My buddy is talking to me on the phone this morning when he says "they just interviewed John Lewis on CNN. He said 'at twelve o’clock today, a black man will be the head of the most powerful nation on earth'."
After I hang up the phone, I say it out loud.
"M-i-s-t-e-r President."
Commander in Chief is probably more accurate, but there is something about the imagery that is involved when an American says "Mr. President" out loud that means "I am ready to obey your command."
"President Barack Obama."
I am already hearing this phrase reverberating around the world in a hundred different languages.
"Pres-i-dent O-ba-ma."
I can get used to this.
yay!
ReplyDeletecongratulations, all of us, on a fine choice for president.
and no, "commander in chief" is not more accurate.
we have a civilian government in these united states, much as the bush administration worked to make you think otherwise.
it is in fact "mr. president."
be proud, say it loud.
Alright, alright, Karen - "Mr. President" it is!
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh, I can get used to this too. The dust is settling in my life and I'll be in contact with you soon.
ReplyDeleteIf Obama governs half as well as he speaks, he'll have one hell of a presidency.
ReplyDeleteSounds SOOO good to hear it. I LOVE IT!!
ReplyDeleteI just want to know. WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP CALLING THE KNEW PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "A BLACK MAN"? He is not a black man "HE'S 1/2 WHITE".......lmao at you people
ReplyDeleteIf he was a powder puff (with white skin and black feature's)would you feel the same? lol. probably not.
Come on, Anonymous - to be "black" in America is almost a metaphysical definition, unbounded by the proportions of African or Caucasian DNA one possesses.
ReplyDeleteFormer Congressman Harold Ford, Jr.(D-TN), former state senator Julian Bond (D-GA), and current Congressman G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), some of the whitest looking black guys I know, all have the distinction of having two black parents, but have been considered black by both the blacks and whites in their respective communities all their lives.
Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington both had white fathers, but had absolutely no choice but to be black, according to the law of the land. They are renowned, even with their particular interracial heritage, as some of the most accomplished black men in American history.
If those last two paragraphs are some irony for your ass, I don't know what is.
If you're going to deal with the reality of America RIGHT NOW, then there you have it.
It will take a better educated country that has a better facility with abstract ideas to rearrange the racial boundaries and labels we use today.
Times are changing, though. Vin Diesel is who he wants to be. Derek Jeter seems to have renounced all racial boundaries. Tiger Woods celebrates all of his many bloodlines as equally as he can, unless Nike needs him to be an angry minority for a commercial.
The more powerful statement out of all these machinations about race, for me, is the way Obama's brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, seems to be the step dad of the two white children his current wife obviously had before marrying him.
The father figure, the male role model for two white children will be an African American man whose brother-in-law happens to be the president of the United States - hard to beat that for positive influences in a kids life.
Do you think that the president " OBOMBMA"is a racist? How do you think my kid's feel about the new president and the way he conduct's himself and the people that he surround's himself with. NOT VERY COMFORTABLE!! He clearly show's and openly addmit's it. He should/will be impeached for it.
ReplyDelete"THE PRESIDENT BEING A RACIST IS DEFINATELY NOT A GOOD INFLUENCE ON MY CHILDREN OR ANY CHILD OF THIS GREAT COUNTRY"
You completely avoided my first question and came with some "DUMB BLACK RACIST" BS. I honestly hope that you put a little more thought into this next question. I warn you now that it is a loaded one. So chose your word's very carefuly "BROWN MAN".
ReplyDeleteYou know. As i sit and think of the complete and ignorant coment that you so brainlessly replied to my 1st question "BROWN MAN'. I can not help but to think of a scripture from the HOLLY BIBLE that myself and my family and friends hold very close/dear in our heart's. DEUTERONOMY:CHAPTER 7
ReplyDeleteThe thing about diversity that we know is that it will not look like the world we inhabit today.
ReplyDeleteWe all struggle with the day to day implications of seeing others as "less than" or "more than", if we are attempting, amidst the illogical hodgepodge of traditions, customs and arbitrary boundaries that we find ourselves being defined by, to value those things we have in common as human beings over those differing characteristics we may possess as members of dissimilar cultures.
I did a four part series on White Americans And The Politics Of Race last year - I learned a lot, doing the research for this.
EXCERPT:
So I started doing some research, even before the polls started to record the phenomena of white Democrats who could not fathom voting for a black man last week, just to see what COULD be going on with my white brethren. I ran into a very good sources, including one whose findings anchor this series, The Black Rage In The White Mind, by Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki. Their study categorized white racial thinking in four ways:
Racial comity and understanding
Multi-dimensional conceptual thinking – can hold positive and negative views and acknowledge that having varied interests do not make black and white interests mutually exclusive.
Racial ambivalence
A complicated combination of assumptions, misinformation, emotional needs, experiences and personality traits that all bear on a white person’s thinking about race. Can sometimes allow him to deny the existence of racism.
Racial animosity
Persistent pathological biases that include stereotyping, denial, political rejection, demonization and fearful, angry emotions. Can include the extent to which white people see themselves as having group interests that conflict with those of blacks.
Racist
Believe blacks share such homogeneously negative characteristics that they must be an inferior rank of human against whom discrimination is inevitable and justifiable.
To really have a chance at understanding the origin and motivations of these four different points of view, we’ve got to back up a bit and look at how we process the information we receive. One thing that all of these states of mind have in common are the basic cognitive functions of perception - attention and emotion - which are functions essential to an individual's knowledge of the world and themselves.
Hopefully, this exploration of racial thinking can utilize the traditional building blocks of perception to provide a clearer picture of how white Americans tend to think when they think about race.
Why is this important? Because in these final days of this presidential campaign season, when the "Racial Polarization" game begins in earnest, you will need to remember who the good guys are if you support Barack Obama. Because I've found myself beginning to do what a lot of you might be thinking - railing against white Americans as a group instead of railing against the individuals, black or white, or the organizations who threaten my candidate's chances.