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Person 1. I read your Omarosa blog and it was fantastic. I would like to point out the racism I saw in the news reports as people respond to what is happening. Many, many people start with what has almost become a tag line – “they are so much alike, after all, Trump created Omarosa.” Or some version of that ie “after all Omarosa is a Trump creation, Trump created her.” Variations on that comment have been on several news shows. The bigotry of that is palpable, but the persons making the comment seem so free and sure of themselves in those kind of comments without realizing they are simply satisfying their need to put a black woman in her place and remind others that to them she is really not human – really no different from the way the Trump people disregard the humanity of those they consider not as good as.
Omarosa is not a puppet and Trump is not a puppeteer. She was quite intelligent before she met Trump and will continue to be – from what I’ve seen. Her growth over the years, as I followed her career, has been phenomenal. When she moved out of her early beginnings she moved into a different society, class, culture and must have gone through culture shock. She entered a world where values were very different from those with which she was raised. From a people oriented group where interpersonal relationships were primary and the back and forth was about relationships and values were around all of that into a society where interpersonal relationships are practically non-existent and everyone is ‘striving’ for whatever power, money and control they can accumulate. The values in such a group are very different and probably seemed immoral to Omerosa when she entered. At best, they were very different from those values with which she was raised. She seems to have started out adopting and adapting those ‘new’ values and ‘striving’ for the kind of success she saw around her and in the middle of it something clicked and her values changed to those with which she was raised. My guess would be that she started taping people when that “click” happened. The precipitating factor for that “click” was probably the very ugly and dehumanizing way she was being treated. That is extemely painful to the black woman experiencing it and totally unrecognizable by the people doing the mistreating. When she realized she was “invisible” to most people. That she could move around fairly freely because she wasn’t seen or if she was seen by some her presence was completely ignored.
What shows most strongly in what she is doing, she is out there truth telling and clear eyed about it and very good showing an extremely intelligent human being. That is almost unknown in the circles in which she was travelling and must have been painful. From what I am seeing she has much more integrity than those who surrounded her – those knocking her and claiming her lack of integrity. In the system in which she was trying to be a part and ‘fit in’ she did lack integrity by their standards and their definition of the word. In the system in which she was raised they are probably repeating your comment “You go girl.”
I am happy you mentioned how impressed you were with the way she carried herself and responded to the media. It was self-composed, in control, with no problems correcting people, backing them off, standing strongly in an independent place and her responses were always right on target. I join the chorus – you go girl.
Person 2. I am encouraged by what I am seeing in this United States society. The headlines and the current president are very discouraging, but I have to applaud Trump. The bottom line of what he has done is to create a more open, questioning, more mature society then that which existed before his election. We are not as much dependent upon the “system” because we are seeing the system only works if we are very much engaged and taking responsibility.
Before Trump, it was anathema to talk about people being racist and what that means. In fact, if you brought up the subject of racism or commented on some action of someone which was racist you were jumped on by everybody with the traditional denial that maintains a bigoted system – “that’s not racist, everyone experiences it”. Talk about racism and bigotry was not nice and needed to be kept under wraps. It was something one didn’t talk about anyplace. Now, it is all out in the open and the media talks about racist and racism in practically every news show. News anchors have become quite skilled at talking about and identifying racism and bigotry. There is nothing which creates change and takes out ugly like taking off the blanket and airing it out letting everyone see the windows are open and fresh air is flowing through.
What is especially encouraging for me, in spite of seeing the neo-Nazi’s trying to recreate Crystal Nacht and the KKK, White Nationalists and all the others out there parading – many of those who took part with their tiki torches in that Charlottesville parade lost their jobs because their companies did not want the taint of such clear racists working for them who were also out advocating for the kind of society we don’t want in these United States. That is what didn’t happen as Nazi Germany was getting started. Maybe there is hope for us after all.
