Obama’s New America
November 6, 2008
And the same old, same old
American voters saw a black man walking toward them on the street and did not put their heads down or turn the other way. They joined him, made him their leader and followed him forward into history.
This is the New America of Barack Obama. And it’s about time. The historical references to slavery and Dr. King provide the gravitas, but what put Obama over on Tuesday night is the dominance of American pop culture and the young (and young at heart) who feed on it.
From music to sports (especially basketball), from television to movies, our pop culture and our black stars have prepared us all for this day. Black pop essentially neutralized black pathology with all its stereotypes and paved the way for youthful, suburban voters to respond accordingly.
There was no reason to fear the Bradley effect. How could an American electorate be racist after being on a first-name basis for years with Oprah, Denzel or Weatherman Al? How can one not be honest about race and still dream of a Halle Berry, cheer for a Kobe or hum a Jay-Z tune? When Maureen Dowd quoted Jay-Z, I knew America was ready for a black president, and not just someone like Dennis Haysbert who played one on 24.
Now we don’t have to settle like we did in 1998, when black writer Toni Morrison declared Bill Clinton “America’s first black president.” Hey, that’s like celebrating Vanilla Ice. Mr. Obama is for real.
Asian Americans may have had trouble with Obama initially, but only because of generational differences, not because of race. Many APAs were reluctant supporters out of loyalty to the Clintons. But when Clinton Cabinet member and APA political godfather Norm Mineta threw his support to Obama, I knew that eventually even die-hard Clintonites would follow.
In the end, add the bad economy, the war and Bush incompetence, and why wouldn’t you give a smart person of color the chance to save us all. Obama was like us—the model minority.
Bigotry still won on Tuesday
But let’s not get carried away. On the same night, American voters in California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas saw two people of the same sex walking down the street with a baby carriage and decided to nuke them to kingdom come.
The electorate giveth and the electorate taketh away. It’s gratifying that we can say a person of color can rise from nothing and get elected president in our great country of minorities. But it’s sickening to say in the same breath that a same-sex couple are still second-class citizens in America.
That’s what tempers the historical significance of the big Obama victory. The bigotry of America hasn’t evaporated and disappeared. The emphasis has shifted. And in the case of constitutional amendments, the bigotry will shortly begin to calcify.
I know an Asian American couple that married before Tuesday. It’s not clear what recourse, if any, they or any of the 18,000 same-sex couples (who legally were married before the vote) will have if California’s Prop 8 wins and bans gay marriage.
But for now, Prop 8 prevents us from overstating the Obama victory as much as we’d like. The “new day in America” exists only for some, not all. Election Night still leaves too many brothers and sisters behind.
A Little Perspective and David Chiu
Eight years ago, at the Democratic Convention held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Barack Obama had just lost a congressional race in Illinois, had his credit card rejected for a rental car and couldn’t even get a floor pass credential. Washed up, right?
I was covering that convention and thought Al Gore was our future. At the time, I was the webcasting exec at grassroots.com, an internet startup intent on changing politics using the Web. We were ahead of our time and technology. I was a podcaster before there was an iPod. But I did work with some great people, including David Chiu.
On Tuesday, Chiu won a tremendous victory in a real grassroots campaign — the District 3 Supervisor race in San Francisco. He handily outpaced, among others, a son of a former mayor and two Asian American Chinatown notables, Claudine Cheng and Wilma Pang.
This election cycle, I focused mostly on Obama and Prop 8 because I decided those were the most important races. But I did admire David’s skillful local campaign, which confirms for me that he’ll be a player in City politics for a long time to come.
In many ways, Chiu is Obama-like. He’s a well-educated person of color (Harvard College and Harvard Law), and a smart idealist on a mission. He’s also a Red Sox fan from Hingham, Mass., who came into a very Asian American city to put down his roots and make his name.
