Part of the silence was due, I think, to the sheer “Alice in Wonderland” kind of world I seem to live in… paralyzed by the sheer number of things I can worry about or get worked up about, so that the simpler reflections I might write then seem trite, even if they are what we need right now!
Just when I started to feel like the voice was coming back into balance, I read a piece in Monday’s paper (the New York Times, what else?). Another of those worries of mine I tried to categorize as “irrational” or “paranoid” is affirmed by someone who actually knows whereof he speaks. Check out this Op-Ed piece by Brent Staples on race and the presidential race: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22observer.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
“Mr. Obama seems to understand that he is always an utterance away from a statement — or a phrase — that could transform him in a campaign ad from the affable, rational and racially ambiguous candidate into the archetypical angry black man who scares off the white vote. His caution is evident from the way he sifts and searches the language as he speaks, stepping around words that might push him into the danger zone. These maneuvers are often painful to watch. The troubling part is that they are necessary.”
Since I cast my vote back way back in the Primary, I kept telling myself Obama was too good a candidate to have it come down to this. Naive of me, I suppose. So white folks speak in Jim Crow code, a hockey-mom in a beehive pretends she is Presidential enough and mocks “community organizing” as a real job… and I am supposed to take democracy seriously?
I will and I do… Lord, give me strength!!!
I, Too, Sing America
by Langston HughesI, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,"
Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--
I, too, am America.
