SHOCKING Obama words: what he really thinks of white folks

[Snorri1234]

Why don't you try to rationalize the quotes for us? Words have meanings and the meaning is pretty clear. People are sick of the games politicians play when they say one thing and then claim that they meant something completely different and it's not going to fly here.

Still, it couldn't hurt to hear your interpretation of the mentioned quotes...

CONTEXT.

[GabonX]

The problem is that the only way to make these words sound good is to take them out of context..
..far out of context...

[got tonkaed]

to be honest, i think the first two lines show a little bit about some of the ancedotal past he probably did share. It doesnt seem unreasonable to believe that someone his age who had an interest in politics would have been introduce to influences like Malcolm X in his formative years. They probably werent the only influences, but i think its fair to argue there were probably some ideas which did stick. The second quote (if i have them ordered right) is probably something akin to percieving the inequalities of the time period through the lens of race in a mindset that im sure he wasnt the only person to hold. The first quote sounds like a boy who is realizing some of the frictions of coming from a biracial family, which persists to this day in children id be willing to wager.

Now as to the why hes stuck around in churches and associated with people whose influences maybe taken out of context look kinda iffy. I think there is something to be said about the dialogue and the dynamic of non-majority groups, be they oppressed or not. Something akin to being an alternative discourse or oppositional dialetic, i think a lot of times, people who arent as familiar (or proponents with an axe to grind) mess them up. I think the heart of the second quote is someone taking a dream of a world that treats a group of people with some identification with equality and dignity, realizing more indirectly that there is another group which has the coveted position within society. I dont think these sentiments have to be reduced to race, but i think a lot of times its easier because race is something that we can see (or at least claim to be able to) and its something that we know how we feel about. I think a lot of times once someone hits on the intellectual message, which if we assume obama is a smart guy he probably did, the theme is something that sticks with you. A humble distanced observers guess is that there was a fairly complex interrelationship with the themes of race and identity of Obama and some of these places and people along with the themed message that he strongly identified with (as can be evidenced i think by some of his more community level work).

I think that is what a lot of the third quote is. It reminds me of a fair number of writings ive seen from people talking about globalization. The words change and the us and them are different but the idea is essentially the same. There is something different that could be achieved which might be a better alternative and its worth striving for. However, that message is a pretty tricky one to transmit, so it gets brought back to themes that people identify with (race, greedy capitalist overlords, secular imperialists - call them what you will). But as you suggest, it is really hard to take those statements simply as they are without the full context. But though i havent read the book if i had to guess where the second and third quotes come from based on what ive just typed, i would imagine it talks about a coming of age somewhere toward the end of college into early adulthood.

[Snorri1234]

to be honest, i think the first two lines show a little bit about some of the ancedotal past he probably did share. It doesnt seem unreasonable to believe that someone his age who had an interest in politics would have been introduce to influences like Malcolm X in his formative years. They probably werent the only influences, but i think its fair to argue there were probably some ideas which did stick. The second quote (if i have them ordered right) is probably something akin to percieving the inequalities of the time period through the lens of race in a mindset that im sure he wasnt the only person to hold. The first quote sounds like a boy who is realizing some of the frictions of coming from a biracial family, which persists to this day in children id be willing to wager.

Now as to the why hes stuck around in churches and associated with people whose influences maybe taken out of context look kinda iffy. I think there is something to be said about the dialogue and the dynamic of non-majority groups, be they oppressed or not. Something akin to being an alternative discourse or oppositional dialetic, i think a lot of times, people who arent as familiar (or proponents with an axe to grind) mess them up. I think the heart of the second quote is someone taking a dream of a world that treats a group of people with some identification with equality and dignity, realizing more indirectly that there is another group which has the coveted position within society. I dont think these sentiments have to be reduced to race, but i think a lot of times its easier because race is something that we can see (or at least claim to be able to) and its something that we know how we feel about. I think a lot of times once someone hits on the intellectual message, which if we assume obama is a smart guy he probably did, the theme is something that sticks with you. A humble distanced observers guess is that there was a fairly complex interrelationship with the themes of race and identity of Obama and some of these places and people along with the themed message that he strongly identified with (as can be evidenced i think by some of his more community level work).

