“The only reason Barack Obama was elected is because the interests of white folk and black folk converged as has happened a few other times in history, like at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and a few other historical events, it wont last...”
There is a kernel of truth in what he says, but he’s totally off base in tying it to race.
I would put it generally as follows:
A particular agenda gets advanced (or adopted) when a sufficient number of people see it that it’s in their interest to advance it. If it has a racial component it is strictly coincidental.
It is my firm belief that politics (i.e. self interest, which is what politics boils down to) trumps everything - race, gender, nationality, family, religion, etc. There’s no way on earth that this guy would celebrate the victory of a black candidate for president if that guy was Herman Cain or Thomas Sowell, Walter William, or any other black conservative. Why? Because politics trumps race.
Obama got elected because enough people saw his political agenda (ultra liberal) as theirs. Additionally he also served a hidden agenda of some people - the relief of their unspoken guilt by electing a black as president. The third component was the almost 100% of the blacks (and to a lesser extent other minorities) who served their interests of boosting their pride and self esteem vicariously, by having one of their own elected president (like the sports fan wanting his team to win and feeling good when it does). It was the confluence of these interests that got Obama elected. There was some racial component on the parts of the blacks, a bit of racial component on the part of guilt-ridden whites, but the majority of the whites and blacks that voted for him did so because of his politics.
If you want to know how much race had to do with it vs politics, you can do a quick thought experiment. All you have to do is replace Obama with another black but one with opposite politics, say Herman Cain.
How many of the whites that voted for Obama would have voted for Cain. How many of the blacks?
This little exercise will convince anyone that his “Critical Race Theory” is totally without merit and is simply pseudo-intellectual drivel by an affirmative action incompetent, provided a tenured professorship by the guilt-ridden whites at Harvard.
Here’s a great assessment by a judge in Wikipedia.
Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago has label[ed] critical race theorists and postmodernists the lunatic core of radical legal egalitarianism.[9] He writes,
What is most arresting about critical race theory is that...it turns its back on the Western tradition of rational inquiry, forswearing analysis for narrative. Rather than marshal logical arguments and empirical data, critical race theorists tell stories fictional, science-fictional, quasi-fictional, autobiographical, anecdotal designed to expose the pervasive and debilitating racism of America today. By repudiating reasoned argumentation, the storytellers reinforce stereotypes about the intellectual capacities of nonwhites.”
This makes me think back to right after the 2008 election. There were two retail clerks I ran into regularly, one older (sixties, I guess) and one younger (probably late twenties), both black. Their reactions to the outcome of the election were markedly different. The young guy was almost bursting with pride to the point he was bashful. The older guy seemed very thoughtful, and a little bit rueful. Interesting contrast.
Great post, aquila48! A keeper.
BTTT!