January 20, 2009
The history of the moment came through Rev Lowery. There was more in his voice than barry could ever write or give a speech about. Video and text of the Benediction. Rev Lowery began by quoting the "Negro National Anthem" and concluded with the Civil Rights mantra:
When black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.
Why end with those words? I can see his need and right to utter them. But they were an insult to everyone who volunteered, campaigned and voted for barry - the overwhelming majority of whom were white. Not to mention the "brown" and yellow" and the "red man".
How are those words not denigrating to all non-blacks?
How are those words meant to uplift and inspire?
How are those words moving us toward a More Perfect Union?
I sense it may have been his usual wrap up, but why the need for divisive speech during a benediction meant to begin a post-racial, post-partisanship era?
Why were the last words in a benediction to The American People (and the world) racist ones?
Who is embracing what is right?
Demographics of the black vote: 2000 = 10% 2004 = 11%. 2008 = 13%
Only 2% increase in turnout to vote for Barack Obama. Had only 150K more people shown up to vote in Ohio in 2004, Bush would not have been president. Only a 3% increase in black voter turnout since President Bush was voted into power. Think about that. Eight million black voters eligible to vote could not be bothered to register to vote for the first biracial president. That means 1/3 of the eligible black voting population did not find it important to get out and vote for progress in America.
When will white embrace what is right?
Blacks did not win the election for barry - though they could very well have lost it for him. Blacks, as a whole, did not do what was right and get out to vote. Browns, yellows, reds and whites did. And many browns, yellows, reds and whites marched right along with their black brothers and sisters in the civil rights fight.
Where they embracing what was right?
Did white Iowans embrace what was right?
The demographics of Iowa (2006-2007): 89% white, 2% black (68,442), 5% Hispanic and 3% other. barry won the Iowa caucus at 38%. Barry would not be president, without white Iowans (and the bused-in Chicagoans) embracing him.
How many blacks were embracing what was right before South Carolina?
And what was it that made blacks embrace barry?
Was it the same platform he had the week previous when blacks had not yet embraced him?
No. It was the same tired old argument.
barry's favorite stump line: "Words don't matter?"
Yes, they very much do. And Rev Lowery's words were not acceptable in any fashion - especially in conclusion.
They were a jab to the very people who helped vote barry into office. The young folk who weren't alive 40 years ago, the immigrants who have sought refuge over those forty years, and the older folk, who after 40 years, very much embraced what was right.
What was the message to be ?
How is diminishing others a benediction?
Did not Rev Lowery watch any of barry's rallies? Stop by any of his campaign offices?
If he had, he would have seen that the overwhelming majority of folks doing what was right to get barry elected were white. Right along with the "brown, yellow and redman".
Who finds those terms acceptable?
Acceptable in any utterance, let alone expressed to the entire world?
Who is embracing what is right?
And who is holding on to the fight?
barry chooses to forget, and it seems many other, that he is biracial. He is half-white - his children 1/4 white. Some break it down even further saying he is more Arab than African. Either way, he is genetically 50% white. A half-white president is in the White House. You deny that, you endorse the one drop rule.
What of the twins born of a Anglo mother and a West-Indian father? Both set of twins have one who looks distinctly like their parent: one white, one black.
Yes, barry is technically African-American in that he is first generation African - but he was born a US and British citizen.
So what is he really? Kenyan, Arab, English, American?
He has a white family, who raised him so that he could be President. And as much as barry likes to pretend - he did not get there alone. His father was not a citizen of the United States or even an immigrant - he was an exchange student. He took part in creating barry genetically, but he abandoned barry and his mother for the lure of an Ivy League education and the loins of another white woman.
barry sr did not embrace what was right as a man - black or otherwise. He did not embrace what was right by not telling his American wife that he was already married, having left Africa with his tribal wife pregnant and carrying for their young child. He did not embrace what was right in accepting his responsibility as a father.
But barry's white mother did embrace what was right by choosing to give birth and raising a darker pigmented child as a single white woman in the 1960's. And without her embracing, barry would not be standing there or anywhere.
It was a very, very sad, bordering on pathetic, and certainly cliche in a tiresome way, note on which to end.
Especially the lasting image of the laughing, newly-ordained President who had just urged all Americans, no matter the color, to come together.
Was Rev Lowery doing what was right?
President Barack Obama:
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
...But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
...For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.
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