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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Why is Race Only a Factor For White Voters?
The basic message from ABC News and other outlets is the massive lead that Hillary Clinton holds among white voters in the Democratic Primary is evidence of latent racism. Indeed, some wise leftist soul is already preparing the narrative for when McCain wins:
Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. And only a third of those voters said they'd support Obama as the nominee against John McCain,
I can already write the headlines for November 5th. "American Weren't Ready for Black President", "White Voters Catapult McCain to Victory." Etc, etc.
I wonder why the media doesn't focus too much on whether racial motives are behind Obama winning 90% of the black vote. Indeed, I wonder how all of this focus on Clinton's white vote, in terms of stirring up racial sentiment, is any different than Clinton comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson. After all, in the end, it's a very apt comparison.
Jackson was a major factor in 1988 and 1984 because he was able to win the black vote as a bloc. That alone put him in second place in 1988. Obama's major innovation has been to add to that base of support the McGovern coalition of peaceniks, traitors, and so forth. But, throughout the campaign, he has shown a fundamental inability to break out of that box - when it comes time to actually counting votes.
I mean, let's get serious here - how much must Obama repel white, working-class people for them to have taken up Hillary Clinton as their champion?
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on May 13, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
Adam,
I was watching a Canadian news outlet (CBC or CTV, I can't remember) a few days ago. They interviewed a man who said he supported Obama. When asked "why", "he pointed to his skin".
His skin was black.
I would rephrase the title of your blog post to
"Why is Race Only a Factor For White Voters to Fear Expressing?"
Of course, the easy answer is: Because the MSM (CBC, CTV, etc.) will villify and demonize you if you don't.
Exhibit A: The news report I witnessed.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-05-13 5:10:50 PM
As a black woman, I am equally angry and disappointed that race is only a factor for white voters to fear expressing. I am also angry that I am ostracized and villified in my black community when as I express my preference for the white candidate and remind my brothers and sisters that they should not base their decision on race alone...just as they have asked white america to do. It's no different, if not worse, when blacks who are experienced at being on the receiving end of racism, turn around and practice the same. How hypocritical.
Posted by: Aio | 2008-05-13 5:53:05 PM
Aio,
I'm sorry you feel ostracized and vilified. Best wishes to you.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-05-13 5:56:37 PM
>I can already write the headlines for November 5th. "American Weren't Ready for Black President"
Yoshi
I can say that right now.
I will also say that Americans aren't ready for a woman President.
As long as women or Blacks or anyone else claims equality with their mouth but acts as though they need special treatment because they don't believe they are equal, America and Canada are not ready for a Leader who will treat their own "unequal" identity group with favouritism and therefore discriminate against the rest.
The gripes of these identity groups and their demands for special this and special that which excludes members not of their groups, the preferencial treatment borne of identity rather than merit has come back to bite them on the ass and bite hard.
It's about time we had some change, and that change needs to be responsibile action on the part of these puling identity group individuals.
Stand up, and ACT like you're equal people.
Then maybe you can lead when you know how.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-05-13 5:59:25 PM
"Why is Race Only a Factor For White Voters?"
Because the evidence indicates that whites are uniquely squeamish about expressing racial solidarity.
Identity politics is the norm with any group that wants to maintain its identity - in other words almost every group in the world. If white Americans think they're above such things that is their problem, not Obama's. He seems to be doing rather well taking advantage of it.
It is up to those not happy with the status quo to change things. Whining about identity politics of other groups isn't going to change anything.
Posted by: Matra | 2008-05-13 6:21:54 PM
I am so disgusted with the media playing the race-card. Who are blacks voting for, whites voting for. Who are women voting for, men voting for. Rich, Middle Class, Poor, who are they voting for. I can go on and on. I blame the media for turning up the heat on racism! The only reason they do this is to serve their own corporate greed! ABC is owned by Disney thanks to Bill Clinton signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which deregulated the media. FOX has a clear right-wing agenda. (CNN)= Clinton News Network where they miminalize Hillary's flaws allowing her to fly under the rada. Then they exagerate Obama's flaws blowing them way out of proportion. Notice how they briefly reported Hillary's sniper story and then reported on the Wright story week after week non-stop. How they didn't concentrate on Columbia-gate/Mark Penn. They didn't update voters on Canada-gate, turns out it was actually the Clinton campaign that contacted Canada reassuring them to take Hillary anti-Nafta comments "with a grain of salt". In Canada CBC updated the story with the correct information. While U.S. media dropped it like a hot potato. Bill Clinton allowed large media corporations to gobble up the little guy. These large Media Corporations favor the Clintons. Americans have become media-sheep.
