It must be an intoxicating and fearful time to be a black political junkie. I assume this because it appears that Barack Obama is poised to become the next president of the United States, but, at the same time, a political junkie is forced to confront one racist attack after another. Try to read an article about Obama’s efforts to win Indiana, and you get subjected to this:
For others, like David Ward, who runs an antique shop with his wife in New Albany, the issue is race. Ward, a registered Democrat, said he will vote for McCain “mainly because he’s not black.”
Blam!! Out of nowhere, it’s like a sock to the stomach. Try to read Sean Quinn’s account of his travels in Western Pennsylvania, and you get this:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
More pain. Go over to the Politico and read Ben Smith’s piece on Racists for Obama.
“I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently.
One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are … undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”
Watch any of the videos being made at McCain-Palin rallies, where Republicans yell, “Go back to Africa” and “We’ll vote for who we want, this isn’t the Oprah show” and brandish stuffed monkeys dressed up like Barack Obama.
Anytime they poll the American people about racism, blacks say there is more of it than whites. The raw racism on display this election season is probably more educational for whites than for blacks, who have had a more accurate picture of reality all along. But, either way, it’s deeply painful to see these suspicions confirmed in such a brazen way. It’s not so much that racist attitudes are being confirmed. It’s that so many people live in microcultures where racism is so accepted that they openly profess their racism to Obama canvassers, reporters, and other perfect strangers. It’s the lack of shame that I find most disturbing.
And it hurts me to know that black people all over the country are being traumatized by these hate-filled expressions of intolerance. It doesn’t help a bit that a racist is going to vote for Obama. That can’t take the sting out of their statements. That can’t take the sting out of the fact that this election has apparently given people license to say out loud what they were supposed to be ashamed to admit.
For a long time, a good section of the white community has been impatient with talk about racism and this country’s violent racist past. Why not get on with life and enjoy your full citizenship and civil rights? Stop making excuses for your poverty, and stop taking my tax money to pay for you to sit on your ass.
But, we can now see how widespread and virulent racist attitudes are in this country. And it’s heartbreaking.
I’m voting for the nigger.
Yep, that is certainly true. I state this because the ACTION is so much more important than the WORD.
I’ll take the vote, regardless of how it is stated.
I’m not talking about the vote.
And the n-word is highly offensive, too.
I think that’s a bit overboard. Allow me to regurgitate my last comment in a previous post. We’ve had to deal with this same crap from liberals all the time. We already know how most conservatives think of us. This is not shocking or new. It’s just more high-profile because bloggers and the MSM are reporting on it. But I’m definitely not ‘traumatized’. I’m more amused at Democrats who are all of a sudden shocked or sickened by it, even though their cohorts have always displayed these emotions. They just chose to tell me I’m being “overly sensitive” or “having a bad day” because “s/he’s a progressive!”.
My name is Oscar and I approve this message.
As a child, I saw white parents riot on Canal Street in New Orleans because a little colored girl of my same age was going to desegregate an elementary school. That was upfront and personal on TV, with the violence not a mile away from my house.
I guess I am just like some gay people who are wondering whether someone here is going to turn them into ash like they did in Nazi Germany.
The virulence of the racism–like I said before, upfront and personal is highly and deeply offensive and disturbing.
I’m more amused than anything else. It’s been a very revealing campaign for liberal white America more than anyone else. Conservative whites know that prejudice and bigotry is there in their community, if not at the surface, then very close to the surface. The racist sentiments expressed toward Obama are no surprise. And for the most part, it’s the same way with black people. We know it’s still here in America, and we deal with it every day. There are no, “I can’t believe it’s 2008 and we are still seeing this in the United States!” moments for black people. We knew all of this stuff would happen to a black man running for president. We knew his candidacy would cause sentiments which were under the surface to bubble up. We are mainly just happy that Obama still has a great chance of winning despite it all because of how bad Bush and the Republicans have screwed up this country. And we are proud of Obama for being such a great candidate and running such a tremendous campaign. It won’t be his fault if he doesn’t hold McCain off. He’s excelled as a politician, and the background conditions should be more than enough to counteract the prejudice. It will just be an embarrassing moment for the American electorate if Obama loses.
BooMan, you know the Princeton area quite well, right? Then you know that there’s still an uneasy color line that runs down Witherspoon St. right past the hospital. You know that casual anti-Semitism is still the norm behind many closed doors.
The rank-and-file Federal workforce is roughly the same, in my experience.