It’s very similar to how Obama picked the black population on Chicago’s South Side to build his street cred. I wasn’t sure if David would go over with the provincial Asian American voters in his district, especially with Cheng and Pang in the race. But Chiu allied himself with current San Francisco kingmaker, Supervisor Chris Daly, and smoked them all in the end.
But I do find the Daly connection troublesome, especially after Daly led the orchestrated decimation of what was a community institution South of Market: the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center. My hope is that David is smart enough and brave enough to stay independent of Daly.
If he does, David’s practical yet progressive sense will serve him and the people of The City well. And then there’s no telling how far a young, ambitious Asian American politico can go in Obama’s New America.
……….
Clarification: At press time, David Chiu had declared victory based on his popular vote lead. The SF Department of Elections has yet to complete its final ranked-choice count. No candidate in District 3 received 50 percent of the vote.
For updates, more on Sarah Palin, Prop 8 and local races, check out the blog at amok.asianweek.com.
E-mail: emil@amok.com.
Comments
30 Responses to “Obama’s New America”
Got something to say?
And this wasn’t about electing a historic black guy over a crazy old guy and her church lady jr sidekick? One kid at my church remarked “I lived when they elected the first black president”. Well I just lived through it and all I have to say is “God Help America”.
Too bad only wacky right wingers worry about going to a church that preaches God D—- America, a wife who was proud for the first time, working with a retired terrorist and wife that met with the Viet Cong leader while Mac was in prison, or went to a send-off for a professor who was an apologist for the palestinean terrorists that inspired Al Queda. Maybe now it will be safe for him to go back to Trinity and Wright, and for us to mention his middle name and start celebrating and adding “first son of two muslim fathers who grew up enrolled in school as a muslim” to his resume for whatever good that does us in dealing with the muslim world.
Congratulations to America and African Americans in particular for creating and electing such a charismatic and skillful politician, but be careful what you wish for when he raises corporate and high income tax rates, not to mention cap and trade and starts that 80% global CO2 reduction thing he promises, and the economy continues to head toward ruin.
Republicans and conservatives lost pretty big, but the popular vote was only down 5%, closer than most polls, and a substantial 1:2 minority backed McCain, including over half of the Vietnamese from both sides. If McCain and Palin or whomever he picked had done everything right, (like that would ever happen…) if the banks and stocks didn’t implode, and if Obama let only a few more gaffes slip about redistributive change that made the public curious about the Marxist roots that underlie not only his world view but that of many of supporters who also don’t mind working with former marxists and terrorists, it might have been different.
Enjoy your new president, you asked for change, and boy folks, we are going to get it.
As for Proposition 8, it’s not about equal rights or bigotry. It’s about the definition of marriage, and it took judges who pulled gay marriage out a constitutional hat that never stated you could marry two men or two women to make the people have to effectively pass the same message TWICE to make it stick. As for bigotry, 70% of blacks supported Prop 8 vs. about half of whites, but then blacks can’t be racist. If you were to get the judges to decide that polygamy was in the constitution, THEN you might get a few fundamentalist mormons on your side, but I doubt that would ever happen.
Nobody would dispute the historical significance of Obama’s win to the presidency. People from all over the world, not just Americans, are applauding what just a few years ago was deemed impossible. And then it happened.
But for Emil to say there is still a lot of bigotry just because Californians voters voted against gay marriage is
preposterous. Since 73% of black Americans voted against it, will he now have the courage to call them as
bigots? Emil, you cannot have it both ways. Tolerance, like freedom, has its limits. You cannot invoke discrimination under the guise of seeking equal rights
simply because the vast majority of Americans know what marriage is, not what you and your homosexual friends demand everybody to redefine.
It’s not only California that has upheld for the umpteenth time the meaning of marriage, but Arizona and Florida as well. Prior to this election, 41 states already have a ban on gay marriage.
