We've always admired your critiques of the power structure. But this past week, when you blasted Barack Obama for pandering to “liberal white Americans" by trying not to be “politically threatening to the white power class and the liberal intelligentsia,” we think you got it wrong. You critiqued Obama for not campaigning "as Jesse Jackson did," saying that you think he somehow should be, or naturally would be, interested in the issues of black people, pointing specifically to inner city poverty.
But sadly, you fell on your face when you needlessly brought race into your analysis. Had you simply discussed the ways in which Obama is allowing himself to be coddled by political and economic elites, then you would have remained on solid ground. But when you made references to Obama being black, you lost your footing and revealed a naive understanding of race, a (perhaps) unexplored bias.
We don't think it's wrong to talk about race. But in this case, your essential argument stands on its own whether Obama is black, brown, or white. It is fundamentally about your belief that Obama, for all of his talk about change, is unwilling to truly pursue deep system transformation. And that is something worth examining.
Your critique has nothing to do with Obama's ancestry. But it sounds like you have mistaken him for being a representative of black people. And you've got to know that assuming that all people of any one group have the same agenda regardless of class is way off the mark. After all, half of all African Americans are middle class--not poor, not disenfranchised. Do you think they really want radical structural change? Probably not. So when you critique Obama as "a black candidate," you lose sight of your own argument--that he is a "mainstream candidate."
Mr. Nader, we're fairly certain that you don't expect to find yourself in the White House next year. So it seems important to this nation that you participate in the campaign in a way that forwards the cause of change, your cause for change. We think your critiques have the power to do that. But your own racial bias got you stuck in a corner that will only serve to marginalize you and your non-partisan views. If you had stuck with what was at the core of your message, you could have offered a challenge to Obama and his supporters that they would have had to address--that following the path of saddling up to more and more elites, Obama will not have the latitude to to bring about any significant change, regardless of his intent or message.
Instead you got lost in the netherworld of race. And often, people don't come back from there.
Sam and Laurie
2 comments:
I pretty much in agreement with Sam and Laurie on this one. Ralph Nader, God love him, has been trying to become president for how many decades now. Don’t get me wrong, he seems to get encouragement from college students everywhere who remain disgusting with both of the major parties. However, I will get back to his comment about Barack Obama. I think the ironic thing about all of this is that almost everyone makes a huge deal about Obama being multiracial EXCEPT Obama. Heaven forbid a candidate run on his policy issues and his ideas for change. Why would voters want to hear about that when we can all sit around and talk about the fact that Obama is biracial? I mean candidates in the past and present seem to want to run on any fact about their personal lives that voters might be remotely interested in. Bush ran on the fact that daddy was president first and McCain on the fact that he is glorious war hero. Obviously having a father in the White House didn’t really help GW out much once he got there and frankly, if you are going to campaign on the fact that you are a war hero, please explain to me how that will help you reform welfare and pull us out of Iraq because I don’t think I get it. So, Mr. Ralph Nader, lets at least try sticking to the issues rather than on how “black” someone is or how “black” we think they should be.
This is basically another prime example of how a large number of people in today's society still operate under a mindset of the past. Although I am living in a time where a lot of things that were believed to be true are for the most part no longer believed to be true, it still amazes how some people can still ignore reality. I mean lets look at the facts yes Obama is black, but he is not only black he is also white. So if a person were to try and describe him it would not be right for them to say that he is just a black person or just a white person. One because their description would be based on their opinion and not actual fact. Also because he is not just black or white he is mixed which is neither. Poor Ralph Nader still probably thinks that if you have one drop of black blood in your body that you are black which is so unfair to mixed people. Unfortunately he is not the only one who thinks that; there are also a lot of people in the black community who think that way also. I don't blame Ralph Nader or the select number of people in the black community for continuing to think in a way which they may have been taught, but I do blame them for not challenging the validity of their thought process to understand why they think a certain way and whether or not the way they think is logical. This brings me to the question of thought " Why do we as individuals have to choose what race we are, and who is ultimately given the right to choose what race an individual is."
Post a Comment