OK, if Barak gets elected can we finally expect black people to shut up from now on?

And just what is that supposed to mean? If that really came out as you intended, I suggest you find yourself another place to hang out (just my personal take, I’m only a guest here).

I don’t know anything about that, but I love his other unhidden agenda.

I just think he’s wrong about Texas, because, for him, its all about the Clintons. For me, I’m sick of the entire effect that Democrat identity politics has had on themselves, the GOP and the entire American nation.

It’s sickening.

I’d like to see it blow up in our faces.

Chakra Hammer on February 26, 2008 at 1:24 AM

Shades of Identity Politics appear throughout history. Identity Politics, in one form or another, is not peculiar to any particular civilization or race of people. Rather, it reflects a natural human tendency to avoid danger by discriminating the similarities and differences among others.

Merging it with Marxism and Postmodernism compounds it’s perniciouness. What follows is excerpted from the Marxists’ Internet Archive.

Identity Politics

Identity politics is the political terrain in which various social groups engage in a “struggle for recognition” within bourgeois society, each seeking recognition for the special interests of a specific social group. Identity politics dominated radical politics during the last few decades of the 20th century, and constituted a turn away from attempts to change governments or win political power. Identity politics focused on how their particular group were “represented” in media and language, how their group were affected by various institutional practices and so on.

Historical Development: Identity politics had its origins in the development of the labour process in the U.S. in particular and the developed capitalist countries generally, which made the super-exploitation of sections of the working class untenable, and increased the potential for the socialisation of women’s labour and other relations which was incompatible with traditional forms of oppression. The growth of professional sections of the working class and “knowledge industries”, on top of the successes of a series of social movements, created both the opportunity and means for the promotion of sectional interests in lieu of class interests.

Identity politics arose out of and as a negation of the mass social movements and struggles following the Second World War – for example the National Liberation Movements, followed by the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S..
…

The inherent logic within Identity Politics leads to smaller and smaller sections of society being thrown into struggle with less and less opportunity for legitimate call upon the solidarity of others.[emphasis added] Consequently, the need for finding some basis of commonality in interest and struggle began to assert itself in the nineties. Further, the ugly consequences of Identity Politics began to exhibit themselves in the disintegratory nationalist struggles in Yugoslavia and in the former colonies, and together with religious fundamentalism all combined to bring Identity Politics to a blind alley by the end of the century.

Nevertheless, the period of Identity Politics completes the bourgeois revolution[emphasis added], in exposing all those forms of oppression that are not essential to the rule of capital; in particular, Identity Politics shows, in case after case, how social consciousness and the various forms of oppression found in bourgeois society are “social constructs” rather than immutable relations given in human nature, and how new forms of social consciousness and new social relations, which overcome the oppressive relations, can be forged in struggle.

The “Anti-Capitalist Movement” of the beginning of this millennium marks the opening of a new political terrain, alliance politics[emphasis added], in which various groups and movements seek alliances to resolve social problems, but unlike the movements which had preceded the period of Identity Politics, identify segments of civil society as the site of struggle rather than engaging in a struggle for state power.

Further Reading: Without any implication that the following writers are advocates of Identity Politics (most are not), for elements of the process, see Franz Fanon’s National Culture and the Fight for Freedom on national identity, Kate Millett on Sexual Politics, Shulamith Firestone on gender and class in The Dialectic of Sex.

Exist question: Is Obama practicing ‘Alliance Politics’?

This is why I think the Texas repubs should vote for Hillary. I don’t care what Dick Morris says.

I don’t like Hillary, but the longer this fight goes on, the more the Democratic party can’t hide its dysfunction from itself. This would provide an opportunity for some folks in the Democrat party to abandon identity politics for participation in the shaping of the GOP’s politics of principle.

Saltysam on February 26, 2008 at 2:06 AM

Considering Dick Morris donated ~165,000 Kenyan pounds worth of political services to Raila Odinga and the ODM campaign last year (Odinga & Obama are in the Luo tribe and likely cousins), I wouldn’t trust anything that man says about the Clintons, regardless of my feelings re: them. I just know he’s got a hidden agenda.

