Keeping your kids home Tuesday?

[peggyfromwastate]

My grade school kids wrote letters to the principal while GWB was in office. When Obama was elected, they wrote letters to Obama. They never wrote a letter to GWB.

My middle schooler was the one who in PE was subjected to lectures time and time again about Obama last year. She was given the assignment to write an essay of how she could be more like Obama. This was soon after the election.

This year, my middle schooler is watching the speech in her civics class, along with all the other kids in middle school in our county.

[rainbabies]

Dd did not watch. She said they played outside (kindegarten)

ds said they did watch arockabama (I love that. Lol. Both kiddos think saying his name is cool). I asked him what Obama said. "he said some of your teachers are great"
(1st grade, btw)

I did not watch it, so I have no idea what was said.

I haven't heard if they watched it. I don't mind if she did. I read the released speech and, IMO, it reads long. Maybe it isn't as long delivered but I can't imagine a kindergartner (or 1st or 2nd) lasting for all of it. It seems better suited to the high school audience.

[Sheherezade]

Peggy - it sounds like you have a problem in your school district. When we lived in Brookline MA - one of the most liberal places on earth - the principal patently refused ANY politics in the classroom. She's retired now. Maybe working with kids for 2o years in such a political neighborhood made her set the policy. Either way, civics were covered in a non-partisan manner - mostly through history and classroom role play in the lower grades. No "real world" stuff for the younger kids. Older kids were exposed (as they should be) but in a detached, debate-club manner.


I didn't experience politics in the classroom until we got here. There was lots of rah-rah and fake elections across the district for the Bush/Kerry election. They've dropped all that now. (It's a Republican district.) Maybe the difference is that politics in the classroom is seen as OK when the prevailing party is the party that also soundly wins in your district. When it isn't, the politics get quieted down by parent protests. For us, we experienced the exact opposite event from you. We moved from a liberal district (Bush years) with NO politics at school to a conservative one (Bush years as well) with LOTS of politics at school. Now that Obama is in office, they've tamped it down here. I'm wondering if they've ramped it up in Brookline as they have ramped it up in your D.C. burb neighborhood (also liberal, right?).

Which leads us to the second point in this thread....people do have these irrational tendencies, don't they? I don't know if I've "lost faith" in my fellow man - but I certainly know that we are all guilty of human weakness and emotional rationalization. I'd still like to find a way to bring us back to center from the polarization we've experienced over the last decades. I do believe we've got good ideas on both sides of the aisle. We just don't talk about ideas with calm and mutual respect anymore.

[madeintaiwan]

The fact that he is black has nothing to do with it and I think it's silly that we keep bringing it up as if it were an explanation.

I disagree with this and I will continue to disagree with this. Unfortunately, America's thinking still hasn't come that far from pre-civil rights days. Whenever there has been a first ANYTHING, there has always been cries and boohooing because people don't like change. It makes them nervous. There is a reason why there are terms like the "browning of America." And they don't mean it in a good way. Martin Luther King, desegregating schools, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Davis. All of these "things" were protested with A LOT of n-bombs, boycotting, and threats to do physical harm. Oh and death. Come on, there are still whites only and blacks only proms in America TODAY! People still have crosses burned on their lawns TODAY!

I have heard that Howard Stern clip and it's embarrassing and ridiculous that people keep digging that crap up like that's what most black people are really like. Throwing stuff like that out there just makes you wonder. Bringing it out is like saying, see look at these dumb black people, now we have one of them as our president. Those people are ignorant. I'm am certain I could go to some trailer park and come up with same results for the other side. What was the point of bringing that up? It was brought up, because it matters to people. They think like that. They believe that. My stepfather, who is white and very republican had to tell my step grandfather to chill out, "it's not like they elected Flavaflav or something."

It might not matter to some of you. But it does matters to a lot of people and you're completely kidding yourself if you think otherwise. I'm out. Because you know all us brown people stick together and we think a like and elect complete idiots just because they look a smidget like us. Even the college educated ones who are half Chinese.

[PrincessFiona]

It might not matter to some of you. But it does matters to a lot of people and you're completely kidding yourself if you think otherwise. I'm out. Because you know all us brown people stick together and we think a like and elect complete idiots just because they look a smidget like us. Even the college educated ones who are half Chinese.

Huh?

Seriously...I am white...and I don't look at people as being chinese or african american or any other ethnic group. I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton just because she was a woman and I expect that most Americans didn't elect Barack Obama because he was black...especially considering the fact that this statement negates all of the white, asian, hispanic, etc Americans who voted for him. The truth is that many people in this country vote along party lines and often don't know what their candidate really stands for with the exception of the issues important to them.

I get sick and tired of the knee-jerk racist card being played all of the time. Cartoons of GWB as a monkey? HeeHaw funny to the dems. Cartoons of BO as a monkey? racism.

Don't like BO's policies? You must be a racist. Don't want him to give a speech to your kids? racist. Hold up signs to impeach bush? perfectly acceptable...we are allowed to hate white men.

How about this one...most americans are just plain stupid and overreact in a very polarized manner about issues...it has nothing to do with race. Think back to how Kerry (as lily white as it gets) was treated...or Bill Clinton....even GWB was treated horribly by the dems (and I was one of them).