Person 3. It is amazing to see the contrast in this country between the present administration and what is happening where elections are being held. I can’t wait for November. We have Donald Trump as president and a White House full of bigots, Nazi’s and such assorted folks. At the same time, as you look around at who is being elected in these contests happening around the country – it is the most diverse group of people I have ever seen. Our politicians going forward will have problems and cause us problems, but they will be doing so representing all of us. All we have to do now is undo the Gerrymandering that happened under the very bigoted Republican Party.
I knew when Ronald Regan went to Mississippi to announce his run for the presidency and even before that when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and took his friends and followers into the Republican Party that the day would come when we would have to face this conflagration. Which way it would go was something I could not see because we could become another very racist society. The move towards Russia that Trump is making is clearly a move towards trying to start a race war to subjugate all of us and to maintain a White Supremacy country aligned with other White Supremacy countries – all led by fascist dictators. That is certainly not the profile of our traditional allies so he had to begin the process of dumping our traditional allies and moving towards others more amenable and trying to maintain their countries as all white, fascist and controlled by their Oligarch’s.
Person 4. You are doing something new and I want to help support you in what you are doing so it is successful and continues and others follow your example. We have a country where corporations are supposed to be “neutral”. They never are because most companies support groups and people moving in the direction of Trump and his people while claiming to be neutral. Billions of dollars go to manipulate all of us. It is always difficult for me to know what is real and what is corporate-hype. However, I feel very much involved with Bettina Network. I use your services when I can and want to know what else I can do to make sure you survive? You don’t claim to be neutral, you just stand up for truth and allow whoever to participate and air their comments. Facebook, among others, claims to give you a grouping of friends of your choosing with whom you create your ‘community’. That is one of the big lies on the internet today. In reality the people you see on your “Facebook Wall” and who you hear from are strangers and people you’ve never heard of before. Your “friends” mostly don’t see your posts if they don’t fit the algorithm – so choosing your friends and your community on Facebook is a myth set up to allow them to market your information not encircle you with your chosen friends. Neutral is not something human beings can be without hurting everyone. Truth telling is stronger, better and beneficial for everyone.
I do not know many places where truth-telling is happening. How are you surviving and paying the costs of Bettina’s Blog? I know from experience it costs money to do the research showing up in this blog – and I know the kind of flak that comes from truth telling. Don’t stop – more companies need to keep watch and put out what they know as truth. Sometimes I think marketing and advertising are great, but most times I realize they have turned us into liars and manipulators and hypocrits for the sake of making a dollar. We need to clear the air so our children will know truth and not be taken in by stories put out to sell products and services or manipulative slants on events to guarantee the corporation will get what it wants and the rest of us suffer. Sometimes I wonder if living breathing human mortals head up these corporations or if they are headed by robots immune to things like the environment, the quality of the food they eat, etc. etc. When cigarettes were such a threat I wondered how those who kept the research which said cigarettes were bad for your health and could cause cancer realized they were also negatively affected by such. They smoked a lot and some died of lung cancer, but nevertheless they kept on going with the mythology which gave them their positions, money, etc.
Keep going – some of us are very strongly behind you.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
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Omarosa – you go girl!
August 14th, 2018“Don’t diss me until you have walked in my shoes.”
It should be amazing to hear, see and read all of the press coverage about Omarosa and her firing by the White House, but it isn’t. What should be amazing about it? The fact that she lasted as long as she did even though she was over the area set aside for minorities. To remain for any length of time in such a position in the Trump White House must have taken a lot of will, political skill and knowledge of self-preservation.
We are seeing the racism of those doing the anti-Omarosa reporting come through like spotlights. It is historical.
For example:
– Omarosa was held in the “Situation Room” for some two hours and was taken into that room, one black female, by four white men. I’ve seen that before and it is meant to scare the same way white sheets and pointy hats and burning crosses are meant to scare. However, the only thing we hear the media addressing is the fact that Omarosa recorded the ordeal and what an awful person she is for having done so. Some have even gone to the lengths of claiming that she should be prosecuted for having jeopardized the security of the United States through this act. Does that sound similar to “lock her up”? Is that a clear blame the victim?
