I shocked my white friends when I voted for Al Sharpton in the last presidential primary. He has a pretty colorful background. I did it because he was loudmouthed about the right issues at the time. Race was not an issue in his platform. Of course he didn’t have a hope. But I wanted to send a message and show there was support for those views against the Iraq invasion, in favor of universal healthcare, economic recovery, protection of our social security, etc. This primary, I voted for Hillary. When the Obama campaign started slinging the label of racist at Bill Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary et al (people who have worked hard for civil rights for decades) he lost my vote. It was slander IMHO. I hate that his campaign stooped to this ploy to energize the black vote and turn them against people they have supported for years. What short term memories the voters have. Yes, I was angry when Hillary voted in favor of the right to invade Iraq. But she explained her reasoning on that vote. That the mere ability to invade is often used a signal to leaders like Hussein to smarter up or face consequences. She didn’t expect Bush to exercise that right. When Bush invaded, Hillary immediately came out fiercely against the war. If candidates stick to issues they get my vote. When they infuse the presidential race with false drama to win, they lose it.

This event reminds me of the headlines years ago after Shana Alexander allegedly made an anti-Semitic remark at a dinner party in the Hamptons: ‘Oh my God, there are anti-Semites in New York’s polite society! Lord knows, New York is Skokie in disguise.Who knew?’ Yet another epiphany! By the way, if that woman at the “fancy schmancy” dinner party ANNOUNCED her bigotry, then it was something of a public statement. Why, then, didn’t anyone ask her why she felt this way? You’re reporters. Correct? I am too, and I know that it is possible to ask anyone just about anything if you frame the words and the tone of a question the right way. That would have been useful because until you understand the cause of a disease—bigotry—you don’t know how to even begin to cure it. The late Carolyn Goodman, the mother of slain civil rights worker Andrew Goodman and one of my heroes, went to Mississippi, where Andrew was murdered, to try to understand the psychological underpinnings of hate. With an understanding of it, hard work over many decades, she was even more effective in her battle against prejudice. She didn’t waste time quoting bigots, to no useful end, who said this or that at a dinner party. Believe me, with her deep intelligence and humanity, she would have figured a way, with her usual grace, to find out why someone said such an ugly thing in order to remedy such thinking. Obama’s campaign is about finding commonalities, not divisions, between people. Quoting some nameless bigot at a “fancy schmancy” dinner party violates this spirit. There is always a way to bring people together. After her son’s death, Carolyn Goodman went back to school to get a Master’s and Doctorate in Psychology. She set up a center at Maimonides Hopital for unwed mothers. The purpose: to help them avoid abusive behaviors toward their children. One woman was particularly difficult, really angry, and Carolyn tried to reach her, to no avail. “How can you, a rich white lady, know about my pain?” she would say all the time. One day about a year later the woman noticed a memorial book for Andrew on the bookshelf in Carolyn’s office. “Did you know Andrew Goodman?” she asked. “Yes,” said Carolyn. “He was my son.” From that day forth she became a lifelong friend. Carolyn was right: everyone is reachable.

Lesley seems to be implying that liberals can’t be racists or that she is shocked that racism could be on display in a mostly liberal setting. Being a liberal does not exclude one from being a racist. That is as much a myth as the popularly held notion that all conservatives/republicans are racists/bigots/homophobes. I assure you, my family and I have experienced just as much or even more racism in predominately liberal areas—NYC, Philly, San Francisco, or name any college campus, from so-called liberals, as we have in what is considered predominately conservative small town USA. Anyone can be racist, hiding behind an ideology won’t change that.

