The Greatest Moment in the History of the USA...

I’m white. I was born in Greenville SC in 1955. I was introduced formally to the issue of racism in America when I was 8 years old.

As I sat in the back of the all white school bus on the way home one afternoon, I heard a chant coming from a group of kids gathered at the front of the bus around the driver. It was a haunting sing song refrain and I distinctly remember thinking (a few seconds before I could make out the words) that whatever those kids were singing was scary. Then the words became clear to me. They were repeating over and over “The *igger lover’s dead, the *igger lover’s dead.”

When I got home I found my mother had come home early from work and she and our African American babysitter Mariah were huddled together on the couch crying hysterically. They just looked at me and shook their heads and went back to crying.

By the time I was 12 my family had moved to the Atlanta area. My younger siblings, Steve and Audrey and I were surprised to be told one morning by our mother June that we weren’t going to school that day. She dressed us up and we went to walk in the funeral procession of Martin Luther King. During the eulogy a large black man reached down and picked up my little blond haired eight year old brother without a word and put him on his shoulders so he could see the proceedings.

Although most white people I knew growing up in the South weren’t racist I had more than enough evidence to realize that ‘it was out there’ and I thought I had left that all behind when I moved to Boston MA in 1990.

Then one day as I walked down Commonwealth Avenue , in the shadow of the giant CITGO sign I passed an elderly black man walking the opposite way on the sidewalk. As I nodded a car full of young white men drove past us and shouted ‘*igger’ in unison. As I barked ‘Fuc* you!’ they retorted ‘*igger lover!’ and sped away. I looked back at the gentleman and said ‘I’m sorry about that.’ He just smiled a sad smile and said ‘That’s OK.’ and kept on walking.

Ironically, that’s the only time anyone ever called me that to my face, not far from John F. Kennedy’s birthplace. I don’t think America is worse than other nations in terms of racism. In some ways you can argue that the USA is the only place racially diverse enough to be considered a true test of a society’s ability to peacefully integrate different races.

Barack Obama being elected president surely won’t mean the end of racism in America, but in my opinion and I think that of my mother June who passed on some years back, I believe that it is the greatest moment in the history of our country.

Bluegrass Obama>>>>>>>>>>>>

He's the man,
He'll fix our country I know he can,
Don't listen to the Clintons, they aint so bright,
You can vote for Obama even if you're whiiite....
That's right,
You can vote for Obama even if you're whiiite...

Old Bill signed NAFTA and he signed GATT,
Hell, he aint no Democrat,
Hillary voted for the war, that's right,
You can vote for Obama even if you're whiiite....

You can vote for Obama.........
Even if you're whiiite!

That's right.

Why David Brooks Is Mad At Obama

In a recent NYT column titled 'A Speech About Nothing' David Brooks suddenly fell out of love with Barack Obama. There is a link to his column and an excerpt from it below the line on this page. Here is my analysis....

On the economy-

I think his view leaves out the ramifications of the Free Trade agreements signed by Clinton, but passed by a Republican congress. We always knew that it would have been good for Corporate America and investors if the US allowed all of our manufacturing to be done in countries which have none of our labor laws or human rights or environmental standards. We didn't allow that though, for a whole raft of reasons.

1. National Security. As Huckabee said, our manufacturing base saved the world in WWII when we turned it into a war machine.

2. Jobs and living standards. Brooks would say 'Look at the cheap goods', but the way I see it is that most people who lose their manufacturing job see their wages go from about 50k to about 17k per year and the amount that they save per year on cheap goods might only be 2 or 3 thousand dollars. You can only buy so many dvd players and cameras.
Home prices and food prices just keep going up, even before the oil boom. Most of the jobs we have lost were not lost to 'technological efficiency', most of these jobs still exist, in China and elsewhere.

In the excerpted quote below from his column he points out that... "For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor force are better educated than the ones coming in."

I think that has a lot to do with the declining wages and college having gotten more and more expensive with ever more slots being taken up by rich foreigners from countries who are much more protective of their own working class than we are. Even the American kids that work in my office are graduating with astronomical loan debts and when they look at the job market they ask, did I make the right decision to come to college? Of course college grad's make more, but what if you're a college grad stuck in a dead end job owing 75k plus interest? And now they've changed the rules so that they will garnish your paycheck much more quickly than before to get the loan repayed.

I think Brooks is down on Obama now because of all that I just said that David doesn't agree with and Barack does. As for why Brooks liked Obama a few months ago? I don't know, either wishful thinking on his part or pre-emptive spin, to set himself up as a 'valid critic' now.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/opinion/15brooks.html
"A pedagogical revolution has led to ferocious competition to get into the top universities but a decline in quality at the primary and secondary levels. For the first time in the nation’s history, workers retiring from the labor force are better educated than the ones coming in.
All of these huge social forces have had profound effects on how Americans work and live. All of them have combined to create a mass upper class, but also a struggling working class. They have all contributed to rising living standards — and also to the feelings of anxiety that show up in poll after poll."

-David Brooks

Love or Die!

...According to poll results from Pakistan* (a nuclear power) "bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Pakistan President Musharraf's support is 38 percent and U.S. President George W. Bush's approval rating is 9 percent."
* Terror Free Tomorrow-poll.

No wonder we can't find bin Laden. If these poll results are true, then we are near, if not at, nuclear global checkmate. That is the point at which, only one more major aggression by a nuclear power against another (or an ally of another) could trigger two nations exchanging nuclear attacks. So that 'nuclear' becomes a 'necessary method of self-defense'. NMSD. We don't want that.

Up to now, because of the unspeakable horrors of WWII, the use of atomic weapons to end that war is seen as morose, but forgiven, by the world as a whole. Further nuclear conflict is avoidable, but inevitable without friendship amongst present enemies. The apex is theMiddle East, from Pakistan to Israel, but it could spread globally, from Russia and China to America. Any attack on Iran by the USA or Israel could throw control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons into the hands of bin Laden' supporters and then all bets are off.

You may say that the USA needs to wipe-out Muslim extemism, via warfare. The truth is, the US and Israel, nor anyone else in the world, best make any bold moves, anytime soon, lest we light up this planet in a very bad way.

Now we really do have to learn how to get along, no matter what your philosophy or religion may be. How do you like them apples?

It's Love or Die.