proper context for If Obama gets in, its going to be a black thing and its going to be all blacks for blacks?

How is that not a racist statement?

I hate the fact that some Obama people cry racism 24/7. Racism is a disease of the body politics, not a tool for a primary.

But that doesn't mean it does not exist.

thank you.  sometimes i see comments here (on both sides) and just shake my head.  civility is the key of good discourse!

Kindly unwad your undies.  The charge of making racist statements has been leveled against a specific person on a specific diary.  Acting like it's an attack on all HRC supporters is disingenuous at best.

including most Hillary voters that aren't regulars on MyDD, would call that diary of Linfar's racist.  And she has been banned for this before, remember, and people were begging Jerome to let her back on.

You know, I realize that this is a silly part of the cycle and that people are going to say and think over-the-top things and we should be forgiving of such excesses in the heat of the moment.  But there are some seriously disturbed people on this site.

http://www.mydd.com/comments/2008/3/31/1 13924/894/228#228

I agree that it can create a hostile environment, and some people may leave as a result. But I don't think banning people for their opinions is the right solution. I'm all for banning people who are being abusive or disruptive, but I don't think that applies here. I think the diarist believes that she is correct and assumes the majority of members agree with her. I'd rather express my opposition in the open so the diarist and others can see that many progressives find such comments offensive.

Failing to ignore...

What the woman quoted is saying is that she's afraid that Obama will help African Americans get ahead at the expense of working class whites.

Yes, she's envisioning some sort of racial patronage system: a "black thing" that's "going to be all blacks for blacks."

Linfar is not saying that sentiment is well-informed or a valid concern.

Sure she is:

"Some might call this racism, but it is nothing of the kind. After decades of affirmative action which has promoted  AA `s over white working class candidates, these voters are wary."

Linfar is essentially endorsing this woman's worldview that affirmative action has oppressed working-class whites. That view was also, incidentally, propagated by Jesse Helms in his famous "white hands" ad. Strange bedfellows, as they say...  

The conclusion they come to is that he is going to help his people at their expense.

His people, eh? Whomever do you mean? Liberals? Democrats? Midwesterners? Americans? I'm all of the above, and one of Obama's "people" as well. Please, Little Otter, enlighten me as to who his people are...

Actually working class whites have been voting Republican since the new corporatist Democratic party abandoned them. Bill Clinton's major accomplishments were screwing workers with NAFTA and deregulation that opened the door for Enron and the oil prices we are suffering under today.

Let's just look at twp of her quotes, the one about Obama only helping blacks, and the one about the firefighters, and do some exchanging.

First pf all, he idea that a black candidate would 'give everything to the blacks', if we just assume that it's made without showing or knowledge of a pattern of discrimination by Obama, has to be considered racist in itself. I mean, what does that statement even mean?

Now, make a thought experiment and assume Obama were Jewish. If this person had then said that Obama would 'give it all to the Jews', I don't think anyone would even think of raising a class defense.

As to the 200 white guys who died on 9/11 - it was actually 341 for the FDNY, IIRC - that's just egregious. And here, too, because it makes it so clear, throw in the Jewish example. The FDNY isn't mainly comprised of whites, technically, it's mainly Irish and Italians. That ethnic composition comes from New York's immigration patterns at the turn of the century and families developing a tradition of entering the service, but one result of it is that other ethnicities - blacks, Poles, Russians, Jews, Hispanics, French, Germans, and so on - are under-represented.

So in our example of a hypothetically Jewish Obama, considering that Irish and Italians tend to be Catholic, what would linfar's quote read right if she'd replaced 'white guys' with 'Catholic guys' and used it to discuss the concerns of Catholic voters with the Jewish Obama?

That would be considered anti-Semitic on its face, just as the statements as they are are racist to the core.

Yep - Larry Johnson doesn't ban anyone. He hasn't found anyone yet that is more offensive than him or Susan.

This is probably lost on a guy who thinks Bill Clinton is comparable to David Duke...

'Beaut of a strawman.

Maybe you think Reverend Wright and these black and white Americans are deluded and ignorant, but I don't think Obama agrees with you.

Some of them certainly are concerning specific issues (some white people re: "black privilege", Reverend Wright re: "AIDS", etc.) and I could care less if Obama agrees with me. I'm right, you know it, and you're being deliberately obtuse.

This kind of vicious and divisive diary is not what Barack Obama's campaign is supposed to be about, and it is ultimately deeply destructive to the Democratic party and progressive goals. I call Obama out fairly regularly for using the tactics you are using here, but he at least strives to be better.

Please, cut the goddamn sanctimony. A particularly offensive diarist who traffics in precisely the type of "divisive diary" you feign such concern over and who's already been banned from this website for posting racially-offensive material is at it once again. Have you nothing to say about the comments in question? Are you genuinely more irked by the fact that I've drawn attention to them? Silence is acquiescence; If you've got no problem with the aforementioned comments, why don't you just come right out and say it?