How big is the race issue?

[Rob Gregory Browne]

I tend to think that Obama has managed to transcend the race issue, and that most Dems are above racism. But I also thought this back in the 90's during the OJ trial, when a co-worker -- an older white woman who seemed to lean progressive -- said to me, "You know that Johnny Cochran? He really is one uppity n***er."

My jaw dropped to the floor. I couldn't believe that this woman could be so disgusting. I'm still surprised when I think about it today.

So I have to wonder how much race plays into the voting results. It seems to me that, based on Obama's popular vote win and his delegate lead that it might be a non-issue. But I wonder how many closet racists there are out there in the Dem party. People who call themselves liberal or progressive.

The thought that there are people like my former co-worker out there scares the hell out of me.

[YOY]

1. How big is the vagina issue?

n/t

[Rob Gregory Browne]

3. That wasn't what I was asking. It's a subject for a different thread. nt

[Deep13]

4. There yah go, imagining 10,000 years of oppression again!

:sarcasm:

[YOY]

20. There yah go

Pretending that her gender overides the fact that she's a DLC legacy and not Mary Tyler Moore...

[Deep13]

35. Wow, what a sexist comment.

She has to be a MTM-esque character to be acceptable. I know you did not directly say that, but it seems to be the underlying implication. I think the significance of the DLC thing is overblown (we kind of need a business-appreciating if not outright business-friendly in our present economic quagmire) and I think it is used as a misdirection disguising sexism. I think given the same facts but with a male candidate (obviously not a first lady or even first gentlement), he would not have been so well libeled by RW media at the start and he would not have been stabbed in the back by his own party. All the criticism of her barely negative campaigning in my judgment is just an accusation of being "unladylike."

[YOY]

39. If I'd wrote the words "Blueberry Muffin" 509 times you'd think it was sexist

So shove it.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

40. There's a difference between feminism and tokenism and I'd suggest you learn it. nt

[Deep13]

2. Race is always relevant in this country.

On the other hand, sexism apparently never is. :eyes:

[Rob Gregory Browne]

6. Again, a subject for a different thread.

Please don't try to hijack this one with another issue, no matter how legitimate it might be.

[Deep13]

*sigh* I'll try to use small words...

...The angry reaction I see from any suggestion of sexism in contrast to the assumed rascism in this campaign was the basis of my ironic statement.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

13. None of your statements has been particularly ironic or enlightening.

If you want to talk about sexism, start a thread and I'll likely agree with you that it's a definite problem.

[ej510]

8. I am sorry no disrespect to white women in this country but you

have never experienced any where near the terror that blacks have went through. And you know it's not even close. White women burned their bras black men got burned alive. Black were raped and widowed, they were spit on and punched while pregnant. I am not saying everything was fair but there is no fuckin comparison.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

33. Rape Of Women During Wartime

Rape during the World War II era:
There were many such incidences during the World War II era. The most serious were:

In Nanjing, China, during 1937 & 1938, Japanese soldiers were responsible for massive levels of rape among the local Chinese population. There were "over 20,000 rape victims...when the soldiers themselves were not raping the Chinese women, they took great pleasure in forcing fathers to rape their daughters and sons to rape their mothers." 5 One source estimates that over 80,000 women were raped. 6
Millions of women victims raped by Russian soldiers during the last months of World War II. Anthony Beevor's book "Berlin -- The Downfall 1945" documents rape by Russian soldiers. "Beevor's conclusions are that in response to the vast scale of casualties inflicted on them by the Germans the Soviets responded in kind, and that included rape on a vast scale. It started as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944, and in many towns and villages every female aged from 10 to 80 was raped." The author "was 'shaken to the core' to discover that even their own Russian and Polish women and girls liberated from German concentration camps were also violated." He estimates that "a 'high proportion' of at least 15 million women who lived in the Soviet zone or were expelled from Germany's eastern provinces were raped." Until recent years, East German women from the World War II era referred to the Red Army war memorial in Berlin as "the Tomb of the Unknown Rapist." 8,9
Hundreds of thousands of kidnapped "comfort women" who probably endured in excess of ten million incidences of rape by Japanese soldiers from the mid 1930s to the end of hostilities in 1945. The Japanese military's mass program involving kidnapped "comfort women" during World War II was probably "the largest, most methodical and most deadly mass rape of women in recorded history." More details.



