I assume because they view her as a token minority we made Secretary of State so we could trot her out at conventions to keep our dark faces count up.
Give me a break.
I'm dead serious. There have been several "spot the minority" threads, and within those threads, several comments that the invited speakers are just tokens who don't count. I agree that's a ridiculous attitude, but it didn't come from me.
I'm dead serious. There have been several "spot the minority" threads, and within those threads, several comments that the invited speakers are just tokens who don't count. I agree that's a ridiculous attitude, but it didn't come from me.
FTR, I thought the invited speakers didn't count because they're too easy. there's no "spotting" the person standing on stage talking. The camera is pointed right at them. That's why the game is only audience members.
Not that I don't understand why the game itself is still annoying to R's. But I really don't undertand why people keep harping on that aspect of it.
FFS! What is the point of having these people talk if they are just going against what the party actually wants?
But isn't that how the party tenor can be changed? It's like voting - if today the general feedback and commentary is how much most people, across the aisle, appreciated her speech and what she was expressing, isn't that conducive to steering the party?
As someone who greatly dislikes the GOP right now, I think it's awesome. I wanted Ron Paul to be able to speak, but he wouldn't endorse Romney so he wasn't allowed. But that kind of platform with an international audience - I'm very encouraged she got up there and expressed these ideas in that forum.
FTR, I thought the invited speakers didn't count because they're too easy. there's no "spotting" the person standing on stage talking. The camera is pointed right at them. That's why the game is only audience members.
Not that I don't understand why the game itself is still annoying to R's. But I really don't undertand why people keep harping on that aspect of it.
Maybe the game is just a game to you, I'll take you at your word on that. But for people who wrote things in those threads like "they'll make sure they trot every minority they have up there" or "Invited tokens don't count" - those aren't comments about making sure the game is sufficiently challenging.
And I can see how token Condi talking about her Woolworth's counter experience would be extra grating for folks like that.
I found Condi's speach to be both very serious in terms of the issues, but also optimistic/inspirational, perhaps the GOPs brand of "hope and change." I can see were liberals would give it a big eye-roll, they might see her story about her parents not being able to take her to a theater or lunch counter during segregation, but she was taught she could do anything and went on to be the Secretary of State a bunch of bootstraps BS, but GOPers love that stuff - I do.
Please expound on why liberals might roll their eyes
The first reason Y4M noted - when the GOP gives speaking spots to minorities, it is viewed as a weak strategic attempt to pander to minorities or come-off as inclusive, when many liberals don't view the GOP as an inclusive party. We see that on this board, so the perceived "token" minority providing anecdotes that appeal to Rs/Cons is eye-roll worthy from the perspective of a liberal.
The other thing is, there is just a philisophical difference in terms of how one becomes successful in this country. Libs like to point to people like Romney (filthy rich) or the Bushs (rich and well-connected political family) to reinforce the notion that the GOP is the party of haves from the get-go. They don't like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings and worked to make things happen for them, they don't like the overcoming adversity story-line unless it's the government and policy that allowed one to overcome odds. That whole thing gets the "bootstraps!" eye-roll. That's not to say that one can't appreciate these stories, but they are viewed as rare exceptions to how things really work and what is really possible. Therefore, Condi's is just being used by the GOP. Her story isn't genuine, and she's nuts to allow herself to be used in this way. (Just some of the facebook comments I've seen in relation to her speach last night from my liberal friends).
Libs like to point to people like Romney (filthy rich) or the Bushs (rich and well-connected political family) to reinforce the notion that the GOP is the party of haves from the get-go. They don't like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings and worked to make things happen for them, they don't like the overcoming adversity story-line unless it's the government and policy that allowed one to overcome odds.
Yes, liberals do not like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings....like President Obama.
I feel like this conversation has taken a nosedive into the very same thing druidp posted about yesterday. I was hoping that we could have a conversation about her speech and what she said but instead it has become "libs just think she is a token" without that comment even being made.
That's not to say that one can't appreciate these stories, but they are viewed as rare exceptions to how things really work and what is really possible.
It's not just a view - the statistics bear this out. Stories like hers are a rare exception. It is exceedingly rare to go from very poor to the 1%.
That doesn't make her story invalid - it just makes it what it is, an exception.
That's not to say that one can't appreciate these stories, but they are viewed as rare exceptions to how things really work and what is really possible.
It's not just a view - the statistics bear this out. Stories like hers are a rare exception. It is exceedingly rare to go from very poor to the 1%.
That doesn't make her story invalid - it just makes it what it is, an exception.
but isn't that what R's are about "American Exceptionalism"
I feel like this conversation has taken a nosedive into the very same thing druidp posted about yesterday. I was hoping that we could have a conversation about her speech and what she said but instead it has become "libs just think she is a token" without that comment even being made.
