[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;313721]Good on him.

Now, is Obama going to recant his racist diatribe against the response to Katrina?[/QUOTE]

I submit that you are engaging in race-baiting by perpetuating this canard.
[QUOTE][URL="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/02/obama-was-right-about-new-orleans.html"]Conservative thinker David Frum argues[/URL] that President Obama – in the [URL="http://elections.americablog.com/2012/10/republicans-pan-drudge-scandal-video-of-obama.html"]not-exactly-a-bombshell video[/URL] that Sean Hannity released last night, showing the President speaking about how the federal government let down the black community in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina – was right.
In an article titled “Obama’s Right: We Failed Black New Orleans After Katrina,” Frum writes:[INDENT]Candidate Barack Obama was quite right about what the reconstruction of New Orleans did to the city’s former black population.
[/INDENT][INDENT]In the span of a year, New Orleans’ former black majority dropped by 20 percentage points, while the “other” population doubled.
[/INDENT][INDENT]Is it really so outrageous that a black presidential candidate would want to talk about the displacement of black Americans in this way? Maybe a better question is: why isn’t the condition of black America an important topic for all presidential candidates of all backgrounds and all races?
[/INDENT][/QUOTE]Further, George W. Bush referenced racial discrimination in his speech in Jackson Square. Was this a "racist diatribe?"
[URL]http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4008217[/URL]

More on Obama's 2007 speech
 

[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-favor/black-people-talk-to-black-people_b_1936535.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics[/url]

"Why Black People Shouldn't Talk to Black People" -Marty Favor
Excerpt:
[QUOTE]The latest non-flap over President Obama, is the October Surprise that Black people sometimes talk to Black people. This, of course, has long been a source of white mistrust and apprehension. The commentators who have flooded television, blogs and Twitter with their horror over then-Senator Obama's 2007 speech at Hampton University are manifesting that age-old anxiety that if African Americans somehow address each other - especially on political topics - then it must be about division, separatism and conspiracy. Suddenly, the Fear of the Black Planet takes hold, and no matter what words are actually said, some folks with a deeply ingrained (and probably guilt-induced) phobia of Black people are going to produce their own pre-emptive narratives of imagined, future victimization.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;313721]Now, is Obama going to recant his racist diatribe against the response to Katrina?[/QUOTE]

The sad truth is there is racism in the "Great" United States of America.

I personally find this a little odd since Science has shown us (through genetics) that we humans are all descendants of the first Humans who evolved in Africa.

News brief: every human's ancestors were Black.

[QUOTE=chalsall;313742]News brief: every human's ancestors were Black.[/QUOTE]

It's a bit more complicated than that :)

The point remains, we are all of one tribe. Diversity is a strength much more often than it is a weakness.

[QUOTE=kladner;313729]I submit that you are engaging in race-baiting by perpetuating this canard.[/QUOTE]Am I? You just happened to not quote the second sentence of my post. And none of your responses addressed my second sentence.

If I am factually wrong that Obama voted against waiving the payback, please correct me. If I was wrong that, after his no vote, he tried to convince them there would be no waiver even though they did pass the waiver (over Obama's no vote at the time), please correct me.

----

chalsall and chappy,

I agree. My point, by the way, was not about racism, per se. It was trying to add balance to the discussion. Romney said something quite stupid and factually wrong. He has now admitted it.

My point was that so has Obama. [And, to kladner, I'm not saying that everything Obama said was wrong or even inappropriate. But what he said about the waiver was wrong and inappropriate, as it has been explained to me.]

[QUOTE=Zeta-Flux;313792]Am I? You just happened to not quote the second sentence of my post. And none of your responses addressed my second sentence.

If I am factually wrong that Obama voted against waiving the payback, please correct me. If I was wrong that, after his no vote, he tried to convince them there would be no waiver even though they did pass the waiver (over Obama's no vote at the time), please correct me.

----

chalsall and chappy,

I agree. My point, by the way, was not about racism, per se. It was trying to add balance to the discussion. Romney said something quite stupid and factually wrong. He has now admitted it.

My point was that so has Obama. [And, to kladner, I'm not saying that everything Obama said was wrong or even inappropriate. But what he said about the waiver was wrong and inappropriate, as it has been explained to me.][/QUOTE]

Please provide references to "waiving the payback" so I can see what you are talking about.

[QUOTE=kladner;313793]Please provide references to "waiving the payback" so I can see what you are talking about.[/QUOTE]

I googled "Obama voted against waiver" (or something like that) and the site that came up was [URL="http://twitchy.com/2012/10/03/wheres-your-dollar-sen-obama-voted-against-stafford-waiver-for-new-orleans-two-weeks-before-speech/"]this one at twitchy[/URL]. I have no idea if it is a partisan website or not. But the information they provided matched what I had been told about Obama voting against the Stafford waiver before his speech.

[QUOTE=chappy;313773]It's a bit more complicated than that :)

[/QUOTE]

Oh really? Pray tell.

[QUOTE=chappy;313773]It's a bit more complicated than that :) [/quote]
Even if you accept the out-of-Africa hypothesis, it's not clear what skin color - or better, range thereof - the early ancestors had. They were adapted for scrub-forest/grasslands life, which likely means at least brown. OTOH more hair means less need for melanic pigmentation.

[QUOTE]The point remains, we are all of one tribe. Diversity is a strength much more often than it is a weakness.[/QUOTE]
A noble sentiment, but completely at odds with everything we know about the evolution of the human animal and human societies. In that respect, New Guinea as recently as last century, with its pervasive tribal "hereditary enemy" warfare, is likely a better model. In that extreme-tribal context, human hypersensitivity to "otherness" - of which racism springs - makes perfect sense. Yes, it is maladaptive in the context of modern cultures, but those are a very recent innovation in the evolutionary history of our species. We should not excuse people who should have learnt better, but we do ourselves no favors by deliberately ignoring the fact that many of these "horrid" behavioral instincts have a deep evolutionary basis.

EWM started in on the reply, so I'll just continue it. Also there is much better evidence of gene transfer between Neanderthals in Europe and homo-sapiens than there is of the out of Africa theory (which is probably correct, but is mostly supported by the lack of any other evidence, not by having anything like an abundance of evidence for it. )

Moreover, the genes that co-mingled between the two groups then migrated back to Africa (assuming that the original direction of migration was out of Africa) so it would make just as much sense to say that all humans are descended from European homo-sapiens who had gotten freaky with the locals.

As to the other point, or the one tribe statement. Humans are the most conserved genetically of any species we know about. There just isn't very much genetic variation.

Yes, there is a biological component of racism, but the same is also found of hairy men. Babies born to a black family will at some point be fearful of a white person that they are not familiar with, and vice versa, but they will also do the same thing if their father is clean shaven they will be fearful of men with beards. This all develops about the time that facial recognition does. And can be short circuited by exposure to (gasp!) other races--and men, like myself who are tired of being called bald-faced liars, who have beards.

The cure for evolutionary racism? Hang out with diverse members of your tribe.

[QUOTE=chappy;313871]Humans are the most conserved genetically of any species we know about. There just isn't very much genetic variation.[/QUOTE]

If I'm interpreting that statement correctly... [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_diversity#Coping_with_poor_genetic_diversity"]cheetahs[/URL].