I know you are a liberal, Emil, but it’s your audacity in calling those who don’t agree with your values that makes you the real bigot. You ought to be embarrassed for your phony moral superiority. You are not above others, and I hope you realize that. Shame!
awarthur:
Gee, I had decided NOT to rub it in, but your unbearable public, well, you’re “published” are you not>, AND less than “reason”able, forget “reasoned, pronunciamentos make a liar out of me once more.
I can’t begin to counter your fractals, but your half=assed reduxes of slanguage and “cultural” takes are, shall we say?, laughable if not downright hilarious.
Not that that’s any score here.
The only score that matters is the obvious fact that you are as “out of touch” as your “Mac,” something your church lady apparently suss’d during her hijinks in the campaign. And even if she didn’t know “Africa” wasn’t a “country,” she HAD to know she was chained to a has=been wannabe, whatever his status of “hero.”
On the other hand, I truly hope you are “right” about “getting” the Obama we voted for. What worries me is the opposite.
No, Art, apparently you have emigrated, immigrated?, to a nation that is no longer bombing or Agent Oranging your compadres, red or blue, and you will have to live with it.
At least for the next four years?
frank
P.S.: I will say this for you, you’re irredentist.
L. Gonzales:
Et tu, Gonzales?
It is increasingly obvious how “the Church” has won Prop. 8.
In a word, “definition.”
That 25-year-old Chinese kid, now you.
Talking point, right?
The Church has found its Karl Rove.
No, I take that back, the orthodox have ever parsed society’s fears and loathings, just as had the two-term neocons,
Indeed, the orthodox and the fundamentalists have ALWAYS invoked, promulgated, AND nurtured the notions of the “immaculate” and the “celibate,” both of which are built-in oxymorons and the latter the fertile ground for festering sexual anomalies.
So, those who urge “just say no” and who damn contraception along with those birthed from the lack of same and who pound their pulpits and demonize any who practice other than the “missionary position,” and that in sanctified holy wedlock at that, “marriage” anyone?, are the Sadducees of today.
Literal interps of second-hand witnesses of revelations are, at best, problematic, at worst, crippling.
Bottom line: follow the money.
Which is power.
Which is dominance.
Which is idiocy. For the dominated.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Some of my best friends are “Christians,” and the rest refuse to state.
Frank, with your “cute comments,” it appears to me you are either trying to be profound, which you are not, or just cannot make your points clearly.
Nevertheless, after trying to slog through your incoherent diction, I have concluded you have no credible arguments except to say your vacuous rhetoric
fits nicely with the incessant bleatings of your homosexual brothers and sisters for “equality.” We cannot redefine marriage to accommodate their warped style of behavior, and coming at that from such a tiny minority who ought to know when to stop ranting and to shut up. The triumph of Proposition 8 is such an occasion.
Oliver Wendell Homes once criticized something he did not like as “a mangled mass of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile incredibility and of artful representation.” He wrote those words in 1842, and they could apply equally well to this perversity we call “gay marriage.” Enough said.
And, furthermore, if there is any . . .
All hands, pro OR con, should read today;s “CounterPuncher,” one UCLA doctorate of “philosphy” AND “jurus” as well, soneone named Frank J. Menetrez,m whogets MY vote for “lowering” the bar of expectations herein.
Menetrez, and more than a few of his elders and peers, bas thrown the gauntlet, and a fearful one at that.
His “Now What?” ruminations are absolutely on the mark, and his conclusions more than logical or likely.
I particularly dug his reference to David Simon’s “The Wire” and its compromised hero, to whom Menetrez parallels Obama.
“Life” imitates “srt, as it has done since Reagan. maybe before.
If so, time for our Philip W. Chungs to come up with better and more helpful models for would-be heroes and heroines to emulate.
If the time has not yet passed for the likes of the shoot-from-the-hips sheriffs and posses, then, mzybe it is time for humanity to roll up its prayer rugs and join the dinosaur in oblivion.
P.S.: A friend today forwarded some quotable quotes from Gandhi, RFK yet, AND the sublime wisdoms of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince.”
