...whenever I read the newest incarnation of your pathological 'any discussion of race is inflammatory and racist' rant, I'm glad I kicked you off the Daily Gotham.

It's almost as if the subject material is incidental to your discomfort with any discussion of race. That's the kind of pathology which would seem to require not a blog, but a therapist.

'nuf said.  

Has there ever been any demand on Barclay's to make reparations. Hello, Charles.  Hello?  Are you there my lad? 

Imagine this.  There is this German company that made a fortune building and maintaining death factories where Jews were abused and incinerated.  Ratner retains this Nazi-affiliated company to participate in its project. The Brooklyn Paper runs a story on it. 

Would it be remotely possible that the Daily News would carry a column defending the hiring of a German company which participated in atrocities against Jews?  Would there be a single Jewish reporter who would come forward to champion the cause of this company? 

Errol Louis reaction appears to be of the same mind-set and motivation that would prompt Black leaders like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Bill Lynch to be the first in line to attack  and undermine the Presidential aspirations of candidate Obama.  And regrettably when carefully examined, it is generally a personal financial one. 

On this Errol Lewis is dead wrong and I am quite surprised by the premise he obviouly supports.

If some hidden descendant of Hilter - came forth with a billion dollars and wanted to name something  after Hitler it would not be tolerated anywhere around the world.

Barclays remain Barclay's irrpective of space or time.  The scars of what they did is still relevant to those who suffered/experienced racism at their hands.  Let  us see a more positve name thrown out, we need to be inspired, not reminded of a bitter and degrading past by showcasing this financial institution,

Bouldin, you once again show how juvenile you are by reading seriously made and considered comments and using them as an excuse to launch another personal attack.  At least over here you can't ban people that you get tired of losing arguments to eh?

I simply, and very seriously, worry about the irreperable damage that is and could be done to brooklyn and brooklyn politics by everyone who wants to make every hotly contested election or issue into a race war.  When you have these same old cards being played again and again by the same people, we all suffer because more and more of the electorate get totally alienated and frustrated by the bitterness of the verbiage.  Nobody is saying that there aren't major racial issues in brooklyn, but every time race is brought into the equation you have the holier than thou (who want to sound the most sensitive, least racist as possible) preaching against anyone who won't tow their line.  Now what, everyone who supports Atlantic Yards is a racist, just as was everyone who supported David Yassky in CD10 or supports the white guy in the upcoming battle for the vacant city council seat?  I think it that it DISRESPECTS the complexities and the importance of the race issue for that card to be played so often.  You trivialize the importance of it, and hurt the effectiveness of playing that card where it needs to be played (such as the Bell shooting) when you play the card unnecesarrily in other places. 

Errol Louis is wrong IMO if he's against Atlantic Yards, or thinks the opponents are simply hotheads, but he's right when he says the race card doesn't need to be played here.  What do the current board of directors of Barclays have to do with the guys who ran the company two hundred years ago?  Hey Walt Disney was a racist and Henry Ford was anti-semitic, does that mean anyone who goes to a Disney movie or buys a Ford car now is automatically racist?  Its absurd! 

anon 4:19 stop being holier than thou.  I will bet anything that if you look at all the places you've done business with over the years, many will have less than spotless pasts.  Like I said watch old Mickey Mouse cartoons, the ones actually drawn by Walt Disney himself, and you will see many blatant racial overtones.  When those were released on dvd sets, they had put disclaimers on them explaining those old cartoons as products of their times.  Hitler had a picture of Henry Ford on his wall.  Have you ever owned, rented or driven a Ford?  Is everybody a racist who ever has?  We should probably tear down the FDR memorial right, because FDR heard for years about the holocaust from victims relatives, he knew what was happening and did nothing.  Erron Louis mentions Chase Manhattan's own past involvements with the wrong sides in world war II.  Is every Chase Manhattan customer who knows that a racist if they don't go right out and close their account?  Or are they allowed to the give the company judgement based on what it is today as opposed to whatever it was in the past?

The point is that you have to put things in proper perspective.  You get holier than thou and start acting so high minded that suddenly nobody is or ever was morally good enough to be around or do business with.  It is simply wrong to hold current Barclays employees or board members responsible, symbolically or in any other way, for what people who ran that country during world war II or two hundred years ago did.  You let the past go, you give people credit for changing!  That is what compassionate people do.  Even Nelson Mandela has forgiven many of the former south african government leaders and business leaders now, because he wants to accept that they have changed, and has no room in his heart for continued hate and continued "holier than thou" preaching.  He knows that you have to move on, and that assigning guilt on future generations for the rest of eternity is not moving on. 

