Saturday, September 19, 2009

Is Opposition to President Obama Racially Motivated?


Earlier in the week, former President Jimmy Carter said the angry outbursts at town hall meetings and in Congress about health care reforms are racially motivated. When Jimmy Cater made the statement that “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," well he was not off the mark. I have seen too many right wing political cartoons showing our current President within racial stereotypes. One example being the President portrayed as a monkey eating watermelon at a state dinner. Yea, Ha Ha real funny assholes.



Although President Obama said on Friday the angry criticism about his health care agenda is not driven by racism, but is instead motivated by an intense concern about the proper role of government. Where this is true as an aspect on health care, you cannot deny that for many on the extreme right also have the racial interjection aspect too.

President Obama has long suggested that he would like to move beyond race and he is right to say so but the pertinent question is whether the country will let him.

The president said the things that are being said about him are similar to what was said about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - that he is a "communist" and a "socialist, etc."

I think that President Obama is right to calm down or deny the racial aspect of his Presidency because it would be a great political move by the Republican’s to get every issue bogged down by diverting the arguments into a constant debate on whether it is racially motivated or not. By diverting any debate or argument to this aspect, they split and divide the population on a diverted argument causing a derailment on any progress of programs that the President is trying to move forward.

So those of us who are supporting the President and his programs, let us all not fall into the opposition’s trap of making everything related to the President racially motivated. Bottom line it is not about race but about getting his programs passed.

7 comments:

  1. Eng.,
    good to see you posting again.

    Iv'e said it before, I'll say it again... Americans, for all the good things we do and righteous things we embrace, we can be the grotesque characature of racist morons.

    Show me a racist sign carrying drooling fool, and I'll show you a bible thumping religious fanatic.

    I am convinced that as religiosity declines, and is eventually bred out of our society, that intellect, reason, and tolerance will increase exponentially.

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  2. Hello Tom,
    Thank you for the posting. I really enjoyed your satirical humor viewpoints. I checked out your site and I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.

    Hello Hump,
    Yes it is good to be back posting on this site. I have been very busy with a local political issue that the office manager of my Ex-Congressman friend asked me to help with.

    Congressman Wayne Gilchrest was a moderate Republican and after 20+ years of voting the way the citizens wanted him to, he lost this last primary to a right wing fanatical nut job, but in the general election many of the moderate Republicans like myself worked for the Democratic Primary winner and this person won the seat last November.

    So in summation, the extreme right wing within the Republican party voted out the moderate Republican Congressman in the primary, but it all backfired on them because they lost the seat to a moderate Democrat.

    I started another blog just for this local issue and to quote a line from the movie, “In the Garden of Good and Evil,” IT IS PISSING OFF ALL OF THE RIGHT PEOPLE. :-)

    Well our effort is paying off and the local issue is now going our way....which of course is close to giving me a woody.

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  3. I think President Carter had it right about the racism. I'm glad people are talking about this now in a more open way. The first I saw was the Maureen Dowd piece last week in the NYT.

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  4. Racism simmers just below the surface all across the world. Why should we think that America is immune to it? Further, it has been only a short time since Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Little Rock - places whose names are etched in history's darkest moments.

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  5. Eng,
    Good work on the political front! Kudos.
    Hump

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  6. Hello Muddy,
    You bring up a good point that racism is just below the surface. Your examples of Selma, Montogomery, Birmingham and Little Rock really was not that long ago.

    Hello Hump,
    Thank you for the kind words and it feels very good to win one locally. Expecially when it is helping out and old friend.

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  7. All I have to do is sample the smorgasbord of conservative blogs to feel the pulse beneath the politessw of their feigned civility.
    Birther blogs are demanding to know if Barack Obama is circumcized! It's a matter of national security and the bottom line of conservative humor these days....
    When I checked out the Meet The Press blog for this week end the first 4 posts were monkey jokes.
    Racism? Naww...nothing to look at here, move on, move on....

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