You are still missing the point. There is a difference between voting for the guy and getting energized by him. I agree with you that blacks will vote for him simply because they won't vote for republicans. By energized, I mean blacks that wouldn't bother to vote otherwise will come out to vote. As of right now, blacks are not energized by Obama. Whites ARE energized, however. ...and nobody is saying that Obama "isn't black enough" except whites.
the blacks are supporting or "energized by" Obama because according to the article, his descent was not "plantation slaves", that's load of bs. Then i guess that should also include all the US prez.. Being a US president does not require having a slavery ancestry, this is the year of 2007, there are lot more important issues than how blacks were treated as a slave 50 years ago.
Thanks Max. I’ll gladly take you up on that. I have no current plans to get down that way but it is one of the last unexploded areas of the US for me, and it would be fun to put a face to someone I’ve been chatting with on the internet all these years. And likewise, if you ever plan a trip to Calgary make sure you drop me a note first and we can arrange to get together here. Hope you and yours had a happy holiday season!
Name one national candidate that blacks were energized about. I find it hard to recognize this phenomenon because in my recollection it has never happened (and don't say Clinton - the guy got the same #'s from blacks as Kerry and Gore did, both in % and voter registration). Second, I find it hard to believe that it would make a difference the more I look at it. The number of black voters in the country is dwarfed by the number of white voters to the extent that even if blacks had 100% voter registration - it's very difficult for them to keep up with the white non-hispanic registered voters who dwarf them in terms of numbers; there's simply not that many. And please - you just lectured me about how perception was everything. Then you come and say people question his civil rights record, his religion, his background, imply he's a rich elitist raise by whites - you don't think this gives off the "Obama isn't black enough" perception?
Well, it all started with a little trade between my then Vancouver Grizzlies and the Rockets for a player we’d all like to forget, Steve Francis. That’s when I found out about this board. When Heisley took our team away I couldn’t cheer for them anymore, but I’d come to like this place so much that I decided to adopt the Rockets as my new team.
Calgary? I thought you were in Vancouver. Anyway I've been through Calgary on my way to Banff. It seemed like a nice city. Very similar to smaller Denver. I also thinks its interesting you followed Steve Francis to a Rox board as he never played a game as a Grizzlie.
How COULD it happen ...Jesse Jackson was the only black candidate. There was a buzz around his candidacy in the black community at the time but I don't have any #'s for you. That said, religious conservaties were energized by Bush and they came out in record #'s. If MLK were alive and ran for president, every last black person in the country would vote for him. I not disagreeing with you on this point. I'm simply questioning if Obama has energized the blacks in America. I've made no claims about how successful Obama will be in he ran for president. I've agreed with this point several times already. What difference does it make to casting votes if whites think that blacks are saying Obama isn't black enough? You are right that this may be how whites perceive what is happening but how is that relevant to counting votes? Voters of any kind will support who they trust. Blacks may still vote for Obama but that doesn't mean they are excited about him. I voted for John Kerry last time but I could care less about Kerry. My main goal was to NOT vote for Bush. I can't remember the last candidate that I got excited about. Just because I'm not excited about somebody doesn't mean I won't vote at all. If MLK were to rise from the ashes, blacks would get excited. Obama is several orders of magnitude away from that right now. Whites, conversly have recently been energized by JFK by the Dems and GWB by the Repubs. Even Ross Perot managed to energize a solid segment of independents (until he went AWOL). The closest candidate that has energized blacks is Jesse Jackson. Obama isn't there yet. I'm not saying he can't do it ...I'm just saying he hasn't yet.
so your barometer for him is MLK in generating excitement? LOL, talk about setting the bar high.... And I'm pointing out that this questioning is essentially rhetorical in nature and seems uniquely designed to discredit obama. It likely doesn't, but it's intended to slow his his buzz and momentum, which will hurt his fundraising, etc. Why do you think "Taylor Media Services" is running with the story? As a buzzkill. So I'm having a hard time trying to see why excitment is even relevant then, other than for the momentum-killer I mentioned above. Anyway - I think the first realistic shot to have a black man in the white house should be enough to make black voters excited as the time approaches (not that it matters that much in the final results). I'm enthused about the possibiilty and I'm not even black. So again what's the point of excitement? So you're saying he hasn't reached the level of the supernatural ghost of MLK? As for JFK he barely won, as did GWB - it's hard to see how they rode an energized populace any more than any number of other exterior factors.