There are real and valid reasons to be against the Ratner project, but his wanting to do business with some old British bank that wants to invest in his project simply isn't one of them. 

...you were banned, Wallner, not because of your putative skills in carrying an argument, but because you repeatedly posted libelous content despite having same deleted and being asked several times to stop doing so.

Now, as to the argument you make here, the way you frame it is quite revealing. The people making noise about this - by all means not just AY opponents, BTW - are 'playing the race card', which you contend will usher in a 'race war'. 'Playing a card' as an expression shows how trivial the question of race is to you, while the phrase 'race war' illuminates how fearful you are of any such discussion. Both phrasings are completely irrelevant to the actual matters at hand.

So yes, clearly, what this is about is once again your own pathology regarding race. You don't want to hear about it and assail everyone who does talk about race. QED.

First Bouldin what you evidently consider libelous fits few other definitions.  You attack and offend many people and nothing you say is ever libelous?  Give it up...

Secondly, you hang out on left wing sites even though you are a right winger, admitted former reagan admirer and considered supporting McCain.  So I don't view you as this great authority on race issues.  In fact your perspective, your lack of understanding of the true consequences of playing the race card too much and too often, shows that you probably haven't dealt much firsthand with those issues.  In my experience, I believe that many of those who are the most "holier than thou" on the race issue are those who are the most eager to hide their own issues with it.  You supported Chris Owens in CD10 when you would not have supported him in the majority of congressional districts in this country.  You support a black candidate in a black district strongly, and it obscures the fact that you support the more conservative white candidates in most places doesn't it? 

I believe the race issue is way too important to be overplayed in the wrong circumstances.  You play the race card too often and too obnoxiously and you get people not responding to it when and where it really needs to be played.  When you go around acting high and mighty every time the race issue comes up, as if noone is "blacker" than michael bouldin, you demean blacks and the race issue.  You want to make everyone else feel like a racist so you yourself will appear less racially insensitive. Thats my opinion, and its not libelous to express opinions in this country. 

As reluctant as I am to engage in a dispute with a feces-throwing monkey, I would merely point out that I'm not the one calling people 'holier than thou' or 'high and mighty' all the while I'm trying to tell them what they may or may not talk about.

As to my right-wing status, again, I'm not the one using the expression 'playing the race card'. So yeah, QED.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. Hehe.

"Would it be remotely possible that the Daily News would carry a column defending the hiring of a German company which participated in atrocities against Jews?  Would there be a single Jewish reporter who would come forward to champion the cause of this company? "

Question posed earlier in the day still waiting for an answer from any honest person.  Including Wallnerwerny, Errol, Antidodo, Rock, Liittle feld, Horniak,  Musa, Fidler, Connor, or Feldman 

Wallner. Why are you so scared of race? Honestly, every time I write one of those race-focused articles that used to make you so uncomfortable I get a handful of white liberals like you worried about "old wounds" and I get some black bloggers thanking me for discussing it because they feel it isn't discussed enough.

 My feeling is that if so many people who are the putative target of racism are thankful for these discussions, it is rather crass of members of the dominant group like you to tell them we shouldn't discuss it.

But maybe that's just me. 

Isn't it strange that Reverend Al Sharpton, champion of the Black Race hasn't weighed in on this issue?  Is it possible the "militant mouth"  has been silenced  by another  big check  from  Ratner?  Of course, the Ratner money will go to Al's organization and charitable causes.  Not to support Al's millionaire life-style,  I'm sure. Maybe Errol Louis could investigate?  

Mole, I'm not scared of race or the race issue.  I simply believe that the issue is so sensitive that the consequences of injecting it into every debate involving say, brooklyn politics, more often than not has more negative consequences than positive.  Believe it or not, there are times when you want to get things done, and get as many people involved on the right side as possible, that you realize it is counterproductive to involve religion or racial politics.

If you portray the anti-Ratner crusade as a race war, you get a lot of people worked up, some in the right way and some in the wrong way.  You are going to get some people who are anti-Ratner and against the project staying AWAY from active opposition because they are not comfortable with the rhetoric.   For instance, I have in the past been involved with groups pushing the pro-choice cause.  I know for a fact that there are some, many, people who are pro-choice but who end up staying away from involvement, or being outspoken, because of the tendency to invoke religion into the issue.  They don't want to get into a religious war anymore than others don't want to get into a race war.  If there was just focus on the surface issue, and not this bringining all these other agendas into the debate, you'd get more people involved.

