Input request: How do we as Democrats deal with race, homophobia, class, gender in this GE election?

[genna]

I will give you the following excerpts so you know what I'm driving at. I don't think it is a good idea to use code words to talk around a hot button issue. I think we are old enough to talk about things that matter without pissing off other people.

I also think some people find ways of being offended just because a topic is brought up and they don't want to deal with it. Yesterday, I read Eugene Robinson's article about Obama's victory. It wasn't the most radical thing I've ever read, but those comments were. It was like falling into a portal where bigotry was a means to express your point.

I know this primary season opened up all kinds of tears in the Democratic coalition. I'd like to be inclusive AT THE SAME TIME I make a point about hot button issues. How do we do both and address the problems these issues engage?


Race
From a black point of view

Our racial wounds are deep, their impact subliminal. Words have consequences. In these sensitive times, they can activate our most unconscious fears and tap the deepest recesses of our ugly history.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/washington/739385,CST-EDT-laura14.article



From a reverse racism point of view

Wow, a surefire way to get people to vote for Obama - call them racists! And what works even better is lecturing women - yeah, that's gonna go over well. Woemn tend to tune out while being lectured in the condescending, "look here, little lady!" tone. We've heard it for so damn long it makes us dig in our heels, *not* do what we're lectured about. Human nature.

I think these bloggers need to stop this crap if the D's are to have any chance of winning in November.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6314771



Race as a card game

How has Obama played the race card in this election? He's made a conscious effort not to do that including not dividing voters into black, white, hispanic, asian, old, young, blue collar, educated, wealthy, etc. He's tried to be inclusive in his campaign but the same can't be said about the Clinton campaign. She's rode on the back of racism, sexism and all other isms out there. Obama at no point throughout this election fueled all of these sentiment ...

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/30/ferraro-reagan-dems-see-obama-playing-race-card-find-it-frightening/




Religion

KURTZ: No, I took 10 seconds, you took 20.

David, from Obama, of course closely identified with Trinity Church for 20 years. Jeremiah Wright story, first defended Jeremiah Wright, continued to defended church. Finally yesterday he pulls the plug on the membership. And because of that video that we've seen - that we've all seen now 50 probably times. Do you have the sense that Fox and others were pushing this hard?

DAVID FRUM, "NATIONAL REVIEW": Well, it's an amazing moment of TV. And anyway, you think Obama has already filed his application for membership at St. Johns in Lafayette Square.

KURTZ: Meaning he's moving to Washington.

FRUM: I think that is the plan. Here is what is strange about all this to me. When Hillary Clinton made that slip about Robert Kennedy, we were subjected to hours and hours and hours of media speculation about how evil exactly her intentions were. If the press doesn't like you or made up its mind it now doesn't like you, it just doesn't like you. Barack Obama gives the speech in Philadelphia in what was a month and a half ago. It was an -- a non-answer to a whole series of questions. It was an evasion. We can't talk about the question. We're going to talk about the history of race in America. Now he resigns in the church. He contradicted everything he said in the speech. I won't disown my church, as if he learned something in the last eight weeks he didn't learn in the previous 20 years. It's not plausible. Yet, he'll get a pass on it. Hillary won't get a pass on RFK.

Gay, bisexual, transgendered, lesbian issues

Ok, then, how about this?

I will be the first to admit that I am a firebrand on this issue; it is that important to me. I know quite well that change will not happen overnight, nor by the end of the next business day.

But if everyone becomes complacent, if everyone convinces themselves that "now is not the time," the the status quo becomes permanent. If no one is willing to keep the issue before politicians, if no one is willing to hold our leaders' feet to the fire and demand, "WHEN?" then the politicans will forget that it is something very important.

As another poster pointed out, it was a century between the Emancipation Proclamation and meaningful civil rights legislation for African Americans. If the black community had not demanded, "Equality NOW!," how long do you think it would have taken?

You don't have to support my actions. You don't have to particularly like my stand. But I will not let the matter of full equality die because, when that happens, hope for change dies too. I will continue to raise a ruckus and make demands because someone must. All I ask is, don't stand in my way.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6306244#6306945




Gender as a Divisive Means of Misogyny

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403090_pf.html




I don't think I have to link to any of the comments on "bitter" commentary to point out how divisively upsetting most people found it from the actual words and the spin surrounding it. But feel free to post any and all articles you find definitive.

