoting a Progressive agenda, then I repeat what I said to this person:
Maybe from where some of you sit, this is okay, but in my mind, this is exactly the problem. What this says to me is that what may matter to some folk is not as important as the 'progressive agenda'. Yet you don't have a progressive agenda without the important aspect of diversity because that is the cornerstone of what being a progressive is all about.
Conservatives of today and the GOP in particular, are not shy about their narrow 'lock step' attitude. They are racially insensitive, racially ignorant and willfully so, as well as lack in totality, any sort of racial consciousness. The few diversed elements within the GOP today quite frankly has put greed and the lust of power -- the power they can garner by merely going against the grain of conventional thought, over those things that they KNOW to be wrong with the movement that they choose to associate themselves with.
There is no way, ever -- that I would agree to suppress my frustrations with progressive racial insensitivity to side with what some think are progressive values. I would love to know what kind of values these are that can ignore compassion and inclusiveness.
That's not being a progressive to me.
It's human nature sometimes to devolve into the muckity-muck of arguing. Some rather enjoy the chaos it creates. But I can tell you this much -- at the end of the day, we need to be on the same page, or at least within the same chapter of the same book.
Because the conversation that I do not wish to have in November of 2012 is why we would've, should've, or could've fixed or resolved our issues back in September of 2011 to avoid an election catastrophe.
To with, I'm not going anywhere. However I will continue to speak out on our flaws as Progressives because we need to learn from them and grow.
And folk -- it's about JOBS. Jobs and the economy all day long. At some point, we need to get back to it.
And we all need to be more respectful of other opinions.
Especially when they differ from your own.
.