Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Thursday, January 22. 2009

The new racism and moral vanity

"Great to have a black guy in the White House (whether or not I like his politics)."


I had the above thought about "a black guy in the WH," and then realized it was a racist thought. It's discriminating (1: making a distinction : distinguishing <a discriminating mark>2: marked by discrimination: a: discerning , judicious <discriminating buyers>) on race. It's just the flip side of the same coin of race-awareness with which loud voices in this country have hammered us with for years.


From a race-awareness (ie racist) viewpoint, what's the difference between "electing the black guy is great" vs. "electing the black guy is bad"? Or electing a white guy is better or worse? Neither do justice to the human inside.


Truth is, we white folks are generally pleased about electing an African-American fellow. However, I believe we are pleased for the wrong reason - our moral vanity. I hear people say "It means we are post-racial." Then they talk about their surprise that so many "other people" would vote for a black guy. It's always "other people," and that's the tell.


If we are post-racial, why is it such a big deal?  How is being pleased about voting for a black guy "post-racial"?


I am ready to take on Obama and Congress on the issues, not on skin color. And I will, to the best of my limited ability. 


Related: Jules vs. Limbaugh.

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, Politics at 13:00 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

"race-awareness". Is that the new politically correct way of saying 'I am not blind'? How can a sighted being not be 'race-aware'? I am a white person and I see a black person. My mind doesn't think - "Oh. He's black." But I'm a racist for understanding that I am looking at a black person?

This should be called the post-intelligence era because we have devolved into a nation of naming things to make us feel good, of changing the language to fit some moronic sense of 'moral vanity'. My god, what idiotic, shallow people we are. "Post-racial". Just like magic we believe it because we gave it a name. Put a 'post' in front and an 'ist' at the end, and it's all good. It doesn't make a bit of sense, but it's good, good. Post-goodist.... that's me.
`
#1 Meta on 2009-01-22 13:57 (Reply)
Barrister ... I agree. The big job for us now is to take on the party in power on substantive things we object to --- not the white vs. black thingie, which is, as someone pointed out here, a non-issue. There's plenty to battle the Democrats about, starting with "oh, yeah, huge government spending to 'spend our way out of the Depression' worked so well the last time" --NOT.

The American economy never fully recovered from the Great Depression, especially in the South, until we got into World War II and began manufacturing massive amounts of war materiel for the Allies. I know. I was there. Apparently, the Democrats have forgotten this salient fact. Now they're saying "We didn't spend enough in the Great Depression. This time we're going to spend more -- lots more. " There's an old German expression I learned in my childhood in Milwaukee ... "so soon we get old, so late we get schmart."

I guess we'll just have to keep reminding them.

Marianne
#2 Marianne Matthews on 2009-01-22 14:04 (Reply)
Agree, Marianne, about what actually got us out of the Depression.Also, we forget at our peril that much of our post war commercial success was based on the fact that our competitors and allies had bankrupted themselves in WWII. This gave us a head start. Not undeserved, as we had just defeated evil. But we face far more competition nowadays. What I get up on my soapbox about is our using schools for pc indoctrination instead of educating competitive future workers, dedicated citizens of one United States.
#2.1 retriever (Link) on 2009-01-22 16:24 (Reply)
I won't comment on the black/white nonsense. We have not elected a black or a white. We have elected an Obamist raised and nurtured by the left.

And an Obamist who supports the left is what we will get.

The inane happy-talking conservatives have provided unmatched humor in recent days. Morons!

With near consensus they proclaim that Obama really won't govern from the left. They accept the faintest hint that the policies and words he has backed for twenty years aren't what he intends.

These dolts won't or can't grasp that hints and misdirection is Obama's stock-in-trade. It brought him to the top and he will keep using it.

Of course he will hint at support for more traditional ideas and utter soothing phrases. He means none of it.

The conservatives are now - how shall I say this - in the chamber pot. At best they can hope Obama and the liberals decide that eradicating them isn't at the top of the agenda.

What Obama and his Chicago and Harvard friends backed (and did whenever they could) for decades is exactly what they intend to do now.

Govern from the middle MA.

IMO the Republicans were so inept they deserved to be kicked out. They matched the Democrats in corruption.

And they were too stupid to realize the media provides a permanent edge to the Democrats. The only way to overcome that edge is to do a very good job in office. They didn't.
#3 K on 2009-01-22 14:26 (Reply)
Consider race feelings a transmission --of values, but like a vehicle, of potential to actual or kinetic) energy. You got yer first gear (KKK) to yer fourth gear (i daresay most of us here, aware but not much else), and you got yer 'reverse' too. That's yer 'backwards' gear.
#4 buddy larsen on 2009-01-22 14:39 (Reply)
So, I'm lying on the couch last night after a hard day at the factory and the missus says "Ha! More people watched American Idol than Obama's inauguration!"

I was happy to hear that, and think I made some snarky comment about the majority of American people still having their priorities straight, and promptly dozed off. That was when I was visited by The Ghost of The Øne.

Yes, The Øne hisself came down from on high to tell me that it was good that more Americans watched American Idol than the inauguration, that this made him happy. The Øne went on to explain that life in America should go on as it has, with people watching reruns of Friends, the new season of American Idol, the Super Bowl, even 24 if they so choose.

