Prometheus 6

The Clintons owe us.  I'm tired of thanking white people for not being as bad as some other white people.  What is that ish about?  Why do we continue to validate setting such low standards of moral and personal conduct for whites.

As if they are all pre-speech toddlers or something!

The Clintons were hell for Black people.  
The 1996 Anti-Terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act
The Welfare Reform Act
The 1994 Telecommunications Act
The North American Free Trade Agreement
Elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act

One can go on and on.  The Clintons should be apologizing to Black people (not that it would mean a thing, of course, but the symbol would be nice) instead of constantly rendering 'you're welcomes' to the delusional Black praise heaped on them.  Bizarre. 

Thanks for posting this.  I had been trying to search for it since I mentioned it to you. 

Like I told you, I didn't really want to read it, but Washington Journal shoved it in my face this morning.

Whenever I read such nonsense written by people like Peter Beinart I am reminded of former Black Panther Elaine Brown's song that contains the line about folks who want you to give thanks for what you already have got. 

We don't owe the Clintons jack, they speed up the drug war for politcal reasons and we have tolerated white amerikkkan behavior for the last 30 years from liberals, centrist, conservatives and racialists. The Black Media has been silent like a rape victim tolerating their rapist walking around and bragging about the crime.And then these idiots get angry when someone like Rev. Wright tells them the truth about their lack of morality and complicity they want to act like total innocents. I SAY TO HELL WITH THEM !!!! it's time to make whites and their media outlets the same expectionalist standards they shove down our thoarts.

Black folk, including Obama, don't owe them shyt. Period. Without Black folk, Bill never would have been elected in the first place. And we see how they repaid us.

Bienart's remarks are in tandem with Hillary's remarks around the time of the South Carolina primary that "it took a president" to help realize the dreams of MLK and her inference that LBJ was equal and possibly superior to MLK in terms of importance to the cause of black freedom.  The truth is is that LBJ deserves some credit but not as much as MLK and that the Clinton's deserve nowhere near the credit that LBJ deserves.  The Clintons practiced a form of "trickle-down" equality by cultivating symbolic friendships with influential black leaders that served their own centrist interests.  They totally ignored what was occurring on the ground as indicated in Bill's role in contributing to the skyrocketing of black incarceration rates.  If the Clinton's have passed anything on to Obama it will be the reluctance and inability of an Obama administration to adequately confront the ravages of the prison-industrial-complex.  Clinton's propensity to make black friends and incarcerate the black poor in ever increasing numbers constitutes part of the bedrock of the "post-racial inheritance" they have bequeathed to Obama.  Notice his reluctance to take a position on the Jena 6 and the acquittal of the policemen who murdered Sean Bell.  If whites don't have to confront any troubling issues concerning race, the illusion arises that racial progress is being made.  If issues of race do arise, they are predominately the fault of the non-white community.  This is the legacy of both Reagan and the Clintons.  Fortunately, the impact of this legacy on Obama is not total.  A candidate completely indoctrinated with the principles of a "post-racial" society could not have given the speech that Obama delivered in Philadelphia.  On the downside, however, Obama will not succeed in a general election unless he adheres to the more ubiquitous propositions of post-racial protocol.  If Obama wins it will set up an expectations game between his supporters who want to see issues of race disappear and those who want to see them properly addressed.  How Obama negotiates these conflicting expectations will play a huge role in determining the political success of his administration and his measure of accomplishment as a president.                                          

 "The truth is is that LBJ deserves some credit..."

We should be careful not to let the Clintonians' idiocy, racism and paucity of historical knowledge diminish both LBJ's contributions and his own significant transformation as a politician. One of the problems, as I saw it, was that Sr. Hillary was not qualified to talk in a public forum about the roles played by Dr. King and LBJ because her intent was not to add clarity to our understanding of past events but to diminish the stature of her political opponent(s). 

the clintons restored democratic credibility on economic issues because they fucked the black populations few (including black elites) gave a damn about. this took race off the table the same way you can take ants off of the table by wiping them off and stepping on them.

"For starters, Clinton deracialized American politics. He didn't deracialize it completely, of course." 

To paraphrase a line from Jackie "Moms" Mabley, "I was there. When did this happen?"

Dream on, the Peter Beinarts of the world. Dream on.    

For Obama, Adolph Reed wrote in the Progressive about his reluctance of voting for Clinton and Obama Whites will never take race off the table and the Clintons created the prision Industrial complex and sat on the boards of Wal- Mart. Watch the documentary the cost of low price and their  ALLOWING wal-mart  carte blanche to screw their employers and deny union actitivty.

So you won't vote for Obama because the Clintons screwed us?

According to an article in today's online edition of the New York Times, Hillary Clinton is still claiming to have a lead over Barack Obama in the popular vote. This dubious assertion has been refuted so many times that I find it suspicious that the Times is actually running another article on the same issue. I know that the Clintonians have jumped through the Looking Glass but why are they being joined by members of the press who presumably have the ability to add and subtract?

I have supported independent since 1988(the only time i voted democrat was in 1992) I think the two-party system is corrupt as hell and Obama is too much of a DLC centrist for a LIBERAL like me. The reason the Dems have lost elections with the expection of Clinton who played the Rethugicans game and threw it back at them is that they stand for nothing except trying to woo back white ethnics in the north and midwest and rednecks in the south which the lost when LBJ signed the civil rights act of 1964.

her intent was not to add clarity to... past events but to diminish the stature of her political opponent(s).

 

And in so doing, she revealed the subtle yet obvious mindset that Blacks owe Whites for the progess that's been made. Just like Lincoln freed us, LBJ was the one who gave us our civil rights. Hollywood's great White hero to the rescue. Brief To Nigras: Be grateful and remember what we've done for you.

To your point, HRC not only suggested that this Black man, Barack, wasn't fit to be president -- by analogy, Hillary is LBJ while Barack is MLK (i.e. not presidential) --  and ya'll know ya'll need a White president anyway.  (Also see her recurring references and slip ups suggesting how she and John McCain are qualified, not Barack.)

She wasn't qualified to speak on the topic because LBJ's racism, politicks (of the South and Vietnam) and political break with MLK as well as MLK's own view of the 64 Act, not-so-highly esteemed by him were conveniently neglected or just didn't fit the great White benefactor narrative and its corollary pat-on-the-back whitewashed view of what was achieved.

Again, just knowing MLK's own views on what the 64 Act and the election of Black officials meant (all bought at "discount" prices) is enough to show how the White/dominant narrative is off and way to celebratory.

Xcard

Good point.  Here is how Lyndon Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, describes Johnson's significance: "Abraham Lincoln struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their destiny, made them, at last and forever [emphasis added], a true part of American political life."  I suppose when black Americans voted in elections prior to 1965 and influenced the outcomes they were not yet a true part of American political life.  When they formed the NAACP and other organizaitions and protested against Jim Crow, lynching, and economic oppression they were not yet fully in charge of their destiny.  When they fought in the Union army in larger proportions than whites and turned the tide of the Civil War they were not participants in their march towards freedom.  One could go on for hours about the serious flaws in Caro's historical interpretation, but it is a discussion that needs to take place.               

I think that we have to look past the biographers and hagiographers to see that the role LBJ played in securing our rights as Americans was markedly different from any other American president both in relative and absolute terms. If we look at LBJ only through the lens of folks like Sr. Hillary or writers like Caro, then there is a great danger that we will fall into the either/or dialectic trap and fail to appreciate how important it was to have a president speak and act as if he was on our side instead of looking for a middle road like Kennedy or no road like Eisenhower and FDR.