D. a friend of mine had recently sent me an article written by a woman, Anne Wortham. She had written a critique of Obama's election and her opinions about it. D. had requested my thoughts on this. I thought I would include my thoughts here. For those that may be interested, you can find Anne Wortham's original writing here: "No He Can't".
Anne is well-spoken, articulate, intelligent and her words definitely has merit.
She also is short-sighted in her critique.
She discusses the basis of why people voted for him and won:
“I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.”
Though she fails to discuss, or even mention those people who did not vote for him, because he was black and/or looked (or didn’t look) like him. Furthermore, I’d like to know where, how, and what the validity percentage was for how she arrived at her conclusion that 94 %… voted for him….because he was black. She has based this theory (and apparently stating it as fact) that the reason that 94% voted FOR Obama…. had to do with appearance (looking like or Not looking like), though she makes no mention of those who voted AGAINST the other contenders…McCain and Paul.
Anne calls attention to the 94% of 12 million blacks voting for Obama. By doing this, she hints that the reason is somehow related to voting by race alignment Though she fails to point out that 55% of the White vote went to….a white candidate.
It’s interesting that though she narrows her view and focuses on this aspect of reasons why Obama was chosen, she fails to mention that McCain won the votes among White Women…53% to 46%. And that too appears to have been a historical ‘triumph’ in the making…
a possible female VP. She omits this exact same dynamic, substituting gender for race. I wonder if McCain had won, if she would have written something in a similar vein, though perhaps from the angle of Gender-ism and not racism?
Do I believe that individual liberty is valued for success of a human life??
Yes I do.
I also do not believe in extremist thinking on either side of the political realm. Recently there was a discussion in a forum I sometimes frequent about if our government should be 'allowed' in the privacy of our own home. One of the posters had included a rather dramatic (read: extreme) scenario of not wanting the government to come in and tell him 'how to raise my child", whether they should have the right to tell him how his children should brush his teeth and for how long they should do that for. I recognize he was trying to prove a point by being dramatic, but the "all-or-nothing" kind of black & white thinking, has got to go. It really does. I don't think the Conservatives and Independents are all wrong. I also don't think the Liberals are all right either.
Anne Wortham is an intelligent African American woman, though that gets clouded a bit when she emphatically announces that she is not
'Race Conscious' in the beginning of her political writing, and then bases the premise of this much web-circulated document on just that...Race, without acknowledging and discussing it as an across the board issue... that "-isms' do indeed exist, even amongst herself.
Intelligent yet short-sighted to not be inclusive of similar dynamics across the board.
And the gentleman questioning the government being in his house and telling him how his children should brush their teeth???
"In your home to watch them brush their teeth?
No.
In your home if you are getting your rocks off on them?
I'd want them in your house and right up close & personal.. IN your face.
Without a doubt."
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“Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled — Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.” ~Barrack Obama© 2009 Greeneyezz
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