"Post Racial" America? Hardly

In January of 2009 prior to the inauguration of President Elect Barack Obama I heard political pundits on both the left and right saying how the fact that we'd elected a man who was half black president of these United States meant that America's racial issues were a thing of the past. I grew up listening to my parents, teachers and neighbors telling me about the America of the 50s and 60s where they were openly treated like 2nd class citizens. They talked about seeing their parents being forced to publicly be subservient to others simply because of the color of that persons skin.
           America has long treated race like the bastard child at it's family reunion. In many states whether you were considered black or white could be determined by either your mother's race OR whether or not you had AT LEAST one black ancestor. The logic was if you had one black ancestor you were considered black.  E.G. If your great, great grandmother was black, but everyone else was white you were still black. This was called the "one drop" rule. America wished to be so segregated that it created a racial caste system.

       The election of a black president theoretically brought an end to that idiocy. Unfortunately, just as Americans like to live in a state of denial of anything unpleasant we have a collective tendency to underestimate things with which we'd rather not deal. In this case we underestimated the infinite stupidity of mankind. Racism is a tool invented by wealthy men to keep poor working people of different races at one another's throats rather than joining forces to question their low wages and working conditions. It works equally well with religions, but that's another story.
      Racism is such an effective tool because mankind is by his very nature lazy. He accepts information given to him rather than seeking it. He allows others to think FOR him because thinking requires effort. Translation racism is easy to instill not because people HATE one another, but rather because simply creating a wedge amongst people who know nothing OF one another is incredibly easy especially if neither group wants to actually do any work to dispel whatever information you give them.
      If you are the person who is getting group A at the throat of group B, you pretend to be above wanting to get involved in their dislike of one another despite the fact that you're responsible for it. You nurture the resentment and hatred by giving one group preferential treatment, while at the same time keeping the wages for BOTH groups low by paying one group less than the other and telling the higher paid group that you would pay THEM better salaries if the 2nd group didn't work so cheaply and that your hands were tied.Your ridiculous logic won't be questioned. It will merely be accepted as a blue collar gospel.


          Why the psychosomatic profile on the roots of racism?  It was used as an effective tool in the post civil war south to keep salaries low. The planter class who had kept slaves decided at wars end to use black former slaves as cheap labor, and to pay their largely illiterate white counterparts slightly better (but not by much) in order to create generations of resentment. When the resentment lead to violence the plutocrats pretended to be above the fold and simply let the hatred fester.  The leading classes of the South were Democrats simply because they viewed the Republican party (the Party of Lincoln) as being to liberal. They WERE the ones who had freed the slaves after all. The Democratic party in the south painted the Republicans as a group of liberals who coddled, lazy, uppity blacks and immigrants and in that gained a great deal of traction. This was successful until the late 1960s when the Democratic party passed a series of civil rights laws, the GOP (which had become increasingly conservative) decided to court the rank and file of the white working class Democrats who were resentful of the civil rights agenda their party had taken.
         The "us" vs. "them" mentality which prevailed had never truly been exorcised and masterful politician Richard M. Nixon when running for president in 1968 decided to exploit those long held sentiments. He called it his "southern strategy" it over the course of the next decade and a half it successfully converted the bulk of white southerners from the Democratic party to the GOP.
         Most smart Republicans were never OVERTLY racist in their appeals, but some were, when they were they were seldom chastised.

         Flash forward to present day. Barack Obama is president of the United States and the Republican party essentially put it's legislative agenda on hold for the sole purpose of derailing any idea the man could possibly have. When Obama reached across the aisle to used THEIR ideas Republicans pretended the ideas were never theirs, or that their own ideas were UTTERLY different as they voiced LOUD opposition.
         They frequently painted President Obama as un-American and created a fake controversy seeking otu his birth certificate despite his being born in Hawaii. In his tenure conservative pundits openly attacked him using vile racist stereotypes and generalizations. Conservative law makers heckled him from the floor of the House of  Representatives and "reporters" from conservative news papers openly did the same at press conferences. Each time it happened there was little if any blowback on the guilty by conservative lawmakers or members of the GOP's leadership. Had any other president been treated in a similar fashion (especially a Republican one) the GOP's leadership would have been rightfully up in arms.

      Barack H. Obama is the black man whom the entire political spectrum has told black Americans to aspire to be. He stayed in school, he got good grades, he got married and raised a family and did something with his life? How is this man whom we've been told to BE our entire lives treated? He's openly called, stupid, un-American and a "communist" by his critics on the far right and they encourage their supporters to do the same. What message does that send to persons of color in the United States? It seems to state either "The American dream" doesn't apply to persons of color, OR we should strive for success and the "dream" as long as our dreams don't encroach on the dreams of others OR get us beyond our "limitations". In the end is that any different from the America where my parents and grand parents grew up where they couldn't vote in elections, couldn't own property in certain places, couldn't attend certain schools and could be told that they were simply unwelcome in restaurants and a bevy of public places by virtue of the color of their skin.


