In a recent blog I wrote critically about the fearful tendencies I experienced growing up in a conservative white community as a biracial child. I drew the parallel of my own experience to current U.S. president Obama’s seeming need to be “nice” and respectful, to avoid confrontation for fear offending anyone, especially the real and imagined power of the white “master.” The underlying need to be liked, I suggested, had/has a racial component whose content is a constant sense of inferiority which exhibits itself in unconscious ways such as pandering and self-deprecating behavior–i.e., submission as in tail between one’s legs behavior–in order to deflect scrutiny of one’s racialized self.
So, for me, it was nice to hear and see Obama’s assertive management of disrespectful Republicans and cowardly Democrats in the healthcare “summit” yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »
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