THERE IS HOPE FOR  AMERICA!

When I saw Presidential candidate John McCain take the microphone away from the White lady who was denigrating Barack Obama, and mildly rebuke her by explaining that Barack Obama is a good family man with whom he simply disagreed, my thought was “There is hope for America!”

 

RACISM IS NOT NECESSARILY RATIONAL

The Hartford Courant’s Stan Simpson noted that “racism is not necessarily rational” as he described a candid conversation with a White female voter who was reluctant to vote for Barack Obama. He wrote: “Well, she said, fighting for words, she was concerned that if Obama got elected, somehow it would embolden black people—black men, in particular—to feel entitled. And what if, she said haltingly, a black president meant a change in the country’s power structure? And what if, she continued, this new black power structure decided to treat whites the way whites had historically treated blacks.” (September 28, 2008).  

 

BLACK FOLKS DIDN’T DO IT!

In typical fashion, some of the powerful are blaming America’s financial breakdown on Black folks taking advantage of loans made available through the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed by Congress to encourage banks to stop redlining and make home loans available to Black home buyers. Nothing could be further from the truth but the allegation alone helps to shift pressure from the real culprits (Greedy White speculators on Wall Street) by encouraging the historical rift between ignorant White folks and Black folks.  If the problem was caused by bad loans made to inner city Black buyers, it could be solved without a ripple in the American and world economies (For that matter, the same goes for the much greater number of bad loans made to White folks). Greedy Wall Street speculators and greedy bankers and mortgage institutions caused the problem by packaging loans of all types, bundling them up into impossible-to-value securities, selling them in pieces and bidding the pieces up amongst each other around the world to levels that had no relationship to the underlying collateral. The people at the top got rich, the economy got feeble and the average American got taken. 

 

BARNEY FRANK IS RIGHT!

A Boston Herald editorial (October 8, 2008) castigated Congressman Barney Frank for suggesting that conservatives were trying to blame America’s financial crisis on Black Americans. The Herald wrote: “…in his one race-baiting speech Rep. Barney Frank…has managed to strip away any lingering facade of bipartisan unity. Feeling the heat from critics, Frank suggested that the conservatives are trying to fend off new Wall Street regulation by stoking anger at poor black people who have benefited from federal housing programs….assigning racial animus to those with whom you disagree politically is a shameful way to seek political cover.” The only thing, though, is that Barney Frank happens to be right and Black folks are grateful that he stripped the conservatives of their cover argument.

 

AND THE BOSTON GLOBE  EDITORIAL SUPPORTS BARNEY FRANK

“The subsequent meltdown of the nation’s entire financial system could not have happened without a huge—and entirely voluntary—inflow of money from Wall Street into a sketchy sector of the mortgage market. Nobody forced investment firms to wager billions of dollars directly on these loans, or to build an elaborate web of complex financial transactions dependent upon their continued performance. But they did. The recent animosity over the Community Reinvestment Act, in short, simply can’t be explained by the facts. Among the law’s critics, there’s more than a whiff of social Darwinism—the certainty that only a government policy aimed at helping losers could lead the whiz kids of Wall Street so far astray. Hogwash. The current financial crisis grows out of loose regulation that gave big investors plenty of freedom to make foolish bets, and then force their losses upon the taxpayers. ” (Emphasis added) (The Boston Globe, October 11, 2008)

 

SPRINGFIELD’S BRACE FAMILY SHOULD BE PROUD!

Descendants of Jeffrey Brace gathered on the Poultney, Vermont town green to dedicate a monument to the former slave who was ripped from his African village in 1758 and eventually sold to a Connecticut widow who sent him to school. Brace was freed after fighting in the Revolutionary War and settled in Vermont. His memoirs (which he wrote) tracing his abduction, the crossing of the Atlantic on a slave ship and his life as a slave became his lasting contribution to history and can be found in the special collections library at the University of Vermont. Congratulations to the Brace family!

 

IS SENATOR LINDSAY GRAHAM CRAZY!

Senator Lindsay Graham was quoted in a Boston Globe article as saying, “You can want to win too badly in this business (politics). Senator Obama is very talented, but he wants to win too much.” I suppose Bush didn’t and McCain doesn’t! Is Graham crazy!  

 

MONEY TRUMPS RACE!

If Obama wins, as this scribe has predicted, it will be, in a large part, due to his spending in the last weeks of his campaign, which is three times the spending level of McCain. Although I don’t want to imply a connection to the negative, I call it the “O.J. factor.”  Whether or not he was guilty, O. J. Simpson beat a double murder charge because he could afford the best defense possible. One of the reasons Barack Obama will win the presidential election is because he can afford the best campaign. In each instance, money trumped race. 

 

MONEY TRUMPS RACE!

“Barack Obama is on track to spend more than $90 million on ads through Election Day. That’s more than all the money McCain has to spend on his entire fall campaign. Obama is the first major party candidate to decline public financing in the general election, which allows him to spend as much as he can raise. The difference between Obama’s war chest and the Republicans’ is so huge, it has allowed the Illinois senator to spend in more states than McCain, appear more frequently in key battleground markets and diversify his message by both attacking McCain and promoting his own personal story.”  (Boston Herald, October 10, 2008).

 

SUBTERRANEAN OR BELOW THE RACIAL RADAR SCREEN,

RACE APPEALS ARE RACE APPEALS

You can carry your denial in your hip pocket, display it on a placard on the tip of your nose, reflect it in the glare of your eyes and vociferously deny it, but Black folks and many White folks know that the McCain campaign resorted to the race card and that Sarah Palin is the campaign’s standard bearer for arousing the bigots. Which is why, of course, John McCain, a decent man, is so uncomfortable. Race appeals, to the discerning mind, are no less race appeals simply because they are subterranean or below the racial radar screen. Georgia Congressman John Lewis was correct when he compared the McCain campaign hate messages to what occurred in the George Wallace era, conservative outrage and denials notwithstanding. 

 

THE RACE ELEMENT INVOLVED IS PRIDE NOT HATE

Equating Black voters who embrace Obama to racists who reject him is ludicrous. Black folks’ embrace of Obama is upbeat and benign. The race element involved is pride. Racists” rejection of Obama is negative and harmful. The race element involved is hate. An analogy here is appropriate. Catholics who embraced John F. Kennedy did so because they were pleased to vote for the first of their religion to challenge for the presidency. It would be foolish to conclude that the hatred driving religious bigots in Iraq to kill Catholics and drive them out of their homes because they hate Catholics is the equivalent of the religious pride that motivated Catholics to vote for John F. Kennedy. 

 

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

“Voters can make no more powerful statement about America’s commitment to inclusion and opportunity than to put forward this man—Barack Hussein Obama, son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas—as the nation’s representative to the world.” (The Boston Globe, October 14, 2008, in and editorial endorsing Barack Obama for President)

 

POV ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!

Point of View has never endorsed a political candidate. We make an unabashed exception for the November 4, 2008 Presidential election. Point of View endorses Barack Hussein Obama. We are proud that he is Black but even prouder that he is the most qualified candidate. n