Obama’s speech in Philadelphia has me thinking and what it has me thinking is “How dare he?” He is totally detached from the world I live in and it shows. If I remember it was Obama who was in trouble, but this is what Obama says in his speech:
“But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table”
Sorry Barack, but I just don’t buy it. I’m really supposed to believe that there is this resentment bubbling up in the African-American community towards white America. I’m supposed to accept that there is some deep seeded feeling of being a victim of prejudice that African-Americans feel? I’m sorry I don’t buy it. Don’t try deflecting your problems by deflecting it towards all blacks. You really think Condaleeza Rice feels that way? I don’t.
“a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”
Oh puh-lease. White people don’t feel this way. We know that everybody is equal and we relish our black friends. Nobody in the white community feels that way either. There was a show about 20 years ago starring Bill Cosby about a family called the Huxtables. They were true to their blackness and frequently had jazz musicians over to visit, but they were also very well asimilated into mainstream American culture. That is what we can all aspire to.
Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord, why dont we?
We all know that people are the same where ever we go
There is good and bad in evryone,
We learn to live, we learn to give
Each other what we need to survive together alive.