"The most important statement on race in American politics in 40 years"

[ldoolin]

Howard Dean’s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or who has been President of the United States since Lyndon Johnson’s June 4, 1965 affirmative action address to the graduating class at Howard University.

For four decades, the primary political project of the Republican Party has been to transform itself into the White Man’s Party. Not only in the Deep South, but also nationally, the GOP seeks to secure a majority popular base for corporate governance through coded appeals to white racism. The success of this GOP project has been the central fact of American politics for two generations – reaching its fullest expression in the Bush presidency. Yet a corporate covenant with both political parties has prohibited the mere mention of America’s core contemporary political reality: the constant, routine mobilization of white voters through the imagery and language of race.

Last Sunday, Howard Dean broke that covenant:


more at
http://www.blackcommentator.com/68/68_cover_dean.html

[chimpymustgo]

1. Whaaa?? Somebody hasn't been listening... Clinton has spoken

profoundly. So has John Edwards.

What hogwash.

[Democrats unite]

2. It's called revisionist history

Seems to be the only way to make Dean look good. Bush has tried it, didn't work. Same goes for Dean supporters.

[wyldwolf]

4. blackcommentator.com has always been pro-dean...

[mzmolly]

7. Interesting given his so called lack of appeal to the African American

community.

[Democrats unite]

8. one web site does not constitute a community

unless of course it's in support of Dean.

[Zynx]

13. Name a candidate who has significantly more support among blacks.

Kerry? Lieberman? Edwards? Clark? None of them do.

[QC]

14. Do you have any figures on black support of candidates?

I haven't seen any surveys broken down by race. That would be interesting.

[thissideup]

3. Is Dean Jesus Christ?

Didn't he walk on water last week?

[Democrats unite]

5. That will be the next headline

LOL!

[JohnKleeb]

10. You forget more

Personally one of the better speeches Ive heard by a white politican on race was the one RFK made in Indianapolis, IN aunnoncing the death of MLK.

Statement on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Indianapolis, Indiana
April 4, 1968
I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Funny he mentions prayer, I can think of another great politican who has mentioned it, yeah DK mentioned it in his prayer for America. BTW CMG good for Edwards standing with Jesse Jackson and that SC community, he is a good guy.

[bigtree]

6. most important?

Hardly. Did you catch Barbara Jordan at the 1976 Democratic National Convention? http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barbarajordan1...

excerpt:

"We believe that the government which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively underscore, actively seek to remove those obstacles which would block individual achievement...obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition. The government must seek to remove them." -Barbara Jordan

This statement from the Commentator is like saying that Gov. Dean was the first to talk about race in this campaign.

[QC]

9. I think Bobby Kennedy said a few words on the subject as well.

As did Lyndon Johnson, MLK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and others.

Dean's speech certainly was important, but I get tired of the suggestion that he singlehandedly invented the idea of building cross-racial coalitions along racial lines. The Populist Movement from a century ago was built on that idea, and Southern Democrats have been winning elections that way for years.

[JohnKleeb]

12. Bobby was simply amazing

Dean's speech, yes it was good but the best in 40 years, so many great men and women making speeches on it, I doubt that. Yes if you read Howard Zinn's Peoples history of the US you will learn that many of the populist were black and white, they were working together for a common goal.

[Lisa0825]

11. It's an excellent article. I printed it out and passed it along

when it first came out. There was another good one in the Village Voice, which refers back to this article.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0351/fahim.php

Evolution of a Not-So-Radical Contender
The New Electable Howard Dean
by Kareem Fahim
December 17 - 23, 2003

(from toward the end of the article)

That day in South Carolina, Dean delivered a serious speech on race, not at Joiquim's church but before a mostly white crowd in a hotel conference room. He charged that Republicans since the Nixon administration had been running their Southern campaigns based on "guns, God, and gays." He reminded the group that phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" were code, signals to white America that "minorities were to blame for all of America's problems." Dean's speech emphasized a commonality of concerns, irrespective of race.
"There is nothing black or white about having to live from one paycheck to another," he told the crowd. "Jobs, health care, education, democracy, and opportunity. These are the issues that can unite America."

(snip)

"If you sat down and designed a candidate to be maximally attractive to Southern voters, it wouldn't be Howard Dean," said Noble. "But that doesn't mean we won't accept him. He talks a little funny, but our ears will get attuned." Southerners, Noble pointed out, are "disproportionately without health care, insecure about jobs, and grossly disproportionately concerned with poor education in schools."

"Besides," said Noble, "Southerners like feisty people. And Dean is a Yankee redneck."

(snip)

By week's end, Representatives Jesse Jackson Jr., Robert Scott, and Elijah Cummings had all endorsed Dean. The Black Commentator, a widely read progressive online journal, called his speech "the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years."