Posted on 05/23/2009 3:48:39 AM PDT by Scanian
received an email from a black man who was attempting to convince me that, though I am completely black, I have no experience growing up black in America. The bulk of his theory on my ‘blackness' was based on the fact that I constantly lampoon Obama in my blog. He counseled me to embrace Obama, as Obama could help me to "rediscover the black experience." He warned that "whites would never see me, as I see me."
Touting Obama as the poster child for blackness is a ridiculous notion. Further, the idea that Obama can teach me "blackness" is equally ridiculous. Unlike me, Obama is only half-black -- as much white, as he is black. Obama's formative years were spent mostly in the white world. He was raised by his white grandparents in upper middle-class lifestyle. He attended expensive mostly white private schools in his youth, his education culminating with Harvard.
Like Obama, I am a product of a father who abandoned me. My story departs with Obama in that my father spent most of his adult life incarcerated, bouncing in and out of my life mainly by phone. When my father wasn't incarcerated, he was strung out -- chemically dependent -- his drugs of choice being alcohol (a vice he inherited from his father, making me a carrier as well) and crack cocaine (an acquired addiction). Surely a father like this qualifies me for the black condition?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Bingo.
The hustlers speak of “healing racism”. But, who keeps picking at the scab?
Trapped inside your own skin. Sounds more like a mental disease.
Great article! One of the thing that annoys me most about Obama is that he is trying to horn in on the American black experience, about which he knows nothing. He’s the child of a well-off leftist white hippie and a Muslim-Marxist foreign graduate student, who has simply managed to parlay what looks like a suntan into a crucial component of this giant fiction that is his life.
Glad you liked the post.
...I like this guy.
A man who refuses to be just a color.
ping for later enjoyment
Thanks for posting this excellent article with Texas roots.
Good article catch/post - - I heard Alan Keyes speaking to this exact point on the radio the other day. Saying Obama is any part of the “black American experience” is miles beyond stupid...
What possible reason would I have for wanting to think like a feminist or a black person if that would mean I would be limited to a narrow, exclusionary point of view? I prefer to think freely, to imagine, to empathize with others, not to limit myself to a racial or sexual stereotype.
Excellent article. Thanks for the introduction - I’m going to watch this gentleman’s blog with interest.
Black Experience? The Jimi Hendrix Experience!....oooops-They were 2/3rd’s white also.
My buddy of several years at work, Manny and I were talking light politics with some other guys one day. Manny's either mulatto or light black, but I just think of him as Manny. Making a casual point, he start saying "As a black man, I..."
I put my hand on his shoulder and said "When did that happen?"
The coffee stains from the laughter are still on the wall.
W O W!!! The author of this piece has laid it all out for all the race baiters out there! BHO decided to become black during college, to take advantage of the victimhood status and to advance his career-he said so on this autobiographies.
Now, turning to Michele Obama, if you read any of the hundreds of magazine interviews or ever heard her speeches, you will find a common trait: she is always claiming that “such and such person/college/employer/institution/entity “...did not REACH OUT TO ME”, or “...MADE AN EFFORT to accomodate my needs.” Has anyone read her Master’s Thesis?
This woman thinks that just because she is black, the whole world needs to cater to her. Even her employer at the Chicago hospital where she worked said in an interview (source?) that she was always complaining. Not to mention she was not proud of the country that allowed her to ride the affirmative action wave all the way to the top, until, of course, her baby’s daddy (her words-not mine) became President. What a joke.
B HUSSEIN Obama would never, I repeat NEVER turned out the way he is had it not been for the fact that he was raised by his white grandparents. P E R I O D. Now, you tell that to the next person that wants to bring up BHO’s blackness. Of course, they will call you racist-so what?
And yes, his Marxist father, son of a tribal slave holder, and grandson of a revolutionary whom was tortured by the British (which is why BHO hates the Brits) was NOT an “immigrant” as he keeps affirming in all his speeches since the campaign. That’s an outright lie! But of course, the MAM will not call him on it. If Michele, BHO, Sharpton, and those types have it soo bad here, let them go back totheir ancestral land (bet you not one of them, except BHO knows where that is) and see if their life story would be anything like it is now had they been raised in a slum in Kenya.
To this date, I do not understand race relations in this country, and the mantra of white guilt . I grew up overseas (Caribbean) where we have 1,000 skin colors and races, but we all have the SAME culture and the SAME language. Maybe that’s what is wrong with the USA for a long time now-NO COMMON SENSE OF PURPOSE!
Thanks. I’m going to do the same!
Of course the black experience has also caused blacks who are experiencing it to never admit that.
It should hence be renamed "experiencing whitey".
