True Or False: Pennsylvania Is The Most Racist State In The Union
It seems like an outlandish claim, I know, but something about this Wonkette post yesterday about Joe Biden’s encounter with one of the many ignorant, racist dragon ladies of Northeast Philadelphia (aka East Pennsyltucky) definitely has the ring of truthiness to it. Whether it’s the fact that we elected Rick Santorum over and over again, or just the simple shit like this that happens all the time, a case can be made that even our worst neighbors to the south have nothing on the inbred populace of PA. The claim turns, of course, on this now-famous exchange printed in the Daily News:
In a corner booth, Biden sat down and, after a moment’s conversation, planted a kiss on the forehead of Carolyn Bauer, age 89. Bauer explained afterward it wasn’t such a friendly encounter.
“I told him I’m not going to vote for him,” Bauer said. “Anybody who runs with a guy with a name like that is not going to get my vote. It’d be disgusting to get a man named Barack Obama as president of the United States. No way. I mean it … I’m going to vote for McCain and the lady.”
“[Obama's] a Muslim,” Bauer added. “He pretends to be a Christian, and he isn’t, he’s a Muslim.”
Grandma, you’re so sassy! I cannot wait to put you in a home for spite. Anyway, the Wonkette post’s whole theorem on how Pennsylvania is the new Mississippi goes something like this:
Add up the entire population of the “Republican T” in the central and northern parts of the state, plus working class neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and you’ve got 10 times as many racists living and breathing, at any given time, than there have ever been in the rest of the world throughout history.
Shit. This guy may have something here.
Wonkette: Northeast Trees Bear Strange Fruit
September 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
this is why we all need to go here tonight (reposted from fishtown.us):
Obama Local Head Quarters Grand Opening
Start: Sep 9 2008 - 6:00pm
End: Sep 9 2008 - 10:00pm
(Pennsylvania Office Opening Round II)
Our volunteers started it and now we are official! Come and Celebrate The GRAND OPENING of the Fishtown OBAMA-BIDEN office! Come talk to us about what action you’d like to see and what action you can take in your neighborhoods to Win in November! With less than 60 days to go, WE NEED YOU! Let’s make HISTORY!
Time: Tuesday, September 9 at 6:00 PM
Duration: 4 hours
Host: Gita Stulberg
Location: Obama-Biden Fishtown Office (Philadelphia, PA)
260 E. Girard Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19125
September 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
“racist dragon lady” … my paradoxical lexicon processor just exploded.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am
It’s most definitely true; I’ve been trumpeting this theory for years now. Could this crime (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/18/immigrants_beating_death_exposes_tensions_in_pa/ ) have been committed anywhere but in Pennsylvania in the year 2008? I don’t think so.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:56 am
djlynnabraham - Why do we need to vote for Obama b/c Pennsylvania is racist? That doesn’t make any sense. As if electing a black president will some how cleanse the state of those who discriminate based on color? Sure there is a lot of misinformation floating around about Obama (Muslim, not American, etc…), but that doesn’t make those who believe it racists. Ignorant, yes … racists, not necessarily.
What kind of discrimination was shown by Obama’s “cling to guns and religion” statement? The fact is, Obama is out of touch with many of Pennsylvania’s residents; perhaps not those in the southeast corner of the commonwealth, but certainly in the more rural “T”. A vote against a black candidate doesn’t need to be for racist reasons. If so I suppose Ohio and Maryland are racist states for not electing Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele; both who lost to white opponents?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am
You’re right, ResIpsa, no where in the country but PA could a anti-illegal immigrant sentiments lead to someone’s murder. Please. Despite the Borough Mgr’s claims that “the kids aren’t racist” the local D.A., with the cooperation of the local PD are in fact seeking to enhance the kids’ charges under PA ethnic intimidation statutes. Don’t believe everything the AP cribs off Amy Goodman. Has anyone seriously holding the PA is “most racist” view ever been to another state? Colorado? New Jersey? Vermont? Idaho and the parts of the Pac. Northwest without high property value?
Put the trumpet down and look a bit more broadly.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Why is it only conservatives are racists. My goodness the number of liberal racists outnumber conservatives. Like it or not, Obama was once a Muslim, and he’ll not only tax us to oblivion, he support muslim countries over the great state of Israel, the only democracy in the region. He’ll be to the left of Lenin, and close to Mengele in the way partial born babies will be left to die. McCain will win easily, it won’t even be close.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
having spent 17 years living in central PA i have a hard time believing anyone also from there can’t see the ‘guns and religion’ comwment as being anything other than true. which is why when folks bring it up, i automatically assume they are part of that problematic group of ignorant jerkoffs in question. and while i understand it sucks having the whole country look at you as an embarrassment and a problem to be dealt with, the whole thing could be resolved quickly if y’all would just stop, ya know, being racist pricks.
September 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Racist or realist?
I’d vote realist
September 9th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
@ mas215.
What in the hell are you doing here?
September 9th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
according to the southern poverty law center (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp) , PA has a a known 33 hate groups (black panthers to kkk to MOVE to abortion clinic bombers). we’re not #1 in the country (Cali with 80) or in the northeast region even (new jersey with 34). It doesn’t surprise me that folks are afraid of black people in 2008. folks still think you can get aids from a toilet seat or that socalizing with a gay person, will make you gay. Ignorance is a god given right in Amercia, and folks will cling to that “right” and fight you over it. It really does kind of make you feel that we are in bad situation. Cause facts are, if white people feel this way and say it, you can almost guess the feeling is returned.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Dear Mas215: Unfortunately, you are correct about McCain winning easily. Just as unfortunately, you seem to relish this predicted outcome. Nothing Obama has said syncs with what you have stated. Are you just assuming he is a liar? On the other hand, almost everything that has come out of the mouth of “Our Gal Sal” Palin is a documented lie. So, the question becomes, why are you in league with the actual liar and standing against your supposed liar? What could be the reason?
