Great POTUS photo.

[ngeso]

way too simplistic, so far detached from reality

Okay, granted, but what I don't see there is the one step forward/two steps back. (Maybe I'm not really picking up on people feeling that they have been served badly by this president.)

[DaBownca]

The guy is sitting where his forebears had to sit, showing he knows where he came from and what it took for him to be where he is today. It doesn't work if he sits anywhere but where he's sitting. If he sits in the front, it isn't an appropriate connotation. It's hubris to sit anywhere but where black folks would have sat on that bus back when. This isn't a Chappelle's Show sketch. What - POTUS is supposed to get it tricked out with rims and a spoiler 'n shit?

It was my understanding that anything beyond the back exit door as the back of the bus and he seems to be ahead of the point

[Martin Red]

The guy is sitting where his forebears had to sit

[ngeso]

C'mon man,.........

[mhd]

Okay, granted, but what I don't see there is the one step forward/two steps back. (Maybe I'm not really picking up on people feeling that they have been served badly by this president.)

there are some very clever people that are counting on that if you "evoke pride and joy" you won't have to do much more, there are some very simple people for whom "pride and joy" is indeed enough, even as they starve

[ngeso]

there are some very clever people that are counting on that if you "evoke pride and joy" you won't have to do much more, there are some very simple people for whom "pride and joy" is indeed enough, even as they starve

That is sad indeed. You're right, one has to be there.

(Sometimes I think about how I'd go nuts in that country, if I was confined to it. I keep wanting to scream at people to get on a plane and just go somewhere else to get a bit of relativity and hope. The trauma is stifling, it's like a prison.)

[Sal Paradise]

It's an image that contributes to the narrative of this countries history. It's important.

[Armento]

It's an image that contributes to the narrative of this countries history. It's important.

I don't care if my emotion about it is simplistic. I'm imagining what the Pres. must be feeling in that moment

[Martin Red]

C'mon man,.........

What ? logic, just saying in regards to

"The guy is sitting where his forebears had to sit"

so apart from a very cozy picture of middle class white people sitting on grass.....

"Sr was a Kenya senior governmental economist"

[Koffy Brown]

The man is Damned if he do Damned if he don't....

Exactly...and just how many photos have we seen of any POTUS riding a public bus...

Love this photo, speaks volumes and it really doesn't require that much analysis

[Armento]

What ? logic, just saying in regards to

"The guy is sitting where his forebears had to sit"

so apart from a very cozy picture of middle class white people sitting on grass.....

Must be nice over there in UK. The way things work over here is that POTUS is seen as black first and foremost

[House]

It's a recreation of a Rosa Parks bus pic. She was sitting in almost same row but on the other side of the bus

[Martin Red]

Must be nice over there in UK. The way things work over here is that POTUS is seen as black first and foremost

pull ya neckski in mate, i was replying to danny, and in turn for ngeso....

[House]

It's amusing. Front of the bus. Back of the bus. Meanwhile, he was just visiting THE bus

It's a nice photo op. A brother now has the opportunity to sit anywhere on the bust hat he choose. He might even be the driver or own the fleet. The possibilities are only limited by ones imagination

[AK]

It's an image that contributes to the narrative of this countries history. It's important.

I'm not sure how "important" it is, but this is exactly right and I presume why the photo struck Armen as being "great." It is indeed very powerful, at least to me.

[House]

I'm not sure how "important" it is, but this is exactly right and I presume why the photo struck Armen as being "great." It is indeed very powerful, at least to me.

It's an extremely powerful image. The first black president sitting in the same bus that started Rosa Parks, and the rest of us, on this epic journey from Montgomery Alabama to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Folks might not know that this had happened to Parks many years before as well. Additionally, Jackie Robinson was court-martialed in 1944 for not giving up his seat. However, this bus, at this time, with this woman changed everything.

That picture is full of meaning just as it is

[Sal Paradise]

I'm not sure how "important" it is, but this is exactly right and I presume why the photo struck Armen as being "great." It is indeed very powerful, at least to me.

The image evokes a powerful narrative. It brings the iconic birth of the civil rights movement full circle and connects Obama and his presidency to something much deeper than politics. It's an image reinforcing his place in our countries history. I think it also asks America who we want to be going forward.

[bomb cola]

This photo to me symbolizes one step forward two steps backward for Black America, the first step backward being the electing of the first black president because it awakened the deep seeded resentment and hatred of a people by a people who thought this day would never come

Is there no end to your ridiculousness?

[Daniel, Grand Duke of Stony Island]

pull ya neckski in mate, i was replying to danny, and in turn for ngeso....

We don't BIFURCATE blackness here, Martin. That's the one positive of the wretched accident of chattel slavery, followed by our forced survival of abandonment after emancipation. When all of us were lumped in and grouped together as slaves/coloreds/negros/blacks, any ideals related to tribes/regional identity were erased. We weren't able to leverage pride from where we would have hailed because no one had that information. I don't know how it works in the UK, where perhaps Nigerians feel separate and apart from, say, Carribeans. In the USA, we's black. Black at birth or black by choice, no matter. From where in the world one's black skin may have originated is a technicality.

Granted, there are so many subcultures within overall black American culture that taking anyone as just black is a huge error and indiginity, but these are things that black folks know about ourselves that non-black folks don't. Sure, we take into account who is, say, Creole or how much native American another person can trace in their family tree. We take score on who has what ratio of which European peoples in them, but the Irish in me never gets in the way of the British in my black neighbors next door. The Irish in me also finds commonality with my Boston Irish friends here in L.A. Can't say they find commonality with the black in me, however we do enjoy the differences.