Some people are just so afraid of being perceived as a race or group traitor—by people who wouldn’t pee on them if they were on fire.
ML/NJ
Keyes is correct. The “black thing” is just one more fraudulent aspect of the Obama persona.
I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Great article. Having grown up on the dividing line of what is a very racially polarized city, this gentleman hits the nail on the head.
0bama was raised half white and half Indonesian Muslim.
I agree. Obame used ever group to get elected. He pretended to black to get that vote, he embraces the mixed people to get that vote. What has Obama done for the blacks since he’s been in office?
I disagree. That’s like saying affirmative action was never needed. While I do disagree with it now for any group. I constantly look at some of my black ancestors and wonder how they ever got anywhere on a job,considering the racism. I’ve experienced on jobs.
Great line - needs to be chiseled above the portals of every inner-city publik skool in America.
He is a wise individual who refuses to let others define or pigeon-hole him.
Crabs in a bucket.
Well written.
But they did leave me wealthy -- wealthier than I ever imagined. They showed me the real world that would have only appeared in evening soap operas, like Dynasty and Dallas. I saw daily a life that was dramatically different from mine; yet always in plain sight. A life of "look, don't touch." Seeing wealth and wealth creation with my own eyes, made me look at life differently than most. I loved knowing both lives -- the lives of rich and poor, not black and white.
What I learned is there is no black experience. There are only the limits to your experiences that you allow in your minds. Obama does not define me as a black man. I did not feel any more proud of Obama becoming president, than I felt for Bush. Sadly, I was less proud.
Finally, I don't need validation from whites on how to see myself. Frankly I don't care what whites (or anybody) thinks about me as a black man. I know how I see me. I like what I see-flaws and all.
So, I stand before you America -- A proud American...who happens to be black!
Barry doesn’t qualify for reparations.
When I was in college, I had the privilege of knowing two basketball players: Walter Jordan and Eugene Parker. Two completely different personalities, Walter was outgoing, sometimes loud, and involved (and still is) in the community in Fort Wayne (and now Atlanta). Eugene was very quiet, studious, and focused (that’s why he went on to law school, and became a player representative for Rod Woodson and Emmitt Smith, among others). To say they were friends would be an overstatement, but someone one said to me “I can’t believe you have friends that are black!” My response was “that’s funny, I never thought of them as black, they were just Walter and Eugene.”
Over the years, white liberals have continually tried to get me to see things in “black and white.” Like this writer, I managed to continue to see things in economic and educational terms....
hh
It’s easy, and obstructionist, to conclude that you’ll never understand me because you are not me. I doubt I’ll ever be anyone but me. Will I ever walk a mile in your moccasins? I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘in’ and ‘walk’. As political animals, it’s more constructive, and necessary, that we consider our similarities rather than obsess about our differences and deem them to be irreconcilable.
“there is no black experience”
Slightly off topic — but that has never stopped me before. An East Indian guy I work with was laid-off and he decided to start his own consulting company. His first job was awarded to him because he is a minority owned company.(US government contract)
OK, this guy lived almost all of his life in England and was educated at a premier college there and at age 45 immigrated to the US. Never in his life was he below the poverty level and perhaps 15 generations back all were upper caste in India. Since arriving in the US that’s all he has experienced is minority preference/preferences from various programs designed to advance “minorities”.
My point is when is all of this crap going to end?
Great article.
.
“Barack Hussein Obama is a privileged African-American, who has not shared the black American experience. By birth, blood and training, he was a Muslim, who became a member of a Marxist, Black-African church. He is a socialist whose politics are rooted in Marx and whose tactics were conceived by the communist, Alinsky. He is a master at shaping his own mythology and completely unqualified to be Commander in Chief. He is not now, nor ever has been, a “natural born citizen” — he was, at birth, a British subject and citizen of Kenya — this fact is published on his own website.”
From The Obama File http://www.theobamafile.com/ by our own FReeper, Beckwith.
The United States Library of Congress
has selected The Obama File http://www.theobamafile.com/ inclusion in its
historic collections of Internet materials
http://www.theobamafile.com/LibraryOfCongress.html
.
Nothing new here. We’ve had forty years of people saying, “You can’t be “black” unless you think exactly like me”.
You left out that he was raised by his middle-class white grandparents.
Jackson campaign has paid wife $247K: feds
‘LOOPHOLES’ | Also gave her $298K for election efforts
Comments
May 23, 2009
BY TIMOTHY J. BURGER
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional campaign organization has paid his wife at least $247,500 since 2001, including at least $95,000 after Sandi Jackson joined the City Council in 2007, federal election records show.