L.gonzales,
At the rate the institution of marriage is going down the tubes in this country, you think you’d welcome people who actually do value the intstitution of marriage - gay or not. With 18,000 gay marriages now on the books in california, that’s probably the biggest boost to marriage in california in recent history.
As for frank eng’s homosexual brothers n sisters, I’d wager that his siblings r actually straight and not gay. + just a guess
L. Gonzales:
I’ll just rty to address three of YOUR “dictions,” to wit:
1: “tiny minority”
If six or seven per centum of humankind is a tiny minority, then so’s your old man. My math counts said minoiity to :come” to some 42 millions, and that’s not including the er, ah, “double-gaited.”
2: “perverse”
Totally, a “cultural” concept and neither “scientific” nor “realistic.” What turns you “off” turns others “on.” So be it.
And please note that “we” are not asking you to turn your backs on YOUR “marriages” the while we believe you have NO “right” to deny us ours. Not that I place much credence in either a rite or a piece of paper.
3: “triumph”?
Of what? Subjective belief and prejudice over objective fact and parity of sorts?
Your “triumph: will be as shortlived as poll taxes and back-of-the-bus dicta. Not diction.
Frank
P.S.: Cut out the ad hominem here. You matter as little as I in this er, ah, dialog. What matters is the issue and the legitimate arguments thereto. Not personal and subjective fears and tremblings or fears and loathings. Those are between you and YOUR “God.” No matter to me.
not a prude:
You are SO “right.”
The family and the clan stride on.
Minus a warped branch or two. Wwll, make that one.
But NONE of my sibs diss’d me, just as I honored and respected them and THEIR feelings.
They “loved” me, unlovable as I am.
And helped make me the :”man” I didn’t “choose” to be, but am.
And sans apologies.
Certainly not to the self-righteous and intolerant likes of the L.Gonzaleses.
.
Come to think of it, not a prude, methinks L.Gonzales did not mean my literal, blood, bros and sisses, he meant the er, ah, perverse and nasty kind, who want to “marry” and even adopt kids who have been abandoned.
He would rather they be merely U-hauled into the neverneverland of “civil” unions and “domestic” partnerships. All for “definitions” and exclusionary dicta.
As for the unwanted children sired by his peers, “married” or not, he would rather they be “fostered” by those being paid for the fostering rather than adopted by those who would pay for the privilege.
Sad. Society’s retro and regressive and atavistic stances continue to subvert the possibility of humankind’s understanding of what is truly divine and what is snot.
Frank, don’t you think it’s time to hang up the gloves? You and your brothers-in-arms made your cause and lost. The people have spoken, period. So, like any magnanimous loser, why not just keep quiet?
Continuing to defend your position on “gay marriage” will not go anywhere. You cannot reverse the natural order of things, and looking for something in the state constitution that those misguided judges felt was your right is not there. Accept it, will you?
You can still go to Massachusetts or Connecticut if you want to marry your boyfriend. But beware! Those two states may yet reverse their stands by the same proposition that you just had in California. That would send you packing back to the Castro district if that were that to happen.
Meanwhile, it’s pointless to keep rationalizing what is impossible to do just because of the inherent fallacies of what you have been advocating and defending. As Arthur Hays Sulzberger once said, it’s nice to keep an opened mind, but not so open that one’s brains may fall out. Don’t let that happen, Frank.
To Arthur: To say Prop.8 was just about a definition of marriage is disingenuous. The outcome and the intent is bigoted and discriminatory. That most blacks voted for it is no surprise. Look at how black churches have failed to respond to the AIDS issue. To throw in the black exit polls to prove your point only shows to what degree spirituality was misused with missionary zeal to deny an entire segment of our society their freedoms.
Emil, gay marriage is an oxymoron. It’s not marriage.
Just like jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, or Chinese democracy.
L.Gonzales:
Me and my bros are not about to hang up our “gloves.”
Why should we?
Yoi haven’t “won” a thing other than your own fears and bigotries.
