Nov 5th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
History
I’m not good at a certain style of grand writing and, consequently, I haven’t even tried to do a post that’s equal to the historic nature of the United States electing a black president. Instead, let me just say that when I went to the supermarket on my block at around 6:30 I saw a huge line of people waiting for the delivery of a “special evening edition” of The Washington Post so that they could keep a souveniere copy of the front page to commemorate the occasion. Some of them had been waiting for as much as three hours and nobody quite knew how long they had left. Apparently, this was happening at supermarkets all across town.
45 Responses to “History”
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November 5th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Oh, come on, Matt. How do you ever expect to become an Important Big Media Figure if you don’t learn to bloviate pompously? Give your readers what they’re paying for!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I wish people would shut up about history. Blahblahblah. History is constantly happening, it never stops happening.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Not just in D.C. or other latte-sipping enclaves.
Newspapers were sold out in my city, and I like in Kentucky.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
I wish people would shut up about history. Blahblahblah. History is constantly happening, it never stops happening.
My European history is kinda poor but how many black leaders has Europe had? Has there ever been a black leader of any democracy outside of Africa? Must we go all the way back to Cleopatra to find an African with such power? This is not only American history, it’s World history.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Starting at about 1pm EST I’ve been to 5 different stores looking for a copy of the Free Press or Detroit News. I haven’t seen a single copy. I should have drank less last night if I wanted a paper.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Obama grew up in Africa? Oh you mean his sperm donor was African. I’m glad he won, given the options, but he’s just a politician.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Our local paper headlined with “Aloha President Obama” and a moderate sized photo. It didn’t really seem to fit my impression of the magnitude of the occasion, but into the scrapbook it goes, nevertheless.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Has there ever been a black leader of any democracy outside of Africa?
Ever heard of Jamaica?
November 5th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Re Matthew’s comment “I’m not good at a certain style of grand writing ”
—————
One imagines the Declaration of Independence with about 40 typos –including several that lead into comically disastous misreadings.
Don’t sweat it , Matthew. A very wise motherfucker wrote 2500 years ago that:
“True words are not beautiful
Beautiful words are not true
Those who are good do not debate
Those who debate are not good
Those who know are not broad of knowledge
Those who are broad of knowledge do not know “
November 5th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
“Obama grew up in Africa? Oh you mean his sperm donor was African. I’m glad he won, given the options, but he’s just a politician.”
Fuck off.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Just Karl – think South Africa and Nelson Mandela.
Barack is the ultimate African-American: a Kenyan father and American mother. He, and now our country, are forever tied to Africa. And given the United States’ global significance we are also forever tied to the world. Yes, Obama is a pol but this is a remarkably historic moment for our country and the world.
I doubt that Ross was trying to indicate that it was not a historic moment – simply that he finds it hard to do justice to the moment in appropriately momentous terms.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Aww, I’m sorry, Kyle. We’re you weeping last night over this amzazing historical event?
November 5th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I like how people call him “African”, when Africa is larger than the US + India + China + Western Europe, as if there are no internal distintions worth caring about. Isn’t that one of the white imperialism?
Obama is Kenyan-America.
Just like someone whose father is from Hamburg is German-American, not European-American.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
JP, they don’t want to get into details. His skin is darker than past presidents, noticeably so, thus we have ‘history’.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
The Washington Post has the pdf online here
November 5th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I lucked out – the CVS in my neighborhood took names and numbers and said they’d hold a copy of the paper until noon on Thursday.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
JP,
It’s also worth noting of course that if you consider “African Americans” as a culture defined by shared historical experience rather than by skin color, Obama doesn’t share a whit of that historical experience. His roots are in Kenya, not in the American South.
It is still nice to have a black president, but let’s not pretend it’s something it isn’t.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
‘Black leader’ out side of Africa?
Depends upon how you define black.
If it’s just the skin color, a number of Prime Ministers of
India were quite dark.
Of course, color and race conscious as Indians are, they would
object to being called black.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
“I wish people would shut up about history. Blahblahblah. History is constantly happening, it never stops happening.”
History is what we collectively remember. And that is not constantly happening. Try harder to be smart.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
“He, and now our country, are forever tied to Africa.”
Seems to me that our country was forever tied to Africa when it imported a large portion of its population from Africa as slaves. But that’s just me.
“I like how people call him ‘African’, when Africa is larger than the US + India + China + Western Europe, as if there are no internal distintions worth caring about. Isn’t that one of the white imperialism?”
Not necessarily. There’s merit to your argument; but you’re ignoring the historical context. The US traded in slaves that were taken from disparate regions of Africa before there were nations there. And although west Africa is the dominate region where slaves were taken, they came from many different ethnic groups. Yet they were all slaves in the US and there’s a large dark-skinned ethnic group in the US who are the descendants of these people. They are something distinct, ethnically, from Americans from European ethnic groups; more to the point, their intrinsic African ethnicity was forced out of them by slavery, quickly creating a unique American creole ethnicity. So it’s perfectly natural and accurately descriptive to call this ethnic group “African Americans”. The comparison to differentiated European ethnic groups is spurious and ahistorical.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
JP, Africa is a country. Don’t be stupid; listen to Sarah Palin.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Keith, that is absolutely correct but irrelevant. Obama clearly doesn’t come from that group. His father was born in Kenyan.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Strangely, Hector has none of the ‘cultural experience’ of the medieval Christian warriors of Europe, but he still dances around with a plastic sword and eggbox armour thinking he’s a crusader.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Hey Keith,
Do you always make arguments with Hallmark platitudes?
