Ex. Prez Carter Says Racism Factor In Opposition To Obama.

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The health-care opposition is not racist. People has expressed their concerns about the reform without resorting to such tactics.

However calling Obama a Muslim or portraying him as an African warrior is distasteful since it is discrimination. It is one thing to portray someone as Hitler or Stalin, call them Fascist or Communist since they are just misrepresented ideologies; however to accuse someone of being a Muslim or portray them as a savage bushman show their real colour.

Sorry, kokonut, but the teabaggers left a bad taste in my mouth because of the above.

It is blantantly obvious.
 
It's weird, though. People are saying that they are afraid. When you ask what they are afraid of, they have no response. Are they afraid of a world in which a black man is in charge? Do they have problems with a black person in a position of authority? They sometimes say that they are afraid of Muslim terrorists and equate President Obama with a Muslim terrorist. Again, it's race and religion. If they're afraid of something else, I've yet to hear it. The racist and discriminatory signs speak for themselves.

Some people say that they want to go back to the world of our forefathers. A couple of centuries ago? When white men owned slaves and women? Really? Good luck with that.

Those pics of teabaggers wearing the Colonial costumes kinda spoke volumes, didn't they? :hmm:
 
No...they weere beingrepublicans.....repubs controlled the congressduringClinton administration.
Or perhaps they were being sexist.......as it was seen as Hillary's bill.
Just kidding folks...don't get your panties in a bunch.

Obama just said he doesn't think it's racism.

Besides I disagree with Carter - remember Clinton? Clinton wanted it and people opposed his healthcare. Were people being racists too?
 
au contraire....
I don't make a claim thatanyone opposing health care is racist....that is over the line.
can't call allteabagger protesters that either...
and I don't know Wilson personally.......seems quite upset about something though....maybe is more than health care.
And Carter? yes we all know what kind of person he is. A preacher.and aa kind soul.

Silly? That has been my point all along if you were able to read between the line. It is just as silly as painting Wilson, Tea Party marchers/protesters, and anybody who opposed any of Obama's policy plans as racists. Playing the race card is the last refuge in a losing debate.

You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

A little history on Tea Party protest for those who don't know.

Boston Tea Party Historical Society
 
White House doesn't agree with Carter's statement. Yay!
 
Carter should kept a set of race cards in his pocket in first place since Obama's policies are not related to racism.
 
Even when they deny they are a racist, you insist they are racist because you WANT them to be labeled as a racist irregardless whether they are a racist or not. It won't matter to you if they're truly not a racist, you just want them to be a racist out of political hate and spite.

Yiz

I don't label anyone a racist who does not exhibit obvious racist tendecies. You seem to misunderstand the definition of denial. It doesn't necessarily equate to innocence, but more often to a desire to ignore. Denial allows for justification, and gives the individual permission to continue with the attitudes and behaviors they really don't want to change.
 
It's weird, though. People are saying that they are afraid. When you ask what they are afraid of, they have no response. Are they afraid of a world in which a black man is in charge? Do they have problems with a black person in a position of authority? They sometimes say that they are afraid of Muslim terrorists and equate President Obama with a Muslim terrorist. Again, it's race and religion. If they're afraid of something else, I've yet to hear it. The racist and discriminatory signs speak for themselves.

Some people say that they want to go back to the world of our forefathers. A couple of centuries ago? When white men owned slaves and women? Really? Good luck with that.

So true. Which is why the oppostion uses the tactics they use.
 
Carter should kept a set of race cards in his pocket in first place since Obama's policies are not related to racism.

Correct. Obama's policies are not racist. However, I believe Carter was refering to the behaviors and attitudes of some of the opponents of Obama's policies.
 
Correct. Obama's policies are not racist. However, I believe Carter was refering to the behaviors and attitudes of some of the opponents of Obama's policies.

Yes, specifically last Saturday's protesters.
 
Then he would be wrong again. That was not a racist protest.

Um... no, he is not. The protest itself is not racist, but the photographed protesters that attended were and thus he is responding to the situation portrayed in the media.
 
Posters portraying President Obama as a witch doctor may be racist, organizers of Tea Party protests say, but they reflect anger about where he is leading the country.


A Tea Party rally protester holds a sign with President Obama depicted as a witch doctor.

The posters, showing Obama wearing a feather headdress and a bone through his nose, have recently popped up in e-mails, on Web sites and at Tea Party protests.

The image has stoked debate and cast attention on the rallies, which have drawn people Tea Party organizers describe as on the fringe and not representative of the overall movement. Their general viewpoint, leaders say, is that there's been too much federal government intervention, particularly concerning health care and taxes.

The witch doctor imagery is blatantly racist, critics contend.

Others remind that presidents get made fun off all the time, and the election of a black president has only made racially charged political satire more sensitive.

While not denying the crudeness of the image, Tea Party organizers stressed that those who carry the signs are a few "bad apples." Watch how poster put spotlight on racism »

"That [witch doctor] image is not representative at all of what this movement is about," said Joe Wierzbicki, a coordinator of the Tea Party Express, a three-week series of protests across the country.

The anger the image portrays, however, "says to me that a lot of people in this country are angry about the direction that the administration and Congress are taking us," he said.

