Obama’s identification with Trayvon Martin
Either President Obama identifies pretty strongly with Trayvon Martin, or he’s pretending to do so for political purposes.
First we had Obama’s statement that, if he’d had a son, he’d have looked like Martin. That was fairly early in the game. But now, post-verdict, we have the following from the president:
When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said this could’ve been my son. Another way of saying that is, a Trayvon Martin could’ve been me 35 years ago. When you think about why in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.
There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
Obama may identify with Martin for several reasons, the most obvious of which is being a black male. In addition, Obama smoked marijuana as a youth; so did Martin (so do lots of young men, white and black). Martin’s parents had split up, so had Obama’s. Not all was similar; unlike the young Obama, Martin had already gotten into quite a bit of trouble during his short life, and he had grown up in a largely black neighborhood.
But the most important similarity Obama is pointing out is his insinuation that they were both unfairly profiled for being black. Forget the actual reasons Zimmerman had phoned the police to report Martin as a suspicious person (hint: it was Martin’s behavior, not his color). Forget about what Martin actually did to Zimmerman to start the fight and continue it.
Obama has already described the origins of at least some of his strong feelings about profiling. They come from an incident with that “typical white person”, his grandmother, who had raised him. It might be time to take another look at what he wrote:
A careful look at this incident as Obama described it on pp. 88-91 of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance…shows that Obama is slandering his elderly grandmother to make Rev. Dr. Wright look better. Obama’s white grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who was raising him and earning most of the money in the family while his own mother was off in Indonesia…rode the bus each morning to her job as a bank executive. One day, the 16-18 year old Obama wakes up to an argument between his grandmother and grandfather. She didn’t want to ride the bus because she had been hassled by a bum at the bus stop. She tells him:
“Her lips pursed with irritation. ‘He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn’t come, I think he might have hit me over the head.”
So why didn’t Obama’s lefty grandfather want to drive his own wife to work? Because to help his wife avoid the hostile, dangerous panhandler would be morally wrong, because the potential mugger was … Well, I’ll let Sen. Obama tell the story:
“He turned around and I saw that he was shaking. ‘It is a big deal. It’s a big deal to me. She’s been bothered by men before. You know why she’s so scared this time. I’ll tell you why. Before you came in, she told me the fella was black.’ He whispered the word. ‘That’s the real reason why she’s bothered. And I just don’t think that right.’
“The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure. In my steadiest voice, I told him that such an attitude bothered me, too, but reassured him that Toot’s fears would pass and that we should give her a ride in the meantime. Gramps slumped into a chair in the living room and said he was sorry he had told me. Before my eyes, he grew small and old and very sad. I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that it was all right, I understood.
“We remained like that for several minutes, in painful silence. Finally he insisted that he drive Toot after all, and I thought about my grandparents. They had sacrificed again and again for me. They had poured all their lingering hopes into my success. Never had they given me reason to doubt their love; I doubted if they ever would. And yet I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fear.”
Then Obama drives over for counseling to the house of his grandfather’s friend Frank, an old black Communist Party USA member, who tells him:
“What I’m trying to tell you is, your grandma’s right to be scared. She’s at least as right as Stanley is. She understands that black people have a reason to hate. That’s just how it is. For your sake, I wish it were otherwise. But it’s not. So you might as well get used to it.”
“Frank closed his eyes. His breathing slowed until he seemed to be asleep. I thought about waking him, then decided against it and walked back to the car. The earth shook under my feet, ready to crack open at any moment. I stopped, trying to steady myself, and knew for the first time that I was utterly alone.”
Well, he’s not utterly alone now, is he? He has a bully pulpit to try to avenge the perceived psychological wounds of his childhood. Note, also, that Obama’s age at the time of the incident was very similar to Martin’s age at the time of his death, and note also that his grandmother indicated a fear that the panhandler might have hit her over the head if the bus hadn’t come in time. Shades of what actually happened to Zimmerman.
Seeing the above excerpt from Obama’s book, it’s no wonder he made the speech he did today. His political agenda dovetails nicely with his psychological one. Obama’s certainly not going to ground and pound Zimmerman, but he’ll use his formidable resources to perpetuate the idea that Zimmerman was a “typical white person” who profiled Martin for being black. The actual situation—whether it be that the panhandler was aggressively harassing his grandmother, or that Trayvon Martin was acting in a way that would have caused suspicion whatever his skin color—is of absolutely no importance to Obama.
[ADDENDUM: Cross-posted at Legal Insurrection.]
So we have a president who holds a grudge against the people he was elected to represent. It’s gonna be a long 3 1/2 years (but then again, those of us who frequent this site knew that already).
Obama and Trayvon Martin have nothing in common. His speech is just another example of him thinking he’s the center of the universe.
By the way, that story from his book makes him look like a rich a-hole with fake problems. Could you imagine a lighter skinned guy with Obama’s background telling that story and trying to say he understands racism? People would laugh.
(so do lots of young men, white and black).
After an unofficial training course in interrogation methods, drug interrogation methods, torture methods, and various other ways to control or break people’s minds using drugs, I sort of had a dislike of using recreational drugs. Or even normal drugs.
Not being in a rational state of mind when I had various lethal tools on my person, also didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t know what was going to happen, which was the point, if I used recreational drugs. I could start doing Russian roulette on myself or others for the heck of it and wouldn’t even realize it until later.
PCP, cocaine, and some other drugs did make for a sort of pseudo berserker fighter, but the cost was too high. And those berserkers weren’t unkillable either, if you knew how.
The Obamas of the world make for good shock troops and totalitarian tyrants. Because those who are easily controlled, those who take drugs and make themselves even more easy to control by the psychological warfare of the Left, are the ones most thirsting to change the world.
Because they were too weak to change themselves for the better.
I see this as yet another example of Obama doubling-down. Here he’s been getting criticism for a long time because of saying that Trayvon Martin could have been his own son, and what does he do now, when he should be calming the waters? Why he goes even further and says Trayvon could actually have been Obama himself!
What a sound-bite. And he knows it.
Truly astounding. And terrible for Zimmerman, and very, very bad for our country.
Baltimoron:
They actually don’t have much in common, I agree. But Obama truly believes (at least I think he truly believes) that they have one important thing in common: that Obama was profiled for being black, and that Zimmerman profiled Martin for being black and that’s why the whole thing happened, according to Obama. And Obama also believes that his grandmother profiled the panhandler so long ago, and that if she hadn’t been his grandmother and known and loved him, Obama, she’d have been afraid of him, too. That perception of his is the wound. And it’s a dangerous and important one in terms of what motivates him, I believe.
Of course, profiling and prejudice occur towards black people on the part of white people. Also, vice versa, although that takes quite a different form (Martin appears to have profiled Zimmerman and attacked him for it, whether Zimmerman’s offense was being a cracker or Hispanic or supposedly gay we’ll never know). Obama is insensitive to that aspect of things. His default assumption is that Trayvon was profiled for being black. It is what white people do, according to Obama.