Just using that as an example to get my point accross. If you think that is my intentions then you are clearly WAY misunderstanding me. Are you on his fundraising comittee or something. You are hypersensative. I'm only defending against people such as yourself stating that blacks are unfounded for saying 'Obama isn't black enough.' Making such a statement is wrong on multiple levels. I'm excited too. But that doesn't mean that everybody is excited. Such dynamics are major factors in how candidates run their campaigns. As of right now, whites are energized ...not the blacks. Again, misunderstanding me. Never did I say the whole COUNTRY was energized. That isn't even what we are talking about. We are talking about energizing a segment of the population. Both JFK and GWB energized their "base." Jesse Jackson is the only candidate that has energized blacks, IIRC (and it wasn't enough).
Yeah but it validates my point about this being a specious argument: He's not as energizing as MLK. Come on, might as well throw in Gandhi, Muhammad, Jesus Christ and even Vince Young himself if we're going to start invoking iconic legendary figures from the pages of history books. I don't think it's your intention - but it doesn't change the fact that the question is flawed and specious to begin with. It seems to reek of jealousy and resentment on one side and opportunism by right wingers. I'm not the one who's saying it - other people are...at least that is the PERCEPTION that is given off when people write "us regular black folks don't trust this guy cause he's an elitist raised by whities" - I mean come on, are you honestly saying this is not the equivalent of saying the guy is too white/not black enough, whatever that may mean? looks like you answered your own question in a way. I still don't get the value of "energizing" unless it translates to votes or $$$ - and I don't see how the math adds up in the context of this particular base (btw his base in Illinois? black Chicago area residents.....shocker, huh?)
SamFisher's right, this article is making alot out of a little. is there some reluctance to accept African Immigrants from African American desendents of Slaves. maybe, there is an issue there, not a big one. personally, I have felt that african immigrants may feel they're somehow better than blacks from this country, but its not a big deal to me. and that might be alot more prevelant than I care to admit. but in the end, blacks are gonna vote democrat and that's the bigger issue. if obama was republican, there might be a some credit to this article.
I’m still catching up on this thread, but I agree that simply making a division based on race is too simplistic, and perhaps a form of discrimination based on race in itself. If the stats in that Maclean’s article are right then I’d say that there are three main cultural groups that fall within the broader category of Americans of African decent with respect to this issue, or so it seems to this white, Canadian, outsider anyway. The first, it seems to me, would be the descendants of people who were brought to what is now the US slaves. These people come from families that survived hundreds of years of slavery and almost another century of Jim Crow laws which created extreme forms of segregation and discrimination. The second would be the descendants of people who were brought to countries in the Caribbean as slaves. Their families also suffered through centuries of slavery, but slavery was abolished sooner in those places and there wasn’t the same level of systematic segregation and oppression after it ended. They were also generally the largest ethnic groups on these islands and so came to have a significant amount of power relatively quickly. I believe that many of their political leaders, if not most of them, have been of African descent for many decades now. So in these places the transition from an oppressed group of people to one that is in a dominant, or at least equal, place in society, and the corresponding impact that that has on education rates and support networks that are crucial to becoming “successful” by the terms of that society, is at quite a different stage than it is in the US in general, and it’s from this group that people like Powell and Gladwell come from. (The article mentions Gladwell in that category but I don’t think he’s a good fit given that he was born in London and grew up in a small Canadian city, and he is a Canadian.) The third group is the recent immigrants from Africa, but there are probably many sub groups in this category. They all will have a cultural hurtle to overcome, but most of them will not have suffered the same kind of oppression that the previous two groups did, and a number of them will have come from families educated in the British tradition, and often have a high level of this kind of western education that will allow them to transition into educational traditions in North America quite well, much better than many people from disadvantaged communities in the first category. So I think that simply saying that because someone is back that they share a cultural heritage with every other black person is incorrect, although given the history of slavery in the US, particularly the way it was divided along racial lines, race triggers certain long standing stereotypes in the minds of a great many people, black and white, consciously or unconsciously, so someone like Obama will have almost certainly suffered from discrimination based on his skin colour even though his past was completely separate from the history that produced that conflict. I believe his wife, and therefore his children as well, are descents of American slaves, however, so his own family is very much connected to that history. This is a bit off topic but this makes me think the affirmative action programs mentioned in the Maclean’s article need to be reworked to better target the groups in the most need, although I think that having to prove you were a descendent of an American slave might be a little hard to do. Maybe such programs should be targeted at disadvantaged groups in society regardless of race, although that would lack the symbolism of directly making up for past wrongs committed against American blacks.