To some degree, I concur, but on the other hand, the "spot the minority" threads of the last few days have made me uncomfortable.
FFS! What is the point of having these people talk if they are just going against what the party actually wants?
But isn't that how the party tenor can be changed? It's like voting - if today the general feedback and commentary is how much most people, across the aisle, appreciated her speech and what she was expressing, isn't that conducive to steering the party?
As someone who greatly dislikes the GOP right now, I think it's awesome. I wanted Ron Paul to be able to speak, but he wouldn't endorse Romney so he wasn't allowed. But that kind of platform with an international audience - I'm very encouraged she got up there and expressed these ideas in that forum.
But we are fact checking and know which statements are lies or not. Your average watcher is going with the assumption that the speakers are actual spokespeople for the platform. But if you have things like this, people end up voting for a platform that doesn't actually say or want to do what they heard.
If she were saying "this is what I wish our platform was about, but its not", then yeah, I get the excitement. Or if the people who were actually running were saying these things, sure, get excited. But right now, these are lies.
I feel like this conversation has taken a nosedive into the very same thing druidp posted about yesterday. I was hoping that we could have a conversation about her speech and what she said but instead it has become "libs just think she is a token" without that comment even being made.
To some degree, I concur, but on the other hand, the "spot the minority" threads of the last few days have made me uncomfortable.
Oh I agree about the "spot" threads. I have not participated in any of them. (Not saying that you or anyone else accused me of doing so)
I've loosened up a bit from my staunch anti-voucher stance but not to the point where I support them. I understand that families just can't afford to wait for their local public schools to turn things around in time for their own children to benefit, so on the micro-level I totally get the attraction of vouchers. But on the macro-level, I see no evidence that public schools aren't being left to flounder and are left to teach kids with special needs, kids with behavioral issues, kids whose families don't care about their educations, etc., and those public schools aren't getting the support (not necessarily financial) they need given the special populations that are left to be taught.
I'd love to see examples of areas where vouchers are offered and where public schools aren't left to deteriorate. So far I haven't seen any.
Marie, this is where I'm at. I'm not opposed to vouchers in theory. But the evidence that I've seen doesn't show that they work. Competition is supposed to force the public schools improve. But despite more than a decade with vouchers, Milwaukee public schools have the distinct honor of being better than...Detroit. And the evidence about whether voucher participants themselves perform better is mixed, at best. There is still more research to be done, and I may someday change my mind. But based on the information currently available to me, I don't think they're the great savior of the public school system.
I think improving education includes addressing hungry kids through meal programs so they can actually learn, which is one part of the poverty issue.
I could not agree more and this is one reason the GOP approach towards education makes me ill. The idea of cutting school breakfast programs seriously makes me stabby.
Do ya'll know when our local district started the afterschool meal program the newspaper was inundated with nasty comments about how their parents shouldn't be so lazy and trifling that they couldn't feed their children. I shit you not.
Well, this is my primary problem with school food. The breakfasts that I used to eat were pure crapfests of sugar. I distinctly remember the French toast sticks because they were amazingly yummy - sugared pieces of bread doused in syrup. There was a reason I was grouchy and starving again by 10am. I don't think the solution to hungry kids is feeding them shit like this.
The meal standards for schools changed this year to include healthier options. And our local school district has partnered with several community gardens to provide fresh local produce in the schools. In fact, I need to get my pennies together because they are selling food from the school garden in the cafeteria today.
Well, this is my primary problem with school food. The breakfasts that I used to eat were pure crapfests of sugar. I distinctly remember the French toast sticks because they were amazingly yummy - sugared pieces of bread doused in syrup. There was a reason I was grouchy and starving again by 10am. I don't think the solution to hungry kids is feeding them shit like this.
The meal standards for schools changed this year to include healthier options. And our local school district has partnered with several community gardens to provide fresh local produce in the schools. In fact, I need to get my pennies together because they are selling food from the school garden in the cafeteria today.
I love this.
My DD's school switched over to much healthier fare last year thanks to sufficient complaints from parents. Make your voices heard, folks.
I don't like vouchers and charters. As the mother of a special needs child those schools won't touch my kid or quickly counsel us out if we do get in. All charters and vouchers do is leave behind kids with special education needs and kids without active adults in their life in the public schools creating essentially a holding pen for those who need intervention the most.
That’s awful. However the Charter School thing almost has to be taken on a case by case basis. Not all are as great as some stories make you believe but some are pretty damn good. I don’t believe they are the answer to an issue as complex as our educational system but if you have limited options, you live near a good one, and you can get your kid in they are extremely beneficial.
