Presidential Pretender

[dgs49]

Mr. Reaper,

You called me a racist. I invited you to define the term and try to relate that definition to anything I had posted. You declined to do so. Whether it was beyond your intellectual capacity to try, or you realized that your charge was unsupportable, I cannot know. All I know is you have been blathering on for days, and in not a single instance have you tried to justify calling me a racist, in any logical fashion.

I defined it for you. You still came up with nothing, and repeated your charge.

Even your most recent post reveals a shocking inability to understand basic concepts. Yes it is true that if you experience discrimination you also witness it. But that is totally irrelevant. The question is, if you witness it, is that the same as experiencing it? These are two totally different concepts, and that fact appears to have completely eluded you - yet it was the essence of my posting. Did I ever, anywhere on this thread or elsewhere, deny that Barry has "witnessed" discrimination? The idea is just silly.

The fact is, I am painfully lacking any productive task to do here at work. My job is analogous to that of a firefighter, and if no one has any problems, I have nothing to do. Were I not so terribly bored, I would not be spending time arguing with someone who seems to lack not only an understanding of relatively simple and common words, but also lacks the ability to piece together a coherent way of expressing an opinion, let alone entering into a logical argument employing deductive reasoning.

"Try again with a real argument"?

What's the point? In a battle of wits you are totally unarmed.

[Liberty1]

It's not worth it DGs, unless you are truely that bored.

Many people who are so focused on racism, are themselves being racist and can't see it. And you'll never be able to enlighten them. I know from experience.

[Econoline]

First, dgs, here is the definition of "Black" used by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget:

“Black or African American” refers to a person having origins in any of
the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicated their
race(s) as “Black, African Am., or Negro” or reported entries such as
African American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.[source]

(So far as I can tell, Dave, the definition you use in the opening post is one you just made up yourself.)

Second, how can you possibly accuse President Obama of employing "false pretenses" to get elected when he himself wrote a book, Dreams From My Father (published in 1995, long before he ran for any national office) detailing everything about his life and his background which you claim that he wants to hide?

After seeing this thread, my first thought was that you're either racist or stupid, and my second thought was that you're not stupid.

[Scooter]

Or, he could be racist AND stupid. They tend to go together.

[Grim Reaper]

You called me a racist. I invited you to define the term and try to relate that definition to anything I had posted. You declined to do so. Whether it was beyond your intellectual capacity to try, or you realized that your charge was unsupportable, I cannot know. All I know is you have been blathering on for days, and in not a single instance have you tried to justify calling me a racist, in any logical fashion.

My charge is supportable, and this thread supports that argument. You just refuse to acknowledge it because you're a coward who can't stand up for his own beliefs.

I defined it for you. You still came up with nothing, and repeated your charge.

I came up with something. You deliberately ignored my accusations just to pretend I didn't say anything. You are a coward and a liar in addition to being a racist.

Even your most recent post reveals a shocking inability to understand basic concepts. Yes it is true that if you experience discrimination you also witness it. But that is totally irrelevant. The question is, if you witness it, is that the same as experiencing it? These are two totally different concepts, and that fact appears to have completely eluded you - yet it was the essence of my posting. Did I ever, anywhere on this thread or elsewhere, deny that Barry has "witnessed" discrimination? The idea is just silly.

You're the one who can't grasp the concept that creating a definition for the sole reason of attacking an individual over the color of their skin is a racist attitude.

The fact is, I am painfully lacking any productive task to do here at work. My job is analogous to that of a firefighter, and if no one has any problems, I have nothing to do. Were I not so terribly bored, I would not be spending time arguing with someone who seems to lack not only an understanding of relatively simple and common words, but also lacks the ability to piece together a coherent way of expressing an opinion, let alone entering into a logical argument employing deductive reasoning.

You have so much time on your hands, yet you have to resort to splitting hairs of semantics instead of actually arguing the point?

"Try again with a real argument"?

Yes, with a real argument. Instead of a stupid battle of semantics just because you can't think of a coherent and rational statement.

[loCAtek]

My personal view is that "Latino" and "Hispanic" are fairly preposterous, denigrating terms that seek to group together dozens of ethnicities that may have nothing in common but a common language. Rather like grouping everyone who natively speaks English as "Anglo's." What do middle-class ethnic Cuban republicans in Miami have to do with wetbacks picking lettuce in California? What do they share culturally, ethnically, or politically? Nothing. But they both speak Spanish, and some (idiots) would include them in the collective, "Hispanic."

