While I can nod my head to some of what is in this piece i have to take it to task for not going far enough on the US vs THEMÂ theme. I hold that race is not the real crux of the biscuit, it is IDEOLOGY. I have no claim to understand what it is like to be treated as a black person in this country but I do know how I am treated as an atheist. Even admitting to not believing in the pop culture version of Christianity is often enough to have you slammed firmly in the "Dangerous Other" category.
A large chunk of the voters and the politicians they put into power act on the belief that this is a Christian country, that the laws, ethics and morality are of Christ and all others are either dangerously wrong or sadly needing conversion. If you are looking for reasons why we are in such sad shape, why our fiscal policies are thrown askew, our ethical policies seem to shatter at the slightest introspection and the sort of blatant racism spotlighted in this article can not only be tolerated but celebrated ….this could be a reason why.
"If we can keep you and others like you constantly as junior partners in this thing called America, then we can retain our status as the prototype, the floor model, the one in the corner office, with the gold-trimmed nameplate who makes the rules, allows you in the boardroom occasionally — but only on our terms — and who, when we damned well feel like it, can send you to get us coffee. But when the nation’s political leader no longer looks like us, has a name that sounds funny, and a family history too exotic for our liking, and when the popular culture changes into one that is thoroughly multicultural, and as the economy melts down, confronting us with a kind of insecurity that hadn’t been our lot for three generations, however normal it might have become for the black and brown, and as the demographics — of the local school, the towns in which we live and even the country — change, confronting us with the possibility that, have mercy, within 40 years our kind will no longer be the majority, the norm, the walking talking definition of an “all-American boy or girl†(which is a concept we fucking created), then the patience with which we have tolerated you begins to wear thin."
For the most part, I’ve tried to be restrained. Although conservatives accuse those of us on the left of thinking that all critiques of President Obama are rooted in racism, this has certainly never b…
