Racism on November 4th?Like many people this election season, I am curious to see if race is a barrier that can be cleared as Catholicism was in the 1960 election.
Molly was kind enough recently to share a heartwarming story with me relayed to her by two dedicated volunteers going door to door to get out the vote. The lady of the house answered the door and was cordial to the campaign workers. When they asked her who she thought she would vote for in the upcoming presidential elections she yelled back in to her husband to inquire who they were voting for. This piece alone intrigues me as I cannot imagine my spouse ever deferring to me in this manner, nor do I think she should just for the record. At any rate, the reply came immediately from within, "We're voting for the n-----". The woman unfazed by this answer repeated it to the campaign workers "We're voting for the n-----". (I pause here for dramatic effect...where to begin parsing this oddity.)
To begin with, I am shocked that the woman used the same language as her husband, apparently without any sort of embarrassment. My spouse, a much more cultivated person than myself, spends a large portion of her life covering my lack of social graces and attempting to refine the few I have. It also strikes one as odd that folks who would choose this particular descriptor of our fellow African-American citizens would also think it prudent to vote for Obama for president. The two behaviors seem at odds and represent to me the reason I find joy in going to work every day with people. They can always suprise you. The possibilities are never less than infinite. I am heartened by the prospect of individuals with enough insight to recognize that despite their own feelings about race, Obama could serve their interests. This is progress in some fashion. As opposed to the working/middle class folks voting republican, because of issues such as abortion, while many republican policies are decimating them economically.
Like many people this election season, I am curious to see if race is a barrier that can be cleared as Catholicism was in the 1960 election. Racism is as American as apple-pie. When I teach social work classes and we talk about race I begin the class by telling students that they must accept as fact that they are racists. This is not to imply that I think they are members of the Klu Klux Klan, skinheads or the like, but rather that racism is in the air and the water. We are all racist, it is merely a matter of degree. If you are a member of this culture you are a racist, because it could not be otherwise. I include myself in this indictment and believe that willingly acknowledging this is the only way to be conscious of our shared beliefs and begin questioning them. This piece by Kristof in the Times discusses the sort of subtle racism that I fear may have an impact in this election. Many people will give in to a gut level discomfort they feel about Obama as a candidate that they may not even be able to explain to themselves. How can we know in these circumstances if we are responding to the color of a man's skin or if we are really voting against him because we believe he wants to take our rifles away? We don't ...which is why I suppose the whole question intrigues me.
It is both sad and amusing to watch the right contort itself to both deny that it is racist all the while searching for racial proxies to fling at Obama i.e. he is muslim, he hates his white grandmother, he hangs out with black revolutionaries. I will be voting for Obama in part, because he wants to dialogue with african-american revolutionaries, white working class men and leaders of countries with a different world view. The 8 long years of ignoring those who thought differently has not worked well. As the country and the world grow closer together and more interdependent we need someone as our leader whose default setting for problem solving doesn't involve the military. Virtually no one wants to waste the resources and the lives those endeavors cost anymore. We need someone whose experience extends beyond prep schools and the sheltered world of old money.
This understanding of others is not an intellectual exercise, it involves a dialogue and some discomfort. I reflect upon the places in my own life where I really learned something about those who were different from myself and it was never in a classroom. It was sharing a room in the military with an african-american man from New Jersey and a Samoan man. It was clients early in my career who were brave and kind enough to let me know where my approach was condescending and operating on faulty assumptions. It is the continuing feedback from my coworkers about how we can make our agency more diverse and inclusive.We can only come together as a country and a world by having these discussions and questioning whether the things we hold as true really are.
If you have an interest in exploring your own biases as regards the 2008 election cycle go to Project Implicit to take a test that can help reveal some of your own unconscious biases.
Entradas
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario