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Levy Rivers

Quiet Political Shifts as More Blacks Are Elected - 0 views

  • In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.
  • “There’s a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates,” said Dr. Hajnal, whose book about white experiences with black mayors, “Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership,” was published last year by Cambridge University Press.
Levy Rivers

Op-Ed Columnist - Rebranding the U.S. With Obama - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. This change in perceptions would help rebuild American political capital in the way that the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy’s presidency did in the early 1960s.
  • In his endorsement, Mr. Powell added that an Obama election “will also not only electrify our country, I think it’ll electrify the world.”
  • Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the BBC poll, said that at a recent international conference he attended in Malaysia, many Muslims voiced astonishment at Mr. Obama’s rise because it was so much at odds with their assumptions about the United States
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  • “It’s an anomaly, so contrary to their expectation that it makes them receptive to a new paradigm for the U.S.,” Mr. Kull said.
  • But Jamaica’s 95 percent black population elected a white man as its prime minister in 1980, and kept him in office throughout that decade.
  • Likewise, the African nation of Mauritius has elected a white prime minister of French origin. And don’t forget that India is overwhelmingly Hindu but now has a Sikh prime minister and a white Christian as president of its ruling party, and until last year it had a Muslim in the largely ceremonial position of president.
Levy Rivers

In poll, African-Americans say election a 'dream come true' - CNN.com - 0 views

  • "Polls show that whites and blacks tend to have different views on the amount of racism in the U.S." said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "So it's not surprising that they would have different views on the likelihood of an African-American president."
  • "A majority of blacks now believe that a solution to the country's racial problems will eventually be found," Holland said. "In every previous poll on this topic dating back to 1993, black respondents had always said that racial problems were a permanent part of the American landscape."
Levy Rivers

Hak Pak Sak - 0 views

  • America in flames? Sound familiar? The closing lines of Grine Kuzine are really no different from Barack Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright’s “God Damn America” paraphrase of Irving Berlin’s maudlin patriotic tune God Bless America. As a singer of Grine Kuzine, and as a not-too-distant descendant of her fellow immigrant workers, I do not understand the recent hysteria over the U-Tube posting of an out-of-context video excerpt of one of Wright’s old sermons. Jews and Blacks and even the whitest-of-white Americans have the right — and maybe the obligation — to be enraged at polities and policies that misuse or deceive them or that fail to live up to their potential or rhetoric. The hyperbole of songs and of sermons generates reflection and vents steam and diffuses rage even as it broadcasts it.
  • Far more interesting and insidious than the slips-of-the-lips of members of Obama’s confessional circles is Hillary Clinton’s decades-long involvement in an oligarchical right-wing prayer breakfast group called The Fellowship, Sound like the stuff of crank conspiracy theories? Writer Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer, a New York University weblog covering religion and the media, has just completed a book on the subject. Will apologies and statements of distancing and denunciation of The Fellowship be forthcoming from the Clinton campaign? I doubt it.
Levy Rivers

iZania.com - Obama's Speech on Race: Not Just Empty Words, or Another "Eloquent Speech" - 0 views

  • it had discovered the bone in Obama’s closet that would derail his run for the Presidency, Barack kicked down the door of the closet that holds America’s worse skeletons, its race closet.
  • So the race closet, stacked to the top with 400 years of skeletons-from the Middle Passage through today’s colorblind racism, is closely guarded by those who know and understand this vile and twisted history. However, this time America started it by trying to radicalize Obama and racialize Obama’s Minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Barack finished it by stating that if you really want to have a conversation about somebody’s racial views - then let’s talk about America’s racial views, in its totality. It was substantive, and it was eloquent.
  • Let Hillary Clinton call this speech “just empty words” or another “eloquent speech.” And let those who claim Barack ain’t “black enough” hang their hat on this speech while those who try to diss his “too black” pastor realize that Barack is “too black” to allow himself to be separated from his church and his community. It was a historic moment. We can truly say that after this week, “a black man” is running for President. And by most accounts, he’s still the best candidate in the race.
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  • They’re back to doubting that a black man can represent a white nation (don’t get it twisted-America is still 69% white). America was poised to default on Obama. The default position is, of course, that only a white can represent all the people. Well, name me one President in the history of America who has represented “all the people?”
  • Only two, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, sought to eliminate the legalized race caste systems (of slavery and segregation), though both tolerated and participated in societal norms that affirmed racial inequality and separateness (while they were President).
  • The thought here is, “White people know he’s black, no need to throw it up in their face” and never blame anything on race - even the obvious racial attacks or the codified ones. As authentic a person as Barack is, it’s his authenticity that has most come under attack from Whites and Blacks. From Whites - in no Black could possibly be this perfect (so hopeful yet non-critical); from Blacks, that no Black could really be “black” and not talk about race. Well, Obama showed how authentic he really is last week, in not running from race and not running from his own. The media could neither “blackball” nor “whitewash” Barack Obama after last week’s speech (and trust me, they were trying to do both). Barack pulled it off.
  • For a country that always has something to say, most of it (except for the ideologues and the racial extremists) stood speechless and/or complimentary on the nation’s first publicly televised race speech by a Presidential candidate. There was nothing empty about the speech.
  • We just needed someone “black enough” (and honest enough) to talk about it. In trying to castigate one man, the door to America’s race closet was opened by another. The man who would be President, if he would have just remained “post-racial.” Now, he’s black and America’s new race conscience. If America is willing to face up to its past and grow up in the race reality of its future (multi-racial nation), Barack Obama still might be elected President of the United States.
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    This is what billy wants to have defened that I simply refuse - Barack is American and ANY ONE OF US!!!
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