Campaign Pain

The Dominican Republic's having a campaign season as well. The 'dem' party there is a lot more outspoken than the one here. They’re running a commercial that asks people in the street, what public works can you remember that were created by the PRD (basically the Republicans, whose thug president shamelessly looted the country via the banks, ending in . . . yes, a bank bailout)? The interviewee can’t name one. What do you remember about the PRD’s time in office? The cost of food went way up. The punchline: when the PRD goes up, the country goes down. Why can’t the Democrats in the US run commercials like this? Here we bicker about how Obama's supposed to beg forgiveness for an elderly black man's resentment of how white people have treated him, and how prostitution is a good job for women, and who is having affairs.

You cannot believe how poor the people by and large are in the DR. Cubans are poor, so many of them, but nobody in Cuba is living in the degraded conditions that most of the people of the DR are.

It's so important too, to recall that Wright is from at least two generations older than Obama. His life was very different than Obama's. That he might express hatred for what white people have done to him and his shouldn't be shocking. What is shocking is how many African Americans do not.

Obama's speech on race is one of the best things ever spoken or written on this continuing tragedy. It was brilliant. Nor did he kick anyone to the curb for political expediency. Recall what Clinton did with Dr. Joyce Elders? That was shameful.

Obama is to be admired for not throwing away someone he loves for the sake of political campaigning. His speech was admirable. He did not dodge the difficulties, but faced up to them. This is not what we witness these days, from those running for office, or holding office either.

Nearly everyone who could afford to acquire a slave, north or south, had a slave or two through the 18th century at least, and that includes the Adams family. Even if the African Americans working for you were paid, they got paid a whole lot less than white people, and they tended to be sent on the meanest, hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous work. You will be hard pressed to find a bridge or any such structure built here at the height of the industrial revolution that didn't have a lot of black men working on it, and for less wages than anyone else.

Much of this country was built out of their bodies, literally. That's what is meant when reparations for slavery are discussed. It's an historical truth that most of us either ignore or diminish. The truths of the reality of slavery are not fit subjects for children, and thus slavery is not taught in any realistic manner in history classes.

Evidently some dorkdongs have been howling that if Wright doesn't like it here he should leave. It's difficult -- in my opinion, impossible -- to tell people who arrived here via kidnapping and sale, against their will -- so definitely not their their ancestors's choice -- to love it or leave it.