Such beliefs are dangerous when a person gets into power.
it’s interesting that Pres. Obama is sure that he has been profiled, just as he believes that Trayvon Martin. Maybe he’s correct…http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire#axzz1rAwW8l1q
Another insightful column, Neo. Thank you.
If the bus incident actually happened, a grateful and loving grandson would have been very upset that his granny had been accosted at the bus stop. The last thought on his mind would have been to call the woman who was raising him and giving him unconditional love, a racist. The man who accosted her was black. She had no control over that.
But not, Obama. He cared only about himself and not his gransmother’s safety. What a piece of work.
Come on people, BHO is the center of the universe. All past, present, and future existence swirls around his magnificence. Whether he is preening, pouting, or petulant; in Barry’s mind its all I, me, mine, unless its the royal we. What a contemptible, loathsome prick.
Got that NSA?
I’ve never been able to understand why his grandfather told him what she said. I suspect there was a lot going on between granny and grandad and that Obama was used as a pawn. And remember, Obama only has grandad’s version of what she said. It may be as accurate as the NBC editing of Zimmerman. If that is true, Obama was very vulnerable to wounding.
Yeah, what was up with grandad, anyway? Instead of feeling protective toward his wife (and just why didn’t he always drive her to work, if she’d been in difficult situations before?), he was moved to shaking because she noted the person’s skin color. Wouldn’t have been the reaction of the men in my life.
So who hasn’t suffered a few psychological or emotional traumas growing up? If you are wise you learn from it, grow a little bit, and hopefully become a better person for having experienced those things. What you don’t do is carry a perpetual chip on your shoulder.
The story describes Obama as being 16-18 years old. Many of our present day military aren’t much older than that and learn, sometimes with very bad results, that the Islamist want them seriously dead.
“Obama was very vulnerable to wounding.”
No doubt, but the great injury that has been branded upon our society and the world at large is how BHO dealt with his dysfunctional family.
The “Post-Racial” President: “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”
That does not give give you or Saint Trayvon of Skittles the right to assault people because you dont like being followed by creepy ass crackers.
Neo,
I see Barack Obama as one of those people who is able to genuinely believe whatever they think its in their interest to genuinely believe. Not uncommon amongst politicians, but Obama has trouble because he is rather shortsighted and sometimes genuinely believes things that will make him look silly later.
As I said earlier, the incident with his grandmother is a perfect example of fake problems. Obama wants to believe he’s suffered for being black because it would make his cushy upclass life seem more meaningful. So he made a minor incident from his past out to be much more than it was, or he just made it up.
BHO had the ability to calm his community the day after the verdict. He said nothing. Now, 6 days later, he throws gas on the fire. We’re all a bunch of racists! Those dept store and car-door-locking experiences prove it!
Either he really hates this country or else he WANTS racial discord and polarization. Perhaps both are true?
expat & Ann,
The problem with your reasoning is that you’re assuming Obama was recounting his grandfathers words truthfully.
neo …
The book has entirely re-written events.
Speaking as an eyewitness who lived in her building — and who worked one block south of her bank building…
The aggressive panhandler — Black — was a fixture around downtown Honolulu for y e a r s. He was NOT of sound mind.
Our condo on Makai Street was within a short walk of the main bus traffic on Breretania Street. (A one-way East to West four and five lane commuter heavy street.) So, it’s very possible that she would’ve taken the bus. Parking downtown is quite impossible. Financial Honolulu is like a micro Manhattan Island.
The beggar was a street person with a regular routine — very much in the style of those in Union Square, in San Francisco. His outfit made him look like he just stepped off the underground railroad — in the 19th Century.
He was, actually, quite unnerving, even to me. (Of course, he was a ghetto of one.) It was his insanity — lack of social graces.
If his tutu used the bus, then she HAD to walk south to her bank office every morning. The bus route passes across the northern side of the financial district. I’ll bet it hasn’t changed in the last fifteen-years.
It would be during that transit that she would’ve been approached by him. (He stank, really stank, too.) He wore a shabby hat — usually in his hands — inverted — begging for bucks. It was seriously worn — but very much in the style of the classic top hats — but never classy even when new.
At one time or another, that beggar hit up EVERYONE walking the street — his beat, if you will.
The odds are overwhelming that she never confronted him on the bus. The drivers (legally or not) just did not allow stinky street people to ride — and he had ZERO reasons to head up to our part of town. I strongly suspect that the local Catholic church was feeding him. All of the resources for a homeless man were available within a very short walk from downtown. (financial) Honolulu is tiny.
THE single most likely sequence would be that he was bothering the bus riders as they left to walk the last blocks — trying to get some scratch.
The fellow was quite a character. I can well remember him all these years. He would come up as a topic of conversation in the brokerage. All attempts to get him off the street (by my fellow stockbrokers) did not work. It’s impossible to force charity upon someone.
Profiling is usually a good and necessary tool. In fact, we all do it. But it has become twisted in its meaning…it is an inherently bad thing to do, they say, even as they do it themselves.
blert:
Interesting.
Obama was saying his grandmother was hassled by the guy at a bus stop, though, not on the bus itself.
Obviously, Barry didn’t register that the Black dude was blatantly insane — and didn’t stay in his own space.
V E R Y creepy.
Blackness had absolutely nothing to do with her revulsion.
Yes, yes, it was at the Breretania Street EXIT stop.
That’s our man.
There are ways to engineer society for the better. There are ways to repair psychological damage from trauma or rapes.
But if you don’t have the skill or motivation to do any of that ,there is always a last resort.
Death.
It cures all.
Why the hell didn’t Obama or his grandfather, better yet both, accompany his grandmother to the bus stop? They’re not men, they’re cowards who won’t protect their women. The narcissism and ideological blindness of these people makes me angry. It’s all about black oppression in Amerikka 110% of the time but never about a single living human being who might be hurt or worse. Never a thought that they’re impotent Mrs. Jellybys who damage the people around them in pursuit of their Utopia.
Obama today said that 35 years ago he might have been Trayvon Martin. Well guess what Mr. President, you are Trayvon Martin, a petty thug who goes around sucker punching people, who steals from people who’ve worked hard so that you can feel good about “helping the poor”.
It’s going to be a long three and a half years.
As someone who has struggled through being a stepfather and having a child who had a stepmother, I’d suggest you turn your thoughts to Obama’s response to the father abandonment that he experienced.
The absent father (or mother) becomes something of a sainted figure to the stepchild. The values of the absent father (or mother), imagined or real, because the focal point of struggle with the step-parent.
See the values of Obama, Sr. for illustration.
There must have been many a discussion with his mother and with his grandparents about the missing father, and why he was gone.
Paul in Boston:
At least Obama made efforts to convince his grandfather to drive his mother to work. That makes Obama a better man (IMHO) than his grandfather was. And if the grandfather’s behavior is any indication of what kind of a role model he was, it’s a wonder Obama did even as well as he has. Frank Marshall Davis, another father figure, was a bitter example, too. Of course, Davis had almost certainly really had a lot of experiences as an older black man that would have made him bitter (Marshall was from Kansas and then Chicago, and moved to Hawaii later in life).
