Obama's speech on race

[MrRain422]

Yeah, the point of the speech wasn't so much the actual differences between white and black America. It was the perception of those differences among and within both groups. So even if poverty is more of the issue than race when it comes to the difference between the haves and have-nots (which I only sort of agree with), that's not what the speech was about. It wasn't about wealth or poverty -- it was about racial divisions and the differences in experience and perception between people of different races in this country.

[Atticus]

do I have to read the whole speech before making personal attacks and uneducated comments that lack any historical or cultural perspective--or could I just wait a few more pages?

 

I've forgotten how the whole system works...

 

[bobbob1313]

Are people doing that?

[SarahC]

Yeah, the point of the speech wasn't so much the actual differences between white and black America. It was the perception of those differences among and with both groups. So even if poverty is more of the issue than race when it comes to the difference between the haves and have-nots (which I only sort of agree with), that's not what the speech was about. It wasn't about wealth or poverty -- it was about racial divisions and the differences in experience and perception between people of different races in this country.

well said.

 

i really do believe Obama has the nation's best interest at heart, and that he can help fix a lot of what's wrong in our country right now.

[JUDE]

do I have to read the whole speech before making personal attacks and uneducated comments that lack any historical or cultural perspective--or could I just wait a few more pages?

 

I've forgotten how the whole system works...

 

 

 

Are people doing that?

 

 

"cutting to the chase"

[Guest Jules]

I think this embodies "Option 1" as described in Obama's speech.

Link? I didn't read or watch this, but you all know he's only half black, right?

[cryptique]

you all know he's only half black, right?

A. What does that have to do with anything?

 

B. His own racial heritage was detailed near the beginning of the speech.

 

C. Link and full text were provided in this thread's first post.

[embiggen]

Link? I didn't read or watch this, but you all know he's only half black, right?

 

yes. your point?

[isadorah]

here comes the firestorm, this thread needed a little stirring:

 

what i don't understand about all of this is why he gave a speech in response to the question of why he attended a church for many many years and is aligned with a pastor that said some extremely anti-american things, and negatively racially charged things. why not be straightforward and speak to the issue at hand which is not about race and poverty or inspiring a generation or change. the question that needs to be addressed: why overlook that controversial aspect of rev. wright, the serious elements of disagreement that completely counter the message obama has been saying to the american people throughout his campaign. history or no history together, there is a line that should be drawn with who and what you want to be associated with. even if rev. wright is the purist of pure people on all other levels, it does not excuse the things he said, regardless of our country's history and current status quo, nothing excuses it. the only way to get beyond anger is to learn from the anger and move forward. no matter how close obama was to the man, i find a fundamental flaw in the lack of questioning being a part of that world and outlook on our country. when this all came out obama first said he wasn't in attendance to those sermons, and wasn't aware of those things being said, now he has stated in this speech that he did hear the reverend make controversial remarks and disagrees with them, but everyone disagrees with people at times. i think this is bigger than a nuance in belief for disagreement. he has given multiple explanations on his association with the reverend. why not say what was said in this speech from the start? there is a difference in what he said today and what he said three days ago.

 

there's a much much bigger question at hand here that a well spoken well written speech does not answer. obama's strength is in speeches. i wonder what is behind those speeches though? for me obama's actions do not support the words being spoken.

 

begin the onslaught.

[PopTodd]

I believe that his response speaks to the greater issue: not only of what lies behind the Rev's sermons, but what lies behind the way each of us percieves those comments, and how we can begin to bridge that gap.

[bobbob1313]

I think the whole preacher thing is a non-issue.

[PopTodd]

I think the whole preacher thing is a non-issue.

 

Agreed, but he did have to respond.

And the issues behind it all ARE issues.

[Sir Stewart]

I think the whole preacher thing is a non-issue.

 

Not listening to much conservative radio recently, eh?

I think the speech was a great use of an opportunity to talk about how bullshit is given more facetime than actual issues.

[bjorn_skurj]

Link? I didn't read or watch this, but you all know he's only half orc, right?

[EL the Famous]

I think the whole preacher thing is a non-issue.

 

right or wrong, for a lot of people it isn't.

 

great speech. i like how it both addressed the specific rev. white issue and, at least for me, better level-set the discussion about race and how it affects the ability to discuss and actually improve upon issues that, quite frankly, affect us all...regardless of skin color.

