Obama not Black Enough Like Me For Morgan Freeman And Why It Matters
Damn, you know Obama is doing a bad job when blacks begin to disown him. The fact is, as ugly as the sentiment may be, Freeman isn't alone in it. On June 26, I posted: Is Obama losing his black "Essence"? I noticed comments similar to Freeman's in some reading involving Essence magazine.
“First thing that always pops into my head regarding our president is that all of the people who are setting up this barrier for him … they just conveniently forget that Barack had a mama, and she was white — very white American, Kansas, middle of America,” Freeman said. “There was no argument about who he is or what he is. America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet. He’s not America’s first black president — he’s America’s first mixed-race president.”
Fact is, black voter participation was high in 2008 and Obama won an unprecedented proportion of it, even as a Democrat. They routinely carry the black vote. But by how much matters – most especially in Obama's case.
A decline in participation, along with a gap in enthusiasm for him, even among those who do show up, could prove disastrous for Obama's re-election chances. However unpleasant, Freeman's sentiments are relevant to the 2012 election.
For all intents and purposes, all African-Americans are mixed race — look at the history of mixed-race children born to slave women, intermarriage between escaped slaves and Native Americans, post-slavery mixed race relationships over the last 150 years…
Mostly true, RwR. But only minorities are allowed to talk in terms of racial purity.
It’s not his skin color that’s the problem – it’s his warmed over freshman dorm room liberalism and committment to unlimited gov’t control.
Uh oh. Waaaycist…
Morgan Freeman may say it but whitey may not repeat it – kind of like blasphemy laws.
We live in a mostly black rural area w/ a low per capita income. It was settled early on (1700s)by white plantations – VERY large tracts of land that required some form of serf labor in order to produce anything Mother England thought worth buying – tobacco was an excellent crop for that purpose.
After the Civil War, black families acquired small acreages – I don’t think there was much “tenant” farming, but I could be wrong. Seems like the lighter-skinned blacks moved North for better opportunities while their darker-complected cousins stayed here and gradually worked their way out of grinding poverty. But that was VERY gradual. In the small graveyard of the black church which abuts our property, some of the tombstones date right back to the beginning – i.e., 1860s. There are markings on these pieces, but no “writing” as such. Literacy didn’t happen till a contingent of white nuns opened a small school for black children. But there weren’t public schools for whites, either; whites knew how to band together and teach their children.
Yeah, they all voted for Obama but they’ve been Dems since LBJ bought their vote. The Dems promised a better deal and they went with it. Buyer’s remorse has set in to some extent as they watch their kids crash & burn. When Bill Cosby started his progam and book, “Come on People Now”, I ordered a box of free books and handed them out wherever I could.
Interestingly, when we moved in here all those years ago, we were only the second white family to have lived in this house. The former black owner felt so mistreated by her neighbors that she refused to sell to black ppl. We were her revenge.
A neighbor down the road told me she always breathed a sigh of relief when a white – or whitish – family settled nearby. But she was still afraid of The Man. If she had dealings with the courthouse, I always went with her to lessen her anxiety…
These days the cash crop in our county is jack pine.
[...] concerns about the president’s “blackness”, raised in the last election cycle and again in this one. Obama already has a family background and experience to which most blacks do not relate. Giving [...]