Time’s Beinart: Republicans Hate Obama For His Kenyan Father, it’s ‘Racism’
Posted on October 11, 2008
-By Warner Todd Huston
This furious beating of the racism drum by the left shows how worried they are that Barack Obama might lose this election. Time Magazine’s Peter Beinart once again charges “racism” against anyone that won’t support Barack Obama. But, Beinart adds a twist to his accusation. It isn’t just his race that is being held against him, in Beinart’s eyes it is the fact that Obama has “foreign roots” that causes “whites” to mistrust him. But, like everyone blinded by the flash of the race card he doesn’t see that it isn’t racism that causes moderates and conservatives to shy from Obama. No, it isn’t his relative blackness that people are against, it’s his redness. Beinart misunderstands the simple fact that it’s Obama’s unAmerican ideals makes him not “American enough” to get the support of millions of Americans.
As the Time headline asks “is he American enough,” Beinart delves into what he sees as the “Racist” claim that Barack’s foreign father is offputting to “white” Americans. He posits that this is the main reason why people cannot warm to Obama. Then Beinart claims that the strategy of the McCain campaign is one of “using race to make Obama seem anti-American.” Beinart says these “attacks” are hurting Obama in the polls with “working-class whites.” He also seems to say that the whole campaign is filled with code words such as questioning what “kind of person” he is. These all culminate into a racist attack that undermines Obama.
Beinart thinks he knows why it works so well against Obama, too.
Partly, of course, this is a response to Obama’s unusual biography: his African Muslim father, his foreign-sounding name, his childhood outside the continental U.S. But it’s also a measure of the times. The racial wedge issues of the 1970s and ’80s–busing, crime, welfare, affirmative action–have all but disappeared. When pollsters compile lists of Americans’ top concerns, those barely register. What is on the rise is anxiety about globalization. Support for unregulated free trade has cratered on the Democratic left. Hostility to illegal immigration is red hot on the Republican right. And beyond the partisan divide, it’s the same demographic that is most upset about both: working-class whites.
Whether he wants to or not, Obama has come to personify this more globalized, multicultural–yes, cosmopolitan–America. It’s one reason many liberals love him: he embodies a new America, more diverse, more tolerant and more open to the world. But as Penn’s memo implied, that’s also his Achilles’ heel. As the face of America has changed, so has the face of American racism. Old-fashioned antiblack bigotry still exists, but today, far more than 20 years ago, white Americans are likely to associate dark skin with foreignness.
But this completely misses the entire point of what the right is saying about Barack Obama. There is no great outcry that Obama is black. There is no fear that he “represents” a “globalized” America. No one cares at all if he had a black, Kenyan father. The right isn’t at all about black with Barack Obama. It’s about red. Red as in communism.
Obamas ideology is the “not American enough” aspect that the right is attacking. It isn’t about his skin or parentage. It’s 100% about ideas. The right sees that Barack has surrounded himself with every sort of America hater throughout his lifetime. Obama’s legislative record is anti-life, anti-First Amendment, anti-capitalist. He refused for a long time to even wear a simple American flag lapel pin. He’s been seen in photos not putting his hand over his heart when others next to him on stage have done so. Obama has gone overseas to campaign for murderous communist dictators. Speaking of overseas, he is the darling of the anti-American left there. Obama has been an operative for a group responsible for the biggest vote fraud effort in American history (ACORN). He has associated with domestic terrorists, Ayres and Dorhn, racists like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and he’s been endorsed by many different communist organizations from the local Chicago New Party all the way to the Communist Party of the U.S.A. Obama’s entire history screams anti-America.
Barack Obama represents the most radically leftist politics that has ever been so close to taking the White House. He represents every ideological anti-American position the right can imagine. The right sees his socialist styled ideas and his communist inspired history. The right sees red, not black. No one cares a whit if he’s black.
But Beinart can’t see this because to him Obama’s socialist background is nothing to be worried about. To Beinart, socialists and communists can be just as American as anyone else. And therein lies his confusion. After all, how can the right claim Obama is unAmerican if communism can be just as American as Mom, Apple Pie and Baseball? So, to him, if Obama’s ideology can’t be the reason the right is against him… why it MUST be racism!
And this is the ultimate sticking point. To any true American, one that loves America’s history, one that’s proud of the Founding Fathers and the principles those giants poured into this country, a communist or socialist cannot be a true American. For communists and socialists want to eliminate everything that is American and replace it with foreign ideas. They want to erase America and remake it into something it was never supposed to be. Conservatives feel that communists and socialists can’t love America. After all, they want everything about it torn down and remade into something wildly divergent from what it should be.
So, it isn’t Obama’s foreign birth that the right stands against. It is his foreign ideas. Yes, it’s ALL about ideas.
Beinart wraps up his misguided piece with an even more ridiculous claim.
Fifty years ago, America’s racial challenges came largely from within, as black Americans demanded full equality in the country they had inhabited for hundreds of years. Today many of America’s racial challenges come from without, as Third World immigration transforms the nation and U.S. workers and leaders struggle to come to terms with China and India, the emerging, nonwhite superpowers. If Martin Luther King Jr. symbolized that earlier transition, Barack Obama may have inadvertently come to symbolize this one. How he fares on Nov. 4 will be a sign of America’s willingness to embrace the realities of a new age.
