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Re: A rambling post on race and history

URK — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:44:51 -0000

so, I'm late here but i wanted to add: John Lewis's comment was appropriate for another reason. George Wallace didn't start his career as a race-baiting politiician. tho he came ot it much earlier than John McCain, Wallace turned to race-based populaist incitement after losing a close election to a harder -line segregationist. This isn't to vouch for the character of either man, but to point out that they were both cheap dates for the devil, that whatever their personal feelins, all they needed was a losing campaign to convince them that a soul wasn't so much to give up after all.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:40:20 -0000

Sharpton lasted through how many primaries?

Kucinich lasted through how many primaries? Candidates like Sharpton and Kucinich, who are trying to make their difference by running and getting their voice out regardless of whether they win, will often last more primaries than candidates who are only in the race as long as they think they have a good shot at winning.

I don't really have a good sense of how much support Sharpton did or didn't have from black people (being white myself), but the number of primaries he lasted, in itself, doesn't say very much.

Jackson actually did considerably better than Sharpton; I don't recall Sharpton actually winning any primaries, but Jackson won five primaries and caucuses in 1984, and got 21% of the popular vote, coming in third.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:03:14 -0000

"Black people are not voting for Obama because he's black. Al Sharpton (and many, many other black candidates) never had our support. Please get a clue."

Because. . . you say so? Sharpton lasted through how many primaries? How about Jackson? 95% of Black Americans just like Obama's policies? Which do you think appeals the most? Tax increases? His willingness to sit down with Chavez? Do tell.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

effluvium — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:47:40 -0000

I'm sorry, but could all the white southerners just chill from shitting on the less enlightened attitudes of their families?

I'm a white southerner too and we all can tell uncomfortable family stories about behavior that would get you drummed out of polite society today, if not locked up. Yes, it was terrible. But I've listened to my peers do this most of my life. And it's got nothing to do with "getting past" anything or acknowledging the scars of history - and you fucking know it. It's cheap preening - mostly on the memories of people whose lives were exponentially harder than ours - to impress others with how progressive we are.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Oguejiofor — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:11:31 -0000

Matt,

Black people are not voting for Obama because he's black. Al Sharpton (and many, many other black candidates) never had our support. Please get a clue.

Love,

Oguejiofor

Re: A rambling post on race and history

rikyrah — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:34:46 -0000

this was a good post, Coates.

As for McCain/Palin not knowing the history, probably true, but I don't care. the evil that they stir up is still their responsibility.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Lynn Gazis-Sax — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:05:37 -0000

"Here here, TNC. That is the best way to put it. I remember sometime in the early 90s, when I was twelve or so, realizing that MLK's assasination happened only some 10 years before I was born. I mean, I knew it, but I didn't *know* it."

I think that may be a common age for getting that kind of awareness. That's the age I was when I realized that the war Dad used to tell me about, where his country got invaded and put under occupation and my uncle joined the guerillas, was the same thing as the WWII I'd heard about in history lessons, and imagined as utterly remote.

MLK's assassination? It's my first political memory. I was seven at the time, the same age Obama would have been. George Wallace ran for president that same year, the old style, still segregationist George Wallace, before he recanted, and won a pretty significant third party vote (I don't remember there being a third candidate again who was counted as significant as Wallace till John Anderson). And the Nixon/Humphrey election was close, close enough that Wallace drawing away votes mattered.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Liza — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:48:51 -0000

Ta-nehisi, this a great post.

I grew up in the segregated south and I was there throughout the civil rights era. My parents and my whole extended family were white racists. They were passive racists, kind of limited to racial slurs but totally unconcerned about social or economic justice. If you asked them about segregation they would just say, "that's just the way things are."

As for me, I had to figure it out for myself, and I have memories of Jim Crow going back to when I was about four years old. I think they are my earliest memories.

Having lived in that time and place, it was a major revelation to me when I moved to California and realized that there were people my age and older who had no real connection to those events or even book knowledge of what went down. And I have come to believe that there are many people who know so little about those chapters in American history that they are very much the way you describe them.

The Obama canididacy has really given me an opportunity to think about what happened during the civil rights era with a different perspective, that of a considerably older and wiser person who might actually get to live to see the historical moment of an African American president. It has taken just a little of the edge off the pain of those memories.

But, I still can't watch the film footage of Martin Luther King's speeches or the marches or people getting hosed down and attacked by dogs and police without crying.

