Just Go Ahead And Say It, Why Don’t You.

Posted 31 May, 2008 at 11:09 am by Kevin
Filed Under Activism, Politics, Racism, U.S. Studies |

Obama is an Uppity Negro. That’s what you want to say, so just say it.

Geraldine A. Ferraro:

As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.

Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.

So, are you saying that these people who are driven by “racial resentment” should identify with someone who has gone to Yale Law School and is married to a Rhodes Scholar Oxford-Yale graduate instead? And they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white? They’re concerned with how they’ve been treated? When no one calls into question the Ivy League background of Senator Clinton? Well, of course no one is questioning Senator Clinton’s Ivy League education, because everyone knows that Senator Obama is the Affirmative Action candidate.

Really, between all the sexist and racist bullshit that I’ve seen with regards this nomination process I’m about to just give up.

Update: Ok, I just re-read that article and now someone needs to explain to me the difference between “racism” and “racial resentment.”

My head hurts.

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13 Responses to “Just Go Ahead And Say It, Why Don’t You.”

  1. nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez on May 31st, 2008 11:40 am permalink

    it’s unbearable.

  2. cooper on May 31st, 2008 2:53 pm permalink

    To try to separate racial resentment from racism is the most ridiculous thing academics have done and for the most part it is academics who have done this. If one actually looks at the history it seems Geraldine is leaning toward the conservative stance in saying what she says. In other words Obama doesn’t deserve the nomination because he doesn’t have the experience, and if he gets it is is because he is black and that would be equitable to affirmative action.

    What she doesn’t seem to understand ( doesn’t want to understand) is those who prefer Obama want to wipe old the old and bring in the new. We are tired of legacy politicians, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what she blabs on about.

  3. riverdaughter on May 31st, 2008 3:02 pm permalink

    I’m really sorry if that terminology bothers you. Feminists have referred to afirmative action for males for years. And the way this primary season has played out, Obama has benefited from a lot of breaks from the favorable media and labyrinthine DNC rules. It is no accident that Clinton lost significant momentum when her significant win in Florida was held to be inconsequential. She has been saddled with a handicap all primary season and the DNC has set her nomination delegate count at 2210 and Obama’s at 2025. And today, his campaign goes before the RBC arguind for a portion of Hillary Clinton’s earned delegates after he took his name off the ballot in MI. Talk about chutzpah! What’s more amazing is that the RBC will likely just hand them over to him with a “Here you go, barack, sorry we inconvenienced you.”
    I’m sorry, but how else do you interpret it when the better qualified, more experienced and clearly more knowledgable candidate gets an additional burden in order to be the nominee?
    Get used to the Affirmative Action meme. We Democrats are only just starting to use it. Republicans are going to milk it for all it’s worth in the General Election.

  4. ashton on May 31st, 2008 4:39 pm permalink

    Only a white candidate can be trusted to treat other white people fairly. This is what Geraldine means to say.

    Weary of the flip by Clinton and her supporters to demand Florida. If they give it to her now, after she pledged not to campaign or participate, and then broke her pledge…yeah, that won’t be fuel for any assault by Republicans. The sole name on the ballot in Michigan? Gimme a break.

    “What she doesn’t seem to understand ( doesn’t want to understand) is those who prefer Obama want to wipe old the old and bring in the new. We are tired of legacy politicians, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what she blabs on about.”

    Amen!

    “And the way this primary season has played out, Obama has benefited from a lot of breaks from the favorable media and labyrinthine DNC rules.”

    Sounds like the same excuses Bush uses. Bush doesn’t care what the media thinks, they’re all pundits dammit! Pundit pundit pundit pundit! He also doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks…these things are not important, blah blah blah. If this is the way we arrive to today’s success, well, I’m ready to try failing with the other method. Just to see. You know.
    As far as complicated DNC rules go, yeah, I’d think they’d get really maze-like when you agree to them and then try to twist them so that they benefit only one candidate. That would seem complicated.

