SoldierHawk wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: Yeah, it is not Obama's fault he won. He didn't nominate himself, or solicit it at all. It is a very stupid moment, but it's not something that we can or should criticize the president himself over. Exactly. The sad thing about all this is a) it feels like it cheapens one of the most prestigious prizes in existence, and b) it undercuts anything Obama might do in the future that is ACTUALLY worthy of such a prize. I feel kind of bad for him...its like being forced into the peak of your career before your career has barely begun.

I think that was the point though. It's almost as if the committee is saying to him, OK, you have these great ideas and have given the world all this hope, now go get it done and show them that you deserve this prize. To me it has a whole, "prove you earned it" feel.

Also, there have been a lot of retarded decisions regarding Noble Prize winners in the past, so this is nothing new or even that aggregious. Al Gore won it for making a movie, remember? And in 2000, South Korea's president, Kim Dae-jung, won it for maintaining peace with North Korea when all he was doing was bribing Kim Jong Il to not attack him.

It's all just another aspect of human society that is altogether meaningless really, so no reason to get up in arms about it.

SpraCoalee wrote:

Unfournatley race is always gonna be an "issue" in America,

I don't think race has been "an issue" in America for quite some time. It's only the few noisy douchebags like Jesse Jackson who use it to further their own agendas and fan the flames of something that isn't even there to begin with. I think Obama identifies himself as black, as do most of us simply because he looks black. I'm only 1/4 Italian, but those genes dominate my French and Irish genes, so if I'm pressed to identify my European ancestry, I say I'm of Italian descent, because I look Italian, not because I need to belong to that race or anything, and I think it's the same with most people.

Whenever race is brought up these days, and it's isn't Jesse Jackson, I think it's more to celebrate differences or make a tasteful joke rather than to denounce it. I highly doubt there are more than ten people in the entire US going around saying, "Dern that Obama, I don't want no nigger in my white house". It just doesn't exist anymore. They'll attack his democratic or "socialist" views much faster than his race.

Berserk007 wrote:

Racism isn't about black, white, yellow either. IMO, it's about the concept that your tribe is superior to all others and they are by nature inferior and or not entitled to equal rights. America as a melting pot will never reach a balancing point as far as race relations as there are organizations all around the spectrum that push and pull for influence in our politics. That is just one example of how the race issue is very very much alive. Until all Americans can stop self identifying themselves by race on a application and just put mutt it will live on, who am I kidding it will live on either way.

When I made my post above, I was pretty much talking about the centers of population in the US, and the overall majority of Americans, not necessarily small towns in Iowa. Of course hatred is still alive and well there, and in backwater towns in Georgia, but for the most part, those people are largely irrelevant, and race isn't nearly as ubiquitous the issue it was 30 years ago.

I also think the distinction needs to be made between tribal identification, personal identification, and racism. Those are three very different things and aren't necessarily related. When I talk of "race issues", I'm talking racism, or hatred/discrimination based solely on race because I agree with you; humans will always identify themselves as one faction or the other, no matter how far history marches. We all identify ourselves as Americans, and in the distant future, we'll identify ourselves as being from Earth, as well as being black or white. I'm white, and will always be white and Denzel Washington is black. Those are just facts that will never go away no matter how much we pretend that we're the same. We're not. I have light skin, and he has black skin. That's a difference and part of what makes us unique human beings.

What has gone away for the most part though are the hard lines between those facts, and the prejudice they used to carry with them. "Race issues" is not how people identify themselves, but rather the stigmas that a certain identification comes with. To most people in the US, we're all just people, on equal footing, and being black or white is just like being male or female. Everyone identifies themselves by a million different criteria. I'm white, American, from California, of Italian descent, am a student in college, etc. Those are all identifiers that make me different than the guy standing next to me, and my skin color is just another identifier. There's no tribal minset of one race, gender, hair color, etc being dominant over the other anymore.

That's why I can say that just like gender issues, race issues in America are almost non existant and only perpetuated by the few small town bigots set in their ways, or ambitious blowhards furthering an agenda. Lots of people rail on Obama, or other blacks for saying that they consider themselves black, but did anyone get on Hilary's case when she said she considers herself a woman? Of course not, because it's an obvious fact staring them in the face that ultimately means nothing aside from being one of the millions of criteria that makes her unique.