Thursday, May 31, 2012

I didn't play the race card. I just trumped it.


In the span of just a few days I have been struck over the head with overt and clear descriptions of racism’s strong hold still in America. This will not be a popular blog with some. I truly don’t care. It is time someone points it out and says the truth.

Let me begin with a statement in the Dallas Morning News today from the Metro section where a teacher was fired. He had alleged discrimination and harassment in the Frisco School district. (For those not familiar with the Dallas area, Frisco is in highly conservative {read Tea Party} Colin County. They don’t even like the GOP there if it is anywhere near the center. I was shot the finger while on the George Bush Toll Road because I had an Obama-Biden bumper sticker on my car. Another friend’s wife had her car keyed for the same reason in a Collin County parking lot. That’s just the kind of county it is. Affluent, white and backward.) One of the things the fired teacher pointed out was a conversation with another district employee who said, “You’re black. I bet you voted for Obama. I bet you’re a Democrat. Obama’s the reason this country is screwed up.”

And there in that quick, vile and hate-filled diatribe is the entire feeling that a lot of folks have in this election. True, some are disappointed over certain policy. I, for one, do not like all the policies that this administration has put together.  I find many of them too pandering to the right. That’s correct – to the right. But I feel most of the vitriolic responses coming out are veiled racists feelings.

Now for a case even closer to home: my neighborhood. I was in my local grocery store third in line right at a shift change.  We got one of our favorite checkout ladies, a black woman, who we all love to talk with and joke with. She is as likable as any human I’ve ever met. Fun, filled with joy and especially fast at getting you through the check-out lane. The next in line ahead of me was an older white female shopper who asked the checker for the store manager.  The checker immediately called for a store manager and the woman took her basket out of line and waited.  I pushed mine up next and the checkout lady greeted me and we talked for a second or two. The store manager arrived and I couldn’t help but over hear the lady say, “I want a white person to ring my groceries up. I don’t like it when a negro does it.”

I heard it.  The kind checkout lady heard it. And the store manager, embarrassed by his dilemma hurried the woman off and into another line where he, himself, rang her out. (I later told him I would not spend another cent in his store for buckling under to racist pressure.) “She should have been told that this is one of our finest checkers, if she won’t do for you, you can find another store.” That’s what he should have said. As it is, I spend a huge amount more in his store than the old bitch does.  He has lost a lot more with my leaving than standing up to her racists attitudes. When I went outside to the parking lot I saw her being escorted by an employee to her Cadillac with a sticker that said, “Take our country back.” It was shamefully printed in red, white and blue with an image of the American flag on it.

Racism is rampant in America. And when the opposition accuses me of playing the race card in this election it infuriates me because I can so clearly see it and others want to hide their heads in the sand and say it is a non-issue.

It is an issue.  Many Americans don’t think that “Obama boy” should be the President.

He is the reason we are in such trouble as a country (What trouble?)  He is the reason all our freedoms are being taken away. (What freedoms? Name one.)  He is the reason we are in such debt. (Okay, he spent a lot, but he didn’t start two wars AND cut the taxes at the same time. He inherited that mess from a WHITE REPUBLICAN FROM DALLAS.) He’s the reason the family is under attack. (Which family is suffering?  Where is the war?  Name me a battle site where your family has lost its right to be a family.)  He is the reason there is a war on religion. (I am so tired of hearing the Christian Right cry in their ice tea {I was going to say beer , but they don’t drink in public, just at home behind closed doors.} about the his striking down their liberties.  Name me one liberty the church has lost in America?  The strongest voice in this election is from far-right religious jerks.  You aren’t under attack. You are the ones waging the war.) He is trampling on the Constitution. (Which page?  Show me. He has done more to shore up lost liberties under the Constitution that we lost under the last administration that it is pathetic for the other side to even bring this up. I do wish he had not renewed the so-called Patriot Act, but then again he's not perfect.)

