We are on a hstoric path to becoming the "community" of Bellflower. I recall the first time that I saw the sign that stands facing Alondra from the South End of Bellflower near the old railroad tracks. It reads "Make Bellflower Your Home." What a wonderful and inviting sign... Yet, I know that it will take more than a mere sign to make this a true "home" where all who are within it can grow together as a connected community. Yet, I know that it can be done. We are a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, group of people of various educational, economic, religious, etc backgrounds and beliefs. We have a richness of spirit here that has emerged overtime...and the time has come for us to become a caring community. A first step in doing that is perhaps to come to know each other better, to know our hopes and dreams for our families, our neighborhoods, our children, our parents, our poor, our homeless, our professionals, our immigrants, our middle class, our wealthy, our small business owners and workers, .... The list could go on and on but I think that you get the picture. I want to hear about each of you. I want this blog to be a place where you can provide us with a positive glimpse into your life your concerns, and most of all your talents that may benefit us all as we move towards truly becoming a community. Please talk to us.... We will be hosting a series of meetings in homes to dig deeper into how we can all make a difference...and we need to hear from you.... Let's start the new year together.
Dr. Willingham-Toure'
I am so pleased that Barack and Michelle Obama understand the true meaning of multiculturalism. They exhibit a consistent expression of "love and peace " to all people regardless of their skin color, gender or sexual orientation, belief system, or disability. Unlike the Clintons, who make every effort to situate themselves as the "Great White Hopes" providing crumbs to underprivileged Blacks and Hispanics, always just enough to keep them grateful and even more underprivileged. On the other hand, the Obama's look at people equally. This very educated couple are aware of the atrocities that Black Americans have faced in the past and the horrible living conditions that many Hispanics, and other non-white groups experience, simply because of their ethnicity. However, as most educated persons realize the economy has made a negative impact on every person White or non-White. We must make the change to live in harmony together and progress together as the human race.
I am disappointed at the way educational systems and the media continue to separate voters by Black, middle-class Whites, Hispanics, and so forth. The Obama's exercise true multiculturalism by not defining their voters by ethnicity, culture or class. Everyday, I hear the media from CNN to NBC continually categorizing voters by their skin color/ethnicity and I'm sick about it! How can we eliminate racism, segregation, and discrimination if we continue to allow the media to ignore the multiculturalism and equal acceptance of all Americans. This includes Barack Obama's commitment to reach out to those in the Middle East and all over the world with respect and equality.
I am dedicated to helping young adults with disabilities pursue college and successfully enter the workforce. I heard the sensitivity of Senator Obama (soon to be President Obama:-) as he spoke to a student with a learning disability and I knew he was sincere. I believe there will be changes in regular and special education when Barack Obama takes office and I anticipate volunteering to make the changes happen.
Professor Danita Applewhite http//www.whiteappleinstitute.org
Usually, when I post links to or quotes from other stories on the Internet, those links only serve as a launching point for interjecting my own commentary. This one is an exception, and for good reason: I have nothing to add that would further advance or enhance the argument.
This article by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post, accompanied by
this commentary and analysis from Chris’ Inside-Out the Beltway
offer something far closer to perfection than anything I could possibly assemble.
Please read both of these fine articles, and pass them along to others.
Thank you.
DHSmd
If you haven't already read Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, here is an introduction to the book. Madama reads from Part One, Chapter One, a section of the book that Obama has titled "Origins." This is a lyrical, moving account of his multicultural childhood. Dreams From My Father published by Three Rivers Press, 1995.
Click here to go to Interview4Obama...
