Althouse: How will the story of America and race be written 100 years from now?

October 6, 2009

How will the story of America and race be written 100 years from now?

How will the chapters on Barack Obama read?

51 comments:

blake said...: "America was still so race-conscious that the citizens elected a completely unqualified anti-American Marxist just because he was black."

Holy crap:

Word Verification is "unicoons".

Can't make this stuff up.; 10/6/09, 7:16 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Your word verification is a racist!; 10/6/09, 7:19 PM
Meade said...: It's a typo. WordVerifier meant "unicorns."; 10/6/09, 7:21 PM
Paddy O said...: In Chinese.; 10/6/09, 7:22 PM
blake said...: Black unicorns, Meade! Althouse is right!; 10/6/09, 7:23 PM
Paddy O said...: I don't actually believe that. But it sounded nicely ominous.; 10/6/09, 7:23 PM
Anonymous said...: One hundred years from now? Not much. The world has little to say about Grover Cleveland as far as I know, because he was a mediocre president in mediocre times.

However, I have already prophesied what near-term partisans will call what will happen: blacklash.

Democrats will lose their majority in the House, and perhaps the Senate (though that one is pretty overwhelming right now and with the third/third/third elections, it will be tough). Then, Obama, the un-Clinton, will not moderate, and he will be a one-term president.

As a result, books will be written about how Americans became more racist and more belligerently stupid because they did not reelect The One. Obama's failure to pass any substantive law will become additional fodder for this narrative in the fertile minds of our imaginative left.

Obama will be a Christ-like figure. The right will be the Pharisees who did not embrace him. Various right-wing commentariot figures will be Judas.; 10/6/09, 7:25 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: On the cave walls, the way things are going.; 10/6/09, 7:26 PM
Meade said...: Another typo! Blake obviously meant to say: "Blake the Racist Unicorn."; 10/6/09, 7:26 PM
blake said...: Meade,

I am most emphatically NOT a unicorn.; 10/6/09, 7:30 PM
DADvocate said...: "Overcoming the setbacks of an incompetent Barack Obama administration and years of false accusations of racism, race relations improved dramatically...."; 10/6/09, 7:31 PM
Photog714 said...: How will the story of America and race be written 100 years from now?

How many people in 1909 foresaw how their history would be written today? None.

You can't do history in the present tense.; 10/6/09, 7:37 PM
J. Cricket said...: "It was an era when people like Ann Althouse, who fancied themselves as tolerant and non-racist, were so filled with hate and loathing that they could not hide their obsession with the President's race."; 10/6/09, 7:37 PM
Stan said...: 100 years from now, Americans will understand that the best way to stop judging people by their race was to stop judging people by their race. Race preferences will be generally understood to have been a bad idea (regardless of however well-intentioned). Barack Obama will be exhibit A as evidence that voting for someone because of the color of his skin instead of his persoanl qualities (the content of his character, political philosophy and leadership) is a very bad idea.; 10/6/09, 8:08 PM
ricpic said...: You could substitute England or France or Germany for America in that question and the answer will be the same as it will be for America 100 years from now. If the English the French and the Germans love themselves and their way of life enough to expel the alien invaders there will be an England a France and a Germany. Ditto America. And if not not.; 10/6/09, 8:17 PM
MadisonMan said...: In a warmer climate?

(ducking); 10/6/09, 8:20 PM
Meade said...: blake said...

I am most emphatically NOT a unicorn.

I, for one, am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on that, blake.

For one thing, you had the chutzpah to jump in and answer the question.

Everyone knows you never get that sort of thing from racist unicorns.

Or from weenie commenters.; 10/6/09, 8:23 PM
Unknown said...: Teddy B. said...

"It was an era when people like Ann Althouse, who fancied themselves as tolerant and non-racist, were so filled with hate and loathing that they could not hide their obsession with the President's race."

That's left wing nonsense. The professor (professrix?) asked a reasonable question, given the Demos' willingness to ascribe to racism legitimate criticisms of this Administration's policies.; 10/6/09, 8:25 PM
Peter V. Bella said...: One hundred years from now? He won the election. He is the first bi-racial president. That's all folks.; 10/6/09, 8:26 PM
Cedarford said...: Teddy B. said...
"It was an era when people like Ann Althouse, who fancied themselves as tolerant and non-racist, were so filled with hate and loathing that they could not hide their obsession with the President's race."

Riiiiight!! Just as any attack by you of George Bush was a manifestation of your conflicting loathing of the white race, which was conflicting because despite all rationality and judgment - you were drawn in tribal white love to the pasty-skinned paragon of white skinned male privilege, Teddy Kennedy.