Rape during recent wars:
More than 20,000 Muslim girls and women were raped during the religiously-motivated atrocities in the former Yugoslavia in Bosnia. This was mainly during an organized Serbian program of cultural genocide. One goal was to make the women pregnant, and raising their children as Serbs. 10 Another was to terrorize women so that they would flee from their land.
It has been estimated that Iraqi soldiers raped at least 5,000 Kuwaiti women during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. 11
During the civil war in Rwanda: "One United Nations report estimated that as many as 500,000 women and girls suffered brutal forms of sexual violence , including gang-rape and sexual mutilation, after which many of them were killed." 11
"In Algeria, the women of entire villages have been raped and killed. The government estimates that about 1,600 girls and young women have been kidnapped to become sexual slaves by roving bands from armed Islamic groups." 11
One source referred to rape of Tamil women in Sri Lanka and of women in Somalia, Haiti, Kashmir and Peru. 12,13,14
Another source referred to rape "in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Haiti, Liberia, Somalia and Uganda." 3
A resolution of the United Methodist Church mentioned rape in the Republic of Georgia. 15



http://www.religioustolerance.org/war_rape.htm

[Deep13]

34. No, I've not experienced it. You are literally right there.

Nevertheless, the oppression of women has a very long history and is ingrained in our thinking. Suggesting that women have not been burned for bucking the trend shows a rather profound ignorance of history. Such women had a special name in Europe and America: witches. While institutional violence against women has not been as savage as it has been to Blacks in this country during the past 100 years or so, sexism remains a persistent and often unnoticed problem. This country and England jailed women who had the audacity to vote, and that was less than 100 years ago. Around the world even today, women are stoned for what amounts to being individuals. They are mutilated for no reason. They are killed by their own families for having been the victims of rape. Of course, the fact that violence is not institutional is a small comfort for the victims of domestic violences of all descriptions.

The attitudes that people have towards women even in the enlightened West are shocking and obvious even to me who grew up with it. Obviously, I cannot name all of the examples here. I remember being in a taxi with my wife who realized we were going the wrong way. She said to stop three times and did not do so until I told him. Everytime a resteraunt employee hands the eldest man at the table a check, it is an implicit acknowledgement of his lordship over the women and children of the family. Makes sense if grey hair makes him the silverback of that group of primates. All Western religions villify women.

You mention white women in particular. What makes you think feminism is solely a white issue? During the time of slavery, Black women were often singled out by whites for special cruelties. Fredrick Douglass wrote about it. I have no reason to suppose that stopped after Reconstruction. The simple fact is that whatever whites did to Blacks, whatever Germans did to Jews, whatever the English did to the Irish, the women of the world receive oppression from their own families and communities and it is considered normal. Put another way, within every brutalized group in history, there were women who were doubly oppressed.

So, yeah, the horrors visited by Black people at the hands of whites in this country are beyond unforgiveable. Nevertheless, treatment of women has been pretty bad, universal and since the beginning of humanity.

[BlooInBloo]

5. Race is never an issue. White people told me so.

[Deep13]

7. I'm a white person. See post #2.

:-)

As a bloo person, you ought to know.

[BlooInBloo]

10. I used to be white. Now I'm bloo.

:P

[YOY]

22. But never nude...

[BlooInBloo]

38. Good ol Tobias! Gawd I miss that show.

[Deep13]

36. Well, I hope you cheer up. Bush is leaving regardless. nt

[ShortnFiery]

12. ...

:rofl:

Just last year I was at Hallmark Store and another WHITE woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I don't know why THEY (African Americans) get their own section." She was referring to The Mahogany Cards.

Racism is real and THE CLINTONS are playing off of the working class white people's fear of "the other." The Clintons not so thinly veiled "race wedge" is the reason that they will NOT EVER recover their reputation within the African American Community.

What's shocking is that many of the people we hold dear (our beloved family members) express racist sentiments.

However, when RACE is used as a wedge between peoples by a Democratic Candidate and/or their surrogates, IT'S VILE.

[BlooInBloo]

18. Yah, it's vile, but it has a silver lining: we have a chance now to effect change in the party...

... itself, vis a vis a party realignment similar in nature to, although smaller in scale than, the Dixiecrats/Civil Rights realignment. The party was a better party after that, and will be after this one.

[nomorenomore08]

17. Well, they should be the experts, right? They're the ones who practiced it in the first place.

:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

[BlooInBloo]

19. Well, that IS the whole *point* of being the fox guarding the henhouse.

[nomorenomore08]

24. I don't think there's any reason for (white) people to be so afraid of the issue. But that's just me

If you're not a hateful, malicious person yourself, then nobody's gonna come after you as an individual. Sure, being a white guy I've read posts here that made me raise an eyebrow, but I understand full well where the people are coming from, and I'm not going to try to argue with someone who has a legitimate grievance.

[BlooInBloo]

37. Yup. Mostly at least - there's always an asshole out there somewhere.

[uponit7771]

9. Amongst gen x and gen y it's not as big of an issue. 95% of high schoolers date interacially

[Benhurst]

27. That seems a bit high. Do you have a link? Did you mean would

date inter-racially?

[2rth2pwr]

11. Gratuitous racism charges from Obama supporters after Hillary win?

check.

Carry on.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

15. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but...