Oh, there is such a thing as bad publicity
Just a few months after Barack Obama announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president, Mars, Inc. launched a campaign to remake the image of its iconic Uncle Ben, the face of the Uncle Ben's brand. The rebranding, which elevated the character from smiling servant to a worldly business executive, was clearly intended to blunt criticism the company has faced over the years that the 1940s character portrays a derogatory stereotype. The reinvention was meant to modernize and personalize the brand in a way that was respectful of his African American heritage and provided a unifying umbrella for new and well-established products. Unfortunately for Uncle Ben's and its parent Mars, some multicultural-marketing observers saw it differently. They viewed it as patronizing treatment of a symbol associated with repression and slavery. The estimated $20 million Web and print campaign recast Uncle Ben as the wealthy head of a fictional rice company. The site's landing page, by TEQUILA, a division of tbwaChiatDay, became Uncle Ben's wood-paneled executive office, where users could read his newspaper, look at his e-mail and peruse his journal. Left intact was his trademark bow tie - and the moniker "Uncle," a frequent target of critics.The new Ben, unveiled in April 2007, aimed to realign some long-held perceptions about the character. It didn't quite go over that way - at least not without a few hitches.Parboiled BacklashThe March 30 announcement of Ben's "promotion" on the Web site caught the attention of the mainstream and spread throughout the blogosphere. That day, The New York Times ran an article about the launch, headlined "Uncle Ben, Board Chairman," and National Public Radio reported on mixed reviews from multicultural marketing specialists. On Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert quipped, "Now that you are a big shot, Uncle Ben, you're going to need your own private chef. I recommend the Cream of Wheat guy."Carmen Van Kerckhove, co-founder of firm New Demographic - tagline: "Better than diversity training" - wrote on her blog, racialicious.com: "This rebranding campaign is really the epitome of putting lipstick on a pig. Uncle Ben is still grinning and wearing a bow tie. There's nothing Chairman of the Board-esque about that image. Uncle Ben still has no last name. When's the last time you heard a powerful man referred to by his first name? No matter what fantasies you weave about him being the Chairman of the Board, his very name still comes from the culture of slavery." A few weeks later, David Segal, a Washington Post Style section writer, posted in Slate, "What's amazing about this Uncle Ben is that he still has a job at all. Uncle Ben is a rare survivor in the once-crowded world of racist spokescharacters. Most of his contemporaries were fired a long time ago." Just after that, interactive agency Organic's Daniel Turman wrote on the company's blog, threeminds.com, "This strategy might have worked better if there was some substance behind the smoke and mirrors. He still is called 'Uncle' in spite of the fact that this title was a Jim Crow-ism used to avoid the use of the honorarium Mister? Really!? By refusing to own up to the divisiveness of the character, the [campaign] falls flat." The initial response from the company was sort of underwhelming. According to Mars, the Ben icon comes from American folklore - stories of a legendary farmer known for his quality rice. When farmers went to market, they would claim their rice was "as good as Uncle Ben's." The portrait of Uncle Ben was introduced in 1947, and it's said that it's the likeness of Chicago chef and maitre d' Frank Brown, who died in 1953.But still, some say this explanation comes off as laughably tone-deaf. How could a group of sophisticated marketers have been blind to the backlash, which seems somehow inevitable? Howard Buford, founder and CEO of multicultural ad agency Prime Access, says, "Over time, the Uncle Ben character had gone from a concrete person to an abstract logo, which had lessened its racial baggage." Mars' move to personalize Ben partially backfired and just reminded people of the logo's history, just as media coverage began to focus on the possibility of electing the United States' first black president. "This was not the time to call attention to that problem," Buford says.Proof Is in the (Rice) PuddingThe controversy seemed to increase consumer interest in the brand: Traffic to the site soared during the summer of 2007 as criticism and online discussion peaked. Unique visits ballooned 1,800 percent, from 191,000 in the third quarter of 2006 to 3.6 million in the same period of 2007, per comScore. Mars uses BuzzMetrics to track brand references on blogs, communities and news sites. Tracking showed that in the month after the launch, the Uncle Ben's brand got more online attention than it has ever experienced, and ended up with three times as much "buzz" as its biggest competitors, says Bryan Crowley, vice president of marketing and sales for Mars Food U.S.The concept of a virtual office gave consumers a way to interact with the character's world, says Austin Hurwitz, TEQUILA management supervisor. "The office setting allowed us to talk about products, offer nutrition facts about rice, showcase recipes and describe the company's philanthropic efforts to end hunger - all in one unified setting," he says. Ads by tbwaChiatDay in celebrity, women's, food and African American magazines focused on Ben as chairman of the board and drove traffic to the site. But Web traffic does not equal brand loyalty or sales (or votes - just ask Ron Paul). So, did the move score for Mars? Crowley says yes. Since the campaign broke, growth in sales and market share has accelerated, he