The historic election of Barack Hussein Obama to the Presidency of the United States of America was heralded by dancing in the streets across the globe. A victory of hope for the entire planet. Proof that my country has at last embraced the ideology it has talked about, but failed to demonstrate, for centuries.
Meanwhile, in Backwoods, Idaho, KKK-ville, Alabama, and other radical pockets throughout the U.S., a devastating blow was felt by white supremacists. Sadly, I am related to a couple of these, and hence when encountering these individuals, I have lately been bombarded by expressions of (racial epithet) at every opening.
With victory and righteousness now in my corner, I did, for the first time in many years, take a stand on the matter of the “N” word. There was little argument from the offending party. Instead of the heated debate I anticipated, I got a convictionless defense of semantics. (“We have always called them that.”) I confess, I was so prepared for the Moment of Truth, I was disappointed by his lack of defense. There was so much more that I would have liked to say. I decided not to kick the downed man any further.
Yet, the debate continues to swirl about in my mind, taking up space and energy that I would as soon direct to more productive matters, and so, I have determined to write it down and get this out of the mental whirligig that I call my brain.
I am white. Raised in rural eastern Nevada, my childhood experience with ethnic diversity was limited. The children in my town were mostly of European descent, plus a few Mexican families, a couple of Asians, one family of Native Americans living off the reservation, and, with two children a few years older than I, one family of African Americans. I was never acquainted with them, presumably, due to the age separation. They attended classes with my older brother, but I never heard him mention them, at all.
As young children, we knew no differences. Our fathers all worked for the same company, had similar jobs, and –as far as I know — earned the same wages. We all got along as well as any group of kids going to school together, year after year, and I never knew about racial prejudice until perhaps junior high. By then, relationships among us were well-established, and I don’t think the racism of our parents changed any of that. It didn’t in my case, anyway. One of my best girlfiends was Mexican. I sometimes played with the Paiute girl in my class. Back then, we called them “Indians”, as they also referred to themselves. My first encounter with racial ignorance was when another friend asked her if she didn’t sometimes “… wish you were American?”.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Movement was a faraway news item that bore no relevance to my life out west, at the age of nine. I remember an older relative saying about Dr. Martin Luther King, “It’s that ____ stirring up all the ____’s down South.”
In the late 1970’s I went to the South for the first time. My first day in Houston, as I paddled about in the motel swimming pool, I was approached by a young black man, who spoke to me in a way I thought flirtatious. This frightened me so badly, I got out of the water, ran to my room, double-locked the door, and hid behind closed drapes until morning. I had never spoken with a black person before. Although I spoke with idealism then, I still carried the fear of difference that my parents had impressed upon me.
Later, in Louisiana, a group of my co-workers and I went into a fast food place to get lunch. A group of black people were in front of us, and one of my crewmates said quite loudly, “I won’t stand behind a ____!” I stepped up and took his place. I couldn’t imagine anyone being so blatantly rude. It was one encounter among many that I would witness down there, including myself once being denied medical treatment after a car accident, because I had walked into the ER with a black man — a co-worker of my husband, who had accompanied me because my husband was out of town at the time. (Of course, they never actually SAID that was the reason for sending me to a different facility.)
In Texas, I once witnessed a KKK rally. It was one of the most horrifying and shame-inducing displays I have ever seen. Such malicious conduct, under the banner of skin the same color as mine! Revulsion washed over me to the extent that I became physically ill.
The incident that had the most profound effect on me came much later, in the 1980’s. I was again working in the oilfield; the only woman among 75 men of diverse ethnicities. One day, it was revealed to me that, before I had come to work there, several of the white crew members had brutally attacked a white woman co-worker, tied her to a tree with cables, and took turns raping her. This was retaliation for her being romantically involved with a black man on the crew. They left her there, naked and battered, to be discovered by her African American lover.
The woman took flight that night, never to be heard from again. No charges were ever filed against the rapists. They were reprimanded by upper management, and warned never to repeat any such behavior.
After hearing about that incident, my contempt for those men grew to the point that I realized I could not work around such cowardly, vicious people. I would not work for a company with such callous disregard for women, and tolerance for racial hatred and violence. I quit my well-paid job and never looked back.
Some people might detect a pattern here. Some people might deduce that all white men are racists. I know that to be untrue, and I also know that bigotry exists in all schisms of society. Black bigots, white bigots, socio-economic bigots are all the same, sharing one common characteristic: Cowardice. They wield their hatred like a shield, to cover their fear of anyone that doesn’t look, dress, act, or think like they do. They assemble in small factions under veils of secrecy and darkness, just as other deviants do. Sometimes, they wear hoods and masks to disguise their identities, because they are unwilling to accept responsibility for their indefensible attitudes. In their most extreme states, they perpetrate violence against the weak and vulnerable. Like the crew members that outnumbered and overwhelmed their female victim, rather than confront the stronger male. Like the Klan sneaks up on isolated victims, outnumbers, overwhelms, terrorizes.
One of the things that I so wanted to express to my bigoted relative – whom I know to be an otherwise intelligent, kind, and sensitive individual — was this question: “Why would you willingly associate yourself with terrorists, like the neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, simply by your use of that offensive word?”
My question for racists everywhere: “How can you not realize the damage this attitude will do to the generations of your progeny, if you choose to inflict such socially unacceptable values on them?” I wonder how they explain to their children that, “We only say that word in the privacy of our home.”?
