The Race Card: No, it isn't our imagination.

[Liberty]

<font size="4" s>White, Street saw 'race thing' as probe tactic..."</font s>

Three days after the City Hall scandal broke, FBI wiretaps captured a phone call in which Mayor Street agreed with Ronald A. White's advice that Street should use the "race thing" to galvanize his voters.

"We don't have much choice but to go with it," Street told White on Oct. 10, 2003, less than a month before the mayor was reelected.

At the time, White was a key fund-raiser for Street - and was the target of intense FBI scrutiny. On the phone, he told Street that the two men needed to discuss "how we're going to do this from a black thing."

*snip*

What is known is that while Street and his campaign aides generally avoided the subject in public, his political allies in the city and in Congress attacked the federal probe - some charging that it was a Republican plot against a big-city Democrat, others suggesting it was racially motivated.

Full Article

Ok Curious. Lets see you spin this.

[curious]

Spin? Moi? [img]graemlins/angel.gif[/img]

But if you want a serious answer, I'll emphasize first of all I'm not familiar enough with Street or that situation to express any opinion. He may be demagoguing, or he may have legitimate suspicions, or some combination of both.

But as for it being an example of how all Democrats and liberals play the "race card," that's stretching it. Life is a lot more complicated than that, and you can't generalize every situation into a blanket statement. That'd be like if I claimed that individual conservative Republicans who get caught cruising for gay sex, represents all Republicans.

Also, I did not say race should never be an issue. Race is one of the central realities of America (and the world), and it has tro be addressed by both Republicans and Democrats.

My complaints about Republicans is more the hypocracy when you use race for opportunistic political purposes while simultaneously claiming that Democrats rely on the "race card."

Also, as I pointed out in that other thread, I get especially annoyed when conservatives claim credit today for the same things they demonized liberals for in the past, and which they still do with their modern counterparts.

I hope you read those speeches from Martin Luther King that I posted for example. Now that King is a safe sanitized historical figure of the past, Republicans are claiming to be the heirs to his legacy. However, if Dr. King were alive today, conservatives would be raking him over the coals.

That's what I object to. No spin there.

[Newt08]

If Dr. King were alive today he would be raking people like Rev Al, and Jesse Jackson and the NAACP over the coals.

If King knew one thing it was that if you want action, you cant trust one party over the other. You take on the issues one by one. You dont sell out

Heck King was even leaning towards Nixon over Kennedy.

Who takes credit for Dr. King with the expection of the Democrats? Rev Al said in his run for the D nod that if blacks dont vote for a dem they would be leaving your prom date for another girl. Or some such garbage.

The libs take total credit for civil rights, when in reality they caused it along with all the other white people. If your werent black then, chances are you didnt do much for civil rights.

As for the race card, the Dems used it in the last election, used it in proir elections, and try to make out the GOP to be the Confederate flag weating, white robe wearing, lynch mob group that actually pretty well described the Democrats of the 40s, 50s, and 60s

[curious]

Originally posted by Newt08:
If Dr. King were alive today he would be raking people like Rev Al, and Jesse Jackson and the NAACP over the coals.If King knew one thing it was that if you want action, you cant trust one party over the other. You take on the issues one by one. You dont sell out/ Heck King was even leaning towards Nixon over Kennedy. Who takes credit for Dr. King with the expect ion of the Democrats? Rev Al said in his run for the D nod that if blacks dont vote for a dem they would be leaving your prom date for another girl. Or some such garbage. The libs take total credit for civil rights, when in reality they caused it along with all the other white people. If your werent black then, chances are you didnt do much for civil rights. As for the race card, the Dems used it in the last election, used it in proir elections, and try to make out the GOP to be the Confederate flag weating, white robe wearing, lynch mob group that actually pretty well described the Democrats of the 40s, 50s, and 60s

It's pure speculation, but if King were alive, he probably be talking a lot like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Among other things, he was what would be called a "radical leftist" in terms of the relationship between economic power of corporations and poverty.

It is conservative wishful thinking to assume that groups like the NAACP and liberal black leaders today have somehow "changed their direction" and no longer represent the goals of the civil rights movement.

Despite what you think of them as people, in a poilitical sense Jackson and Sharpton are the line from King to today. If you read King's speeches from the 1960's (especially after 1965) he was -- if anything -- more militant and fiery than either Jackson or Sharpton.

Also, you have a real misconception about Sharpton and the Democrats. He sees the Democrats as much better than Republicans, but he is a thorn in the side of Democrats too. He cconstantly is railing against Democrats for taking blacks for granted today.

King may have thought of voting for Nixon over Kennedy, but Nixon let him down by not protesting his arrest, while Kennedy did speak out against it. And King saw the contest between Goldwater and Johnson as crucial to the nation and the fate of blacks.

You do have one good point in there. It wasn't white liberals or white conservatives who brought about civil rights. It was the agitation of blacks who forced white America to change.

But that is in line with the point I have made here and in that other thread about race. Positive social progress is often only accomplished by people who are initially marginalized and demonized. And that is the liberal/progressive instinct pressing against the reactionary conservative status quo.

Today, it's accepted mainstream wisdom that black people should not he held back by their color. But until the mid-1960's, that was considered radical and unnatural. Civil rights only came about because of the agitation of blacks, liberals, leftists, radicals and other forces of change that conservatives routinely resist -- even today.