Paul…
Read my posts above.
She was being bothered when EXITING.
BTW, she would’ve been in a crowd of people, not quite the PATH trains into the World Trade Center, but a LOT of commuters.
The dude just would not stay in his own space.
His weird behavior, intense odor, — and height (he was quite tall and lanky, 6′ 4″ ? — Barry’s tutu stood about 4′ 11″ — and ugly as sin) — and he would wobble on over — even willing to hover over a shorter person!
(Short people are ten-a-penny in Honolulu.)
BTW, she, me, and everyone else saw him countless times. He was a floating fixture in the area. If the breeze was right, you could smell him before you saw him.
Of course, Davis had almost certainly really had a lot of experiences as an older black man that would have made him bitter (Marshall was from Kansas and then Chicago, and moved to Hawaii later in life).
This seems like a given to you, but I’ve got to ask why you would make that assumption.
Kansas City and Chicago were pretty hospitable to black men in Marshall’s day, and jobs were far more plentiful than in the south. Blacks migrated by the millions to Kansas City and Chicago, so things might have been… pretty good.
Hawaii doesn’t sound too bad, either.
“There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store…”
Okay, fine. That is unfair to blacks who are innocent. But who is really to blame? I’m pretty sure Obama would say that it is racist white folks fault. Given the high rate of black criminality, isn’t it rational to be more suspicious?
If they want to blame anybody, how about the criminals who are causing suspicion to fall on all African American young men. Instead they do the opposite–glorify gangster lifestyle, teach their sons that Trayvon was a victim rather than an idiot for attacking a man who turned out to be armed.
Isn’t saying “typical white person” profiling? And what, exactly, IS a typical white person?
I would have loved to ask the son of a bitch that question during one of the “debates,” particularly the one Candie Crowley moderated.
If this crap continues, what’s left of this country won’t survive. Calm the waters? Why should I do that when there are so many typical white persons to blame?
The other stop for his tutu would’ve been the pick-up at Bishop and King Streets, just across the street from the two big banks.
It’s possible that he chased her around that plaza.
Still, lots of people during the commute.
I keep hearing about how hopelessly racist and vicious America was back during my Dad’s day.
Doesn’t square with what I know about Dad or Grandad or the men I grew up with.
My heroes, growing up near Chicago in the 50s and 60s were Ernie Banks and Muddy Waters, black men who were held in very high esteem by everybody in Chicago.
Like the great and mostly fantasized oppression of women, the great oppression of blacks (at least within living memory of several generations of my family) has been dramatically over-stated for purposes of political gain.
What Obama and “black leaders” are doing today seems to me to be identical to what they were doing in 1968, which is claiming the right to tribal blood vengeance.
This, I think, is the meaning of the stream of comments by Obama and the “black leaders” about the unfairness of the legal system.
They want the right to tribal blood vengeance.
It’s not over stated at all.
It’s just, the Left is blaming you all for what they have done.
They need a scape goat. You are it.
They want the right to tribal blood vengeance.
They can start shooting now if they wish. They don’t need permission to do so.
They just know that many “people” are ready for that and they can’t win against it in a fire fight. So they utilize other ways to undermine their enemies.
If you can’t defeat a man in a fist fight, what do you do? Take his women and children hostage.
I’d love to see a national white guy stay at home day. Better yet a national typical white guy stay at home day.
Does anyone actually believe that a word of this “bus stop” story created by Ayers is based in reality?
I don’t. A husband wouldn’t defend an overly aggressive bum who accosted his wife, nor would a loving grandson.
If it makes him feel any better, I would be more inclined to lock the door if I saw him walking down my street now, than when he was just an unknown bum.
Now he’s a famous, shameless, lying scumbag.
What a big turd this guy is.
The whole Zimmerman episode has had the odd affect on me of confirming that a “stereotype” about black people is absolutely true.
All my life, black “leaders” have been demagoguing race in an effort to get stuff for themselves.
I’ve assume for the past couple of decades that this is a feature, and not a bug.
So, I’m of the opinion that the ranting about race for the purpose of making a profit was going on in the decades before I was born, too.
Seems to be something blacks like to do.
Don Carlos: “Profiling is usually a good and necessary tool. In fact, we all do it. But it has become twisted in its meaning…it is an inherently bad thing to do, they say, even as they do it themselves.”
Exactly. Humans did not become the survivors we are by being open and trusting toward everyone and everything. What Zimmerman was doing was observing suspicious behavior. We all observe people and make value judgments about their intentions all the time.
The neighbors who live across the street from me are black. When they moved here, we both sized each other up. Our conclusions: Nice people who are a nice addition to the neighborhood. Their conclusions seemed to have been the same. Everyone’s intentions, not skin color, is what mattered in this instance.
No, it’s not skin color we profile for, but intentions. If you exhibit a thuggish attitude, people will clutch their purses tighter, walk faster, lock their car doors, and so on. Or if you are looking for evidence that people are profiling you, then you will probably see it everywhere. I wonder how President Obama feels about the new department store practices of tracking all customers with cameras and gadgets that can read their smart phone emissions? The department stores can now literally follow you electronically every moment you are in the store. They say it is for marketing research, but my guess is that its also an anti-theft tool. Oh my, we’re all being profiled!
There’s so much of Obama packed into this speech it makes my head spin:
– the need to make it about himself,
– the need to make it about race,
– the need to heap on the white guilt,
– the arrogance of thinking that he must get involved because only he can and make it better
– the need to not so subtly diss someone, both Zimmerman and anyone who has ever hurt some poor black kid’s feeling by taking safety precautions
Here’s what I heard: he hates most of us Americans – especially whites, he’s never stopped being a community organizer nor started being a president, he has no intention of calming racial tensions, he has every intention of disarming us one way or another, and he doesn’t respect the rule of law.
“He was very aggressive, Barry. Very aggressive. I gave him a dollar and he kept asking. If the bus hadn’t come, I think he might have hit me over the head.”
Just like our wonderful government. I pay my income/sales/whatever tax and they keep asking — although it’s not “asking” when I don’t get to refuse the offer. They keep asking. It’s gorshdurn *rare* when government actually reduces the rate at which I get to pay my share. [But (to be balanced) it does happen. Thanks, non-left legislators.]
They keep asking, and should I politely decline the offer, they threaten incarceration. In the ultimate, they kindly arrange to bring their weapons to help me comply. “I think he might have hit me over the head.”
My contempt for this excuse for a human just grows and grows. Since his reelection, I’ve taken to referring to him as the incumbent, or, for sarcasm, the incumbent-in-chief, because to pronounce his name makes me retch. I’m at the point now where even “incumbent” won’t do. The only thing I can pronounce when referring to him is pee ohh ess.
lacune:
I would rather the story were false than true, because it reflects so dreadfully on the forces that shaped Obama (particularly, the problems between his grandfather and grandmother).