You see, the arguments against this president are nothing short of folly for the most part.  He saved the country from a Great Depression – which in all fairness Bush helped out, too.

He help save GM and Chrysler. (True Fiat played a role in that but only because we backed the sale with US Bonds pushed for by this administration.)

He bailed out the banks (which I am still not sure I would have done, but the experts say it staved off a far worse recession or even the big one #2)

He brought bin Laden to justice – or at least to meet his maker. (Again with the help of the previous administration. And that just shows the continuity of his administration with the last. There hasn’t been a huge revolution in our government. In fact, if you closed your eyes, you’d never know we changed leadership for the most part.

He has lowered our taxes.

Has given us reason to feel proud of our foreign policy again, as the world once more sees us as a fair and honest light in a world of darkness, not a bully trying to throw his weight around which we had become.

He gave us Affordable Health Care, which some call socialism and it is anything but; since it is based on a totally free market system that allows insurance companies (those bastions of free enterprise) to be the backbone of the system. (I myself would have rather had a single-payer system and I will always disagree with this President over not doing that from the beginning, but instead knuckled under to the right-wing of the GOP and gave us something less than a great system…but still we got a universal system, just the same so now my daughter can get insurance and my neighbor who has had cancer can’t be rejected for a prior condition.)

He is working to make student loans more affordable, to help those with student loans pay them down in a more equitable manner.

He has helped shore up the home loan crisis in the country.

And during this time he has only gotten three new federal judge nominations approved by the Senate.  Mitch the Bitch from Kentucky will not work with him in filling federal bench seats. So when you complain about our slow moving courts, don’t point at the black man in the White House.  Point to the old frog from the Blue Grass State who hasn’t smiled since 1867 his birth year.

You see what this president is up against? A congress that truly doesn’t like him. And many in his country that thinks he has no right to be in the white house either because of (a) his birth certificate, or (b) is race. Both articles of which are bullshit.

So to my friends who say that I am riding the race card too much, this is your answer. Racism is alive and well in America. The blacks finally had one of their men elected to the highest office in the land. Something they took great pride in and someone their young people could look up to and have pride and empathy with – someone to which they could emulate. And that pissed the white, redneck, conservative, Christian right wing off no end.

Has Obama been a great president? No. But he has been a fairly good one. And he has recognized and made us recognize that America is more than billionaires and Wall Street and Fox News and the GOP white country club set. He has made us realize that we have problems feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and taking care of our own and our less fortunate. He has said over and over we need to protect our boarders, not foreign lands.

He has made us sit up and take notice of those less fortunate than we are. And that is a good thing. After all, there was once a man named Jesus who forced us all to do that, too.

But hell, he was a Jew. How can you trust a Jew, for God’s sake?


1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the commentary, John.

    I have almost finished Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt... great true crime novel.

    I agree with your premise that President Obama was/is a source of pride among both African-Americans and Negro-Americans and even among what many call Mixed Race-Americans; however, lots of Negros and African-Americans -- like Colin Powell, who is the son of LEGAL Jamaican immigrants -- are not happy with how President Obama has taken positions (or not taken positions) that reflect what their concerns as Negros and People of Color.

    I doubt that Colin Powell will ever endorse him again, and I think a good portion of the Negro vote will not go to President Obama this time -- they might sit this one out and simply let him go into the history books as the First African-American or Colored President. A single Term President Obama looks "just fine" next to Rev. Martin Luther King on school bulletin boards for African American Appreciation Month... both will be remembered for their speeches.

    Neither of them will have changed the white faces of American Presidents that came before and after them. The issue of Racial Equality in America will not be addressed in the Election of 2012 ... and was not addressed to the satisfaction of any Colored Minority (including my own Anglo-American one) over the past four years... and none believe that re-electing President Obama will help that Cause. I don't.

    Colored Minority voters will focus on saving as many of their own minority elected representatives as they have left in order to live and fight another day.

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