Cross post from A Slant Truth: People Liked Obama, Don’t Worry; It’s 0nly Black People

I am cross-posting a wicked post from Kevin of "A Slant Truth." This guy is razor sharp. Follow his blog! I've added his post here, but go to his blog post and be sure to read the comments, especially that call him racist for calling out racism! Post-racial life, indeed.

A Slant Truth

If You Thought People Liked Obama, Don’t Worry; It’s 0nly Black People.

By Kevin ⋅ May 1, 2009

One of my non-blogging buddies (one of the coolest mofos on the planet, actually) tipped me to this nice little article, by Byron York, entitled The black-white divide in Obama’s popularity. Imagine the look on my face when I read this, the very first paragraph (actually, don’t imagine that look; it’s not pretty):

On his 100th day in office, Barack Obama enjoys high job approval ratings, no matter what poll you consult. But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

Um, yeah…WTF?

This dude actually wrote this. Here, let me translate this for you:

Black people don’t count (or if they do count, they sure as hell don’t count for more than 3/5’s of a white person) so, even if President Obama has a high approval rating, it’s not accurate (or actual) because black folks are all up in the mix. We all know that only white people’s opinions matter, right?

The entire article says nothing other than black people like Obama, and so he’s not really as popular as you think he is. It doesn’t matter that we happen to be members of the population and so our opinions count too. It doesn’t matter that black folks also overwhelmingly liked Bill Clinton. No one challenged Bill Clinton’s popularity because black folks loved him (ok, now that I think on this some more, I bet a good handful of folks did, but still). But when a lot of black folks happen to like another black dude, well then obviously something is amiss.

Post-Racial United States. Gotta love it.

Transforming the Black Narrative -- from MinnAfrica

This post is very interesting. It is from the excellent blog MinneAfrica, which also has Facebook presence. Highly recommended read!

The New African Americans; Transforming the Black Narrative

Latecomer blogger -- let me introduce myself

Welcome to my brand new blog! Let me introduce myself. I am a 52 year old artist, connector and wannabe DJ. I am also a mother and grandmother and queer girl extraordinaire. Got legally married to my handsome wuzband in MA 2 1/2 years ago. I am the white girl in a brown family and a mostly brown community of friends. So my life crosses a lot of interesting intersections. I am going to blog about those intersections and more.

For example, I will surely be blogging about what it's like to be a whitegirl in my world, some of the things I've learned along the way, and how the world looks through the lens of my specific eyes -- which are near sighted, far sighted, and full of astigmatism -- so it's sometimes an interesting worldview.

I will likely blog about what it means for me that our new president is biracial, and was raised by a white mother and white grandparents given that I raised two biracial kids. I could say a lot about that. A lot. But not now, later. This is my intro blog.

I am very interested in blogging about getting older. That could be the topic of most of my blogs. I did not realize I was passing out of regular adulthood into older adulthood until I was almost 50. Seriously. I was still a regular club goer and general merry maker. I had no idea I was shifting into the young side of the golden years until I realized most of the people in the clubs were the age of my kids -- until I ran into my actual kids in the clubs. I'm just sayin. I was shocked into reality.

So aging has become a subject of endless fascination for me as I really have no idea what it means to be getting older but I do know I am extremely happy to be alive, having survived a lot so far. Aging thought for the day: Billions in advertising dollars are spent each year to tell women how to look younger. What if those same dollars went into telling us how to live better?

Oh, and I stay up on world events and feel compelled to opine from time to time. My favorite TV show ever is "The Wire." That's the kind of stuff you might find me blogging about here. Politics. Race relations. The media. Poverty. Prison reform. Father's rights. The needs of undocumented people. You know, light fluffy stuff.

I love music and am an armchair critic. So I'll tell you what I think about a musician, a concert, or an album now and then. Artist recommendation of the day: Ruthie Foster. Favorite song: Up Above My Head (there is music in the air).

Since I am an artist of sorts, you never know when a poem or piece of creative nonfiction might get posted here as well.

So an anything goes blog. We'll see how it goes!

Let me end this introduction by saying I try to live by this African proverb: Don't look at your feet to see if you're doing it right. Just dance!

And remember, embrace your age cause you livin'!

Welcome! I invite your comments!