14 Comments Add your own

• 1. Menlo Bob  |  June 25th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

  After spending some time with Ralph’s sister, a lawyer/anthropologist teaching at a major American university, I’d have to conclude that there is a genetic flaw at work in that family.

• 2. Leatherneck  |  June 25th, 2008 at 8:23 pm

  After reading the transcripts, there is nothing racist with what Nader says. Having been a community organizer in Chicago and representing this constituency, Obama is probably very familiar with loansharks and other exploitation of the urban poor. Obama doesn’t campaign in inner city neighborhoods simply because he doesn’t have to. Hello?! He has 95% of the Negro vote. The fact that Obama is a mulatto is beside the point, because apparently, Negroes consider him one of their own. And what makes Obama more “acceptable” to white liberals is because he does NOT talk like a poverty pimp.
  I mean if his message were like Al Sharpton or Jesse, he’d scare the crap out of white liberals. So he avoids divisive rhetoric and all this unity & feel-good stuff has sold.
  And yes, in a business where perception is reality and appearances are so important, it certainly helps that Obama looks clean cut and that he is a mulatto. Argue that point all you want, but if Obama wore dreadlocks or a ‘fro, do you think he would be the nominee? Or let’s say if a Caucasian middle aged man went out and gave Obama’s speeches with all this rhetoric of unity and feel-good stuff, do you think he would be the nominee? Think about it.

• 3. Pat Cunningham  |  June 25th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

  Listen up, Leatherbrain: I know you think your use of the word “Negro” makes you a big, brave warrior against political correctness, but I don’t like it. The next time you use it here, your comment will quickly disappear. And don’t accuse me of censorship. This is my blog, and I decide what gets published here and what doesn’t. You can get your own blog and use whatever words you like. “Negro,” though it still is used in historical references and in the names of a few institutions, is offensive to lots of people, black and white alike, when used in everyday discourse. It’s a throwback to the days before the modern civil rights movement when black folks were expected to know their place and stay in it. I no longer will allow it here — any more than I would allow references to women as “dames,” “chicks” or “broads.”

• 4. Menlo Bob  |  June 26th, 2008 at 9:17 am

  Leftists like playing the role of being the gatekeeper for acceptable terms. They even have a website to keep tract of it. I guess the owner of this blog won’t be giving to the United Negro College Fund. Too bad, ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste’.

• 5. redrover  |  June 26th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

  Two things here bother me:

  1] The continued insistence of the diehard Al Gore fans that Nader was the blame for Gore’s loss in 2000.

  Al Gore lost the race because he is such an outright phony that he couldn’t even win his own home state of Tennessee. Why? Because they know him for what he has always been: a fraud who changes political convictions as often as most of us change socks.

  If Gore had insisted that Nader be allowed to participate in the debates that he (Gore) lost to the nincompoop, Bush, then Nader would have been able to expose Bush for the dummy that he is, paving the way for a Gore victory. But the corporate-wing of the Democratic Party was out to marginalize Nader anyway they could, and it backfired on them.

  2] The use of a partial quote to condemn Nader.

  Just below these comments is a more complete transcript of Nader’s remarks, including his answer to a follow-up question on the “talks white” statement.

  There is nothing remotely “racist” in what Nader suggests, but there is a recognition that race will play a critical role in how the Obama campaign will conduct and is conducting itself.

  What Nader says is this: Barack Obama is a very clever man who knows very well the dimensions of racism in this country and who carefully uses language to ensure that his race is not so easily used against him by distancing himself from the issues that are dear to the hearts of most other African-Americans.

  Nader gives his reason for why Obama is doing this [see below], but I have another. Obama does not have to take his campaign to the poor African-American community because he feels confident that he already has their votes.

  In a way, Obama is playing his own version of the race card in order to negate the effects of the race card that is being played against him. It’s a pity that such crap goes on in politics in this country, but just because Nader recognizes it as such does not make him a racist.

  ——— Transcript of Nader Interview ——————————–
  http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/25/partial-transcript-ralph-naders-comments/

  Q: “Do you see Barack Obama as qualitatively different than Al Gore or any other Democrats. He talks about taking on lobbyists, not taking money directly from lobbyists … People portray him as being different. Do you see him as being any better than Al Gore or any of the other Democrats that you’ve opposed over the years?”

  Nader: “No. I mean, he’s deceiving people. He takes, he takes … In this very building he would take money from corporate lawyers who are not registered lobbyists but whose desks are across the aisle from corporate lawyers who are registered lobbyists in the same law firm. That has been reported more than once in the mainstream press … Six out of seven industries, as of a month ago, have given more money to Obama than they have to McCain, only the transportation industry is more equal opportunity corruption.

  “Look at the health care industry. It has poured money into his campaign. The securities industry, the defense industry. No.