No one dares say anything anymore without it automatically being assumed to be racially motivated and that is silly. Yes, there are racists out there, but I don't think the majority of behavior out there has anything to do with that. I think most conservatives are up in arms because they have lost so much traction even within their own party and are trying desperately to fight back.

Anyway, I don't get why you reacted so strongly to my post...

[moonlight]

Kris- the reason why some people say others are being racist by not wanting Obama to address the school children is because (in their minds) the situation is so ridicules. People wonder if there is a real reason behind others not wanting their children to watch the president of the U.S. give a speech to children about doing their homework and staying in school. It really does seem absurd to think any parent would not want a president to encourage and inspire achievement. Given that thinking people will say “oh, it must be because they are racists and don’t want their kids to hear a speech from our black president.”

In all reality I think it’s more about people not wanting the president talking to their kids for fear he will say something “liberal.” This situation has become so crazy that I also think it’s because some people are racist.

I’d also like to say that American has come much farther along that D/madeintaiwan is giving us credit for when it comes to race relations today verses life pre civil rights.

[Rapunzel]

Oh man - there was serious lunacy about GWB when he was president as well. People were off the deep-end that that man was the devil incarnate. LOL Am I really the only one who remembers that???

I think this is nothing new. This is the exact same kind of stuff we've seen throughout American history regarding presidential politics. People overwhelmingly opposed to a president overwhelmingly oppose him - who woulda thunk it?

Happened with Bush? Check
Happened with Clinton? Check
Happened with hmmmm.... Lincoln? Check ( )

And, because those were all white guys we couldn't throw out some skin-tone or cultural excuse (well, except for Bush - people were seriously Texas-bashing with GWB not too long ago and, heck, even on this current thread!).

I think it is just easy for people who support this particular president to think that those who don't support him are evil, insane, or completely ignorant (which racism qualifies as an example of all the above). It helps them explain away something they find, well, crazy. LOL It's convenient to explain away opposition to a president in this manner. The only difference is we haven't had this particular convenience in the past.

The bottom line is that Obama's skin tone or the cultural background of his father are red herrings. They ignore the real issues that concern people. The cry of "racism" in national politics is dismissive of intelligent discussion.

[DCJenn]

except when it's true.

J.

You eyes see it through your lens, period. For those who have lived with racism, they see it much easier than those of us who have either never or rarely had a negative reaction to our personhood due to our race. I think if you have never lived with racism towards yourself, you just can't relate, and those who have can. Some places in the country are for sure worse than others and I think that lends to the broad spectrum of comments here.

The sad thing is, people are overly reactive, (Peggy this is not about you, but the general comments some people are saying in the media) and this really is a sad thing. No harm was done by Obama. If a school district gives him too much play or time in the classroom, it was hardly done by Obama himself. Shrug, I just don't understand the high emotions. It's just a speech, listen to it or not, it's just a speech - to kids - about school.

And no, America is not colorblind, and perhaps it's still ok to admit that.

So you really believe that people are against Obama being shown in classrooms is about his race and not his politics? Maybe it is not about that. Have you considered that it COULD be because of his politics? Here's a quote that I find interesting, and it was written BY A WHITE PERSON ABOUT A WHITE PERSON REGARDING THE SAME EXACT SITUATION: "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students." Quote from DEMOCRAT Richard Gephardt in the wake of the October 1, 1991 speech to schoolchildren by then-President George H.W. Bush.

[spotty_dog]

You eyes see it through your lens, period. For those who have lived with racism, they see it much easier than those of us who have either never or rarely had a negative reaction to our personhood due to our race. I think if you have never lived with racism towards yourself, you just can't relate, and those who have can. Some places in the country are for sure worse than others and I think that lends to the broad spectrum of comments here.

You said this really well. This conversation has prompted me to go back and re-read Unpacking the Invisible Backpack. I have the freedom to ignore race, because that's the privilege with which I was born. Not everyone is so lucky.

[rainbabies]

feeling bad that i brought it up.....

[PrincessFiona]

Re: Keeping your kids home Tuesday?

It's true to a degree, but common sense also must prevail because we are all carrying around our own issues based on our own experiences. At what point do we allow for the fact that just because we he have experienced something one way and feel it in our hearts, that this still does not make it necessarily a universal truth.

Think of the conversations we have had here through the years where people have blindly made assumptions and then turned their backs on this community in anger because we don't seem to understand their unique perspective that they consider a universal truth.

Anyone remember the whole "you don't know what it is like to be a parent until you are a parent" thing where we were apparently not being sensitive enough to fertility issues around here???

We all have issues and at some point we have to recognize that they are our issues and that WE filter our lives through OUR experiences. This puts the responsibility on us and not society.

Racism exists. There are jerks out there. There always will be. But when we filter any opposition through our own experience we don't give ourselves or others the opportunity to shine.

Disapproval of Obama and his speech might have much more to do with partisan politics than race. To refuse to consider that perpetuates racism, alienates Americans and is simply ignorant.

Personally though as I said, I had no issue with it. I probably would have made any number of comments about GWB giving a speech ... and not because I am predjudiced against stupid people. LOL. I just didn't like his politics.

Kris




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[GrayMatterWife]

feeling bad that i brought it up.....

No, no. Don't feel badly. This was brought up in Debates. If you post here, you've got to bring a thick skin...isn't that one of the "warnings" about posting here?