While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have agreed to tone down their rhetoric after this week's racially charged battle, one loyal follower of the Clinton camp, Charlie Rangel, had other ideas.
On a CNN interview, Rangel said that Barack Obama was "absolutely stupid" for his part in the conversation about the relative contributions of Martin Luther King and Lyndon B. Johnson.
"How race got into this thing is because Obama said 'race,'" Rangel said in an interview. "But there is nothing that Hillary Clinton has said that baffles me."
Clinton and Obama got into a dispute over the issue after Hillary Clinton implied in a speech that Martin Luther King's dream became reality primarily because he had a president willing to sign the legislation to make it into law.
"I would challenge anybody to belittle the contribution that Dr. King has made to the world, to our country, to civil rights, and the Voting Rights Act,” said Rangel. “But for him to suggest that Dr. King could have signed that act is absolutely stupid. It's absolutely dumb to infer that Doctor King, alone, passed the legislation and signed it into law."
Some have argued that Rangel is off base for his vicious attack on Barack Obama. Dr. Boyce Watkins, a Syracuse Professor and regular CNN guest, says that Rangel completely missed what the Obama camp was trying to say.
"Barack was communicating that politicians are bell weathers for public opinion, not much else," says Dr. Watkins. "If King had not engaged in the risk necessary to create the public sentiment needed for the Civil Rights Act to be passed, Johnson wouldn't have signed anything. King deeply cared about Civil Rights, Johnson only cared about doing whatever people told him to do. He would have signed a law reducing Civil Rights if the public had demanded it."
Charlie Rangel is a Congressman from the State of New York.
2 comments:
Congressman Rangle is clearly out of line in his quest to support Senator Clinton.
These people are showing a desperation that is simply uncalled for, unessary and a clear embarassment to the black community.
As disapointed as I am in the stand our black caucus members have taken to stand against Senator Obama who is also a black caucas member in good standing, to support Senator Clinton.
I do not believe that is what Congressman Rangel said because I listened to a clip of him saying it.
The fact that he did not call him stupid, does not erase the fact that he and many of the other members have turned their backs on this is man and as far as I am concerned, black America in their vile methods of demonizing him and playing up to the Clintons.
We as black Americans do not owe these people anything and the people we elect to go to Congress should be supporting our issues and not using their public postions to speak out against the majority who stood up for them.
Who they vote for in their own private world is their business, but when they speak out, like they are currently doing is not in the best interest of a huge majority and they all know it.
They all know that this is a chance of a liftime for us to have a young man of Senator Obama's calabor and for them to simply embarass our folks is just more then many of us can except.
There is nothing Senator Clinton can promise them when she becomes President, that they would not get from Senator Obama and to try and blow smoke up our behinds with this mess is speaking to us as if they really think we are crazy.
Whatever the real reasons are for this very public humelation, of the black race will live with all of them from this day forward.
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