Libs like to point to people like Romney (filthy rich) or the Bushs (rich and well-connected political family) to reinforce the notion that the GOP is the party of haves from the get-go. They don't like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings and worked to make things happen for them, they don't like the overcoming adversity story-line unless it's the government and policy that allowed one to overcome odds.
Yes, liberals do not like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings....like President Obama.
I didn't say that - but Obama's story isn't presented as one of "he did all by his loansome" - quite the opposite. That's what I'm saying. Also, Obama's beginnings are really not all that humble. His parents were well educatedH. He was raised in a stable environment. He received an Ivy league education. I'm not saying he didn't overcome other circumstances (single mother, minority), but his degree of humble is not any more spectacular than some of the GOP speakers.
I feel like this conversation has taken a nosedive into the very same thing druidp posted about yesterday. I was hoping that we could have a conversation about her speech and what she said but instead it has become "libs just think she is a token" without that comment even being made.
Which is really kinda sad because I've never viewed Condi as the token black in the GOP or Colin Powell for that matter either. Condi is rather respected in liberal crowds, so using her as the whole token minority commentary is quite frankly off base.
Now, Michael Steele on the other hand ...
And back to MrsDL's point about pandering, yes, I fully admit to feeling that the GOP panders to minorities while on the other hand making "free stuff" comments after coming back from an NAACP convention or that gov't shouldn't be the "Sugar Daddy or Uncle" or what the fuck ever reference Mike Huckabee had last night is off putting to some black folks.
And it's off putting because it sounds like (to use a phrase from Mark Thompson) coded language. Like lazy, no good inner city urban black youths have no idea what it means to work hard and have a work ethic and that just want to lay up and let Big Daddy Government cure all their woes. We can solve this by letting them work as janitors in the schools so they know what hard work is and can one day grow up to be Hermain Cain Jr.
If you want to frame discussion so that some black folks feel like the party could be more inclusive, then you need to look at the rhetoric from the eyes of minorities and ask how that shit can be framed so that I don't take offense. If you want to talk about how welfare has failed then say, this system isn't working to benefit everyone. Don't point out that Bonquisha is a welfare queen. None of that makes me hear what you said. It makes me defense and any other salient point after that sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher "Wah, Wha, wah wah waa wha wah."
Now, I don't know if anyone on this board is close enough to a GOP campaign strategist, but I seriously wonder does anyone have these discussions with candidates. Like somebody should have smacked Mitt upside the head and said "DUDE! Don't say if they want more Free Stuff Man! Black folks already feel like we accuse them of bleeding welfare dry and being welfare queens." What he SHOULD have said, if you still want a stagnant economy and no improvement in your community, then vote for Obama. But Free Stuff = Black Ghetto Baby Momma With 8 Kids and No Job Who Loves Welfare.
Post by iammalcolmx on Aug 30, 2012 10:35:15 GMT -5
And the applause she received was the most absurd thing. What were some of these delegates really championing? That Rice had managed to succeed despite the foot they and their forefathers had placed on her neck?
This would have been true at the democratic convention as well.
It’s not healing when you avoid the truth of our past. It’s not progress if you can take a stage and say you overcame Jim Crow, but never say how you did it exactly.
I could not agree more and this is one reason the GOP approach towards education makes me ill. The idea of cutting school breakfast programs seriously makes me stabby.
Do ya'll know when our local district started the afterschool meal program the newspaper was inundated with nasty comments about how their parents shouldn't be so lazy and trifling that they couldn't feed their children. I shit you not.
My neighbor literally made the comment of teaching children to eat from the public trough as if they were animals.
I think the reason that Condi's speech was so well received, besides the fact that she's an excellent speaker, is that it was comparatively positive. Most speeches that I've seen have been little more than Obama bash fests whereas Condi's speech was more about vision and policy. It was more, "This is how we'll try to make it better." and less, "This is how the other guy is screwing it up."
FTR I did the spot the minority post firmly TIC. I am waiting for the DNC to do a spot the small business owner or spot the pretty liberal woman.
That's a stereotype, that lib woman aren't pretty? I'm seriously new to this concept.
I do think there were suggestions during the DNC 2008 of drinking games every time Obama uttered the words "hope" and "change."
And to follow up, we did not in fact put a mustache on our TV screen while the RNC was on for less than 5 minutes... and it was right as that chic was on the screen. (can't remember her name) I LOL'd at the timing.
I don't think Condi is a token and I thought her speech was good. Frankly, I recognize that I'm going to be about as happy with her speech as I will ever be about a Republican's speech because obviously I have fundamentally different beliefs politically than most Republicans. I appreciated that she kept it upbeat and positive and focused on aspirational things rather than cutting down the other party/candidate. I hate that from both sides and right about now in the election cycle is when it really starts to grate for me.