And, just exactly, what IS it that you fear?
That little voice within you that proclaims, “there but for the grace of “God,” go I”?
I have news for you:
YOU and the other 51? per centum, in your inglorious and self-rughteous diss’ing of your OWN brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers as well, are the ones to be pitied.
The day you begin to recognize the rights and perks of those other than yourselves wull be the day humankind achieves the millenium of LOVE and justice as well.
For now, KNOW that I, for one, am bemused by your felief that I need, much less seek, YOUR puny approval.
your lack is your prob, bro.
And, by the way, the promulgators and bzackers of Prop. 8 are, at heart, BOTH “prurient” AND “sexist.”
At the heart and base of homophobia lie the self-hatred that led to the murder of Matthew Shepard for one.
Have you looked into yourself and your fears?
Just don’t project them outwardly onto others, who have not denied YOUR rights and perks.
Frank Eng
P.S.: I’ll be in the ring just as long as you are. So, why don’t YOU hang up YOUR gloves, baby? You ARE an infant, forsooth.
Golly, Molly,
forgot to note:
My math is as weak as awarthur’s reasoning, to wit:
Six or seven per centum of the world’s six-billion-plus carbon-dioxide-producing specimens equates a tenfold approximation of my off-the-cuff erratum.
Say at least a few hundred millions”
But, the number are irrelevant to the fact that a SINGLE injustice is equal to the whole of inequity and iniquity among the species “homo sapiens.”
No, L.Gonzales, et al., “homo” here is NOT sexist, albeit I question the assumption of “sapiens.”
Frank, your infantile comments just make you look worse than I thought you were. There is no fear involved in those who voted against “gay marriage.” That’s their conviction, as it is with the vast majority of Americans. Man, you are losing it with your paranoia. Babbling about homophobia will get you nowhere either. You are trying to create a phantom. Have no fears, Frank, get your feet back to the ground, and maybe those cobwebs will clear up and make you think better. And by the way, those protests you and your ilk have been mounting in California make you the laughing stocks of the nation. One more time: Hang it up, Frank. There is no use continuing to be a feckless clown.
frank is my muse…don’t put him down
he’s a frozen icon, unchanging, fairy-like
a genius!
L.Gonales:
Yeah, old age DOES have a lot in common with infantilism.
But, at least, infants are merely polymorphous perverse and not perversely intolerant.
P.S.: Okay, so you fear not, but you fail to address the issue of bigotry here.
Frankly, I’m a bit tired of the hype of a “post racial” America and the grandiose sense of new direction made possible by BHO presidency. This country was more than ready to elect a minority president given the right circumstances. Even the Bush admnistration had prominent black figures. As far as I’m concerned, BHO’s election was a celebration of who we already are.
Does Obama have a discernable record of empowering minorities? The Annenberg project failed to improve schools despite millions in grants, and he supposedly went back on his promise to improve housing conditions in Chicago slums. He might have scored some points with Koreans by opposing the FTA (albeit not for the reason they’d like). Some of his buddies are notorious anti semites.
I’m a conservative Asian. So you’ll understand that I’ll judge BHO on who he is, and not on his skin color. He won’t have my “minority” support by default since IMO, the guy’s just not qualified to be president. Give Roh Moo Hyun a modicum of charisma, and he’s pretty close to a Korean version of Obama. Lesson learned from that buffoon - Any love you gained by bashing on Bush / America will dissipate rapidly when you can’t deliver on your promises. (Of course, president Roh did send troops to Iraq, a big no no for Koreans).
Frank, bigotry is your own creation. None of us who are against “gay marriage” don’t see it as an issue of bigotry at all. The fact we disapprove of same-sex marriage ought to tell you that is a core conviction we hold, not a reflection of any intolerance we have against certain groups. There are certain things civil societies hold as immutable, and marriage is one of them. The fact you want to force the rest of us to approve something we don’t believe in makes you the bigot, like Emil. Face the truth, Frank, and that may set you free. Right now, you have become a slave to your own narrow and selfish prejudices. Get off those manacles; incessantly bitching as you do will not make things any different. Stand up and be a man, Frank. Or can you?
