Forbes Avenue » Obama

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:00:51 +0000

Roman Polanski, you sexy, 13 year old girl raping, hairy magnet. I have one word for you…Extradition

The Arena Football League. back. for the first time.

Lindsay Lohan owes money to a porn king. I see “videos” in your future, Ms. Lohan.

One of these days America will sit down with itself and have a talk about the secretive and blatant racism that still runs rampant in this country. In the mean time though, lets make Facebook polls about killing the president! (What is wrong with this country)

Reality Stars. Making way too much money per episode. (What is wrong with this country)

The New York Times compiles the last words of prisoners executed by the state of Texas.

Once again: Roman Polanski drugged and raped a child. So, yeah, everybody stop with the outrage over his arrest.

Lamar Odom, WTF are you thinking, sir? Khloe Kardashian? After one month? Really?

In other Kardashian news, Kim is back together with Reggie Bush. At some point, these dudes are gonna realize the Kardashians are, like, half a step above the groupies who gather in the hotel lobby after games.

Good Morning Forbes

negrostotle — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:00:18 +0000

Ben Affleck may be cheating on Jennifer Garner with the above pictured Blake Lively. *whispers* I think its the Mom jeans that does it for him.

Jimmy Carter thinks Joe Wilson’s disrespect of Obama was “based on racism.”

Stuff only Pittsburghers care about: Former Steelers tight end Jay Riemersma is running for Congress.

TMZ has the audio of Obama calling Kanye a jackass.

Yeah, this is late…the internet went out. Anyway…

Good Morning (morning somewhere) Forbes.

Van Jones Resigns

tigger500 — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:44:05 +0000

Not unexpectedly.

I have a bunch of feelings about this, but the first thing I thought was that “maybe now we can get the green jobs movement moving again.”

Honestly, I don’t think the Republicans attack on Jones is about Jones at all. He was a mid-level appointee. But he was an easy target, since he is an actual liberal (of which there are so few in the Obama administration). And, signing a Truther petition is basically a big bullseye smack dab over the heart, folks.

This was about the Right gaining traction around the notion that Obama’s a closet Communist/lefty out to destroy the nation. Dude isn’t even progressive, but the nutsos will never believe that. Especially not now.

And the Right will continue to bring this up well after Jones is gone. Obama will have to explain why he hired him, how come he didn’t know about the petition, etc. Obama will answer, but the crazies don’t care about the why and his answer will just be part of the political theater that occurs with stuff like this. The crazies just wanted something on which to hang the “Obama = communist” tag. And they got it. And it will probably haunt the rest of this term and his re-election campaign.

For Jones himself, I doubt this will significantly affect his ability to do what he does really really well – organize. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes more effective outside the administration. And we need it, since the energy bill still has to get through the Senate.

I guess we’ll see.

On Politics and the Sorry State of Affairs (or, you know, the Democrats)

Obama’s conclusion on Gates arrest: Can’t we all just have a beer?

griffn — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:29:12 +0000

At the White House press briefing this morning, Obama made a surprise appearance to tamp down the controversy regarding the arrest of Professor Gates and to announce that he had invited both Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer. So apparently the lesson is: arrest a hobbled elderly man in his own home on trumped up charges of disorderly conduct and get invited to the White House for a beer with the president. Awesome.

A few days ago, I wrote that if you have a serious conversation about race and you walk away feeling good about it, something got sugarcoated. Beers at the White House is presumably Obama’s way of getting everyone– the police, the media, the African-American community, the talk radio circuit– to walk away feeling good about this situation.

From a political standpoint, it’s a brilliant move. Obama needs us all to shift our attention away from the firestorm he went out of his way to throw gasoline on and back to health care reform. What better way to do that than a photo-op at the White House showing a power-abusing white cop and an angry black man drinking out of the same pitcher of beer with our biracial, post-racial president?

I don’t know, maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe Obama, Crowley, and Gates will sit down not for a photo-op but for a serious discussion about what occurred and what next steps we can take to curb police abuse of power, whether race is a factor or not. But my sense is that the deference and benefit of the doubt that Obama is giving to Sgt. Crowley shows that he either doesn’t get it or is choosing not to get it for political reasons.