I think that is what a lot of the third quote is. It reminds me of a fair number of writings ive seen from people talking about globalization. The words change and the us and them are different but the idea is essentially the same. There is something different that could be achieved which might be a better alternative and its worth striving for. However, that message is a pretty tricky one to transmit, so it gets brought back to themes that people identify with (race, greedy capitalist overlords, secular imperialists - call them what you will). But as you suggest, it is really hard to take those statements simply as they are without the full context. But though i havent read the book if i had to guess where the second and third quotes come from based on what ive just typed, i would imagine it talks about a coming of age somewhere toward the end of college into early adulthood.

YOUR WRONG. HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A IFLTHY MUSILM AND HE HATES WHIT POEPLE!

[gdeangel]

The quotes are clearly introspective. I don't think anyone should be defending insularity of groups along racial lines, but I don't think that is what he was saying. I had a long post that described the dilemma of someone, particularly at the formative college age, trying to belong - trying to find an identity (which is what all the stuff about being unsure about how to handle the fact of interracial parents, etc. etc.)

Insular groups drawn up along backward thinking lines that pander to race (from the neo-nazis to the "black table" at the dining hall), or religion (be it fundamentalist Christians or the Muslim Brotherhood), and really I can just sum up my thoughts in 10 words: they do not do us as a society much good. Could that type of racial divide be swept away by an overarching sense of national pride? I posit that has yet to happen through history of mankind setting aside for societies which drew up their national identities along racial or religious lines. And even then it was short lived...

[Frigidus]

Still, it couldn't hurt to hear your interpretation of the mentioned quotes...

Guess you missed that link from earlier. Here, I'll save you the trouble.

# I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites.

This statement comes from the introduction to Dreams from My Father (p. xv), as part of a passage in which Barack Obama spoke of the difficulties of growing up as the child of mixed-race parents. The statement is actually a portion of a parenthetical remark Obama used to explain that people who did not know him well were often surprised to find that he himself was the child of mixed-raced parents (because he looked black, and he no longer made a point of gratuitously mentioning that his mother was white):

[W]hat strikes me most when I think about the story of my family is a running strain of innocence, an innocence that seems unimaginable, even by the measures of childhood. My wife's cousin, only six years old, has already lost such innocence. A few weeks ago he reported to his parents that some of his first grade classmates had refused to play with him because of his dark, unblemished skin. Obviously his parents, born and raised in Chicago and Gary, lost their own innocence long ago, and although they aren't bitter — the two of them being as strong and proud and resourceful as any parents I know — one hears the pain in their voices as they begin to have second thoughts about having moved out of the city into a mostly white suburb, a move they made to protect their son from the possibility of being caught in a gang shooting and the certainty of attending an underfunded school.

They know too much, we have all seen too much, to take my parents' brief union — a black man and a white woman, an African and an American — at face value. When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background (and it is usually a discovery, for I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect I was ingratiating myself to whites), I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am.

# I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.

No such sentence (nor anything close to it) appears anywhere in either Dreams from My Father or The Audacity of Hope. This statement was taken from a March 2007 article about Barack Obama; they are not Obama's own words, but rather those of the article's author (recast in the first person):

In reality, Obama provides a disturbing test of the best-case scenario of whether America can indeed move beyond race. He inherited his father’s penetrating intelligence; was raised mostly by his loving liberal white grandparents in multiracial, laid-back Hawaii, where America’s normal race rules never applied; and received a superb private school education. And yet, at least through age 33 when he wrote Dreams from My Father, he found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against his mother's race.

# There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.

This statement comes from page 142 of Dreams of My Father, as part of a passage in which Barack Obama was being interviewed by a man named Marty Kaufman for a position as a community organizer in Chicago. Kaufman was specifically looking for a black man to work with him, because he was white and needed someone to help him appeal to both sides in a racially polarized city. The statement reproduced above creates a false impression by eliding the ending to the final sentence: Obama makes reference (in his expression of misgivings) to Kaufman's whiteness being a problem, because Kaufman himself had said it was a problem:

I had all but given up on organizing when I received a call from Marty Kaufman. He explained that he'd started an organizing drive in Chicago and was looking to hire a trainee. He'd be in New York the following week and suggested that we meet at a coffee shop on Lexington.

His appearance didn't inspire much confidence. He was a white man of medium height wearing a rumpled suit over a pudgy frame. His face was heavy with two-day-old whiskers; behind a pair of thick, wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes seemed set in a perpetual squint. As he rose from the booth to shake my hand, he spilled some tea on his shirt ...

