In Defense of White Americans

[Anonymous]

A well written article on the country, McCain's campaign, ...


IT seems like a century ago now, but it was only in 2005 that a National Journal poll of Beltway insiders predicted that George Allen, then a popular Virginia senator, would be the next G.O.P. nominee for president. George who? Allen is now remembered, if at all, as a punch line. But any post-mortem of the Great Republican Collapse of 2008 must circle back to the not-so-funny thing that happened on his way to the White House.

That would be in 2006, when he capsized his own shoo-in re-election race by calling a 20-year-old Indian-American “macaca” before a white audience (and a video camera). “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia,” Allen told the young Democratic campaign worker for good measure, in a precise preview of the playbook that has led John McCain and Sarah Palin to their tawdry nadir two years later.

It wasn’t just Allen’s lame racial joke or his cluelessness about 21st-century media like YouTube that made him a harbinger of the current G.O.P. fiasco. It was most of all the national vision he set forth: There are Real Americans, and there are the Others.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26rich.html?em

[Anonymous]

I also resent being told that because I was born and raised in an East Coast city, that I am somehow less of an American than someone who lives in Ohio. The mythologizing of the "real America", ie small town and white, disrespects and foolishly discounts the millions of us who live in large urban areas, no matter our skin color.

[Anonymous]

I completely agree PP.

When did it become so fashionable, so "in," so "all-American," to be a small town, blue collar, low-ambition, uneducated person? I suppose that this is yet another legacy of the Bush Administration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I completely agree PP.

When did it become so fashionable, so "in," so "all-American," to be a small town, blue collar, low-ambition, uneducated person? I suppose that this is yet another legacy of the Bush Administration.

PP, do us all a favor and watch your own uneducated remarks. As bothered as I am by the Palin-McCain rhetoric that seeks to divide and conquer, you are not helping the cause with your equally wrong and divisive words. Small town and/or blue collar does not equal low ambition and/or uneducated.

[Anonymous]

All this "us" and "them" is sometimes funny when you think about it.

Isn't it ironic that Allen used a term heard outside the US, that John McCain is a "foreigner" (and arguably a Latino) and that Mr. Sarah Palin worked for one of the biggest, foreign-est oil giants around. (The B in BP stands for British, I believe.) And the Dem nominee is (arguably) an Evangelical Christian.

Just the fact that we have Blue Dog Dems and Log Cabin Republicans in the political system shows we're not as different than we think. Let's admit it. Those of us inside the Beltway are the "real" America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I completely agree PP.

When did it become so fashionable, so "in," so "all-American," to be a small town, blue collar, low-ambition, uneducated person? I suppose that this is yet another legacy of the Bush Administration.

PP, do us all a favor and watch your own uneducated remarks. As bothered as I am by the Palin-McCain rhetoric that seeks to divide and conquer, you are not helping the cause with your equally wrong and divisive words. Small town and/or blue collar does not equal low ambition and/or uneducated.

I agree that we don't need to characterize small-town folks this way. As for when did it because "fashionable"? When politicans realized that these votes were up for grabs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I completely agree PP.

When did it become so fashionable, so "in," so "all-American," to be a small town, blue collar, low-ambition, uneducated person? I suppose that this is yet another legacy of the Bush Administration.

In my experience as a conservative non-white woman who grew up on the east coast and abroad, the very worst class of racists I have come across tended to be liberals of the above persuasion. I appreciate the OP's very valid point but I do find that certain democrats lull themselves into a false sense of security, mistakenly believing that "isms," -in particular racism - are problems exclusive to the Republican party. They are not.