Dissing granny
Bookworm on Mar 18 2008 at 2:46 pm | Filed under: African-Americans, Barack Obama
In that portion of the speech in which he refused to disavow Wright by comparing Wright to his grandmother, Obama essentially “forgave” his grandmother for the “sin” of being worried about seeing black youths on the street as she walks by. I kind of ignored that attribution when I said Grandmother Obama never bad-mouthed anybody. The reason for this blind spot on my part — when Obama was trying to call her a racist, but a forgivable one, was that I viewed her concerns that as a factual reality, not a racist emotion. It turns out that I can be forgiven for feeling as I do — that is, for not understanding that Obama was calling his own grandmother a racist because of this worry — since it turns out that Granny Obama and I are not the only ones who share that concern. Someone else does too, and you may be surprised who it is.
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Greetings:
Several years ago, on one of my internet safaris, I came across the US Department of Justice’s web site. In looking over the murder statistics, I discovered that a white person had a 3-4 times the probability of being murdered by a black person than a black person had of being murdered by a white person. This was a straight murder to murder comparison, unadjusted for the disparity in the size of the groups in the overall population.
Since that time, I have seen this observation mentioned just one time in the mainstream media and that was by Michael Barone in US News & World Report.
Maybe Granny’s right to be afraid.
After Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck and mauled during the Rodney King riots, he was hauled off the street by a black man named Bobby Green who undoubtably saved his life.
I’ve read that Denny and Green were offered a ride to the hospital, but Green was hesitant because of the drivers “appearance”.
Green later left LA, feeling threatened. But I can forgive him.
“I had threats, word of mouth; it would get to me from the streets,” he said. “Like, ‘Why did I save another person like that and disgrace our people? Why was I going to court to testify against my people?’ ”
http://www.newsthinking.com/story.cfm?SID=138
Here are some homicide stats by race.
The homicide offending rate of blacks was 7.5 times that of whites in 2005. In 1976, the homicide offending rate of blacks was 9.5 times that of whites. From 1976 to 2005, the homicide offending rate of blacks has gone down 43%, and declined 29% for whites.
From 1976 to 2005 —
• 86% of white victims were killed by whites
• 94% of black victims were killed by blacks
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
Most murder occurrs within races. While homicide offending rate of blacks is still much greater than that of whites, it has dropped substantially.
That Obama apparently wants us to think that his grandmother’s understandable, evidence-based, and shared fear of young black men on the street is an equivalent offense to his pastor’s 20-year record of race-baiting hatred of America is instructive. He provided us with several other outrageous attempts at moral equivalence, as well.
10-15 years ago, this speech might have taken care of his problem, but with the Web, I think it’s going to be pretty tough…..unless, of course, McCain decides that it’s “unseemly” to say nasty things about his esteemed Senate colleague and manages to shut down any mention of Obama’s relationship with Pastor Wright.
But, I suspect that we’ll be hearing more of this kind of thing, and the nomination will slip away from this “not-so-new-style” politician.
There’s something subtle going on here…
Obama’s speech states:
“…a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Book’s explanation of this states:
“Obama essentially forgave his grandmother for the sin of being worried about seeing black youths on the street as she walks by. [...] I viewed her concerns that as a factual reality, not a racist emotion.”
Obama’s speech refers to a woman walking past a black man, or perhaps a group of black men, but in no way specifically refers to a group of black youth who are walking past her. A group of black youth who might reasonably be assumed to belong to a gang, who are approaching a woman frozen in position, interpreting their approach as predatory.
In Obama’s version we have a woman on the move, walking past one or more presumably adult men. In Book’s version, a gang of youths approaches a woman alone and motionless.
I’ve had any number of groups of “youth” approach me, with all their attitude and threatening language and posture, and I’m always worried. That is not at all what Barack Obama SAID. There’s something disturbing about the twist implicit in Book’s interpretation. This bothers me.
In re-reading, I see I had my own wrong implicit assumption that she was walking – actively moving – past Black men who were also walking – an assumption not warranted by Obama’s phrasing. How interesting that I too perceived something that was not there.
The part that fascinates me is how easily, and with so little effort, he tossed his own grandmother under the train in order to preserve his chance.
I originally thought that he was fairly bright but ignorant; then he managed to move me to the idea that he was ignorant because not very bright; now he’s just a sleazy Chicago machine democrat ward-heeler with an enormous streak of garbage down the middle of his back, underpinned by boundless ambition. I have two dogs who would make better presidents – and are just as qualified – as this twerp.
Yes, when Grandma raised you for so many years, Obama’s recent remarks could be construed as throwing her under the bus. Another way of construing his remarks is to say that they pointed out the existential insecurity of Obama, truly the Man without a Country, without roots. His father abandoned him. As an interracial child from the US living in Indonesia, he had to have felt to some degree that he didn’t belong. He lived 7-8 years not with his mother, but with his grandparents. Whether or not he chose to live with his grandparents instead of with his mother, or whether or not his mother shipped him out, his living away from his mother for so many years indicates a certain amount of alienation of affection between Obama and his mother. My interpretation of Obama’s recent remarks about his grandmother is that he was saying, “Not even with my grandmother did I feel secure.” IOW, Obama’s recent remarks about his grandmother say much more about Obama than they do about his grandmother.
His existential insecurity is one reason, in addition to political expediency, why Obama latched on to Jeremiah Wright. Wright wasn’t just the guy who provided Obama with snooze time on Sunday mornings. Wright was an important person for Obama. Like Grandma, Jeremiah can also be thrown under the bus. OTOH, here Obama was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. After all, people such as myself, who in any event probably wouldn’t vote for Obama, were demanding that Obama throw Wright under the bus.