Posted on 11/05/2012 4:55:17 AM PST by Kaslin
The headline of a recent article by the Washington Post’s Peter Wallsten capsulizes, inadvertently, the supreme paradox of the Obama presidency.
“Obama struggles to balance African America’s hopes with country’s as a whole,” it says.
The story documents Obama’s struggles over the last four years, which continue today, to avoid overplaying his hand as the first black president, yet to also not ignore this fact.
But nowhere does Wallsten note the irony that four years ago many understood the meaning of Obama’s election as the beginning of the end of the perception of black America as a world apart from the rest of America.
There was exhilaration that the nightmare was over – finally. That wrongs have been righted, that we can get on with America’s business without the ongoing issue of race looming, and that we can stop looking at blacks politically as a special class of Americans.
Yet here we are now at the end of four years of the presidency of this first black president and attitudes about race seem to have hardly changed at all. There is still the sense that black America and the rest of America are not on the same page and that blacks and the country “as a whole” have different needs and different agendas.
Wasn’t Obama’s election supposed to have changed all of this?
Not only have racial tensions not improved, but the racial divide appears to have widened.
“Win or lose,” Wallsten continues, “the electorate that decides his fate November 6 will be far more racially divided than the one that propelled him into the history books.”
According to a Gallup poll done last year, the third year of the Obama presidency, the election of a black man as president had little impact on the enormous difference in perceptions of blacks and whites on the need for government activism.
Fifty nine percent of blacks, compared to 19 percent of whites, said that government should play a “major role” in trying to improve the social and economic position of blacks and other minority groups in this nation.
Fifty two percent of blacks, compared to 15 percent of whites, said new laws are needed to reduce discrimination against blacks.
If Barack Obama’s election has had little or no impact on improving racial politics or changing the sense that blacks must be viewed as a special political class, what exactly, practically, has it meant?
Rather than making things better, it has really made matters worse.
From the perspective of Democrat voting blacks, the implications of a black president was not a more racially just America. It was about assuming there would be a man in the White House more prepared to sign off on special political treatment for blacks. To the extent this has not happened, there has been dissatisfaction.
From the perspective of conservatives, tensions have increased because criticism of Obama’s big government liberalism has been spun as racially motivated.
The Obama presidency has not ushered in a new era of racial tranquility because, despite all the hype, it’s not what it has been about.
The real tension in America today is not about black versus white but about liberalism versus conservatism.
Liberalism is about government as a political agent, not as a protector of individual freedom. By it’s very nature, liberalism creates political classes – whether based on race or gender or business interests. Those that get the goodies are happy. Those that pay for them are not. Tensions and animosities get worse, not better.
In the end, we all suffer because giving politicians more power means less growth and prosperity.
Things will never get solved until we finally take “e pluribus unum” seriously. That American diversity can only be finally united through one set of values, under God, that enable freedom. One set of true values for all.
She never got a $200.00 pair of sneakers.
It's not a racial thing, it's a cultural thing.
I'm willing to bet that little Condi Rice never had $200.00 sneakers either.
0 hates White people and has been taking money from the hard-working productive members of society and giving it to slackers who vote democrat.
IS the “racial divide” worse than before 0bama,
or is it the case that the generational “hate whitey” resentment was kept under wraps until 0bama’s election,
after which they felt they had the power to implement their racism?
It is worse than this. The past few weeks O has given up on convincing independents to vote for him and instead is trying to rev up the Dem base to ‘get out the vote’ by using very racially divisive tactics.
Not only was there the Obama racist ‘vote to get revenge on them’ comment that Chris Matthews called criticism of racism, but I learned from the Chris Hayes show that the O campaign is running radio ads on black talk radio stations blaming criticism of Obama racist and repeating the ‘vote to get revenge’ line to the black listeners.
Obama is finishing up the most divisive 1st term presidency with the most divisive and hateful POTUS re-election campaign of all time intended to Balkan-ize the country, and it is largely unnoticed by those it was not intended for.
From what I’ve seen and experienced its always been there, festering under the surface, ready to erupt. Regardless of who wins this election, its only going to get worse; in many ways, it may be best that it get worse sooner than later. This prolonged “cold war” of the blacks putting on the appearance they don’t hate the whites needs to come to its inevitable conclusion because all the cold war truce does is make it possible for them to fool more white youth into believing the anti-white racial hatred doesn’t exist, setting them up as easy targets when the crap hits the fan or worse, turning their natural loyalties against their own.
Ms. Parker gets it right. I wished she had addressed the fact that many, if not a majority of the black community, hold quite conservative ideas on social issues and yet still seem to stay on the Democrat Plantation!
Exodus: Inner-City Blacks Abandoning Obama & Democrat’s Liberal Agenda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdTihf2_GGM&feature=youtu.be
Meaning the government should take more of the private property of one group - the racial 'majority' - and give them to the other - racial 'minorities'.
And then they wonder why Obama has made race relations worse.
“”The real tension in America today is not about black versus white but about liberalism versus conservatism.”
Ms. Parker gets it right. I wished she had addressed the fact that many, if not a majority of the black community, hold quite conservative ideas on social issues and yet still seem to stay on the Democrat Plantation!”
Plantation is the correct term, but if you use it you are branded a racist!
They may have conservative ideas on social issues but most of them feel it is the gubmint’s place to “hep them along”. Many of them actually think they can’t succeed without external help.
Obama was such a poor choice for the first President “of color”.
Why couldn’t we have someone like Herman Cain?
One sad thing about obama’s presidency is that he has permanently fouled the waters for any future black candidates running for the office. Many of the politically unaware will blame all the failures of his administration because he’s black. It isn’t obama’s blackness that caused this mess but as the article pointed out, it’s his liberalism.
All this nonsense about how we all believed an Obama Nation would be holding hands and singing kumbaya is so much utter B.S. The Left never seeks to unite people. Ever.
This reminds me of God's Word. . .
Revelations 3: 14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
As believing Christian's we are to STAND. This is instructed many times. Stand for God's Word, stand for the Truth - don't sit on the fence and continue to go along to get along.
Vote the Kenyon out!
Anyone seeking to put a boot on my throat will have the “satisfaction” of being surrounded by dead comrades and shell casings.
” Obama is finishing up the most divisive 1st term presidency with the most divisive and hateful POTUS re-election campaign of all time intended to Balkan-ize the country, and it is largely unnoticed by those it was not intended for. “
Getting worse every day.
It’s not worse...it just woke up comfortably ignorant folks who had been drinking the elixir of sameness
including plenty on this forum
and it looks like some are still sipping the cup
stupid white people...is there no bottom to that bucket full?
***...said that government should play a “major role” in trying to improve the social and economic position of blacks and other minority groups in this nation. ***
They have been doing this for the last forty eight years, and they still cannot stand on their own feet?
It seems legal immigrants do well starting businesses.
Don’t forget what is rumored what the Val Gal said : “After We Win This Election, It’s Our Turn. Payback Time.”
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