Tag: racism

Red State Blues

~ Deb ~ 3 Comments

CNN’s Rick Sanchez showed an interesting map earlier this week.  It was a map of the United States broken into counties.  Each county was shaded either a variation of red or blue based upon whether the county voted more Democratic or more Republican than four years ago.  It was not a breakdown of who actually won the county, mind you, but more of an illustration of political tendency.  So a county could go for McCain but be shaded light blue if McCain only won by, say, 52% and Bush had won it four years ago by 56%, thus the light blue indicating a downward movement for Republicans and slight increase for the Democrats.

With the recent major shift towards the Democrats, not just in the Oval Office, but also in the House and the Senate, it should not be surprising that the country was almost entirely painted in varying shades of blue, light to dark depending on the size of the shift.  Ohio?  Blue.  North Carolina?  Blue.  Southern Mississippi?  Yep, blue.  Almost the entire country, except . . . Arkansas, Tennessee, Northern Louisana, Eastern Oklahoma were almost solid red.

The question was asked on Sanchez’ show about whether this reflected racism still running through a wide swath of the south.  A Republican strategist essentially replied that this kind of question was only asked by trouble-making Democrats who wanted to belittle the Republican party.  Well, then, you can consider me a trouble-making Democrat.

I’ve heard story after story about racist responses to this election.  There were rumors going around local high schools here in Middle Tennessee the day of the election that if Barack Obama won then white kids were going to bring guns to school and kill all the black kids.  In rural Georgia, people were flying flags at half-mast.   An African-American student at Middle Tennessee State University walked out of his dorm room and saw the N word written on the railing of his dorm balcony.

I DO NOT believe that voting Republican automatically makes someone a racist (of course not).  But there was a strong national trend this year that one specific section of the country resisted strongly.  There are likely many reasons for that, and I believe one of them is racism.

What do you think?

Black to the Future

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

A woman in my evening composition class told this story last night.  After leaving the polls for early voting in Nashville yesterday, she happened upon a man she works with.  He asked an interesting question.

“Did you vote right?”

She looked at him a little puzzled.  “Well, I suppose ‘right’ would depend on which side you’re for.”

“What I mean is,” he said with a knowing southern grin, “did you vote black or white?”

As we are approaching the summit of that mountain top Dr. King saw 45 years ago, it must be noted that some Americans remain stuck in a valley of immense ignorance.  For a long time now, we have lived in the delusion that racism was disappearing.  As Barack Obama edges closer to the Oval Office, our baser elements seem to be crawling out of the ooze.

But don’t think for a minute that I would advocate the impossible (and unnecessary) concept of a colorblind election.  This election IS about the economy and the war and education and health care, etc.  But, this election is also about race, and it should be.

The civil war ended 143 years ago and with it the national sin of slavery.  In those 143 years, we have experienced Reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynchings, Plessy v. Ferguson, segregation, Brown v. The Board of Education, lunch counters, sit-ins, fire hoses, police dogs, and church bombings, not to mention the death of a thousand cuts that shows up as that subtle, systemic, sinister, subconscious bigotry that insinuates itself into everything from jobs to jokes.  To a sociologist studying cultural change, 143 years is nothing.   We absolutely cannot elect a black man to the most powerful office in our nation in 2008 and not recognize how profound that moment would be.

When I cast my vote a few weeks ago for Barack Obama, I did so because I believe in his plan for America.  I agree with his economic vision, his policy of diplomacy first and war last, his devotion to equality for all Americans, and his recognition that our diseased health care system must undergo surgery.  But I also felt a personal thrill and undeniable swelling of patriotism that I lived to see the day I could vote for an African American for president.

He shouldn’t be president because he’s black.  But it still does mean something that he is.  And regardless of whether he accomplishes that task or not, we can’t put this genie back into the bottle.  Our national racism has once again come up for healing.  And our national prayer should be that we eradicate this cancer once and for all.