Bullshit.

Culturally, most if not all, have had to recreate their social identies following the conquest/invasion of the Spaniards that deliberately strived to destroy the native culture.
Prior to that, the interrelationship was due to the migrations(s) of humanity, that crossed the Bering land bridge and populated North, Central and South America. Archaeological evidence suggests the movement crossed itself many times, hence the similarity in religion, language and genetics. The largest geological barrier to cross-cultural fertilization was the Chihuahuan Desert, which accounts for the difference between Native and Meso Americans.

[loCAtek]

Rube, you fucking idiot,

Barry is a Negro who has indeed seen how you are treated as a "Black man" in many parts of the U.S., over an extended period of time.

So what? So have I.

I have also witnessed instances when a Negro is one of only a few in a school or neighborhood. They are seldom treated badly, and very often end up being quite popular as a result of their uniqueness. I suspect this is what Barry experienced while living in Hawaii and Indonesia.

Can you cite a single instance when Our Beloved President was the victim of racial prejudice or harmful discrimination? OTOH, one can easily see many, many instances when he BENEFITTED from his skin color, to the extent that even if there was the occasional slight growing up, it was more than outweighed by the benefits of availing himself of programs and attitudes designed to compensate for past discrimination - which neither he nor any of his ancestors ever experienced.

One example;

Excelling in School

While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979. As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of self. "I began to notice there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog...and that Santa was a white man," he said. "I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking the way I had always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."
source

More;

Racism wasn't merely the cruelty involved, but arrogance too

The older woman in my grandparents' apartment building who became agitated when I got on the elevator behind her & ran out to tell the manager that I was following her; her refusal to apologize when she was told that I lived in the building. Our assistan basketball coach, a young, wiry man from New York with a nice jumper, who, after a pick-up game with some talkative black men, had muttered within earshot of me and three of my teammates that we shouldn't have lost to a bunch of niggers; and who, when I told him to shut up, had calmly explained the apparently obvious fact that "there are black people, and there are niggers. Those guys were niggers." It wasn't merely the cruelty involved; I was learning that black people could be mean and then some. It was a particular brand of arrogance, an obtuseness in otherwise sane people that brought forth our bitter laughter. It was as if whites didn't know they were being cruel in the first place. Or at least thought you deserving of their scorn.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p. 75 Aug 1, 1996

Biracial heritage has caused identity crisis

As I imagined myself following Malcolm X's call, one line in his book stayed me. He spoke of his wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged. I knew that, for Malcolm, that wish would never be incidental. I knew as well that traveling down the road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into mere abstraction. I was left to wonder what else I would be severing if and when I left my mother at some uncharted border.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p. 80 Aug 1, 1996

There is some hope of eventual reconciliation between races

If Malcolm X's discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation, that hope appeared in a distant future, in a far-off land. In the meantime, I looked to see where the people would come from who were willing to work toward this future and populate this new world.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p. 80 Aug 1, 1996

Poverty of political organizers was proof of their integrity

In the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils & tenant rights groups. When no one wrote back, I wasn't discouraged. I decided to find more conventional work for a year, to pay off my student loans and maybe even save a little bit. I would need the money later, I told myself. Organizers didn't make any money; their poverty was proof of their integrity.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p.125 Aug 1, 1996

America's race and class problems are intertwined

Whether because of New York's density or because of its scale, it was only [there] that I began to grasp the almost mathematical precision with which America's race and class problems joined; the bile that flowed freely not just out on the streets but in the stalls of Columbia's bathrooms as well, where, no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence between niggers and kikes.
Source: Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, p.254 Aug 1, 1996


The above quotations are from Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack

I'd recommend reading his book.

[dales]

The fact is, I am painfully lacking any productive task to do here at work.

Idle hands are the work of the Devil.

[dgs49]

rube, you have made me see the light.

Barry was the victim of vicious, constant discrimination and bigotry throughout is life. It is a wonder he survived to adulthood.

He is truly a "Black Man," or "African American," if you prefer. Even if his ancestors were not slaves.

Can we move on now?

[Grim Reaper]

Can we move on now?

I don't know. Can you stop with your racist definitions and childish strawman arguments?

