Very well put. I agree with just about everything in that comment.

One slight correction to the following statement:

And in Oregon, a group of Muslims who had intended to hold a rally celebrating the end of Bin Laden were forced to cancel due to death threats.

As I recall, it out there were no specific death threats, though TPM’s original story implied that there were (TPM later updated their article to make it clear that there was no specific threat).

The organizers just said that they cancelled the event because they were worried that “something bad might happen.” They said that they had received some “really out-there” e-mails, and they also cited the overall climate of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the America, and in particular the recent incident in which grafitti was painted on a mosque in Portland, ME.

Another story I saw the next day said that the organizers were also worried about the potential for some kind of action by some individual or individuals who may have been angered by Bin Laden’s killing. The organizers also said that it the event had never been intended as a “celebration” of Bin Laden’s killing, that it was the media who had given it that label.

By the way, I don’t doubt that there were some very legitimate safety concerns, and if I were in their shoes I’d have been pretty nervous going forward with the event. It’s certainly a sad statement on the situation that American Muslims find themselves in, when they can’t even hold a rally for “peace and unity” without worrying about the potential for some extremist to use the event as an opportunity to wreak some kind of havoc.

We are one race, but certain people are treated differently because of their identity, and so they respond as an identity with a commonality of experience. Hispanic people are still looked at in this very community with the assumption that they are illegals and/or “Mexican Cartel” growers. And my Asian son has already encountered racism in his young nine years, one particularly upsetting incident coming from a very unexpected source. And in Oregon, a group of Muslims who had intended to hold a rally celebrating the end of Bin Laden were forced to cancel due to death threats. And homosexuals’ marriages are still deemed of less value than those of yours or mine.

It’ll be great when identity experiences are no longer an issue, but when a whole community is attacked or disregarded with a level of uniformity, expect them to respond with some kind of unity. When the problems disappear, so shall identity politics.

It reminds me of an incident back in college where someone noted that the black students were all sitting at one table together, and some of the white students at the surrounding tables were making comments about how “exclusive” the black students were. Nobody questioned the all white tables around them.

Yeah, we’re one race. But we aren’t. And until we are, we won’t be.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/05/13/the-worst-political-ad-ever/

Think we’ll ever get to where we view ourselves as ONE race – HUMAN?

The one in the main post just makes me cringe.

It would be amazing to see what would happen to political advertising if he were to win.

The Rudy one is classic – he got Sean

And I actually liked the guy after the Redondo Beach clip.

Funny though. He seems to have delisted the one with his kid cursing : http://mobile.salon.com/politics/war_room/2011/05/12/adler_race_ad/index.html