He ordered more hot water and told me about himself. He was Jewish, in his late thirties, had been reared in New York. He had started organizing in the sixties with the student protests, and ended up staying with it for fifteen years. Farmers in Nebraska. Blacks in Philadelphia. Mexicans in Chicago. Now he was trying to pull urban blacks and suburban whites together around a plan to save manufacturing jobs in metropolitan Chicago. He needed somebody to work with him, he said. Somebody black.

[ ...]

He offered to start me off at ten thousand dollars the first year, with a two-thousand-dollar travel allowance to buy a car; the salary would go up if things worked out. After he was gone, I took the long way home, along the East River promenade, and tried to figure out what to make of the man. He was smart, I decided. He seemed committed to his work. Still, there was something about him that made me wary. A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white — he'd said himself that that was a problem.

# It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.

This sentence appears on page 101 of Dreams of My Father, as part of a long passage in which Barack Obama talked about his time at Occidental College in Los Angeles. It was another expression of a theme touched on in many other sections of the book — the difficulties of being expected to associate oneself with a particular racial heritage, especially for those who came from multiracial backgrounds — prompted by the example of a girl named Joyce, one of Obama's classmates:

She was a good-looking woman, Joyce was with her green eyes and honey skin and pouty lips. We lived in the same dorm my freshman year, and all the brothers were after her. One day I asked her if she was going to the Black Students' Association meeting. She looked at me funny, then started shaking her head like a baby who doesn't want what it sees on the spoon.

"I'm not black," Joyce said. "I'm multiracial." Then she started telling me about her father, who happened to be Italian and was the sweetest man in the world; and her mother, who happened to be part African and part French and part Native American and part something else. "Why should I have to choose between them?" she asked me. Her voice cracked, and I thought she was going to cry. "It's not white people who are making me choose. Maybe it used to be that way, but now they're willing to treat me like a person. No — it's black people who always have to make everything racial. They're the ones making me choose. They're the ones who are telling me that I can't be who I am ..."

They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people ...

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling conventions. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.

But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.

# I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.

This statement is a rewording (two separate sentences have been conflated into one, further changing an intended meaning already obscured by the lack of context) of material from page 220 of Dreams of My Father. The material appears as part of a passage in which Barack Obama describes his profound disappointment in learning (from information provided by his half-sister, Auma) that the lofty image he had held all his life of his role model, his biological father (a man he barely knew, because Barack's father had left him and his mother when Barack was just two years old, and Barack had only seen his father once since then), was a flawed, idealized one.

All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I had later tried to take as my own. The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader — my father had been all those things. All those things and more, because except for that one brief visit in Hawaii, he had never been present to foil the image, because I hadn't see what perhaps most men see at some point in their lives: their father's body shrinking, their father's best hopes dashed, their father's face lined with grief and regret.

Yes, I'd seen weakness in other men — Gramps and his disappointments, Lolo [my adoptive father] and his compromise. But these men had become object lessons for me, men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. And if later I saw that the black men I knew fell short of such lofty standards; if I had learned to respect these men for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my own — my father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!

Now, as I sat in the glow of a single light bulb, rocking slightly on a hard-backed chair, that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced by ... what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost!

# I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

This statement is a rewording of a passage from page 261 of The Audacity of Hope, in which Barack Obama spoke of the importance of not allowing inflamed public opinion to result in innocent members of immigrant groups being stripped of their rights, denied their due as American citizens, or placed into confinement, as was done with Japanese-Americans during World War II. The original contains no specific mention of "Muslims":

In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

[pimpdave]

Wait, so a kid of mixed race had an identity crisis about it?

Sounds like all of my mixed friends. Maybe THEY'RE all radical Muslims too!

Or wait, no. Maybe they're just typical examples of that specific American experience.

GabonX, do yourself a favor, move to a city and meet people who aren't eating fried donuts (now double fried with fried frying sugar!) and listening to Rush Limbaugh all day.

(Edited to correct a typo)

[Snorri1234]

Wait, so a kid of mixed race had an identity crisis about it?

Sounds like all of my mixed friends. Maybe THEY'RE all radical Muslims too!

I bet they are. Quick, go report them to government-officials and they will be sent to guantanomo bay for plotting terrorists attacks.


