I called my father after the Illinois primary to see if he voted. He had, and he voted for Clinton. I was surprised because of this, as we shared so many principles that I thought that it would be a no-brainer for my father to vote for Obama. It turns out it wasn't. He told me he wasn't ready to vote for a black man. Yeah, I know...Ouch!
Let me give you my father's perspective.
His parents were German immigrants. They arrived in the late 30's-early 40's. They met here in America. My grandfather fought in WWI (on the German side). He was told by the German government in the lead-up to WWII: Either fight for us, or leave. He left and came to America, and I couldn't be happier. Nobody in my family knows much about how my grandmother ended up in America, but she found her way here.
My grandfather was a barber and ended up being able to support a family with three kids on that. Odd, I know, in this day and age.
My grandparents ended up getting married and moving to the Cottage Grove neighborhood on the South Side. For those of you interested, it's approximately 111th and Cottage Grove (a street). Unwittingly, I ended up taking a job only a few blocks away from where my father grew up.
My gradparents moved there at the begining of White Flight. After ten years it was an entirely black neighborhood. For whatever reason, my grandparents stayed in the neighborhood. This was in the 50's, the begining of the Civil Rights movement. Because they were White, they were treated poorly by the new population.
Here comes the sad part.
Because they were one of the few white people in the neighborhood, they were terorized by a few thugs in the community that decided any white person was open to attack.
My grandmother bore the brunt of the attacks. It started with her not being able to carry her groceries home because someone would knock them out of her hand. It escalated with her being spit on. It ended with her being beaten.
Who is to blame? Who knows. My grandmother was the perfect stereotypical German woman: Big boned and didn't take shit from nobody. Who knows what she might have said to provoke the attacks. But I can say this, anything she might have said was done out of fear and a complete misunderstanding of America at the time. She thought that America was the land of opportunity. I guess she learned the hard way.
The point to all of this is that my father, as a young child, saw all of this. He saw how black people beat his mother. A woman from another country, who had no stake in the political processes that were unfolding around her.
She had her groceries tossed accross the street, she was spit on, she was beat upon. All because she was in the wrong place in the wrong time.
My father saw all of this happen, as a young man, to his mother and father.
This is not to say that I validate any form of racism. This is not to say that I sympithize with the color of one's skin. This was my father's experience, and he has carried it with him his entire life. I can't say that I blame him. I can't say that I blame anyone, regardless of skin color, to carry this with them for the rest of their lives. This is America. Just as it was 60 years ago, it is today. I don't agree with it, but it is a reality regardless of your skin color.
I just want to say that I know, for a fact, that people of color in this country today...TODAY...go through this kind of shit every day of thier lives.
I had a fantasitc teacher in high-school that once said: "If you're white, male, over 21, you can do anything you want in this country". That statement alone, in 1990, made me realize how far we have to go.
I desperatly want to chage that oh, so accurate narritive from my high-school teacher. This is my hand extended, and if you take it, we can help each other.
By the way, I talked to my Dad yesterday and I asked him about the RBC meeting. He said: "What meeting, I was out in the garden all day?" I later asked him about Obama in Nov. and he said: "He's looking like a damn good candidate isn't he?"
Hope. That's all I'll ask of this country. Hope for America to be something truely better.
auteur. Enjoy.
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