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McCain isn't just getting a VP...
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grufty jim
grufty jim
1978 posts

Re: A stinging, ferocious blast at racist double standards in the US
Sep 24, 2008, 16:59
handofdave wrote:
There is enough racism left in the USA to have an effect on the vote in McCain's direction, there's no doubt about it.

And this is, ironically, why Obama's campaign has to tiptoe around the subject, lest he incite the discomfort of the whites who think they're beyond race, but when tested, find out they're not as enlightened as they thought they were.


About 15 years ago (or thereabouts) I used to publish a zine on the subject of psychedelics. One of the things I included (in classic cut'n'paste zine stylee) was a long conversation / interview between David Byrne and Tim Leary. They were both heroes of mine at the time, and remain so today.

There was a particular exchange in that dialogue that has stuck with me to this day. They were discussing the topic of racism...

===============

DB: After years of telling myself I'm not a racist, I'm a liberal, I'm free-thinking, I started to acknowledge that I have these reactions that I'm not aware of, that I didn't look at before; things that have been bred into me, not necessarily by my parents... maybe by the society, by the system, by television... and that it's a real job to get rid of it. You can't just blissfully say, Everybody's equal, everybody's nice. The conditioning is so powerful that you have to work all the time...

TL: It's invisible; racism is the water through which we swim.

DB: And you have to tread water to stay up there; otherwise you're in it. You have to go against the flow to rise above it. So it's acknowledging that in some ways I'm trying to deal with it, but it's not going to happen overnight. It's not something you can announce to yourself and all of a sudden you're clean and pure.

===============

That line; "racism is the water through which we swim"; is very powerful and very perceptive in my view.
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Re: A stinging, ferocious blast at racist double standards in the US (handofdave)
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