The Tragedy of the Politics of Race in America

[alice wellintown]

I get what you are saying here, Henry, but the President can take a
position on race, as he did when he ran for the office (remember?) and
still get re-elected.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-th_n_92077.html

On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 8:03 AM, Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gotta love the politics of impracticality.  The very people who criticize
> Obama from the left for bein "all talk," e.g. Moore, Bernie Sanders, Amy
> Goodman, OWS, Wikileaks, Anonymous, et al, have done nothing but talk.  Big
> talk to be sure, but at the end of the day, what have these braying lefties
> actually accomplished?  The reaction from the right to Obama's centrist,
> i.e. practical, left statements and policies has been virulent.  Imagine how
> organized the right would get if Obama ever said anything that the leftist
> theorists would have him say!  The USA would be pushed into a long, deep,
> dark age.  The hot-air and camp in the city park left, and celebrity groups
> like the New "Black Panther" Party already say enough that is unreasoned,
> nonsensical, obviating any need for red herring that the right would have
> required.
>
> AsB4,
> ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> Henry Mu
> http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 7:18 AM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> “Sophocles implies that incest and exile, too much unity and
>> too much diversity, are not opposites but are, literally,
>> two sides of the same coin. He also suggests, what the
>> audience believed, that incest and parricide are acts that
>> obliterate the distinction between man and beast, inside and
>> outside, the wild and civilization. What Oedipus lacks (and
>> Thebes as well) is some middle term, an Aristotelian Polis
>> that mediates between our divinity and animality, making us
>> whole in a community constituted by diversity” 287.
>>
>> J. Peter Euben in  The Road Home: Pynchon’s The
>> Crying of Lot 49, the concluding chapter of his The Tragedy
>> of Political Theory (1990).
>>
>> The shooter thought he was working on the side of Divinity, that the
>> younger man was on the side of Animality. He was wrong. But his
>> actions are not tragic and what happens to him, whatever it may be,
>> will not be tragic. Nor is the tale of the young man in the hoodie
>> tragic. He is dead, the other is in the hands of a polis. Let the
>> politicians and papers have their day. But let us not be fooled again.
>> The tragedy here is not one man's death, but the failure of a Nation
>> to make a community constituted by diversity.
>>
>> There was great hope that this President, this Attorney General, both
>> black men, would do something to improve the lives of poor young black
>> males. They have done little. If a tragedy is in the making, it is a
>> tragedy of these men, the President, his Attorney General, not of the
>> shooter or his victim. The First Lady has no fear of her obligation to
>> the black community. The President, to use the Attorney General's
>> words, "is a coward."
>>
>> Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting
>> pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too
>> many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues
>> continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion,
>> and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation,
>> we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about
>> race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our
>> nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we
>> are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with
>> one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank
>> conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But
>> we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility.
>> Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice,
>> as long as I am here, must - and will - lead the nation to the "new
>> birth of freedom" so long ago promised by our greatest President. This
>> is our duty and our solemn obligation.
>>
>> http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090218.html
>
>