says. And according to Information Resources Inc., sales have indeed swelled in some sectors: The brand's biggest product category, dry rice, showed sales growth of 6 percent in 2007 compared to 2006, per IRI. The year before, sales growth was 4 percent. Sales of ready-to-eat rice mixes, which are about one-seventh the dollar volume of dry rice, rose 8 percent in 2007 compared to 2006, per IRI. But that's less impressive than the year before. Ready-to-eat rice sales in 2006 showed a 21 percent rise compared to the previous year. "We respect the views of the critics and we want to keep open the lines of communication with them," Crowley says. "We also understand that for many people in our target market, the Uncle Ben character stands for trust and quality. Both of those viewpoints are important, and we are working with advisors to figure out how to strike a balance." Mars started conducting research about the Uncle Ben's brand at least 18 months before the campaign's launch, around January 2006. The mission was to "find a big idea that could tie the content of the site together and bring the brand experience to life," says TEQUILA's Hurwitz. Research identified the target as 35- to 54-year-old mothers who are devoted to their home environment, have attended college, are avid readers and are interested in health, Crowley says. About 80 percent are white and most of the remaining 20 percent are African American, plus a small percentage of Hispanics and Asians. "Focus groups, one-to-one meetings and other qualitative research uncovered that consumers had a tremendous amount of respect for the Uncle Ben icon and that he represented quality, trust and family," Crowley says. "To leverage the respect and values of the brand, we decided to present Ben as chairman of the company and use him as the center of the marketing." The campaign itself was in development for about seven months, starting in the fall of 2006, before the launch hit and the brouhaha began. By October 2007, the Web site's traffic dropped almost to normal levels, but not quite. While the site saw 3.6 million unique visits from July to September 2007, it attracted only 114,000 uniques from October to December, according to comScore - but that was still almost double the visits during the same period the year before. In the last several months, the company scrapped some of the plans for the site that were touted at the launch. Gone are plans to further personalize Ben with voicemail messages from him and a full-length picture of him in a business suit. (Only his portrait is currently used on the site and in the ads.) Since tracking shows most visitors use the site to find recipes, the company is expanding that content and tweaking the landing page to give direct links to recipes, Crowley says. Hurwitz says the recipe section continues to get about 20,000 visitors a month and average three minutes per visit. Crowley declines to say if any of the changes are related to the criticism. Dust, CautionThere are no easy answers here. Possibly the best solution is to dissolve the brand, eliminating the inflammatory iconography. Of course, this is a catch-22, so the task became a salvage job. Industry experts find the eventual campaign's costs and benefits complicated."The admirable part of this effort is that they generated Web traffic and attention to the brand, and the company looks like it is trying to be positive and proactive," says Larry Vincent, group director of strategy, Siegel+Gale. But he questions the wisdom of using such a strategy to shake the dust off an antiquated image. To change the backstory of Uncle Ben "is a risky branding move even without the race issue. It is difficult to reinvent history in a way that is different than what consumers perceive. When a brand pulls an about-face, people subconsciously get the feeling [that] it is trying to pull the wool over their eyes," he says.Some multicultural marketing experts were hoping for more of a response from the rice company. "I'm flabbergasted that they didn't change the existing site after the press criticism," says Luke Visconti, partner and co-founder, DiversityInc Media. That shows the failure of the company "to have respect for American history. Since launch, Obama has hit the scene, uniting the political and racial discourse," says Visconti. "For Mars to be so recalcitrant at this point seems blockheaded; it does not reflect the audience's mood," he says. Ron Campbell, president and chief strategist, Campbell-Communications, which specializes in multicultural marketing strategies, is more blunt: "It is a marketing faux pas that is paternalistic and condescending. It's like something out of Mad magazine." But so far the backlash seems to be mainly from "gatekeepers," says Campbell. Whether the decision to focus on Ben turns out to be "a big branding mistake and a big revenue mistake depends how much the noise from the gatekeepers reaches consumers who buy the rice because they need a quick meal for their families," he says. If Mars' objective was to get exposure, it was a good move to be bold, rather than changing the icon subtly over time, as the Quaker Oats Company has done with its Aunt Jemima brand, says branding expert Vincent. But with "online social media and the rumor mills, criticism of a brand can take on a life of its own," he warns. In exchange for an incremental lift in sales, Mars could be harming the brand's reputation and permanently relegating its rice to a commodity product, he says, echoing other experts.Crowley won't admit to a downside. The company is "thrilled with the results of the campaign and considers it to be working well," he says. Perhaps a more telling question is whether Uncle Ben - the icon and the chairman - will keep his bow tie. "Yes," says Crowley. "The bow tie stays."