But although a lot in the book is apparently untrue, I believe this story has the ring of truth. The depth of feeling is strong and believable, and it connects up with a lot of Obama’s attitudes today. I believe it’s a wound that never healed. Basically, he identified with the panhandler.
His mother had left him, his father had left him, and he saw his grandmother’s love as conditional. His grandfather was indicating if the grandmother didn’t know and love Obama she would have feared him.
Shouting Thomas:
Well, I’m up there in age myself, and I’m old enough to remember a lot of racial prejudice even in northern cities. Not everyone, probably not even a majority of people, but certainly enough to have given Davis quite a few experiences of it.
Well, I’m up there in age myself, and I’m old enough to remember a lot of racial prejudice even in northern cities.
Seems to me that “racial prejudice” is a pretty loose term that can be used by the individual black man to excuse his failures and weaknesses in a way that a white man cannot.
My Dad had a pretty rough life, surviving both the Depression and WWII. He didn’t bitch about it a lot, nor did he look for scapegoats. Never heard him blame a black man for anything.
People not liking you, for fair and unfair reasons, is just part of life.
Shouting Thomas:
I’m pretty sure some of it was imagined, and some of it was real. That’s part of the problem—how to tell? There’s no way to know the ratio of one to the other.
But it existed, and still does. And of course black people are hardly free of racial prejudice, and whites and blacks are not the only categories, either.
That includes me, too, and I’m white.
Several years ago I was in a shopping mall. I needed to buy a new wallet, as my old one was worn out and falling apart. Since my wallet is a constant daily companion, I’m not afraid to spend a little more money and get a good one that will last a long time.
I went into a high-end men’s clothing store, probably Brooks Brothers or something similar. As I looked through the merchandise, I had a strong feeling that someone was watching me, possibly a store detective. I was probably dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and my longish hair and scraggly beard made it bloody obvious that I was not a not a regular customer in that store.
So I wasn’t offended in the least. They didn’t know me, and the store had every right to protect their property from shoplifters. I’m sure that a wallet is an easy thing to steal.
Eventually a sales clerk came over to help me, and I did end up buying a wallet there. That was maybe ten years ago, and I still have it. It’s in excellent condition and will probably last me for another ten years at least. I chose well.
Oh, the guy who I thought was watching me, and may have been a store detective?
He was black.
I don’t believe the bus stop story for a moment.
Nor do I believe “gramps” and “toots”. It’s not even near what I think the Big Oâ„¢ would call his grandparents, even if that’s what they wanted to be called.
Obama and Martin have a lot in common; both are hoods who will sucker punch you!
And that is NOT because of their skin color – it is just who they are/were.
I’ve grown incredibly, bitterly skeptical about the fabrication of martyrs for political causes of all stripes.
As an illustration, you might want to watch the video about the University of Texas at El Paso team that was the first all black basketball team to win the NCAA tournament.
The movie “Glory Road” portrays the UTEP team surviving screaming racist crowds and threats to win the title.
This story was mostly a fabrication.
There’s been a lot of this in the past, and it’s still going on. The manufacture of martyrs is the standard MO of the left.
Neo @ 6:00 pm.
Yes, Obama’s the hero in the narrative, but he’s not. They should have gone to the bus stop just to warn the guy off. It’s not even neccessary to say or do anything, sort of like the US Navy showing the flag. Blert’s description of the bum changes the narrative entirely and how one would respond, but Dreams chooses to elide that entirely to make the story about racism.
Steve Sailor has a posting where he quotes from some passages in Dreams From My Father from Obama’s time as a community organizer in Chicago: Obama confesses to racially profiling black youths,
As Steve Sailor points, Obama also engages in profiling: “”I start picturing myself through the eyes of these boys, a figure of random authority, and know the calculations they might now making, that if one of them can’t take me out, the four of them certainly can.”
Racial profiling is bad if a white Republican- or a grandmother- does it, but is OK if Obama Himself does it, as he gets an Eternal Dispensation for whatever he does.
Shouting Thomas,
I think the phenomenon really took off after the famous Bernstein dinner described by Thomas Wolfe. When you can milk the social elite, you have it made.
Today Obama did what he does best; fanning the flames of race hate. Stirring racial animosity and setting back race relations by decades. Congratulations, Mr President, this is your legacy
Can I tell you this grandmother story has bugged me for years, particularly as a woman and particularly since the book ‘The Gift of Fear’ had a big effect on me.
What Obama and others are trying to tell people is to ignore their natural, rational fears – which involve a complicated back brain risk calculation of all the available factors including race, clothing, behavior, and the simple look in someone’s eyes – because of race. Never mind that black men of a certain age commit a giant chunk of all violent crimes. Maybe you should address that instead of being angry that people have fear.
Is that fear justified? Maybe not in some cases but in others yes it absolutely is. And ignoring it is likely to get someone injured or killed. It would be nice if some of the black men who are so hurt by this would try for one second to empathize with a woman who is alone and greatly outmatched in a strength game with almost every man she meets and is forced to make these risk calculations on the fly daily. 99% of the time maybe things are fine, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be watchful and observant.
The POTUS neglected an important point about adolescent black males and the way others perceive them. Many adolescent black males relish playing the tough guy, relish intimidating others. As such, they invite fear and scorn. They should not be so surprised when they get fear and scorn.
I encounter a similar situation is a subway station a couple of years ago. A tall street thug was ostensibly panhandling for subway fare. He chose only attractive young middle-class women to approach. He was relentless. He was manipulative. I intervened long enough for one target to escape. I then purchased my own fare and turned to find that he found another target, another attractive young middle-class women. This women was cornered and clearly frightened. I noticed that the street thug was escalating. He seemed to enjoy his victim’s growing discomfort. [It cross my mind that I might not live to return home that evening] I intervened again and ushered the young women to the safer presence of the stationmaster. The thug fled after he observed the stationmaster calling the transit police. It seems to me that grandmother Dunham was profiling behavior and body language, not race, just as I had done.
One would be well advised to approach any tale in Dreams From My Father with caution. It may not be authentic given the likelihood that Bill Ayers was the ghostwriter for the book. However, accepting this tale as told one wonders about the judgment of grandfather Stanley Dunham in this instance. Stanley Dunham Sr. was odd, something of a crackpot. By accounts he was an ideological hardline leftist and a poor judge of character. In this instance why would a mature man of judgment even go there with young Obama? Why say any such thing to a teenager who had been scarred by abandonment by his father and then by his own mother? Why undermine young Obama’s positive relationship with his grandmother? Why take a chance that a scarred and isolated black teenager might suspect he was rejected by his mother because he was “black”. One wonders if some sort of transference took place where fears of abandonment by his mother have been displaced onto his maternal grandmother, a safer target. Moreover it seems that Stanley Dunham Sr. confided in young Obama for the purpose of justifying his own uncharitable intransigence. Why was Stanley Dunham Sr. unreasonably determined to force his wife into to a disagreeable and perhaps dangerous situation? Senior Dunham’s rationale seems punitive and ideological.