Success in politics involves hitting on the broad themes and not forcing people who broadly are on the same side to sign off on detailed agendas that involve more complex issues.  Maybe it makes you and others feel good to make the Ratner debate a racial crusade, make it would make me feel good to show off being on the right side in that debate too for that matter, but this isn't about personal satisfaction and showing how much integrity you or I or anyone else has.  Its about a project-- one project-- that we need as many citizens actively opposing as possible  To do that, its important to stay away from the hot button issues indirectly related to it.   

If DDDB or the other anti-Ratner groups turn this debate into a race war, they are going to kill any chance thats left to stop it, because you are going to be alienating, turning off, as many people as you are going to be inspiring to rise up.  Thats a fact.   

This also brings up one thing I like about Obama which is that he condemns partisan grandstanding and too much righteous indignation on either side of the political spectrum.  In his first book, he talks about the difficulties he had organizing inner-city communities to fight the political machine in Chicago.  He came to Chicago thinking he was going to light up an intense movement to get things done by harnassing the anger and resentment of the locals there.  But what he found out is that for every person he signed up, numerous others stayed away because they were not at all comfortable with outspoken preaching righteousness which took one issue and linked it to other issues and formed some big agenda or crusade against a larger cause.  It was one thing for Obama to get people to sign up to protest crappy conditions in a project, and another to get them to do it or keep doing it once they found out they were participating in a race war or a religious war or a class war.  When you make it about these larger issues, the risks become greater, and heat becomes higher, and some people don't want to become involved.

Obama's success as an organizer, and later a politician, was in learning to not beat people over the head with the intensity and righteousness of his personal very liberal convictions.  In learning to not push all the hot buttons all the time.  The anti-Ratner forces need to think along those lines, lets not hate the enemy so much that we feel the need to radically define anyone who has not the level of hatred we do for the enemy. 

This issue seems to have evolved into nothing more than a pissing match between two old White enemies with a personal grudge.  Enough already!!!

The particular incident here involves the Ratner Project. But there is a far more important question that needs to be discussed. It's a question of fairness and equity.  And when ignored it produces Charles Barron who is patiently waiting in the wings.

The question is whether all descendants of victims of Genocide and Slavery regardless of their race and/or religion should have the equal right to protest against existing companies and organizations that were involved in those cruel and murderous practices which destroyed their ancestors.  

The question is also whether Blacks should meekly submit to insult and indignity or whether like Jews they have the right to say NEVER AGAIN and rage in solidarity against all those who can be identified as having perpetrated crimes against their forefathers. 

Would Jews permit a company which clearly and actively participated in the Holocaust, to do business in their community, and under the same corporate name?  I don't think so.  Unless, maybe, their people were given substantial control of that company, and a considerable percentage of the profit was turned over to the community.  And as a descendant of victims of African Slavery I would totally agree with them and  support their outrage. 

 Do  the  descendants of  African slaves  have the right to say that the presence of Barclay in their community is an unwelcome and disgusting memorial? I think so. And for those who were not aware of Barclay's history, it is an opportunity to study the history of African Slavery.

Here is the other question.  Are there any mitigating circumstances in favor of Barclays? Does the record of Barclay and its present business practice demonstrate a desire to compensate for its sick past by assisting the race that it participated in destroying. 

Would we see a solid percentage of Blacks in supervisory and administrative postions at Barclays?  Or would their top management be a reflection of the Slave Trade?  Is there any evidence of Barclays not just exploiting Black communities, but participating in programs to help these communities? 

African Slavery Victim, you speak of "raging in solidarity", but the idea has to be to accomplish things not just rage.  Recently I read Taylor Branch's pulitzer prize winning book on Martin Luther King, "Parting the Waters"  In this book, it is vividly portrayed how King was constantly fighting not only the racist establishment in the south, but also just as often those who were on his side but who saw everything as a zero-sum proposition.  Over and over again King was dealing with people, on both sides, who saw a zero-sum, who saw one side as totally good and the other as totally bad.  He had to work long and hard to get people on both sides to get past this zero sum mentality and find a middle ground.  To get each side to realize that not everyone on the other side were racists or bad.  He saw that nothing could get accomplished constructively if both sides totally hated each other, and each saw the other as evil incarnate.

This is quite relevant today because you have the Bush Administration also seeing the "war on terror" in zero sum terms.  Bush sees all fundamentalist islamics as evil, he doesn't differentiate between the various groups (hezbollah, shiites, sunnis .etc) He sees them ALL as evil.  When you can't see the middle ground, when you can't see beyond the surface, when everything is zero-sum, you have to either wipe out the other side or get wiped out.  Martin Luther King knew this would never work in the civil rights era.  Whites weren't going to wipe out blacks, blacks weren't going to wipe out whites.  The only way to end the war was to work together, and look long enough and hard enough to find the common ground that all human beings should logically have by nature.

