Sometime in June, the ever controversial Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said the then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had an ‘inferiority complex’ because he is black and if elected might ‘behave worse than whites’.
Now that Obama will be President, it is time to examine this ‘inferiority’ accusation more closely.
When a black person projects confidence, he is accused of putting on airs; he is overconfident, too cocky; or they will simply say he is imitating the white man — ‘acting white’, as they say in the US.
When a black person projects humility, it is said he is acting true to character — subservient, inferior, slavish and lacking in confidence. In short, he is accused of suffering from an inferiority complex.
Will the ascension of a black man to the most powerful office on earth restore some respectability to the black man’s battered image?
I doubt it. The black man has a millennium old image problem. Racial prejudice against black people runs deep, with antecedents that span centuries. The historical and psychological roots of racial prejudice against blacks are many and complex, but you could reduce them to four words: military conquest and enslavement. Throughout history, any people that have been conquered and ruled or enslaved are always treated by the conquerors as inferior.
It is why the British imperialist poet, Rudyard Kipling, in his poem, The White Man’s Burden, uses words such as ‘half-devil and half-child’ to refer to the conquered people of the Philippine Islands, while exhorting the white empire to act as the almighty lord to all ‘inferior’ races.
Prejudice
While blatant displays of prejudice against black people are less overt today compared to Kipling’s time, they are no less frequent and virulent in their subterranean form. In a recent article in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas D Kristof reports on studies by several scholars, which showed rampant unconscious bias and racism towards black people.
Prejudice against black people is so deeply ingrained and embedded in the psyche that racially discriminatory and prejudicial behaviour often operates subliminally. It is sad and tragic. But the greater tragedy is this: even black people themselves are caught up in unconscious discrimination towards people of their own race.
There is a popular and free test on the Internet that you can take to test the level of your unconscious bias. It is called the Implicit Association Test and is run by a team of psychologists led by Prof Tony Greenwald of the University of Washington.
Choosing the whites
The test is designed to probe unconscious biases in people. It is one thing to lie about one’s true thoughts and feelings; it is entirely another to not even know what is truly in your mind. For example, well-meaning people who say they have no racial prejudices might be surprised to discover they are in fact unconsciously racist.
When such people are faced with a decision that requires making a choice between a black and a white with similar qualifications and experience — such as in a job interview setting — they will always choose the white person.
If you think you know your mind well, you might want to withhold that judgment until you have taken the Implicit Association Test. It has the potential to shock you.
The implication of all these is the black man’s burden is double in weight. On top of the weight of conscious and unconscious white racial prejudice, there is the extra baggage of conscious and unconscious black inferiority complex.
It raises a disturbing question. Will the black race ever rid itself of this double load? Conquering and enslaving another race is out of the question, at least not in this millennium. Becoming the president of the most powerful country on earth will not do it either. For every good an Obama-type does to the black man’s image, there are a million negative images competing to nullify the effect.
Inferiority complex
There is one way to do it and it is not by decolonising the mind through the promotion of native languages, as Ngugi wa Thiong’o suggests in his book Decolonising The Mind. It is not by merely urging Africans to ‘drop the inferiority complex’, as Gambian President Yahya Jammeh recently said.
It is only through a combination of strategic humility and strategic pursuit of self-interest in a determined effort to raise black people’s development — individually and collectively — that our millennium-old image problem will be addressed. It means recognising that we are in a hole (literally and perceptually) and then using any means necessary to climb out.
About The Author: Kap Kirwok (Strategybeyondprofit[at]gmail.com) is based in the US | More articles by Kap Kirwok
Klan group ordered to pay $2.5 million. A jury on Friday ordered Imperial Klans of America grand wizard Ron Edwards and two former lieutenants to pay 19-year-old Jordan Gruver $1.5 million for lost wages and medical expenses and Edwards to pay $1 million in punitive damages.
AP: BRANDENBURG, Ky. - A Kentucky-based Ku Klux Klan group was ordered on Friday to pay $2.5 million in damages in a judgment that civil rights attorneys hope will bankrupt the chapter.
The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the nation’s second-largest Klan outfit on behalf of a Latino teen severely beaten in 2006 by two Klan members. The Klansmen were convicted and served two years in prison.
A jury on Friday ordered Imperial Klans of America grand wizard Ron Edwards and two former lieutenants to pay 19-year-old Jordan Gruver $1.5 million for lost wages and medical expenses and Edwards to pay $1 million in punitive damages.
“I’m overwhelmed. I’m victorious,” Gruver said. “And, I’m also sad. I’m sad because those guys are still going to be the same way that they were. That will never change.”
Morris Dees, the lead attorney for the center, said after the verdict he plans to seize Edwards’ property in Dawson Springs that serves as Klan headquarters along with any other assets that can be found. It wasn’t clear what the property is worth.