Is this some bitter rant from an "angry black man" hardly. I love this country and would give my life to defend her. Do I love President Obama? I can honestly say I LIKE the President, but I love the IDEA of him. He is that guy whom our parents wanted us to grow up to be, the calm, intelligent person who thinks of others before himself. The generation of black people who grew up in the 60s and 70s were told that we could grow up to be president. When one of us actually DOES just that he's reminded every single day that it wasn't too long ago that the "colored" signs were removed from the backs of buses and from the fountains from which they drank.

       Is the GOP racist? No. There are men in the GOP's leadership who are fair, honest and decent men. While there might be many in the GOP's rank and file who openly hold racist beliefs the party as a whole in my opinion is not. The problem is however that by hoping that the small minded racists will continue to vote for those with elephants next to their names on election ballots and choosing the ignore their ignorance the GOP is sinking to being as reprehensible as the Democrats were from 1866 to the mid 1970s.

      

The Validation of Barack Obama

When the election of 2008 ended and it was apparent that the son of a Kenyan immigrant and the daughter of a Kansas W.W. II vet who had fallen in love with Hawaii and decided to raise his family there it was to be the next President of the United States. It was evident that America had made some astonishing leaps in the course of a generation. In 1972 when New York Congress woman Shirley Chislom had declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination no one had taken her seriously. When Jesse Jackson ran in 1984 and again in 1988 he was dismissed as were Al Sharpton and conservative Alan Keyes.
         Men and women who as children had attended segregated schools and vividly remembered "Colored" and "whites only" signs over the entrances of restaurants, affixed to drinking fountains and on the doors of restaurants and even on the doors of public restrooms. Black men and women of the baby boom generation could remember their parents not being allowed to vote, being called stinging pejoratives and being told that certain schools and professions were off limits to them for no other reason but the color of their skin.

            In their lifetimes they saw change in the form of the civil rights laws passed by President Lyndon Johnson and the often violent resistance that accompanied that change.  Martin Luther King Junior before his assassination once opined that "You can not legislate people to love one another." When a tall, skinny bi-racial senator from Illinois spoke of hope, and change it resonated not only with them, but with Americans who truly judged men by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. As a candidate Barack Obama offered Americans the promise of an America we COULD be rather than the America we were. Not all however embraced the president elect. On the eve of his inauguration former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gathered GOP legislators and  outlined a plan to derail President Obama and anything he could hope to accomplish. Their plan was simple enough, to vote in a unified block against EVERY piece of legislation the newly elected president proposed even if he simply used one of the GOP's ideas i.e. The Heritage Foundation's health care alternative to Bill Clinton's health care bill.
        
        GOP legislators would vote no to anything he proposed and would denounce pieces of legislation which they had penned if only to make it appear that he was a partisan incapable of "reaching across the aisle." In addition to this legislative hurdle, the GOP's media outlets lead by Fox News would assail the president at every opportunity. They would question his place of birth, whether or not the proper oath of office had been given to him and whenever possible question his loyalty to the country of which he was President. Any legislative victory he attained was minimized and those who opposed him were aggressively disrespectful. The GOP's mission was to affix the mantle of one term Democratic president Jimmy Carter to him.

                 The far right had taken over the GOP and in 2012 the litmus test for those seeking the GOP's presidential nomination was for far to the right they could veer. At the end of a lengthy primary Massachusetts moderate governor Mitt Romney had become the GOP's standard bearer and all he had to do was to sell out every principle he'd ever had and denounce the health care law he had signed into law in Massachusetts which had become the model for the Nation's first comprehensive health care law. Conservative Super PACs and the GOP ran one of the dirtiest, campaigns in modern history to unseat the president but when the final votes were tallied president Obama had been re-elected to a second term.

             Why is the re-election of this American president so important?  Had Barack Obama failed to win re-election he could be minimized. His term could be painted by the right as a national collective err in judgement. He could be dismissed and vilified in the same manner as Democratic President Jimmy Carter and when history books written and his name mentioned.  His defeat would have been a resounding victory for the subtle old guard who reminds those whom they don't regard as American "enough" that they can achieve anything they wish in the greatest country in the world...within certain limits. and provided those limits didn't upset the status-quo. 51% of Americans giving Obama a chance to finish the job he started on that cold November day in January of 2009 sends several messages.  To baby boomers of color of the civil rights generation it says once and for all that the America in which their mothers and fathers were second class citizens has FINALLY accepted them as Americans. It was not merely a validation to black America, but to ALL Americans who stove for the promise made to them in this great nation's constitution and best surmised by Lincoln's iconic Gettysburg address when he spoke of a nation "Of the people, by the people and for the people".  To those who have long practiced the politics of division it is a reminder that the America in which there was a nefarious person of color, foreigner or communist behind every bush will soon take it's place with the horse and buggy in America's past.

        America's electorate is changing as is America itself. We have long touted ourselves as a great "melting pot" and now we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are in fact becoming one.