But, if I’m gonna play lefty devil’s advocate … what else can I use? That’s the only play in my book! And, and if you take away my name-calling, well, then, you’re just not playing fair! I have no rational arguement to debate you with so I have to resort to emotional attack on your character! If I had a pie, well, I’d rush the stage and throw in your eeeeevil right wing face while you were talking! So don’t step on my freedom of speech! You, you, you nazi!

Eeeewwwww. Playing lefty dumbazz makes me feel all dirty, gotta go get a shower now.

I’m voting for McCain.

He’s not Fred!, but his whiteness and maleness seals the deal.

Racism is okay, even wonderful, as long as it’s the patronizing, self-aggrandizing kind practiced by the Left.

Gilda on February 26, 2008 at 1:26 AM

But isn’t it okay to modify your vote for the purpose of beneficial social engineering, such as racial equality? Sure, but racial equality happens, almost by definition itself, when race disappears as a factor in decisions, and as long as we vote for a candidate on the basis of race, what we promote in fact is racial inequality.

True, if Obama weren’t black, he would not be the Democratic front-runner. (Not at his young age.) And if Hillary weren’t BJ’s wife, neither would she. So much for the fruits of identity politics.

Identity politics may thus focus on diverse forms of identity: race, ethnicity, sex, religion, caste, sexual orientation, physical disability or some other assigned or perceived trait (see below for a more complete, but still non-exhaustive, list). Some groups have combined identity politics and Marxian social class analysis and class consciousness—the most notable example being the Black Panther Party—but this is not necessarily characteristic of the form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics

Chakra Hammer on February 26, 2008 at 1:24 AM

Identity politics is really hurting this country and needs to be discouraged, not encouraged. For every group formed, an opposing group pops up. Whereas it’s true that there is strength in numbers, and that occasionally, there is a need and a purpose to band together to reach a goal, for the group to remain together after the goal is achieved is counter-productive and actually causes divisiveness.

Q. What is your plan for the coming economic recession?

Barrack: Well, I’m really a candidate for change.

Q. What can you tell us about your plan for health care in America?

Barrack: Easy, we’ll champion definite changes in that area.

Q. Can you tell us your plan for curbing rampant illegal immigration across our souther borders?

Barrack: Did I mention I was for change?

Q. How would you address the increasing threat of communist North Korea and China and their influence on Iran?

Barrack: What we need here is to champion change in our foreign policy. Oh yeah, can y’all see that I’m a black man too? Vote for me.

as our great, and now missing, sadly, csdeven used to say.

Entelechy on February 25, 2008 at 10:57 PM

OT, but where is csdeven???

Sarandon: “Well, I’m going to back Obama. But I hope – I think that he, as a symbol, has really excited people, and he’s definitely confusing to everyone who really hates America for hating Muslims because a name like Obama and a Black man, they’re probably going to go “Oh, wait a minute – what?” It’s kind of like when you’re out on the line for freedom to have an abortion and you’re incredibly pregnant. They just can’t quite figure it out.”

Tell me people don’t REALLY think like this. If you think electing a half black man who is NOT a muslim is going to fool the America haters into suddenly liking us, all I can say is…..what have you been smoking?

“So I think he definitely has convinced people that he stands for change and for hope, and I can’t wait to see what he stands for.”

Don’t you think it would be better to actually KNOW what he stands for and then decide for yourself if it is good, instead of just blindly supporting a person and HOPING he does well? I also think he has defintly convinced people that he stands for change and it scares the hell out of me to wait to see what he stands for.

Miles – “I admit it: I’m voting for John McCain because he’s white.”

That’s raaaaaacist!

Tony737 on February 25, 2008 at 10:45 PM

Nice try but you cannot stiffle my enlightened political opinions with your neanderthal name calling. You are obviously black and therefore a close minded bigot. If you are not black you are a race betraying white, which is even worse. So save your breath, Uncle Thomas. I only listen to people who agree with me and demonize those who cannot accept John McCain as their own personal savior. Such is the blissful rapture of McCainmania.

1. “I’m voting for McCain because he’s white.”
2. “I’m not voting for Obama because he’s black.”
3. “I voting for Obama because he’s black.”

A: 1
B: 1 & 2
C. 3
D. None
F. All