Is Black History Month Still Needed?

Just because a person is black, it doesn't mean he sees the world as do other blacks. It also does not mean s/he shares the same experience of others. That's the same as a person of any race/gender/religion/sexual orientation/age/profession or any other category.

Phillip Morris' column this morning in the Plain Dealer might provide some evidence to support those statements. He opines that it's time to cancel Black History Month. Now that the US has "the courage and conviction" to elect a black man, "are we mature enough as a nation to accept as fact that our histories really are one. . .?"

Just because Morris is African-American, some people might assume he is speaking for all African-Americans. That'd be as likely as people believing I speak for all Ohioans. Or all educators. Or all women, or whatever. If one person, such as Obama, achieves a certain status, it in no way indicates that others of his racial status have equal access to education or other stair steps to achievement.

In the same newspaper edition, a headline reports "Blacks denied more loans despite higher income."

Higher-income blacks in Ohio were denied home loans in 2007 at a rate higher than lower-income whites, numbers that point to a continuing trend of racial bias in mortgage lending, a study by the Cleveland-based Housing Research & Advocacy Center concludes. …

Statewide, nearly 33 percent of higher-income blacks had applications for home-purchase loans denied in 2007 compared with 28 percent of lower-income whites. Higher-income blacks were denied refinance loans 54 percent of the time compared with 53 percent for lower-income whites.

And when upper-income blacks were approved for home loans, they were far more likely than lower-income whites to receive subprime mortgages that carry higher interest rates and higher fees.

The Cleveland metropolitan statistical area, which includes Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties, had some of the biggest disparities compared with other state regions. Forty percent of upper-income blacks in the Cleveland area had applications for home-purchase loans denied in 2007, compared with 23 percent of lower-income whites.

Median income in the Cleveland region in 2007 was $60,700. The study defined upper income as being 120 percent greater than the median. Low-income was defined as being less than half the median.

I found it interesting that some who commented on Cleveland.com ASSUMED that the data had ignored other factors such as income-debt ratio or credit score. Why can we assume that blacks would have a less favorable ratio or credit? If we go to the study referenced, we find that a National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) found “wide differences in lending by race, even when accounting for income levels, suggests that more minorities are receiving high-cost loans than is justified based on creditworthiness.”

I grew up in an era when an employer could (and did) look me in the eye and say, "We've never had a woman do this job before. If you do well, we'll consider hiring others. If you don't like it or don't do well, we won't." Women who succeeded in that era frequently became "Queen Bees" who assumed that, because they made it, any woman could do it without any special consideration. That wasn't true then, and it isn't now.

Similarly, just because one American with a black father has been elected President or an African American has a newspaper column, it does not mean that racism no longer exists.

When we lived in China, we university women were bused to a huge rally every year for "Women's Day." I felt that, anytime there is a special "day" or "month," it means the authorities can continue to discriminate the rest of the year.

Until the day comes that we can show that nearly all racial discrimination is historical, not current, we should make certain, through the special month, that we are still striving for greater equality.

Style Becoming a President

Obama has really done it now. That arrogant jerk has . . . relaxed the dress code???

Barack Obama promised change and on his first morning as president he delivered. He appeared at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in his shirt sleeves.
It was part of the story Thursday on the front page of The New York Times – meant to show that Mr. Obama has brought a shift in presidential style and habits to the White House.

On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama loosened things up by conducting meetings and other official business in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. Images like this one have caused a stir in some Washington circles accustomed to the more formal dress policies of past presidents.

His top aides didn't try to conceal the new president's less formal dress code. On the contrary, the White House released a photograph of it.

It's only worth noting because for the last eight years, President George W. Bush made it a standing order that he and his staff would always wear their suit jackets in the Oval Office.

Well, if George W. Bush wore his suit jacket, Barack Obama had better do it, too. Why let small matters of changing a broken economy and foreign policy, etc., stand in the way.

Really, with all else that is going on, this is something we should worry about?

Obama is also foregoing the announcement, "Ladies and Gentlemen – the President of the United States," for meetings. This morning, rather than being announced, he breezed in with "Hello, everybody – good to see ya."

This Presidency stuff really is going to his head, isn't it? But quick, before we even consider what he says/does, did anyone check if he has on his flag pin? These things are the most important for the Leader of the Free World to consider.