No place is immune.
I know it seems strange, but the single place where I’ve personally seen the default racial division broken apart and rendered obsolete is in the military. And it’s taken, what, 60 years of application since Truman’s directive to integrate for that to happen in any lasting, useful way?
yes, I am familiar with that neighborhood, which is derisively known as ‘Browntown’ by some white locals. It was settled by servants for the university students back in the 19th-Century, and there is an old high school on Nassau Street (now a part of the university) that was for the black community (segregated) up into the 1950s. IIRC, the lower schools were integrated, though, even then.
On the whole, Princeton is not a particularly racist place. I wasn’t exposed to racism until I reached the 7th grade. As for anti-Semitism, I experienced absolutely none in my entire childhood in Princeton. But, almost all my closest friends had at least one Jewish parent and I went to one of the most progressive Episcopalian churches in the country.
I’m not black (brown) but I’m not traumatized either–it’s not surprising to me. If anything I am relieved to have it out in the open.
This is how I feel. I figured out in High School that racism was still alive and well in the country, no matter how many folks kept trying to tell me otherwise. It’s pretty damn blatant in most of the “Heartland” once you put yourself in a mindset where you’re willing to acknowledge it.
In fact, here in the “heartland” the only folks I know who deny that racism is an issue anymore are all young white conservatives. Those guys are the ones who I see having a traumatic eye-opening experience as they are beginning to realize the underbelly of the party that they never “signed up for”.
Maybe it’s different on the coasts, but at least in my experience midwestern liberals don’t have many delusions about racism being a non-issue in this country. And most of us were expecting this to happen when Obama announced he was running.
At least in the upper mid-west its subtle. There’s only twice where I’ve been more obviously discriminated against once at a bowling alley and once at a bar. But it’s more in the attitudes. Despite the fact that I was always one of the smartest kids in school, teachers would always assume I had trouble with the English language, or needed to be in the “slow” course or started me behind other comparable kids. My reaction was “Oh yeah, I’ll fucking show you” and worked my ass off to pass all those kids who started ahead of me and usually did.
Now, my little sister who is even smarter than I was (and is 12 years younger) finds different reactions: teachers who had me in their classes treat her like a regular smart kid, but teachers who didn’t or are new treat her like I did: slow class, assuming she needs help etc.
It’s might not be a desire to kill, but that constant assumption that they expect you to be inferior due to your skin color is definitely frustrating. And of course there are some teachers and parents that get very upset when a little brown girl/boy is doing much better than their lilly white kids.
When people are encouraged to be afraid and uncertain their ignorance is always more easily weaponized. And nothing says ‘weaponized ignorance’ like racism and xenophobia and religious extremism.
The fact that people are surprised at this blatant display of racism is but one more example of how clueless we are collectively about how truly uncivilized our broader society really is.
it’s disgusting, but not at all surprising in Pennsylvania, a state that is filled with more stupid and ugly people than anywhere else I’ve lived.
We have a huge nazi skinhead problem here and a bad aryan nations problem as well.
let them choke on their vomit –
TPM notes
and most doubt he could do it
Go Obama, GO all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
.
It ain’t difficult, is it?
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated the Confederates at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."When it was rumored that Barack Obama was going to run for President, I came out that I hoped he would. I hoped he would because I thought it was time that the United States saw a credible Black candidate for President.
I wanted him to run because I wanted the answer to this question:
Would White people vote for a Black man for PRESIDENT?
I didn’t know the answer to that question; I only knew that I wanted the answer.
The annals of history of this country have been riddled with White people choosing WHITENESS over common sense.
It was obvious that this country had gone into the toilet.
My concern was, for many White folks, would they choose to go down the same road of insanity with McCain because Obams was Black?
So, while the story in Pennsylvania might upset some, when I read it, I LOL. Just as I did when I read over at MyDD.com, the experience of someone canvassing in Southwest Virginia:
They came upon a trailer. On the flagpole was the Confederate Flag, flying high. On the lawn was an Obama sign.
The image is jarring; makes you shake your head, and then count it as an Obama miracle and keep on going.
I wrote awhile ago that the Black middle class was the first group to go to Obama because they could identify with him so much. they could watch him, and see his travails, and the double standard, and the ‘moving of the bar’, with nobody commenting on it in the MSM, but always, we noticed. We could relate to Obama because of our travails in the White Corporate World.
To be honest, most White folks don’t want to hear the answer to the question:
What did Barack Obama do to EARN your vote?