Click PICS To Enlarge
THE VICTIM Jordan Gruver
KKK Criminal Andrew Watkins
KKK Criminal Jarred Hensley
Imperial Klans T-Shirt
The GRAND WIZARD — KKK Criminal Ron Edwards
Earlier, in his closing statement, Dees told jurors that a substantial financial award would stop the Kentucky-based group in its tracks.
“It’s all about the money. It’s all about the money,” said Morris Dees. “If you stop the money, you’ll cut the organization off.”
The heavily tattooed Edwards plans to appeal the verdict. Despite the judgment, Edwards said the KKK will remain active.
“We’re not going away,” Edwards said.
Dees had argued during the civil trial that Edwards’ group incited violence against minorities with racist speeches and “hate metal,” leading to the attack on Gruver. Edwards, who represented himself during the trial, denied the charge and said his group’s not generally violent.
The case was similar to nearly a dozen others brought by the center against hate groups. A similar lawsuit bankrupted the white supremacist group Aryan Nations in Idaho in 1999.
The trial centered on a beating Gruver suffered at the hands of former Klan lieutenants Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins. Gruver suffered a broken jaw, bruised ribs and permanent nerve damage to his left arm.
The jury ordered Edwards to pay 20 percent of the compensatory damages, while splitting the remaining 80 percent evenly between Hensley and Watkins. The jury laid the $1 million in punitive damages solely on Edwards. Hensley, who had also represented himself, left the courthouse without commenting.
Watkins reached a confidential settlement with Gruver before the trial that will account for his share of Friday’s judgment.
Jurors deliberated for nearly six-and-a-half hours after a three-day trial at the Meade County Courthouse. As Meade Circuit Judge Bruce Butler read the verdicts, several skinheads in the courtroom shook their heads and looked down.
The judgment against Edwards and Hensley is active for 15 years, giving Gruver and the center time to pursue assets, Dees said.
“No matter what he gets, we’ll get a piece of it,” Dees said.
Gruver, who testified earlier Friday about having nightmares and the extent of his injuries, celebrated the verdict by hugging his mother, Cindy. He then joined his family and left the courthouse under heavy security into a cold rain.
From Publishers Weekly: Village Voice correspondent Ridgeway ( Powering Civilization ) traces the evolution of the “racialist right” in American politics up to George Bush’s bid for the presidency, which, the author asserts, had the issue of race at its very foundation. With startling detail, this volume sets forth the violent histories of such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1866 by six former Confederate soldiers; the John Birch Society, an anti-civil rights group masquerading as an anti-Communist force; and the Posse Comitatus, whose members gather in posses to “protect” the white race from the scourge of Jews, blacks and other minorities.
Examining their influence on the political climate of the U.S., Ridgeway profiles such leaders as David Dukes, the former head of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana who ran for the Senate in 1990. Readers may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information this fascinating book imparts, and less than smooth transitions give the work a scattered feeling. As a result, Ridgeway’s conclusions–including the obvious one that with the Cold War over, race will increasingly define “the social contours of society“–are more general than incisive.
From Library Journal: Ridgeway has written a series of compelling reports in the Village Voice on the extreme right in contemporary America, and on the impact of radical racist and anti-Semitic groups on mainstream politics and culture.
The articles are here rewritten to present a comprehensive view of racist politics in the United States (with some reference to Western European politics).
However, in the book Ridgeway relies on purple prose, unsubstantiated analysis, and superficial background, so the vivid details and acute perspective of the original reports are obscured.
Barack Obama serves up a “Facial” on McCain. The “Republican bigot world” is stunned, as a black man, “THE ONE,” is set to lead them out of the “Dark Ages.” The extremists — The “American Religious ‘Taliban’,” “Fox News’ Maniacs,” Right-Wing Bigot Radio, the KKK, Neo-Nazis and misc. FILTH, are shell-shocked as the Obama train rolls into the White House.
Barack Hussein Obama: “It’s been a long time coming, but change has come to America”
At the beginning of this campaign, I had faith — faith that finally a black man would lead this great nation. Even though my faith was shaky at first, in Barack Hussein Obama, I saw a brilliant “tribesman,” an intelligent and capable man, a “superb brain” like his troubled father was. I saw an exceptional human being with outstanding qualities. I saw a great American story and a great prospect for the ultimate prize in politics — The Presidency of The United States.
Exactly two years ago, I wrote: “The six year cesspool of a mess presided over by the Bush administration might not be in vain after all. It has made America hungry for a messenger with a message of hope.”
My faith in Barack Obama has been richly rewarded.
On the other side of things, the rotting corpse of the Republican Party is stinking up the United States from top to bottom. The people of America have “atrophied” the GOP into nothing more than “a very is a sick joke.” McCain, Palin and the GOP totally underestimated the fact that America has changed, and continues to do so.