Also, if you want to go ad hominem, buddy, I went to your site and your family fucking ugly.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:42 am
I went to four gas stations, a Kroger, a Target and a Wal-Mart.
You can no longer buy a copy of today’s paper in Plano, TX. Amazing.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Heh, the only souvenir I saved was an extra, unused “I voted in Arlington” sticker. Maybe I should have been thinking bigger, but considering how much trouble it apparently was, maybe I didn’t miss much.
It’s also worth noting of course that if you consider “African Americans” as a culture defined by shared historical experience rather than by skin color, Obama doesn’t share a whit of that historical experience. His roots are in Kenya, not in the American South.
Oh come on. Obama’s parents may not have had that “shared historical experience,” but if you think being black hasn’t affected Obama’s life, I doubt you’ve been paying attention. I haven’t read his books, but didn’t he say something about getting looked at funny when out in public with his grandparents? In fact, wasn’t there a ginned-up controversy about him supposedly calling his grandmother racist? Ask a black person if Obama is “black enough” for them, then reconsider whether he has that experience.
This is not only American history, it’s World history.
True, but still, England had a Jewish prime minister more than a hundred years ago, the current president of France is the son of a Hungarian refugee, lots of countries have elected women as heads of state… don’t get me wrong, I agree that this is a very big deal, just don’t get all American exceptionalism here.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:28 am
miller, you muppet, the fact that everything thinks this is a historic event makes it a historic event. Likewise whether or not Obama is “really” African, in the eyes of the world, he is. Which means that he is.
I mean if you’re going to be an ass about it, you could say we’re all Africans, because humans evolved there and then spread outwards. But no-one sees it that way.
It’s all about how people see it. And the world sees this as historic.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:36 am
I will bet any amount of money that JP and s. weynard miller are neither black or from any African country.
November 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Wow, swmiller is making a serious run at Mixner’s position for resident asshole.
Obama grew up in Africa? Oh you mean his sperm donor was African. I’m glad he won, given the options, but he’s just a politician.
Well, when this African sperm donor donated his sperm, he couldn’t do it in the context of marriage to his white wife in over a dozen states. And the fact that Obama’s sperm donor was black meant that Barack was born without full civil rights. Then this guy fought non-vilently to get them and was shot in the head for it (at which point, assholes like you said: “history is constantly happening…I wish people would shut up about history”).
The sheer fact of Obama’s African heritage would have excluded him from, at different points in history, jobs, marrying 75% of the women, voting, food, freedom of movement, access to his own family, the right to protect his own life.
It was just proven that while there are still barriers, that the highest office in the land is available to someone who used to be excluded from access to most of the goods in this country.
Your sneering condescension doesn’t make you look sophisticated or cool, it makes you look ignorant and stupid.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:10 am
HOW FAR HAVE WE COME?
“Strange Fruit”
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Lewis Allen
“Strange Fruit” began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men. He published under the pen name Lewis Allan (the two names he and wife would have named their own children).[3] Meeropol and his wife adopted Robert and Michael, sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage and executed by the United States.[4]
Meeropol wrote “Strange Fruit” to express his horror at lynchings after seeing Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. He published the poem in 1937 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol/Allan had often asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set Strange Fruit to music himself. The song gained a certain success as a protest song in and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden.[5]
November 6th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I think it was a once in a lifetime thing. Since the country’s founding, it’s been white male Christian Presidents. Look at the pictures on the currency.
Now it’s change for the better and anthropologically speaking the President is sort of like the head of tribe, it’s a big deal and a big step forward. I think it helps women as well as non-whites, since the President is now not a white male Christian. In fact it helps white males like moi b/c a thriving diverse society will be better than a stratified one.
From a progressive viewpoint, this is the beginning of the end of the Republican’s Southern Strategy scapegoating, something all of those purists to the left fail to acknowledge.
November 6th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
It’s fair to observe that Obama’s upbringing did not steep him in either (i) Kenyan culture or (ii) African-American culture.
As an adult he has steeped himself in African-American culture in Chicago, and I think he’s visited Kenya a few times and become a little bit of an advocate on Africa issues, but his culture touchstones are those of Hawaii and Indonesia.
Having said all that, racists don’t care about any of the above. To a racist, black is black.
November 6th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
It’s also worth noting of course that if you consider “African Americans” as a culture defined by shared historical experience rather than by skin color, Obama doesn’t share a whit of that historical experience. His roots are in Kenya, not in the American South.
Hector, that argument didn’t help blacks in the South back in the day (ever heard of the One Drop Rule?) and it didn’t help your hero Gandhi during his time in racist South Africa either.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:47 am
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