Also Frigidus, everyone knows Snopes is a site that is controlled by radical, left-wing politicians who are in controll of the lizardmen.

[Frigidus]

Also Frigidus, everyone knows Snopes is a site that is controlled by radical, left-wing politicians who are in controll of the lizardmen.

Well, sure, but I figured I might as well throw out the obvious counterpoint before some negro lover did. WHITE POWER!

[b.k. barunt]

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

"And yet, even as I imagine myself following Malcolm's call, one line in the book stayed with me. He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged."

"Desperate times called for desperate measures, and for many blacks, times were chronically desperate. If nationalism could create a strong and effective insularity, deliver on its promise of self-respect, then the hurt it might cause well-meaning whites, or the inner turmoil it caused people like me, would be of little consequence."

- Barrack Hussein Obama


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI77cU3j ... re=related

It's all there. The New Yorker caricature of Obama may have been intended as satire but for those who listen to the words that come out of his mouth and pay any attention to the kind of company he keeps, it becomes evident that it may not have been so far from the truth. If you doubtthat he said these things click the link and you can hear them in his own voice. If that isn't enough go to a book store and check out Obama's Dreams from My Father.

Heh heh, you sound scared, honky.


Honibaz

[oVo]

John McCain associated with communists after bombing urban targets,
but nobody's taking that out of context and waving it in your face.

[Spuzzell]

To Frigidus: Top stuff, I can't imagine a more complete squash to a stupid thread.

Also, Heavycola made me laugh a bit earlier in the thread, which was nice

Here's my opinion, because you've all been waiting for it.

I don't trust Obama, mainly because I don't understand him. That might be residual racism, or just that I've not read anything from him that actually means anything, or it could be that I see him as Americas Tony Blair, a politician driven solely by opinion polls, with no substantive agenda or plan beyond winning an election.

He and Biden are however, in my opinion, a monumentally better option than Palin and anyone. I don't care if Jesus is the guy on the top of the ticket, Palin shouldn't be allowed within a million miles of a position of authority.

The woman is TERRIFYING. She's Margaret Thatcher on crack, with a rifle and a sense of god-given infallibility.

So, yeah, between a black man I don't understand, and a backwards madwoman I unfortunately do, I'd go for the black man.

[gdeangel]

I see him as Americas Tony Blair, a politician driven solely by opinion polls, with no substantive agenda or plan beyond winning an election.

I think he is a little more like the Democrat version of Richard Nixon.

Also, Palin is not that bad. People have been too swayed by the "shock value" of out of context statements, such as what the OP tried to do here with Obama.

I suggest you take a look at this site: [url]http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm[url] and really dig through what type of record she has. She might say something in speaking to a librarian that books like Harry Potter, if they are really having a negative influence on children, then they could be banned in some collections... well... there are more than a few kids who have been over-sold by Rawling machine and are completely obsessed with it. So what? She is not running around burning books like the media portrays, but nor is she bowing down on any sacred cow issues. I really think that's extraordinary and, combined with her populist viewpoint, a formula for shaking up Washington which has lost touch with the will of the majority of Americans. The only question is whether on not McCain has sold out, or will he still steer the maverick course...

[Ditocoaf]

Why don't you try to rationalize the quotes for us? Words have meanings and the meaning is pretty clear. People are sick of the games politicians play when they say one thing and then claim that they meant something completely different and it's not going to fly here.

Still, it couldn't hurt to hear your interpretation of the mentioned quotes...

No, you don't need an interperetation tacked on to them. You need to read what he said just before and after these paragraphs to understand what he was talking about. To understand that, you would need to read the rest of that chapter. To understand what he was getting at with that chapter, you'd have to read an entire book. To understand the book, you would have to live on planet earth. ...you've read these isolated paragraphs, and you live on earth (presumably)... so why not fill in the gaps and read the book?

[nesterdude]

Wow
I'm seeing a lot of rationalizations for Obama's comments
If a WHITE man said those things about "society" about "race" about "difference" we'd see a very different line of argument.
No Obama isn't a crazy ass fundamentalist black racist bombing mother*(&*
But he does have his views, and his views certainly don't fall in line with mine.
To boot, there are many "I think" "I feel" "Well I believe he meant his"
you don't friggin know, so really, stop your vulgar elucidations right there. It is what it is, please stop rationalizing.
As well, seriously, stop giving the guy a free pass because he's an excellent orator - absolutely superb. Look beyond the words and speaches people, read into them. Evaluate.
Goddam these threads of absolute verbal diarrhea are odorous.
Whew enough rants for one day.
And no troll calling, we're only on page 3.