In 1963, after being elected governor of Alabama, the epicenter of segregation, DixieCrat George Wallace declared: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.”
Since then, America has waddled through racism slowly but surely. While George Wallace’s Democrats did a one hundred and eighty degree turn in the ’60s, and embraced the Civil Rights movement, the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln(who introduced measures that resulted in the abolition of slavery, by issuing hisEmancipation Proclamationin 1863), slid into the so-called Southern Strategy, a racist scheme in which Republican candidates ignored black voters and exploited racial tensions of the white majority, in order to win elections.
To a large extent, John McCain implemented this strategy, and it fell flat on its face!
The “big-ticket” Republican “scare-issues” like outlawing abortion, gay marriage, “we can clobber the whole world” — have largely fallen into deaf ears, except into those of idiots like Joe The Plumber.
Also, the cruel xenophobic campaign by Republicans to rid the “homeland” of immigrants, last year, turned toxic for the GOP. Hispanics and other minorities eligible to vote cast their votes for Obama in droves. Young whites devoid of their parents’ prejudices flocked to Obama in swarms.
The nativist zeal in political rhetoric, with which the Tancredo led Republicans approached this sensitive issue, has proven costly, and to John McCain, who abandoned his previous reasoned approach in favor of the “Lou Dobbs Fear & Loathing,” “get them all outta here” anti-immigrant hate-mongering, it must be extra painful — for I am sure the Hispanic vote was decisive. Sixty six percent of Hispanic voters (12 million eligible) cast their votes for Obama.
Obama brilliantly co-opted the Republican theme — “Cutting Taxes” into his economic strategy. At a time when the American economy is suffering, it fit so nicely that John McCain could only fumble and stumble on the issue. The “moderate maverick” was forced to campaign like a right-wing nut-bag, with an agenda of fear — Bush-Style. Little did he know that the majority of Americans, after eight years of “murderous rule“, by George Bush the GOON, didn’t want any more of that crap.
Barack Obama’s win validates the work of civil rights activists in the last century. It is also proof that America is “evolving… trying to reach for the best part of itself,” a former activist says. Even a segregationist’s daughter chimed in: “I think Obama will be one of the best presidents.” … [READ MORE HERE]
I strongly agree!
A new era in American politics has just been ushered in, and with proper management, Obama and the Democratic majority in both houses can ensure that the right-wing fringe bigots of the Republican party remain in their “southern holes” for a long time to come.
Full Results
———————————————–
Barack Obama’s Victory Speech in Chicago
Civil-Rights Icon Jesse Jackson Breaks Down
A Kenyan Savors Obama’s Victory
Martin Luther King JR.’s — “I have a dream” Speech
In Kogelo, Kenya — Villagers lined up to cast a mock ballot next to a poster of Barack Obama in Kogelo, the town in Kenya where Obama’s ancestors are from.
Also, Blood flowed as Election Day dawned in Barack Obama’s ancestral village in western Kenya.
The presidential candidate’s half-brother Malik tied a bull to a tree, then hobbled it. The beast’s head was then held to the ground as he drew a machete across its jugular.
“Hold this guy down now,” said Malik, 50, eyeing the animal’s horns as blood poured from its throat like an open tap.
“He could kill me now.”
After five minutes, the blood flow began to slow, and the fight went out of the animal, which stopped kicking and lay still, breathing heavily. “O.K., it’s over,” said Malik. “Fine animal too.” — [MORE]
Full text: Obama’s victory speech
Democrat Barack Obama has become the first African-American to win the White House. Here are his remarks as prepared for delivery to a huge crowd in his home city of Chicago:
CHANGE HAS COME
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
PARTNERS IN THE JOURNEY
I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.
I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.
I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice-President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.
I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation’s next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.
And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.
To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done.
VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to this cause.
It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organised, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth.
This is your victory.
THE TASK AHEAD
I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.
There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
REMAKING THE NATION
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.
And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
ONE NATION, ONE PEOPLE
What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity.
Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours: “We are not enemies, but friends? though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”
And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.
AMERICA IN THE WORLD
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.
To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you.
And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.
A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE
This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.
And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.
At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.
When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.
When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.
She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome”. Yes we can.
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can.
THIS IS OUR MOMENT
America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.
This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.
Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.
3.McCain Loses as Bush Legacy Is Rejected — Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States, as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
4.The Next President — Barack Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens.
8.A Case for Barack Hussein — An Obama presidency would change the way the Middle East sees America, argues the editor of a Moroccan newsmagazine.
9. “The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.” — ADAM NAGOURNEY, New York Times
12.Tuesday’s Second Biggest Winner: Democracy — Let’s start with Hispanics, who accounted for the most dramatic swing. In 2004, Kerry outperformed Bush with Hispanic voters 59 percent to 40 percent. In 2008, the Hispanic vote went 67 percent for Obama, and only 31 percent for McCain — a net improvement of 17 points.