 

i also like how he articulates his view that racial disparity against the black community is indeed alive and well, but that it has come along way...and that part of the equation to get beyond it is accountability of self.

 

it does not excuse the things he said, regardless of our country's history and current status quo, nothing excuses it.

 

in no way, shape or form does that speech condone and or excuse what rev. white said...quite to the contrary, he uses it as an example of the type of dialogue prohbiting the unity he is trying to acheive. but, as he states, reality is that one can respect and interact someone as a whole w/out agreeing w/ everything they say and/or do. that's real life.

[isadorah]

in no way, shape or form does that speech condone and or excuse what rev. white said...quite to the contrary, he uses it as an example of the type of dialogue prohbiting the unity he is trying to acheive. but, as he states, reality is that one can respect and interact someone as a whole w/out agreeing w/ everything they say and/or do. that's real life.

 

 

but why he is taking the opportunity now to address this. why didn't he address it head on years ago when he heard the "controversial" sermons? why not at the beginning of his campaign? where is the effort prior to this speech to bring forward this dialogue with the minister himself and make someone obama is so close to aware of how much his actions are prohibiting the unity you talk mention? action, that's what i need, not simply a speech that talks about it.

 

i have a hard time with the whole respecting someone that differs so extremely on such a fundamental core point of view. there are some things, indeed, yes we can all agree to disagree about, that is reality. however, rev wright is not obama's best friend or third cousin, this is his pastor, his spiritual advisor, and yet they don't agree on the message that rev wright preaches. i find flaw in that. the we don't agree contradicts the notion of the role that wright has played in his life. in other words, i don't understand how his spiritual advisor, his pastor, his preacher, whatever term you give it does not align with his own personal beliefs.

[Edie]

You can replace "black" with "poor" and it makes just as much sense.

 

OK, let's try that here:

 

Legalized discrimination - where poors were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to poor business owners, or poor homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or poors were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments

[Good Old Neon]

Here's my admittedly way too long take on the subject of racism - and why we will still be dealing with its negative consequences for a long while yet....and quite a bit longer still if it is simply treated as learned behavior, as it is to this day.

 

 

March 17, 2007 - newscientist.com

 

Born prejudiced

 

We know ethnic prejudice is wrong, so how come it's still rife, asks Mark Buchanan

Mark Buchanan

 

In 1992, during the war between Serbia and Croatia, The Washington Post ran an interview with a

Croatian farmer named Adem, who had a horrific story to tell. Over the previous year, Adem said,

discourse between local Serbs and Croats had deteriorated, as individual identities dissolved into a

menacing fog of "us" versus "them". Then group animosity turned into something far worse. Serbs from a

neighbouring village abruptly rounded up 35 men from Adem's village and slit their throats. The summer

before, the killers had helped their victims harvest their crops.

 

Earlier this year a small group of Z-list celebrities caused an international incident during the filming of

the UK version of the reality TV show, Big Brother . The seemingly racist comments made by Jade

Goody and her cronies to Bollywood film star Shilpa Shetty provoked thousands of shocked viewers to

write letters of complaint. There was a media frenzy. Questions were asked in Parliament. Even the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who happened to be on a visit to India, felt he had to

comment on the affair.

 

Two very different stories; one common theme. Proof, if it were needed, that the human tendency to judge

others in the crudest terms - race, religion, ethnicity, or any arbitrary marker - has not been consigned to

the history books, no matter how much we might wish it were so. Somewhat disturbingly, scientists now

suggest that this is not really surprising because such prejudice is part of human nature.

 

If they are correct, then the roots of group animosity and hatred run very deep indeed, which may be

depressing news for those trying to make a difference in ethnic or sectarian hotspots from Darfur and Iraq

to inner cities and football terraces. Yet researchers also insist that facing up to our authentic nature is the

only way to gain real insight into the forces that drive group conflict, and to learn how we might manage

and defuse such urges. "We shouldn't treat prejudice as pathological just because it offends us," says

anthropologist Francisco Gil-White. "If we aim to transcend ethnic strife, we would be wise to understand

the role that perfectly normal human psychology plays in producing it."

 

Psychologists have long known of our proclivity to form "in groups" based on crude markers, ranging

from skin colour to clothing styles. Think of inner-city gangs, Italian football supporters, or any "cool"

group of stylish teenagers. "Our minds seem to be organised in a way that makes breaking the human

world into distinct groups almost automatic," says psychologist Lawrence Hirschfeld of the University of

Michigan, Ann Arbor. Many experiments confirm this, and show that we tend to favour our own group,

even when that group is just an arbitrary collection of individuals.

