As we choose our next president, Americans not only want someone to ably handle a crisis after a hypothetical 3 a.m. phone call. We also want someone who reinforces our identity and tells us who we are. As I argue in The Powers to Lead, we judge leaders not only on the effectiveness of their actions, but also on the meaning that they create and teach. Barack Obama's supporters have argued that his African background and his boyhood running around in rice paddies in Indonesia give him a rare experience for American presidents.
Most leaders feed upon the existing identity and solidarity of their groups. In that sense they are insular, and define their responsibilities to their group in a traditional manner. But some leaders see moral obligations beyond their immediate group and educate their followers. For example, Nelson Mandela could easily have chosen to define his group as Black South Africans and sought revenge for the injustice of decades of apartheid and his own imprisonment. Instead, he worked tirelessly to expand the identity of his followers both by words and deeds. In one important symbolic gesture, he appeared at a rugby game wearing the jersey of the South African Springboks, a team that had previously signified White South African nationalism. He seized the teaching moment at the end of apartheid.
After World War II, when Germany had invaded France for the third time in 70 years, the French leader Jean Monnet decided that revenge upon a defeated Germany would produce yet another tragedy, and instead invented a plan for the gradual development of a European Coal and Steel Community that eventually evolved into today's Europe Union. European integration has now helped to make war between France and Germany virtually unthinkable.
Faced with a campaign crisis over incendiary remarks by his former pastor Jerimiah Wright, Barack Obama did not simply distance himself from Wright, but made use of the teaching moment to deliver a speech that should serve to broaden the understanding and identities of both white and black Americans. That is leadership.
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Obama failed when he hadn't left that racist person and his church. What he is telling right now only means that he is admitting to his "guilt". And, a leader should not find himself in such a position, in the first place. Making incorrect decisions based on incorrect informatio
Tell me, what actions on Obama's part prove that he internaliz
While you're at it, check out the words of Hagee, Robertson, Dobson and Falwell - they're equally horrendous
Folks don't even stop for a millisecon
The basic trope of most so called white thinking as that the world is perfect until these ******s start "stirring things up.
Newsflash, black people did not invent race. Newsflash-
If you did a little reading you'd understand that powers that be in this country have duped us all.
Our broken down economy, barren rustbelt, and empty auto assembly lines are done and dusted with no plan B because the folks hoarding all the money and power have convinced the so called white massed that the brown hordes have taken their jobs and are getting "advantage
Do a little reading folks, it ain't us.
We don't blame you, we just want you to wake the f*** up for the good of the universe. The longer you support the madness the longer it will continue:
White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era
by Eduardo Bonilla-Si
Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregatio
by Grace Elizabeth Hale
Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race
by Matthew Frye Jacobson
Understand
by Joseph Barndt
So, question: is the next president going to be the next Reagan? Or the next Carter? (And I'm not asking a question about Republican
Americans. That is leadership
No ... that's just another CYA speech by a politician who is Black and who can't separate himself from a racist, hate full demagogue.
It's not working except amongst the fawing Liberal elite.
Read what the Budweiser drinking people in Philly think ... and note the falling approval ratings of Obama vs Hillary and McCain.
http://www
The Chickens are coming home to roost ... Pastor Wright's chickens.
Princeton Junction
Rev. Wright, however inflammato
To properly grasp what Wright is getting at, one has to put his remarks in context -- the context of each sermon as well as the larger context of urban racism and social injustice. He appears to be a pastor who sees his mission as challengin
Now, for people who aren't particular
Here is the website for Obama's church. The only way to find out what was in the sermons in totality is to listen to the tapes. There are whites that belong... so if it was offensive.
Maybe.
But I think it was bigger than saving a campaign. I think Obama saw his entire career-- his entire life-- being distorted by pundits and the voters who buy into those distortion
It was another day of being black in America-- of working twice as hard to prove he is "acceptabl
Yet no black American ever went through what Obama has been through. On the verge of his party's nomination
What's more-- Obama is biracial. This ought to open up a good discussion about what it means to be biracial in America, but-- again-- no one with such a background has ever climbed so high in American politics.
So Obama-- who has always had to deal with issues of race from both sides, to prove himself acceptable to a power structure (Harvard, Illinois, D.C.) dominated by whites while not losing touch with the community he identifies himself with-- made himself an ambassador on 3/18 to two groups, the black community and the white majority, on behalf of Obama the individual
Because Obama was about to be labeled as a fraud who followed a crazy preacher then disowned him in a last ditch and desperate attempt to bail out a campaign. One could almost see the pain in his eyes and lifetime of experience in his tone as he sought to set the record straight, once again, about himself, his unique background
True, Reagan was keenly astute when it came to opportunit
I was liking Obama for a while. But I'm changing my mind. Still believe he's probably the decent guy he appears to be. But I don't see him having a grasp of what this country's facing right now.
In an irony of ironies, Reagan describes -- back in 1990 -- one might even say he foresees -- the trouble brewing between Islam and the West.
"In a schism reaching back centuries, based on differing interpreta
Its a shame that it has taken the MSM over a year to find this easily findable material. That's what's sad.
I wonder if any critic has heard an Entire Wright Sermon yet?
I, for one, have been in countless White Evangelica
I have heard the Same Fire & Brimstone. I have heard the US Supreme Court damned and Justices called "instrumen
I have heard Congress called "Satan's Lair" and a "Godless Criminal" bunch of cowards.
I have heard America cursed for Her Sins. Her fall predicted.
Why is it OK for white pastors to Preach such Fire, but not Rev. Wright?
~~~~ 61 year Old White Guy
:
http://www
But somewhere along this bruising campaign trail the narrative grew in complexity
Choosing a president is such an anguishing task because, more than anything, it is the process of redefining ourselves. In a way, this is even more true for the casual voter than for the avid political blogger. We’re pretty sure we don’t want to be a cowboy-hat
It has never been fair to poor people white or black. The same thing america was against in the Revolution
We must be willing to admit a problem in order to solve it ..........
What the reactionar
What most black people hate is the irrational
The kind of reactionar
Our current president lied to the American public repeatedly and the cost of his lies was not only the financial ruin of this country but also the cost of precious human lives.
Yet, we all sit here "outraged" over this Rev. Wright business.
Bush and his crew have repeatedly and unrepentan
So enraged and embittered