Perhaps it's the right time for me to spin my favorite witticism on the subject.....
Americans are racist people who nurse their racism whereas Europeans are repressed xenophobes.
1997, G. Jaeger.
Frankly, I don't think that a Democrat Prez would make any difference for the improvement of African-Americans' lifestyle.
I'm shocked by your reporting of plug-uglies preventing Blacks and other minorities from entering the poll buildings --that's the kind of thing that was supposed to occur in jackboot-banana-republics only! And now it seems to be routine in the so-called Greatest Democracy on earth....
However, as a far-leftist utopist myself, I find the Democrats' call for "every-vote-should-count" dubious and hypocritical. Sure enough, a vote is a vote and the "one-man-one-vote" principle should be enforced as strictly as possible but hey, let's not be duped by such a Warholian notion of Democracy! I mean, just as Andy Warhol claimed that everybody should be entitled to a 15-minute fame, Al Gore is hinting that every American citizen should receive his/her one-Tuesday "democracy chill" every four years! But guess what's scheduled in between?? NOTHING, of course. After election day, people are just swept back into their ordinary, grim lives....
You find Gen. Colin Powell vapid --but who cares anyway?? The guy's reached the top of the hill, at least on the military track, and is now poised to become Secretary of State! And what about Ms Condoleeza Rice becoming National Security Adviser --a post that, 30 years ago, was filled by Henry Kissinger? Likewise, I was watching CNN the other day and the anchorguy was interviewing some professor about the ins and outs of the USSC ruling and so on.... Well, the interviewee was a certain Georgetown Univ. Pr Viet Dinh, that is, a VIETNAMESE fellow! Do you think that, over here, in Europe, a Chink would ever become a CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR telling the French or the Belgians about their laws and political institutions??? Let me tell you, TE, with all your racist tensions --who could sincerely deny them, after all?-- and racial prejudices, from a foreign vantage point, the USA still looks like another planet altogether.... Maybe we should think of the current level of racism in the US society as we think of unemployment: perhaps there's a "natural level of racism" that's preventing Blacks, Latinos and other minorities from going up the social ladder --just as a "natural level of joblessness" is preventing 3% of the workforce from pulling it off.... |