Slavery was despicable.  So was the Holocaust.  But you don't get past events like those by responding with the same level of fervor, righteous indignation, hate, that the other side had, and which caused those tragic things in the first place.  Just as King and Gandhi taught that you don't respond to violence with violence, because wars in the modern age aren't won by wiping the other side out.  You can say that Barclays is a totally evil organization for all eternity OR you can say, "life isn't a zero-sum, its not a question of being totally good or totally bad, and that consequently I'm going to judge a place like Barclays comprehensively and not just label them overrall one way or the other"  The african-american community, above all others, should know how wrong stereotyping is, how wrong it is to judge a book by its cover or a person by his skin color.  Martin Luther King had to stare down fellow african-americans back in the day who were so mad they were ready to shoot anybody that was white, and white southern leaders ready to shoot anybody who was black.  Each side had dug in and was pre-judging everyone on the other side.  King had to say again and again to both sides to judge people by the content of their character, based on who they are then and there, not what they were or did in the past, or what their skin color is.  So can you judge Barclays on what they are now, can you practice forgiveness?  Or is everything a zero-sum, now and forever, you are either good or evil and you can't change?  I have not seen one, not one, anti-Ratner person on their high horse about Barclays even attempt to see whether this company has changed in two hundred years.  What they were is that they are apparently.  Zero sum.  Nobody ever changes.  I just don't see it that way. 

You mention Charles Barron.  I was appalled that after the Bell shooting, Barron went to City Hall to a press conference standing next to members of the Nation of Islam and Malik El-Shabazz of the New Black Panthers, who is profoundly anti-semitic.  That kind of symbolism does not help matters, it does not help police who lack compassion become more compassionate.  It makes those police think that what they view as dangerous is even MORE dangerous.  Barron's presence with those people was signifying to the police that some community leaders, like himself, were prepared to respond to hate with hate, violence with violence. 

Funny thing is, Wallner, that you profess to care deeply about racial discrimination, yet over the past year or so, whenever anyone anywhere has raised race as an issue, you've demanded that it not be discussed.

On any subject, in any context, no matter the issue. Including CD-11 and Sean Bell.

In the process, you've managed to lecture a white woman married to a black man, and then her husband for good measure, on how they're racist, but you're the one who gets it.

So it does seem that in WallnerWorld, people are allowed to talk about race, except not right now and unless you approve, which you never do.

I don't demand that race not be discussed in the context of these issues.  I just *suggest* that it is such a hot button, divisive, issue that it inevitably leads to flaming and obscuring of what was originally being talked about.  There is so much righteous indignation on issues like race and religion, so much zero sum thinking, that it interferes greatly with coalition building.  How are you going to get people on the side of opposing the Ratner project by beating them over the head and saying, "if you don't come to our side, you are a racist because they are racists"  That sort of attitude drives people AWAY from politics. 

And you just libeled me, because I never said the woman you are talking about was a racist, nor her husband.  You lied.  So don't brag about banning me for libel, as if you never do anything like that.  I know her, probably longer than you have, we worked on the Dean campaign.  I would never say such a thinking.  What I said to her, what I was trying to say to her, was essentially what I am saying here, that when you can obcure any effective response to other important issues by smothering it in the heat and flames of racial politics, it is NOT always worth it.  That in no way means I don't realize how serious a problem the racial issues are.  It means I want to solve it by dealing with the underlying issues (class and economic disparity) and I don't see how we GET to those underlying issues when we can't get past the surface.

That by the way is not lecturing, another lie you made, it is me expressing my opinion.  Lecturing is telling other people what to think.  Expressing opinion is expressing what I think, and what I think others should think.  Which you and everyone else here does, and which there is nothing wrong with.  

I don't know, Wallner, but it does seem that any discussion that involves, however peripherally, race, becomes a flame war in part because you demand (or, pardon me, 'suggest', over and over and over again) that people stop talking about 'the race card', because when they do, it invites a 'race war'.

Seems pretty heavily flaming to me, but hey, I'm not nearly as smart as you are.  

No bouldin, any discusion of race, however peripherally, becomes a flame war because when that button is pushed you and others get righteous and holier than thou and highly intolerant of dissenting opinions.  I react to that intolerance because as stated, it strongly reeks of zero sum mentality, breaking the world into two sides, rigidly defined good and evil.  Because I see New York City as a city of good liberals, that has a republican mayor specifically because democrats can't come together due to racial politics.  How are we ever to get the hispanic power base in the bronx, the black power base in brooklyn, and the white and jewish power bases around the city together-- even when they AGREE on 95% of the issues-- when the overriding issue is always race?  The answer is we can't.  The last two mayoral elections proved that.  Hispanics did not vote for Mark Green in the 2001 general and many blacks did not vote for Ferrer in the 2005 general.  The party actually needs to move back the mayoral primary because six weeks clearly isn't enough time to cool down the racial tensions that always come out in the democratic primary elections.