I haven't seen any gratuitous charges of racism after Hillary's win. But that isn't really my question. What I'm wondering is if racism actually DOES play a large part in all of this (with no reflection on Hillary whatsoever, but on certain voters)? My sense (if you paid attention to my OP) is that it doesn't, but I still have concerns based on my previous experience as I related.

[klyon]

14. big, very big... it is still out there.... still very real

the rural white vote went for Sen. Clinton, some could be Rethugs trying to get the opponent they think they can beat but it is so real

[galaxy21]

16. It is pretty shocking to me that people are so open about it

being a racist used to be something to be ashamed of. I'm shocked that so many people are honest in admitting they won't vote for a black man.

[nomorenomore08]

21. Maybe a more conservative political climate brings out the worst in people. I really don't know.

It's also partly a regional thing - being openly racist is way more acceptable in some areas of the country than others.

And of course, there's always the anonymity of the Internets, which allows Joe Six-Pack to shoot his mouth off without fear of repercussions.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

31. This is certainly a disheartening thought

I, frankly, don't think any of us can escape racist thoughts now and again, but most of us -- I would hope -- are able to recognize this as a flaw that we have to battle against. Maybe because I'm in an interracial marriage and have bi-racial kids, I lean toward the belief that racism is something we can eventually get rid of in this country. The fact that Obama is doing so well, I think, indicates this is true. I don't really think of him as a black man, but a person -- and a very charismatic one at that. Just as I think of Hillary as a person, not a woman.

An interesting take on racism in this country can be seen in the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiments done in the seventies. Google the subject for an interesting and somewhat disturbing read.

[Catherina]

23. It scares the hell out of me too because I'm seeing more racists

in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. We still haven't shaken off the wretched Dixiecrats.

When the Republican Party tells Blacks it's less racist and just look at Condi Rice, look at Colin Powell, I'm sorry but they have a big point. I feel very sorry for the Democratic Party right now. It's walking into a big old trap and there are lots of little firestarters pretending to be Democrats fanning the flames.

See post 9 about the younger generation next time you get depressed about this :hi:

[moondust]

25. "most Dems are above racism"

Specifically when it gets down to the voting booth and choosing between FOUR TO EIGHT YEARS of sane and sober corrective action to get the country back on the right track and moving forward versus FOUR TO EIGHT MORE YEARS of George W. Bush.

[undeterred]

26. I wonder about the people in very white states like Wisconsin

I have had a lot of talks with Dems in the rural areas- at one point the question was racism vs. sexism- and I do feel a lot of white men are more sexist than racist- but that could be skewed by my own point of view.

We have a white governor with two adopted black sons who spoke out early and enthusiastically for Obama. I don't know if that's why Obama did so well here, but it sure didn't hurt.

Today I was talking to an older white man in my neighborhood- he told me he was in France during WWII. He is 84. And he said, "That was supposed to be the war to end all wars- that's why we fought it. Now we just fight war after war." And he told me the number of soldiers lost in Wisconsin: 90

So I asked him if he was voting for Obama, half afraid he was going to turn out to be a McCain guy. "You betcha!" he said. :)

[anonymous171]

28. For Clinton supporters it is huge. I'm talking gigantic.

Just ask Larry Johnson.

[ashrob123]

29. I agree with you

and no, I don't have any statistics on it but from my point of view from the people that I've talked to about who they are choosing for their democratic nominee. I've drawn the same conclusion.

I cannot tell you how many times I've been watching television, reading an online newspaper or talking to people around me who can't give a legitimate reason why they wouldn't vote for Obama. And this is way before Rev. Wright, bitter-gate, NAFTA or any other supposed election killer that has happened in the past four months.

I believe (as do a lot of Dems) that the majority of the policies by each of the candidates are the same. Not to say that they don't differ but I can say from my own experience (a former Clinton supporter) that I didn't have a problem with either Clinton or Obama getting the nomination. He has more legislative experience (albeit state level), she has more national connections, he has a stronger ability to bring in new voters, she has a strong ability to bring in big corporate donors. They both have strengths and weaknesses.

The most common answer that I have gotten as to why people won't vote for Obama is "I just don't know. I can't put my finger on it but there is something I just can't name that prevents me from voting for him."

These aren't uneducated folks. These aren't raving racists. They are just people who have not unpackaged the fear and uncertainty that a lot of white people are taught to have for black men. That is what they can't put their finger on. The fear that they have been taught is normal.

I have never thought that the Democratic party is immune to racism or racists so this does not surprise me in the least. Disappoint, yes. But it doesn't evoke surprise at all.

[EFerrari]

30. It's big but it's something that you accept and attend to

sort of like a practicing addict in the family.

We are who we are, that's the first thing. Who do we want to be? :)

[TragedyandHope]

32. Hillary thinks it's big enough to risk alienating a huge block of core Democratic voters

in order to appeal to people who aren't comfortable with a black candidate.

I do think the country as a whole has moved far enough beyond the race issue that Obama is a strong, viable candidate, despite the lingering racism on the fringes.