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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nigel bates who wrote (68950)	1/28/2010 5:29:16 PM
From: Mac Con Ulaidh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

I stayed long enough last night to hear Chris Matthews say "I forgot he was black" and... k, I know it is Matthews, bless his heart, but my jaw dropped. I was waiting on TNC to do his take on it. Dude is a treasure - this post rocks: I Just Remembered Chris Matthews Was White Here's Matthews on Obama: I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It's interesting; he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He's gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two. I mean it's something we don't even think about. I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he's an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we've completely forgotten that tonight -- completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of the discussion, it was so broad ranging, so in tune with so many problems and aspects and aspects of American life. That you don't think in terms of the old tribalism and the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard, a very subtle fact. It's so hard to even talk about it. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it, but I am. I think it's worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn't trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it's worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he's done for race relations. (See Matthews' clarification here.) But I think it's most worth noting that "I forgot Obama was black"--in all its iterations--is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it's really dishonest. One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we've been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We've also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you'll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, "Wow, I forgot you were a woman." Indeed, it would be pretty offensive. The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one's "woman-ness." So if football and beer don't fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim "I forgot you were a woman," as opposed to "I just realized my invented truth was wrong." Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white. continued... ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com

To: nigel bates who wrote (68950)	1/28/2010 8:50:12 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Nigel, there is an 800 lb gorilla in the room when addressing the supreme court decision. What that is, is the personalities of the five justics. They all have one thing in common. They all lack compassion. Now I am not saying "bad" per se, I am saying it is a neuological reality no one is taking into consideration. It shows in their law decisions, but it also shows on their faces. Humans are generally quite good geneticaly at reading faces. 100 years from now, their psychological deficency of cmpassion will render them ineigibile to be judges of any kind.