September 9th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
racism aside, Obama is going to lose because the USA as a whole, rejects the radical left’s image of what America should be. Election after election, they shake their elitist heads and cast dispersions on the rest of “backward America” just as Obama himself did in the Pa primary.
For at least the next 10-15 years, we,middle America will vote to protect our values. Once this country is awash in 3rd world immigrants,and over run by peasants, the left will win the war. For the immediate future, Middle America is winning the battle
September 9th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Oh and reason #1 why Grandma was right
Obama’s slip of the tounge on Sunday…
“my Muslim Faith”
game,set & match McCain
September 9th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Dear Jburnside / PADutch / Mas215: Please define your “values” so that we, your fellow citizens, may debate on specifics and not platitudes. Also, for future reference, please refer to the values as outlined below for a sampling of what we Liberals believe in:
September 9, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist / NY Times
Hold Your Heads Up
By BOB HERBERT
Ignorance must really be bliss. How else, over so many years, could the G.O.P. get away with ridiculing all things liberal?
Troglodytes on the right are no respecters of reality. They say the most absurd things and hardly anyone calls them on it. Evolution? Don’t you believe it. Global warming? A figment of the liberal imagination.
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they’ve taken from the right that they’ve tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
So there was Hillary Clinton, of all people, sponsoring legislation to ban flag-burning; and Barack Obama, who once opposed the death penalty, morphing into someone who not only supports it, but supports it in cases that don’t even involve a homicide.
Anyway, the Republicans were back at it last week at their convention. Mitt Romney wasn’t content to insist that he personally knows that “liberals don’t have a clue.” He complained loudly that the federal government right now is too liberal.
“We need change, all right,” he said. “Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.”
Why liberals don’t stand up to this garbage, I don’t know. Without the extraordinary contribution of liberals — from the mightiest presidents to the most unheralded protesters and organizers — the United States would be a much, much worse place than it is today.
There would be absolutely no chance that a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin could make a credible run for the highest offices in the land. Conservatives would never have allowed it.
Civil rights? Women’s rights? Liberals went to the mat for them time and again against ugly, vicious and sometimes murderous opposition. They should be forever proud.
The liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Social Security and unemployment insurance, both of which were contained in the original Social Security Act. Most conservatives despised the very idea of this assistance to struggling Americans. Republicans hated Social Security, but most were afraid to give full throat to their opposition in public at the height of the Depression.
“In the procedural motions that preceded final passage,” wrote historian Jean Edward Smith in his biography, “FDR,” “House Republicans voted almost unanimously against Social Security. But when the final up-or-down vote came on April 19 [1935], fewer than half were prepared to go on record against.”
Liberals who didn’t have a clue gave us Medicare and Medicaid. Quick, how many of you (or your loved ones) are benefiting mightily from these programs, even as we speak. The idea that Republicans are proud of Ronald Reagan, who saw Medicare as “the advance wave of socialism,” while Democrats are ashamed of Lyndon Johnson, whose legislative genius made this wonderful, life-saving concept real, is insane.
When Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law in the presence of Harry Truman in 1965, he said: “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.”
Reagan, on the other hand, according to Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, “predicted that Medicare would compel Americans to spend their ‘sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.’ ”
Scary.
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today’s young people. Liberals (including liberal Republicans, who have since been mostly drummed out of the party) ended legalized racial segregation and gender discrimination.
Humiliation imposed by custom and enforced by government had been the order of the day for blacks and women before men and women of good will and liberal persuasion stepped up their long (and not yet ended) campaign to change things. Liberals gave this country Head Start and legal services and the food stamp program. They fought for cleaner air (there was a time when you could barely see Los Angeles) and cleaner water (there were rivers in America that actually caught fire).
Liberals. Your food is safer because of them, and so are your children’s clothing and toys. Your workplace is safer. Your ability (or that of your children or grandchildren) to go to college is manifestly easier.
It would take volumes to adequately cover the enhancements to the quality of American lives and the greatness of American society that have been wrought by people whose politics were unabashedly liberal. It is a track record that deserves to be celebrated, not ridiculed or scorned.
Self-hatred is a terrible thing. Just ask that arch-conservative Clarence Thomas.
Liberals need to get over it.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
“Once this country is awash in 3rd world immigrants,and over run by peasants, the left will win the war” -Jburnside.
Burnside- I think I remember reading your vision of this radical left dystopia once before:
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The Statue of Liberty just ruled your ass, bitch.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
All these nuanced critiques of jburnside’s statements are all well and good, but far, far too generous.
jburnside, two questions. 1.) What is a “dispersion?” I know people often talk of Obama as a luminary; but I don’t think he possesses the capacity to produce the optic effect you claim he has.
2.) How, exactly, is Obama’s policies part of this so-called “radical left?” I know people keep telling you he’s radically left; but I’m curious whether you could articulate something about what the guy actually plans to do in office as opposed point your finger and shriek “leftist.”
You see, if jburnside is incapable of answering such simple questions, how can any of his interlocutors expect him to know what they’re talking about?
September 10th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Jburnside:
Obama did not reference “my Muslim faith”, he referenced people who talk about “my Muslim faith” in error. Can you acknowledge that bit of clarification or do you really / really / really prefer inaccuracies?