i'm willing to go out on a limb and call you on actually reading obama's book. the conservablog's cliff notes version doesn't count, bf.

Honestly, MB, I wish I still had it so I could mail it to Neo. Unfortunately, I gave it to a friend who used to be an Obama supporter.

Heck, I'd even be happy if BengalsFan would provide the definition of 'racist' that he's using...

Honestly, I really don't care if a pot head who hasn't read the book wants to say I didn't read it. All I'm asking is that those who support Obama DO read it. Go back to your bong and cheetos.

Frankly, you can see his racism in comments he makes about being a typical white person.

How about simple hatred and intolerance of another race? Simple enough for you?

That's clear in the way he chides his grandmother for being a typical white person. It's clear in the way he continues to listen to advisors who claim "the white man" is keeping them down. It's clear when he calls for "the Joshua Generation" to follow him in bridging the final gap between them and "the white man".

Unless, of course, you want to claim, and I'm sure you will, that "the white man" has no negative connotations.

of course he is racist, bf. *pats head* when you have the ability to play "shifting sands definitions" you can turn any pejorative word into a canard.

"beware the racist sleeper cell agent!"

-Bengalsfan

Shifting sands definition? Come on. You're even more pathetic than I thought. The definition is simple. When you continue to use words like "Typical White Person" and "The White Man" as a derrogatory term, you're acting in a racist fashion. It's no different than if I were to say something like "My friend is a typical black person. He has three children by two different women, neither of whom he is married to. His children and their mothers are on welfare, and he works three minimal wage jobs to pay his child support." As soon as I generalize from one person's bad situation or bad acts, and say it is typical of his entire race, I'm acting racist.

Based upon what BF said and comments made by Hussein Obama, I would have to say he was a racist. Just like Neo and Ron must be to feel so ashamed of their feelings that they need to throw the word racist at other posts like its going out of style.

Of course I would. I would even quote George Bush if it related to what I was writing. The idea that you only quote people that you agree with doesn't make sense to me.



Why? Well, Malcolm X refers to it in the quote when he talks about violence. He indicated that his white background was a result of his grandmother being raped. Obviously, that has a bearing on whether he considers it to be something good. It is also something totally unrelated to Obama's experience, which was quite different.

Yossarian, Ron, and Neo...

If I said you were all typical black people, would that be racist?

No. You'd just be stupid, since I am white.

While the "white blood" line is not listed here; from the Obama campaign comes a website set up to debunk the kinds of myths that BF and company try to spread to create false fear regarding Obama.


http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/therealquote

Gasp, imagine that. Obama is trying to say "what I meant was"....

Oh, and notice, he says nothing about wanting his white blood to recede and knowing it can't. Why? Because he can't.

What Obama wrote, in context:

"Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me. The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will. All the other stuff, the talk of blue-eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program, I decided. Religious baggage that Malcolm himself seemed to have safely abandoned toward the end of his life. And yet, even as I imagine myself following Malcolm's call, one line in the book stayed with me. He spoke of a wish he'd once had, the 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 and my grandparents at some uncharted border."

I wonder what the reaction would be if McCain had written a book in which he said that, "David Duke's memior spoke to me..." and "while I longed to follow his call, I just couldn't get there..." [for this or that reason]... I'm sure that wouldn't be any big deal, right?

Thank you for answering my question. It makes your posts easier to understand. My confusion stems from a difference in our respective definition of 'racist'. Mine is: "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race"

I think you put the wrong part in bold:

"His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me. The blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will. All the other stuff, the talk of blue-eyed devils and apocalypse, was incidental to that program, I decided. Religious baggage that Malcolm himself seemed to have safely abandoned toward the end of his life."

So your comparison with David Duke fails because once you take away the racial comments from Duke, there is nothing left. None of the poetry or respect that Obama referenced.

Strangely, Yoss, there's no bold face in the book. On the other hand, there are repeated references to "the white man" and his desire to be black and not white.

Amazing.

Those were my thoughts as well. I guess some parts are just more important than others.

Thank you.

And I would imagine you don't believe him when he says that it was the "poetry" and "insistence on respect" that spoke to him rather than the "incidental" racial stuff that he refers to as baggage that even Malcolm X abandoned.

hmmm i knew a guy once that thought god talked to him in morse code.

So then these words convey everything he means or is there, as you have argued, some deeping meaning to the words, the hidden, implied meanings?

I know a guy in Washington who believes that God speaks through him.

Is it possible that while Obama sees poetry in Malcolm's words, others see hatred? Where Obama sees insistence on respect, others see insistence on violence?

And that these words are the flip side of the David Duke's of the world? Can you at least concede that this line of thought is possible?