Is Beinart saying that a rejection of Barack Obama is a rejection of the whole world? Apparently, Beinart see his messiah as a man that represents the whole world and anyone against simply must be against everyone else. I can only laugh at this grandiose claim. It is also amusing to note that this fits in exactly with why real Americans reject Barack Obama. He really is of the world. And, doesn’t this show that he isn’t of America? Doesn’t Beinart’s feeling that Obama represents the world present the perfect example of why many Americans find the man unpalatable? Doesn’t it tend to confirm the fears that Obama will not represent American interests but will bow to “the world” representing foreign interests?
Can anyone blame the right for voting against Barack Obama?
(Photo credit: daylife.com)
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACORN, Bigotry, Communism, Democrats, Elections, Fascism, History, Liberal Media/Bias, Marxism, Multiculturalism/PC, News, Obama/Biden, Racism, Socialism, The United States of America
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6 Responses to “Time’s Beinart: Republicans Hate Obama For His Kenyan Father, it’s ‘Racism’”
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Wow excellent piece Mr. Huston. I beleive you hit the nail on the head, I as a conservative couldn’t give two figs where Baracks DNA came from. I do however care where his ideas and thouhgts came from. And your are exatcly right about the left trying to turn the election into a referendum on race, an how unracsist America is if they dont vote for Obama..and how racist they are if they disagree.(though they will alaways claim we are racist haha)
I only recently found your blog but i am definately going to become a regular reader.Thanks!
Great article.
How do these idiots rationalize the uniquely American successes of Clarence Thomas, General Colin Powell, or Secretary Condi Rice? Did we have a temporary lapse of national racism?
Roger, no offense, but there’s a big difference between Clarence Thomas/Colin Powell/Condi Rice and Obama: NONE OF THEM WERE VOTED INTO OFFICE (or onto the bench) by the public.
And yes, when you have people at McCain’s rally saying, “[Obama] scares me…he’s Arab,” that would be racist. Not to mention ignorant, as he’s not.
Chad,
How is that any different from people that they are voting for Obama because of the color of his skin? Is that not just as racist? So far every criticism of the man is labeled as a racist attack.
Seven,
Agreed that it is racist to vote for someone if you do so SOLELY because of their skin color. But I do believe there is a difference between categorically rejecting someone based upon skin color and ultimately deciding you support a person because they are more likely to have your ‘values’ (which would include your racial background–black, white or otherwise).
Also, I don’t believe every (or even most) attacks against Obama is racist–those against his policies are fair. But unfortunately, that’s not how McCain’s campaign is now talking. They are alluding to Barack being ‘different’ (to quote Palin, “This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America”). Again, this would be fine if it were related to saying “he sees it differently because he believes in big government” or something like that. But instead, her quote states that he doesn’t see the USA as a force for good in the world (i.e., he sees it as a force of evil–which is the exact same thing you can say about bin Laden & islamic extremists). So really, I’d say they are going even further than being “racist”, they are trying to make Obama an anti-American, bin Laden-loving terrorist.
That’s why you hear more & more shouts from McCain rally crowds of “kill him” and the like. Wow, that’s some pretty strong words to be saying of a political candidate in this country. Political discourse & disagreement are wonderful things, but never would I condone people wishing death on the other party’s candidate (I’m FAR from being a fan of Bush, but I would never wish him to be “killed!”).
WOW, you are clueless and your rants of “racism” only separates people more. I was once an Obama supporter, but having done my research, I have no desire to vote for him any longer. Trust me it’s not his race that’s swayed me, it’s his ties to a long list of people that hate America. I also have a big issue with his voting record and earmarks. Yeah he helps thse that help him which shows he has no interest in bettering this country for everyone, just those who he wants too. Call that racism. He has seedy ties to a bunch of terrorists all working to get in to ruin what we have. I’m the same color, but I won’t be fooled. People need to know what’s really behind a name, huh Barry? Google these names with Obama and dig deeper. I’m big, beutiful, bright and now informed! Even Oprah had enough sense to remove herself from Trinity because she knew that white people wouldn’t like her if she belonged there.
Google Obama and Rev Wright
Google Obama and Tony Rezko
Google Obama and Michelle Obama
Google Obama and Louis Farrakhan
Google Obama and William Ayres
Google Obama and Nadhmi Auchi
Google Obama and Khalid Al Monsour
Google Obama and Bernadine Dorhn
Google Obama and Frank Marshall Davis
Google Obama and Saul Alinsky
Google Obama and Fr Kwame Kilpatrick
Google Obama and Rev Meeks
George Obaman and Soros
Google Obama and Raila Odingo
Google Obama and Abongo Obama r Pfleger
Google Obama and Black Panthers
Google Obama and Ludacris
Google Obama and Franklin Raines
Google Obama and Jim Johnson
Google Obama and Ahmad Yousuf (Hamas)
Google Obama and Fidel, Raul Castro
Google Obama and Hugo Chavez
Google Obama and Daniel Ortega
Google Obama and Mu’ammar Qadhai
Google Obama and Kim Jong Il
Vote FOR America … McCain/Palin ‘08