It seems to us the only way the national security of the U. S. was jeopardized was by General Kelly using a secure room which should be used for national security meetings, etc. and used it as a setting to intimidate and restrain a black woman in a room against her will. There is no other way to describe what happened to Omarosa during her time in the Situation Room except as a time of instilling fear and intimidation. How come holding an employee of the White House against her will is not worthy of coverage? Unless, of course, this is seen as normal because it is a black woman and because we want to make sure the victim is blamed where race is concerned. No or very little blame has been incurred by General Kelly and his three co-intimidators. Holding someone against their will is generally called kidnapping – “lock him up.”
– And – One needs to go back into the history of the relationship between Trump and Omarosa before reporting how they are the same! That is the most ridiculous claim of all. Let’s paint both with the same brush! Even making the claim that Omarosa, while like Trump, is much worse. Those are flabbergasting charges.
When you look back at the history of their friendship the extent of Trump’s racism didn’t become clear until he was into his run for president. Whenever a black – especially a black woman, works with whites you have to and are raised to turn a deaf eye and ear to a lot of the racism of your friends, co-workers, acquaintances. That is just survival in these United States. Some people handle that better than others. That appears to be what happened to Omarosa, especially looking at the blacks who surrounded her and seeing the blacks who knew the way to attempt to make claims on Trump’s pocket book and power – ie Kanya West.
Looking at the Apprentice TV show, it had a fairly large number of blacks on the show and it was not easy to pick up racism. Not many of the blacks on the Apprentice picked that up – if they did they certainly kept that discovery to themselves. One assumes also that as the star of the show the people picked were chosen by Donald Trump. However, in this ‘dust-up’ we learn and we learn it from Omarosa that Donald Trump did not choose the people who appeared, there was a production company which did that which accounts for the diversity.
– We have yet to hear anyone talk about Omarosa’s composure, her ability to handle the press when they try to demean her in the middle of an interview, how put together she looks always and the way she carries herself.
Maybe we just don’t remember that during the transition period Omarosa was a part of what was happening in Trump Tower and seemed to be the one sitting in the back of the room closely observing the comings and goings. So – when she makes the comment that as president, people will bow down to Trump and be obsequious as they try to share his power (not her exact words, but the sentiment of the famous taping that is playing over and over on news reports) it is more a statement of truth then one of Omarosa bowing down to Trump. She is in the middle and sees people coming and going who once criticized Trump now bowing down to be included somehow – let us remind you of Mitt Romney, Al Gore, etc. etc. people who would not be expected to show up at Trump Tower because of their strong and accurate criticism of Trump. Omarosa’s character and ethics are criticized using that film clip to do the criticizing, but she is simply telling the truth. We don’t want to be faced with the hypocrisy of our leaders – we want that to slide as they become a part of this Trump Administration. That is how the game is played until along comes this black women who stands in front of the camera and articulates exactly what is happening and points out our hypocrisy in that process. She wasn’t puffing up Trump’s ego – she was truth telling.
– What is also clear is the way the press refused to interview Omarosa during her tenure on the White House staff and the fact that no one said she formerly worked at the White House so was the only staff member with any experience on such a staff. That part of her background was enclosed in silence while other parts – which reflect the stereotype of black women – is pulled out and paraded around.
– To look at the entire picture of Omarosa’s life it was clear that we were headed for such a moment as this. A doubly oppressed minority with Omarosa’s family history and her beginnings in fairly poor surroundings, it is no surprise that having been taken up by Trump as she was moving upward on her own steam, aggressiveness, life-history she would praise Trump. Who gave her such an incredible opportunity? To have moved from Omarosa’s beginnings to Senior aid in the White House is an awesome achievement. She was grateful as many are who experience a life beginning of serious and severe oppression.
