The Trouble With Transcending Race

The Root ^ | 5/01/08 | Marjorie Valbrun

[LJayne]

Why the Double O's are standing on shaky ground.

[LJayne]

I’m not a fan of of either one but this article shows her viewership of mostly women think she has betrayed them.

When trust has been betrayed it’s hard to regain. Time will tell how much this has hurt O.

[Cletus.D.Yokel]

It’s in the tag...

[L98Fiero]

Read like a “all this is whitey’s fault” article to me.

[marron]

Could it be that because of unpleasant and race-loaded issues like the "scary" and "angry" Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Oprah went to his church, too), flag pins and uppity comments about "bitter" white voters, that Oprah and Obama no longer seem so special or different from, you know, other black people?

Almost, but not exactly. The problem is that a goodly part of America is ready to transcend race. Another goodly part of America already has transcended race.

People thought Obama was the right man to lead a country that has transcended race, because he seemed like a man who had himself already transcended it. The discovery that, no, he is as race-obsessed as the rest of the DNC has been a rude awakening for some who would like to have supported him.

for some, race becomes impossible to ignore.

No, its not. Try it. Once you get used to it, you will never go back.

If Oprah's troubles are, indeed, somehow linked to Obama... it's a sad statement on race in America.

No, its not. Its a statement about the race-obsessed, who want to represent ordinary Americans, but they can't, because most Americans are way past them. They want to see Oprah as Oprah, and Obama as Obama, they are not interested in the race hang-ups that these people may carry around inside themselves. At some point people have had to let it go, and most people have. O and O need to try it. It will liberate them in a way they can't yet imagine.

[School of Rational Thought]

It is not that blacks are “held to ridicuously high standards” as the author proclaims. It is that blacks don’t want to be held to standards.

[mrsmel]

I wonder why they always overlook the most important part of the equation--blacks are app 12% of the population, whites are app 75%. There is no way a person can get elected to the White House by dismissing the largest demographic voting bloc, and telling them that they are bitter racists. Even though the white vote is not unified like the black vote is in consistently voting for the Democrats, you still don't get elected as President of all the people by shaking your finger in the face of the largest, by far, demographic. It's just absurd. They live in a small bubble of self-hating guilt-tripping whites, and are surprised when the rest of us want to vote for the person who represents us best regarding the issues, not on racial representation. The White House is the one elected office, if there is no other, in which racial and gender identity politics have absolutely no place. "Leader of the free world", indeed, representing America and its best interests (in the best of all worlds, of course), not representing racial factions as if you were a local mayor or something. It's a shame that even mayorships have come to that. The White House (not forgetting what Clinton did to it, after the luster President Reagan gave back to it after Carter) is supposed to be bigger than that, and anyone who thinks that they will use it as a platform for castigating some 70% of the population while benefitting the 12%, doesn't understand what it means at all. Obama clearly didn't, as his ties to people like Wright show. He was supposed to be bigger than that, if he wanted to be President.

[dr_who]

Transcending race is like not tripping on a coin lying on the floor. Most people don’t need to talk themselves through it.