L.Gonzales:
I am literally bemused by your challenge.
I have stood up and BEEN a “man” since I wass a child of six and realizws that if “God” was all he was claimed to be, there was NO need to either “hide” OR lie.
and one of those lies would have been to deny my own “sexuality,” which, zafter all, is just one part of facet of my “humanity..”
I have been totally “open” and “honest,” well, as open and honest as any human being, fallible as the species goes, can be.
At least, I made, in this view, a MANly effort to do so.
I could easily have “married,:”"legally” in your view, and been considerably less thzn either honest or honroable to my “spouse.”
I could have “made” a “famiily,” as millions of bisexuals have, and, in the doing, created the “dysfunctional” AND dishonext as I have personaly witnessed.
That said, I am NOT interested in your ad hominem and totally juvenile jeers and taunts.
And you and YOUR bzare majority in this past election might well read this week’s Sacramento Bee editorial on Prop. 8. You’re on the wrong side of history, here, bub. And either the courts OR the nexty election, or the ojne following will put your ‘victory” in the identical context with the poll tax and Jim Crow and the ‘82 Exclusion Act and every regressive and oppressive injustice perpetrated by one group of humans upon another.
As for “core convictions,” check those of the Nazis, and, NO, L.Gonzales, I, for one, have no wish, much less desire, to “force” ANYthing ON or TO you.
I am merely citing my own opinions and “core convictions<’ which I hope, the the longer run, will prove to bee the verdict of humankind.
Meanwhile, enjoy your “victory,” and your seeming smug self-righteousness. Enjoy. Be my guest. But don’t expect me or a lot of others to begin to identify with, much less “understand,” your views and definitions of words like “:mzarriage,’ and/or your psychoemotional attachments to same.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Define “man” here, will you? The hardsticks and the standzards. Are you talking about “size”? Or the capacity to “penetrate” and sow the seeds of future generations? Or are you “defending” the pubertal notions of the recently bar-mitzvah’d or the tribally inducted? Maybe Viagra?
My parents taught me to respect everyone, especially those who have eaten more grains of salt than I have of rice. I envy you Frank for your unyielding ways. Undoubtedly your unique command of the written language keeps me on my toes–a refreshment from the ordinary I admit. You challenge my thinking when I was taught to do the challenging. Thank you for forcing me to reflect, especially on the things that really matter, to rekindle the spirit that once lived and moved this body.
Having that said I still have doubts on Obama. This is why… 1. I was in Bean town when he was there for law school and Chinatown was not buzzing about a skinny lo mak doi’s message of hope. Then I was living in Chicago during the time he was there running for senate and again I didn’t see any collaboration between the Asian community and Obama’s people. I guess only time will tell. Although it’s a moot point, I voted for him too. You are a feisty old man. Good to have made your acquaintance.
Dear Linda:
Thank you.
Personally.
AND impersonally as well.
For my part, all I am truly interested in is NOT to gain either favor or recognition.
I, honest, Abe, only seek to be on the “right,” as in “correct,: sense as to principles as well as logic.
The rest is “for the birds.”
That said, I agree with you about Ohama in re the issues and the injustices of the day.
But, NOT, I repeat, NOT, solely in context with what he can or should do for “usl.”
Linda, the hungry child, of whatever race, creed, or color, never mind politicis, matters more than individual seekings and ambitions and dominances.
The last is as puerile and as pointless as L.Gonzaleses’ stztements and stances above and foregoing.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s not him OR the balloting that matters.
It’s the “core” “prinicple” of simple justice.
Frank
P.S.: It’s really cool to be perceived as “feisty,” but belay that old-man merde. Hell, I’m as young as you, albeit not quite as “wise.” And, believe me, it’s MY pleasure here.