However, while Condi herself isn't a token, I do think the speech oversimplified and glossed over some really key areas. I don't necessarily agree with the tone of the response that soudesafinado posted above, but I do agree that Condi made her story bootstrapsy without a lot of attention to the parts where the policy positions of politicians and elected officials on matters of civil rights impacted her story. It's not like the folks protesting segregation just woke up one morning and had their civil rights simply because they asked for them or even because they worked so hard to get them. It requires a political platform that has at its core an attention to equality for all. I think history has more than shown that we cannot rely on the benevolence of the majority to bestow rights upon those of us in the minority, nor should we have to given the composition of our political system which is supposed to protect us from exactly that predicament. I kind of hate that she stands there and glosses over all of this when her own party's opposition to equality in most of its forms is one of the biggest political issues of the present day. For some of us it is not a matter of just working hard to get ahead - it is literally impossible to do that to the same extent as other Americans when there are huge legal and systemic barriers in your way.
Do I really expect that line of thinking from a Republican, though? No, not really. Not because I think Republicans are evil, but because, quite clearly, this is something the Republican Party and its base have decided is the hill they want to die on and that's fine by me.
The other thing is, there is just a philisophical difference in terms of how one becomes successful in this country. Libs like to point to people like Romney (filthy rich) or the Bushs (rich and well-connected political family) to reinforce the notion that the GOP is the party of haves from the get-go. They don't like to hear stories about people who came from humble beginnings and worked to make things happen for them, they don't like the overcoming adversity story-line unless it's the government and policy that allowed one to overcome odds. That whole thing gets the "bootstraps!" eye-roll. That's not to say that one can't appreciate these stories, but they are viewed as rare exceptions to how things really work and what is really possible. Therefore, Condi's is just being used by the GOP. Her story isn't genuine, and she's nuts to allow herself to be used in this way. (Just some of the facebook comments I've seen in relation to her speach last night from my liberal friends).
I disagree with this. I don't think there is a philosophical difference in how people become successful. The difference, in my view, is that people don't necessarily view those who come from a long line of riches and "success" as independently successful. Is Mitt Romney successful? Of course. But his parents are the inspirational boostraps story. Not him. It's not particularly difficult in this country to make something of yourself when you are already in the top 1%. And that is part of what bothers me about him. I don't give a damn if he's outrageously wealthy. I don't care that I will never even come close to achieving that kind of wealth. I care that he panders around pretending that if anyone, anywhere, works hard enough, we can do that too. That just isn't true. And it's disingenous for him to act as though that's how he made it to the top. The fact of the matter is that he was on top from the get-go. And I don't care about that. I just want him to own it.
Denying the complex and ugly battle to make the United States live up to words of its founding is an insult to progress and to how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. While the situation has changed, we can’t simply gloss over old horrors to make things easier for the same people who tried to stop progress because they claimed it was happening “too fast.”
Sou, I love this article. Love it. I have been thinking a lot about this when we have the discussions of how economic policy seems to weigh more heavily than social justice for some. And my thought is that it benefits me not if the economic policy creates a Boom if there is still some social happenstance that keeps me from taking full advantage of economic policy.
Social injustice may not be as overt as it once was. But when I look at things like how big banks treated equally qualified minority customers by handing out bad loans, it makes me cringe. Because to me, that is a prime example of how subtle social injustice gets wrapped up in an economic issue.
For years, local housing non-profits in my city went to the state asking that laws be changed because of subprime lending practices. This was BEFORE the housing meltdown. I'm talking seriously like 5 years before the meltdown. Eventually there was some change, but it wasn't enough before the house of cards came tumbling down. I couldn't put into words how that made me so angry other than likening it to redlining until I heard an NPR guest sum it up. To paraphrase the NPR guest, she basically said very little attention was paid to subprime practices in minority communities because it simply didn't affect everyone else in suburbia. It wasn't until the banks decided that they were getting away with those practices for years that maybe they could capitalize in the suburbs with the same type of lending practices. Until the entire country was brought to its knees, there was no concern about such egregious practices.
With that, I yelled YES in my car. Because that's it. That's exactly how discrimination meets economic issues head on.
Sheesh - I think I'm thankful. I guess I just really don't care how attractive a woman is (though for obvious reasons someone prettier might get more mileage in a primarily male-dominated political spectrum - and ick for that), if she has brains and can present well.
And not to refute yet again to a movie scene/quote (but I will anyway), I love the scene from Love Actually where Hugh Grant turns to the picture of Margaret Thatcher and asks if she's ever had the love-at-work problem, and then answers, "Of course you did, you saucy minx." ;D It's one of our favorite scenes of that flick.