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Goodness, I have read too many posts on Salon, Huffington, and NYT among others. I am reading too many posts that do not possess an ounce of nuance and instead pounds of vitriol.
What continues to amaze me in this so-called "discussion" of race is the ongoing need to boil statements down to their basest elements, stripped of context, into a viscous gruel of bile and rage. I begin to feel like if I want a complex discussion of major issues I should just watch "Battlestar Galactica" DVD's.
We miss important points along the way to the present. Has anyone dared to posit that perhaps, just PERHAPS what is astounding about Barack is that, despite growing up without a father, despite having any inherent privileges, and DESPITE finding a good church with a flawed paster, he manages to conduct a balanced, race-free campaign for several months before being dragged into the mud pit by those on the left and the right?
Barack has put his faith into action, by believing that we can come together, and forgiving his pastor's excessive commentary. Why are so many of us unable to do the same? I cannot consider myself a Christian, lacking faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but to put faith into practice in such a real, consistent, and yet progressive way warms my heart.
I am just another over-educated East Coast effete latte-sipping liberal, but one from a family so poor in my youth that we lived on canned mackerel and crackers for several months. I had a child far too young, and through an odd series of events, found myself married and in a poor minority neighborhood outside of Boston. I HAD thought I had overcome adversity. I never dealt with the obstacles that the children there, typically Black and Hispanic, saw on a daily basis. I didn't spend my youth dodging drug dealers, muggings, and car jackings. How could anyone succeed with so much thrown their way?
But someone did. And it wasn't Hillary Clinton. What is very interesting, and something lost in our rants here, is that Bill Clinton's story has much in common with Barack's. Bill was compelling for some of the very same reasons. But in the end, he was a white boy and didn't have to face the trials by fire that we see now.
This is a poorly-organized post, but I want to leave on last thought: I had many relatives with the "typical white person" reaction to race. I had a great-aunt who once told my now ex-wife that Hispanics working under poor conditions in an egg processing plant should be happy to have any job, since they should all be back in Mexico with "their kind" anyway. It took all but physical effort to keep my wife at time from striking her.
This is a good case of "hate the sin, love the sinner." If we toss out everyone with a racist thought or reaction, ostracize those with inherent contradiction in their thoughts and actions, we'll have all the world be a prison with only the wind as our guards.
