America's Racial Divide

I happened to tune in to the cable news program "Hardball" with Chris Matthews on MSNBC this afternoon, quite by mistake. I confess I rarely watch that channel because I already take blood pressure medication and I just can't afford to expose myself to that much pressure! There was a woman on there who was absolutely raving about how those people who were criticizing our President's policies were doing so out of a viciously racist motive. What!!? Now this was a white woman, and granted, she might have drank some really bad kool-aid, but she was espousing a view that, had there been any truth to it, we would still not have a black President. Actually we don't even now. We have a half-black and half-WHITE President. So what? His white side doesn't get much attention

I don't think our problems in this country center around color anymore. At least not black and white. I think the problem colors are green and red, and I am not talking about Christmas here. Money is green and when we don't have the green flowing, we are awash in red. Ink, that is, and it's on the fiscal balance sheet, not our skin. I am sick of the what we can "say" and what we can't freaking say. Could we be real for a minute? Ideology, we got it. We have culture, class, and caste. Yeah the world is certainly diverse, isn't it? Are you kidding me? I am talking the county I live in, my region, and my country too. Labelling! We've got that too, in spades. No pun intended.
We are living, breathing mammals, including humans that claim a Spirit too. Personally I think everything alive has a spirit if not a Spirit!

And anything with a Spirit can feel put down, denegrated by and vulnerable to another group. Our only way to prevent being unhappy in another person's power is to amplify our swagger and join up with others in our same predicament. I realized, just this week, and it really became clear to me that we are devolving, not evolving any more. I belong to the biggest generation living today, called the Baby Boomers. I just found out that they have added a few more years to the end of that. It used to be 1946-1959. I remember that because I remember thinking when I married my husband that since he was born in 1959, I had narrowly dodged a bullet .If he were just a few months younger than me, we would have been in different generations. That just wouldn't have felt right to me. To my spirit and my Spirit!

My husband and I witnessed as young impressionable children, a country at its strongest and business booming. War was looming and waning and we had an invincible military we admired and leaders we believed in. Then we observed the racial divide: far enough post-slavery for hope and prosperity to be coming for people who had long awaited its providence. Not far enough for institutionalized racism and prejudice to have unentangled itself. Most people of good will deplored the prejudice. We just didn't say anything loud enough for many others to hear. We talked among families and friends, the same way we do now. You had a few nuts around out at the edges that ascribed to whatever weird theory that promoted some stupid out-of-the-common prejudices about the differences between black and white. It's dumb. There are only superficial differences. Differences of culture and thought exist not only between races, but generations, personalities, beliefs, ideologies, and every other -ologies we can come up with.

That, right there, is where all the trouble leaks in. The more the populations grow, the more differences we have because we all have our own unique constellations of experience. That largest and most difficult uniqueness is perception. In my perception, another large can of worms was opened by Barack Obama a couple of weeks ago. As a nation we hit that benchmark
when Obama opened his mouth and commented on the arrest of his mentor, Professor Gates, by the Cambridge policeman, Sgt. Crowley. You didn't seriously think President Obama didn't bring his prejudices with him into the White House, did you? He is just a human being. He isn't above us except he has anything money can buy, and people fawning over him like he is some kind of Egyptian pharoah! Do you think someone has to be exceptional as a human being to be elevated to those dizzying heights of power?

Nope. Can I remind you of Hitler, Caligula, and Prince Vlad of Transylvania? Relax, I am not saying that Obama has any resemblance in any way to any of those historical figures or their personalities. No one really knows yet. I am not a revisionist of history, just an observer, and it is only far into the future that we know how history will judge him. Nixon was a villainous figure to most people for a little over a decade and then gradually people started to see that he might have gotten some things right. By the time he passed away, some years ago now, he functioned almost as an elder stateman. Senator Byrd from my home state of West Virginia just outlived all the guys that could recognize his shoes under the white sheet! So now, he charms the crowds with his cute "elderliness" and he still plays the violin. So, although I don't know what history will say of Obama, I do know what they probably won't say. They won't say he ever made anything that contributed to the problem of racism. Obama is the post-racial president. Yep.

My generation saw the civil rights battle in this country. Some of us from closer vantage points than others. My husband who lived much of his young life in southern Mississippi saw it first hand, not just on TV. He was one of the white kids who was bussed to a black school, and as a result, my husband had an education that was far inferior to mine in West Virginia. I was in an all white school. I do remember the black people from Huntington were going to march down route 60 between Huntington and my hometown Ceredo. There were pickups lined up down both sides of the road with shotgun barrels out of every window that went on for over 7 miles. The black people wisely chose not to march. I remember President Kennedy and Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy being shot. Those things didn't just affect Black people. It affected all of us. Society started to change.