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=79730
What makes it hard for the pundits is that Obama fits nowhere. He attends an African American church in a community in which he did not grow up but to which he came to work and help as an outsider. He lived as a biracial child with white grandparents in a multicultural Polynesian society and then in an Asian one and back to the "US" state in the middle of the Pacific. He is not Muslim but has a Muslim name. He is not Kenyan but has a Kenyan name. He is not a woman but has the empathy and sensitivities of a woman. He is not a writer but has published two successful books. He is not an actor or singer but has earned a Grammy.
Barack Obama, excuse me, the Senator is a bridge between all of these parts of his own life - Africa and America, African Americans and Caucasians, Pacific Islanders and mainland Americans, Asians and Americans, Ghetto kids and suburban kids, Christians and Muslims.
Is this not as atractive as a woman who has lived in state supported mansions for most of her adult life, in Arkansas and Washington and not much of anyplace else with mostly white people and who espouses liberal social values but has a husband who asked not to have blacks on one of his committees during his administration and patronizes Barack Obama by comparing him to an unsuccesfuol previous candidate with a totally different misson and style? Isn't this better than someone who would put out a fear ad like the Willy Horton one and claim experience she does not have (SCHIP)?
There is no doubt this is better. How could that not be clear, so let us make it so.
Scoop's Link Yesterday!
This is an excerpt that a link from Scoop in New Zealand had yesterday:
"But politics isn't science; it isn't even traditional culture. It's its own world. Thus we have a man who hopes to be America's first black president whose only upbringing by a black parent ended when he was two years old.Barack Obama's mother is white. His stepfather was Indonesian. The grandparents with whom he was sent to live when he was ten were white. But according to the media and his supporters, Obama is still black.In Obama's case this is a myth that's a little hard to sustain, but by keeping his white relatives sternly away from the media and by playing up his culturally tangential connection to Kenya including a media-enhanced visit, he's done an impressive job.But journalists aren't meant to play along with myths. Obama isn't black. Since the word race shouldn't even be used these days, it would be best to call him bi-ethnic or multicultural. There's nothing wrong with this; it just doesn't seem to attract as many votes and dollars."
To this I replied:
Folks,To all of this I say two things: "And and So?. I can't identify myself as pink even though I am part American Indian and part German. Is this what your going to try? The race card in reverse? Please spare us. If he clamed he was white, you would object to that.As for this "one drop" issue, has anyone of you ever received any donated blood or transplants from deceased human beings. How far back can you trace your lineage? I doubt it would be far enough to substantiate what race(s) you belong to. People just claim one; just as he is.As far as his use of the word audacity, to act audaciously as defined by Webster's Dictonary as: Au`da´ciousa. 1. Daring; spirited; adventurous.
You chose to pick the 2nd & 3rd definitions to suit your purpose. How stupid do think the public is? Or maybe I should ask, how smart do you see the Americans voters are becoming?
I probably shouldn't have bothered to reply, but this angered me. I'm living in a red state in the South. A lot of people here don't even used the words “bi-ethnic” or “multicultural.” If you did, be prepared to pull up a seat and explain what you meant by what you just said. I'm not saying that we wouldn't understand the words, but you would have to explain what ethnicities or cultures you were talking about. Truthfully, this is not on the agenda here.
Here's what we are worried about – DISTASTERS. Hurricane and Tornado season is on. We are in the middle of a serious drought in Alabama. Crops were planted and because of the storms and late frosts they failed, so the farmers replanted. Now, we are in a drought situation. So now we have corn and cotton crops and people's individual gardens that are about 2” high in May!!! We can only water our yards once a week, and if we don't get rain soon, we won't have enough water to do that.
I watch the news and 53 counties in Florida have fires from a storm front that contained around 20,000 lightening strikes in that state. Greensburg, Kansas is just gone; massive flooding is going on in the northeast. California has fires, too. And everyone knows since we are still reeling from the Katrina disaster, even if they don't want to admit it, we are on our own!!!
Our National Guards men are stretched too thin. Our equipment and money is going to rebuild what we blew up in another country. How can we get help to rebuild when we are supposed to be rebuilding Iraq?
WE ARE the PEOPLE, we are FOR THE PEOPLE, but we aren't BY THE PEOPLE! Can we even say that our own democracy is working anymore under this administration? I don't think so.
So call him black, white, bi-ethnic, multicultural, or green (but remember Kermit said that wasn't easy either) for that matter. This is not the issue that matters here.
Sorry for the rant,
Robin