He earned it, IMO, because of the respect that has grown for him, traversing this minefield known as Presidential Politics, with one hand tied behind his back during the Primary Season, because he couldn’t be seen as the Big Black Brute picking on the poor Wittle White Woman Hillary. He earned it, as we’ve watch everything in his life be microscopically examined, while the obviousness of what they aren’t doing with OTHER candidates is blinding in it’s double standard glare. He earned it, because as Black folks, we’ve watched as they’ve dealt one racist taunt upon another at him AND his wife, and he’s still standing there, along with Michelle, with grace, elegance, calm.
There have been times during this campaign where I believe ONLY Black folks understood what Obama was up against. And, because we do, and how he’s handled himself, IMO, he’s more than earned our respect, and our vote.
Well, to be fair, he’s a Democrat, so black or white his chances of winning the white vote are about as good as mine, and I’m not running. For now, he’s getting closer than Kerry or Gore did. Might actually be getting closer than Clinton, but I don’t know.
Liberal complacency allowed Ronald Reagan to become president and Newt Gingrich to take over Congress.
The greatest danger of an Obama administration is that after November 4 liberals will say “We won” and go back to their non-involved lives.
In fact, the remnants of the modern conservative movement are counting on it.
You’re shocked there’s racism in this campaign. Shocked, I tell you, shocked?
I’m shocked that so many self-professed racists are in fact going to “vote for the nigger” or “vote for the colored boy”. And if they put it in those terms they are not giving you a polite “Yes”. They are really going to vote for Obama. I don’t know how extensive that phenomenon is but I suspect it’s gaining strength in union areas.
And it really is the economy and the incompetence of the Republican administrations.
Will it be enough? The suspense of that question is enough to stop suicides or premature emigrations.
I heard about a pickup truck in North Carolina with a shotgun in a rack and a bumper sticker that read, “I love my gun but I love my job more — Vote Obama”. I understand that the former Republican Governor or Virginia is running around SW Virginia challenging white voters,”What matters more? His race? Or your job?”.
The specter of Depression II is forcing white America to make this choice. I’m glad they have McCain instead of Romney. With Romney, they could convince themselves yje he knew what to do. With McCain, they know he is hopeless. All he’s got is he’s white. Will it be enough? I don’t know. I do know it’s enough for Northern racists, but I’ll never understand Southern Whites. I have a friend from Mississippi. He believes that the Civil War (or as he calls it, The War of Northern Aggression) was a noble defense of states’ rights. He’s a Southern White Man through and through. Yet he’s totally non-racist and an Obama booster. He was raised racist, but says he learned better in the Navy.
I can’t find it on Google Images, but there is a very famous photo of then Sen. Doug Wilder standing in front of a HUGE confederate flag, grinning and giving the V for victory sign. It was on the cover of When Hell Frooze Over. It is pretty funny. I would have no way to know, but there must be more than a few blacks who feel the same way.
Of course racists are going to vote for Obama. The whole idea was that he is the sort of black politician some white racists will vote for. If I was that canvasser I would be laughing. Yes, racism is widespread, but this year it isn’t going to hold us back.
Yeah, I laugh too.
(shrug) Shocked white person #456547656456.
Yes, yes, there is overt racism against Blacks in this country, and even more covert racism (of course, let’s not even mention the rampant, and far more “acceptable” racism against “Middle Eastern” people, and Muslims).
And yet, a black man has been nominated for President of the United States, and may very well be elected. That says a great deal about how far this country has come just in the last decade or two.
I personally could not care less about the race or gender or national origin of any candidate, and neither Obama’s race nor Clinton’s (or Palin’s) gender is of any interest at all to me in making a choice. However, if Obama is elected, I will not only be celebrating the fact that the United States – and in my opinion, the world – have dodged a very dangerous bullet, I will also be celebrating what electing a black man means for American society.
As someone who is not black, or even very dark skinned, I consider the fact that a black man is where Obama is to be far more significant than the fact that there are still people in this country who are overtly racist. And anyway, as one of my black colleagues and I agreed the other day, it is only when things like race and ethnicity are not issues worth mentioning in situations like this that we will be able to relax. I hope to see the day when it is no longer remarkable that a black man and a white woman battled for a major party nomination.
Not traumatized. It pisses you off, without a doubt, but most African Americans who actually make it to adulthood would not be traumatized at this point because you suffer your trauma early on and/or are warned about from your parents.