[Neoteny]

Wow
I'm seeing a lot of rationalizations for Obama's comments
If a WHITE man said those things about "society" about "race" about "difference" we'd see a very different line of argument.
No Obama isn't a crazy ass fundamentalist black racist bombing mother*(&*
But he does have his views, and his views certainly don't fall in line with mine.
To boot, there are many "I think" "I feel" "Well I believe he meant his"
you don't friggin know, so really, stop your vulgar elucidations right there. It is what it is, please stop rationalizing.
As well, seriously, stop giving the guy a free pass because he's an excellent orator - absolutely superb. Look beyond the words and speaches people, read into them. Evaluate.
Goddam these threads of absolute verbal diarrhea are odorous.
Whew enough rants for one day.
And no troll calling, we're only on page 3.

Verbal diarrhea. Obviously.

[pimpdave]

Wow
I'm seeing a lot of rationalizations for Obama's comments
If a WHITE man said those things about "society" about "race" about "difference" we'd see a very different line of argument.
No Obama isn't a crazy ass fundamentalist black racist bombing mother*(&*
But he does have his views, and his views certainly don't fall in line with mine.
To boot, there are many "I think" "I feel" "Well I believe he meant his"
you don't friggin know, so really, stop your vulgar elucidations right there. It is what it is, please stop rationalizing.
As well, seriously, stop giving the guy a free pass because he's an excellent orator - absolutely superb. Look beyond the words and speaches people, read into them. Evaluate.
Goddam these threads of absolute verbal diarrhea are odorous.
Whew enough rants for one day.
And no troll calling, we're only on page 3.

Do you make over $250,000 a year?

No?

You're being manipulated.

Vote Obama/Biden.

[b.k. barunt]

People such as this do not read books - they read paragraphs, and that only when it agrees with their perception of things. But the racist viewpoint is only a variation of the nationalistic flag waver viewpoint - both are inspired and therefore controlled by fear. The powers that be in this country have learned how to manipulate them both. Obama or McCain = two sides of the same fooking coin, so what difference does it make? No matter who wins, changes will be minimal and it will be business as usual. Meet the new boss . . .


Honibaz

[b.k. barunt]

If a WHITE man said those things about "society" about "race" about "difference" we'd see a very different line of argument.

I apologize for double posting, but i just can't let redundant, stereotypical ignorance like this slip by.
"If a white man said . . . "
You incredible ass clown - if you had any idea what a cliche you are, you would slit your wrists.

How the f*ck is a white man going to have a mental/emotional crisis concerning accepting or denying his race? Are you that stooopid? Why would a white man even address such an issue? But wait! Hmm, you know you might actually have something there - you sir, have made me ashamed to be a white man, and now i shall deny my race. I hate all you honky mofos.


Honibaz

[heavycola]

I take offense to the notion that because I bother to investigate a candidate, something which very few Obama supporters are willing to do for fear of what they may find, somehow makes me a racist.

I take it that your investigations included reading the book from which these quotes were taken?
Sorry, of course you haven't. Why bother with actual primary source material to 'investigate this candidate' when youtube only takes 5 minutes, panders comfortably to your prejudices and doesn't involve any pesky reading of words over three syllables?

This does not represent any great love of obama, more a rejection of the sort of idiots who buy this crap without thinking. That video was made by people a lot cleverer than you.

[Nobunaga]

... BHO made his living as a "racist" before running for state office. I use quotes because it was pandering more than true belief. He worked for Chicago unions through ACORN.

... Do some research, people: ACORN, Obama, Voter Fraud, Unions, etc... Racism these days is nothing but politics / vote-grabbing. The stupid electorate means it works (for both sides).

...

[jay_a2j]

People do your country a favor, support neither of the two candidates. Vote 3rd party. It is the ONLY way to change things.

[Dancing Mustard]

Good old Nobunagger, always sharing his views... Y'know, I bet he's a man who knows how important it is to get the blacks out.


Big up to Nobunagger, talking sense and clarity since 1312. Fo' Shiz.

[jiminski]

Free Wales!

[comic boy]

Free Wales!

The Orca or Taffy version ?