To folks looking from the outside in, where the only measure of status is which colony you come from, sure - y'all may look at President Obama as a half-Nigerian born and raised by Irish blooded Americans. That's how you've all been trained to see your fellow colonized subjects. You come up in here with all that half-This and quarter-that, know what we say?

"Who that nigga think he foolin'?"

It's a crude form of unity, perhaps. It's still unity.

[TAD]

Is there no end to your ridiculousness?

that must have felt good eh?
no there isn't. no end in sight. i will continue to blurt out incoherent ridiculousness just so you could continue to feel superior and post how moronic i sound. if i could only be as cool and smaht as you. :sadface:

[TAD]

This photo to me symbolizes one step forward two steps backward for Black America, the first step backward being the electing of the first black president because it awakened the deep seeded resentment and hatred of a people by a people who thought this day would never come

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Electio...-Election-2012

Anti-Obama slogans with racist slants on the rise in Election 2012

The 2008 election was not devoid of racist anti-Obama sentiment, but racial slurs and offensive slogans seem to be balder this time – from a racially derogatory joke circulated by a US judge to crude bumper stickers.

By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / March 20, 2012


Racism, in forms both overt and sly, appears to be rearing its head higher than in the 2008 election campaign, when voters took the historic step of electing the first African-American president in the nation's history.
Related stories



Already there's been some nasty stuff. Chief among them: an online video that went viral over the weekend, which shows a car sporting a bumper sticker that says "Don't Re-N-- in 2012" (fill in the blanks with half of the word that many African-Americans consider to be perhaps more inflammatory than any other). Some question whether the video depicts a real or a photo-shopped car and slogan, but the fact remains that the bumper sticker is the No. 1 best-seller at Stickatude.com, where it sells for $3. Stumpy's Stickers, until the site went down over the weekend, also peddled the design, one with a caricature of a black man's face missing a tooth and another with a picture of a chimpanzee that reads, "Obama 2012."

These and other racially loaded campaign materials point to efforts to make an issue of President Obama's race in this election, say analysts. Such calculations are born of frustration and even rage against both the president and his policies, which some perceive to have a pro-black slant, they say. While such virulent expressions may play to the racist sentiments of a subset of Americans, they are also likely to offend a vast many more voters and could have the opposite effect of what their creators intended.


“We are just beginning to see the glimmers” of the racial card being played in this campaign, says Randall McLaughlin, a civil rights lawyer and a professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y.

He cites a video produced by the late Andrew Breitbart, conservative blogger and provocateur. It included film footage of a young Barack Obama embracing Derrick Bell, then a Harvard law professor and an architect of critical race theory, which holds that racism remains deeply embedded in US laws and institutions despite – and even because of – efforts to redress it. Mr. Breitbart had promoted the video as a "bombshell," suggesting that it proved Mr. Obama to be a “race warrior” intent on righting the wrongs of history on the backs of white Americans. But the Obama-Bell video fizzled, says Professor McLaughlin.

Still, such efforts are designed to turn up the heat on racial issues in this election, he says. “We are not in a post-racial America,” McLaughlin adds. His prediction: “This is going to be the nastiest election cycle we’ve ever seen.”

To Mark Naison, professor of African American studies and history at Fordham University in New York, the difference between the 2008 and 2012 campaigns is that the racial messages now are cruder and uglier.

There is "an added edge to it," he says in an e-mail, "because Barack Obama is a powerful, incumbent President who is the odds-on favorite to win the 2012 election.” This gives what “racist expressions that do come out an air of desperation, rage, and quite frankly, startling self destructiveness,” he says.

He reminds, though, that racism was apparent in the 2008 contest, too, citing a Sarah Palin rally in Johnstown, Pa., a month before the election, during which a man in the audience held aloft a monkey doll with an Obama sticker wrapped around its head.

[bomb cola]

:if i could only be as cool and smaht as you. :sadface:

It will never happen. You also don't have to be as "smaht" as me to know that the election of Obama was not a "step backward" for Black America.

[TAD]

It will never happen. You also don't have to be as "smaht" as me to know that the election of Obama was not a "step backward" for Black America.

i know it'll never happen. your humility never ceases to amaze me. i however accept my humble place amongst the geniuses of the world. however, if you were as smart as i think you are you would deduce from my statement that what i meant was the election awakened deep rooted racist mofos from their rabbit holes, and the violence that ensued as a result of this election, which is precicely what happened, but what do i know, i'm canadian, an inferior breed.

[bomb cola]

if you were as smart as i think you are you would deduce from my statement that what i meant was....

Try saying what you mean instead of relying on people to "deduce" what you really mean. It's not that hard. I know exactly how smart I am. I'm smart enough not to think and say something so ridiculous as: the election of Barack Obama was a step backward for Black America.

It's got nothing to do with where you're from. I couldn't care less that you're Canadian. It's all about who you are, TAD.

[TAD]

Try saying what you mean instead of relying on people to "deduce" what you really mean. It's not that hard. I know exactly how smart I am. I'm smart enough not to think and say something so ridiculous as: the election of Barack Obama was a step backward for Black America.

It's got nothing to do with where you're from. I couldn't care less that you're Canadian. It's all about who you are, TAD.

who am i?

"the first step backward being the electing of the first black president BECAUSE it awakened the deep seeded resentment and hatred of a people by a people who thought this day would never come"

the above was my first post. was that not clear enough?