race

As we've seen this election cycle, there's a desperation seen in the MSM talking heads and newpaper columnists, even some blogs, to declare Barack Obama's success a post-racial triumph in this country -- that racism is rapidly becoming a distant memory.

First, take a look at this lovely T-shirt being sold at Mulligan's Bar and Grill in Marietta/Cobb County, Georgia (h/t Jeremy from Cobb).

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he's peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with "Obama in '08" scrolled underneath, are "cute." But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

"It's time to put an end to this," said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan's Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the "racist and highly offensive" shirts.

Just down the street from Marietta's famous Big Chicken, Mulligan's has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner's ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it's impossible not to know what's on Norman's mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan's. Among his recent musings: "I wish Hillary had married OJ," "No habla espanol — and never will" and the standard "I.N.S. Agents eat free."

"I'm saying out loud what everyone in this town whispers," Norman said.

...Norman said those offended are "hunting for a reason to be mad" and insisted he is "not a racist." Why picture Obama as Curious George? "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George," Norman said.

Not a racist. I guess he doesn't do Klan night riding on the weekends, so in his mind he's free and clear of that label. Even sadder, he's donating the proceeds to the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I wonder what the MDA thinks of this?

More below the fold.

...Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, according to the numbers. The mainstream media has been focused like a laser beam on Barack Obama's slippage in the blue collar white working class vote because of results in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's part of the assessment of the electability factor.

The curious thing is that little attention has been paid to the support of black voters for Hillary Clinton, which has fallen off the cliff. This piece puts the hard facts out there. (NYT):

Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

While a favorable opinion doesn’t necessarily translate into a vote, this should still give the Clintons (and the superdelegates) pause. Electability cuts both ways.

If Hillary Clinton should defy the odds (and the current math) and secure the nomination, she would be hard-pressed to defeat John McCain without the enthusiastic support of black voters, stalwarts of the Democratic base.

And the collapse isn't because of the affinity factor -- blacks voting for Obama solely because he's black. When a majority of whites abandoned the former president during Monicagate, blacks were among his most steadfast supporters. In this election cycle, that loyalty has only garnered a perceived slap in the face. More below the fold.

Barbara Barrett and Martha Quillan wrote an excellent story in today's N&O about racial prejudice in North Carolina. It's a hard view of the sad reality in North Carolina.

I can't believe the MSM has spent all this air time on a pastor who isn't running for president. Oh, OK, yes I can. Since Obama "divorced" Wright in the press conference yesterday, my question is whether the bar for the media will move even higher. His former pastor's ego was obviously bruised from the (quite frankly, sensitive) rebuke of his past comments that he received from the presidential hopeful in Obama's A More Perfect Union speech.

Some of what Wright said at the National Press Club was clarifying and on point:

Maybe this dialogue on race, an honest dialogue that does not engage in denial or superficial platitudes, maybe this dialogue on race can move the people of faith in this country from various stages of alienation and marginalization to the exciting possibility of reconciliation.

Other parts added nothing positive to the dialogue showed a public unraveling of the id. Wright felt dissed, and took it before the cameras, damaging his own credibility -- and he either doesn't seem to realize it -- or care.

I see clips from the NPC appearance and wonder what's next -- Rev. Wright lobbying for additional 15 minutes of exposure to "play the dozens" with Barack Obama? I'm sure the media would be down with that too. And that's because they never dig deeper to see what's really beneath the surface.

[Cross-posted at DKos (pls. rec!) and Pam's House Blend. ]

Linda Daves of the North Carolina Republican party apparently wields a lot of power. When Senator Elizabeth Dole was asked to condemn an anti-Obama color arousal ad, this was her response:

Dole said in an interview she didn't want to get involved.

"I am concentrating on getting my work done here in the Senate, and I'm just not going to get into refereeing a third party political ad that has nothing to do with my race," she said.

You can do something about this - we're planning to give Liddy a special delivery. Read on.

I was on the Mike Signorile Show on SIRIUS OutQ 109 on Friday to tackle why it's hard to have productive discussions about race, given the environment of denial and defensiveness that has developed around the subject. It's the second of a series of segments Mike and I plan to have about this (the first segment is here).

Use the player below or click here for the MP3.

We talked about the NC GOP ad flap this week, and also examined how both Oprah and Condi Rice recently received a cold splash of water in the face to remind them of their blackness -- and thus (in the eyes of many who somehow saw them as "post-racial" figures before) they now part of the secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda, a group apparently as dangerous to our culture as The Homosexual Agenda.

More below the fold.

On Saturday I will moderate the panel "Still Crossing Those Bridges: Facing Racial and Ethnic Barriers" at the 2008 Unity Conference, held at UNC Chapel Hill (more info here). This panel was originally developed for the EqualityNC conference last year, and it was so popular that the organizers of tomorrow's event wanted us to expose it to a larger audience.

The topics are particularly relevant in new ways, in the wake of Barack Obama's speech on race:

* Coming out on in communities of color on NC/Southern Campuses-- identifying the challenges
* Effect of religious-based bigotry coming from the pulpit
* Finding LGBT cultural common ground between different communities of color (black, brown, white) on campuses -- what are those barriers?
* How do we create a safe space online and offline to discuss race relations?
* Are separate racial/ethnic social spaces essential for LGBT communities of culture on campuses and why?
* If so, how, as a movement, can these groups come together to on initiatives to move LGBT rights forward -- what tools and approaches work, what have been the frustrations?
* How do class and culture factor into the equation?

Let's face it: there's way too much flaming that goes on in internet forums and in local newspapers over Reverend Wright's sermons.

It generates a lot of heat, but no light.

So how about if we back up a little and try to do what Barack has asked us to do: sit down and have a quiet conversation and try to understand one another?

Mom's become, slowly, an Obama supporter, captivated over the past few months by his clarion calls for a return from the often hyper-partisan political nastiness of the past decade to the more graceful and, yes, humanely decent and inclusive, discourse of the past.
And then...this...

Tonight my wife Kate and I -- and a lot of folks in the Bull City --  will head downtown to take in a free screening of Durham: A Self-Portrait at the Carolina Theatre. The first show at 7:30 is sold out.

The documentary chronicles the people and neighborhoods of my hometown, as well as the history of race and class here.  It's the work of Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Dr. Steven Channing and Durham-based VideoDialog.

The city has a rich heritage as a textile center and of course, tobacco production (Liggett-Myers, which vacated long ago); my father's side of the family has long been a part of the city's history as well, in business, public service and civil rights. It will be interesting to see how civil rights era history will be covered in the doc.

When surfing by the excellent local blog Bull City Rising, I found a short video tribute to the city center by Luther Blissett. It's below the fold.

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