Results tagged “racism” from LTG Blog

Watching the McCain-Palin rallies is a little scary. No, it’s a lot scary. The intensity of their rage at Obama is obviously fueled by the awareness that their world view on free markets and anti-government intervention is as dead as Lehman Bros., while their assumed beliefs in the inherent exceptionalism of the American way of life—our economy is safe, so everyone who wants to work can and will; we win all wars, so people in the world can trust us; every person with a job is “middle class,” so we’re just one lucky step away from being like the rich—have gone up in the smoke of a bad debt, bad militarism, and very, very bad 401(k)s.

When people have cherished beliefs, to be confronted with the stark reality that you may have been sold not only a bill of goods but down the river is psychologically devastating. What we’re seeing at those rallies is how not just anger but the outcome of massive cognitive dissonance: if I let go of all that I have believed, I lose my identity; if I hold on to what I believe, I may lose my life. Trapped between these two poles, people adapt to this unbearable tension by becoming even more extreme in one belief or the other. Every teenager goes through this as they begin to distinguish the simple truths of their childhood with their dawning awareness that the world is more complex (and inevitably more hypocritical) than they realized as children. We can go through this as adults, too: a divorce can challenge one’s beliefs about love and trust; beliefs in fairness may be tested in similar ways at work. Lucky for the world, the extreme behaviors of teens and adults in various moments of mid-life crisis get acted out pretty much away from the center stage of national life.

Riding on a crowded Lexington Avenue Subway right before Obama’s overseas trip, I overheard the two middle-aged black guys standing next to me, their leather briefcases tucked between their suit pants on the train floor as they rode uptown.

“Man, Barack better be careful over there! One misstep and McCain’ll be all over him like white on rice,” the taller one said.

“You know they’re just waiting for that. He says one thing wrong, it’ll be back to why Black people better stick to domestic issues. Can’t handle those foreign countries,” the shorter one with the purple silk tie replied.

“Yeah, you know how it is. Obama mess up once, then it’s all about what we can’t do in the first place…You just gotta’ worry for the brother…”

How do you explain your life’s story in America if you’ve lived here in this country for 350 years, are white, straight, Protestant, and hard-working, and still remain pretty much working class? Back in the 1960’s, my pipe fitter father starting working on our family tree. Active anti-war leftist that I was back then, looking to the past seemed like a waste of time at best when there was a whole new future being born. Given how eccentric the old man was, I just added genealogy to his list of wacko topics.

Growing up in a small New England town in the 50’s and 60’s had its benefits for a rambunctious white kid like me. You could ride to the beach on your bike and get in for free, everyone’s favorite son. Walk to your elementary school two blocks away, worrying only about the chow dogs up the street who barked just a little too much. Early evenings at the local library, trying to read a book for social studies without staring at the strange white straps appearing beneath girls’ blouses. Horse chestnuts in the Fall, snow in the fort all winter, spring and summer breezes off the Thames River, beckoning, always beckoning to try, just once, to fly. Seemed like a good life to a twelve year-old.

Senator Obama’s comments about Black fathers got me thinking about my own father, a descendent of the Dutch West Indies traders of the 1600’s whose own father at the turn of the 20th century chose to homestead in Washington state over dreaded work in a New England mill. Entering the job market at the height of the Depression, Dad landed not with the engineering job he felt he deserved but as a pipefitter, a job he was embarrassed by all his life.

Barack Obama's Father's Day speech critiquing Black fathers for not taking up their family responsibilities got me to thinking about the fathers -- all of them white -- whom I knew growing up in a once-small New England town back in the '50's. My brother and sister and I grew up on a tree-lined street with grassy lawns in the back where kids played ball in the day and hide n'seek in the evenings. For someone driving by, it would have seemed just about perfect, rosy as a summer peach, a "Jack 'N Jill" cover come to life.