1.20.2009

Say it with me. President Obama.

This article posted on election day, but few read it, and it seems appropriate to repost now.

George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Harrison
James Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses Grant
Rutherford Hayes
James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
John Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George Herbert Bush
Bill Clinton
George Walker Bush
Barack Obama

Praise God, that I now live in a country with a black man as President. Who would have thought it possible, 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 5 years ago? I had thought I'd be old and gray before I'd live to see this day. I'd have thought we'd have to wait till we are a minority-white nation in 2055. Instead, we may be the first majority-white nation in modern history to elect a person of colour.

Truly now, all things are made new. We will now speak of President Obama, a President with an African and Arab name. We will now look to our leader as a person of colour, one with connections for the first time with the 2/3rds World. Children of colour across this country will now look up and see that they can do anything. Other nations will look on us and realize this is a nation they can relate to. They will realize that, now, we truly are the land of the free, the home of the brave.

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You never once mention Obama's capabilities as a MAN. You dwell 100% on his race and exclaim that everything has been solved, that all things "are made new," and that other nations can "relate to us" simply because we elected a black guy. By your logic, he could be, functionally, the worst President in history, but he's automatically the greatest and has fixed everything just because he's black.

I'll let you know that his skin color won't end any wars, won't fix any economies, and won't close Gitmo. On the other hand, a white guy would be perfectly capable of doing all those things.

Are there positives to electing a black President? Of course. It's great history. But to pretend all is solved just because he's black is ludicrous.

What a racist post.

Jed Carosaari said...

Racist and sexist, Pigg? Quite a combination! (Please note, I rather like pigs. Used to have a pet one. I don't for a moment put them down at your level.)

His capabilities as a man are rather irrelevant, don't you think? (Unless you still haven't released your four wives form the cellar.) It's his capabilities as a person that matter.

I actually dwell on a whole lot off other aspects besides race. I understand that you read only what you want to read, so you felt free to ignore everything I wrote in other posts, and felt free to read into this post what you wanted to.

But just to be absolutely clear, not for you but for others reading this, 'cause I understand you will never appreciate clarity: Our President has the closest ties to the rest of the world of any President in history. He’s the first TCK President. The rest of the world looks up to him, and after 8 years of Babylonian Captivity, the rest of the world is delighted to have someone they feel they can trust. These are all reasons why our relationship with the rest of the world should improve. The “black” part is simply a great step in the struggle against racism in our own country. Of course, that’s clear in the context, but you wanted to ignore that. I can only guess at the reasons why you wanted to ignore that. I understand that all over the nation there have been increased death threats against Obama, because many white supremacists don’t like the idea of a black man leading them.

Your extreme racist stance is revealed, when you say his skin colour won't do all these things, but a white guy could. Your clear implication is that a black man could not.

And who told you we were talking merely about skin colour here? Blackness is also a cultural trait. And just as there is much valuable in white American culture, there is much valuable in black American culture. We each bring our culture into the oval office or wherever we go, and bring the benefits of that culture to the task at hand. We've tried 220 years of it from the white American cultural perspective, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. Most of America won't begrudge us the benefits of the black cultural perspective. (I recognize that you're a notable exception.)

The positives are great history. Yes. Which was the main point of this post- and us overcoming racism by electing a black man. But that's not something you obviously want to see in your country.

This is a country of diversity, where people are welcome from any nation, and any place- even those we forced to come here. If you don't like it, I'd suggest you go back to Germany or England or wherever your ancestors came from.

You just don’t get it, do you? You probably never will. Obama’s a great man, sure. Separately from that, it’s a great hurdle that we’ve reached as a nation, electing a black man, as a majority white nation, perhaps for the first time in modern history. You should be celebrating, even as the extreme right-wing Republican that you act like. (Many other Republicans are celebrating this fact.) It would have been a great moment if we’d elected Colin Powell as a Republican. Just for me, a Left-wing Democrat, not quite as enjoyable. But I would still have had the balls to recognize a great moment for the nation.