I had no idea that what MLK was really doing was telling black people to get over themselves.

They - not the right - asked “Is Obama Black Enough”

Yeah, the right didn’t have to ask that question because they already knew the answer: “Hell yeah; he’s way too black.”

... and refererred to him as “The Magic Negro”.

Um, I seem to remember Rush Limbaugh singing a certain song ...

In fact when Hillary dropped out, the leftist media touted him as the “First Black Presidential Candidate”.

A fact which would, of course, have gone entirely unnoticed otherwise.

Honestly, these people aren’t even trying to make sense anymore.

You know what I REALLY like about that post of his about how the left employs (and will employ) hateful racial tactics to promote Obama?

The way he doesn’t mention any.  In fact, the sole two actual, proven examples of a racial attack made by “the left” are when two different left-wing bloggers depicted politicians in blackface.

“Outright racism against Condi Rice” - yep, that’s awful.  Links plz?

“We’ve seen this numerous times every time someone has the audacity to bring up one of his ever growing gaffes.” - Really?  You mean like when… umm… oh, you mean you don’t actually have some examples?  Huh.

Oh, wait, I get it now:

Watch the next time - and since he has about one a week it shouldn’t be long - he has a gaffe, and is called on it, how the left throws out the “race” card to claim he’s being picked on.

See, based on the absolutely no examples provided, it’s clear “the left” is going to do it again. 

And seriously:

The historical party of racism, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation

Can there be some sort of law passed where as soon as you say this you’re not allowed to have a weblog anymore?  You failed the stupidity test on that one.  You are officially not worth paying attention to.  Thanks for playing.

Once again the “liberal fascist” maneuver: use junior high level sophistry and quote mining to assert that liberals are somehow even more guilty than the right wing of the right wing’s signature evils. But what he’s actually saying is that it is somehow more racist to oppose racism than to pretend it doesn’t exist.

We’re going to see a lot of this.

Weird thing—the stereotype I’ve had to un-learn is that all Muslims are Arabic. So, “black man” does not equate to “Muslim” in my mind, much less “terrorist”. Which means that all the “Obama/Osama” crap sounds utterly ridiculous…if it weren’t the fear-du-jour, the “in” thing to be worried about, they’d come up with some other reason to dislike him. (Witness how he’ll be called a commie in the next breath, even as it is.) It *can’t* be simply about honest worry about his foreign policy, no way no how.

who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation[?]

The answer, of course, is “Barry Goldwater” when running against Lyndon Baines Johnson. Goldwater was supported in this endeavor by a Governor by the name of Ronald Reagan. It’s not that Republican pundits think that African Americans are so stupid as to forget this. It’s just that Republican pundits are themselves stupid and think that everyone else is as stupid as they are. Macsmind no doubt really believes all the crap he wrote.

if one is proud of my own ethnic identity, is not your statement one which justifies discrimination in favor of people who share your ethnicity?

Somehow, I manage not to support odious sorts of discrimination, despite being proud of my own ethnic identity. Crazy, I know.

the right is going to have to find a way to do its normal fear-and-loathing without appearing overtly racist towards Obama.

I think you give both the right wing and the American public far too much credit.  Americans, especially rural Americans, are by and large inherently and thoroughly racist.  (I refer you to Hillary’s performances in Appalachia.)  They show their racism covertly, instead of overtly, only because a ‘liberal elite’ (led by black reformers like MLK Jr, supported by people like, well, us) has managed to dominate the media and the public consciousness and push the idea that no, overt expressions of racism are not, in fact, tolerable in polite society. 

The Republicans have the courage and atrophy of soul to fight against this idea.  They’ve been pushing the lie that opposition to overt racism is mere ‘political correctness’ for decades, after all.  We’re already seeing overt racism on Fox News.  It’s only going to get worse.  And what this will do - in fact, is already doing - is tell mainstream, ordinary, racist white Americans that overt expression of racism is once again acceptable in mainstream society.  It’ll take the lid off the pressure cooker, and these ordinary white Americans will jump at the chance to once again call a spade a spade, as it were.

It’s going to get ugly.  Obama’s candidacy has the potential for genuine, transformative racial change; but if the racist backlash manages to overcome him, race relations in America could very well regress back to 1950s standards.

  If that’s the case, if one is proud of my own ethnic identity, is not your statement one which justifies discrimination in favor of people who share your ethnicity?

Of course not. Some of us have IQs over room temperature

(seriously. think it through. examples from other ethnic groups, particularly those now considered “white”, are instructive).

The historical party of racism, who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights legislation

Can there be some sort of law passed where as soon as you say this you’re not allowed to have a weblog anymore?  You failed the stupidity test on that one.  You are officially not worth paying attention to.  Thanks for playing.

You are also officially not even trying to get it right. You are officially just repeating stuff and hoping your readers know little enough that they believe you.

There is no excuse anymore (if there ever was) not to know about the Southern Strategy.

I’m awaiting his next post, where he says that since Lincoln was a Republican, his opponents were Democrats.

Dana, plenty of people voted for Bush because they felt that as a beer-drinkin’ regular guy, Bush was “one of them.” Yes, stupid, but not an odious form of discrimination.

Plus, since no party could succeed if it represented only the interests of one race (eg, we cannot, unlike other, more dysfunctional countries, support ethno-religious parties), your arguments do not apply.

Finally, denial of the presidency to someone based on the behavior of irrational voters is really not a form of discrimination I’m interested in worrying about. And in any case, Obama, since he is going to be elected president, won’t be shut out of the presidency about it.

However, proudly black, Irish, Indian, or Chinese-American doctors are perfectly capable of serving patients of all sorts of ethnic groups well, as are teachers capable of serving students of any sort of ethnic background, even if they maintain strong pride in their own. I know, you think such an idea is crazy, but it’s true.