And by your logic, what could criticism of any member of any race be but racism, and criticism of an ethnicity or group thereof but prejudice, and criticism of any creed but bigotry???; 10/6/09, 8:26 PM
Triangle Man said...: With this delightful Uniball roller pen that I just receive in the mail, if I have anything to say about it. (Triangle Man did not receive any compensation for this favorable comment about Uniball pens an intends to return the pen after the designated review period has expired); 10/6/09, 8:27 PM
Anonymous said...: Wow. Teddy's comment was such a brazenly dumb and stereotypically leftist trope that I assumed it was sarcasm.

Guess not. As I said, people, the times will be called blacklash.; 10/6/09, 8:32 PM
Meade said...: Oops. Sorry, MadisonMan, I didn't mean you when I alluded to weenie commenters. I posted my bold profound comment before I saw your weenie comment.; 10/6/09, 8:34 PM
miller said...: This is almost worth paying attention to. But really. Will any kids remember him any more than they remember Millard Fillmore?; 10/6/09, 8:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Seven Machos, you got it precisely right. America's failure to re-elect Obama will be seen as proof of virulent, irredeemable, insidious racism, although if that were true, of course, he never would have been elected in the first place.; 10/6/09, 8:51 PM
Anonymous said...: Teddy B: "It was an era when people like Ann Althouse, who fancied themselves as tolerant and non-racist, were so filled with hate and loathing that they could not hide their obsession with the President's race."

Obama himself couldn't hide his obsession with race. What do you think "Dreams From My Father" was all about?; 10/6/09, 8:56 PM
blake said...: Duscany, be fair. Obama didn't write Dreams, Ayers did.; 10/6/09, 8:59 PM
traditionalguy said...: The Indianapolis 500 will be all electric cars. Oh you mean races of humans. The year 2109 will see a single human race, the computer-enhanced-human race with implanted HAL 9000operating systems...and then along will come some red haired Scots-Irish folks from deep in the mountains of Apalachia and wipe them all out by playing Yodeling Slim Whitman music on loudspeakers. Or instead by then the Chinese will keep a few of each other race than Han Chinese in preserves for chinese school kids to visit as examples of Chinese generosity towards conquered peoples. Oh, who knows? The chance that Obama will be remembered at all will be as a combination of Neville Chamberlain and Montezuma of the Mexhicans.; 10/6/09, 9:03 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: If we survive as a country and a people, I think that racism will be seen as something quaint and historical. Electing a (partially) Black man President will be seen as just another small step like the first Black on the Supreme Court, the first Black governor, etc. And, I suspect our descendants would see similar small steps for women, Hispanics, and Asians.

And, yet, maybe the picture will not be as rosy as all that. LBJ and his Democratic majorities in Congress managed to destroy the Black (and other underclass) family structure through his (typically for liberals) ill-conceived "War on Poverty". And the result is that many young Black males can expect their lives to either be short and brutish, or spent in prison for making the lives of other Black males short and brutish.

The question is going to be whether we can keep liberals out of power long enough to cure the problems caused by such ill-conceived and counter-productive liberal programs. But, until we can, there is going to be racism, because, realistically, Black males are statistically far more likely to kill people than any other demographic segment of our society.; 10/6/09, 9:11 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: How will the chapters on Barack Obama read?

How does a book placeholder read? .. other than be as ornate and fancy as possible.

I get the impression that Althouse is prepping un for a big bombshell.

Obama has lost her.; 10/6/09, 9:14 PM
Methadras said...: He's a zebra for the masses.; 10/6/09, 9:16 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: that video the other night was about Obama.

wv catristo.. lol

yes there will be a chapter about chavez.. castro ie the enemies of the US and how they liked Obama and still hated us.; 10/6/09, 9:18 PM
Rialby said...: Here's my prediction:

After New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C. were lost to nuclear weapons carried by Islamic terrorists, President Obama, the first African-American President, decided to launch cruise missles strikes against terrorist havens in Somalia and Afghanistan. Further action was deemed excessive by his party and, resisting the call for more action from the hawkish Republicans, he was summarily voted out of office. Historians believe that racism, xenophobia and the Right's desire for blood revenge helped propel them back into power.; 10/6/09, 9:20 PM
David said...: It will be written as a continuation of a series of massive political and social failures.

The inability to eliminate slavery without a brutal civil war.

The inability to avoid nearly a century of discrimination and segregation--phenomena spearheaded by the segregationist Democratic party and acquiesced in by Republicans.

A failure to follow up on the moral and political energy of the 1950's and 1960's in civil rights, and the descent of the civil rights movement into a bureaucratic and political entitlement system, fed by Democratic gerrymandering, a misguided affirmative action system and an unwillingness to take the radical steps needed to improve urban education and stamp out rampant black on black crime.

The rise in power and influence of other minorities, particularly hispanic americans and asian americans, and the decline of the relative importance of the black vote to the Democratic party.

The complete collapse of the educational system in American cities, and the consequent gigantic outmigration of more successful urban blacks to the suburbs.

The separation of black America into an mobile and educated class and a permanently undereducated, alienated, underemployed and restless underclass.

