For those who don't know, Aaron Dahl wrote a very good article called "Hillary Clinton and the Burning Down of the Black Church. The article is here.
I intended this to be my response there, but it took on a life of its own, so I decided to create a new thread just to share my answer with everyone.
Read on if you dare..
After reading some of the bizarre responses to this well written article its no wonder there are very few blacks frequenting dKos. To me, this is no slight to the Kos himself, because he shares my progressive values, and the progressive agenda will be beneficial to not only blacks but other minorities, women and the gay community as well. Nevertheless, it would seem that a black perspective is unwelcome to more than a few of the citizens here. This is not surprising, because this pretty much reflects the sentiment of a significant portion of non-blacks in America. Allow me to elaborate.
Very little of our history is taught in the public schools. Very little is mentioned about slavery in the history books. Our entire experience in America is summarized by two things: one classic speech by Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I bet very few of you can tell me about one of the multitude of inventions and patents by blacks in America. We sit idly by while others discuss our community as if we are some third world country. Nowhere was this more evident than during Hurricane Katrina, when blacks caught in the flood were portrayed as looting "refugees" that were too stupid to leave town and pretty much got what they deserved. (By the way, how's that rebuilding New Orleans thing working out?) Whenever one of us screws up, it is seen as an indictment on all of us. Then, whenever we dare point out these inequities, not only are we dismissed out of hand we are often accused of being ungrateful, selfish, "looking for a handout" or even racist just for bringing them up. Meanwhile, when whites parrot age-old, bigoted talking points like "blacks are naturally inferior to whites" (updated in 2008 to "Obama is unelectable" or Barack being portrayed by Geraldine Ferraro and George McGovern as the affirmative action candidate) or if whites raise the specter of the angry black man in order to scare the shit out of old white people, the rush of other whites to declare the person who uses these comments "not racist" is quite fascinating. If we are to believe these people, white racism is extinct and its just a sign of black oversensitivity to issues pertaining to race. In the profound words of one Chris Griffin: "Whaaaaaaaaaat?"
Racism in America is real. Bigoted perspectives exist on both sides of the divide, and we won't be able to begin to address the divide if we can't even agree on this. Sweeping our grievances under the rug for the past 20 or 30 years has done nothing to make the problems go away, in fact in some ways they are probably worse. Not only do we need to be honest about the problems of race, we need to elevate the debate.
One way to fight this is to stop allowing the right wing noise machine to keep defining race relations as blacks vs whites. In fact, we need to lose the term "race" in the discussion altogether, because we aren't the only minority being victimized by the elitism and separatism in this country, we are just the most visible - and most vocal - element of the struggle for equality in America. If we are to truly vanquish our racial demons we need to expand our discourse to include all people of all backgrounds and persuasions. For too long, the race divide has been blacks on one side, whites on the other side with everyone else in the middle. For example: we need to stop allowing the immigration debate to be marginalized as a Mexican problem, while ignoring the reasons behind the influx of people across our southern border. These people are just trying to survive just as the rest of us are. We need to remember that in order to resist falling victims to the Lou Dobbses of the world.
In the words of one Larry the Cable Guy, we need to "git 'er done."
There. I've said my piece for the day. I hope I was able to offer a little insight into the racial divisions in this country in a way that encourages the mature debate Senator Obama hopes for. We in black America have been dying - some of us literally - to have that mature discussion for years. I welcome your feedback and input in the discussion.
Peace.