Pat Dollard | Young Americans

When I was a kid in the ’70’s, like most of my peers I was taught to be colorblind and believe that the color of a man’s skin had nothing to do with his character and how he should be judged. I accepted it, I practiced it. But a funny thing kept happening throughout my life. I kept experiencing that blacks had little interest in being color-blind, and practicing what they preached about not accusing people of being bad because of their race. Much to most of what I heard from black people was about how bad white people were. I felt like the whole race issue had become a one-way street, that I accepted them as equals, but I was not accepted as an equal. I literally remember one experience where a black guy was telling me how he loved being black because a black male had a unique emotional make-up superior to white’s. I read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and realized that this guy was not interested in equality, but in black supremacy, constantly arguing that blacks were superior to whites, that whites were born genetically inferior, apparently harboring some gene that made them morally inferior, evil people. He later renounced it, but the damage was done by such an influential book. Then as I got older, and began to understand both human nature, economics, capitalism, and the mechanics of power, I began to realize that certain black race-battle profiteers had a LOT to lose if Martin Luther King’s Dream ever were to become a reality, and that a lot of black people in general had a lot to lose if they no longer could hold a victim entitlement card. If you’re a victim, you can squeeze a lot out of people; victimhood, like any rewarding thing, is hard to give up. Not only does it get you things from those who either “owe” you or just feel pity for you, but it alleviates you from responsibility and the consequences of failure. It also allows you to cling to the mantle of moral superiority. White people, almost entirely, learned their lessons a long time ago, and stopped being racist ( beyond the degrees of racism that exist in all races and will never go away, which is really just about clannishness, groups stick together no matter what the factor of commonality is), but as far as I can tell, far too many black people want to cling to a distant past of a racist white majority, and walk around with a chip on their shoulders feeling free to criticize, attack and insult white people. This is no way to get along y’all. You can’t have it both ways. If you want the hating from the white end to stop, you’ve got to stop the hating yourselves as well. So I’ve continued on my merry way of not being a racist, not harboring hate in my heart, but had this feeling back in the day when a black candidate became viable in this election, that all these one-way street, chip on the shoulder, bad mouth the white man, chickens were going to come home to roost. It’s a little hard to ask for a white man’s vote when you’re telling him he’s an asshole at the same time.

Like I said, me and the vast majority of my peers have never been racists because our generation was not raised that way. If you, my black American friends would care to join us with a reciprocal attitude, a whole host of your problems will go away, and it’ll be a fuck of a lot easier for a black man or woman to become President than it’s just become in the last two weeks. We’re accepting you. Let us know when you’re accepting us. Shut the fuck up with the insults, and speak with the same respect you wish to be spoken to. You won’t beleive the shit that will happen. It ain’t so cool blaming and hating, my friends, and at the end of the day, there’s just no payoff. You’ll never be off the plantatation as long as you keep your mind there.

A white man is not brinnging down a black candidate. A black man with an ancient, ugly, hateful attitude toward white people is. And he’s not alone. Because the young man who that all that hate shit was cool while he was hanging out with blacks, is just as responsible, due to just that, for his own potential downfall.

- Pat Dollard

Politico:

Democrats who worry that Barack Obama is untested can put their concerns to rest.

The inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has confronted Obama with the most severe test of his presidential campaign and, quite likely, of his public career.

He is now facing a full-blown and fast-moving political crisis in which his reputation as a leader with a singular ability to transcend racial divisions and unite Americans is in jeopardy.

A convergence of factors — a media firestorm, a Democratic rival eager to exploit his stumbles and, most of all, a Republican opposition eager to rough up the man they expect to face in the general election — have raised the stakes to new heights for Obama with the speech he will deliver in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.

A successful address would go a long way toward answering Hillary Rodham Clinton’s complaint that Obama has never shown he can handle the rough-and-tumble nature of modern political combat.

A failure could leave many of the white independent voters — a key group behind Obama’s swift rise in national politics — doubting whether he is really the bridge-builder and healer he has portrayed himself to be.

n either event, the speech marks a significant shift in strategy. Obama initially tried to brush aside the comments by his former pastor as irrelevant to his campaign. A deluge of media coverage showed that was not going to work.

In the past, Obama has made racial issues, and his own precedent-shattering status, a minor note in his message. But Obama said Monday he recognizes that there is no way he is going to become the Democratic nominee without a forthright statement about the role of race in American life.