 

In 1970, for example, a team of researchers led by psychologist Henri Tajfel of the University of Bristol,

UK, randomly divided teenage boys from the same school into two groups, and gave every boy the

chance to allocate points to two other boys, one from each group. This could be done in different ways -

some increasing the combined total for both recipients, and others increasing the difference between the

two. The boys consistently chose options of the latter kind, favouring recipients from their own group.

Experiments like these are enough to convince Tajfel and others that if you put people into different

groups, call them red and blue, north and south, or whatever, a bias towards one's own group will

automatically emerge.

 

This in itself does not make us racist. In fact it may not be such a bad thing: research published last year

suggests at least one useful function of our groupist tendencies. Political scientists Ross Hammond of the

Brookings Institute in Washington DC and Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan have

discovered, perhaps surprisingly, that it can promote cooperation (Journal of Conflict Resolution , vol 50,

p 926). Taking their cue from Tajfel's finding that in-group favouritism emerges with minimal prompting,

Hammond and Axelrod decided to try to emulate this in a simple computer model. Imagine a population

of individuals, interacting in pairs at random, and engaging in some activity where both would benefit

from cooperation, but each was also tempted to cheat - getting more for themselves at the other's expense.

With no insight into the likely behaviour of others, individuals in such a world would have no way -

besides pure guesswork - to maximise the outcome of their interactions. But add one simple element,

colour, and everything changes.

 

People in Hammond and Axelrod's world come in four colours, assigned randomly at birth. When

interacting with others, they might now adopt one of several basic strategies. An individual might act

randomly, as before, ignoring colour - which would make sense as the colours say nothing about how an

individual is likely to behave. Alternatively, a person might always cooperate or always cheat, regardless

of the other's colour. Another option would be to follow a groupist "ethnocentric" strategy - cooperating

with anyone of the same colour, but always trying to cheat those of another colour. Finally, agents might

be anti-groupist - only cooperating with someone of another colour. The researchers randomly assigned

one of these strategies to each agent. They also gave all agents the ability to learn from one another, so

that any strategy that did well would tend to be copied and so spread.

 

What happened then, they discovered, was that agents of each particular colour began to gather together.

At first, a few groupist agents of the same colour might find themselves together by chance. Within such a

group, cooperative interactions lead to good outcomes, causing others nearby to copy their strategy,

swelling the group. In the model, Hammond and Axelrod found that strongly ethnocentric groups of

different colours came to fill the world, at the expense of others. Anyone who did not follow the groupist

strategy tended to suffer. Even someone ignoring colour - and remember colour initially signified nothing

about an agent's behaviour - would also get wiped out. In short, once people begin to act on colour, it

comes to matter. What's more, it turns out that the overall level of cooperation is higher in this world

where there is in-group favouritism than in a world where agents are colourless. "Ethnocentrism is

actually a mechanism for generating cooperation, and one that does not demand much in the way of

cognitive ability," says Hammond.

 

Axelrod and Hammond are well aware that their model is a far cry from the complexities of real-world

racism. Still, it is interesting that colour prejudice emerges even though colour has no intrinsic

significance. Modern genetics has dispelled the naive notion that racial divisions reflect real biological

differences. We know that the genetic variation between individuals within one racial or ethnic group is

generally much larger than the average difference between such groups. As in the virtual world, race and

ethnicity are arbitrary markers that have acquired meaning. But you won't get far telling Blacks and

Hispanics in the racially charged areas of Los Angeles that their differences are just "superficial" cultural

constructs. "Race doesn't matter because it is real," says historian Niall Ferguson of Harvard University,

"but because people conceive it to be real."

 

What's more, this misconception seems to be deeply ingrained in our psyche. For example, Hirschfeld

found that by the age of 3 most children already attribute significance to skin colour. In 1993, he showed

a group of children a drawing of a chubby black child dressed up as a policeman, followed by photos of

several adults, each of whom had two of the three traits: being black, chubby and dressed as a policeman.

Asked to decide which person was the boy as a grown-up, most children chose a black adult even though

he was either not overweight or minus a police uniform. "Kids appear to believe," says Hirschfeld, "that

race is more important than other physical differences in determining what sort of person one is."