Perhaps this instance strikes to Obama Jr.’s deeper most repressed fears?
Yes Trayvon Martin was also abandoned by his father and then likewise sent away by his mother … when he was 17 years old …
Mike O’Malley:
Why say any such thing to a teenager who had been scarred by abandonment by his father and then by his own mother? Why undermine young Obama’s positive relationship with his grandmother? Why take a chance that a scarred and isolated black teenager might suspect he was rejected by his mother because he was “black”.
One partial explanation is that Stanley Dunham’s mother committed suicide when he was 8 years old. To make matters worse, 8 year old Stanley found his mother’s body. Sounds as if Grandpa was forcing Barack to live in part the trauma Grandpa suffered when he was a kid. I will let those more learned in psychology to continue.
Commenter Blert has commented at Belmont Club about Barack Obama’s ambivalent relationship with his grandmother, courtesy of having lived in the same building. Yelling at him in the hallway…
Gringo Says:
July 19th, 2013 at 10:48 pm
Mike O’Malley:…
Commenter Blert has commented at Belmont Club about Barack Obama’s ambivalent relationship with his grandmother, courtesy of having lived in the same building. Yelling at him in the hallway
Good Lord!
If you have time to do so can you identify the essay by Fernandez wherein I can find and read Blert’s observations.
I was unable to find the relevant comment.
Thanks
Mike, I didn’t find it at Wretchard’s place, but found it by Googling “blert obama grandmother.” But the reference is at Neo: From Wretchard’s blog:Rage Towards My Tutu: Homey Won’t Say It.
Mike, also try this. Blert has several postings on the thread.
http://neoneocon.com/2011/04/20/who-was-obamas-mother
Reading through the above, I agree that Obama is self-centered and has some warped views on race etc., but the man is not stupid. And he is first and foremost a successful politician. He has had several days to observe and ponder the public’s reaction to the Zimmerman verdict, and more importantly how it might fit into his political future.
IMO this whole Zimmerman thing is a black hole – a Godsend for him – pulling attention away from several scandals that were driving his poll numbers down.
Obama puts out those inane comments, which his black and leftist base love, and the right wing can’t help talking about, instead of talking about – for example – this week’s development in the IRS scandal:
“The IRS scandal was connected this week not just to the Washington office–that had been established–but to the office of the chief counsel.”
“Still, what landed was a bombshell. And Democrats know it. Which is why they are so desperate to make the investigation go away. They know, as Republicans do, that the chief counsel of the IRS is one of only two Obama political appointees in the entire agency.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324448104578614220949743916.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
If Nixon had been this lucky he might have finished his presidency.
Two points that we’ve hashed over many times, but it never gets old:
1. Obama is a creep raised by creeps.
2. Obama wants to destroy the United States of America.
Obama’s “blackness” is all made up. He was accepted in his gang in Honolulu; his so-called racial issues were used as tools for his advancement.
Obama’s mentor and possibly father was a commie and a pervert. Frank Marshall Davis probably seduced his 17-year old motheer and later sexually abused Obama. Neo-neocon already analyzed the drippy semen poem on an earlier post. The many levels of this family’s creepiness lead to the ick factor very quickly.
NOTE: Blert described how awful Obama’s grandma was. I also described how nice Michelle’s neighborhood was. Thanks to the internet, we can have eye-witness viewpoints that are a lot more believable than fake newspaper accounts.
Obama had to teach himself to talk “black” and he never learned it properly. He also never learned the thug walk, so why would he be regarded suspiciously in a department store????? This is total nonsense that he just made up. The whole thug and pants around the butt-crack is a lot more recent than Obama’s childhood. Obama is almost 50 years old.
Obama is a serial liar, and a sociopath. I could even call him a serial killer, because he uses his drones to kill people, just like they were video game images. He’s a fake warrior but a real killer.
Ok, I admit, I’m on a rant here . . . but people, let’s keep in mind the kind of sicko person we’re dealing with. Obama is a puppet of those who want to do us harm, and he’s a willing puppet because he hates us. He hates ‘black” people too. Who’s to say who’s black these days? One drop? Eight drops? The whole issue is sick, sick, sick. I’m talking “mentally ill” here. My family has black people in it, and I’m sure many of your families do too. The fact that racial issues are being ginned up now is just crazy talk.
Maybe the KGB in its latest incarnation is behind all this. I just finished Daniel Silva (married to a liberal)’s newest work “The English Girl.” He had interested things to say about the KGB. My next serious book to read is Diana West’s “America Betrayed” about the Soviet infiltration of the U.S.government.
Somehow we need to do some kind of mixed-martial-arts jujitsu and get the discussion back on track so that people become aware that we are being played by enemies of America.
…..”he had interesting things to say about the KGB.”
I remember Democrats being offended that they were called anti Americans or un American in 2004 or so.
Perhaps that was because they really felt the pain of that hit.
http://www.examiner.com/article/federal-statistics-of-black-on-white-violence-with-links-and-mathematical-extrapolation-formulas
Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites than vice versa
Federal Statistics of black on white violence, with links and mathematical extrapolation formulas.
Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
Blacks are three times more likely to use a hand gun, and twice more likely to use a knife.
Hispanics commit three times more violent crimes than whites, but the statistics are nebulous because sometimes they are classified as white, so it could be far higher.
The best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percent of the population that is black and Hispanic.
Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites then vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit a robbery.
Forty-five percent of black crime is against whites, 43 against other blacks, and 10 percent against Hispanic.
Thank you Gringo.
That helps explain Obama’s relationship not just with his wife but with Valarie Jarrett, his stalwart pro Iranian mentor who he so feared to cross when it came time kill Usama bin Laden.
So it would also seem, as with the profiling charge against George Zimmerman, that Stanley Dunham’s slur about his wife’s reaction to the black panhandler was also a malicious fraud.
Do you have an analysis of the role of fatherlessness in those statistics Artfldgr? From my readings of Dr. David Popenoe and associates I learned that the fatherless commit murder at least twice as often and rape three times as often as those who were raised by their married biological father together with their mother. It seems to me that accounting for fatherless in those statistics would substantially reduce the difference in those racial crime rates. One wonders whether what numerical impact multi-generational fatherlessness has on violent crime.
.
BTW Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father, appears to be a Crips crime gang alumnus.
It is galling to be instructed in proper etiquette in the presences of a hooded black gangsta by the likes of Tracy Martin.
I never knew any of the old-time commies, like Dunham. I knew dozens of young radicals , like Ayers. I do not know whether Dunham would have actually ascribed his wife’s fear to racism. Ayers? Of course he would, and the millions like him. I heard that crap all the time, thirty, uh, well, forty, or so years ago. Anybody out there who knew the red-diaper parents, to confirm or deny?
Racism is a real factor and problem, but what we’re dealing with in the Martin incident and Obama’s take is the Marxist zero-sum conflict frame of race. It’s not the same thing. Switch out the identities of the parties, and the Marxist racial lens could be exchanged just as easily for class or gender Marxist lenses. Race is most effective, though.
