Excuse me?!
I hate to inform Mrs. Obama of this, but anybody can get shot at the gas station. Just ask all the people involved in the Washington D.C. Beltway sniper attacks. Those people were of all different races but they were still targeted by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.
Perhaps a better statement would have been "As with any American, Barak can get shot going to the gas station." But I guess that wouldn't send quite the same message.
Reporter Steve Kroft asks Obama whether he thinks being black will hold him back from winning the presidency?
"No.... If I don't win this race it will be because of other factors --[that] I have not shown to the American people a vision for where the country needs to go that they can embrace," he said.
I think, quite honestly, that we are beyond the point where a black person or a woman or any other minority couldn't be elected President. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most Americans would probably like to vote for a black candidate, but only if that candidate espoused ideas and opinions with which they agreed. That's the same standard I think we use for any candidate.
Maybe Mrs Obama's statement would have been more accurate if she had said: "If he was filling up his car in Northeast Philadelphia, he'd at least get robbed, and possibly shot."
ReplyDeleteI'm one of those evil right-wing conservatives who has voted for a black candidate before: when I was living in Virginia, I voted for Doug Wilder, a Democrat, for governor in 1989. Last year, I voted for Lynn Swann, a republican, to be governor of Pennsylvania.
Now, with me, Republicans get the benefit of the doubt, and certainly win all ties. I voted for Doug Wilder because Marshall Coleman, the Republican nominee, is best described by the slang term for the human rectum.
Now, it's obvious that I will not vote for Barack Hussein Obama for President. If I don't like the Republican nominee (and that's possible, considering the lame field we have right now), I'll vote for the Libertarian or Constitution Party candidate. But that isn't because Mr Obama is black; it's because he's a liberal.
Well, Dana, I voted for Jesse Jackson in 1988. ;)
ReplyDeleteAt the time, I was quite liberal and Jesse was saying things I agreed with. I honestly wasn't concerned with his blackness. I just don't vote based on color. At the same time, I did, however, vote for women if I didn't know the other candidate, so I know such voting habits exist (I no longer do this, btw).
I understand that Ms. Obama (and her husband, for that matter) are trying to both use whatever advantages they might get from positive portrayals of black people, and avoid any negative stereotypes (and the guilt factor for white people, I think). The idea being to make everyone want to vote for him. I was just irritated by the implication from her statement: that it is more dangerous for a black man to fill up his car than a white one.
Watch the interview people, instead of relying on how Drudge spins it. When her comments are put in the context in which she made them, she was referring to black on black crime.
ReplyDelete