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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23420 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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His main schtick in 2008 was post-racial, post-partisan unity of the United States. "Not red states or blue states" etc.

See his Philadelphia speech on race in 2008. Progressive activists thought he was kind of a sell-out or too much a naive believer in white goodwill.

But [Reverend Wright's] remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's efforts to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change — problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Of course, he then lit a lot of that goodwill on fire by bungling the Trayvon Martin case, needlessly blowing the Skip Gates silliness way out of proportion (remember the "beer summit" at the White House?), etc.

I don't think he bungled anything there. To secure his re-election he needed to repeat the crazy high black turnout of 2008. That might not have happened if race relations were cool and calm.

2008 was a different time. Post-racial unity was the way to do anti-racism back then. Esoteric critical theories were only starting to show up on obscure nerdy spaces, and even die-hard Democrats thought they were way off.

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