Slavery continued in the South under the program of “labor lease” in which prisoners often arrested for bogus causes were rented out as miners and laborers. This didn’t end until 1945. The vast majority were African American. Maybe she could argue that was just a coincidence.

(Flight of thought…)

It is amusing to see my young neighbors here in the Bible Belt in an awkward mix of traditional southern and post MTV fashion, tooling down the street in their muscular pick up trucks with rap and hip hop blaring through the windows. (Ahh! to be young again) I think a few of them I know are going to vote for Barack Obama, God bless them.

Growing up as a Kenyan/Kansan in Hawaii remains the misunderstood and underexamined framework for Barack’s childhood. In Hawaii, even the likes of surfer (and model) Laird Hamilton grew up thinking he was ugly because he was too white, (a ha’ole), so for Barack to go to elementary school there, he must have felt like he was from Mars. This IHT article quotes Barack’s half sister saying “I think Hawaii gave him a sense that a lot of different voices and textures can sort of live together, however imperfectly, and he would walk in many worlds and feel a level of comfort.”

This is not something Kathleen Parker’s life experiences has prepared her to feel or evalute from behind that annoying crimped smile of hers. Quite the contrary.

It is the trans-Altantic DNA, the Pan Pacific upbringing and the Ivy polish that brings Barack to this time and place. And that would not have been possible without the love and care of Stanley and Madelyn Durham.

So as offended as we are by the Neo-Confederate Neandethals, we need to remember that this too is part of “silly season in politics” and should be dismissed as quickly as McCain’s Canal-Zone origin. Whenever the side issues clammer in, we’ve got to refocus on the unjustitiable suffering that this administration has inflicted on us and innocents abroad. We are all in this together, and ignorance remains our baggage.

Clinton’s and Obama’s domestic policy proposals are nearly identical. The difference between them is that, based on her past record, what Clinton might actually accomplish will be merely a limp and tepid spoonful of what she promises.

So I won’t call you a racist, but I do think you’re an ignorant fool.

According to him, they respect ‘true grit’ in a person above all else. A person who shouts and fights and ’stands up’ is highly respected for those qualities and they alone will pull in the votes. (Interesting when I reflect on the personna that Bush projects. Maybe his re-election isn’t so unfathomable afterall.)

I also wonder if this characteristic is mainly an American phenomenon.

Can this blood thing be related to not having anything else to hang on to: a good education, a stable income, respect in the community, having a voice that’s heard?

Oh, except for the ones who arrived in 1914 (how’s that for foresight?) and points in between. Being a first-generation US-born citizen on one side, I must be up to no good.

Actually, the combination makes me more American than just about anybody. And that reminds me: I’ve read about this Parker screed a couple of times, but only tonight did I make the connection:

We know everyone can’t be
As American as we–
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izch3bAAnx4

Since my family showed up here before 1650, I wish these damn newcomers could have some manners, and stop acting like they own the place.

You’re hallucinating. Clinton has closer ties to globalization than Obama. And he has done and is doing more to close the racial divide than anyone I’ve seen since Martin Luther King.

I suspect, dude, that the truth is you don’t want the racial divide closed. You seen rather attached to it.

However, you’ve annoyed me enough. You are banned.

My concerns with Obama are his support for globalization, the fact that he is the chosen one of the TLC which started globalization in 1973, and the concern I have that he may be a racist.

Racism can be a 2 way street, and those victimized by it are prone to adopt it, just as those abused as children are more likely to be abusers themselves. In his book Dreams from My Father, written before he got adapted by the TLC and Zbig Brzezinski, there are some disturbing comments suggestive of a belief system similar to Pastor Wright.

He had a chance to address some of Wrights comments, many of which I agree with, and he backed off. This discussion would have been helpful to healing the racial divide. He chose not to, and you sense he is being less than honest in his relationship with Wright.