Tag Archives: president of the United States

national news

‘N-word’ burns my ears, even when POTUS uses it

Barack Obama’s use of the “n-word” the other day in an interview made me cringe.

OK, he’s the president of the United States. He’s partly of African-American descent. The subject of his media interview was racism. So he’s entitled, I guess, to use the word.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/245793-obama-uses-n-word-to-provoke-talk-about-racism

But I hate the sound of the word. I hate seeing it written. I hate hearing it spoken. In the words of one of my sons, “It makes my ears bleed.”

The use of the word had become a staple of black comedians’ efforts at some sort of self-deprecation. They have felt it’s OK to use the word, drawing laughs in the belief of audience members that “It’s all right for them to use the word.”

Where I come from, it’s not all right for anyone to use a word intended as a racial slur.

That includes gang members who tag buildings with the word and who use it in casual conversation among themselves.

Rap artists have bastardized the word with crazy spellings meant for mispronunciation. It’s not the actual “n-word,” but you hear it said and you know what it means.

According to The Hill, Obama told an interviewer: “Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n—– in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

The comments, of course, have come in the wake of that hideous massacre in Charleston and the intense debate it has launched — yet again — over whether racism still poisons our society.

Of course it does.

I get what the president says about the impolite use of the “n-word” and whether it can bring an end to the racist strains that infect so many of us today. Striking it from our vocabulary, though, is a start.

national news

Race relations worsen during Obama era

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Relations between white and black Americans have worsened — arguably — during the time Barack Obama has been president of the United States.

That’s the view expressed by many in an essay written by Anita Kumur for Tribune Media Services.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/race-relations-arguably-worse-in-age-of-obama/ar-BBgFqdF

We’re more polarized. Blacks are more distrustful of white authority figures.

Obama’s election in 2008 has resulted in deeper fissures between the races. “We are more racially fractured and fragmented,” said James Peterson, director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. “It has exposed more wounds than it has healed,” he said of Obama’s election. “It has exposed how racist our society still is.”

So, who’s to blame for that? Is it the president? His family? His closest advisers?

Or is it many of the rest of us — some of whom just cannot stand the idea of this nation being led and governed by an African-American president?

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was supposed to signal the transition into a post-racial society. It hasn’t happened. There have been some terribly personal and inappropriate things said to and about the president and his family since they moved into the White House. The president has received more threats against his life than any of his predecessors.

Indeed, the Tribune essay suggests a deepening divide. “The number of people who think blacks and whites do not get along has increased throughout Obama’s presidency, from 19 percent in late 2009 to 28 percent in 2014, according to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center and USA Today,” the essay notes.

This is an uncomfortable subject to address. The president’s harshest critics insist with great passion that their opposition to his policies has nothing to do with race. Many of the president’s supporters counter that the level of disdain and the volume of the criticism suggests something more visceral is at work here.

Personally, I’ve always been dubious of those who start their criticism of Obama by saying, “I am not a racist, but … ” I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard that qualifier since the man’s election in 2008.

I wish it were different. I wish we could get past race. I wish with all my energy that we really could just look at each other without regard to the color of their skin.

It hasn’t happened — yet.

The president, however, doesn’t deserve blame for this sad reality.

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HRC fires another 'campaign' salvo

Hillary Rodham Clinton ventured to the city of my birth and delivered what sounds to me like yet another shot in her still-to-be-announced campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Speaking to the World Affairs Council of Oregon in Portland, Clinton said the current no-compromise political climate in Washington has hurt the United States.

Gee, do you think?

http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2014/04/hillary_clinton_tells_portland.html#incart_river_default

She’s saying far more than the obvious, of course. “Don’t vote for people who proudly tell you they won’t compromise,” she said to the crowd that jammed the hall to hear her words.

Indeed, Americans have gotten an overdose of what happens when zealots place their hands on the controls of government … which is that government stops working. They don’t know how to operate the levers. They refuse to listen to other points of view. They cannot bend for fear of breaking. They believe their way is the right way and other guys’ view will doom the country to, well, a miserable future.

Clinton is married to a man who knew how to compromise when he served as the 42nd president of the United States. Bill Clinton famously enacted the strategy called “triangulation,” in which he played both extremes — left and right — against each other to come up with policies that tracked more or less down the middle.

Indeed, the nation’s greatest legislators of the past 100 years or so knew “compromise” isn’t a four-letter word. They worked well with legislators on the other side: Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, Sam Rayburn, Mark Hatfield, Lyndon Johnson, the list can go on for a long time, but you get my drift.

My strong sense as well is that Clinton well might have included the current president in the “no compromise” category of modern politicians. Barack Obama blames Republicans for refusing to bend; the GOP fires back with some credibility that the president is afflicted with the same malady.

OK, so Clinton has said she’s “thinking about” running for president in two years. Duh!

Let’s prepare for a lot more of these kinds of talks from the former secretary of state and U.S. senator.