  5. donna darko on May 31st, 2008 6:05 pm permalink

    If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment.

    No, she’s talking about playing the race card or “reverse racism.”

  6. donna darko on May 31st, 2008 6:05 pm permalink

    People automatically calling whites racist whatever they say.

  7. Barrayaran on May 31st, 2008 10:27 pm permalink

    “Someone needs to explain to me the difference between ‘racism’ and ‘racial resentment.’” That’s exactly what I thought when I read the piece, too.

    And “they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white”??? Irony, poetic justice, and just damn “Huh?”ness aside, what on earth are they expecting Obama to do?

  8. Kevin on June 1st, 2008 1:52 am permalink

    “I’m really sorry if that terminology bothers you.”

    I trust that you have come here in good faith, but these “sorry if” non-apologies need to go.

    “Obama has benefited from a lot of breaks from the favorable media and labyrinthine DNC rules.”

    I’d argue that Obama has received no more “favorable media” than Clinton has. Because y’know, all that “Obama is a Muslim terrorist,” “white people won’t vote for him,” and other such nonsense is just as caustic as this in my mind.

    I can’t speak to the labyrinthine DNC rules, so I won’t, lest I make myself out to be a fool.

    “Get used to the Affirmative Action meme. We Democrats are only just starting to use it.”

    Another reason I’m glad I’m not a Democrat.

    “Republicans are going to milk it for all it’s worth in the General Election.”

    I have no doubt about that, but at least I expect it from them.

    “Only a white candidate can be trusted to treat other white people fairly. This is what Geraldine means to say.”

    I feel that that’s exactly what she said.

    “And “they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white”??? Irony, poetic justice, and just damn “Huh?”ness aside, what on earth are they expecting Obama to do?”

    You know? Reading Ferraro, you’d think that it’s an official Obama platform position to just round up all white folks and send them away.

  9. The Girl Detective on June 1st, 2008 2:56 am permalink

    “Ok, I just re-read that article and now someone needs to explain to me the difference between ‘racism’ and ‘racial resentment.’”

    I think a lot of people just like to just redraw the boundaries of racism whenever they get too close to it. Resenting someone because of their race isn’t racism - it’s racial resentment. Also, hating someone because of their race is also not racism - it’s, uh, race-based hatred. Which is not racism. No sir.

  10. Amanda Marcotte on June 1st, 2008 12:49 pm permalink

    Obama has offered that reassurance that they won’t be left behind! It was him, not Clinton, that made a speech about white working class people who feel left behind, and that was so threatening that the media and Clinton spanked him for using the word “bitter”. Whose dick do you have to suck, seriously? If you ignore the problem—the Clinton’s preferred method—you really are leaving those people behind. If you try to address the problem directly, you’re supposedly condescending and insulting them.

  11. Changeseeker on June 1st, 2008 4:31 pm permalink

    Poor Geraldine. It must be terrible be held accountable for what comes out your mouth when talking to the press. Of course, she’s only making it worse. I mean, now, she’s whining that she’s a put-upon White person (poor baby) who’s worried (with all the other put-upon White people, apparently) about being “left behind.”

    Bulletin to Geraldine: You ARE being left behind, Sugar Lump, if you still believe White people deserve special consideration and special privileges and special access and special, well, everything. The campaign for the nomination is, for all practical purposes, over. If her comments are any indication, she (and her ilk, of which I fear there are many) would rather see a John McCain in the Whitehouse than a Barak Obama. Sigh. So what else is new?

  12. thebewilderness on June 3rd, 2008 11:17 pm permalink

    racism, assumption of superiority based on race.

    racial resentment, the condition of fear present when you realize that the natural order is not what you always told yourself it was.

    Anyway, that’s this old hippys take on it.

  13. …you don’t say. « Modern Mitzvot on October 4th, 2008 10:54 pm permalink

    [...] Hey, Mainstream! Welcome to the party. Maybe now we can put to rest the idea that only KKK members are racists? [...]

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