Friday, March 16, 2012

IOKIYAW (It's OK if you are white)

I'm borrowing the acronym IOKIYAR (It's OK if you are Republican) to illustrate a great question posed by Steve M. He wants to know if you can name the person who said this:

... I hope to stand for a new harmony, a greater tolerance. We've come far, but I think we need a new harmony among the races in our country. And we're on a journey into a new century, and we've got to leave that tired old baggage of bigotry behind.

Some people who are enjoying our prosperity, are forgetting, have forgotten what it's for. But they diminish our triumph when they act as if wealth is an end in itself.

And there are those who have dropped their standards along the way, as if ethics were too heavy and slowed their rise to the top. There's graft in city hall, the greed on Wall Street; there's influence peddling in Washington, and the small corruptions of everyday ambition....

I wonder sometimes if we have forgotten who we are...

I want a kinder and gentler nation.

He contrasts that with the freakout ("he hates you") at The Gateway Pundit for this line from President Obama talking about racism back in 1990 that I mentioned yesterday.

“Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous,” Obama said.

So OK, Bush is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat. But we all know that's not the real story of why the former can be praised for saying the exact same thing the later is vilified for...certainly not when the subject is race.

Thanks for the catch Steve M. It is perhaps the most clear-cut example of how race factors in to the reaction to President Obama.

4 comments:

  1. This is excellent. I think back in Eisenhower's time the Republican Party really was a conservative party with compassion. The beliefs we are seeing now were there in a much smaller way.

    The President is such a beautiful person. My wish is that every person could see that. Disagree with his policies if that's what you believe, but see what a wonderful person he is.

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    Replies
    1. I realize that wasn't Eisenhower's speech. I just feel that by G.H.W. Bush's day the far right narrative was very much in power in the Republican party in spite of the words he spoke.

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    2. Things were certainly different in Eisenhower's time, but I might say they were more so because the Democratic party was so thoroughly racist at the time. Jim Crow was Democratic policy, you'll remember. This has clearly changed, but there was a lot more room for agreement between the parties on social policy when, each for its own reasons, both had no room for people of color, at least in anything other than custodial positions.

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  2. I remember when Michelle Obama was militant when she was proud of her country. It really irks me that the First Family has to walk on eggshells and we have our "friends" on the left talking about how weak the president is. Why are they even on the left if they don't get basic sociology?

    Vic78

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