HERE'S HOW MEDIA/NEWPAPERS WORKS
Most reporters are taking marching orders from an Editor who tell them what the story should say and how to report it. That Editor takes marching orders from the Managing Editor; the Managing Editor takes orders from the Publisher. The Publisher takes orders from the Board of Directors; the Board takes orders from the major stockholders or owners. The major stockholders want more power, money and greater access to new markets that government officials regulate.
These same people (owners and major stockholders) are the ones that you see bundling money (buying favors) for political candidates. It is to their benefit to get Clinton or McCain into office. Bill Clinton in 1996 gave big media the ability to gobble up many more outlets in the same markets. Why did none of the media, pundits read or listen to Rev. Wright's entire sermons? Why did reporters ignore Bill Moyers' interview of Wright on Friday (too positive?). Divide and Conquer and it's working!
Posted by: Marika | 2008-05-13 6:23:59 PM
Would everybody here please, in the interest of full disclosure, list the exact date you freed your slaves?
I'll start.
Neither I nor any of my ancestors has ever owned slaves and therefore I bear no guilt for the slave trade.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-05-13 7:07:29 PM
SYF,
I can honestly state that I have never owned, freed, nor slept with any slaves. I can't, however, say that about my ancestors.
Of course, I also can't say definitively that my ancestors didn't sleep with their masters.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-05-13 7:29:28 PM
Matra,
"If white Americans think they're above such things that is their problem, not Obama's. He seems to be doing rather well taking advantage of it. "
So what you are saying is that Obama does not and will not represent ALL Americans regardless of their skin colour. However, he will use racial politics to further his own agenda.
Got it. Thanks for clueing us in.
Posted by: h2o273kk9 | 2008-05-13 8:03:46 PM
What Speller said rings scarily true on one level:
I had a chat with my stepmother this evening about the outcome of the latest episode of "Dancing With the Stars" (please, no groaning) and what came out of it was that "it's time for a woman to win because men have won it every year to this point" (in regards to a comment I made about the apparent winner being the only female left in the competition)--this is the same woman (my stepmom, not the dancer) that said, essentially, the same thing about Hillary way back in the more innocent days of October '07.
The point is, that a lot of people, stupidly, value form over substance (or appearance over ability) and a lot of people are going to reward exactly the things Speller so adequately eviscerates in his post. I just hope enough people are rational enough to vote for the most qualified person come November--not the person they feel who's 'time has come'.
As for Matra's dig at Fox News: the scary thing is they play it more middle-of-the-road than MSNBC, CNN, etc. (Fox is the network that pretty much marginalized Fred Thompson from the get-go and has been cheering for McCain from day one, which doesn't exactly put them on the side of the angels as far as conservatives are concerned).
Posted by: ECM | 2008-05-13 8:34:35 PM
It appears more and more the O's strategy is sound. Demographics have changed since 1972 when McGovern attempted the same strategy and got blown out (the raison d'etre for super delegates). McGovern liberals and the black vote are now significantly large enough to take Barry to the white man's house. In fact it appears a mistake was made by BHO in not embracing Jeremiah and black liberation theology. Wright's message was focused at "rich" white people (we all know who they are, disproportionately). It would have pre-empted the Wright outrage over hurt feelings. Still it appears not to have mattered. Bush I beat Dukakis by winning the white vote. Bush II only squeaked by Gore because his percentage of the white vote was 4% less than his father's which he corrected in 2004 and beat Kerry. However, it appears O does not need to win a majority of the white if he can increase his black percentage by a couple of points.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-05-13 9:41:59 PM
You don't want race to be a factor in this election ? Easy.
Shut down Fox, cnn, and other controlled medias like those.
Posted by: Marc | 2008-05-14 7:28:07 AM
Set You Free wrote: "Would everybody here please, in the interest of full disclosure, list the exact date you freed your slaves?"
For the blacks among you: Would everybody please give the exact date your ancestors stopped capturing and selling slaves?
In spite of the recent whinging at the U.N. by African countries demanding reparations from the slave trade, it wasn't a zero-sum game (hardly anything ever is). It may have been whites who bought and exploited, but it was blacks who captured and sold. Africans, of course, know all of this. They were just hoping that Americans and Europeans didn't--just as American blacks don't want American whites to know who's mostly responsible for racism today. Bill Cosby was right.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-05-14 8:13:55 AM
Shane, visit the Emancipation Network or www.antislavery.org or any of the tens of dozens of aabolitioninst websites out there. Slavery never went away. Conservative estimates say there are 27 million or so slaves and bonded laborers out there. You and I buy products they've touched. So let's scotch that myth that slavery was an African thing, or an American thing, or a hebrew/egyptian thing. It's a global thing, transcending race, cultures, ideologies, political bias, and age.
