The March 14-18 national Gallup survey of 1,209 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters gave Clinton, a New York senator, a 49 percent to 42 percent edge over Obama, an Illinois senator. The Clinton’s new lead over Obama might be the results of the recent revelation and stain caused by Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Some American voters suggest that Obama should have completely disowned and disassociated himself with Rev’ Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. But Obama clearly answered and defined his position in his recent race speech, “A More Perfect Union”.
My suggestion is that Obama in order to continually redefine his position and reclaim his lead and eventually win in the general election as President of the United States, he needs a new creative and strong PR, to produce a new TV and radio ad and run it in all the TV and radio networks so that his message can again penetrate and engrave in the minds of the voters and that may help him recapture and regain his voters and supporters and bolster his candidacy.
The media in recent weeks have been consistently focused on this issue of race and religion and that has helped trigger some of Obama supporters to question his patriotism.
There’s no doubt that Obama is the best candidate for the presidency of the United States. In politics so as in life, there are and will always be those who are willing and ready to do anything at any cost to jeopardize even at the cost of causing pain and infliction to someone or someone’s family in order to achieve their objection of causing and trigger confusion and disbelief in the minds of the supporters.
Thus, the Obama campaign needs to reengineer and reinforce what Obama has eloquently stated in his speech through new TV and radio ads across all the networks around the country.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.
Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.
This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.
This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.
Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.
This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.
And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.
On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.
But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.
As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.
Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way
But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:
“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”
That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.
But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination – where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.
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. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, 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.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.
This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs – to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.
Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.
The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
Today, Barack Obama walked up to the podium in Philadelphia, PA, and he looked the American people in their eyes, straight on, unashamed, and undeterred, and gave the speech of his life, the best unifying and hope-giving speech I’ve heard in my lifetime. He rebuffed the critics on the Rev. Wright’s speech, and he confronted racism, gender, hatred, and unsavory religion rhetoric in America.
The speech was direct, the message was powerful, and his honesty is lucid. I especially like how he directly responded to the critics in regard to Rev. Wright when he said; “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my own white grandmother.” Brilliant!
This time it is clear, Obama is the perfect choice for the next President of the United States. So all you great Philadelphians, when you go to the polls on April 22nd, don’t make the same mistake the Ohioans made on March 4th, this time all you confused democrats, republicans, and undecided independents, make sure to vote Obama and let’s wrap this thing up, quick. Barack is the clear unifier of our country.
This is a true history in the making. So, make it count!
History is being written and re-written right before our very own eyes and if you are denying it simply because of his race and color of his skin, then you’re denying yourself the gift of being part of it.
During the days and times of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, John F. Kennedy, Mohandas Gandhi and other great personalities, those of us who were not yet born or were too young to know it, experience it, hands-on feel it, literally see it with our very own eyes, and hear it with our own ears, now have a chance to live and re-live it, feel it, see it, hear it, and not just stand on the side line, but being part of it, and that’s the new voice, the fresh wind which is currently blowing from the East to West, South to North parts of the United States, the cultural phenomenon of the son of man, Barack Obama.
There are times when I just wished I was part of the Martin Luther King Jr’s and or Mohandas Gandhi’s movement, but I was not yet born, but now, when my children and grand-children, and great-grand-children will ask me; “dad or grandpa, how was it, when Barack Obama became the first African American President of the United States in the history of the U.S.?”
Then I would like to tell them everything, how since he stepped up on the podium in 2004 during the Democratic national convention, when the majority of the Americans and the world didn’t know anything about him or have never heard the name Barack, for the first time for the whole US to get to know him, hear his eloquent voice and speech, his vivid passion, and the gift to capture and captivate all those who hear him speak.
Barack Obama is the real deal today; he’s the voice that cries out in the desert, the vision, and the deliverer. He’s today’s cultural phenomenon.
But I am richly blessed and passionately grateful, because I was part of the movement and the history that ended the South African Apartheid movement. I didn’t just stand on the sideline, but just like most of us then, in Namibia and South Africa, was part of it.
I was part of the history when Nelson Mandela was released from the Robben Island prison; I was part of the history when Sam Nujoma arrived back in Windhoek from many years in exile. Now, I am richly blessed again to being part of the Barack Obama’s phenomenal movement in the U.S. and around the world.
Where would you be? Go out and vote, be part of it, let your vote be counted and be part of the historical movement.