“I think it would have been naive for me to think I could run and end up with quasi-front-runner status in a presidential election as potentially the first African-American president, that issues [of] race wouldn’t come up, any more than Sen. Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up,” Obama told interviewer Gwen Ifill on PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.”

“I think we’ve got to talk about it,” he added. “I think we’ve got to process it. But we’ve got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what’s different and that if we’re going to solve any of these problems, we’ve got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before.”

The interview also gave a likely preview of Obama’s tack in answering critics of Wright, whose Afrocentric sermons are filled with denunciations of America and its majority-white culture as corrupt and racist.

“To the extent that, you know, the conversation over the last couple of days has been dominated by some stupid statements that were made by Rev. Wright, but also caricatures of Rev. Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ — which, by the way, is part of a denomination that is overwhelmingly white — you know, I think that that has distracted us from the possibilities of moving beyond some of these arguments,” Obama said.

As he often does when confronted with controversy — such as the accusation that his own voting record and views are too liberal — Obama cast the debate in generational terms, suggesting that the criticism itself is an example of outdated old politics.

“I think that, you know, when you look at somebody like a Rev. Wright who grew up in the ’50s or ’60s, his experience of race in this country is very different than mine,” Obama told Ifill. “Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taking place. But I’m not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that’s part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, ‘Let’s acknowledge a difficult history, but let’s move forward in a practical way to get things done.’”

This kind of gauzy, up-with-people language has been effective previously in allowing Obama to nimbly step aside from the usual push and shove of campaign debates.

But there is no mistaking that the Wright association gives Republicans a vulnerability they will pound on relentlessly in a general election.

The GOP has proven skilled at questioning the patriotism of Democratic candidates. Just ask John F. Kerry, defeated presidential candidate, and Max Cleland, defeated senator, if such attacks work in the post-Sept. 11 political environment.

They will blend together Wright’s fulminations with quotes of Michelle Obama saying her husband’s candidacy has made her finally proud of America with pictures of Obama himself sans the American flag on his lapel (the latter a point that has thrived in conservative precincts of the Web and talk radio).

In isolation, any of these might be innocuous. But in the totality of a campaign ad or brochure, the attacks could be brutal, replete with an unmistakable racial subtext.

It is not just the Wright episode that has damaged Obama. It’s also the environment in which the clips of his rants exploded across the airwaves and the Web. The Clinton camp has spent months raising questions about his judgment and authenticity. His relationship with Wright and handling of the controversy play right into Clinton’s hands — almost as if it were planned.

The comments of a pastor who married him, baptized his children, inspired the title of his book, advised him politically and ministered to him personally for two decades might not strike many voters as compatible with Obama’s post-partisan aura.

Obama has not only repudiated the words but also made plain he is not ready to unambiguously denounce a man who has been so central to his family’s life. This is no easy balancing act: The more he distances himself from Wright to appease his critics, the more he risks offending African-Americans and his friends in the church.

For now, Obama is fighting a two-front damage-control campaign. The Wright uproar blossomed at the same time he is facing new questions about his relationship with accused political fixer Tony Rezko, now standing trial in Chicago. Both controversies go straight to the authenticity of his reformer image and his judgment about associates.

On Friday, Obama sat down with his local papers and later released information that he had received more money from Rezko associates than was previously reported.

That would be a significant media story right now if the Wright controversy had not overwhelmed it.
After a somewhat sluggish start, it is clear Obama and his aides see the peril presented by the Wright story. He agreed to interviews on all three cable networks Friday night to address Wright’s comments.

When those did not calm the waters, he announced the Philadelphia speech. Aides said he planned to be writing much of the text himself, up to the moment of delivery.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the Wright uproar plays right into the hands of Obama skeptics. “For them, this is just confirmation about the terrible secret they suspected all along,” he said.

But most of the hard-core skeptics would probably never vote for Obama. His big concern is with the large number of independents and pockets of Republicans who voted for him in primaries and caucuses and have opened the door to backing him in the general election.

Obama needs to reassure these voters that he does not share Wright’s most radical views. This will require him to explain to the outside world the fabric and framework of Trinity United, which preaches a black liberation theology deeply rooted in the legacy of slavery. Sermons there often relate biblical lessons to modern-day troubles of black Americans.

Lisa Lerer contributed to this story.