Matter of fact, if you guys here really want to show me you're here to free mankind, fight terrorism, push a liberty agenda, and all that good stuff... prove it. Never mind radical islam. Nevermind Obama or communism or pot or helmet laws or taxes. Roll your sleeves up, and as a bloc, sick libertarianinsm on slavery worldwide. Get educated. Get active. Get out there. Get rid of it. Get over the petty crap.
Posted by: Pattern Recognition | 2008-05-14 8:29:57 AM
PR;
Ya vol, mien fuhrer.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-05-14 10:00:56 AM
Time Magazine Canadian Edition dated May 19 2008 has declared Barry (don't call me Barak" Obama the nominee for the Democratic Party, I assume the US Cover and content is the same as the Canadian Edition. This cover story by Joe Klein is sure to piss off many delegates and super delegates who have not voted and is typical of the over bearing Liberal and Left Wing arrogance of Time Magazine. As a distinguished Editor and Journalist in Halifax Nova Scotia told me some decades ago, "Time Lies" this is just another example.the choice of Obama is good news for the GOP. Obama and Aunt Ophra won't survive real media inspection of this wannabe President the most shallow politician in United States History,including Arron Burr. MacLeod
Posted by: Jack MacLeod | 2008-05-14 10:41:55 AM
Jack:
It's going to be interesting to see how the Democrat Party handles the disenfranchised voters of Florida and Michigan ... who happened to support Hillary.
So far, the results of those primaries have not been included in the total.
The game's far from over.
Posted by: set you free | 2008-05-14 11:00:49 AM
Right,Agreed SYF, the Games is indeed far from over,
My personal opinion is that Senator Clinton will be the ultimate choice of the Democratic Party, but, having said that, she will not defeat Senator and
Commander (Ret) US Navy, McCain. The Dems will be split for many decades over the manipulation of this leadership campaign particularly by Ophra Winfrey,her money and her script writers. Jack MacLeod
Posted by: Jack MacLeod | 2008-05-14 11:21:27 AM
Darwin: Origin of the Species
"Slave-making instinct. This remarkable instinct was first discovered in the Formica (Polyerges) rufescens by Pierre Huber, a better observer even than his celebrated father. This ant is absolutely dependent on its slaves; without their aid, the species would certainly become extinct in a single year. The males and fertile females do no work. The workers or sterile females, though most energetic and courageous in capturing slaves, do no other work. They are incapable of making their own nests, or of feeding their own larvae. When the old nest is found inconvenient, and they have to migrate, it is the slaves which determine the migration, and actually carry their masters in their jaws. So utterly helpless are the masters, that when Huber shut up thirty of them without a slave, but with plenty of the food which they like best, and with their larvae and pupae to stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they could not even feed themselves, and many perished of hunger. Huber then introduced a single slave (F. fusca), and she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors; made some cells and tended the larvae, and put all to rights. What can be more extraordinary than these well-ascertained facts? If we had not known of any other slave-making ant, it would have been hopeless to have speculated how so wonderful an instinct could have been perfected. [...]
By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend to conjecture. But as ants, which are not slave-makers, will, as I have seen, carry off pupae of other species, if scattered near their nests, it is possible that pupae originally stored as food might become developed; and the ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to the species which had seized them if it were more advantageous to this species to capture workers than to procreate them the habit of collecting pupae originally for food might by natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves. When the instinct was once acquired, if carried out to a much less extent even than in our British F. sanguinea, which, as we have seen, is less aided by its slaves than the same species in Switzerland, I can see no difficulty in natural selection increasing and modifying the instinct always supposing each modification to be of use to the species until an ant was formed as abjectly dependent on its slaves as is the Formica rufescens."
Chapter VII: Instinct
Reminiscent of the way a mass immigration policy currently replaces high birth rates with the mass migration of wage slaves.
Posted by: DJ | 2008-05-14 11:26:14 AM
Fitzhugh's critique of wage slavery and despotic capitalism.
CANNIBALS ALL! OR SLAVES WITHOUT MASTERS
BY GEORGE FITZHUGH,
CHAPTER XI.
DECAY OF ENGLISH LIBERTY, AND GROWTH
OF ENGLISH POOR LAWS.
"Blackstone, whose Commentaries have been, for half a century, a common school-book, and whose opinions on the rise, growth and full development of British liberty, are generally received as true, as well in America as in Europe, maintains a theory the very opposite of that for which we are about to contend.