I don’t know whether Sgt. Crowley is “racist” or not. Honestly, I don’t care. I do care that he believes it’s okay to arrest anyone at any time for any reason. I do care that the police report– the one Crowley himself wrote– reads as though Crowley baited Gates into stepping outside his home so that he could be arrested for causing a public disturbance. I do care that the Cambridge Police Department and the local police union are vigorously defending Crowley’s right to detain, fingerprint, mug shot, and humiliate someone for the charge of hurting a police officer’s feelings. I do care that so many people believe that because the job of a police officer is hard and dangerous and heroic (and it is all those things), that we should look the other way– or worse, invite them to the White House for beers– when they occasionally abuse their power.

I didn’t see Obama’s press conference today, but I did read the transcript. Without getting too deep in the weeds, let me take issue with one thing Obama said:

I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.

The problem with this statement is that it puts the two people involved on equal footing. They are not. One of the people in that situation has a badge and a gun and the power to detain and kill you with minimal or no legal consequence. The other has the power to raise his voice and hurt your feelings. I think it’s safe to say the guy with the gun has significantly more power and should be held to a significantly higher standard of not overreacting. This isn’t about two good people who weren’t able to resolve the incident. This is about a police officer who is trained and paid to resolve incidents not resolving the incident (i.e. apologizing and walking away the minute it was clear that no burglary was in progress and Gates was the homeowner).

The fact that Obama thinks this situation is about two people with a misunderstanding rather than one person with vastly more power than the other using that power to shut the other guy up and teach him a lesson about sassing the police gives me little hope for what will be accomplished at that White House beer.

Why Obama can’t be the national spokesperson on race

griffn — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 06:08:10 +0000

Earlier this week, tigger500 wrote a post titled “What’s wrong with Obama’s speeches on race.“ Read it. And allow me to extend that discussion.

The problem with Obama’s speeches on race is that his job as a politician– more specifically, a politician with tenuous support and job security– necessitates that he makes people feel good. He needs to make people feel good or else he gets nothing done and he’s not the president. That position is fundamentally incompatible with having any kind of honest discussion on race, because an honest discussion isn’t going to make anyone feel good. If you don’t walk away from a serious discussion on race with your head in your hands, something got sugarcoated.

Obama lectures black audiences on personal responsibility despite the fact that he’s smart enough to know that personal responsibility and accountability aren’t even in the top ten problems facing the black community. He does it because he knows black audiences will feel good about themselves and motivated to do better, and white observers will feel good that someone is finally giving those irresponsible Negroes a good talking to. Everyone feels good, Obama wins, and black fathers continue to get incarcerated, undereducated, and unemployed at double and triple the rates of white fathers.

He doesn’t lecture white audiences on personal responsibility and accountability, despite knowing that they need the pep talk as much as we do, because the politics of doing that aren’t nearly as good. Likewise, he lectures black audiences in metropolitan Atlanta on homophobia because he knows they’re 90% behind him regardless, and he knows white folks will feel good that it’s the Negroes’ fault, not theirs. Lecturing white audiences in Utah or Alabama on the subject would have far greater impact, but again, the politics of doing that suck.

To Obama’s credit though, he’s a brilliant politician, and the game ain’t easy. Especially for– and you really cannot say this enough– a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. The line he has walked thus far on race has been flawed, but flawed in the way the Apollo 11 mission was flawed. Yeah, some things went wrong, but they put a man on the moon. On the moon, son.

Fact is, the best thing Obama can do regarding race in America is to work towards fixing the institutional inequities. Black fathers don’t abandon their families because they don’t feel like being dads, they do it because they get thrown in jail more often, lose their jobs more often, and don’t have generations of wealth built up to fall back on as a cushion. The playing field is badly tilted. It’s at a 45-degree angle or worse in some cases. You can lecture the players about working harder to get up that hill, or you can pressure the league to flatten the field. Both approaches are worthwhile, but which is more likely to turn your squad around?

What’s Wrong with Obama’s Speeches on Race

tigger500 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:23:18 +0000

Well, first. There are so few.

No, seriously – let me start by saying that the fact that we have a president who talks about race seriously at all is a huge step in the right direction.

That said, I am frequently distressed by what the president actually says when he does speak about race. Because I think he is (perhaps unintentionally) intellectually dishonest about how race truly operates, what life is actually like as a Black person, and what it will take to really create equality of opportunity and an equitable division of resources (which are two very different things that require two separate, but specific, approaches).

