Is a dirty game and not for the meek of heart. Most people who vote are not really interested in the candidates issues because to really understand them they would have to do research themselves and we all know that todays society is all about 'shortcuts' or 'get it now..with no effort'. The people are taken by the candidates' charisma, soundbites and reactions to situations that are thrown in thier way (such as the issue with his pastor).

As a man he should have stood by his pastor and friend because I am sure at some time he shared those same views but as a presidential candidate he played the game which exactly what this is...a game. An election is just 'fast food' politics we get caught up in the hype and promises because the 'real' political agenda is constant and never changes...

There are those enemies of ours who are very happy for those, like you, who feel that that they (our enemies) have already won and have the 'game' wrapped up and that (some) of use choose to sit on the sidelines because it is a 'done deal'.

There are many ways to push the black community into an irrelevant position. Repression. Racism. Disenfranchisement.

Most of thess strategies become unnecessary when so-called black conscious persons, have their agendaless meetings, full of conspiracies and views of immutable powers and principalities that control every'thing', leading to our people doing exactly what years of barbarism, lynchings and 'nightriders' had hoped to achieve - KEEPING THE KNEE-GROWS IMPOTENT, WITHOUT VISION, WITHOUT STRATEGY, DEVOID OF COALITIONS.

The white sheets of the Klan were designed to play upon the 'negros' superstitions and belief in spookiness. These intellectual masturbations of the non-involved pseudo-activists achieve the exact same effect.

Bahia is fine. So is Philadelphia. You don't really know me, do you? That's what the bigots do.

Do you believe that James Baldwin was a hypocrite? (He wrote THE FIRE NEXT TIME and GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN when he was in France).

BUT, the level of discussive discourse of this thread rises far above both of us and is more important than both of us...so let's leave it that way and not go off on tangents.

I believe that I left my e-mail when I registered for this site. You can PM me offline if there is some burning need to tell me about myself.

What are you views on the situation of health care in the African-American community and do you think that the positions of any of the candidates can remedy it?

peace

Adrian...you are right to pick me up on the big generalisation, naturally you are right what i should have specified was the so called Street culture/idealogy that has b.astardised Hip hop....

I must say that I totally disagree with that sentiment. In my experience as an American African, I have met those who were basically "White" in appearance, mixed, etc. but had a much deeper sense of an African community than those who were almost 100% African.

Culture is about what you are taught. Not what you are born with.

It might be better to take an historical look at African-Americans and their voting patterns rather than snap judgements.

African-American faith in the Democratic party, from FDR until 1968 mirrored those of the ethnic minorities, urban residents, farmers, the educated, etc. The New Deal by FDR, the income tax (redistributed for such projects as the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide electricity for poor whites) was always a slap in the face of big businesses and kept racists politically divided.

The big initiatives of the Democratic party stymied the various racist actions of the local state machines of the Democrats.

African-Americans who could not appeal to the racist state systems for relief could turn to the huge stick of the Democratic federal government.

To excellent ends. Most of the racists prosecuted in the Southern States were found guily of a new crime - VIOLATION OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF AN AMERICAN. Juries that acquited racists of murders often saw these same racists convicted by this new law brought in the Democratic administration.

The entire power politics changed with the voting rights act which created FEDERAL guidelines for who was allowed to vote in the Southern states. Maybe a lot of you northerners don't understand the radical change in the South that occurred with this act. Hundreds of racists mayors, school boards, state trooper commanders were simply booted out of power in areas were African-Americans dominated.

So, for these entire years, there was absolutely no reason for African-Americans, nor farmers, nor poor whites, nor urban residents, nor immigrants to deny the Democratic party.

This was brought to a head in 1968 when the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party (whose Black Panther symbol was brought by Stokely to the Black Panthers) challenged and broke the back of the racist Democratic state machines in the South.

Since 1968 and Barry Goldwater, the architect of Republican Conservatism, it is a bit naive to say that other groups have had this 'strength' to switch parties 'for their interests".

That is a fallacy.

Conservatism from then until today has refined the game of divide and conquer. Poor whites deserted the Democratic Party because of Richard Nixon's LAW AND ORDER platform. The Democratic Party's policies created a huge middle class that now were more interested in protecting property, rather than protecting the huge open door that created their prosperity.

Affirmative Action created a sense of displacement in white american men.

Right wing evangelism instilled a sense of 'white trash elitism' in poor southern whites.

Rather than 'reasoned' and logical desertions of the Democratic party, the last 30 years has seen 'pack rats' being deluded and stampeded from one conservative 'divide and conquer' strategy to another.

Of all of these groups named in the previous posts, which one of them actually achieved their interests?

Poor whites are poorer. The middle class is being betrayed by monopoly capitalism.

White men are dying in silly wars.
Latinos are being demagogued. (by the way, latinos have NEVER swung to the Republican party. George Bush received the largest latino vote ever with 42%.)

So, despite the so-called 'slavish' adherence of African-Americans to the Democratic Party...there is rationalilty to that decision (outside of forming a third political party).