I’m a liberal with a liberal take on racism, but what has happened to liberalism is that it’s been so thoroughly corrupted by Marxism that Marxist definitions are now commonly applied to liberals by liberals themselves.
Marxism is a zombie mind-control parasite.
I understand applying racism to the 1st take of the Zimmerman controversy but we’re far enough along in it now that a fuller picture should be in control. However, the Marxists are zealously enforcing the racial frame.
In both the Zimmerman controversy and the Obama grandma story, the adherence to the Marxist frame to the fanatical degree of presumptively excluding obviously relevant factors that mitigate the Marxist narrative no longer surprises me, but it continues to astound me.
We try and want to give Marxists the benefit of the doubt when trying to engage them in reasonable informed discourse, but their minds are wired differently. To take off of what Neo said about engaging Mitsu, it’s not about convincing Marxists who just see the world differently, it’s about saving everyone else.
I’ve had several wake-up calls that reinforced to me the difference between a real liberal and a Marxist-corrupted liberal.
One experience was a job as a crime victim advocate.
At work, I helped crime victims, mostly blacks and Latinos, which appealed to my liberal sensibility. They, like Zimmerman, were concerned about crime in their communities and would want stricter policing. At the same, I would listen to ‘civil rights’ activists protesting the ‘racist’ policies of the police who were trying to apply stricter policing in the victims’ communities.
I thought, how can race be a factor when the people asking for stricter policing are also black and Latino? If they were arguing purely on a civil libertarian platform, I could accept their integrity, but they were using primarily a racial frame. It was clear to me that there was a fundamental contradiction. I wondered, did the race-based activists not care that they would be placing black and Latino residents at greater risk?
It was one of those a-ha moments that made me realize that race wasn’t their ultimate issue; it’s just a means to an end.
If Zimmerman was black, and all the other facts were the same, this wouldn’t be a racial controversy. Or maybe it would be if the Marxists found a creative way to combine race and class as a hybrid zero-sum conflict lens. After all, Marxists can afford to be creative and flexible when all roads lead to Rome.
The harder that they push on Zimmerman, the clearer it becomes that the line must be held with Zimmerman. We are all George Zimmerman. If he goes down, the rest of us are just prey in the open.
Mike O’Malley
So it would also seem, as with the profiling charge against George Zimmerman, that Stanley Dunham’s slur about his wife’s reaction to the black panhandler was also a malicious fraud.
That depends. Did Grandpa actually say it? I see several possibilities
1) Ghostwriter Bill Ayers added Grandpa’s dialogue. See what Mike Adams wrote. The “racist” charge certainly fits the way ’60s radicals operated.
2)While Grandma did encounter the panhandler, Obama invented Grandpa’s dialogue to get a dig in at his grandmother. Given what blert has written about Obama and his grandmother, it is not difficult to see why Obama would want to do this.
2) It actually occurred. Grandpa said it to get a little dig in at Grandma, who was working while Grandpa was not working.
3) It actually occurred. Grandpa did it in an unconscious replaying of HIS childhood trauma. It as if he were saying, “As I lost my mother when I was 8, I will undermine your trust in the person who is acting as your mother, so you will share some of my suffering.”
Options 3 and 4 speak of a grandfather overstepping the boundaries between grandfather and grandchild. Offhand, I do not know if there are other examples of this in Dreams.
I am surprised no one has spoken about my linking to Steve Sailor’s quote from Dreams, which shows that Obama himself engaged in some racial profiling.
As others haves stated, I see Obama’s speaking out on the Zimmerman case as a way to distract us from the other scandals: IRS. Benghazi, etc. Rather successful, it would appear. A rather crafty politician. Chicago taught him well.
Eric, thanks for your comments. It’s important for all of us to distinguish between classic liberalism on the one hand, and Marxism, Progressivism, etc on the other hand. Many classic Liberals were reasonable people who had the good of the country at heart. I might have disagreed with their views on certain issues, but it wasn’t personal and I never questioned their patriotism. I’m thinking of the late Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois as an example. He was an upstanding man who received my vote despite some policy disagreements. People like Paul Simon have more in common with today’s conservatives than they do with today’s Progressives, who seem to hate our country and everything it stands for.
As someone says above, we are not here to be ‘prey animals’ for black predators!
I quote the below from Thinking Housewife; the last 2 paragraphs could have been written by anyone in my family, and maybe yours too.
“Mr. Obama offered three examples of the humiliations borne by young black men in America: being followed while shopping in a department store, hearing the click of car doors locking as they cross a street, or watching as women clutch their purses nervously when they step onto an elevator. The first two experiences, he said, had happened to him.
“These incidents in which black men who have done nothing wrong are questioned or are under suspicion are, of course, fairly common and real. However, the incidents Obama mentioned are minor. He has never been detained by the police or even frisked. His experiences are just inconveniences. They are nothing compared to the hardships that are imposed on millions daily by the realities of black crime. It would be nice if just one American political figure had the honesty and courage to say in response to Obama something like this:
‘“I’m sorry that the president has had to be inconvenienced in this way even though he has never committed a crime. But I would like to share my experiences too. For much of my life I have had to restrict my movements as a result of black criminality. I have never really been a free man in my own city.My daughters are especially limited in the places they can go. I know of an old man who was beaten to death, a cab driver who was shot and a woman who was brutally raped just blocks from my home. I’ve been mugged three times and each time the man was black. I spend lots of money on cab fares because it is too dangerous to walk home at night.
‘“Obama complains about being stopped by security men in department stores. I assure him it is much worse to be stopped by a thug with a gun. But I am lucky. Many others have had their movements confined much more. Those are the tens of thousands of people who have been injured or killed by black criminals. I suggest that the president be considerate and understanding of others when they are trying to protect themselves and that he acknowledges that in order to be “a full part” of a free society one must condemn anti-social behavior. The necessary corollary of freedom is responsibility.”’
@ Mike O’Malley
sorry, no real numbers on fatherlessness that are that easy to get. one point is that they mix step dads (the most likely to harm the child) with blood fathers (the least likely to harm the child, even less likely than mom)
however, there are tons of stats in general as to single parent mothers and outcomes….
its a no win situation…
if the mother makes it well without dad, every one of her sons gets an up close and personal lesson in having no purpose, and with no purpose… what difference does it make?
if she doesnt then they get an up close lesson on how stupid their wives can be to make such choices all around…
either way, it doesnt bode well
the point that i think your looking for is actually found in matriarchies. which are not utopian, quite the opposite. in matriarchies, women have close knit groups, but the men are unmotivated, violent, sit around, and predator on them at night.
think of many of the african states where women are strong, men are in gangs and all that, and not much gets done, for if you try, the negative tears down the positive just as a matter of its only purpose.