[Gore1FL]

1. Bottom line:

We act like Leaders, we act like Democrats, and we Americans, and we take the good fight across this nation.

We simply cannot be afraid of doing the right things, taking the right positions, and letting our voices be heard from the mountaintops, the valleys, from the great plains, from the coastal waters.

Our single voices will be heard crying out in unison, not from the corner we have often found ourselves quivering, but from sea to shining sea.

We cannot and will not back down from adversaries of progress, or opponents of change. Fear cannot and will not be an effective electoral strategy--not this year, not ever again.

[genna]

3. OK I hear the Clarion call for action. I'm asking what inclusive language is least offensive?

[Gore1FL]

11. That is the point

As long as the language is inclusive, it is only offensive to those who wish to be offended.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. We challenge americans to show that they are.

better than the hate mongerers think they are.

[genna]

4. Better how? The haters spawn off and claim they are inclusive.

On this board, I've seen the mere mention of an inclusive agenda be panned and I've also noticed some words need not be mentioned.

I'm asking how to approach the issue without cutting people down to the quick at the same time.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. That is a good question.

Obama has tried by going straight at the issue and bringing up 'divisiveness' on a regular basis. I think that is a good approach. There may be other good tactics as well. The point is to observe that the opposition is trying desperately to divide us, and then to quickly move to why - becuase the issues at stake here unite us - almost all of us, as americans who have suffered under one of the worst regimes in the history of our republic.

[Raineyb]

6. I wish I could answer that

But based on the thread discussing Tim Wise's article, we can't even have a honest discussion about race and certain people's mindsets without an accusation of flamebait going out.

The Tim Wise discussion thread is locked BTW and frankly based on the responses in it I doubt very much that we will have the discussions of which you speak. There were a lot of very defensive people posting, just irate because Tim Wise said that their "whiteness" was showing without bothering to read the article to understand exactly what it is he meant by the phrase. So it looks as though we'll probably go along not talking about privilege and the mindset it creates, racism among Clinton supporters who will vote for McSame, etc and if we manage to get Obama elected, white people will pretend that racism is gone because the country elected a black man.

I'd like to be optimistic but just based on the primaries, I don't think that's a wise move.

Regards

[BklynChick]

8. yea, that was disturbing. it was a very good and enlightening article, but people seemed to take

offense to the title and didn't look any further. that's NOT progressive.

[Raineyb]

10. Progressives should know that you can't judge book by its cover

Nor can you judge an article by it's title. It's part of the reason why I'm not as excited about this election as I was at the beginning of the year.

As for the article itself, I thought it was excellent. It was a more erudite stating of something I've been trying to get across but with few takers at least when discussing the Clinton supporters who will vote for McSame rather than vote for Obama.

Regards

[BklynChick]

7. I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, but I tend to believe that dealing with the isms head on

and being straight up about it is best. However, if you don't have the diversity in the room, or in the message board, it's very difficult. I subscribe to the "shut up you might learning something" school of thought. If a person who is different than me in some way describes their reality, I try not to get defensive right away and try to hear what they're saying. Having been in an interracial marriage for almost 20 years and living in NYC amongst so much diversity combined with in your face people, I feel comfortable with that. But many people would prefer to say they are color blind (as an example) and just keep moving.

:shrug:

[newmajority]

9. I suggest the "Consolidated" approach

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-B9Z3b3zxg

Fuck ALL bigotry, and fuck their wedge issues.

Damn, these guys were ahead of their time.........

[terrya]

13. I hate to reference Hillary's speech...

No, that's a lie, actually. :-)

In her speech, she said that there are "No Acceptable Prejudices". And that's a good starting point. Bigotry...any kind of ism or phobia...is not acceptable. Period.

[Raineyb]

14. It's too bad she didn't think of that before

I certainly would have appreciated such an attitude during the primaries.

Now? Sounds like lip service.

Regards

[LWolf]

12. Hopefully,

with more grace, with more ethics, than we did in the primaries.

This is part of what has divided the party, and I don't see the healing happening within the party very quickly.