Posted on 09/17/2009 4:56:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
Was President Obama's comment Monday calling black rapper Kanye West "a jackass" prejudiced?
Obama was referring to West's actions during the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday when he jumped on stage, interrupted country singer Taylor Swift's acceptance speech and proclaimed that Beyonce had the best video. West apologized publicly on Jay Leno the next day and directly to Swift on Tuesday.
Hold on -- there has been no speculation that Obama's comment was due to racism or possible dislike of rap music. But the inflammatory question provides us the opportunity to have a frank conversation about racism and prejudice.
Prejudice is a preconceived judgment or opinion. Racism occurs when the prejudgment is due to a person's race.
People are constantly trying to explain the world around them in a cause- and-effect manner. It provides a prescription for dealing with activity and outcome and allows for predictable living. What made it happen? Was there an underlying reason?
Everyone has prejudices, or preconceived opinions.
Race and sex are traits that are often used in prejudging. Other prejudices can be based on country of origin, religion, college attended or work experience. The list goes on and on.
Most of us have experienced some form of prejudice. Some of my experiences include prejudice regarding my rural upbringing, work experience, sex and age.
Race is different. We all carry around the mark of our ancestors in terms of the color of our skin. As Mary Norwood, the lone white candidate for Atlanta mayor, noted in response to a question regarding her race, "This is the package I got." We have no choice in our race.
After his "You Lie" outburst during Obama's health care speech last Wednesday, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., called the White House and apologized for his "inappropriate and regrettable comments." Not appeased, his colleagues publicly reprimanded him Tuesday.
Speculation abounds not only that Wilson's comment was caused by racial prejudice but that racial prejudice is behind the general opposition to Obama.
Saturday night at the U.S. Open, Serena Williams exploded after a Japanese line judge called her for a foot fault while the tennis star was trailing near the end of the second set. "If I could, I would take this ... ball and shove it down your ... throat," Williams screamed at the woman. This tirade resulted in a penalty point leading to Williams' loss of the U.S. Open title.
She publicly apologized the next day.
I have heard no speculation that the cause of her outburst was the race or gender of the line judge.
Nor have I heard any speculation that West's outburst was due to his possible deep-seated dislike of country music or blonde women.
Why pull together these episodes of September savagery where decorous speeches, matches and awards ceremonies have given way to spectacles of outbursts, lost tempers and uncivil behavior?
There is a difference between coincidence, when A and B occur together but one does not cause the other, and cause and effect, when A causes B. To the casual observer, coincidence is often mistaken for cause and effect.
Early in my career I moved from finance to marketing. Several marketing employees were convinced that the move of a finance person into marketing would ruin the marketing department.
Soon after the move, there was pushback regarding my approach to negotiating with vendors. Was this due to prejudice against finance people, or a serious question regarding policy implementation? Assuming the latter, we worked together to create a consistent policy. Was prejudice against finance people moving into marketing still evident? Certainly. But by addressing the substantive questions regarding policy, the prejudice dissipated.
To answer my own question, I do not believe that Obama's comment regarding West was prejudiced. But it provided us the opportunity to rethink prejudice. While we cannot condone prejudice, we cannot afford to believe that prejudice is lurking behind every comment, prejudging that it will surface. Instead, we must focus our energy and efforts on substantive policy issues.
Might some portion of the pushback regarding Obama's performance be due to underlying racial prejudices? Certainly.
Would an approach to solve substantive questions regarding policy without regard to outlying prejudged beliefs go a long way toward dissipating any remaining prejudices? Probably.
Is it fair to label all opposition to Obama as racist? Certainly not -- and possibly prejudiced.
BUMP
I submit that this is too simplistic a definition, and that one must also include malice and/or a sense of superiority or inferiority in the definition.
Kind of a pointless article, IMO. Those claiming that criticism of zero is based on racism are stuck in a racist mode and would probably be unable to recognize true racism if they ever experienced it. Before the election, we were told by “leaders” in the black community that anyone who would not vote for zero was racist. It never occurred to these pinheads that an average citizen can have honest policy disagreements without any regard to race, but that’s not how they wanted to frame the debate.
There was an interesting debate between two African-Americans on Hannity yesterday that cut to the heart of this issue. One was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality and was able to clearly define the boundaries between racism and policy differences. The other was an Obama kool-aid drinker who could not distinguish between racism and policy differences and claimed that all of the opposition to Obama was racist.
This is where the debate remains entrenched in America. For those who have been taught that all opposition to someone of “color” is race-based, that’s their reality and they are stuck in that level of thinking. Others can see beyond racism and have honest disagreements based on policy differences. What distinguishes the two positions is that the person who has policy differences will have those same policy differences regardless of whether the target of those differences is white, black, or purple with yellow polka dots. The person who sees it all as race-based will only have a problem with the opposition when it is someone of THEIR race that is drawing the opposition.
Therein lies the issue that gives us race-baiters like Sharpton, Jackson, Farrakhan and the likes of Cynthis McKinney, to name but a few, their audience. As long as they can preach to a gullible handful who want to believe that their problems are all caused by race and nothing else, we are never going to get past this period in America.
And, each generation is more than willing to provide us with a new crop of race-baiters.
I submit that this is too simplistic a definition, and that one must also include malice and/or a sense of superiority or inferiority in the definition.
Agreed. The initial definition is "stereotyping".
It just seems to me that Liberals are much more race conscious than conservatives. In fact, when I think about it they need for racists to exist to justify the fact that they keep dividing everyone into different races.
The goal of conservatives is to be oblivious to race and judge people on the merits of their actions and the content of their character as Martin Luther King taught.
That's a fact. It's like a weird sexual fetish. Most people have no idea how someone can become aroused to the point of frenzy over, say, a woman's foot.
Similarly, people of normal motivations and intelligence can't figure out how some people can identify themselves via the most superficial and irrelevant characteristic they posses: Their skin color.
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