When you inflame racial tensions too much in this city, you cannot bring people, even good democrats, together in the same room.  One person's righteousness is another person's bigotry.  There is just no way to win.  How do you get anything done when you can't even get democrats to vote for other democrats in city general elections? This is why I react the way I do.  I'm as concerned about racism in this city and country as you are.  I was at the Bell march on fifth avenue.  Were you?  I just want to fight the underlying causes, and we can't do that without getting the right people elected, and we can't get the right people elected by responding to hate with hate.  Venom with venom.  That only turns off voters and guarantees low voter turnouts.

In my opinion, and I don't think I'm smarter than anybody.  I'm just a concerned citizen, like you.

If you're positing that Mark and Freddy both lost because of the 'race war' you keep on talking about, I'd say that's silly. There were quite a few reasons why both lost, of which the racial controversies were one, but to imply that these were monocausal defeats is just plain loopy.

Thing is, your example of the mayorals actually undercuts your 'argument' (which I still say is an ex post facto rationalization of your own very personal discomfort). Giuliani adopted your approach of 'race doesn't matter enough to be talked about or acted upon positively', and wound up hated until Al Qaeda turned him into a saint; Bloomberg, by contrast, has reached out to black leaders and the black community, and taken racial issues seriously (with caveats, but the contrast to Herr Giuliani is striking).

And it's pretty clear, if we're positing that 'race war' you keep on drooling over, that the Bloomberg approach is better.

So yeah, I'll say it again: you're personally very uncomfortable with any discussion of race, which is why you jump at anyone who does talk about it. To justify carrying your own private pathologies into the public, you invent bizarre rationalizations, such as the idea that any honest and frank discussion of race leads to 'race war' and then on to lost elections. Oddly enough, as on this thread, it seems that you speak for yourself alone, because nobody else from that vast offended and disgusted majority you carp about seems to be taking your side.

But hey, logic, who needs it when you're as smart as you are, Citizen Wallner.

anon 1:141 said: ( I understand that you can't empathize...you are white after all....You believe yourself to be sympathetic to our plight and history, but all you are doing is insulting. )

Listen, you don't know anything about me or my background, so who are you to say I can't emphathize? I think your words were hurtful and insulting.  Do I have to be black to emphathize with those who experience racism?  For that matter how do you know that I'm not black?  How do I know that you are?  In fact most of my friends were black when I was little, it helped shape my world view.   I grew up in the deep south, I saw racism all around me.  I've done everything I can to speak out against it.   I was in college when Jesse Jackson ran in 1984, I was a supporter, went to his rallies, I still have his button somewhere that says "Jesse!"   I thought his was a really important campaign.  I have also stated repeatedly here and at daily gotham/culture kitchen that I might support Barack Obama this time. I did sign up at his web site the day he announced, although I have not fully committed quite yet. 

In my opinion, you can't always read race into everything.  If you do, we will always be divided because we will never see the way clear through the fire of racial rhetoric to those things that are out there that CAN unite us.   This is what I've been trying to say. There are no human beings on this earth who are better or worse than anyone else.  We need to fight those instances where humans think they are better than other humans, because of differences in class, economics, ethnicity, sexual orientation or race.  I had a friend in college who was gay and was severaly beaten. Just for being gay.  Yet it seems in your view, is his discrimination issue different than yours?  Am I insulting you if I think his discrimination and the discrimination you have felt are part of the same problem, and that if one form of discrimination is seen as greater than another, that we aren't solving anything?  Do you for instance find it worse being discriminated against for being black than the discrimination you get for being a woman?  Aren't the women enslaved by their men in Saudi Arabia as much discriminated against as any blacks or hispanics or other non-white races here?  Must I, as a white person, be called a racist by you or others simply for pointing that out?  I don't think so.

My point is I don't want to limit the discussion.  I want to consider the big picture.  Yet when Barclays is called on the mat for past racism, and not for every other type of discrimination they partook in, in the past, such as sexism, I get called a racist for pointing that out? For saying that we should both hold them accountable for all past discrimination AND accept the hopeful likelihood that this company in the past and the present might be two different places?  I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Just as black voters down in Alabama near where I'm from gave governor George Wallace (mr. "segregation now, segregation forever") the benefit of the doubt when many voted for him in his last campaign and put him back in office.  A pessimist thinks people can never change.  An optimist thinks people can always change.  I am an optimist.