Jesse Helms - Enlarge Image No matter how much Republicans try to sanitize Mr. Helms — after his death last week, his legacy will remain that of Racism, Anti-Semitism, Homophobia and Confederate Segregationism.
The former North Carolina Senator was an unyielding champion of the conservative “Bigot” movement.
And he was the only senator to vote against making the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. His lone dissent came only after he conducted a 16-day filibuster against the King holiday, during which Helms took to the Senate floor to decry the assassinated King, a pacifist and beloved civil rights leader, for his “action-oriented Marxism.”
In an opinion piece, columnist DeWayne Wickham asserts that Helms subtly carried the torch of white supremacy during his lifetime:
“The former North Carolina senator seldom displayed the overt, incendiary racial prejudice that Ben Tillman, the turn-of-the-20th century South Carolina demagogue, often spewed on the floor of the U.S. Senate. But in many ways, Helms accepted the torch that Tillman passed to a new generation of white supremacists — and served the same cause with a tad more subtlety.”
While working as a television editorialist in Raleigh, N.C., in 1960, Helms called the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus the “university of Negroes and Communists.” That snideness echoed the ring of Tillman’s condemnation of education for blacks: “When you educate a negro, you educate a candidate for the penitentiary or spoil a good field hand,” …wrote Wickham
When President Theodore Roosevelt invited black leader Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House in 1901, Tillman was outraged. “The action … will necessitate our killing a thousand “niggers” in the South before they will learn their place again,” the senator said.
Ninety-four years later, as a guest on Larry King Live, Helms was greeted by a caller who thanked him for helping to “keep down the niggers.”
“Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” said Helms, sounding just a bit embarrassed — and a lot like the linear successor to Tillman.
That was “White-Sheet” Jesse Helms — a bigot whose “nobility” is being shamelessly parroted in the air-waves by right-wingers ….who have eagerly been linking his death to July 4th — Independence day!, to smother the ugliness of Mr. Helms’ White-Supremacist past.
“….don’t let the Independence Day paeans fool you. Jesse Helms was a bigot, a racist, a homophobe — and a media charlatan. America would be a much worse place if he’d had his way on his many signature issues. Our nation’s birthday is brighter for him not in it.” ….Click here for more
In an Aug. 29, 2001 piece, David Broder, a columnist for the Washington Post states:
“What is unique about Helms — and from my viewpoint, unforgivable — is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans.”
“In 1984, when Helms faced his toughest opponent in Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the late Bill Peterson, one of the most evenhanded reporters I have ever known, summed up what “some said was the meanest Senate campaign in history,” ….says Broder.
“Racial epithets and standing in school doors are no longer fashionable,” Peterson wrote, “but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master.”
In 1990, locked in a tight race with an African American Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, Helms aired a final-week TV ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter, while an announcer said, “You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.” Once again, he pulled through.
Jesse Helms’ White Hands AD
That is not a history to be sanitized.
Richard Nixon was one of the first Republicans to recognize Helms’ Racist utility.
The North Carolinian was welcomed into the GOP by then President Nixon and his southern strategists of the late 1960s and early 1970s because they understood that Helms was skilled at working the fault lines that could turn white fears into Republican votes.
The Republicans are still working those fault-lines. Indeed, some of the people who worked most closely with Helms as he transformed what began as an anti-slavery party into a comfortable retreat for white-backlash voters are now key players in the campaign of John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
“Let us remember a life dedicated to serving this nation,” McCain declared in a statement on the death of Helms, to whom he was compared favorably by former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole earlier this year. (Actually, Dole suggested that McCain was somewhat more conservative than Helms.)
In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, Richard Nixon touched the essence of the southern strategy:
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
Republicans have used this Racist strategy ever since — very effectively. Read more about The Southern Strategy.
Jesse Helms — May You Rot In Peace!
OVERHEARD AT THE BIGOTS’S FUNERAL ON TEUSDAY:
“We need more men like Jesse Helms,” Holloway said. “He’s an icon - a Southern gentlemen. He’ll be remembered for integrity and truth.”
“Jesse Helms always stood his ground,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said from the pulpit. “He put duty above all else — duty to God, to country, to family … the simple duty of treating other people well.”
It is why the British imperialist poet, Rudyard Kipling, in his poem, The White Man’s Burden, uses words such as ‘half-devil and half-child’ to refer to the conquered people of the Philippine Islands, while exhorting the white empire to act as the almighty lord to all ‘inferior’ races. 
The implication of all these is the black man’s burden is double in weight. On top of the weight of conscious and unconscious white racial prejudice, there is the extra baggage of conscious and unconscious black inferiority complex. 
poster of Barack Obama in Kogelo, the town in Kenya where Obama’s ancestors are from.
