Pretty good, whether it's him or his speechwriter

by Prometheus 6
January 3, 2004 - 10:55pm.
on Race and Identity

Howard Dean

One of his roommates became a leader in the black student alliance, which resulted in frequent, large gatherings of African-American men in his dorm room. At one of these gatherings, Dean said, "I suddenly realized I was the only white person in the room, and literally the hair went up in the back of my neck. 'Cause I thought, what if it was always like this? What if everywhere in your world you were the only white person and everyone else was black? For one instant I had some tiny inkling what it was like to be black in America."

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Submitted by mark safranski (not verified) on January 4, 2004 - 5:35pm.

Hi Prom,I was waiting for your comment on this one.Personally, I think Dean's crafting an image here where Clinton had some substance to back it up. Not that it really matters as Dean's political goal here really is to not irritate or offend the Dem's most important voting bloc - just as Bush's minority " outreach " is more about convincing white swing voters that he is not anti-Black. It sounds good, probably better than it is in reality but it's a smart and positive note to strike for Dean.

Submitted by Al-Muhajabah (not verified) on January 5, 2004 - 2:40pm.

It's much more fun to be cynical than to take things on face value. :-) Hopefully, Dean has some specific policy proposals to offer beyond the nice words. A lot of this campaign talk tastes great but isn't very filling.