"And you're going to see a wide expanse of those people," he continued. "Some are going to be more extreme. Most of them are going to be in the mainstream of American politics, as evidenced by Obama's falling poll numbers."

An incendiary image such as witch doctor detracts from any hope for a cohesive message at the rallies, where many appear not to be associated directly with either the Republican or Democratic parties, said W. Joseph Campbell, a media professor at American University.

And previous infringements of good taste don't make it acceptable to Photoshop the president into a witch doctor.

"It's true that presidents before have had to endure some rough stuff, and there's nothing wrong with satire," Campbell said. "President Bush was morphed into Hitler. That was not excusable either. Just because it's happened in the past doesn't mean there isn't a line and it can't be crossed."

As a politics and African-American studies professor at Princeton University, Melissa Harris-Lacewell typically advocates discussion about the racist overtones in images or language bandied in public discourse.

"But I'm concerned in the age of Obama, too many of our public conversations about policy have been limited to a kind of investigative effort to determine whether opposition to him is based on race or substantive disagreement," she told CNN. "The problem is, it can be both."

Harris-Lacewell points out that Obama made his African father a part of his campaign narrative. Now his critics are trying to mock that heritage.

"This witch doctor image is racist in a very specific way because of his proximity to Africa," she said. "You can imagine there would have easily been a time when [Jewish New York Mayor Michael] Bloomberg would have been portrayed in anti-Semitic ways. You can go back to political cartoons when Irish Democrats were mocked, Italians were lampooned."

Spelman College history professor William Jelani Cobb, who has written extensively about race and politics, points out the original Boston Tea Party was driven by colonists who frequently declared that they had been "enslaved" by the king of England. The men who led that revolt dressed up as Native Americans when they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor in 1773.

Hard to pin down and a seeming catch-all for general anger at the government, the modern Tea Party movement is grounded the belief that the federal government should stay out of state business. But "states' rights is also an argument with a history tied to racial segregation during the civil rights' era," Harris-Lacewell said. And so it comes full circle.

Cobb said Obama's election has also rekindled the historic rancor some whites feel against successful blacks.

"There is lots of connective tissue here," said Cobb. "The Atlanta race riot of 1906 was partly about this. The upsurge of riots at the beginning of the 20th century was driven in part by the fact that blacks were perceived to be moving up in society -- at the expense of whites.

The Atlanta race riot, which left 25 black people and two white people dead, was sparked by a series of false news reports about black people committing crimes, inciteful rhetoric from white politicians and an overall fear by whites that blacks were starting to make progress socially and politically in the south.



"Now we have a black president, which means, on its most basic level, that a black man has more power than any single white citizen in this country," Cobb said. "Whether people want to admit it or not, I suspect the Tea Party crowd believes that the currency of whiteness has been devalued."

There's another wrinkle to the witch doctor controversy. Obama was mocked by some critics as the "magical negro" during the campaign because he was perceived to be a solve-all to nation's problems.

"This is an echo of the theme during the campaign when his opponents would ask 'Who is Barack Obama?" Cobb said.


"At that point, it was part of a somewhat cynical attempt to depict him as vaguely foreign and unknown," Cobb said. "But now that he has control over actual policies, those views appear to have hardened, metastasized into something more vitriolic.

"Caricature is part of politics, but racist stereotyping isn't."

Obama as witch doctor: Racist or satirical? - CNN.com

Some very interesting points for those willing to lay aside the defensiveness long enough to truly discuss the issue from a sociological and political perspective.
 
Jesse Helms right hand man....Joe Wilson....yup racist..and Carolinans keep voting for it.
Let's not pretend it ain't so.
 
Jesse Helms right hand man....Joe Wilson....yup racist..and Carolinans keep voting for it.
Let's not pretend it ain't so.
This Jesse Helms?

His conservative principles were matched by his compassion. Originally, he didn't think there should be a big government role in combating AIDS. So Bono, who is an advocate for the cause, asked to see him. Bono convinced him, and they worked together--eventually securing some $200 million to fight AIDS in Africa. In a message to the Helms family this week, Bono said that thanks to Jesse Helms' efforts, 2 million lives were saved.
Jesse Helms - TIME

I'm no supporter of Helms but it does show that there is more than one side to the story.

Don't forget--Joe Wilson is from South Carolina, and Jesse Helms was from North Carolina. Those are two separate states.
 
Um... no, he is not. The protest itself is not racist, but the photographed protesters that attended were and thus he is responding to the situation portrayed in the media.
Which ones? Show me so I can condemn them. I mean that seriously. The rotten eggs shouldn't spoil things for the good ones.
 
Which ones? Show me so I can condemn them. I mean that seriously. The rotten eggs shouldn't spoil things for the good ones.

I know what you mean.The people were trying to stand up to the government, but it went downhill after that opening statement of having lost a train of thought. That's a shame, really. It was blatantly obvious that a large part of the crowd detracted from the sole purpose of the meeting, so the uproar continues.
I think what Carter was really saying was about a growing sense of racism all throughout this country, but he should have kept his mouth shut. All these alegations of racism will just drive people apart, and I for one will not fall into that Abyss.
And by the way, Rush has gotten into the act, big surprise, huh?
Raw Story Limbaugh: We need segregated buses
 
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