Mr Taylor’s original statement means, in effect, that if John McCain wins, it won’t be because white voters voted against the black candidate, but because they were proud of their own ethnicity, and voted for a fellow white guy.

Um, no. Being proud of your ethnicity has nothing to do with voting for your own ethnicity. It’s about understanding, owning and celebrating where you came from, not because your ethnicity is better than everyone else’s, but simply because it’s yours.

Mr Taylor’s original statement means, in effect, that if John McCain wins, it won’t be because white voters voted against the black candidate, but because they were proud of their own ethnicity, and voted for a fellow white guy.

I assumed you had an IQ above room temperature.

My mistake.

However, proudly black, Irish, Indian, or Chinese-American doctors are perfectly capable of serving patients of all sorts of ethnic groups well, as are teachers capable of serving students of any sort of ethnic background, even if they maintain strong pride in their own. I know, you think such an idea is crazy, but it’s true.

Well, that comes from a weak self identity, and a total non-awareness of the multiple ethnicities in the world. They literally are unware of that diversity and can only divide the world into us/them.

I have to wonder what such people did to African Americans to think that they deserve such revenge?  To make them fear it?  It almost smacks of an admission of guilt over mistreatment predicated on always being top dog, really.

A lot of our cultural memories are older than we care to admit, and Nat Turner still lurks in the back of many a white person’s closet.  After all, we know what we did to them, and if they did that to us, we’d be pissed about it and want revenge, so clearly any black person who gets power over white people will be out for revenge.

It doesn’t say anything very nice about white people in this culture, but there you have it.

Here’s the thing about ethnicity and race—because of the history of the US, whites are defined as a race comprised of many ethnicities.  (I certainly don’t think of myself as ethnically white, I think of myself as ethnically Irish and WASP.  The boiled vegetable people are my people.)  The same is true of Asian-Americans and also of Latinos, who aren’t even defined as a race (and of course race is a social construct anyway), though whites have a lot of trouble recognizing the vast ethnic differences in these two groupings.  Until recently, African-Americans were defined as a race that comprised one ethnicity, because a fairly homogenous African-American culture and identity, built by folks from a variety of African backgrounds, emerged out of the crucible of slavery.  With increased immigration from first the West Indies and now Africa, this definition may be changing.  But, ethnic pride is going to be much more of a factor for an African-American voting for an African-American than it will for, say, an Italian-American voting for a Scots-Irish candidate, even though both are white.  African-Americans are an ethnic grouo unto themselves; hell, that’s why we have the term now to define that particular group of Americans, it reflects shared ethnicity rather than race.

The 1964 Civil Rights Bill had both bi-partisan support and bi-partisan opposition.

However (this is what the Republicans don’t get) it WAS divided by ideology. Liberals (whether Republican or Democrat) supported it, Conservatives (whether Republican or Democrat) opposed it.

Yes, in the 1960s the parties were not divided along ideological lines like they are now. Mostly because back then there weren’t enough conservatives to form a viable national party. Look at the 1964 Presidential election to look what happened when they tried.

To put an exclamation on this point, Julie Nixon Eisenhower has donated $2,000 to the Obama campaign this year.

“The Republicans have the courage and atrophy of soul to fight against this idea.  They’ve been pushing the lie that opposition to overt racism is mere ‘political correctness’ for decades, after all.  We’re already seeing overt racism on Fox News.  It’s only going to get worse.  And what this will do - in fact, is already doing - is tell mainstream, ordinary, racist white Americans that overt expression of racism is once again acceptable in mainstream society.  It’ll take the lid off the pressure cooker, and these ordinary white Americans will jump at the chance to once again call a spade a spade, as it were.”

Agreed TDPK.  It’s already happening - Kathleen Parker (Orlando Sentinel) “full-blooded” bullshit that ran in the Chicago Tribune and associated newspapers a week or two ago. Fortunately, lot’s of adverse comment afterward.

Poor Dana. It must really suck to have no holiday or ethnic traditions to connect you to your roots.

Me, I’m an amalgam of several European groups and got to learn about traditions from them that have influenced the culture at large. Germanic: happy birthday cake, Xmas tree, Oktoberfest, and May flower bouquets for neighbors. English: fruitcake/Christmas pudding, wassail bowl, holly & ivy, May poles. Vast amounts of literature. Irish: St. Patty’s day, potatoes as a dietary staple, Celtic myths, bagpipes, jigs and reels. They are also famous for a certain independence of spirit. Satirical literature, by Swift and Shaw. French: a cuisine that appreciates fresh produce, the Can-Can, Impressionist painting, je ne sais quoi and savior faire.
And you know what? In spite of feeling a connection to the cultures I came out of, I ALSO love:
steel drums, taiko drums, Japanese prints, sumi-e ink painting, Latin dance, R & B, Thai food…

And I sure as hell am not going to vote for McCain just because we both have some Celtic blood.

This, Dana, is ethnicity/race as a positive. I don’t mourn that I have more body hair than many non-whites do, even though our beauty culture posits less body hair as ideal. When my niece was growing up, I bought her glamor dolls with brown skin so she wouldn’t feel ugly in a culture where Barbie is usually blond. Race as a positive means thinking that every different type has its own beauty, and that our culture is the richer for having festivals celebrating different heritages and restaurants serving different food in different atmospheres.

Why is this not obvious?

I am so goddamned sick of racists, and their apologists, distorting that King quote. This man gave up his life fighting for his people’s rights, and they’re twisting his words to mean that their plight should officially be ignored?

And while I find Dana more likeable than the average wingnut, I am equally sick of people like him saying, “If [blank] is OK/unfair for black people, then why isn’t [blah blah] OK/unfair for whites?” To them, this is devastating, unanswerable logic. Where I come from, it’s called “whining.”