In 2008 - we need a President and VP who are NOT white men.

bloom

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Sat Nov-11-06 08:50 PM
Original message

In 2008 - we need a President and VP who are NOT white men.

Edited on Sat Nov-11-06 09:39 PM by bloom

Do you think it's offensive to say that 43 white men as President and how ever many white men as VPs are enough?

Well - >:nopity:

I've been reading the Dred Scott decision - and while I admit - it's been around awhile 1856 (so this is nothing new) - it's a damning indictment against white men - the only people who had true citizen status - the right to vote and the right to sue. I keep reading it (I'm app. half way through) and I am amazed at how outrageous the arguments are.

Until people who are not white men are elected President - it is like nothing has changed. The white men of today may say that they did not have anything to do with writing such a document and that is probably true (though there are still some white men who are writing crap like this). But white men DO have the legacy of the privileges that the Dred Scott decision contains.

It's way past time to be moving on with the equality of representation for women and people of color.

"The only areas in where Republicans retained a majority of the voters were in people who earned over $100,000 a year and demographic groups among white Protestants and among men.

Women, overwhelmingly Democratic. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, all the demographic groups, Catholics, Jewish voters -- basically only people over $100,000 a year and also the elderly, people over 60 years of age, still voted majority Republican. But the younger you get in the population, the more Democratic its leanings. So that does suggest that there is a potential for more long-term changes in the air."

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/09/1444238

I don't think the Democrats, DNC, DLC, or any other group should even encourage ANY white men to run at ALL. If some do - it's not like we can help it. But I don't think they should be encouraged. Does that mean that white men are out of the picture. No. It's means that white men can do whatever it takes to help elect someone who is not a white man for a change. It's not like women and people of color have not been helping white men out forever.

If you haven't read it - you might want to think about it.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/llst:@field(DOCID+@lit(llst022div3))

(you may have to paste in the end of the link)

For example:

"The words "people of the United States" and "citizens" are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the "sovereign people," and every citizen is one of this people and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them." (pg 17)

"They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern; without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion."(pg19)

...It then proceeds to say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration; for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted; and instead of the sympathy of mankind, to which they so confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

Yet the men who framed this declaration were great men--high in literary acquirements--high in their sense of honor, and incapable of asserting principles inconsistent with those on which they were acting. They perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. They spoke and acted according to the then established doctrines and principles, and in the ordinary language of the day, and no one misunderstood them. The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks, and laws long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader were supposed to need protection.

This state of public opinion had undergone no change when the Constitution was adopted, as is equally evident from its provisions and language.

The brief preamble sets forth by whom it was formed, for what purposes, and for whose benefit and protection. It declares that it is formed by the people of the United States; that is to say, by those who were members of the different political communities in the several States; and its great object is declared to be to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. It speaks in general terms of the people of the United States, and of citizens of the several States, when it is providing for the exercise of the powers granted or the privileges secured to the citizen. It does not define what description of persons are intended to be included under these terms, or who shall be regarded as a citizen and one of the people. It uses them as terms so well understood, that no farther description or definition was necessary.

But there are two clauses in the Constitution which point directly and specifically to the negro race as a separate class of persons, and show clearly that they were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government then formed...

No one of that race had ever migrated to the United Slates voluntarily; all of them had been brought here as articles of merchandise. The number that had been emancipated at that time were but few in comparison with those held in slavery; and they were identified in the public mind with the race to which they belonged, and regarded as a part of the slave population rather than the free. It is obvious that they were not even in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when they were conferring special rights and privileges upon the citizens of a state in every other part of the Union.

Indeed, when we look to the condition of this race in the several States at the time, it is impossible to believe that these rights and privileges were intended to be extended to them.

......In addition to those already referred to, it is sufficient to say, that Chancellor Kent, whose accuracy and research no one will question, states in the sixth edition of his Commentaries (published in 1848, 2 vols., 258, note b,) that in no part of the country except Maine, did the African race, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites in the exercise of civil and political rights.

And if you haven't read Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe - I recommend that also. The most read book of the 19th century (after the Bible). It was quite an indictment against slavery and arguments put forth by slave-owners to justify themselves. It would apply to the same kind of crap that imperialist white men like Bush and Cheney are doing today.

On Edit: I added a little to the Dred Scott section.