  “There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

  “I think his main problem is that he censors himself. He knows exactly who has power, who has too much, who has too little, what needs to be done right down to the community level. But he has bought the advice that if you want to win the election, you better take it easy on the corporate abuses and do X, Y, Z. When I hear that I say, ‘Oh, I see. So he’s doing all this to win the election, and then he’ll be different.

  “Well let’s see if it worked. Did it work for Mondale? Did it work for Dukakis? Did it work for Clinton? Yes, but only because of Perot? Did it work for Gore? Did it work for Kerry … ?”

  Q: “Do you think he’s trying to, what was your term, ‘talk white?’”

  NADER: “Of course. I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law. Haven’t heard a thing.

  “I mean, the amount of economic exploitation in the ghettos is shocking. You’d think he’d propose a task force to at least study it. I mean, these people are eroded every day. The kids, bodies are asbestos and lead, municipal services discriminate against them because it’s the poor area, including fire and police protection and building code enforcement. And then the lenders, the loan sharks get at them, and the dirty food ends up in the ghettos, like the contaminated meat. It’s a dumping ground for shoddy merchandise. You don’t see many credit unions there. You don’t see many libraries there. You don’t see many health clinics there. This is, we’re talking 40-50 million Americans who are predominantly African-Americans and Latinos. Anybody see that kind of campaigning? Have you seen him campaign in real poor areas of the city very frequently? No, he doesn’t campaign there.”

  Q: “What do you think the purpose of that is?”

  NADER: “He wants to show that he is not a threatening, a political threatening, another politically-threatening African-American politician.

  “He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as a black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

• 6. Henry  |  June 26th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

  Bob -

  Do you use the n-word, or address black men as ‘boy’? If you do, then I guess you are a racist. If you don’t, then you are bowing to ‘political correctness’. Right? If my analysis is wrong, please set me straight.

• 7. Menlo Bob  |  June 26th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

  I call my black friends by their given name.

• 8. Pat Cunningham  |  June 26th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

  Rover: You’re getting a little wordy on us, Dude. Rather than giving us long verbatim transcripts, why not just provide links or paraphrases or excerpts or combinations thereof? Thanks.

• 9. Henry  |  June 26th, 2008 at 5:50 pm

  Bob -

  How about answering my question? Are you politically correct, or not, within the context of my previous post?

• 10. Menlo Bob  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:00 am

  Yes, I am politically correct in that I observe conventions–including freely using the word negro, caucasian and asian to denote the major racial groups.

• 11. Pat Cunningham  |  June 27th, 2008 at 11:31 am

  Bob: The admonition I aimed at Leatherneck in Comment No. 3 (above) applies to you as well.

• 12. redrover  |  June 27th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

  I apologize, but not profusely, for the prolixity.

  This political correct language stuff really bothers me. I live in a country where some of its black citizens, usually male, can and very often do refer to themselves and one another using words that no white citizen dare utter, and where these same people can make money doing so by selling musical compositions containing that language.

  If a racial slur is only a racial slur when certain people use it, then what, besides racism, is the basis for such a social norm?

  And how can a society that condones this sort of racially-diferentiated linguistic selectivity have the moral authority to condemn any other word as socially unacceptable?

  I do not know the answers to these questions. But I think that they need to be addressed before we as a nation can evolve into a genuinely post-racist society.

• 13. Henry  |  June 27th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

  Bob -

  Believe it or not, it isn’t 1950. If you still use the ne-word, you must have been in a time warp until this blog started. Perhaps you should do some of that painstakingly thorough research you’re famous for (see Polar Bear link) so as to gain an understanding about the history of the word, how it was used, and why blacks find it offensive.

• 14. redrover  |  June 27th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

  Regarding the original topic of this posting, please take a look at a recent article that discusses some of the tactics used by the Obama campaign to identify the Senator as a “down-to-earth fellow.”

  Applying a Personal Touch to the Campaign
  By Howard Kurtz
  Washington Post, Monday, June 23, 2008
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/22/AR2008062202241_pf.html

  But what does “down-to-earth” really mean to much of Obama’s target audience?

  Here’s the closing quote from the article:

  Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan wrote: “It’s hard to get Willie Hortoned — turned into the radical black guy who gives white America the heebie jeebies — when you look as suburban, as unchic, as let’s-hop-in-the-Explorer-and-head-to-Costco wonky as Obama looks in this oh-no! photo [of Obama riding a bicycle].”

  Is Margery Eagan also a racist? She seems to be saying that Obama is doing his best to look white, just as Ralph Nader says he is talking white.

  Back in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote his The Souls of Black Folk to “show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century.”

  Like Du Bois, Obama is a smart and very well educated man who is doing his best to deal with the strange meaning of being black in the dawning of the post-racist Twenty-first Century. And that’s what Nader and Eagan are commenting upon.

  Although I dislike his politics and will not vote for him, I wish Obama well. He is the man of the hour, and we are lucky to have lived long enough to see that hour arrive.

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