Shall we wander for another 40 years?
In his final speech before being tragically assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. famously referred to the Promised Land that he could see from the mountaintop. But in the Exodus story in the bible, after the Israelites were freed from Egypt, they didn’t go straight to the Promised Land—they wandered in the desert for 40 years. As written, God commanded this to allow the old generation that was still disobedient, and still behaved like slaves, to be “consumed”. Similarly, most of the remnants of racist feelings in our nation are concentrated in our older generation, and this could be what costs Obama the election. It may be that we have to wander a bit longer in the desert ourselves, until more of the older bigots among us have died off, before we too can reach a new and better place.
http://aabw.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-lies-below-surface-racism.html
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Unfortunately many young people also have racist/prejudiced beliefs. But I get your point. I say the same thing about gay acceptance, tattoos/piercings, etc.
Let us hope that, when the moment of truth comes in the privacy of the ballot box, the deep racist feelings that some have will give way to the common sense that something has to be done to stem the collapse of America, which is ongoing. There is not one news story that suggests anything other than America is in deep decline, including a story this morning in the NYTimes about the loss of influence of the Supreme Court in the global threater. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18legal.html?hp.
I think we have wandered long enough—if the older generation is racist, we must help them get over it—we now know that brains keep changing even in older age.
Camera—your religion does not affect my life. Your support of traitorous politicians do (ie deregulation of banking) do affect me and my children. When “your president” puts a 1 trillion dollar war on the credit card for my kids to pay, it affects me. If you worship a lizard, it does not affect me, so feel free.
Make some point instead of just posting a link, if it is possible.
My intention is to point out the hypocrisy in your daily loaded question here. Every time you do that which you criticize Christians for, I’m posting the link to your thread. And I know how much you love to make assumptions and put words in people’s mouths to fit them into your narrow-minded view of the world, so to clear it up, I’m agnostic.
I know we disagree, but please point out the hypocrisy?
“Every time you do that which you criticize Christians for, I’m posting the link to your thread.”—-I’m struggling with the syntax, please help
There’s no question that there remain racist feelings in this country. I just wonder if, in the name of black liberation from racism, many blacks in the U.S. have resorted to the same genre of racism many whites have been guilty of. MLK, Jr. and Booker T. Washington both stood for something much better than simply changing the imbalance of race, but for a collective spirit of plurality that I don’t know we’ve yet realized. Obama’s race is brought up mostly as a factual note (“he’d be the first black president”) which isn’t racist, but then there are those that get on whites, calling them bigots because they won’t elect a black man. Hm. Is that fair? Let’s elevate the conversation to a higher plane of ethnic pluralism instead of bringing race into it so often. Obama is what he is, a candidate. How people respond to him shouldn’t be drawn up along ethnic lines unless there really is a significant voting bloc bent on keeping him from getting elected because of his race. I don’t see that in the polling data, and if we want to move past the racists of generations past, then we need to ignore it altogether and evaluate Obama on his merits/faults.
Sure, but as I phone bank for Obama, I’m noticing a racist undertone in many of the people that I’ve been speaking with. It is not encouraging….
Racism will always exist. Religious, ethnic, socioeconomic, age and so on racism is not just a black/white issue.
@allengreen
You sure that undertone isn’t perceived? That’s the trouble with a lot of what’s being said in these kinds of discussions. I guess I’m after more of concrete evidence of what’s actually there, not anecdotes. See, I could point out the racist undertones going on against Bush, being a hick white man, etc. but we’d just end up talking in circles, I think. My main point is that there is something more to aspire to, a postcolonial world where people are inclusive in their speech and political analyses rather than exclusive. But I suppose the nature of presidential campaigns is exclusive because you ultimately have to decide for whom you’re going to vote. I want to strive for inclusion, for unity, for discussing reasonable ideas (not going after the “issues”; that’s only divisive in my opinion), for a mutual desire for the human race, not any one particular one, to have an improved quality of life.
After Nov 4, I will get on your bandwagon godfather. True, my example as totally antidotal 4 sure.
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