I question the assertion that those years have not yielded African-American clout in the party nor the achievment of many items on the African-American agenda. Don't confuse that 22% entrenched African-American 'urban very poor' with the 75+ African-Americans who are solidly in the working and middle classes. Nor the immense federal and state grants that has made college a reality for AAs (until cut by several successive Republican administrations)

So, I think that Obama' strategy of trying to push through race and show the real plight of rural whites, which has always been tied to that of urban blacks is a good strategy. It is a return to New Deal politics. As is his questioning of laissez-faire capitalism.

And despite it rubbing people the wrong way...Bill and Hillary's definition of the racial politics in America are on the mark. Bill Clinton was raised poor white and he defends his people. Just as we do. African-Americans (12-13% of the population) ain't going to elect anybody by ourselves in federal elections.

And I've always been taught that logic shouldn't confront emotion. It's probably wise for Hillary to steer clear of campaigning for the African-American vote (despite the fact that a huge number of African-American women are supporting Hillary). There's an evangelistic zeal to this thing. In Philly, at a rally at Temple University, the majority of people there were too young to vote. But just wearing a button with a black man running for president of the United States seemed to be something magical to these young people.

Until the smoke dies down, Hillary can't touch that.

Gmahagony..... I'm not going to tough on your first offering as i broadly agree with the underlying sentiment...althought I'm not quite sure if i would have put it the way you did...

So onto the second post.....

Point 1.... Sorry but you know what AA's in fact Americans plural i find to be the most blinkered culture on this planet.... I just love how you try to offset everything and try to play it like its in the heads of the beholder... In fact your perspective reminds me of the player who gets caught and then tells the girlfriend, that she is imagined the issue and that it is SHE who is being paraniod and not that HE is guilty of said sin...

Listen you can style anyway you wish..but the facts as I see them speak volumes...and it is clear that the influence of a narrow vision of American 'street' culture is far reaching....and for you suggest that it is not is breath taking!!! because if your assertion is to be believed, various groups across the globe with independant thought and spontinatiety suddenly developed the same identikit method of wearing cloths, the same manerisms, the same style of rapping, the same ghettofabulous idealogy and even the same lexicon of street phrases...

This is in effect what you're trying to tell the audience reading YOUR words.. You're also trying to us that we simply misheard consistent American politicians discribe America as the ONLY superpower.. and that AMERICA has no inflence whatsoever on world policy, economics or cultures... So i guess that I just woke up and dreamt trick or treating coming to the UK did I?

Come on now G.. please don't tek me or the people reading this for fools...

Sorry gonna cut it short and comeback later with more!!

@G
it’s Blacks from outside America who do so, by acting like what we do 3000 miles across the ocean, somehow impedes them from doing what they need to be doing in their own country/community, or causes them to do things they would otherwise not do, but for our far-reaching hypnotic powers of suggestion and control.

Its called the power of the media dear and your lot control it using AAs inadvertently to achieve their agenda...dumbing down of Black and African values and morals

And yes we do concern ourselves with what you guys do??..why should i bother myself with some poxy little country that doesn't remotely affect me..your actions have a impact on the world culturally economically and socially don't act cute with us its unbecoming of you @G on this thread...your arguments don't hold water and shows ignorance and a typical narrow view of an avergae american...you want to control the world but you don't want those you control to know what you get up to that directly affects me....how does that work??
And thanks for AmeriKKa for bringing the woe of Credit Crunch upon us....peace

Some of what you guys are saying isn't logical.

Maybe you should define what is a 'society'. Specifically, what is "American society'.

I agree with G. Except for a remnant of the 60s black nationalist groups, I generally don't perceive of common African-American folks as being generally culturally, nor politically 'imperialistic'.

Angelique Kidjo.
Les Nubiens
Seal
Mostly all reggae artists
Fela
(his son)

When given forums to be introduced to African-American audiences they receive warm to thuderous ovations.

Of course there are exceptions. When nameless individuals enter the world stage...they cling to petite nationalisms and the cultures that surround them. I've seen that with young farmboys who found themselves stationed in Stuttgart or Frankfurt, waving the red-white-and blue. That same as Trinis on Eastern Parkway or Jamaicans at the Penn Relays waving flags that can only be made in America because no one in their native countires waves flags that huge.

A politician is not THE representative of THE American society. Nor are the small number of players who control the media.

If a 'society' is being judged by what the profit driven media says about that society then Jamaican society are theives, Brazilians are full of sluts and you British are snot-noses. (James Bond was and I've seen all of his movies).

But that's ridiculous, isn't it?

'A' politician, one out of 100, or even 10 out of 100 (the count of american senators) can say anything that they want, representing their constituency. And, being a plural country, (meaning we have many societies that some Americans require a 4 year college degree to understand) there are racist, elitist, xenophobic constituencies. And? Is that American society? Then what is British society? Or French?

I'm not saying that you don't have valid reaons for your 'distaste' for American society. I'm saying that none of it was presented here.

And if these superficials are your proofs, they don't stand the test when measured against nearly every other society.