McCain, Joe the Plumber TV Ad

Has anyone seen this new TV ad from the McCain campaign? It makes a simple point and makes it clearly. Several people in the ad say, "I'm Joe the Plumber," and every one of them look the same (they are all white Americans). Now this is not about racism to me at all. This is about a failure to understand the makeup of America today, which is crucial to understanding the issues that challenge ALL Americans. America is White, Black, Asian, Latino, African, and all of these categories break down 20 times or more... including Arab... America is also Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc.

A fundamental problem with "McPalin" is that they don't speak to all Americans. Palin makes this clear when she differentiates true Americans from other Americans. Even if they acknowledged this only superficially as a strategic trajectory, at least they would be demonstrating intelligence and awareness. Perhaps "Tito the Builder" is a perfunctory attempt to do this?

I'm reading "Dreams of My Father" this week, and I have a greater sense of Obama's perspective. As a transnational, biracial, socio economic status straddling, class climbing, spiritual journeyman, American who has lived in places where his national origin and ethnic ambiguity has always been a cause for deep personal reflection on issues that many Americans are afraid and often don't know how to talk about, he is in many ways the very epitome of America.

Against All Odds

Poor African American males living in urban settings in the United States face a myriad of social, cultural and historical stigma, which influence and alter the ways that they engage the world around them. They face the obstacles of trying to find personal social relevance in a world that devalues them by and large. This devaluation comes primarily as the result of a legacy of racism in America. Not only are they trying to find a personal level of comfort and belonging, but they too are seeking the American Dream. It is in attempting to navigate the dominant culture in the pursuit of this dream that they often come to identify themselves as the “strange other.” This term is indicative of the fact that black males are imaged as altogether different, and perhaps even more different than any other racialized group in America. They are so different in fact that they are estranged from many other groups. They are frequently known only through stereotypical images, and framed as undisciplined, incapable of conforming to social norms, ignorant, violent, lazy, and unintelligent. The media parades images of thugs, drug dealers, and corner boys on the one side; and athletes, entertainers, and fabulously flashy preachers on the other side. One set unlawful and another set lawful, but all disparaging to some degree. Rarely are the paraded images those of scholars, doctors, lawyers, teachers, activists, and African American male professionals. It is amidst these images that many African American males fall by the wayside, while some still manage to achieve against the odds.



I have been trying to succeed against all odds ever since I was 4 years old and decided that I was the "man" of the house because I was the only "male" in the house. When I think back to my childhood growing up in Jersey City, I realize that there were a myriad of forces aligned against me... such that, just surviving to live a somewhat "normal" life is a tremendous triumph. I'm happy to be able to walk down the street, to be fairly healthy, and have my mental faculties mostly intact... Then, to have a good job, to have somehow graduated from college and gone on to graduate school, to have a good wife, own a home... things that many Americans take for granted is a bigger deal -probably- than it feels like to me. They say that I have beat the odds. They say that I should not have made it this far. They say that I am a statistical anomaly.



In a recent sermon I preached in Washington, DC, I noted:

Black men make up 6% of the general population U.S.…
…a full 35% of all HIV/AIDS cases in the U.S…
…a full 67% of all stroke victims in the U.S….
Black men are twice as likely to get cancer…

Over 70% of the black men in the U.S. are unemployed….

49% of the murder victims in the US are black, mostly male and 93% of them are killed by other black people…

Black men make up over 40% of the prison population in the U.S….
There are in fact 25% more black men in prison than in college…
AND In fact, according to statistics, only 37% of the black men enrolled in college in 2008 will actually graduate…

The odds are not on our side... But I've never been a betting man, and so, odds never meant much to me.

Palin is a Domestic Terrorist

Sarah Palin referring to Barak Obama's acquaintance with Bill Ayers as "palling around with domestic terrorists" is deplorable. It is irresponsible, offensive, and in my mind, it amounts to an act of domestic terrorism. If sitting in the Whitehouse no matter how unqualified you might be... If being so desperate to win an election that you would resort to what amounts to grade school mud slinging... If attempting to catapult yourself into a position that could, due to your ignorance, jeopardize the safety and well being of every American citizen is not an act of domestic terrorism, than I don't know what is.

Her feeble attempt to discredit Barak Obama by associating his name with the word "terrorist" is an overt act of racism that the Republican Party must denounce. It is an attempt to get people to associate Barak Obama with Islamic extremists (who by the way don't reflect the views of all Muslims), and play on a fear and contempt that many Americans have towards Arabs due to 911. A fear and contempt that aside from being greatly exaggerated, spills over to other groups who fit into stereotypical essentialist biological categories of "race" associated with an outdated archaic definition of the word. The Republican base finds this perfectly acceptable and even laudable, but if Joe Biden or Barak Obama were to make a statement that through spin and tweaking and manipulation could be made to sound sexist -like "pigs with lipstick"- then they cry foul.

Does Sarah Palin not realize that the majority in America will soon be the minority? Maybe not, she lives in Alaska!!!! She does not identify with any ethnic or religious minority in the country, which by the nature and make up of a 2008-2012 and beyond America means that she doesn't identify with America. Hint... hint... unless you are a conservative Christian white woman from a culturally/socially/politically/economically monolithic place, then she doesn't know who the hell you are... nor does she seem to possess the intelligence to learn. Well, she did learn that one speech real well, as she shows by repeating it every time she's in front of a crowd...

...I digress... furthermore... what kind of Christian ethic does this woman represent... I am a Christian, and political preferences aside, I am ashamed whenever she talks about her faith... not just because her faith is ill informed, many of us can stake that claim unfortunately... but the most basic characteristics of the Christian faith should expound humility, kindness, gentleness, compassion, peace... Sarah Palin is arrogant, divisive, coarse, and offensive.

These are the facts Palin, "Saturday's New York Times reported this about Obama's relationship with Ayers, now 63... the article concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called 'somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.'"

Someone who stokes the flames of racism to win an election is not what America needs in the Whitehouse. I'm praying for you Sarah. I hope you see the light!