Surely, these parents must, on some level, realize that children endowed with this perception of the world will be socially handicapped by it. Does it never occur to these people that their children might someday grow up and want to leave the compound in Backwoods, Idaho, and that if they do, their attitudes will scar them with unrealistic fear of people, will retard their career achievements, and worse: if their experiences do not negate the racial prejudices they were taught at home, those paranoid ideals will force them to seek out other fear-based groups to immerse themselves in? Do these parents not care that, should their children find a different path — into the truth of America as a grand tapestry of diverse cultural experience — these enlightened ones will come to reject the ones who imposed false and ridiculous beliefs upon them?
How do they explain to their children, that they can play with their white cousins, but not with the dark-skinned ones? Except, sometimes, the Polynesian ones, and the Native American ones are acceptable.
How would they explain to their aunt, that some of her great grandchildren are better than the other ones, and entitled to better opportunities, because their skin is a lighter tone?
I have but one more multi-part question for racists: “What do you people really want, anyway?”
Do you really want a segregated nation?
If so, would you devise a geographic restructuring of our country? How would you decide where to put which color? How would you determine exactly what color people really are? Would you demand genetic testing of every individual (That might be risky. How certain are any of us, exactly who our ancestors were?) Maybe you could just have a scaled skin-tone meter. Are eastern Indians black or brown?
Then, unless you go by the Sarah Palin dichotomy, you must realize that we can’t send all the African Americans back to Africa. (Africa is a continent, not a country, Ms. Palin.) We can’t send them back to their countries of origin, because after so many centuries on American soil, they are too intermixed to ever sort out the DNA.
Alright, then. Let’s give them the South. Except, of course, the Gulf Coast, which is more suitable for Asians. They’re all fishermen, you know. Just throw the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese together in one area. They’ll never know the difference.
Hispanics can take Southern California and the Southwest, except that those whose genes mark them as South American shall be driven over the border and releasted into Mexico.
What about Midde Easterners? Shall we allow them to live, or just slaughter them, cowboys-and-Indians style? Too messy. Just give them the Midwest.
Now, the old melting pot has been boiling for several generations, and we have a lot of mixed race specimens to place. Put them in the Northeast, except of course, New York City should be reserved for the Jews. Native Americans can stay on their reservations, and Polynesians must now return to the Islands. Immigrants should be immediately deported to their birth countries.
That leaves the big wide West and Pacific Northwest, plus Alaska, for us Caucasians. Bring them all in! We can develop this Big Empty in no time at all. Of course, we can’t just randomly put all the Whities in one place. They will have to be sorted into subgroups, by religious affiliation, I suppose.
Naturally, the military will need to be re-segregated. Send all the dark-skinned people to Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t worry! They’re used to defending this country, as they have since the Revolutionary War. They’re glad to do it.
Now, having established order in our demographics, we’ll need to figure out trade restrictions. White people, being the supreme race, would of course be entitled to rtribute from the less evolved “Other Regions”. They’re probably not smart enough to figure out that they now have us outnumbered, surrounded, and contained. Seige would be so easy.
We’ll have change our name: Divided States of America.
No. This all just seems too complicated, and I have a simpler solution. Since white supremacists are so disgusted with the way this country has devolved, why don’t you all just sell your property in Backwoods, Idaho and KKK-ville, Alabama, buy yourselves some one-way tickets to Russia and the former USSR countries. (Let’s face it, the rest of Europe wouldn’t have you.) It’s a perfect fit: predominantly white, and they probably wouldn’t object that strongly to your support in their ethnic cleansing projects. You might be allowed even bring your favorite hunting rifle.
No reasonable person would ever consider the geographic redistribution of our nation’s population. Most people, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds actually like where they live, or have deep connections to their homes and communities. If you want to see revolution, just try telling someone that they have to give up their homes and property in order to achieve some political agenda.
Only the most extreme radicals sincerely believe in apartheit, and I doubt that more than one or two psychos would actually participate in genocide. The idea, we now realize is beyond absurd.
Thus, according to the Purist Ideal, the more realistic solution would be to leave people where they are, more or less, and to set up a governmental hierarchy based on skin-tone. The Supreme Leader should be an albino, and all the economic assets of the nation could be distributed by descending levels of melanin.
Only white kids should be educated. We’ll go back to executing those uppity minorities with the audacity to teach their children to read. Superior types, like Indian doctors, Vietnamese techno-geniuses, and black scientists are too much of a threat to national security. Send them all to Gitmo.
Over the past thirty-five years or so, I have been privileged to become acquainted with people from many different backgrounds and ethnicities. People who were willing to set aside their own preconceptions in order to know me. My life has been inexpressibly enriched by the diversity of my friends. I like to think that the reverse is true, also. Over time, I have come to realize that people everywhere want the same things. They want their children to feel safe and secure, and to have opportunities to fulfill their potentials.
Most importantly, I have learned that wanting the same things I do, is not equivalent to wanting to take mine from me. I have learned, too, that the idea of racial superiority has at its root, the secret fear that the reverse is true; that in order to dominate another set of people, the game must be rigged.
On November 4, 2008, the majority of my countrymen spoke up for equality and justice.
The battle is over, hate-mongers. Bigotry didn’t win. It never will.
The time has come to lay down those indefensible ideas about racial separatism. Time to put away those swastika-emblazoned banners, and exchange them for the flag our country.
Come! Join the victorious legions of your fellow Americans who stood up, finally, for those principles upon which this nation was founded.
Now! Become part of the solution, instead of vainly trying to create division between your fellow citizens. There is no “them” anymore. There is only “US“.
photorover
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