excuse my typos

IBD Editorials Bashers Beware By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, May 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT The Presidency: It takes little courage — or brains — to join the mob vilifying President Bush. But the Democrats (and Republicans, too) depicting him as villain will one day regret it. Read More: Election 2008 In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today’s bad weather. Barack Obama plans to reach the White House by claiming the presidency of Sen. John McCain would amount to a third Bush term. McCain, meanwhile, seems to think it a wise campaign strategy to highlight his differences with the president, such as outgreening the greens on global warming. Rep. Tom Davis, former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, reflected the panic engulfing many Republicans in Congress last week when he called President Bush “absolutely radioactive” and warned, “They’ve got to get some separation from the president” if they want to win this November. How about a dose of reality? On the economy, there are indications the sun is coming out after a fairly mild economic storm. More data are showing a recession will be avoided, and it looks like a new bull market in stocks began in March after a short and shallow bear. The report earlier this month of 20,000 jobs lost in April was far better than had been expected, and unemployment remains low at 5%. There is undeniably a lot of gloom and doom out there, with the Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index at a 26-year low. But the National Association for Business Economics announced Monday that it expects the current downturn to be mild and brief. NABE “anticipates a significant pickup in the second half” with real GDP for 2009 projected to be 2.9%. It may not even classify this downturn as a recession at all. For the resilience of this economy, we can thank the president. He pushed substantial tax cuts on income and investment through Congress, which were followed by four years of growth, generating over 8 million jobs. The president also can be thanked for appointing Ben Bernanke, chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, to succeed Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chief. Bernanke has moved on several fronts to keep the economy afloat — including creatively making more credit available to combat the subprime mortgage crisis. As for national security, Obama keeps saying the war in Iraq and the rest of the administration’s foreign and defense policy have, as he put it last week in South Dakota, “prevented us from making this country safe.” But the country is safer than anyone expected after 9/11. There has not been a single terrorist attack on the homeland, and we have instead foiled multiple terrorist plots to kill innocent Americans. America has succeeded in foiling these plots because Bush gave the National Security Agency the authority to monitor any and all communications of suspected terrorists, by telephone, e-mail or other means. The president also gave authorization for the CIA to employ tough interrogation methods on terrorists in custody, to the extent of transporting those detainees to secret locations abroad. As we have prevented the terrorists from taking their jihad to the U.S., we have taken the global war on terror to the terrorists’ home soil. We have given Muslims in the Middle East the opportunity for freedom in Iraq, proving that we are willing to spill our blood and expend our own resources to defend our interests as we promote their liberty. When faced with the entire Washington establishment demanding an end to the war — including his own father’s secretary of state, James Baker — President Bush stuck to his guns, placed a new general in charge and employed a surge strategy that is now winning the war in Iraq in resounding fashion. This is the supposed albatross Republicans are so intent on distancing themselves from and which Democrats believe to be the key to victory in November. The facts of the last seven years tell a different story.

Bean: Some individuals do prolong their quarrels beyond any reason for quarreling because in many cases the quarrel has become their life, their definition of who they are. Now–––back to the thread at hand. Racism in the United States is “like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill, but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure.” George M. Fredrickson This is an apt metaphor and I say to the lady at the party: I am sad, sick, and furious at your illness and how I would like to dunk your head in that rich dessert just for some good laughs around the table. Alas, I control myself.

Racism is not our biggest problem. It is a symptom but the problem is xenophobia, and the way we “code” a group and then distance ourselves from them. The only way through this is through this. There are no easy fixes, answers, pills, or solutions. Race is one coding; sex another; sexual orientation another; age, another; ability/disability, another. We each have people in our lives who we look at, often with feelings that are difficult, and say, “I’m not LIKE you.” And then use that as an excuse to exclude, treat badly, or whatever. Homeless folks are now a new group so coded. They’re too much trouble, so we just don’t deal with them. “Crazy people?” Okay to avoid them, etc. Race is one that people speak of constantly constantly constantly in terms of black and white and I will turn blue pointing out that we are excluding Asian people from this discussion virtually always. On and on it goes. There is only one way to deal with people to avoid this, and that is to treat each individual according to a set of principles that you live by. If you don’t have them or know what they are, that’s not my responsibility. I certainly have mine, and the ghost of my ancestors sitting on my shoulder to tell me when I’ve violated them. Reducing the question of equality to one of race does not serve the greater question of equality for EVERY person regardless of race creed color religion national origin or ANY other coding we can come up with. Should we individually be selective about who we spend our time with? Doncha think?