Listening to Barack Obama, son of man, speaking live is probably the closest someone like me, someone who was too young or perhaps not yet born to getting to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks live.
Obama’s eloquent voice full of passion, warmth, honest, caring, faith and hope for America and the world resonates in every fiber of every being.
I am very fortunate to be here, right now, and watch and listen to this great man, Mr. Barack Obama, and not just a bench warmer, but as a doer for a new change.
The new flame, the fresh and soothing air of change is blowing right now from east to west, north to south, and this new fresh air is Barack Obama.
Barack Obama is definetely the new definition of passion, integrity, hope, faith, and belief for the American dream.
One of these candidates might be our next president or may be not.
My question is who might be more pro-small business, someone who Wall Street can cheer for?
I like Romney, probably because of his entrepreneurial spirit. In short, Romney is a former CEO of Bain & Company and the co-founder of Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm. And I am a big fan of Bain Capital.
But me being a democrat; I am divided between Clinton and Obama.
When Bill was president, almost everyone was smiling to the bank, amid that he came to power when Bush Sr. had everything screwed up, and when Clinton left the office, he had had balanced the budget, and the deficit was in control. Although most people believe that Hillary was mostly responsible for helping Bill accomplish all of those.
So, does Hillary have the it factor? I think she does, she will be a great president, perhaps better than her husband, but then she sometimes has that illustrious funny smirk on her face, that makes you think that she’s saying one thing but then actually she may mean something else.
Obama; he’s a fresh face in Washington. His ideas are commendable, and him being against civilian guns, etc, I agree with him. I too believe that civilians should be limited to carying guns. I don’t carry or own a gun, and I have never carried, owned or fired a gun, and I want to stay that way.
If civilians were limited to stringent gun control, then these treacherous accidents like the Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Nebraska Mall, and many other unreported gun shootings may not be happening.
So, if I could vote for two candidates, I would vote for Hillary and Obama, but since that can’t happen, given all his stance on many different issues, I’d vote for Obama.
In the United States, racism has been merely historically defined and accepted only by certain individuals and groups as a distinct and complete separation between whites and blacks, with the belief that all white people are intrinsically superior to all blacks, anywhere, but the real and always has been hidden racial separation can now be intrinsically seen, felt and observed among black Americans towards black Africans in America.
U.S. Senator Barack Hussein Obama, the only African American male in the U.S. senate, who when he ran for and won the seat in the U.S. senate in November 2004, he was seen by many African Americans as the glory black-knight with the shining rescuing armor, a dream in the making, and a breakthrough in the United States politics.
Not only that he has become the most caring, charming, and distinctive black representative in the U.S. Senate for the state of Illinois, but as the first and only black male in the U.S. senate, he was seen by many as the true representative of all the black people in the U.S. senate.
However, because Obama was born to a black Kenyan father and to an American mother, who’s white, as a candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, most African Americans do not really perceive him as being black enough, not because his mother is white but simply because his father is an African, born and raised in Africa, or the jungle as most refer to it.
The racial separation between black Americans and black Africans in America can be clearly and visibly observed, felt and experienced anywhere in most areas in America, where most black Americans seem to honestly reject the notion of completely associating with black Africans in America in terms of having personal relationships such as marriages, dating, and business partnerships.
It’s just as hard finding a black African male dating or married to an African American woman, as it’s rare finding an African American woman, dating or married to a black African man. But you’ll find most African men and women dating or married to white men or women in America, one example as that of Barack’s father.
If going to most historical black colleges in the US, you can clearly observe a great social separation between black American students and black African students. They only mostly socialize in classes and cafeterias, but they rarely talk to each other. You would find black African students sitting on one side and black American students playing or sitting on the other side either in Cafeterias or during many social events. While at most integrated colleges, most black African students rather associate and mingle with white students instead of black American students.
One can easily conclude that Africans are the one who isolate themselves and try to separate themselves away from black Americans, but most black Africans get tired of being labeled and mocked at and making fun of such as, as an African whether you sleep under a tree back in Africa, or have seen and chased lions and tigers, or have an electricity and phones in Africa, et cetera.
Most African Americans don’t even know the difference whether Africa is a continent or a country, and most of them still think that Africa is a country; they don’t know that Africa is just a continent composed of many different independent countries such as Egypt, Morocco and South Africa, etc.
