Michelle Obama Tells Black Grads That White People Make Life Tough

originally posted by: CharlieSpeirs
I don't think it's possible to "play" the victim, when one has actually been a victim.


Just an observation.

well all etnicities have been slaves and hated on at one time or another so its not like they have a corner on the victim market.

While I was at work today, I pulled up this site and showed a bunch of my co-workers this thread. My co-workers are of many "races" - some Asian, some African American, some Hispanic, some Middle Eastern and so on... Only 3 disagreed with my conclusion that her speech was filled with underlying bigotry.

When I got off work - I visited with some of my friends and showed them this thread. None disagreed with my conclusion after watching the video. Heck even my hubby agrees with me.

Yes, there is racism in this country - loud and proud racism - BUT it comes in all shapes, sizes, forms, genders and colors. As I have said many, many times - at some point in history every "race" has been enslaved, mistreated, been treated as sub-human and so on...

If everyone lived in the past - rehashing and rehashing then nothing would change. You can't have one foot in the past, one in the present and expect to walk into the future with the next step - the past is two steps behind the future so you will always be a step behind.

Things were changing - as I said in my OP we now have MANY blacks in positions of power - how they choose to use that power and influence is on them. Things were changing for the better and now we are almost back to the 50's mentality once again.

All I hear is how it needs to be discussed and owned. Well I think it has been owned to the point that people feel tremendous guilt. That isn't healthy - it creates an unbalance - and swings the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

I long for the day when we are so racially mixed that Asian, Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Middle Eastern etc... will be a long forgotten memory but heck I am sure there will be something else to fight over. Always is - guess it really is human nature/nurture.

originally posted by: Willtell

originally posted by: c0gN1t1v3D1ss0nanC3
a reply to: Willtell

What do you mean "you folks"?

Maybe you should check yourself out.

“You folks” is referring to the people who seem to think this little speech is some kind of fiery racist screed.


I didn’t hear such a speech.

Sure it refers to race issues but so what?


As if this country doesn’t have a tradition of racism?


It does.

That’s the issue she is dealing with


At the university where a few decades a ago( not centuries ago) THEY WATCHED BLACK MEN WITH SYPHILIS DIE!!!!!

For experimental purposes

Tuskegee syphilis experiment

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment (/tʌsˈkiːɡiː/)[1] was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in rural African-American men in Alabama. They were told that they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.[1] The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 during the Great Depression, in collaboration with the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201[2] did not have the disease. The men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. None of the men infected was ever told he had the disease, nor were any treated for it with penicillin after this antibiotic became proven for treatment. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for "bad blood", a local term for various illnesses that include syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards, primarily because researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease they were studying. Revelation in 1972 of study failures by a whistleblower led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent [3] communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results.[4]

en.wikipedia.org...

Context is everything, but people keep missing it. I posted information about the Tuskegee Airmen, who were WWII heroes, and the inhumane studies done on them, back on Page 5. But, people are more concerned about keeping the hate for the Obama's alive than actually discuss the landmark racism issues that were addressed at Tuskegee University.

a reply to: Involutionist

I'm not sure I follow your points? Why would I refuse a raise from my comments?

originally posted by: Kali74
What is this thread even about? She spoke at a black college and talked about how some people will never really see them for who they are, just the color of their skin. It's true isn't it?

It's about me wanting to know why she chose to use her lofty position to "poke at a wasp's nest"!

Yeah the first thing you notice about a person is their appearance. So yeah it is true.

a reply to: Willtell

I know the history. Who doesn't?

The problem is that most people don't know actual world history. Yes The Tuskegee Experiments were awful, but there have been plenty of far worse things that have happened in the world which garnered no attention at all.

I was using a play on words with the whole you folks thing...you know the millions of times where a white person has said you people or you folks to a black person and they would pull the race card on them. "YOU PEOPLE! WHATCHU MEAN YOU PEOPLE?"



I didn't think the speech was necessarily racist, nor do I think she is necessarily racist. I do see speeches like this as a further divide of races. That is the main point of anything I have said in this thread.

When you focus on race, you keep racism alive.

All people are inherently racist. This is a survival trait. It isn't rocket science.

However, racism can be reduced or increased depending on the amount of racist rhetoric they are subjected to. People who grew up with black/white/yellow friends and never had a racist bone in their body can over time turn racist based on the influence of people they look up to.

There have been far worse things that have happened to slaves, even black slaves, than slavery in the USA.

There are currently far worse things that people have to deal with all over the world than slavery or black slavery in the USA.

I am sure millions of people dying of hunger every year would love to be slaves as long as they could get something to eat every day.

I mean honestly, there are hundreds of millions of slaves around the world right now. They just aren't called slaves, but they are.

STOP playing the victim race card.

a reply to: c0gN1t1v3D1ss0nanC3

I had to give you a star!

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic
a reply to: wanderingconfusion

She didn't mention white people at all. And everything she said is true.

It was much more of a truth 50 years ago than it is now.
Things have changed for the better and she refuses to give that any credit.
She is still pushing the cart backwards, it's hard to deny that.

a reply to: windword

Absolutely horrible
but you don't seriously believe the Army
only kills Black men in mad medical experiments, do you?

