Dean speaks about Katrina, race
Thanks to floridagal and her diary at Booman Tribune, I can share with you some of what Howard Dean had to say at the National Baptist Convention today in Miami.
"Dean, in remarks interrupted several times by applause, charged that Republicans in Congress and the Bush administration have not done enough to combat poverty. The pictures of primarily black storm evacuees huddled at the dank Superdome and stranded on rooftops, Dean charged, showed "the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not."
"The question, 40 and 50 years after Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, is: `How could this still be happening in America?' " Dean said, later adding: "We have not swept poverty away in this nation. We have simply swept it under the rug."
floridagal included additional excerpts from the article in the Kansas City Star, including the comment that Howard Dean refused to take questions from reporters, saying that he was speaking today "not as chairman of the Democratic party, but as an American."
Yet he repeatedly sought to lay claim to the so-called "morals" issue that some pollsters suggested cost Democrats the presidency in 2000. Moral issues, the new Democratic chief said, should apply to poverty and universal health insurance - not abortion and gay marriage - two issues with which some conservative black clergy side with the GOP.
"The moral choices in America are not about hot-button social issues that get everybody mad," Dean said. "Moral choices are about making sure that folks don't drown at a nursing home before they can get evacuated."
Read the rest of floridagal's diary here, and recommend it if you're a Booman Tribune member.
Color me confused - I went to what I thought was the website of the National Baptist Convention and it says they're meeting in Georgia this week.
ReplyDeleteOther important news:
Go F* Yourself, Mr. Cheney!
Calling Sen. Landrieu: Want a Katrina Investigation? Block Roberts
Ok. I've got to get back to work.
Your confusion is well warranted - there are three National Baptist Conventions - the Boyd Convention, the Incorporated Convention, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention (not to mention the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention).
ReplyDeleteOscar, if you have any thoughts about good responses when people bemoan the "playing of the race card", I'd love to hear them. "Go Cheney yourself" is what comes to mind, but that's probably not the most persuasive way to respond.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I don't mean responding to flyboy--as I consider that pointless--but to anyone who has absorbed right wing talking points into their vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteMy approach to anyone who goes with the "playing the race card" angle is to essentially call them stupid - this approach probably won't work for most people because most people are kinder and gentler than me... >:)
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, when someone pulls the race card card simply ask them if America is totally free of racism. Ask them if racism has to be overt, i.e. hurling the n-word at someone, in order for it to be racism. Ask them if a fundamental disconnect with people who are not like themselves can lead them to think of those others as something less than themselves. And then ask them if White Supremacy is limited to rednecks in sheets. If they answer any of those questions incorrectly then point them to the proper resources and tell them to go get a clue - in a kinder, gentler tone, of course. :-)
Thank goodness, Oscar. So which one did Howard speak at?
ReplyDeleteI like your response to dealing with the race card. It's hard to answer and I really would like to call them stupid.
You know, it wasn't lost on a whole lot of people I talked to that most, if not all, Bush's photo-ops were with white hurricane victims...