The Irony of Electing Our First Black President
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Touchstone’s James Kushiner:
The irony about the election of our first black president, an irony which I wish did not exist, is that while blacks have risen from the indignities and injustice of slavery in which their bodies were sold and consumed as property, and have endured segregation and second-class citizen status and racial discrimination, and have now one of their own elected to the highest office in the land, this very president-elect, Barack Obama, will increase the death toll among black human beings if he fulfills his promise to enact a Freedom of Choice Act, which will serve as a firewall around Roe v. Wade, the Dred Scott decision of our times. Helping to fund abortions also will likely disproportionately increase the number of black victims consumed by this holocaust. Someone might point out that policies about abortion, too, in this post-racial age of enlightenment, should be colorblind, so anyone who cares about the skin color of its victims is a racist, and that appeals to blacks about not aborting black babies is an appeal to a presumed racism on their part.HT: Denny Burk
Discrimination based on the color of one’s skin is not now the burning issue of our time, however. It’s that we’ve forgotten the value of human skin in the first place. The human skin of the baby in the womb, the human skin of the severely disabled (candidates for “selective” abortion), the human flesh and blood of the elderly, and the bodies of those near death, from whom we cut organs while they are, yes, still, alive—this human flesh is abused and sacrificed on various altars. Resting on the hard-earned laurels of enlightened colorblindness, many have forgotten, or deny, the sanctity of the very flesh about which we say we are so indifferent as to its color.
posted by JT at Wednesday, November 12, 2008
8 Comments:
Barack Obama, will increase the death toll among black human beings if he fulfills his promise to enact a Freedom of Choice Act, which will serve as a firewall around Roe v. Wade, the Dred Scott decision of our times.
The death toll will rise regardless. The death rate will increase as a result of Obama's policy of making the procedure of baby dismemberment as easy to obtain as possible.
I think another irony is that Obama has nothing in common with the average black American, save for some skin pigmentation.
He is not descended from slaves, as are the great majority of American blacks. In fact, he is a first generation black American, his biological father being a Kenyan.
He has no cultural narrative to share with the American blacks who voted for him, apparently because he's "black."
Actually, there's a chance that the death toll will actually decrease. Clinton, who's almost as liberal as Obama, increased funding to programs that assist young moms. The number of abortions decreased under Clinton's administration from Reagan, who saw the all-time high.
david t,
What is shocking is that many so-called "evangelicals" consider it pro-life to dismember more babies while spending more on social programs in the hopes that the net effect will be a decline in the total body count.
I'm disappointed that the author of this post chose to lump "cutting organs from those still alive" in the same category as all the rest.
There is only one example I'm aware of in which a physician possibly acted too quickly in obtaining organs and even this is debatable.
Further there is no trend demonstrated here and there is no pending legislation attempting to enable this action. The hasty surgeon simply broke the standard and widely accepted protocol.
As one who has been waiting 14 months for a set of new lungs, I certainly don't appreciate any negative and incomplete press about this topic.
McCullars-
My point was simply that he might be wrong. The body count might actually go down, and Obama might actually "save" thousands of black babies.
Unless we do some massive work to preach the word about the humanity of the fetus on a "street level" (as opposed to a federal level), we're not going to see public opinion change on abortion, and we thus won't see any change in its legal status. This is a democracy, you know. The current legality of abortion reflects the majority of our country's belief that life begins sometime after conception.
Until then we're going to have to learn to compromise and take what small victories we can get. Do you care about being right, or do you care about saving babies? If you do care about saving babies, then increasing social programs to decrease the number of fetus/unborns being killed isn't a bad idea at all. Obama himself has said he's committed to reducing the number of abortions--of course while maintaining it as a legal option (much to our chagrin).
david t,
Obama himself has said he's committed to reducing the number of abortions
He has said a lot of things. He's also said he's committed to never giving ground on "rights" of women to hire someone to dismember their babies.
If you do care about saving babies, then increasing social programs to decrease the number of fetus/unborns being killed isn't a bad idea at all.
There's a logical fallacy in there and I can't recall its name. I do care about saving babies. If I disagree with you on whether certain social programs are worthy of support, that in no way necessitates a lack of caring about saving babies.
The current legality of abortion reflects the majority of our country's belief that life begins sometime after conception.
I disagree. I think the majority in the country may tell themselves life begins sometime after conception in order to feel better about themselves. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Americans know full well that a murder is being committed every time a baby is dismembered.
mesa mike ... your general point is taken, but i want to caution you against assuming that there even is an "average black american."
a lot of people mistakenly believe that blacks even have a lot in common with each other and that, therefore, obama isn't like the "average" black person.
the reality is .. (1) blacks in this country didn't even start off being the "same people," as they were stolen from over 1,000 different ethnic groups before being brought to north america; (2) blacks are very diverse in terms of economic status, level of education, and worldview; and (3) blacks are also diverse in terms of lifestyle: half are suburban, almost half are urban, and a portion are rural.
so when you say "average black american," it doesn't really compute.
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