What is imprinted when we are children is hard to shake. I confess that I have a racial paranoia that I rarely exhibit because it serves no purpose, other than to make me afraid to walk forward. But as a little girl, sitting on the floor where it was cool in the Illinois summertime heat, watching our black and white television, scenes of unimaginable violence toward people that looked like me, was de rigeur. Dogs and hoses and fists and crosses and faces contorted in blind hatred and strutting sheriffs and placid protesters...all were part of the upheaval of my youth. And I saw it. Sometimes on television. Sometimes in real life -- though nothing like what those on television endured.
I cannot forget it. It's sad that I can't because there are beliefs that sit within me, even as I look at and love people who don't look like me.
Witnessing the Republican's tactical deployment of sixteenth cousins to the behavior I witnessed has been difficult. I don't ask non-white people whom I love, who I know are Republican, if they are voting for the man whose campaign used these tactics because 1) they're younger than I so they don't get the crassness of it; and 2) I don't want to know that it's not a deal-breaker for them. I want to keep loving my Republican friends after this is over.
On Friday, my beloved friend, a conservative and life-long Republican, let me know she's voting for Obama. I don't think I've ever been so relieved and grateful in a long time. She's doing it based on material factors and probably not on rejection of what I consider to be race-baiting by the Republican campaign, but no matter. It relieved me immeasurably.
With all the above rambling in mind, I'm posting a video with Mavis Staples singing Eyes on the Prize. I am hoping this will explain, if not absolve, my racial paranoia to the young ones. This is how I first saw how white people, given full allowance for awful behavior, felt about me and mine.
So when I see a Republican field office deploy newsletters depicting Obama Bucks, I fear that we aren't that far removed. I have a litany of other offenses and articles and videos and statements, but why list them. (If you e-mail me, I will send them to you. I can't bring myself to show them.) They would be distilled down to the self-entitlemed privilege that tells them that it's perfectly fine to write, say, imply, depict, anything they feel is appropriate to appeal to the lesser angels exhibited in that video. That those lesser angels are in existence and being called to by a campaign for president is heartbreaking.
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