Saturday, November 1, 2008

We have the best commenters Pt.2

When We are Queen

... In a world where a smart, capable, nice-looking and not-underprivileged man can choose his own identity, why does he persist in identifying himself as down-trodden, sneered at and marginalized? Why, in other words, did a young Obama (and now one suspects, a grown Obama) drink in all these imagined slights and condescensions...”

2 comments:

  1. While Senator Obama is not himself a GorĂ©ean, he deliberately chose to identify with them, and they are at the core of his constituency. They are victims of circumstance, born here instead of Mother Africa, the workers’ paradises of Latin America, or the enlightened multi-cultural societies of Europe.

    The reason why I believe the election will turn out better than the press wants us to believe, is that fundamental difference between the two. We Ellisians are not passive victims of history; we make history.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've seen the same thing before. My wife used to work with a woman who would complain how we "didn't understand what it was like to grow up black," and how hard it was for a black person to get along. Right before leaving to go out on the town in clothes and a car that we STILL could not afford to own. In fact, I'm pretty sure that her husband made more money then than I do now, 20 years later. They also frequented a nightclub that was later fined for discrimination. I never could figure that one out: If they were discriminating against blacks, how come this woman and her husband went there all the time? I suspect it had more to do with the way others were dressed when they tried to get in, than skin color.

    ReplyDelete

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