Jackson’s political committee also gave at least $298,927 in cash and in-kind contributions to his wife’s campaign fund, which bankrolled her races for a City Council seat that pays more than $100,000 a year and an unpaid position on the Cook County Democratic Committee.
Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional campaign organization has paid his wife at least $247,500 since 2001, according to federal election records.
(Brian Jackson/Sun-Times)
Sandi Jackson received the $95,000 for political consulting. The Chicago Sun-Times first reported in 2005 that she was on her husband’s campaign payroll.
Jesse Jackson got a Federal Election Commission advisory opinion in 2001 saying his campaign could pay Sandi Jackson for consulting without violating a ban on personal use of political donations. The FEC noted Sandi Jackson’s “considerable experience and expertise” in its opinion. Even so, his fund-raising is so entangled with his family’s interests that he’s pushing the limits of propriety, said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an ethics watchdog group.
“Mr. Jackson is availing himself of the full range of loopholes by which he can transfer money to his family,” Sloan said.
Aides say both Jacksons take care to avoid legal or ethical conflicts.
“Congressman Jackson and Alderman Jackson are each other’s biggest supporters and do their best to follow all federal, state and local rules, laws and ethic codes,” said Rick Bryant, a spokesman for Rep. Jackson.
In addition to payments for consulting work, Jesse Jackson’s political committee has transferred more than $227,000 to Sandi Jackson’s campaign organization since October 2006, according to his campaign reports.
Jackson said last month he is the subject of a House ethics probe into his contacts with ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich about the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama. Blagojevich faces federal charges that he tried to sell Obama’s seat. Jackson has denied wrongdoing.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1588313,CST-NWS-jesse23.article#
Nobama is nothing more than a consumate hustler, no different that lots of Bros just like him who didn’t rise as high and only prey on their friends and neighbors. They, including nobama, didn’t work to expand their worthwhile experiences but instead perfected BS. Their commonality seems to be incestant talking without substance simply to impress the stupid and wear down with most others who finally walk away.
Nobama’s farce will not continue unabated, hopefully enough senseable dems (yeah I know that is a relative conjecture) will turn away from this HNIC before more or permanent damage is done to America.
2010 will be his Waterloo.
Obama’s religious mentor Rev. Wright is the personification of this kind of Black experience. In his world view all problems befalling Blacks are the fault of a racist white society and Blacks must seek more and more redress from the government where through minority preference hiring practices, racial quota college admission regardless of academic achievement or race specific government programs reparations might be received. The cornerstone of this Black experience is to vote in lockstep for liberal politicians who will keep this system going.
Black/white is just another natural occurring difference that has been exploited by the Marxists.
So, I don’t know what it is like to be a black man.
Guess what?
A black man doesn’t know what it is like to be a white man.
That makes us even.
So when the author concludes, “So, I stand before you America — A proud American...who happens to be black!”, if he can live with that, I can too. It is the way I have lived my life. It is the Marxists who see skin color...
Wright doesn’t believe a word of his own prattle, otherwise he wouldn’t be living in a multi-million dollar mansion surrounded by “rich, white people.” He just sells that sludge to the dummies.
Aw, that’s just the “Chicago way!”
He’s the child of a well-off leftist white hippie and a Muslim-Marxist foreign graduate student, who has simply managed to parlay what looks like a suntan into a crucial component of this giant fiction that is his life.
Impressive bit of prose. Very well written and, I thought, worthy of repetition. Well done, livius!
Agreed. I am white and have always been somewhat to the right of Barry Goldwater, but after working in the South in the '60s and seeing some of the institutionalized and personal crap that went on, I feel the same way.
Reading history, I have to wonder why there wasn't a black rebellion over the systemic screwing they suffered. Today, it's a different story and I resent all the guilt that the Left tries to shove down my throat and the Special Priileges they claim for any minority.
Thank you! The stunning thing is that he has convinced so many people to accept this fiction.
It's a great book, and it shows you what life was like growing up in the South (although it would have been true in many Northern and Western cities, too) for a poor black child. Clarence Thomas's father disappeared and his mother was dysfunctional, but he was fortunate in that his grandparents were insanely hard-working, determined people who took him in and made him work like a dog but never take no for an answer or let the bigots win. He was also helped by the fact that the family, unusually for a black family, was Catholic and he went to Catholic schools (which do not seem to have been segregated at that time in his state) and was forced by "mean" old-style nuns to learn and not let anyone make him think that the fact that he was black meant he couldn't or shouldn't do it.
Now that's an autobiography worth reading! And it deals with a real life, warts and all (Thomas' divorce from his first wife), not an airy, self-justifying fiction.
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