Pot Meet Kettle

*Sigh*

Y’know, when I see comments like this:

But we can’t not vote, either.

Actually, you’re pretty much wrong.

If Obama can’t win against the trainwreck that is Mavericky McStraightTalk, then it’s the fault of him, his campaign, and the Democratic Party to engage people like me.

I’m getting tired of being played by the Democrats the way the Christian conservatives keep getting played by the Republicans, having our collective hopes dangled in front of us with the implicit threat of “If you vote for the other guys, this all goes away”.

I don’t owe him my vote just because he’s got a “(D)” after his name, and the Obamabots are not helping anything. At all. I haven’t made up my mind what I’m going to do in November. But Obama and the Democrats have about four and a half months to convince me (or at the very, very least, stop pissing me off).

I can’t even bother to pull out my itsy bitsy teensy weensy violin.

Why?

What Carmen said.

Let me ask a few questions:

When was the last time a national Democratic political candidate was ever threatened with loosing an election because that candidate failed to adequately engage people of color?

Has it ever occured to some people that statements like this:

“I’m getting tired of being played by the Democrats the way the Christian conservatives keep getting played by the Republicans, having our collective hopes dangled in front of us with the implicit threat of ‘If you vote for the other guys, this all goes away’”

have been a staple of people of color’s voting concerns since time immemorial?

Where have you people been all this time? The Democratic party has been giving some folks a ride for quite some time now.

I have to ask: what about people like me? Not all of us are Obama supporters, yet still, with every passing day, it becomes more clear to me that people like me don’t matter and never have. Progressive people of color could have used your help and your outrage a long time ago. We’ve been there for you, yet you always seem to forget about us. Hmm…kinda sounds like the Democratic Party, doesn’t it?

Pot meet kettle.

While I’m at it. New Rule! No one that uses terms like Billary, Obamabot, Obamatron, Shillary, Baracky or any of the hundreds of other stupid fucking terms that have sprung up lately to refer to Senator Hillary Clinton or Senator Barack Obama shall be taken seriously for a second. If, while trying to make some sort of political statement, you use any term other than their given name and earned title, you will forever be deemed inconsequential and childish; and no one with any sense should take you seriously. I love snark and all, but you people sound like the 8th graders that used to call me “Elliott” in an ET voice back in the day. So yeah, grow the hell up and use grown up snark, will ya?

Do I Contradict Myself?

Hmmm….In this post, I write that I will never support Sen. Clinton. Then in this post I make an argument for an Obama/Clinton ticket?

Something tells me that I need to sit back and think all of this through some more.

Obama Is The Democratic Nominee

Obama has clinched the nomination. History has been made, but regardless of the outcome history would have been made. Before everyone starts gloating and talking shit, however, I think it’s important for people to listen to what Melissa has to say with regards to the treatment Sen. Clinton received this primary season. Actually, you should have been listening to her all along. I don’t say this to diminish or take back my own criticisms of Sen. Clinton’s racist tactics. I stand by those criticisms. But you see, for every piece of racist nonsense I’ve seen leveled at Sen. Obama, I’ve seen a piece of sexist nonsense leveled at Sen. Clinton. And none of it is right. This shit hurts. You understand?

I would like to see an Obama/Cllinton ticket. There, I said it. I know that’s not a popular idea amongst Obama and Clinton partisans, but that’s what I would like to see. I would like to see the two come together and get past all the bullshit that this primary season has spawned. It would be a good example because while there are plenty of examples of Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama being blind to their respective white and male priviledge, there are a headache-inducing number of sexist and racist shit being said by their respective supporters. Maybe, just maybe we can learn and grow from all of this.

And as for Sen. Clinton being a ruthless politician that will undermine Sen. Obama? Well, Sen. Obama seems just as ruthless to me when it comes to politics. You’re gonna throw your pastor and church of 20 years under the bus and I’m supposed to believe that you aren’t a ruthless politician? Sorry, not buying it. They are both playing the political game. I don’t like it, but it is what it is.

Hillary Clinton’s “Assassination” Remark & Why It Matters To Me

[Update: I've added several more blogger of color reactions below. I post these reactions to show the breadth of thought on the matter from bloggers of color. I don't necessarily agree with everything that is said.

Oh Wait! You mean not all black people and other people of color think alike? That one black blogger doesn't speak for ALL BLACK PEOPLE EVERYWHERE THAT HAVE EVER LIVED, ARE LIVING, AND WILL LIVE?.

Yeah, I know. It's a crazy concept, but it's true.]

I traverse a wide range of blogs, and there’s something that I’ve noticed concerning discussions of Sen. Hillary Clinton and her recent “assassination” remark. At the primarily white blogs, there is much debate over whether or not what she has said is offensive (I won’t bother repeating it here since it’s been posted everywhere) and yet when you look at black bloggers, and other bloggers of color, there is an almost unanimous agreement that her remarks were reprehensible. I also noticed that in the links being provided by blog authors and commentators at the primarily white blogs, to support their agreement or disagreement with the offensiveness of Sen. Clinton’s statements, all are to other primarily white blogs and white bloggers. I find this problematic because I’ve seen a lot of comments on these blogs to the effect of “anyone who thinks that her statement was truly offensive is paranoid, a nut case, delusional, incapable of rational thought, etc,” and this leads me to think that a lot of people just aren’t taking into consideration, let alone even reading and listening to the black and other bloggers of color that Clinton’s statement has affected not only on a political level, but on a deeply personal level.

Let me tell you a story.

