Shorter NYT: Why Does Obama Walk On Water?

Is it to distract us from the fact that he can't turn it into wine?

The survey suggests that even as the nation crosses a racial threshold when it comes to politics — Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas — many of the racial patterns in society remain unchanged in recent years.

Indeed, the poll showed markedly little change in the racial components of people’s daily lives since 2000, when The Times examined race relations in an extensive series of articles called “How Race Is Lived in America.”

As it was eight years ago, few Americans have regular contact with people of other races, and few say their own workplaces or their own neighborhoods are integrated. In this latest poll, over 40 percent of blacks said they believed they had been stopped by the police because of their race, the same figure as eight years ago; 7 percent of whites said the same thing.

Nearly 70 percent of blacks said they had encountered a specific instance of discrimination based on their race, compared with 62 percent in 2000; 26 percent of whites said they had been the victim of racial discrimination. (Over 50 percent of Hispanics said they had been the victim of racial discrimination.)

"Even after we did this series on how things are fucked up, things are still fucked up." Valid story. Might have been more valid if you as an institution hadn't been spending all your time in the past eight years fellating the people who fucked all this up in the first place, but still, valid story, NYT.

Still, I fail to see where Barack Obama has the responsibility to personally wipe out the existence of racist assholes and simpleminded dittoheads who think the reason they're still not king is that a black dude somewhere woke up this morning.

What was it Jesus said? The closeminded dickheads who hate everybody else for their own miserable failures and blame every minority they see for this one time they got cut off in traffic, you will always have with you? Something like that.

A.

Comments

[pansypoo]

while i don't have any black friends now(mainly when i was grade school age) i did interact with black people yesterday at a resale shop. ok, mostly older lack women. they appear to be humans.

[report from the heartland]

I found that Jesus quote; my great aunt embroidered it on a pillow which I inherited. It's on my fainting couch.

Is Holden on vacay? Because yesterday's presser w/Commander Coo-Coo Bananas needs his commentary badly... and I believe some ponies may be prancing his way...

[aimai]

I totally don't understand why the headline isn't "Despite Obama's best efforts Racist Americans still not able to come to terms with America's history of Racism" and I eagerly await the headline "John McCain's support strongest among racists more frightened of black people than old angry people." Or even, after 400 year history of struggle white americans still not willing to give up their race based identity politics.

aimai

[karen marie]

“I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC.”

the truthfulness of that statement is more important than you may have thought:

"In early July 2008 Senate Republicans voted, with astounding conformity, in favor of the controversial electronic surveillance FISA bill update that was condemned by American civil liberties advocates across a wide range of the US political spectrum; two GOP Senators, John McCain and Jeff Sessions, abstained from voting and so 95.9 % of Republicans voted "aye" on FISA. But there was one specialized subgroup within the Democratic Party that voted with almost as much uniformity in favor of the FISA bill - Senate Democrats who belonged both to the DLC and who were members or "friends" of a shadowy fundamentalist group that's been burrowing, since the Eisenhower years, into the Washington power establishment: The Family."

go read the rest here: http://www.planetaki.com/example/post/4487871?full=true

and then go over to dkos and read troutfishing's posts about "the family": http://troutfishing.dailykos.com/

[karen marie]

"the black commentator" talked to senator obama about his relationship with the DLC, here's the link: http://www.blackcommentator.com/48/48_cover.html

obama said, in part:

"I favor universal health care for all Americans, and intend to introduce or sponsor legislation toward that end in the U.S. Senate, just as I have at the state level."

if he really means this, to me, he would in fact be a water-walker.