Left, pic by Geoff Kenyon
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader spoke today about presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Nader accused Obama of “talking white” and being “corporate.” Despite his causing of Gore to lose in 2000, I generally like Nader. I’m gonna pull the quotes from the Denver Rocky Morning News, who conducted the interview, and go through them:
“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”
“I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law,” Nader said. “Haven’t heard a thing.”
“He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician,” Nader said. “He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”
Nader is little off here. Remember Obama’s Philly race speech? In it, Obama said (with a Faulkner quote to boot):
Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.
Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.
A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.
Nice try Nader. While it’s true that Obama has not made the plight of the poor his top campaign priority (that was Edwards’ theme and he lost—fast), he did in fact address it in the best speech of 2008.
Obama’s historic race speech is not to be taken lightly. He said things no major American presidentail candidate has ever said. And I believe once in office there’s no way he can ignore black America, as it will make up one his largest constiuentcies. Strategically, he needs to court the middle now—the left is already with him.
TAGS: Barack Obama, Crack, HBO, Jesse Jackson, kids, obama, political, Race, Ralph Nader, Schools, war
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June 25th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I don’t know man. When I think of the context of that speech, Obama only said those things so he could give Jeremiah Wright an excuse for saying God damn America. Even though every word was true, I don’t give him credit for speaking truth to power if he was just saying it to cover his ass. I would give him more credit if he had the balls to repeat it since then.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
He still said it in the most important speech of the campiagn, if not his life. I give him credit, though he should obviously be saying this stuff more…
June 25th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Nader is right while being wrong here… Because if Obama was saying this stuff more, he’d alienate white voters, “appear like Jesse Jackson,” and lose the race. Plain and simple. The dude needs to worry about being elected before saving the world. And if there was ever a potential president who we might believe will try sincerely to address poverty and racial inequality in America once in office, it must be Obama, right? Nader is not a good person to take campaign advice from, since his goal has never been to actually win but to bring real shit into the discussion. Real shit freaks people out. People who vote. I’m pretty sure Obama is actually trying to win. Once that is taken care of, then he can (and should) take advice from Nader.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I like that Obama wrote this speech and there’s been 7 million downloads, more than any other speech in 08. He’s a politician. From Chicago. He’s playing to win. I like his style. These words from Feb 08 will come up again. Or at least I have the audacity to hope they do.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Not to mention that he addresses poverty in the speech and racial inequality in speech. Aside from his two books, this is his most read text. He said it, and had to have meant it, or else he’s f–ked.