[Scooter]

Best to stop tweaking his nose, before he starts calling you a "knee-grow lover".

[Grim Reaper]

He'll move on soon enough, it's only a matter of time before he abandons this thread and makes a new one to start the cycle all over again.

[dgs49]

An interesting article on the question of what "African American" means and doesn't mean.

For those who claimed I made the whole issue up.


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/05/so ... -american/

[Econoline]

The point of that article seems to be this:

Today, 24 years after Jackson popularized African-American, it's unclear what term is preferred by the community. A series of Gallup polls from 1991 to 2007 showed no strong consensus for either black or African-American. In a January 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 42 percent of respondents said they preferred black, 35 percent said African-American, 13 percent said it doesn't make any difference, and 7 percent chose "some other term."

...which is far from the point of your original post.

The only people mentioned in the article who had any objection to Barack Obama being called "African-American" were (1) Alan Keyes, (2) Herman Cain, (3) Rush Limbaugh, and (4)"some [unnamed] Hillary Clinton supporters" during the 2008 primaries. (Apparently nobody--except you--objects to him being called a "Black man.")

And BTW, I'm still wondering how you can accuse Obama of pretending to be something he's not when he himself wrote a best-selling book in 1995 exposing everything about his life and background which you claim he wants covered up.

[Lord Jim]

BTW, I'm still wondering how you can accuse Obama of pretending to be something he's not when he himself wrote a best-selling book in 1995 exposing everything about his life and background which you claim he wants covered up.

Aha! Trying to hide in plain sight.....

[rubato]

rube, you have made me see the light.

Barry was the victim of vicious, constant discrimination and bigotry throughout is life. It is a wonder he survived to adulthood.

He is truly a "Black Man," or "African American," if you prefer. Even if his ancestors were not slaves.

Can we move on now?

Can you learn to talk sense now?

The world he was born into said that he was black. That world defined what black was. He lived in the world created for him by ignorant racists, like you.
'
That entitles him to claim a common experience with all black people in the United States. Just because he is a lot smarter than you are, a lot better educated, more articulate, more successful, and more powerful than you will ever be does not negate the fact that racists, like you, called the tune and he was forced to listen to it and overcome it.

You are weak by comparison. No one is following you anywhere.




yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

(A) I did not say or imply that this article proved my point. It is merely an article on a group of related topics.

(B) Is this truly rubato who admonishes me for raising this issue about Our Beloved President because said Presidnet is more accomplishe than I am? The same rubato who incessantly refers to as "stupid" (or its equivalent) Republicans and conservatives who are infinitely more intelligent and accomplished than he is? Unbelievable.

(C) As for Barry's book, I wonder what percentage of the "African American" voters who voted in lockstep for him read the book. Nevertheless, the question is not whether he hid his personal background (which was generally known) but whether he legitimately claimed to be "one of us." To draw another analogy, my own father was active in the local American Legion, holding officer positions and so forth for decades, despite his having served only 6 months at a Navy base in Maryland at the end of the War (with three children, he was one of the last ones drafted). WWII Vet? Yes. Sort of.

(D) And to whip the dead horse one more time, nothing I wrote was in any way "racist" for anyone who cares about the actual definition of the word.

[Grim Reaper]

(D) And to whip the dead horse one more time, nothing I wrote was in any way "racist" for anyone who cares about the actual definition of the word.

Yet you created a thread solely to attack a person's skin color. Somehow that's not racist. Try again.

If we had a white President calling himself Irish-American because his father was born in Ireland, you wouldn't be saying a damn thing about it. But since you have a blind hatred for anything President Obama has ever done, you have to take issue with his color of skin and say he can't call himself an African-American by inventing a new definition of the word and acting like it's an accepted definition.

[Crackpot]

Can't be too sure I don't think he liked the Kennedys Either

[dgs49]

While I know it's a pointless exercise, I'll do it again. I will quote something Mr. Reaper has said that is totally, demonstrably false, and then sit back to see how he tries to explain it away.

Quote: "you [meaning me] created a thread solely to attack a person's skin color."

Please quote the sentence or phrase in this thread where I attacked any person's skin color.

Anyone who could even make such a statement after pouring over this thread for these many, tortuous weeks, is an idiot.

And remember, "idiot," like "racist," means anything I want it to mean.