As a child, I once came home, after hearing the standard “if you work hard enough, maybe one day you can be President” spiel at school, and quite happily informed my grandmother that all I had to do was work my butt off and maybe one day I could be President of the United States. My grandmoms, not one to harbor any illusions, informed me (this is obviously a paraphrase) that “no black person can become President of the United States. A black person would be killed before white folks would allow that to happen.” True story. Now, as a black woman that grew up in the Jim Crow South, her reasoning was not out of the question. I don’t believe that that’s true today, but from her vantage point, from her life experience, she had every right to believe what she was telling me, and that to tell me this was good advice. This is the context within which I hear Sen. Clinton’s statement. The context of my elders, the generations that came before me. And so while I no longer believe what my grandmoms told me oh so many years ago, I am still influenced and I still reverberate with her experiences and what she tried to teach me based on those experiences.

I was not alive when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Yet, when I hear the words “1968″ and “assassination” in the same sentence, I cannot help but to think of Martin Luther King, Jr. I cannot help but to think of the racial unrest of the period. I cannot help but to think of the struggles that my people have had to undergo in order for a black person to be seriously considered for the Presidency of the United States of America. I cannot help but to think of the numerous civil Rights leaders slain.

This is my history.

And let it be known that this is not solely the history of black folks. People of Color across the board share this history in the United States. We may be invited to the dinner table now and again, but don’t even think we will get anything until the establishment has had their fill.

I don’t think that Sen. Clinton’s statements can be divorced from several events that occurred in 1968:

The assassination of Robert Kennedy.

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The riots at the Democratic National Convention.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I learned of her remarks (which she has made before, but I was unaware of), that’s what came to mind. It was offensive to the Kennedy family, especially given Ted Kennedy’s illness (Sen. Clinton did apologize for that, however). It unnecessarily brought up the specter of black folks getting killed for being black and standing up for their humanity; and it also, for me at least, brought up the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, given all the talk these days about a “civil war” at the Convention, talk that I’m sure she is aware of.

I can’t say whether or not she intended for me to hear her statements the way I do, but as y’all should know, I’m not one to care much for intention, and that’s how I hear it. I will continue to speak out against sexist attacks against Sen. Clinton, but I will do so because I believe that sexist, racist, classist, disablist, homophobic, et. al. attacks should be condemned under any circumstances; but just as I will speak out against racist attacks against Condoleeza Rice and still never support her politics or career, I will speak out against sexist attacks against Sen. Clinton and still never support her or her career because she is using racist tactics to win an election.

Other Folks of Color on the matter (I’m sure there’s much, much more, so if anyone can point me to other Folks of color’s opinion on this matter, I’d appreciate it and will update the post accordingly):

Electronic Village

Jack and Jill Politics

The Unapologetic Mexican

Pam Spaulding at Pam’s House Blend and Pandagon

My Private Casbah

African American Political Pundit

All About Race

Ultraviolet Underground

Sylvia at Problem Chylde

Liza at CultureKitchen

Lower Manhattanite at Group News Blog here and here

Blackperspective.net

Francis L. Holland. And again here.

Vanessa

Malik

Zuky. Also at The Unapologetic Mexican.

Latoya Peterson at Racialiscious

[cross-posted at The Unapologetic Mexican]

Alice Walker on the Democratic Nomination

Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.

What I admire about Alice Walker and her work is that she never shies away from an honest look at the complexities of a situation. I read pieces like this, and I wish she were running for president. A few snippets that I feel address the depressing disconnect that this nomination race has produced:

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that “Jane” and “Dick” had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their “democratic” right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot. It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.

I feel that this story is one that those who wish to imagine we are in some post-racial paradise fail to recognize. This is a story that folks in my generation hear from our grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles all the time. This history is still very much alive in black folks lives, and I fell that it is ridiculous to expect us to simply put it all behind us because it all happened back then.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown – choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

Tragic indeed. Not to mention overly simplistic and insulting to people’s intelligence.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth’s people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don’t understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes. But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, “enemy” or “friend,” and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

This is important. She doesn’t flat out say it, but I feel she is addressing the more vocal supporters of Sen. Obama, who often seem to think that he can do no wrong, or seem to think that any criticism of Sen. Obama on policy makes you a traitor to the cause. I feel that some Obama supporters have lost sight of the need to hold our (or this particular) elected officials accountable. This is especially true for progressives. It is, after all, our duty as participants in a democracy and can only help ensure that we get the candidate that we think we’re getting. I read this as Walker saying, “Look, this is what we expect of you, Sen. Obama. You better not let us down.”

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as “a woman” while Barack Obama is always referred to as “a black man.” One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I am so glad she brought this up–white normalization of general terms. It’s something that has bugged me to no end. We hear terms like woman, man, American, and the assumption in our society is that we are talking about white women, men, Americans. It is not until we move to people who are not normalized as the default in our society that we must start adding adjectives and qualifies. This is one reason why I struggle with the term African-American. I feel that it aids in normalizing American as white and helps to reinforce the notion that black folks are an hyphenated anomaly (I’ll refrain from ranting about the use of the word America, technically a continent, or at the least a bunch of sub-continents, to mean The United States of America, a country. Same with Africa).

I’m probably starting to exceed the bounds of fair use here, so I’ll end with the final paragraph, which I find to be a powerful and wise closing statement. Go read the entire thing yourself, please.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for

Yes. We must always remember that the best leaders have always been and will always be, the best followers.

Oh, and might I add: It’s always nice to read something in support of Sen. Obama that does not constantly refer to Sen. Clinton as Billary. That annoys me to no end too. She is, after all, not joined at the hip to her husband. It’s one thing to disagree with her politics, or how her campaign is being run, but at least grant her the dignity of being an individual woman. That is, after all, what we are working for, right? Dignity for all humans, even those we disagree with or don’t like?

[Hat tip to Jack and Jill Politics]