What Made Him Think “Mongrel” Was a Good Word to Use?
Oh, Mr. President, the things you say when you’re not reading canned speeches off a screen in front of you.
Our Commenter-in-Chief spent this morning on “The View” having a little chit-chat with the Four Yentas of the Apocalypse. Things appeared to be going along rather swimmingly until he delved into the issue of race. That’s when this happened.
When asked about his background, which includes a black father and white mother, Obama said of African-Americans: “We are sort of a mongrel people.”
“I mean we’re all kinds of mixed up,” Obama said. “That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.”
Really. His first “go-to” description of blacks is that they’re members of mongrel race? That sounds an awful lot it came from the mouth of a certain former Klan Recruiter and Democratic leader. Who could forget how our President eulogized said former Klansman as “a voice of principle and reason” so perhaps he found a kinship with the old buzzard.
More seriously, I’d love to know what the heck he was thinking. I know a good number of people who the President might call “mixed up” and I can tell you, when I think of them, the word “mongrel” never enters my mind. I am one of those “mixed up” white people he so casually dismissed and I’ve described myself as “American Indian Euromutt” whenever anyone asks me about my family tree. “Mongrel” is one of those words so loaded with negative connotations that it doesn’t work as anything but an insult. I’m certainly not the only one — bad dogs are mongels, good ones are mutts. It’s sort of baked in to the language and culture of America. It’s definitely a highly-charged word to anyone who has studies racism in America or the Civil Rights Movement at all.
Which leads to this question: How insulated from America has Barack Obama been to think that “mongrel” is a complimentary thing to call anyone?
(Plenty more at memeorandum)
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin asks which is worse: mongrel or macaca.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Death to *Insert American President’s Name Here*
- AIP Blogging: Which Promise is the Real One?
- The President and I Differ on the Meaning of the Word “Rest”, and Other Words.
Category: President Barack Obama, The Social Issues
I try not to get too worked up about things but this did offend me. I agree about the mutt/mongrel comparison and I am completely puzzled why he thought "mongrel" was a good–or even acceptable–word to use.
The other thing that gets me is "That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.” Really? Why is that? Because white people are stupid? White people are elitists refusing to admit their family history? And who is "we"? "We" as in you're not half-white yourself?
I guess I can't relate to this obsession with race. I'm made up of a bunch of things but I don't make it the focal point of my life because I always thought that it shouldn't matter.
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[...] from Whoopie if GWB made such a comment or Srah Palin. How on earth could Obama have thought that using the word “mongrel” to describe African-Americans could be a good thing? Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharton protesting the bigoted and hateful [...]
The Sherrod incident got 24/7 coverage. So did Don Imus' p.c. faux pas. The POTUS, who is also biracial black, uses the term mongrel to describe black people and we get silence from the media – who usually love to report ad nauseum on p.c. mishaps (easier than doing actual journalism). Nor do we hear a peep from the usual p.c. police and race hustlers such as Jesse and Al. I guess the NAACP was too busy protecting Obama from those evil Tea Partiers to worry his WTF remarks.
No wonder it's so easy for whitey to get over on blacks folks. Like a 4-yr old, it don't take much to satisfy and shut them up. Give them a "cookie," i.e. black face in White House, and they want for nothing more. Obama and his coporatist puppet masters are looting, polluting, impoverishing, and shredding civil liberties big time. If white folks are feeling major pain from this, black folks are on life support. And still, 9 out of ten of them continue to make excuses for Obama, who has shown them nothing but disdain and scorn. Sometimes one gets what one deserves. If blacks continue this insipid love-in for Obama, they deserve all the economic and social setbacks Obama is enabling to occur.
For a perspective from the 1% of blacks who didn't drink the kool-aid, please check out blackagendareport.com. The BAR staff have been in the journalism business since the 60s. Glen Ford and Bruce Dixon have covered Obama since his Chicago days and do an excellent job dissecting the b.s. of Obama, AND, of other national and world matters. I also recommend rt.com for real journalism, not corporment (govt + corporate) spin. I highly recommend two programs on rt.com – The Keiser Report and Crosstalk. Don't bother with the Alyona Show – it's corporment spin.
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