Unlike most people, I thought the Philadelphia speech was terrible, a historical, and dangerous. I thought in his attempt to appeal to both White and Black, he made a crucial mistake that many people make when discussing race — equating Black and White feelings about, and experiences with, race symmetrically. Meaning White people’s resentment at Black progress was the same as Black frustration with being oppressed.

Simply – though both are legitimate, they are not equal.

To suggest, as he did, that they are, I think is dangerous. I think it contributes to a feeling of fatigue in America. Fatigue with remedies for past wrongs. Fatigue with talking about Black people when we can talk about White people. Fatigue fatigue fatigue.

This is perhaps unavoidable. He is a politician and there are many more White people than there are Black people. He must say what will allow him to stay in power and do what he wants to do to help everyone. I get that.

But because race operates the way it does, what any prominent Black person says carries enormous weight. In this case, what he’s saying is incredibly detrimental to a concerted, real fight to end racism (it’s great, if you’re goal is bettering race relations…but yea, that’s a different goal).

We’ve got to find language that talks honestly, directly, and passionately to the specific and unique experience of being Black in America without it being assumed that, by doing so, we ignore everyone else.

I think Obama attempts to find this language in his speech before the NAACP last week:

The first thing we need to do is make real the words of your charter and eradicate prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination among citizens of the United States. I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009. And I believe that overall, there’s probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today.

But make no mistake: the pain of discrimination is still felt in America. By African-American women paid less for doing the same work as colleagues of a different color and gender. By Latinos made to feel unwelcome in their own country. By Muslim Americans viewed with suspicion for simply kneeling down to pray. By our gay brothers and sisters, still taunted, still attacked, still denied their rights.

On the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, discrimination must not stand. Not on account of color or gender; how you worship or who you love. Prejudice has no place in the United States of America.

But we also know that prejudice and discrimination are not even the steepest barriers to opportunity today. The most difficult barriers include structural inequalities that our nation’s legacy of discrimination has left behind; inequalities still plaguing too many communities and too often the object of national neglect.

Lovely language, but later in the speech he says something he’s never really said before:

We need a new mindset, a new set of attitudes – because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way that we have internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little of ourselves. (emphasis mine)

This is the part of the speech that has been missing from all his other speeches regarding race. And boy – it’s beautiful to see. Even more beautiful to listen to.

See, the problem I’ve always had with Black conservatism, particularly as embodied in Obama, is the silly belief that Black self-reliance is so Herculean that it can fix all problems that Black folks face. Black conservatives didn’t always pay the proper attention to just how damaged Black folks really are.

Here though, Obama nods at something that few public Black figures speak enough on – the psychic dimension of racism. He acknowledges that so much of what being Black is is about wrestling with a legacy of racism that manifests in subtle, specific ways all damn day long. That takes its toll on a person.

The problem then, in this speech, is that he doesn’t expound on this idea more. He doesn’t talk about the daily bombardment with anti-black images and ideas that black folks have to deal with. He doesn’t talk about the fact that Black boys do well until about 4th grade and that it could have something to do with the fact that a racist White America is still largely in charge of his education.

But he does immediately follow it up with the usual, “get off your ass and change,” undercutting the weight and importance of his statement about the psychic damage of racism. So much so, that no one has mentioned it.

Shame.

Were it that easy for us to collectively pick ourselves up, dust off the racism and keep it moving, we’d have done it long ago.

The sad truth is that even if you work really hard and play by the rules all the time, as a Black person, you are still more likely to “fail.” Even if you “succeed,” you have to be like Obama and pretend that you aren’t the exception that proves the rule that you are.

Either road isn’t good for Black psyches. Either road perpetuates the dominant narrative that if there is a problem in Black communities, it’s Black folks’ fault. Either road doesn’t eradicate racism.

Continuing to deny that Black people are profoundly damaged, that life is hard for us no matter how “well” we do, that the end of Jim Crow, slavery and lynching isn’t the same as the end of racism, that the burden for ending racism has as much to do with White folks as Black folks will doom us to repeat the past.

As evidenced by Pat Buchanan’s unrepentant racism, the tea parties, caricatures of the First Family, racism is alive and well. Resurging, even.

Now might be a good time to start talking about it for real.