Quote:
Originally Posted by Olympiadis
No matter how you look at it, or who says such things, it is very blatantly elitist. It's the same presumptuous mechanisms at play that some people find so offensive about racists/racism.
Same mechanism, - just different selection process when it comes to acceptability or offensiveness.
|
While I'll grant you that it wasn't a smart thing to say on a number of levels, I wouldn't classify it in the same category as racism.
Racism focuses on, and associates negativity with, innate, inborn qualities that the individual has no control over. Furthermore, those qualities have little to nothing to do with who that person actually is (which is probably best defined by that person's actions).
What Obama was criticizing was ignorance and a self-perpetuating cycle that keeps people locked in a miserable existence. And this goes on for generations. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone akin to the people Frank Lee was describing say, "If only I won the Lottery, I'd...", then I wouldn't actually need to win the Lottery.
What I will grant you is that there is a snippet of elitism there, mostly because Obama sees his place as being better than that of the people he was criticizing. But just look at this forum. Everyone here believes that what they are doing is the "right" thing to do and that everyone else should follow suit. The problem is never with stating your opinion; it is refusing to listen to the opinion of others.