Researchers in Michigan determined that “49 percent of all child abuse cases are committed by single mothers.”
the remaining amounts are step fathers, fathers and others… [assorted people living temporarily in the home]
A study of 156 victims of child sexual abuse found that the majority of the children came from disrupted or single-parent homes; only 31 percent of the children lived with both biological parents. Although stepfamilies make up only about 10 percent of all families, 27 percent of the abused children lived with either a stepfather or the mother’s boyfriend.
but since feminism is a sex cult making a self supporting harem of sex freaks, the manipulation of these numbers are needed so that feminist women would make choices that they would not make otherwise… ie. tell them they are winners, and then give them advice that destroys their lives, then confine them its someone else’s fault.
a composite index based on the annual rate of children involved in divorce and the percentage of families with children present that are female-headed — is a strong predictor of suicide among young adult and adolescent white males
though we only care about the attempts by women, not the successes of the boys….
Boys who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely that those in father-present homes to have trouble establishing appropriate sex roles and gender identity
Children reared by a divorced or never-married mother are less cooperative and score lower on tests of intelligence than children reared in intact families. Statistical analysis of the behavior and intelligence of these children revealed “significant detrimental effects” of living in a female-headed household. Growing up in a female-headed household remained a statistical predictor of behavior problems even after adjusting for differences in family income.
Source: Greg L. Duncan, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Kato Klebanov, “Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development,” Child Development 65 (1994).
Children with fathers at home tend to do better in school, are less prone to depression and are more successful in relationships. Children from one-parent families achieve less and get into trouble more than children from two parent families.
Children whose parents separate are significantly more likely to engage in early sexual activity, abuse drugs, and experience conduct and mood disorders. This effect is especially strong for children whose parents separated when they were five years old or younger. Parental Separation, Adolescent Psychopathology, and Problem Behaviors,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 33 (1944)
A 1988 Department of Health and Human Services study found that at every income level except the very highest (over $50,000 a year), children living with never-married mothers were more likely than their counterparts in two-parent families to have been expelled or suspended from school, to display emotional problems, and to engage in antisocial behavior.
“Children from mother-only families have less of an ability to delay gratification and poorer impulse control (that is, control over anger and sexual gratification.) These children also have a weaker sense of conscience or sense of right and wrong.”
Eighty percent of adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from broken homes.
Kids who exhibited violent behavior at school were 11 times as likely not to live with their fathers and six times as likely to have parents who were not married. Boys from families with absent fathers are at higher risk for violent behavior than boys from intact families. merican Journal of Public Health, No. 84. 1994
Children from disrupted families are 20 percent more unlikely to attend college than kids from intact, two-parent families
Nationally, 29.7 percent of children living with a never-married mother and 21.5 percent of children living with a divorced mother have repeated at least one grade in school, compared to 11.6 percent of children living with both biological parents
Seventy-two percent of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. Sixty percent of America’s rapists grew up the same way.
its interesting to note that feminists are creating rapists that then go out and create more feminists…
The proportion of single-parent households in a community predicts its rate of violent crime and burglary, but the community’s poverty level does not.
Compared to boys from intact, two-parent families, teenage boys from disrupted families are not only more likely to be incarcerated for delinquent offenses, but also to manifest worse conduct while incarcerated.
The relationship between family structure and crime is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.
so basically here is what they created…
and by they i mean white educated feminist women
they created a society that will tax them at over 90% if not now, then at some point in the future
they have insured that men will not be in the top earning positions paying the highest taxes but will sit around playing Nintendo looking for women to have sex with, participating in gangs as they have no point other than be mean lions that the ladies will debase themselves over (hookup culture, etc)
they have managed to do this by removing their mates, who are now off marrying others… they will find that there will not be enough of them left to turn the political tide that will make them the hated underclass breeders of racist men… (guess what color white womens babies generally are?)
their men have left the studio…
its interesting to note who is marrying who when the mixing happens… the african male who doesnt want to share the lady with 3 kids by 4 men (one dont know he aint the daddy), and that crazyness, are dating and marrying caucasian women, and a few others. the caucasian women are finding that they are not wanted,other than for party girls when young and i dont know what when older as they try to poach men from young girls by lowering the freaky sex bar (leaving damaged goods for the young woman to marry the second time around)… the smarter decent boring nice guys are marrying chinese women, which is pissing off the chinese men, and really peeving the feminist women (Care to read the articles on yellow fever resurrecting a race phrase from the past?)
so its all interesting…
just stand back..
and you can watch the comedic tragedy unfold…
just pretend that your window sill is the fountain the gods peer down and watch from…
As a coda to my comments…
The panhandling bum was active in the early eighties — and any confrontation with his tutu would’ve come to Barry’s notice when he returned from the mainland — circa the holidays in 1983.
Barry would’ve been 22 years old.
The bum was bothering everybody, and a constant source of frustration for the cops.
It was commonplace for pedestrians to yell, “Take a bath!”
While the bum was generally VERY creepy, Barry’s grandmother HAD to be freaked out about the prospect that Barry, himself, might choom down to such a low level — destroying his mind with party drugs.
Her persistent blow-ups — she was ALWAYS hyper-dominant — were certainly triggered by Barry’s passive-aggressive gambits. He LIKED to punch her buttons.
What we are ALL seeing in his presidency is a repetition of this tic. He LIKES to irritate whitey — passive-aggressively. White complaints are what he lives for, probably better than sex for Barry.
=========
Of late, you may have noted the deference that 0bama gives to Bush 41. But remember: Stanley Ann was a CIA non-official cover, AID employee when Bush, senior, ran the agency.
If you notice, she went from one CIA hot spot to another, ending up in Pakistan. She spent five years living out of a hotel room!
Her digs and location have to mean that she was a top ranking agent — and I suspect was running the books/ secret bank accounts — just like her mother did in her CIA career. In such a position, Stanley Ann knew all there was to know. She’d be reporting directly to the ‘station’ chief; covering the desk when he went to Washington.
(His tutu was the signing authority for CIA disbursements out of the Hawaiian ‘station.’ She was so high ranking, essential, that the CIA kept her husband on the payroll, as sort of Mr. Outside. It was in this capacity that he ran the Kenyan education connection — with 0bama, Sr. just one of the many Kenyans brought to Hawaii by the CIA. There’s a class photo out there on the Web showing the old man with the Kenyans.)
Stanley Ann died young. It’s not beyond speculation that she was taken out by hostile forces — poisoned.
The KGB maintained a world class execution wing — specializing in ‘wet work’ that would go unrecognized by physicians.
During the relevant period, the Soviets were being bloodied in Afghanistan — from CIA provided weapons via Pakistan. Stanley Ann would’ve been in the thick of it — and pretty visible to the KGB. (The hotel room was a tell.)
Anything along these lines, if true, would still hold the highest classification. Imagine Putin’s status, ex-KGB, when the KGB is fingered for murdering the President’s mother!