The Armed forces are in many ways the last place to be looking for racism.
Every race has served their country since the Revolutionary War.

She did in fact mention white people. Read between the lines. The context was clearly about race and oppression.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: Asktheanimals

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic
a reply to: wanderingconfusion

She didn't mention white people at all. And everything she said is true.

It was much more of a truth 50 years ago than it is now.
Things have changed for the better and she refuses to give that any credit.
She is still pushing the cart backwards, it's hard to deny that.

How have they changed for the better? It used to be that a single parent could easily afford to send their kids through college without going into debt now kids come out 15, 20 even 30 years in debt. When it comes to unemployment the percentage of blacks is off the scale when compared to other races. So just how have things gotten better?

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Absolutely horrible but you don't seriously believe the Army only kills Black men in mad medical experiments, do you?

Not to mention from the same source it states that not only White men were performing such medical experiments.

Historians found evidence that most of the African-American staff who assisted the Tuskegee Experiments believed that they were part of a medical experiment that was in the best interests overall of poor Black residents of Tuskegee.

Racism and cruelty clearly does not discriminate when effecting individuals.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
a reply to: windword

Absolutely horrible
but you don't seriously believe the Army
only kills Black men in mad medical experiments, do you?

The Armed forces are in many ways the last place to be looking for racism.
Every race has served their country since the Revolutionary War.

The Army’s decisions about blacks in its ranks were still influenced by a 1925 Army War College report called The Use of Negro Manpower in War. The 67-page report was full of cruel and untrue generalizations about the behavior of black men during wartime and the black race in general.

When you take into consideration that the US Army didn't think that blacks were well enough behaved or smart enough to serve as pilots or other skilled positions....and then all they accomplished........

The Tuskegee Airmen destroyed 260 enemy aircraft.

The Tuskegee Airmen accumulated a total of 850 medals for their service and valor.

The nation's first African-American four-star general, Daniel "Chappie" James, was not only a Tuskegee Airman but a 1942 graduate of Tuskegee University. He completed the U.S. Army Air Corps program and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943. This year's convocation will be held in the General Daniel "Chappie" James Center for Aerospace Science and Health Education, a facility named in his honor.
www.tuskegee.edu... portunities_for_african_americans.aspx

And then for the government to turn and decide to experiment on them.......hiding from them and denying them treatment and proven cures..........



I'm sure that many members of the audience, during Michele Obama's talk, were deeply affected by the actions of the brave heroes who were the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group, of the United States Army Air Forces and victims of the syphilis studies, and appreciated her words.

*Ejectile vomit*

For a second there she was a spitting image of Al Sharpton. That's a really good speech. Bravo. Yes, instead of telling them that by graduating college (i'm assuming) they now have an even better than equal opportunity to be successful (since many large companies require a certain racial demographic), she instead riles them up by telling them that they are still viewed as unequal by "whitey"...

It's quite the unique country that we live in, I wonder how speeches like this and attitudes like this go over in the middle east or just about anywhere else that isn't occupied by a majority of caucasians...

a reply to: c0gN1t1v3D1ss0nanC3

They are not called slaves anymore. They are called citizens. And we are all in the same trap...

Divide and conquer. People of multiple races are gunned down by police monthly but the media chooses only to show the hot button issues that in turn create racists on both sides of the fence. The new generation doesn't understand race or see the significance of it. They see a person as a person until the media tells them who they're supposed to hate and why. What better way to keep a country distracted and divided so its government can do as it pleases with no one being the wiser. Don't become a subconscious player in this game.

a reply to: introvert

It's because there still are many people in this nation that judge people based on the color of their skin, but don't have the juevos to be honest about it. I have more respect for an honest racist than I do to those that claim their hatred lies in political or ideological roots.

There are people that don't like Obama based on his politics, and nothing to do with the color of his skin!

I resent it when I read the views that anyone disagreeing with our President must be because he's black. If one were to go back to '08 in these very forums they would come across a comment I made; one where I cried tears of joy that Obama won office. It was for the wrong reason that I was overjoyed. I was happy to have our first black president, and though I shouldn't need to add the fact that I'm white.

That right there is the problem. People say we don't talk enough about the race issue. I think we talk about it too much. I'll be happy when the time comes where we no longer make it about color, because we make it an issue by doing so.

Inequality is the issue, and that's based on many things.

MRS. OBAMA: "Because here’s the thing -- the road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me. Because while we’ve come so far, the truth is that those age-old problems are stubborn and they haven’t fully gone away... Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are based on their limited notion of the world... And my husband and I know how frustrating that experience can be. We’ve both felt the sting of those daily slights throughout our entire lives -- the folks who crossed the street in fear of their safety; the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores; the people at formal events who assumed we were the “help” -- and those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this country."

Is keeping racism alive within the black community part of her job?

I was happy when Obama first got elected, I thought it would be the beginning of the end for racism in America and maybe eventually the world...boy was I wrong.

This doesn't deserve front page it's a #post with a sensational and misleading title.

a reply to: wanderingconfusion