I just watched Eric Michael Dyson on The Today Show insist that the dislike of President Obama was based on a "fear of a black president and a fear of a black planet."
Please.
Dyson makes a good point earlier when he says that you don't ask the abuser to assess the improvement in treatment of the abused, you ask the victim.
Unfortunately, in this case, the abused only sees the world through a single narrative: abuse. And when you see everything as abuse, there's no alternative.
I'm here to provide one, and to point out how absolutely non-racist this is.
The vociferous opposition to the current presidential policies is no less loud, energetic, or appropriate than was the Code Pink-inspired anti-war protests of 2005-2006 after the Kerry-Bush election.
(Once that election had been lost, the partisan poles of the political spectrum targeted 2006 mid-terms as time to try and take Congress. Unfortunately for the Republicans, 2006 was a very bad year in Iraq, and their party took a beating at the polls because of their association with the President.) The 2006 elections were about Iraq. Between 2006 and 2008, though, Iraq stabilized, and the economy tanked, and the 2008 election was no longer about overseas (mis)adventures. Instead, we were talking about the economy.
And the discussion of the economy
never had the narrative of "black man seeks to impose socialism on America".
Instead, the narrative was "Democratic policies from Congress will get an enabler of Obama is elected in 2008".
You see, the bulk of the issues around which the opposition has coalesced existed before Barry O became "President Obama". They existed when Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took control of Congress, and persist now that Congress knows that there's not a rubber-stamp veto waiting for them at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to housing policies that include the government propping up house prices when the market is correcting 5 years of over-valuation.
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to shifts in strategic approach to overseas wars when the result is to change rules of engagement that are already endangering American lives.
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to changes being promoted as "health care reform" that are actually "health insurance reform" and fail to address any underlying systemic problems, but instead install another permanent layer of government on top of an already bloated and broken system.
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to federal control of education standards (note: this has squat to do with the President's speech to schoolchildren, with which most people I know had -zero- problem).
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to continued funding for a community organizing group that has turned in tens of thousands of fraudulent voter registrations and was being given a prominent role in the census.
Race is
not a determining factor in opposition to any form of immigration reform that rewards illegal behavior.
Race is
only a determining factor for those who fail to see the world through any narrative
other than race. Dyson has been trained from birth by the Sharptons, Jacksons, and Clyburns of the world to scream "race" as soon as anyone disagrees with a black man's idea. That does a great disservice to the black man, in that it says, in short, that their ideas are not worthy of intellectual discussion. It's sad, and pathetic, and never moves out national narrative forward when a large minority refuses to engage in an issue-driven discussion because they can always scream "race!" at the first person who disagrees, and everyone will put their heads down, and shuffle along a bit faster without bothering to investigate whether or not the "race" accusation is legit, never mind continuing the discussion that first sparked the accusation.
Dyson has set the political narrative in this country back about 30 years, and Maureen Dowd's recent column on Joe Wilson has put an 'acceptable' white face on the bogus accusations. These discussions happen to be led by a President who is 50% black. But they also happen to be led by a man who is making political decisions with which people disagree, no matter what color the skin of the man (or woman) promoting them. After all, it's not like people are swallowing what Reid and Pelosi are selling, either, and they're pretty damn white. The political disagreements we're having did not suddenly materialize when there was a black face in the Oval Office promulgating them. The disagreements have gone back decades, but even more recently, they predate Obama's challenge for the Presidency, and they manifested themselves very directly in the 2006-2008 Congressional sessions when Pelosi and Reid were calling the shots, with nary a black face among them. Hard to disagree with other white people on racist grounds - a fact that Dyson would do well to notice.
This is about politics, pure and simple. And to assign "race" as the narrative through which we are to discuss it is disingenuous and shows a lack of intellectual depth ont he part of the accusers.
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