Barack Obama will be unimportant in this overall history, the first black president turning out to be fundamentally uninterested in the plight of African-Americans in the way he governed, despite his symbolic importance at the time of his election.

(All of this does not have to come to pass, but something like it will unless we make some major improvements in education, and huge progress on crime. In that case, the history will tell of the second great black uprising--the sudden and widespread refusal of ordinary African Americans to accept the lousy education and terrible crime that the failures of the black and white ruling classes, Democratic and Republican, have foisted upon them.); 10/6/09, 9:26 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: After New York City, Chicago and Washington D.C. were lost to nuclear weapons carried by Islamic terrorists..

Thereby causing great anguish and devastation to a derailed Obamacare.. Obama said on top of the rubble in Chicago.

I will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my healthcare and you will know that my name is president Obama when i sit down and break bread with the.; 10/6/09, 9:43 PM
Synova said...: "Barack Obama will be unimportant in this overall history, the first black president turning out to be fundamentally uninterested in the plight of African-Americans in the way he governed, despite his symbolic importance at the time of his election."

Uninterested?

As if all that is necessary is interest?

Is this like "doing something?"

I suppose in one sense that's what progressives and modern liberals have been selling for years. And so very much of what has been done to "help" contributes to the problem of inequality. But somehow this means nothing compared to being interested in the plight.

Heh... guy on television right now saying that Obama has drawn a line in the sand on Education and has said we're going to stop drop-outs, improve scores, etc., etc.

Like no one has ever before declared that education is important. And the most important thing is to make a strong stand and statement of interest.; 10/6/09, 9:56 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: 100 years from now, America will have its first Catholic priest president. He and his wife and kids will remind some historians of the Obama presidency which also was a huge historical first. But the Obama presidency ended after one term when voters decided, in the future, the media had to actually vet all candidates with vigor.

Obama will be remembered as the smooth talking, innocent who really lacked any actual skills and whose election was due to an electorate wishing and desiring that race, as an issue, would just go away.; 10/6/09, 9:57 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Blake & Meadhouse - that was very very funny you three.

wv =taggrat; 10/6/09, 10:02 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: God help us if we're still blathering on about race in 100 years!; 10/6/09, 10:03 PM
William said...: Not in the way anyone imagines. Look at what the hot issues were one hundred years ago: trust busting, civil service reform, importance of enlarging the navy. The radicals were preoccupied with class divisions and considered race just a codicil to those divisions. The world didn't unfold in the way anyone--marxists, imperialists, monarchists--envisioned.....Over the course of my lifetime race relations have steadily improved except for the times they didn't. I expect this trend line to continue unless, of course, it doesn't.; 10/6/09, 10:04 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Morgan Freeman was right. Just stop talking about it. Race this, race that.

I hope that the story is, "Sheesh those primitives were all about race, weren't they? Glad we're not so stupid now."; 10/6/09, 10:05 PM
Wince said...: As I've said before, lo the reputation of the Democrat who comes forward to challenge Obama's renomination.; 10/6/09, 10:05 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: EDH:

Political parties want power above all. If Obama continues to stumble and bumble, the Dems will embrace a challenger.; 10/6/09, 10:16 PM
Wince said...: Indeed, I don't think he'll be challeged by a Democrat unless he's weak.

I'm just predicting his defenders will go ugly, especially if that challenge comes from the center-right, largely as a way to preempt the challenge in the first place.; 10/6/09, 10:37 PM
knox said...: We can't keep going on like we are. The knee-jerk fingerpointing we have now is unsustainble. Surely to God in 100 years we will really and truly be burned out and bored by the subject of Race.

(please?); 10/6/09, 11:07 PM
rhhardin said...: I'd guess that wv uses a thesaurus for picking segments of its words based on blog content so far, just to entertain you where otherwise you'd slog through a mindless security ritual.; 10/7/09, 5:53 AM
AllenS said...: As long as there is a Congressional Black Caucus, we will always have racism.; 10/7/09, 6:31 AM
Anonymous said...: Maybe the census, a marriage license application and the Portuguese class offered by the Miami adult ed program will no longer require us to disclose our race.

And no, "human" is apparently not an acceptable answer.; 10/7/09, 7:39 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Well I am hoping that the Barrack Hussein Obama commerative plate and coin set I bought last year will have appreciated enough in value to pay for my cryogenic rehabilitation and regeneration.; 10/7/09, 8:26 AM
kentuckyliz said...: In the Dhimmitude we will not be permitted to speak of the abd.; 10/7/09, 8:40 AM
Bill Harshaw said...: Well, 100 years ago, sophisticated people talked of the virtues and vices of various races, like the Celts and Anglo-Saxons, the Oriental, and the Hun.

I'd venture we'll sound equally strange to people 100 years from now.; 10/7/09, 3:17 PM