It saddens me but doesn’t surprise me. And lately–it has just made me laugh!
Really!
Take, for instance, the asshat with the stuffed monkey. Did you see him? A complete fucking loser. He has nothing. He is nothing. He looked like a fat pedophile on parole. But when he found out that the cameras on him were news cameras, he suddenly gave his toy away. Real brave there, Chester.
That doesn’t traumatize me–that makes me laugh. And it gives me strength.
But I am happy that attitudes are coming out in the open. Denial is harder when the truth is revealed. Folks can’t pretend it’s “all in your mind” or you don’t have a “sense of humor” or that folks are being “overly sensitive.” Of course, looking at ugly people and their ugly attitudes is not fun. OTOH, lots of hearts, minds and eyes have been opened. And you meet people who are genuinely pissed off by the behavior, too. That’s always a good thing.
And the best thing: There are people who are PISSED about what they see, and are willing to write and name it.
🙂
My, my…I grew up in Princeton in the ’50s and ’60s and attended Witherspoon St. school. I remember as a white kid I was nervous on the first day because I had to walk down the section of Witherspoon that entered the “black community”. I was 12. It became clear right away that I had nothing to fear as I made black friends quickly. That was the end of any potential racism for me. I’m sorry to hear that old prejudices die hard even in what I always considered an enlightened community.
I was another white kid that grew in a small rural Oklahoma town. When the schools were integrated in the mid ’50s I went to the school in the center of the black community. I was 10. I also made friends easily and grew angry when racism was expressed especially in my family. My own kids living in Colorado are now in their early 20s. Race, sexual expression or sexual orientation is not an issue with them. I can tell because their friends are a mixed crowd of all the above. I think however they do discriminate based on the type of music considered cool.
My Mother still lives in that Oklahoma town and has not changed much. After the civil rights laws in the mid ’60s she stopped using the n-word because ‘you just don’t do that anymore.’ That lasted until FAUX news arrived when she went back to using the n-word.
Two of my three kids are working with the Obama campaign in Colorado. This a third generation and the change is real.
I highly doubt that black adults are being traumatized, Boo. Between their experiences and the fact that Obama’s winning, I’d imagine most are shrugging and saying something to the effect of, “Whatever, assholes.” They know this stuff is out there. They’ve dealt with it.
What I find incredibly offensive is that small kids are having to see and hear this garbage, many for the first time, and I imagine they’re quite confused and upset because of the fact that Obama, whom they’re looking up to, has done nothing to deserve this kind of hateful speech.
That’s what truly bothers me.
My hope is that he wins, and then we can all enjoy laughing at these idiots.
I couldn’t agree more. As a Black man, my response is that some people are just going to have to die ignorant. We’ll move on and relegate their ignorance to the dustbin of history.
Yep. And it’d be nice to be able to say to those kids, “Ignore ignorance. They’re nasty and hateful, and they lost, so just have a good laugh and do your thing.”
I think in a way the racism we’re seeing in this election is probably more shocking for whites who aren’t racist and don’t often see these kinds of blatant expressions of racism, than it is for African Americans who are well aware that that racism is there and actually experience it.
Drew Jones, I agree with your comment about children being exposed to the racism.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a black parent — do you start inuring your child to the racism right away? It would be hard, as a parent, to do that — and yet, if you don’t, and you send them out there to find out on their own…? That would be unthinkable.
Heart-breaking decision to have to make.
Thanks.
I don’t have kids, so I can’t pretend to know what it’s like for parents, let alone black parents. I’m a pretty standard-issue liberal white guy. Twenty-four years old, college-educated, live in NoVa (but wasn’t born here, moved from Florida), etc. Could I be more of a stereotypical Obama supporter?
Kids are smarter and tougher than they’re given credit for though. I’ve learned that through my significant other’s experiences. She’s a teacher. All her kids — black, white, Asian, Latino, all of’em — are for Obama and excited by him. They get that older people have issues, and they get that they’re watching history unfold in front of them. They’ll be confused and upset, but they’ll adapt, so long as we, as a society, demonstrate that these ugly people don’t speak for us.
There’s lots of casual racism out there on all sides.
There’s lots of casual sexism out there on all sides.
There’s lots of casual homophobia out there on all sides.
Don’t act surprised. Don’t act shocked.
Act aware of it. Speak out against it when you see and hear it. Act BETTER, because we can each change our own actions.
But above all, act like it’s unacceptable behavior. Because that’s what it is.