| My brother asked me back at Thanksgiving dinner "Is America ready to elect a black man or a woman as President?" To which I answered, "We're as ready as we're ever going to be before actually doing it." He replied, "I hear you... but are we ready?"
If Obama continues and becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee (and his chances got a lot better last night) it is going to get ugly. Real ugly. Racism is alive and well in America. We are ready to elect a black man President and if Obama wins the nomination we will elect him but his campaign, and everyone else on the Democratic side, is going to have to be ready to win a race war. Us white folks are mean sons of bitches when someone threatens OUR power.
I'm not talking about the KKK or Stormfront obvious nutcases but mainstream Mom and Pop white folks that don't think of themselves as racist but really don't want those people living in their neighborhoods or dating their daughters. The ones that live in towns across America that are 88% white and 12% other and really don't have much if any association with black society.
And make no mistake, electing a black man threatens white power, control, and dominance. Note also that Obama is a black man despite being 50% white. We have never claimed half-whites as white. They are black. We don't claim them as even half white. They are black.
As an aside, it was a revelation to me as a teenager when a friend told me he got the same from black society. That it was a real struggle for him because he wasn't treated by the black community as black. It had never occurred to me that he wasn't black despite the fact his skin color was closer to mine then most of our black friends.
The Republicans will come at Barack Obama with the Hussein stuff. The Osama-Obama stuff. The Indonesia-madrassa stuff. Heck! They'll probably blame the current unrest in Kenya on him and claim that he'll bring the same to America (something the worst amongst them can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy). But it'll be race that is their strongest gut level, divisive playing card... and they will use it.
I am half hoping they do and that they overplay their hand. I think we need to be ready to point out the ugliness, the racism, overt and covert, of their actions. They'll claim we're playing "the race card" but we can't be side tracked by that.
And we can't foist this off on our black friends and compatriots.
This is a battle within white America to get the hell over itself and its... our ... racist past... and present. White Americans need to "lift up" our own people out of these ignorant views. Most whites have no idea just how racist America is. Black people don't need educating on that subject. They know. White people do. And they need to hear it from other white people. Their peers. Us. Not liberals to conservatives. Not educated to uneducated. Not Democrats to Republicans. White average Americans to white average Americans.
The Obama campaign itself needs to steel itself... and I do mean steel... and be prepared for the attacks. The have to respond and they have to respond well. They cannot ignore it. At the same time they need to stay above them and keep their campaign about a positive vision for Americas future. They can't allow themselves to get bogged down and lost in a race war.
The rest of the Democratic community needs to be prepared to do the ugly, trench work on this one. We need to talk race and we need to talk it openly and honestly. Preferably not angrily. I'm thinking a passive-aggressive approach may well be best. Let the freepers froth at the mouth about race while we talk dispassionately and openly about it. Let the ugliness be repellant all by itself. I'm not sure. I think it will depend on a case by case basis but I am thinking that is the best overall approach. Shine a light on the ugliness and place it smack dab in the middle of the village square but stand off to the side and allow Americans to say "I'm not like that" and come to the healing message, the reconciliation, of brotherhood and away from the ugly troll of racism convulsing in the light of day. |