So, it's hard for me to understand the lack of awareness of or perhaps the lack of interest in the civil rights era. This was the most significant populist movement in American history and certainly one of the most significant in the history of the world.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

JT (Chicago) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:41:57 -0000

Great post Mr. Coates and nice point Zak.

I'm 51 and of Mexican ancestry. I've tried to pass along the experiences of my grandparents (who came to this country in the late 1910s) to my children. I've also tried to note to them the treatment of African Americans I observed while growing up on Chicago's sout' side. We cannot forget what we observed and we cannot allow our children to forget the history of our nation.

Earlier today, I was at a grocery store where I met a older black man who was working as a bagger. He saw my Obama button and asked where I got it - he's been looking to get a couple for himself & his wife. I gave him the button and we talked for a few minutes about what this electon means to us personally, not just for the future but for what we saw in our pasts. As we parted, he said that this election day could be like the days his children were born, his grandchildren were born - so full of joy and anticpation for a brighter tomorrow. Hope!

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Bren — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:34:44 -0000

TNC,

Keep up the justice!

Re: A rambling post on race and history

touhy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:33:28 -0000

I agree with your post TNC, and I think it needed to be said. I feel what you are saying, even though I'm a white northerner. And I may get myself in trouble saying this, but...

If this is close and wrenching for us, then the other 60's culture wars that the GOP are fighting might be just as close and wrenching for them. Not for me, but I'm pretty sure I would have been against the VietNam war if I had been alive then. But the 60's might not be so long ago for other people who remember them, and some people remember the 60's as being about VietNam. That's why they get so fired up about Iraq.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:04:06 -0000

Kathy,

I apologize - I didn't mean for that to read in an excited manner - I promise, my blood pressure didn't spike a bit as I typed. I think that goldwater you're drinking may have caused you to read it wrong.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

kathy a. — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:55:40 -0000

matt, as a white woman who was raised in a replublican household where a can of "goldwater" held pride of place in the kitchen -- could you just settle down a little? maybe you have not heard much about other people's experiences, or read up on cultural shifts and differences. listening helps a lot; so does getting out and seeing things that are not comfortable to one's former experiences.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

poolside — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:47:18 -0000

Matt:

TNC likes to portray himself as above the fray ... all the while lecturing white people on history and how we are supposed to feel about it.

Like Obama, however, he is as blinded by race and partisanship as the very people he condemns.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

kathy a. — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:46:36 -0000

i was born in 1957, so there are things i remember. growing up in L.A., i remember the watts riots in 1965 -- but what i remember from then is seeing the flames and guns on TV, and my mother's orders to not stand in front of the windows. we lived over the hills, some 15-20 miles from south central.

it was about 11 years later that i first talked with a classmate who grew up in south central about those horrible times. he lived in a war zone; his reality was SO far from mine, in the same city. and his was true; mine was what i saw on TV plus some really idiotic fear. thanks, mom.

my mother's mother was a flat-out racist; she had fond memories of her family's "laundress," an african-american woman whose family had been slaves to my grandmother's family, before the "recent unpleasantness." my grandmother freely used terms such as "pickaninnie," and worse. damned right, the history is recent enough.

and it is recent enough to still be affecting african-americans everywhere in the country, from a presidential candidate down to the girlfriend of a guy who was dealing, who is serving a long prison term. it is recent and strong enough to still be affecting white americans who wave the flag, say they are for equality, and pretend like equality has worked well all along, while they complain about "those people." we have a long way to go, still.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:45:42 -0000

I take it that's in lieu of a substantive response? In that case, not bad. You gotta go with humor if you got nothing else there.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:41:02 -0000

Not Republicans Matt. Just you. Only you.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:22:38 -0000

It's also a little ironic that in his post on Jesse Jackson's allegedly anti-Jewish statements Mr. Coates says " But whenever I've speculated on the contents of the hearts of men, I've gotten in trouble." yet a day later has no problem speculating on just that.

Perhaps he has decided the way to sidestep that issue is to only speculate on the dark thoughts harbored in the hearts of Republicans?

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Matt — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:54:26 -0000

Do they not know about it, or are they not defined by it? McCain would almost certainly be intimately familiar with some of these struggles, having grown up in a military family and entered the Naval Academy around the time Truman was integrating it. Of course, you don't know whether McCain understands this because . . . . wait for it. . . . you've never asked him, nor has anyone for that matter. So you get to assume his ignorance for purpose of tarring him, but really, you expose your own by the assumptions you make.