He's also shirking his responsibilities to the U.S. Marine Corps Band. On the first day of his presidency, the band played "Hail to the Chief" everywhere he went. Ever since, the band's duties have been downsized to a single piano player who, instead of playing John Phillips Souza's martial music, runs through Cole Porter's "Night and Day" and Sting’s "Desert Rose," according to a CBS report.

This just proves Obama's mistreatment of the military. What will those poor band members do now? How arrogant is he to think he can decide such things?

Since I haven't posted that much, some readers may think I seriously think this is a problem. Not at all! I'm responding to the horrified gasps I've read from people who, despite their constant criticism of that "arrogant" Obama, are aghast that he would actually refuse the geegaws of the office.

Holbrooke is a Mistake

This is going to sound like heresy, considering that I worked so hard to get Obama elected, but his foreign policy so far leaves a great deal to be desired.

I disagree with his entire Afghanistan policy -- as I did before the election. I had hoped Biden might influence that for the better before Obama made a serious error. I wasn't pleased with Obama's naming Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State because, despite her many good qualities, her foreign policy views were not among them, to my way of thinking. Understanding the desire for a "coalition cabinet," I crossed my fingers.

Obama's naming Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan really takes the cake, however. It shows that the flawed policy remains firmly in place. Holbrooke, a neoconservative, was a Hillary supporter, so her influence might be all over this choice.

In an attempt to be rational about this, I considered what both conservatives and liberals have to say about him.

Right Web notes:

In making our predictions about Obama’s policies, many of us project our hopes and fears. Many opponents of the neoconservative agenda supported the Obama candidacy based on his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, stated willingness to dialogue with Iran and Syria, and apparent commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Compared to the ideologues and fanatics who were recently in charge of U.S. diplomacy, Obama has seemed a staunch member of the antiwar camp. This explains much of the enthusiasm that he garnered among antiwar bloggers during the Democratic primaries, when he challenged then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had voted in favor of the congressional resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq.

But there is a certain element of wishful thinking in this image of Obama. Obama’s earlier opposition to the Iraq War corresponded to the constituency he represented as an Illinois State Senator. But he never proposed that his position on Iraq was grounded in any leftwing or progressive anti-interventionist principles. Instead, he reiterated several times during the campaign that he respected the realpolitik types who were responsible for the more traditional diplomacy of the first President Bush. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports Obama consulted with one of these realist luminaries, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, about his foreign policy picks for the new administration.

Some hopes of progressive and libertarian antiwar activists were already dashed when Obama announced he would retain Robert Gates as defense secretary, and nominate Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and retired General James Jones as his national security advisor. The non-interventionists’s mood was probably not improved after reading reports about the potential role that former Clinton administration aides like Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross, or Richard Holbrooke — known for their pro-interventionist approaches — might play in the administration.

Indeed, those of us who were hoping, wishing, and praying for the making of a new U.S. foreign policy paradigm — that would disengage militarily from the Middle East, end the special relationship with Israel, withdraw from NATO, terminate military pacts with Japan and South Korea, and take a less belligerent approach towards Russia—were bound to be disappointed by many of Obama’s selections for his foreign policy team.

Stephen Zunes, in Huffington Post, calls Hollbrooke an insensitive choice.

In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In this position, he played a major role in formulating the Carter administration's support for Indonesia's occupation of East Timor and the bloody counterinsurgency campaign responsible for up to a quarter-million civilian deaths.

Having successfully pushed for a dramatic increase in U.S. military aid to the Suharto dictatorship, he then engaged in a cover-up of the Indonesian atrocities. He testified before Congress in 1979 that the mass starvation wasn't the fault of the scorched-earth campaign by Indonesian forces in the island nation's richest agricultural areas, but simply a legacy of Portuguese colonial neglect.

Later, in reference to his friend Paul Wolfowitz, then the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Holbrooke described how "Paul and I have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."

In a particularly notorious episode while heading the State Department's East Asia division, Holbrooke convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under U.S. command in order to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju. Holbrooke was among the Carter administration officials who reportedly gave the OK to General Chun Doo-hwan, who had recently seized control of the South Korean government in a military coup, to wipe out the pro-democracy rebels. Hundreds were killed.

He also convinced President Jimmy Carter to continue its military and economic support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

Ack! ::)

Listen Up, Complainers!

By LORI HOLMAN

Marine parent/OK native

Do you ever think some people are smellin' what they are shovelin'?