 

More recent brain imaging studies suggest that even adults who claim not to be racist register skin colour

automatically and unconsciously. In 2000, a team led by social psychologist Allan Hart of Amherst

College in Massachusetts found that when white and black subjects viewed faces of the other race both

showed increased activity in the amygdala - a brain region involved in grasping the emotional

significance of stimuli. Yet consciously, these subjects reported feeling no emotional difference on seeing

the different faces. In another study of white subjects, in the same year, neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps of

New York University and colleagues found that those individuals whose amygdala lit up most strongly

also scored highest on a standard test for racial prejudice.

 

Does this mean that our species has evolved to see the world in terms of black and white? Not necessarily.

After all, our ancestors would not normally have met people whose skin was a different colour from their

own: neighbouring ethnic groups would have looked pretty much alike. So, it's possible that our tendency

to classify people by colour might simply be a modern vice, learned early and reinforced throughout our

lives - even, paradoxically, by anti-racist messages. That seems unlikely, however, when you consider our

attitudes to ethnicity. In fieldwork among Torguud Mongols and Kazakhs, neighbouring ethic groups

living in central Asia, Gil-White investigated ideas of ethnic identity to find out whether people link it

more with nurture (a child being brought up within a group) or nature (the ethnicity of biological parents).

The majority of both groups saw ethnicity as a hidden but powerful biological factor, unaffected by

someone being adopted into another group. "They perceive the underlying nature as some kind of

substance that lies inside and causes the members of an ethnic group to behave the way they do," he says.

Like race, ethnicity has no biological significance, yet this is exactly how we perceive it.

 

Many researchers now believe that we have evolved a tendency to divide the world along ethnic lines. For

example, anthropologist Rob Boyd from the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that our

ancestors, given the rich social context of human life, would have needed skills for perceiving the

important groups to which individuals belonged. Being attuned to ethnic differences would have allowed

individuals to identify others who shared the same social norms - people with whom it would have been

easiest to interact because of shared expectations. It would have paid to attend to cultural differences such

as styles of clothing, scarification or manner of greeting, that marked one group out from another. In the

modern world, colour is simply mistaken as one such marker.

 

That might explain why we tend to divide the world into groups and why we use ethnic differences and

skin colour as markers to help us do this. It even gives a rationale for in-group favouritism. But what

about out-group animosity? Is prejudice part of the whole evolved package? Gil-white believes it is. He

argues that within any group of people sharing social norms, anyone who violates those will attract moral

opprobrium - it is considered "bad" to flout the rules and benefit at the expense of the group. This

response is then easily transferred to people from other ethnic groups. "We're tempted to treat others, who

are conforming to their local norms, as violating our own local norms, and we take offence accordingly,"

says Gil-White. As a result we may be unconsciously inclined to see people from other ethnic groups not

simply as different, but as cheats, morally corrupt, bad people.

Natural but not nice

 

"I think all this work refutes those naive enough to believe that if it weren't for bad socialising, we would

all be nice tolerant people who accept cultural and ethnic differences easily," says Daniel Chirot,

professor of international studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. That may sound disturbing, but

being biologically primed for racism does not make it inevitable. For a start, what is natural and biological

needn't be considered moral or legal. "The sexual attraction that a grown man feels for a 15-year-old

female is perfectly natural," Gil-White points out. But most societies forbid such relations, and all but a

very few men can control their urges.

 

Besides, if ethnocentrism is an evolved adaptation to facilitate smooth social interactions, it is a rather

crude one. A far better way to decide who can be trusted and who cannot is to assess an individual's

character and personality rather than to rely on meaningless markers. In today's world, that is what most

of us do, most of the time. It is only when it becomes difficult to judge individuals that people may

instinctively revert to the more primitive mechanism. Hammond and Axelrod argue that this is most likely

to happen under harsh social or economic conditions, which may explain why ethnic divisions seem to be

exaggerated when societies break down, as a consequence of war, for example. "To me this makes perfect

sense," says Chirot. "Especially in times of crisis we tend to fall back on those with whom we are most

familiar, who are most like us."