We began the Age of Aquarius. Many of us resolved not to carry on the sins of former generations when it came to race, creed, and color. Many of us who had already let go of it, or never really had much prejudice in the first place, breathed a sigh of relief! My family collectively never had enough wealth or power to have really figured much in the whole business ever. My dad's side was probably the most prosperous having owned a slave or maybe two in a few parts of the family stretching across time from the beginning of this country. Mom's family probably never did though I don't know for sure. All I know is that my parents weren't even racist. Mom was raised in coal camps in Kentucky living with and playing with children of every color and nationality. In her elder years, she could still say a few things in different languages. In any case, I did not grow up hearing bad things about black people. We knew prejudice existed because we most certainly saw it happen on our TVs. In some cases, we might have witnessed some, but segregation essentially meant that black and white traveled different roads. We weren't ever in a position to defend anyone.

I think southern whites and southern blacks used to have more in common than northern and southern blacks. That is what my experiences have taught me. But when people started analyzing and exploiting the racial problems and putting all that on TV and in print, they made a lot more people mad. Every time someone says or does something stupid, why are we surprised? Why does it spread like wildfire? We have been going down this road almost as long as we have been a country. I am really tired of it. I know I am not alone in this. My mom used to say the more you stirred s--t the worse it smelled. The older I get, the more I agree. Germany has recovered more from the Holocaust than we have from slavery. Abraham Lincoln would be sad, I think, good old Kentucky boy that he was. I know you always hear he was "from" Illinois. He didn't go to Illinois until he was a adolescent, and as crooked as Illinois is now, he would probably try to get as far away "from" it as possible!

What most white people want to say is that slavery was stupid. We're sorry. Now get over it. Forgive us and move on! Blacks have opportunity now. Many of them are in the highest ranks of military, government, society and celebrity. White people might still have more as a whole, but we also out-populate minorities too. I feel a lot sorrier for the Native Americans who used to own and rule this vast expanse, and now they are stuck on little patches of land that aren't even technically the United States. They suffer from higher rates of poverty and disease than any other Americans. I am so tired of all the propaganda. I believe most white people are ready to move on, but when some black people want to keep stirring the pot, it stirs up the nuts too. When did Billy Graham ever show up and advocate for anybody just because he was white and they were too. I think the scorecards are evening up pretty well. Yeah we have Martha Stewart, but they have Oprah! At least their billionaie didn't lose a lot of her money and position by going to jail. I have never felt defensive like this in my whole life! When some black people started talking about "reparations", it started making a lot of white people defensive. When black people aren't held to the same standards as white people now, it doesn't make sense. Slavery was a bad institution but in my view God gave black people some intrinsic "reparations". Roman 8:28 in the new testament of the Bible says:

" And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,who have been called according to his purpose.

Black people have this unique brotherhood that exists between all of them whether they know them or not. The only time I have ever seen that level of brotherhood among white people is the masonic organizations. With black people, they have been able to draw on their unique experiences to excell in every walk of life. They have created a standard among the music arts that has not been enjoyed by any white ethnicity in centuries. I am not generalizing unequally here either. I am sure there are white people that have suffered for their art and black people who don't sing or dance well either. I am just saying that God has allowed a lot of great breakthroughs for black people to use their talent to reach splendid levels of success. Our government tried to level the playing field with Affirmative Action. There is no inferiority in any race. It's all in your head. But the change doesn't just have to be in white people's heads. Change has to occur in the minds of black people too.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton need to stop coming to the opening of an envelope! African-Americans need to just be Americans. Black people need to get the chip off their shoulder long enough, so white people can quit trying to knock them off, or amass a pile of their own chips to shoulder. No one who is even halfway educated or intelligent is proud of the history of slavery. But it is time for us to quit being slaves to our history. Every incident that happens, every time someone sticks their foot in their mouths, the media is all over it. It's one thing if it is a real injustice that is happening to someone. Why didn't Professor Gates think, "wow, my Martha's Vineyard home is safe. My neighbors look out for me and my property. I will show my identification and my respect to this police officer that is just doing his job, making sure someone isn't in my home that shouldn't be!" Why didn't Sgt. Crowley say to himself, "boy this guy has gotten me all wrong! I am going to explain to him clearly the premise of my visit.( Oh, he's not getting it, because he is a black professor with a chip on his shoulder.) I am just going to pull out my citation book and write him one for verbal assault and go back to the precinct and talk to my superior about it."

Because Professor Gates had the "you just saw me as a criminal because I am black and in this fine home" chip. Sgt. Crowley had the "you are making a fool out of me in front of this crowd, and I can't overtalk your big, irrational mouth" chip. Those are two big heavy chips to carry around. Obama had the "I have to show you I am a regular brother, and defend my friend whose facts didn't quite match up to the official report" chip when he blurted out that the police had acted stupidly when they arrested his mentor, Professor Gates. Well at least he is giving good old "foot-in-the-mouth" Biden a run for his money now

I know this is long and complex. So is life.I hope you stuck with me till now. I have not tried to offend anyone with this opinion. I am just trying to have an honest discussion about our problems between the races. I don't care about this stupid incident because it is irrelevant. Welcome to our crazy world. If people of conscience and good will let our better selves show up at every place we go and with everything we do, we can begin to fulfill the dreams that Martin Luther King talked about. This kind of infighting doesn't help. It only hurts the cause of equality and liberty along with our pursuit of happiness. We can't guarantee or legislate "attitude". We just have to change it! And could we please quit making a racial issue out of every misspoken word?