You didn’t stop in Calgary to see any of our great architecture? This isn’t a great city for architecture I’m afraid, but much of that has to do with the fact that in the last 50 years Calgary’s population has gone from about 200,000 to over 1,000,000, and that amount of growth in that time led to a downtown full glass office towers. It’s a nice skyline when you stick the mountains in, though. The Banff Springs Hotel isn’t bad. That’s about as old as it gets, at least for a building that size, in this part of the world. I think you misunderstood what I said about Francis. I found out about this site at the time of the Francis trade. A rather lively discussion ensued between members of Clutchcity.com and Grizzball.com about character and professionalism of Mr. Francis, amongst other things, and there was a lot of visiting back and fourth for a while. I didn’t become a fan of the Rockets until Heisley bought the team and absconded with them, and I never became one of Francis’ fans.
This is getting boring because we have just been going in circles. I am proposing a theory about why blacks are CURRENTLY not jumping on his bandwagon ...at least not to the same degree that whites are. You are not accepting that blacks are not. You beleive that blacks ARE jumping on his bandwagon. Okay, whatever. You are free to ignore my first hand accounts, if you like. BUT: Here's part 2 of my theory. That once Obama publicaly declares his candidacy, that he will get the word out and blacks around the country will fall in love with the guy. But since he isn't actively campaigning, the average American doesn't know much about him yet. Are we really that far apart on this issue? ------ Just do this one thing for me. Quit putting words in the mouths of blacks by telling us that we don't think he is black enough. Because I can tell you, regardless of what you think, that isn't how it is. People identify with others that are like themselves. That is true with all colors, regions, accents, countries, shapes, sizes, sexual orientation, etc etc etc. That is a WELL KNOWN FACT. It's indisputible. People tend to gravitate towards others with simularities to themsevles. Just acknowledge this one point and I'll be satisfied. As an extention of that point and the basis of my theory (and we can agree to disagree), I am making a factual statement when I say Obama has little in common with average American black besides skin color. And because I make that assertion, I'm TELLING YOU that racial dynamics are more involved than simple skin color. I can 100% guarentee you this to be a fact. 100%!!!!! Racial dynamics go deeper than skin color. ABSOLUTELY. If you chose to take the position that because of skin color alone, blacks should overwhelmingly support this guy, than so be it. I don't know what else to say.
Regarding Kerry, I know few Democrats who were excited about him. I didn't vote for him in the Texas primary, and was dismayed that he got the nomination. Thank goodness, we have far better leadership in the Democratic Party today, as shown by the results of this past November. I'm confused about your comment about JFK. Honestly, I thought you were referring to Kerry, which didn't make any sense (his initials are JFK). When I realized that you meant Jack Kennedy, that confused me as well. Kennedy, as Sam pointed out, barely won against Nixon. It was after (and during, to tell the truth) he was inaugurated that he "energized white voters," (a phrase I would never had thought to use about him) and that was over 40 years ago. Not recently at all. (I remember watching his inaugural speech, by the way. He put paid to the wearing of hats by men as a style, by not wearing one that day) And that wasn't the only ethnic group he appealed to. He was admired around the world by many in his day. But what was Jack Kennedy's base? Catholic Democrats? A majority of American voters, to a much greater extent than today, were Democrats, yet JFK just squeaked by Nixon. Frankly, Robert Kennedy had far more impact during his run for office, in my opinion, than Jack did during his run for the presidency. Talk about energizing people... Bobby Kennedy had it in spades. He took those who admired JFK after his election and added greatly to those numbers, in my opinion. Those dismayed by LBJ's war in Vietnam saw a young, charismatic leader who stood for the social progress JFK and Johnson had pushed through, but who wanted to end the war and unite the country. Sound familiar? Barack Obama reminds me of Robert Kennedy a lot, and I'm old enough to have worked for his nomination. You won't find higher praise than that coming from me about a politician. Bobby was a far better man than Jack, and I liked Jack. Sorry for my bit of remembrance of a wonderful and ultimately tragic time. I hope Barack keeps himself safe. The nation deserves a respite from the tragedy of the last few years, and of decades past. And they deserve a real leader in the White House, not the disaster occupying the Oval Office today. D&D. Wander and Wonder.
Sam Fisher; I'm just curious about why you are arguing so vociferously with Krosfyah on this issue. Krosfyah isn't disagreeing that most African-Americans would vote for Obama. He's not even saying that Obama would make a bad candidate yet you are accusing him of buying into some sort of Republican conspiracy. Krosfyah doesn't seem like he is trying to tear Obama down just explaining why many African-Americans might not feel they have that much in common with him.