It's one thing to be in the tank for a candidate, it's another to basically make up the opponents views.

Their whole worldview may not be tied to slights to their ethnicity, as yours is. In fact, is any other ethnic group in the US so defined by the events of the past as African Americans? You are praising people voting for a man simply because of a similar skin color as if that's something to be proud of. The Howard Stern interview the other day is indicative of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5p3OB6roAg&feature=related

Why is this something to celebrate? As I said in another post that you found lacking in "class" (apparently defined as anything that does not praise Obama), it's like Arkansans voting for Bill Clinton for President just because he's from Arkansas? Because they really, really want a presidential library is about the only reason I can figure. Should "he looks like me" trump his tax policy, foreign policy positions, etc? And if it does, why is that not a racist stance?

And yes, I'm white. And no, I'm not an Obama supporter. And no, I'm not moving to France if he gets elected or stocking up on staples for the Armageddon. And no, I don't think he's Muslim. I think he's got potential to be a great President, but I'm tired of rookies who have to learn on the job. 8 (and arguably 16) years is enough of those.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

Tel — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:26:54 -0000

Hence its tendency to kick us in the butt. ;)

I don't mean to say that I don't know about the past intellectually. I'm curious about it, and studied quite a bit of it. I know some of the dates and some of the personalities, and can research what I don't know just as well as anybody else. What I can't do so well, is connect with it emotionally, in the same way that TNC is talking about it. It's history, but none of it seems like *my* history. Or maybe all of it does, which would amount to the same thing.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

DougEFresh — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:20:38 -0000

I think a lot of the forgetting is self-serving (like the French, Germans and Japanese treated the 1940's), but it is also that people have short memories. This is how Bush can be called a fascist while people forget about the trampling of civil rights under Wilson, FDR, J Edgar Hoover, or even Bill Clinton (read what the ACLU said about him back in 1995). Short memories are why people can mindlessly compare Vietnam to Iraq.

It is also how conservatives can consider Obama a socialist for having tax rates that are lower than during large chunks of the Reagan Presidency.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

KT — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:59:50 -0000

Tel -

I don't know that it's a generational thing; I was born in 1980s as well and I'm if anything hyperaware of history surrounding events and places. I was raised by an archivist, which probably influences my view of things, but most of my friends see things the same way I do. The only thing harder than living in the present without knowing the past is trying to plan for the future without knowing the past.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

anonymous — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:55:34 -0000

Re Wilmington:

http://www.newsobserver.com/print/friday/other/story/511596.html

A special section from the Raleigh News and Observer, published in late 2006. The author also edited a collection of academic essays on the subject.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

lumpy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:53:00 -0000

McCain and Palin are both willfully ignorant, but you let them off too many hooks with this: "A lot of folks think that these guys are intentionally stirring up these old forces--but that gives McCain/Palin too much credit. They don't really know how close this stuff is to us..."

Then why are they saying it? They are both politicians, and documentably craven. They are losing the biggest election of their lives, so they don't want to be wasting time stirring up a pot that's empty. John McCain talks as if Vietnam was the greatest event he lived through, even though history will remember it as a neocolonial spasm that ended like all the rest of them. In the meantime, McCain's life has spanned the civil rights era--a sea change in American life that some die-hards (who else is left in McCain's base) remain unhappy about. McCain came up through a very segregated Naval Academy and joined a very gradually integrating officer corps. He must remember some of that.

As for Palin, her family history might be construed as very radical white flight, through Coeur d'Alene to palest Alaska.

They may be small, misguided, bitter, desperate people who have risen like scum to the top of the Republicans' sacrificial ticket, but they are adults and they are responsible--like the rest of us--for their histories, their actions, their intentions, and their miscalculations. Just because they have no shame is no reason that the rest of us should pretend not to notice.

Re: A rambling post on race and history

shani — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:52:40 -0000

I think the fact that so many people like the McCain crowd are oblivious to the impact race has on our country, speaks to their white privelege. Not be confused with wealth. And that annoys me more than a Wallace-type. It's a convenient state of unconsciousness.

My professor used to say that history is the pursuit of truth. For anyone whose ever been in therapy, that can be a painful journey but it ultimately liberates you because you now have the power to throw your crutches away and live like a functional person. An entire society of people is no different.