To her credit, however, Omarosa was not tone deaf. How she conducted herself in what had to be horrendous surroundings in the middle of people who showed themselves to be totally racist and sexist is nothing short of brilliant. That she woke up from those surroundings to take such a clear, strong, stance and came out of it with what she needed to prove what her life was like during her time in the Trump bubble shows who she really is and the strength of her character.
When you compare that to others who came out and felt they had to sign the NDA AND ACCEPT the $15,000 or other figure per month to keep silent speaks volumes about Omarosa, who was offered the same deal and refused it instead, opened the door to the White House for the rest of us to see what her life had been like and what life in the White House is like. Omarosa gave us another pathway to understand what is happening in these United States.
Do you know what it is like to be in a situation and treated in the horrendously negative way she was treated? What do you do? Some would move out, resign and be grateful for the $15,000/month offer.
“Until you walk a mile in my shoes don’t let your self-righteousness cloud your eyes and ears and keep you from learning from my experience. Is your life so pure you can so negatively judge me?”
When you come from Omarosa’s background to double down and try to make a success of where you are because you know those opportunities are not overwhelming determines your daily life and decisions. She was alone in a White House that was very hostile to her yet she stayed and still worked to attempt to open doors for blacks and that in spite of the fact that neither blacks nor whites reached out to her, but instead negatively characterized her, judged her and treated her like a piece of disposable dirt. It is pretty bad and it is a trap from which it is hard to extricate yourself.
Omarosa had to have a sense of justice to tape, write and go out in the front of a storm to confront and expose. She also has to have a strong sense of who she is to go up against all the negative comments about her “lack of credibility.” What lack of credibility. She was rarely covered by the press for anyone to know who she was – lots of assumptions because she was a friend of Donald Trump and backed him even when his extreme racism began to show. That is not lack of credibility.
At one time I would have said that is lack of good judgment. However, seeing what she was doing with her time in the Trump White House and how she documented what they were doing for a future release time I have changed my mind about that. It seems to me Omarosa was taping people and situations during her time with Trump because her way out was going to be to document everything she saw and experienced. To let all of that out in a book which she probably saw as an alternative to the abyss which awaited her whenever she did decide to leave or would be removed from the White House. She certainly has eliminated the prospect of being called a “go for coffee girl.”
Omarosa is a touch stone for a whole lot of blacks. Those still in the Republican Party and feel they are contributing to moving blacks ahead – staying to be able to document history correctly; feeling that they are keeping really horrendous things from happening to blacks inside and outside the Republican Party; being present to document their experience which could be skewered by others if she didn’t. That is just a few – there are many more.
Omarosa is no better nor worse than the black attorney who is called on to represent clients accused of racism – that happens so much it is automatic and to be expected, We see the black attorneys complimented for their work not dissed for allowing themselves to be so negatively abused; women called to diss other women because coming from a woman it is a stronger dissing; blacks called on to make negative claims against other minorities and so much more.
Omarosa is and has been a black woman whites don’t understand; don’t like; don’t want around because she violates everything about blacks and the black experience that they think they know and understand – she can’t be trusted therefore her character and ethics are in question; but mostly she is the foil against whom we see sharply the failings of other blacks, male and female, those who parrot and are promoted by whites to do their bidding in exchange for 20 pieces of silver and a brief time appearing to be considered equal. She uncovers those blacks as they try to put her down and uncovers those whites who desperately want to protect and continue to cultivate “their” black who helps them hold the line against the onslaught of equality.
Put all of the above against what you will hear over the next few days about Omarosa. You can agree or disagree, but this is what we see.
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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you. Please also tell us if you want your name as your byline or if you want your article to appear without your name.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
Tags: African American history, Bettina Network Educational Institute, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, breakfast table talk, Donald Trump, Racism, Sexism
Posted in African American history, Bettina Network's Lifestyle Community, Breakfast Table Talk, Donald Trump, Guest comments, John Kelly, Omarosa, racism, sexism | Comments Off on Omarosa – you go girl!