The Øne explained that people should not bother themselves too much with what is going on in Washington, D.C. - that he, The Øne, will take care of everything, not to worry, that he was surrounding hisself with the best and brightest minds in the nation, and we should just continue watching American Idol as everything will be taken care of by his appointed team of experts. The Øne stressed that he would prefer that people not watch what is going on in the nation's capital.

The Ghost of The Øne asked me to share this with y'all. I woke up and promptly inquired, "Where's the remote control?"
#5 Ebeneezer Smooth on 2009-01-22 14:57 (Reply)
There is hardly a human relationship that is untouched by narcissism, and I’m sure that, for some, narcissistic pride is a part, even a large part, of the ‘happiness’ about Obama’s election. But human beings harbor good motives, as well. We have had a long, very ugly history of racism in this country and many, many people feel genuinely bad about. Many people have been troubled by the feeling that a large part of the American population has felt second class, always having to wonder about their place in the wider American community—their place in the promise of this country. For white Americans to recognize and share a sense of joy, vindication and hope felt by so many African-Americans, and to feel joy and a sense of pride in the capacity of American society to move beyond the grave sins of our past, is not pathologically narcissistic. It is, for many people, empathic joy.

As for discrimination, it is certainly not the discrimination of one race seeing itself as better than the other, using either the law or social pressure to crush the other. It is, instead, a recognition and celebration that historic racism has largely been defeated. Consider the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Would we see only discrimination in the meaning of any celebration of that event? Or might we fairly see it as a sign of a great moral leap forward for South Africa? I don't believe it is moral vanity to look favorably on moral reconciliation.

In the case of Obama’s election, I see this as less of a leap forward and more of a concretization of what has been gradually realized in this country over the past 50 years. We have, together, accomplished something that is very good. There is nothing wrong with being happy about that.
#6 Dr X on 2009-01-22 15:36 (Reply)
Got to go with Dr X. A good many of the Founders were only able to go fight King George because they had black workers back on the plantation. George Washington himself is one of these. Black folks have been here as long as we have --they're not latecomers to America. I'm gonna try to ignore the hip-hop angle as part of a larger pop cult rancidity, and instead forward up my mental list the thought that everybody ought to have a moment in the sun.
#6.1 buddy larsen on 2009-01-22 15:49 (Reply)
Yep, I tend to agree.
#6.1.1 Bird Dog on 2009-01-22 15:51 (Reply)
Like a Raisin in The Sun? Lots of Chicago back ground there.
#6.1.2 jappy on 2009-01-22 17:42 (Reply)
Of course we're not post-racial. We never will be, Sad but true. I'd have thought this might do it, the election of a "black" president, but clearly I was mistaken. Ask Jay Z.
#7 Jenn (Link) on 2009-01-22 15:59 (Reply)
Jenn, don't let jay Z control your feelings. he's just another loudmouth --and they're everywhere in all shapes & hues.
#7.1 buddy larsen on 2009-01-22 16:33 (Reply)
I beg to differ with some of you.

I understand the empathy with black Americans who are excited and proud, but that's just about emotion. Just reverse the skin color to see the implied racism.

As Seinfeld said (approx): Rooting for a sports team is just rooting for laundry.
#8 The B. on 2009-01-22 17:39 (Reply)
It would be nice if we could as Dr. King said " judge people by their character rather than the color of their skin." That ideal is far from realized.

In a similar vein, economics is not a matter of left or right. It is a matter of good versus bad.

I could care less if a person is black or white, male or female. I am interested in the substance of their ideas and the quality of their character.

My opposition to Obama was based on those two things.

Is it a good thing that a black man can be elected President today? In a superficial sense, yes - if it meant that people could look past color to see ideas and character. Otherwise, I really do not understand all of this hoopla over Obama just because he is black.

Does this mean Obama won this election on ideas and strong character? I would say no. Did race play a factor? I would say yes. Is the United States post racial (and I agree with Meta)? No - approximately 95% of blacks voted for Obama. (And to The B, this is not "implied racism", it is de facto racism.)

Our country is disintegrating around us because we are too multi-culti, everyone is above average, no one can be criticized and moral relativism has usurped right and wrong - good and evil.

If we are unable to discuss the root causes of our problems because we can't speak plainly about what those problems are, then we have failed before we begin.

When Thomas Sowell and people of his intellect and character can be elected as easily as Obama, when conservative women can discuss their views without being mocked as well as a liberal member of NOW, then we will be making real progress.

I for one will be watching Obama, bot because he is black, but because his ideology is that of the far left which stands in direct conflict with our constitutional rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness or as MF puts it "freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots" - which describes not only government but most of the people who populate it.
#9 Barrett on 2009-01-22 18:44 (Reply)
Democrats, liberals, progressives and Socialists are the ONLY ones who think in terms of race, at least here in the State of Connecticut, Barrister. As many of us guests on the Farm agree, we only care about how much hay gets into the loft, and how good it is, not who puts it there.

What we have in the White House is a proven Socialist. Lots of suggested reading on this, but http://www.dickmorris.com has some interesting predictions.
#10 Steve on 2009-01-22 20:23 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.