 

Knowing all this, it may be possible to find ways to curb our unacceptable tendencies. Indeed,

experiments show how little it can take to begin breaking down prejudice. Psychologist Susan Fiske from

Princeton University and colleagues got students to view photos of individuals from a range of social

groups, while using functional MRI to monitor activity in their medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain

region known to light up in response to socially significant stimuli. The researchers were shocked to

discover that photos of people belonging to "extreme" out-groups, such as drug addicts, stimulated no

activity in this region at all, suggesting that the viewers considered them to be less than human. "It is just

what you see with homeless people or beggars in the street," says Fiske, "people treat them like piles of

garbage." In new experiments, however, she was able to reverse this response. After replicating the earlier

results, the researchers asked simple, personal questions about the people in the pictures, such as, "What

kind of vegetable do you think this beggar would like?" Just one such question was enough to

significantly raise activity in the mPFC. "The question has the effect of making the person back into a

person," says Fiske, "and the prejudiced response is much weaker."

 

It would appear then that we have a strong tendency to see others as individuals, which can begin to erode

our groupist instincts with very little prompting. Perhaps this is why, as Chirot points out, ethnocentrism

does not always lead to violence. It might also explain why in every case of mass ethnic violence it has

taken massive propaganda on the part of specific political figures or parties to stir passions to levels where

violence breaks out.

 

If the seeds of racism are in our nature, so too are the seeds of tolerance and empathy. By better

understanding what sorts of situations and environments are conducive to both, we may be able to

promote our better nature.

[the carlos]

You're this Mark Buchanan guy?

 

NOTE-not being a smartass.

[cryptique]

i have a hard time with the whole respecting someone that differs so extremely on such a fundamental core point of view. there are some things, indeed, yes we can all agree to disagree about, that is reality. however, rev wright is not obama's best friend or third cousin, this is his pastor, his spiritual advisor, and yet they don't agree on the message that rev wright preaches. i find flaw in that. the we don't agree contradicts the notion of the role that wright has played in his life. in other words, i don't understand how his spiritual advisor, his pastor, his preacher, whatever term you give it does not align with his own personal beliefs.

Seems to me that you're trying really hard to find reasons not to respect Obama.

[JUDE]

...

If the seeds of racism are in our nature, so too are the seeds of tolerance and empathy. By better

understanding what sorts of situations and environments are conducive to both, we may be able to

promote our better nature.

 

 

Dude, that's like longer than the speach you're posting in regards too.

[Good Old Neon]

You're this Mark Buchanan guy?

 

Yes, I am Mark Buchanan.

 

No, no no - that was poorly worded wasn't it - I tend to agree with Mr. Buchanan's take on the inherent nature of prejudice - is what I think I was trying to suggest, not too well.

[the carlos]

Yes, I am Mark Buchanan.

 

No, no no - that was poorly worded wasn't it - I tend to agree with Mr. Buchanan's take on the inherent nature of prejudice - is what I think I was trying to suggest, not too well.

ok. I wasn't being a smartass. just trying to understand your post.

[MrRain422]

but why he is taking the opportunity now to address this. why didn't he address it head on years ago when he heard the "controversial" sermons? why not at the beginning of his campaign? where is the effort prior to this speech to bring forward this dialogue with the minister himself and make someone obama is so close to aware of how much his actions are prohibiting the unity you talk mention? action, that's what i need, not simply a speech that talks about it.

 

i have a hard time with the whole respecting someone that differs so extremely on such a fundamental core point of view. there are some things, indeed, yes we can all agree to disagree about, that is reality. however, rev wright is not obama's best friend or third cousin, this is his pastor, his spiritual advisor, and yet they don't agree on the message that rev wright preaches. i find flaw in that. the we don't agree contradicts the notion of the role that wright has played in his life. in other words, i don't understand how his spiritual advisor, his pastor, his preacher, whatever term you give it does not align with his own personal beliefs.

 

He agrees with him on some things and not on others. Why must Obama agree 100% with everything each of his advisors believes? And if he did agree with them, what would be the point of even going to them for advice, since he would have nothing to learn from their perspective?

[solace]

right or wrong, for a lot of people it isn't.

 

great speech. i like how it both addressed the specific rev. white issue and, at least for me, better level-set the discussion about race and how it affects the ability to discuss and actually improve upon issues that, quite frankly, affect us all...regardless of skin color.

 

i also like how he articulates his view that racial disparity against the black community is indeed alive and well, but that it has come along way...and that part of the equation to get beyond it is accountability of self.

 

 

 

in no way, shape or form does that speech condone and or excuse what rev. white said...quite to the contrary, he uses it as an example of the type of dialogue prohbiting the unity he is trying to acheive. but, as he states, reality is that one can respect and interact someone as a whole w/out agreeing w/ everything they say and/or do. that's real life.

Rev. Wright, fwiw