PRESSmUP:Mark,
Your post is enlightening in that I can see how the Freepers came up with their statements that Obama supports reparations for slavery.
I wonder if they realize that "reparative work" spoken by a questioner does not infer this? While this shares a Latin derivative, that would be about as close as you can come.
Press, they were talking about reparations, but no one made it clear as to what form that would take. Obama made it clear that the Supreme Court, the Warren Court, was not very radical, in that it did not go after redistribution of wealth after desegregation. This is what prompted Karen's question, and she referenced what Obama said as reparative work. Obama answered her question, never correcting or questioning her reference as reparative, but calling it redistributive change.
Obama: But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of
redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and
economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as
people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.
It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by
the founding fathers in the Constitution
One
of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the
civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a
tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and
activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual
coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change
and in some ways we still suffer from that.
Caller (Karen): The gentleman made the point that the Warren court
wasn’t terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it
too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that
the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place – the
court – or would it be legislation at this point?
Obama's answer: I’m not optimistic about bringing about major
redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t
structured that way.
You start getting into
all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court
monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative
and takes a lot of time.
Obama is very clear in his response. He is not optimistic about major redistributive change happening through the courts. He is pessimistic about it getting done through the courts. He thinks it should be legislative, as Karen suggested, and then it would be a simple matter of administration. But he is all for major redistributive change.
They were talking about the same thing, and it all began when Obama spoke about the failure of the Courts, after desegregation, to go after redistribution of wealth/reparative work/redistributive change for blacks. They spoke of the Court being behind "public opinion" in its rulings, as if it were understood that is what the Supreme Court does. I was shocked at the cavalier attitude they had about the purpose of the Court, as if it were understood by any idiot that the purpose of the Court was not to interpret the law, but to make the law. They referenced John Ashcroft many times, fearing that as Attorney General, he would not be "activist enough" in getting cases before the Courts.
What is becoming increasingly clear to me is that Obama believes in redistributing the economic earnings of Americans. He talks about change, redistributive change, redistributing wealth, and spreading the wealth. He spoke of reparations in the form of increases in money for education, totally avoidiing the reparations question in the Democratic primaries. I don't think he is being totally honest with Americans, and I don't think he ever will.
If you listen to the audio, and it lasts about an hour, you will see that the whole point of this is Karen's call and Obama's response. The first part of the post is to give the context and purpose of her call. Obama's response is what is revealing.
Mark