Frank, this is a free country, and I expect you to express and cling to your opinions, no matter that the vast majority of not only Americans, but of those around the world, have expressed the “core” conviction that traditional marriage should be preserved, not tampered with by the constant brayings of a few misguided people like you. To compare us with Nazis means how low you have become, analogous to those who call gays like you as perverts, which I have not engaged in, though I have a sneaky feeling they may be right. I don’t need an editorial either to change my feelings on this matter. And if you feel the affirmative vote for Proposition 8 is something that you think will be overturned, that is nothing but fantasy. The people have spoken, and this is something that judges, with their prejudices, should not be poking their noses into. They should respect the sentiments of the citizens. You are not a man, Frank. You are a sorry poltroon who cannot face the truth. Too bad you may be that old (if true) to get out of that straight- jacket you have allowed your mind to be imprisoned in.
FYI L. Gonzales: Hitler admired the Americans very much for their ability to use genocide on the Native Americans. That’s right, ugly as it may sound, shameful as it may be, Hitler got the idea from us.
Linda, what has that got to do with gay marriage? Furthermore, I would condemn genocide anywhere it happens, or has happened. I see no connection of what Hitler did, or where he got his idea from during the Holocaust, with what we are discussing. I presume you must be a lesbian, or at least a supporter of gay marriage, which impels me to conclude you are reaching quite far to taint those of us against gay marriage with ideas like genocide. You are quite misguided, Linda. Look, there have been at least 30 propositions across America like you had in California, and all of them passed, many times overwhelmingly. Don’t you get the message Californians don’t approve of gay marriage and so you all need to stop bitching? Just accept your militant advocacy is not going to go anywhere, and those pompous judges ought to know the line has been drawn. Any further arguments would be useless and a waste of time, Linda. Just say you CANNOT change this, hear?
I think Linda is one of these paid promoters supported by the white homosexual lobby. I don’t believe that she/he is even of Asian heritage. She states that “Hitler got the idea from us.” That idea being genocide. How many REAL Asian Americans would really believe this. Our ancestors did not commit genocide against the native Americans. It was the white Anglo Saxon Protestant settlers that did this not Asian people.
A good analogy is these paid stock pump and dumpers who come into forums and promote a stock , the stock goes up because other people believe the propaganda and then the people pumping up the stock sell into the rally. Afterwards the stock price collapses.
“In the end, add the bad economy, the war and Bush incompetence, and why wouldn’t you give a smart person of color the chance to save us all.”
Obama doesn’t have a chance to save America. I bet by the time he gets into office the American dollar will be devalued by at least 50%. People in America are going to wake up with prices for everything doubling in terms of dollars.
In terms of race relations I doubt Obama’s election is a sign of an improvement. In the South where most blacks live according to a recent New York Times article
“Mr. Obama’s race appears to have been the critical deciding factor in pushing ever greater numbers of white Southerners away from the Democrats.”
The only reason Obama won is that he won the swing states like Ohio where manufacturing is declining and white people voted for Obama in spite of his race because they see the American economy collapsing around them and voted for the black candidate as a protest vote against the Bush administration’s economic policies.
I don’t really believe the whites in Ohio would welcome blacks in their neighborhoods.
Kwaninator:
“Fairy-like”?
Whadat?
Are you “macho=like”?
L. Gonzales:
I’m not surprised that you don’t consider yourself a bigot, since most bigots do not think of themselves as bigots either. Your description of gay marrige as,”perverse” clearly demonstrates this. A great number of laws and actions targeting and violating the rights of diffrerent minority groups have occurred throughout this nation’s history with the suppport of the majority during the times of their implementation. Laws outlawing interacial marriage during the 1960s, slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans, the attempted genocide inflicted upon Native Americans are just a few examples. Also, does your desire for the No on Prop. 8 proponents to, “stop ranting and just shut up”, mean that you are against freedom of speech?