I suppose that John McCain's friendship with G. Gordon Liddy, or being one of the Keating Five doesn't count as "ties to extremists", "untrustworthy" "shady", "unpatriotic," etc., huh? Why is Obama voting against Operation Iraqi Freedom funding because there's no token timeline for withdrawal "UnAmerican, Against Our Sons, and Unpatriotic In A Time Of War!" - but McCain voting against funding because there IS a token request for a timeline, and voting against College funds and Veteran care "True Support Of Our Sons, Patriotism From A Real Hero!"?

BTW, don't EVEN get me started on military funding - I want my sons to have everything they need when they go to war. But that doesn't mean we can't save some money by slashing no-bid contracts to private contractors. Why not shift 90 percent of that taxpayer money to actually readying our boys for combat, making their missions more doable while they're there, then (gasp) taking care of them when they come home. But then, that's too radical, too restrictive, too. . . LOGICAL. My bad.

We won't even touch the whole "Let's actually go after the ones who keep attacking us" concept. I doubt you'd even listen.

And I know, it's just my own clueless, biased, I-don't-deserve -to-be- a-Marine-Mom- I'm-really -a-traitor -who-wouldn't-know-a-real-patriot -if-one-bit-me-on-the-butt because I voted for a "Muslim, terrorist pal, Communist, Socialist, Nazi, foreign-born, birth certificate-forging, immoral, untrustworthy (*whispering* uppity colored) man" opinion (golly, did I forget to mention he's unpatriotic?), but isn't the whole pouty "I'm going to fly my flag upside down or not at all for the next four years, he'll never be MY President, because Obama=Socialism not Patriotism” thing a bit...uh...much?

I am proud to be a newly registered Democrat/Liberal/Left-winger. I campaigned and voted for Barack Obama for President in 2008, and will do so again in 2012 if the situation warrants. I do not hate America. I do not sympathize with terrorists. I dislike extremism no matter from what direction it comes. I am not cultish (except for my support of the Marine Corps, and that's plain common sense). I am neither warmonger nor peacenik.

I do not believe Barack Obama to be either Messianic nor a benevolent father figure. I do not take lightly nor denigrate John McCain's service or POW experience - and I do not think those alone qualify him to be Commander in Chief over a candidate who did not serve.

At age 49, I am not youthful, nor am I disadvantaged; although I am ardently a believer in health care for all (a healthy society is a more productive and long-lasting society). I in no way view hard work as impractical or distasteful, nor do I prefer a hand out to a hand up to those who need it. I am highly concerned with practicalities.

I am well-read, well-traveled, and I painstakingly educate myself about events, people, politics and history. I take very seriously both my rights and the responsibilities that go with having them. I know how to use search engines, books, snopes.com, common sense and the brain that God gave me. And I'm sorry to disappoint, but I refuse to fit into the mold to which some seem so desperate to put "my kind." Those who do may kindly take comfort from someone else's failings, not mine.

Barack Obama IS our next President. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to being the same proud American I was before this whole election campaign started. It's just a suggestion, but you might try to do the same. It's less likely to cause a stroke for you down the line.

We'll take it up again in four years. Until then, TRY to have a beautiful day, y'all.

And God bless.

Hillary and Barack: FOCUS!

Watching TV analysts tear apart the Clinton and Obama missteps tonight left me wondering why we Democrats seem to manage to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

Jim Dean, Democracy for America says:
“The Democratic race for President has lost its focus. We have John McCain to beat in November, instead we fight each other. Geraldine Ferraro. Reverend Wright. Rezko ties. Secret tax returns. If you're like me; you're sick of it.

"We have a war to end, an economy in trouble, and $4 gas.

"With hundreds of progressives to elect at all levels of office, it's time to leave the character attacks to Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly.

"America needs to know why our candidates are better than John McCain and we need to hear it from Senators Clinton and Obama. Fight McCain, not each other.

"We have an historic nomination battle, driving record Democratic turn-out and commanding the nation's attention.

"America needs to know our nominee will fight global warming with new jobs, technologies, and investment. Our nominee will expand health coverage to 10 million kids immediately, allow lifesaving research on stem cells, and work toward health care for all by the end of a first term. We will ban torture, restore habeas corpus, and build renewed respect for America around the world.

"A Democratic President will end the war in Iraq and bring our brave men and women home.

"A long primary battle is healthy as long as we make the case for how we'll win, not how the other candidate will lose. We need to fight McCain, not each other. Join me in demanding Senators Clinton and Obama keep their eyes on the ball.”
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