[wonkowasright]

She is of course right in this particular. As a historical fact there were laws allowing the discrimmination against blacks in this country.

And slowly but surely, America changed. We got rid of those unjust laws. And today, just 50 years later, my husband and I are President and First Lady of the United States.

The US Constitution itself expressly allowed for the buying and selling of black men and women. It was changed to fix the egregious errors it contained. That was the first step. Then a war. But it wasn't until the days of MLK that blacks got the right to vote, to equal schools, to ride in the front of the bus etc. It was the changing of those laws that allowed within 50 years a black man to become president.

I refuse to accept that as a conservative we must hate blacks or object every time the first lady makes a factual statement about US history. We should be willing to admit not only the greatness of the USA but also the sins of the USA.

[T. P. Pole]

It’s like Pavlov. Some key words just set them off.

It is a ton worse on the other side. But that doesn’t excuse the behavior on our side.

[ilovesarah2012]

What the hell does that have to do with talking to the Chinese other than to try to make America look bad?

She is nothing but a race-baiter like her husband. I despise them both more than words can say. They are a disgrace to what was once a great country.

[Alberta's Child]

Very good post, Wonko.

I would add, though, that Barack and Michelle Obama are compelling evidence that the "progress" you describe really didn't do anyone any good.

Everything I ever needed to know about race relations in the U.S., I learned from Bill Cosby. And he was right.

[ozarkgirl]

The US Constitution itself expressly allowed for the buying and selling of black men and women.

Where would that be in the Constitution? Currently taking a college course on pre 1877 history and we have discussed there was absolutely no reference to slavery in the Constitution. It was a volatile subject even then so it was ignored.

[ohioman]

No one here hates blacks. We hate liberals. The problem is that Moochelle left out the fact that we now have laws that allow the discrimination against whites. The USA as it stands right now is a country I hardly recognize anymore. People on the left do not want equality, but revenge.

[caveat emptor]

I hear you, but Michelle's way out of her league and needs a travelling companion/guide to ease her way.


to Chinese eyes the restrained elegance of their First Lady, Peng Liyuan, won the day

No doubt her Chinese hosts were polite enough not to remind her that they know a thing or two about discrimination and victimization.



Sign at entrance to Shanghai park.


Bodies of Children Killed by the Japanese at Nanking

And smart enough not to mention their historic and current caste systems or that Mao Tse-tung’s policies and actions led to the deaths of nearly 77 million of his countrymen,

[dfwgator]

So, there were laws against Irish and Poles, too, so what? It’s ancient history.

[rbmillerjr]

“I refuse to accept that as a conservative we must hate blacks or object every time the first lady makes a factual statement about US history. We should be willing to admit not only the greatness of the USA but also the sins of the USA. “

Oh, please. We are the most open and self-critiques society on the face of the earth. The pendulum has swung too far to the other side. This is why we have a nation of people who despise their country...this is why we have a nation that knows little about our accomplishments and everything about our faults.

And this is partly why we have reelected a failure of a President, who enjoys diminishing the US at the expense of the cultures around the world that can hold our jock strap.

[Ditter]

We don’t hate black people. We hate thugs of every color, some of them are black.

Black people have been raised to hate white people, I have heard it from them myself.

[DMZFrank]

The problematic aspect of the Mooch’s rather “after school” version of United States history, WHENEVER she critiques some aspect of it is her nauseating self absorbtion. The constant narcissistic attempts to fold his mysterious Manchurian candidate’s elevation into a justification for more socialist schemes and redistribution is patently obvious.

She NEVER counterbalances the continual whine of racial and other grievance with an assertion of the noble PRINCIPLES of the Declaration and the codified protections for liberty and federalism that are enshrined in the constitution because she and her hubby seek to undermine the transcendently objective moral truths of the constitution and the Declaration with a corrupted notion of arbitrary dispensations based upon the whims of a socialist/Marxist ruling elite headed by her, hubby and others like them.

The history of this nation is flawed, it has commited great sins. Notwithstanding that it is and has always beenthe greatest nation in history because of the founding PRINCIPLES which the Mooch will never acknowledge, if she even knows them. Her frame of reference will ALWAYS be primarily one based on real and imagined grievance.

Besides the constant self reference and navel gazing is more than I can stand from this semi-literate dunce.

[Albion Wilde]

I agree that there was nothing wrong with the face value of the words of her speech; without any overt race-bashing, she summarized the great American accomplishment of correcting the one flaw in the Founding. She said the people who overturned Jim Crow were "ordinary people" -- without identifying them by race.

If you are not looking to reflexively hate everything she says without regard to content, that sentence can certainly be taken to reflect the reality -- most white people in the nation at that time were willing to end Jim Crow, and demonstrated it by electing for two terms the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first president to outlaw segregation in the military and who put forward the first comprehensive Civil Rights legislation since the days immediately following the Civil War, even though he as bitterly opposed by rabid segregationist white Democrats and their Dixiecrat Senators and Congressmen in DC.

That said, the mainstream also expected that a newly-freed people would rise to the responsibilities that go along with political freedom, as had so many waves of ethnic immigrants before then. And many A-A folks have done so, without demanding crutches and reparations; that so many slid back to the Democrat party plantation is another whole story.

As for the speech on its face as quoted, no sense arguing with it; it's pretty well stated.