Obama Phobia

This post began as an email reply to a comment left in my journal on my post yesterday. Here's the comment:

 

One thing in your entry did make me frown...
'I have no more tolerance for those who profess that he scares them, that they worry that he's going to sell out this country. That's total nonsense and you're too ignorant for words to even believe it. If I hear or read one more person assert that he's a Muslim and that he's going to help the terrorists destroy the United States, I'm going to scream. And so help me, if I read or hear one more white person say that he is a reverse racist, I'm going to forget that I believe in nonviolence and slap somebody up side the head. By the way, my head was wagging when I wrote that last line.'

I am not ignorant, I am not racist, but from day one I had a gut feeling, a mistrust, not the color of his skin but the way he spoke.  Elegant some say, to me it's fake.  I don't think he'll sell out the country, but I don't have a blinded trust.  He's a politician.  I can't stand by and be called ignorant for my opinion, sorry.  

Sorry, but I don't get it. How would you expect a person who graduated from Harvard Law School, who lived in many different parts of the world as a child, to speak? Does Ted Kennedy sound fake? Does Bill Clinton? Does Hillary? Does John McCain? Does George W. Bush? (Okay, bad example; he is fake.) What do you expect a well-educated black man to sound like? What is fake about being an eloquent orator?

 

I don't have blind trust in anyone. However, I do find it interesting that white Americans have expected black people to trust them for generations, as they have run for political office and made promises that often have not been kept. As a people, black Americans have been tolerant and trusting for a long time. Curiously so given our history in this country. It began with slavery but it didn't end there. Segregation, Jim Crow, lynching, all were the progeny that followed slavery and lasted well into my lifetime.

 

Imagine being snatched up, chained together, branded with a hot iron like cattle, and then being shoved into the hold of a ship where you would remain for months. You will never see your homeland again, your parents, your husband or wife, your children, your life has just ended and yet you still breathe.

 

You arrive in a strange land with others who are like you but not like you. All Africans are not the same and the slave traders made an effort to mix tribes, recognizing that the differences in languages and customs would make the possibility of their captives joining together in an uprising during the long sea voyage, less likely.

 

I understand that no one alive today had anything personally to do with slavery, point taken. However, this country was built on the backs of African slaves, American Indians, Chinese railroad workers, all groups that did not voluntarily commit  their labors, and or land to building  these United States but were conscripted into doing so, and then denied a fair share of the benefits that their efforts reaped.

 

Every first year law student has to take a class on property law, after all, this country is predicated on notions of ownership--land, air space, intellectual property etc. One case from the 1800s that we studied dealt with a momentous decision regarding land ownership.

 

Some Native Americans had attempted to reclaim the land that had been taken from them by white settlers and had taken their case to the courts, hoping to find justice. The court couldn't deny that the Native Americans occupied the land for generations before the settlers had taken it, so it came up with a new definition of ownership. According to the court, the native population had been merely occupiers of the land; they never owned it because they didn't engage in the activities of ownership such as cultivating the land, i.e., cutting down all the trees and making it into farmland or grazing land for cattle. Therefore, the Native Americans had never owned the land, and when the white settlers cultivated the land, they established ownership. Decision in favor of the settlers, and the setting of a legal precedent that salved the white landowners consciences and allowed them to sleep well at night.

 

The more of the history of this country that you know, the more the question should be why are people of color not consumed with hatred and a desire for vengeance?

 

I'm not filled with hate or seeking vengeance, and neither are the majority of the people of color in this country. (By the way, my list of people of color who have suffered discrimination in this country is not meant to be exhaustive; it would take much more time than I have to acknowledge every group.)

I am, however, intrigued by the paranoia and anger that is expressed by some white people. Sorry, but my people have never done unto your people what your people have done unto us. What right do you have to be paranoid or angry? Why does a black man (who is really as much white as he is black) scare some of you? Are you afraid that Barack Obama is going to engage in a big payback, retribution for the sins of your ancestors? Trust me, if black people had some big plan for punishing white people, we wouldn't have waited so long.

 

We don't want retribution; we don't want vengeance. What we do want is fairness, equality, and respect. We want recognition that this country, this society that we live in today, would not be what it is without the blood, sweat, and suffering of our ancestors. We want you to recognize that it doesn't matter that you didn't personally own slaves, that nonetheless as a white person, you have reaped the benefits of a society that was built on slavery, on the intentional, systematic, and legal oppression of one group of people by another group of people, based on skin color. We want you to acknowledge that this oppression didn't magically end with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865, to the contrary, the subsequent rigid segregationist laws and policies that fueled the Jim Crow era were in many ways more horrific than slavery itself. We were a free people but enjoyed none of the rights of a free people.  My father went off to fight a war (the Korean conflict) riding at the back of the bus on his way to the departure air base. Black people, not even men in uniform, were not allowed to ride at the front. We want you to acknowledge that you recognize our pain.

 

So when I read comments about fearing Barack Obama, not trusting him, it leaves me totally bewildered. What has he done to merit such fear? Did his ancestors ever support a legal right to enslave others? Did his ancestors engage in the wholesale lynching of others based on skin color? Did his ancestors deny people the right to vote, to live where they pleased, to attend school, to marry whom they pleased?

 

What has Obama personally done that has demeaned others? Has he ran a campaign of divisiveness? Has he declared that he is only concerned about the well-being of black people? Does being erudite, capable of presenting complex ideas in an understandable fashion, make him a person to be feared?

 

If you don't support Barack Obama, then just say so, but don't come up with some sanctimonious nonsense about how you would like to support him but you fear him because he speaks like a fake. You don't have to support Obama to prove that you're not a racist. I'm not really interested in racists because I think that they are a hopeless cause. Most people aren't racists, but all of us engage in prejudice and bigotry way too much. I don't give people a racism litmus test by asking them if they plan to vote for Obama.

 

I am excited about Obama and I know other people, black, white, Hispanic, Asian etc. who are also excited. However, I dare say that everyone that I know is not an Obama supporter and I haven't dismissed them as being racists. However, their reasons for not supporting Obama are far more complex than that they are afraid of him. I'm not even afraid of George W., although I probably should be. 

 

Ask yourself what you mean if you are one of those people who is afraid of Barack Obama? Ask yourself, what in the hell do you have to be afraid of?

 

The video is by a singer/ songwriter whom I like a great deal. Her name is Tracy Chapman. The lyrics are below the video.

Talkin 'Bout A Revolution 

Don't you know
They're talkin 'bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Don't you know
They're talkin about a revolution
It sounds like a whisper

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take whats theirs

Don't youknow
You better run, run, run...
Oh I said you better
Run, run, run...

Finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin 'bout a revolution

Tags: Barack Obama, racism, fear, slavery, Jim Crow, the middle passage,  Tracy Chapman