(S L O W poisons are the most difficult to detect. They can come off as just a run down feeling. If it’s a new chemical, established tests will not reveal it…. The polonium murder was not detected as radiation until the victim was too far gone. Early in, a blood transfusion could’ve pulled the toxin out before it went everywhere into the body.)
blert, while for a number of years I have read at a number of websites the allegations about the CIA connections of the Dunhams, I view them as being in the conjecture-not-yet-proven category.
The BBC have been very quiet about this recent act of political immolation by a man clearly unfit to govern.
You all have my sympathy.
Sadly the US seems to be walking steadily down the same road as South Africa, we aren’t doing much better.
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I agree though options (3) and (4) would seem likely to have inflicted deep narcissistic scars upon young Barry. The scarring blade would have been young Barry’s own “blackness”. One wonders whether Barry could ever trust “white” America after being rejected by his white grandmother and even by his white mother because of his “blackness”? Perhaps this is the true local of Barack Obama’s authentic black American experience?
I recall from the 1990’s a young female black politico speaking in a Detroit public setting. This female black politico was agitating for additional government welfare benefits for her local constituents. She accused “America” of being a father who had “abandoned his black children”. The charge struck me as both interesting and odd as it was likely that she, the female black politico, along with perhaps all of her black Detroit audience had been actually abandoned by their actual black fathers.
If King Unicorn wants to talk about racial profiling, be a white person and walk down any MLK Blvd in any city. See how long you last, cracka.
Screw King Putt and his race baiting, community organizing bullshit.
Profiling is a survival instinct. When viewed that way, it only makes sense that progressives want to remove survival instinct from society, too. White people should just shut up and take their beatings, if they’re lucky.
I will have to force myself to read Obama’s memoir at some point. This is interesting and pertinent material. He has little insight, apparently, into his own psyche.
I was also horrified during the first election when Obama threw his grandmother under the bus. What is missing in the excerpts is any understanding that it is possible that the grandmother had good reason to be afraid of this particular person who was badgering her. Regardless of color, he may have appeared menacing to a woman alone at a bus stop.
It does take a particular type of selfish myopia to throw your grandmother under the bus, and an indifference to the power of your office to throw a private citizen under the bus if you are president.
libertywolf
I will have to force myself to read Obama’s memoir at some point. This is interesting and pertinent material. He has little insight, apparently, into his own psyche.
I highly recommend it. You can get freebie online versions of it. I bought a copy for $1 at a used book store. As Obama himself has admitted that the characters are often composites, his memoir is best looked at not as his history as he remembers it, but as a picture of himself he wants to present to the world.
Obama writes in several places about his encounters with “Kyle,” the son of a woman he worked with in his community organizing in Chicago in the 1980s .
Several years later, “Kyle” has not turned out so well.
Obama made no mention to “Kyle” that by the mid-1980s, the Air Force had had black pilots for over 40 years. Apparently Obama – with the Ivy League credentials- didn’t know about the Tuskegee Airmen. But what can we expect from the most brilliant President evah who talks about “corpsemen.” the “intercontinental railroad,” or speaking Austrian? He is a crafty politician with big gaps in his knowledge base.
You might want to check this out. This morning Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt included a excerpt of an article written in 2008 about an encounter with then-State Sen. Obama at a party in 2003 where he was mistaken for one of the wait staff. The occasion was a party at Tina Brown’s to launch a Sidney Blumenthal book about Bill Clinton’s presidency. Geraghty used it as a jumping off point to riff on the belief that the problem with racial attitudes in the US is other people’s bad attitudes, never mind that one of the best and brightest among liberal literati mistook the future POTUS for a waiter.
I have to wonder how much of Obama’s attitude about racial profiling and the excerpts noted above in his books are a backwards projection of these kinds of incidents (I’m sure others happened to him along the way in similar circumstances). It’s one thing for the “typical white person” that you don’t know from Adam to profile you … how much more insulting to get similar treatment from people you are trying to impress and who condesendingly claim to be above racism. Is it any wonder he has come away with the attitude that *all* whites are closet racists?
link here
Yeah, judging from pics of him from HS, I highly doubt 17 yo Barry Obama set off warning bells like 17 yo Trayvon Martin. Obama was a nerd from a relatively stable affluent household.
In many ways a rebel resistance or insurgency cannot succeed without the support of the people. This is often accomplished by the occupation doing enough injustice, creating enough martyrs, to inflame the conscience of the public.
This can also be furthered by actions of the rebels, leading to more cruel counter insurgency raids. Fear, love, and respect war with each other and compete for military power to determine who the ultimate victor is.
In many ways, Obama’s actions to provoke whites by telling Americans they deserve to be burglarized, raped, and murdered in their neighborhoods is a good thing.
It’s also a bad thing, depending on where your pov is.
neo-neocon, I have a question for you:
Have you ever found yourself trying to explain anti-semitism to someone who–despite being generally thoughtful and intelligent–really just doesn’t get it?
Or for that matter, have you ever tried to discuss sexism, or the historical subjugation and oppression of women with someone who, like one of the commenters here, believes that it has been “mostly fantasized”?
Or maybe you think that sexism and anti-semitism really don’t exist, and have been manufactured by people who have some kind of “victim complex”? Perhaps you believe that these are old societal problems which have been successfully resolved and hence merit no further discussion?
I am genuinely curious about your thoughts on this.
I’d also like to know if you are ever horrified by the comments on your blog entries that have been written by those who stand firmly on the “side” to which you’ve switched over.
Much as the Zimmerman case does for you, I find that your blog deeply upsets me for reasons I don’t completely understand.
Thanks for reading.
Shane,
I rarely have discussed anti-Semitism with anyone who clearly doesn’t get it. In comments here sometimes there are VERY anti-Semitic remarks which I usually delete, but in “real” life very few people openly admit to anti-Semitism. What they actually think in private may be quite anti-Semitic, but as I said I don’t usually encounter such people up-front and in person. Other people, or course, profess to be merely anti-Israel, and I’ve certainly had discussions with them. In general, I find that unless a person is very open-minded (rare) and good at critical thinking (also rare) that such discussions are pretty worthless, because minds are made up and facts can’t penetrate.
Of course I believe there is anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, all sort of isms. Especially in individuals. The question (and perhaps where I part company with many liberals and leftists) is where it exists, how much exists, whether it is institutionalized, what evidence is important, how to measure and evaluate it, and what the remedies could and should be. That is an extremely lengthy and complex issue, too lengthy and complex for this comment.
And of course there are many comments here that I don’t agree with—sometimes quite strongly. I don’t have time to engage every commenter with whom I might disagree. I merely delete the most egregious and offensive ones that cross a certain line, leave the rest, and sometimes reply to some that especially pique my interest.
If you spend much time around the blogosphere you will see plenty of offensive comments from both left and right. In general, I see more on the left side, but the right is hardly immune.
I have no real idea why this blog upsets you, but I will say from personal experience that changers such as me often upset people greatly, because they shake up their categories of left and right and what’s good and bad. I have also had quite a few people say to me a version of, “I don’t understand it. You’re so intelligent, how can you be conservative?” Which shows their profound ignorance about conservatism.