I have tried to ignore it or rather ignore my feeling about it. I watched a dear friend shed tears when Teddy Kennedy's senate seat went to a dim-witted, blowhard who appealed to rage filled people who say they don't want big government but sure want government to fix everything and NOW. I had a glass of wine and a bite of chocolate as if that would make it go away, even though I knew as soon as Obama was elected that it would happen. Maybe that's why the honeymoon period was so sweet because we got lightheaded from holding our breath.
But it's here now, and, like a hemorrhoid, like the loud, drunken ass on the bus, like the blood bloated fly knocking itself silly between window and screen, it can't be ignored anymore, at least not by me. This is a backlash against the fact that Obama is Black.
And I'll tell you why.
My parents would tell me, from time to time, that I would always have to work harder, accomplish more, be better than my white peers simply because of the color of my skin. To achieve the same results as everyone else, I'd have to be roughly twice as good. I don't know if I ever completely bought into this idea, and certainly, my road has been much easier than the previous generations in terms of what I've had to face in terms of discrimination. However, the sense I have and the proof I have of the insidiously institutionalized racism in our systems, but more importantly, in our hearts is honed to a fine edge. Call it the resurgence of hate, if you will. It's the same bitter brew from which terrorism arises. Take some folks who feel victimized. Maybe they are victimized. Maybe they've had some loses, maybe their lives have gotten harder. Maybe their lives were never easy. They decide--they make a choice--to choose to blame someone else, someone they can discern as different from themselves in some way as being the cause for their perceived misfortunes. This is kind of a double whammy in the Obama situation--it would be hard, I think, for anyone with an even slightly clear mind to deny the fact that we're in the mess that we're in because of Bush/Cheney/greedy men/and our own greed and blindness. But let's not face this, oh no, let's not try to change what we can change within ourselves, or help our neighbors, let's blame that Nigra in the White House because we knew he couldn't do it in the first place, being a Nigra and all. Sure, the congress is in a log jam, sure he's generated more potentially life-changing legislation in his first few months in office than many, many other leaders, sure he's changed the way the U.S. is viewed around the world, sure he and his team have engineered some unpopular but ultimately successful bailouts that have kept us from falling farther down an economic cesspool, but, damnit, we're mad at a fundamental level, we're bitter, and we're deeply in touch with our ugliest attitudes, and this makes us more than willing to be swept along in a tide of ignorance and bullshit that will cost us even more of our prosperity in the long run.
I know President Obama has a lot to learn; I know that he has had failures during this first year; there are areas where he seems to have been short-sighted, stubborn, naive. His team doesn't seem to have learned how to deal with Congress productively. The back room deal making that people are complaining about has been going on since before politics was an evil gleam in a prehistoric man's eye.
But we owe ourselves that thing, that attitude that seems to serve Americans best which comes out of times when things are at their worst--that sense of pulling together for a common good. Those few days after 9/11, when we were letting each other into traffic, and helping each other up the steep bus steps. The collective rush, the palpable sense of having elevated ourselves once civil rights legislation was passed. Those few brief months of happiness after Obama was elected, that whiff of having at the least elected someone who was bright enough for the job. The surge of support for the earthquake victims in Haiti. The glow that comes from living in a place where speech is free and all shades are tolerated.
So, I'm taking note. I have my ugly feelings, I've shouted at the TV, but I'm going to commit to be involved and I'm going to act out of my faith that human beings have the potential to see beyond the superficial, even that idiot Palin. I'll try to give this new Blowhard the benefit of the doubt. And I'll pray like mad that the birthers, tea baggers, militiamen and die hard bigots and that Ken doll Mitt Romney have some kind of epiphany about what it truly is to be American.
And I'll try to remember that I have a sense of humor.
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