How far we haven’t come

I found this video clip on Too Sense.

This clip broke my heart. It was supposed to be better for these young people, but here they are, having the same issues of self-identity and self-love that existed when I was a child, back in the ’60s.

The doll experiment is a clear indication of our failure as a society to adequately deal with issues of race. 50 years after Brown vs Board of Education, and the results are still the same. When will it ever change?

Hillary’s Path to Victory

via The Unapologetic Mexican:

Some Wishful Thinking

I wish that we could have a real discussion of race in America.

I wish I could easily buy jeans and know that they weren’t made with sweatshop labor.

I wish Africans could benefit economically from the natural resources in their countries.

I wish the Rule of Law applied to all individuals in all countries, in spite of race, gender, religious affiliation (or lack thereof), or personal wealth.

I wish polar bear cubs weren’t drowning.

I wish my niece and nephew had the same opportunities I had.

This is just a short list, but this is where my head has been for the past week or so. I have visions of a better world, and I wish I knew how to make those visions come true.

*sigh*

I haven’t posted lately because I’m tired of yelling into the void at the Clintons and Clintonistas. I do have a couple of essays percolating in my brain, hopefully they will appear soon.

Calling Bill Clinton on the Cluephone

via The Huffington Post:

The following audio clip is from an interview of Bill Clinton by Susan Phillips of WHYY.org. She brings up his comments equating Obama’s South Carolina primary win to Jesse Jackson’s in 1988. Bill then gets all huffy and claims the race card was played against him. The last thing he says, when he apparently believes the mike is off, is “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

So let me get this straight. Bill Clinton invokes Jesse Jackson when his wife loses South Carolina, and the race card is being played on him? Bill, Bill, Bill, get a clue.

I was living in California in 1988, when Jesse Jackson ran for president. I remember the birth of The Rainbow Coalition very well, it was a concept that appealed to me on many levels. But at that time I was in graduate school, trying to maintain my identity in an environment that included no other Black people. And to those folks, Jesse Jackson was not a serious candidate. He may have won South Carolina, but he was getting zero traction in Southern California. I would liked to have voted for him, but I didn’t, because I knew he was going nowhere.

Please don’t tell me you didn’t know that too, Bill. You’re a savvy politician, I doubt you would’ve been president otherwise, and no matter how much respect and love you have for Jesse Jackson you can’t seriously expect me to believe you thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the nomination.

Reverse racism? Spare me. I hear that every time a White person utters a (possibly subliminal) racist comment and is called out on it. It is a refusal to recognize how insidious and pervasive this issue is in our culture. And it is an indication of how much I respect your intelligence that I believe you know this very well.

Bikers for Obama

Seriously, I’m not kidding. The following clip by Jeremy Scahill aired on Real Time with Bill Maher last night.

If this isn’t an indication of how harmful the current administration’s policies have been to the country at large, I don’t know what is.

The Travesty on ABC

All day I’ve wanted to post about last night’s awful debate on ABC. I’ll admit, once I saw who was broadcasting it, I didn’t expect much, as I haven’t forgotten about that wretched Path to 9/11. But it was worse than I could have imagined, and I’m not the only one who was appalled.

I actually have to say I was pleased to see all the blowback. All the blogs I read expressed outrage and anger over the empty, vapid posturing that tried to pass itself off as debate moderation. It’s about damned time we started demanding better political discourse. This is the most important election in our lifetimes, and we deserve better.

Will Bunch at Philly.com wrote an open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos that pretty much says it all:

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters — you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

People aren’t stupid. We know that this kind of “journalism” has helped promote the economic and moral decline we now face. Thank goodness people are finally pushing back.

Chickens, meet Roost.

Chicago Tribune on Rev. Jeremiah Wright

My sister sent me the following in an email (which is excerpted from an article in the Chicago Tribune):

In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy’s challenge to, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.

In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)

The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy’s premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief’s medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery.

For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.

What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.

While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/ sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.

Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?

After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America’s biggest cities.

This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ.

…

Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.

Word. Let’s hope this puts an end to the Reverend Wright “controversy”.

More Michelle Obama

Yes, Michelle is getting the love today, but this clip in particular talks about something that’s close to my heart: public education.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Yes, to me Michelle Obama represents the American Dream, the one I envisioned as I was growing up during the Civil Rights Movement.

I also come from a working class family. I went to public school in NYC, and that public education was sufficient for me to go to college and eventually get a PhD. Yet this path is closed to my niece and nephew in the current economic and political environment.

I support Obama because I want the next generation to have the same opportunities that I had. Who better to do that than someone who experienced it for themselves?

Michelle Obama on The Colbert Report

Michelle Obama on The Colbert Report (h/t Jack and Jill Politics).

Vodpod videos no longer available.

What a great First Lady she’ll be!