Also, it’s just funny how some news media make a distinction when reporting about something that might has happened in Africa. They rather say South Africa, Morocco or Egypt when reporting something that has happened in those countries and would simply refer to other countries in Africa as Africa instead of mentioning the individual countries’ names such as Namibia, Tanzania, Malawi, etc.
In the movie, Coming to America (1988), starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, which depicts two young men from Africa who travel to America for Prince Akeem of Zamunda, accompanied by his friend Semmi, to look for the love of his life. In that movie, one can see the true stereotype of how most black Americans really treat Africans, even today.
Although Barack Obama is an American by birth, many black Americans still perceive him as not a complete African American enough, thus most black Americans rather support Hillary Clinton. And this is not based on Barack’s campaign platform or belief or experience, issues, etc., but mostly because of his national origin, being a half black African and white American, and not a fully blooded African American per se. So, in the case of African Americans supporting more of Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama, it is not by mistakes but just an old trend and true stereotype of how most black Americans do not cling to Africans.
But the tribalism and racism among Africans is not something new. It’s an old practice that dates back even before the age of slavery and or African occupation by white people. For hundreds of years, Africans have been waging war against each other, kings versus kings, tribes against tribes, and nations against other nations, bloody killing each other in hundreds and millions. And this is still going on in many different countries in Africa today, such as in Darfur, Sudan, Congo, etc.
Racism among black people does not merely begin with white people or the slavery, but has been going on for centuries and it is still growing strong. The only difference is that the world outside Africa doesn’t really care nor has really honestly ever cared to help end the misery and put a stop to what’s happening in Africa when coming to violence and civil wars.
Many countries in Africa have gained independence over 40 or 60 years ago from their colonizers. And no matter how rich the African continent is, in terms of mining, agricultural and wildlife, Africans are still dead-suffering, simply because of their ignorance to put aside their tribal and racial differences and work together for the sake of making their life better, healthier, happier and productive.
As for this nasty and filthy separation between black Americans and black Africans in America, this just goes way back to how Africans used to live and still live among each other today, no matter where they are, they fight each other, kill each other, and hurt each other. And at front of it all; it’s humanity crisis, the loud cry of parentless, poor, and AIDS stricken children in Africa is heard throughout the nights, every night, but sadly, no one is listen to any of them. The world does not care.
As in America, you’ll find black gangs and drug dealers, selling each other stupid and deadly poisons such as cracks, cocaine, etc., in almost every city in America, prisons and in many different institutions, where black fights against each other. No wonder there’re beer houses and gun shops in almost every corner of every black suburb in America, just so they can destroy and kill each other for good, just as it always has been, in Africa.
So it’s true that you can take an African out of Africa, but you cannot take Africa out of an African, even here in America. And before you shake your head in disgust, there’s still and will always be Africa in all of us.
The question is; how far can this go on, and when is enough is enough?
It was reported that Michelle Obama, the wife of Senator Barack Obama, has made a comment yesterday; “Iowa will make the difference,” she said. “If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, it is just a dream. If we win Iowa then we can move to the world as it should be. And we need your help in making that happen” (Yahoo! News).
The Obama camp quickly played down and tried to distance itself from her comment, saying that; “they were making it clear that they were optimistic about their chances in Iowa but didn’t consider it essential that they win.”
In a September 2007 interview with Glamour magazine, Michelle Obama reveals that, “her husband, Barack, is so ’snore-y and stinky’ when he wakes up in the morning that their daughters won’t crawl into bed with him” (New York Times Blog).
Mrs. Obama is a Harvard Law School graduate, and as such, one would expect nothing but class from the possible future First Lady of the United States of America, but with a mouth like that, without limiting herself to what or what not to say, what kind of a First Lady could she possible be?
Rumor has it that Oprah has a big crush on Obama. So, could have Oprah, as Mrs. Oprah Obama, the First Lady, been a better reflection and an asset for the Barack Obama’s presidential campaign instead of the outspoken Michelle?
Sometimes, we may say certain things, hoping that we’re helping but sometimes, we might be actually far from that. Like President Bush, perhaps Michelle should get herself someone to teach her some etiquettes of public speaking in terms of what might be appropriate to say and not.
Michelle Obama, as the wife of Barack Obama, the democrat presidential hopeful, a greater reflection is constantly beamed upon her, and obviously everything that she does or say is severely scrutinized, and for that, perhaps limiting her public appearance for the time being might be the best choice for the Obama camp.
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