He holds that the appearance of the House of Commons, about the reign of Henry the Third, was the dawn of approaching liberty. We contend that it was the origin of the capitalist and moneyed interest government, destined finally to swallow up all other powers in the State, and to bring about the most selfish, exacting and unfeeling class, despotism. He thinks the emancipation of the serfs was another advance towards equality of rights and conditions. We think it aggravated inequality of conditions, and divested the liberated class of every valuable, social and political right. A short history of the English Poor Laws, which we shall annex, will enable the reader to decide between us on this head. He thinks the Reformation increased the liberties of the subject. We think that, in destroying the noblest charity fund in the world, the church lands, and abolishing a priesthood, the efficient and zealous friends of the poor, the Reformation tended to diminish the liberty of the mass of the peoples and to impair their moral, social and physical well-being. He thinks that the Revolution, by increasing the power of the House of Commons, and lessening the prerogative of the Crown, and the influence of the Church, promoted liberty. We think the Crown and the Church the natural friends, allies and guardians of the laboring class; the House of Commons, a moneyed firm, their natural enemies; and that the Revolution was a marked epoch in the steady decay of British liberty.
He thinks that the settlement of 1688 that successfully asserted in theory the supreme sovereignty of Parliament, but particularly the supreme sovereignty of the House of Commons, was the consummation or perfection of British liberty. We are sure, that that settlement, and the chartering of the Bank of England, which soon succeeded it, united the landed and moneyed interests, placed all the powers of government in their hands, and deprived the great laboring class of every valuable right and liberty. The nobility, the church, the king, were now powerless; and the mass of the people, wholly unrepresented in the government, found themselves exposed to the grinding and pitiless despotism of their natural and hereditary enemies. Mr. Charles Dickens, who pities the condition of the negro slaves, thus sums up, in a late speech, the worse condition of the "Slaves without Masters," in Great Britain: "Beneath all this, is a heaving mass of poverty, ignorance and crime." Such is English liberty for the masses. Thirty thousand men own the lands of England, three thousand those of Scotland, and fewer still those of Ireland. The great mass of the people are cut off from the soil, have no certain means of subsistence, and are trespassers upon the earth, without a single valuable or available right. Contrast their situations with that of the old villeins, and see then whether our theory of British liberty and the British constitution be true, or that of Blackstone."
Posted by: DJ | 2008-05-14 11:29:00 AM
DJ
While reading your excerpt regarding slave ants, it occured to me that by today's feminist standards the slaves would be the masters. Sterile females going out to work and organize the colony, while fertile helpless females reproduce and do little else. An ironic role reversal, isn't it?
Posted by: dp | 2008-05-14 9:09:11 PM
I never realized that Democratic voters were so racist. They use to like to blame Republicans for that and as it turns out, they are just as bad if not worse.
Posted by: jon | 2008-05-14 9:51:00 PM
Jon,
Your naivety can be forgiven but any clear thinking person knows one of the biggest myths perpetrated by the leftist media establishment and sadly promoted as fact is that Republicans are racist, while the Dems are the party of "tolerance".
True racisms always comes from the left, the Democratic party has always been the party of segregation, their entire premise is set up on class and racial warfare. The majority of them are extremely wealthy rich white elitists. Racism is an industry for them.
They have a formally active kkk member still sitting as a senior senator.
Which party has elevated the likes of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales among others to the highest positions of power?
Of course if you ask any leading democrat about that fact, in the case of Powell and Rice they will tell you because they are conservatives they aren't really black, in itself a racist statement.
The most disturbing thing is although the facts are in plain site for everyone to see, still the myth prevails.
I am personally enjoying the Dems showing themselves for the complete assholes they are, and in the process tearing themselves apart.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of evil malcontents, which is what comprises the democratic party, as it does the Liberal party up here these days.
Posted by: deepblue | 2008-05-14 10:35:16 PM
Well said, deepblue.
I'd like to add that it was the Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln that freed the slaves.*
While doing so, the Democrats were doing their usual "opposing the war" routine.
(no doubt had Libertarians existed back then, which they didn't, they would have supported the Copperheads)
Those interested in learning more about the Democrats opposing the American Civil War might want to do a search using the term Copperheads.
The Democrats were snakes then and they are still today.
Of course the Southern American States that comprised the Confederacy have traditionally hated the Republicans ever since and have historically uniformly voted Democrat because of the Civil War.
That is why Senator Robert Byrd(D), a former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle-(Kleagle is the Klan title for recruiter)-is a senior sitting Senator today.
*(cue DJ telling us that Abe Lincoln was ambivalent about freeing the slaves and did it only for utilitarian purposes)
Posted by: Speller | 2008-05-15 6:44:11 AM
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