One thing that depresses me about Obama's chances in Ohio.

[Berry Cool]

Mind you: I'm not saying he can't win here and it's going to be because of people like this. I don't know that that's so, and I sincerely believe that Obama has an excellent chance of winning this state if all the votes are counted.

I just feel like I have to mention this because it's a window into a very dark place that we might not otherwise have. And if there are people like this in Ohio, there are people like this in other states like Ohio.

My younger sister was just saying to me the other day that although voting for Obama is a no-brainer for her, she has friends--whom she calls good friends and smart people--whom she simply cannot talk to about him. Mind you, she's not a proselytizer when it comes to politics, either--she's just a person who thinks that when push comes to shove you have to vote for the person who's going to do you the most amount of good or the least amount of harm. She and I commiserated many a time in 2004 over how we just couldn't see how anyone could vote for Bush again. You get the picture.

These friends of hers have already made it flat-out clear: They will not vote for a black man. Period.

Why? Here's why: They think that if Obama wins, the blacks will "take over the country." The tables will be turned, the blacks will begin acting like the privileged majority, and they will shove all the white people in the country to the back of the bus. So to speak.

The way they see it, it will start with lawlessness and mayhem. An Obama victory, as they see it, will cause the equivalent of a huge national "blackout" (cough cough) in which black people across America will immediately take to the streets, begin smashing into and breaking into stores and houses, and looting them of all their personal possessions. In other words, election night will be like the Rodney King verdict, and they, the white people, will be Reginald Denny. Black people will be literally crawling through their picture windows and stealing their TVs and everything else they own right out from under their noses--and nobody will try to stop it.

The lawlesness will continue for a full four years, as white people are made to take a back seat to black people and their "'tude" of entitlement. In short, once one of "them" is president, they will think they can run ragged all over white people and do whatever they want and get away with it. They can get waited on first in line, they can take away jobs (or live off the government with no jobs at all), they will be "the privileged class" and white people will be nothing.

My jaw just dropped when I heard this. That's what they really think? Supposedly intelligent people?

Yep, she says.

I would love to know what they think would happen on election night if McCain won. Do they think there would be no riots, no anger, no craziness? But maybe it's best not to go there. Because they might use that as an excuse to show how the whites are already under the black thumb, living in abject fear of how "they" will react to the election, win or lose.

Obviously, these people have bought the "fear of the uppity black" meme hook, line and sinker. Obviously, I think they are nuts. I think they are letting irrationality run away with their imaginations. But I think that if anything explains the otherwise inexplicable "I won't vote for a black man" attitude amongst some white people, it is this particular strain of "fear of the unknown." They still don't deal with enough people different from themselves every day to know what they are really dealing with or that they cannot toss an entire race into a single box.

I asked her if she had ever tried to point out to any of them that Obama is half white. She said she can't even talk to them about it. That's how bad it is. She can't even get the conversation started.

And many of these friends are like her. Middle-class people, struggling to make it and raise kids, exactly the kind of people Obama wants to help. But they don't see themselves as being the ones he really wants to help--because they're white, so he must see them as The Privileged Enemy, and want to grind them even further underfoot in order to help his fellow blacks.

Talk about taking an entire group of people you have never even tried to get to know anything about and refusing to have anything to do with them or to deal with your irrational fears of them. And this is not to say that there are no black people worthy of being feared. There are--just like there are white people worthy of being feared, and people of other colors. But they just won't even GO there.

Easier, far easier, to fence off the whole group, to consider them lawless and uppity and anxiety-provoking, and say to yourself that they, or anyone related in any way to them, must never, NEVER be allowed to taste power, because one taste of power will only get them drunk. And as middle-class whites, they're far enough down in the dirt--they don't need to be even lower on the totem pole than black people!

Yeah, it's the same old phenomenon that has kept racism alive and well in the South: not only the rich white man's sense of privilege, but the poor white man's need to have someone else even lower than himself to look down and spit upon with reliability.

I don't know how you fight this. It doesn't yield to intelligent thought (they won't even think). It doesn't yield to logic (irrational fear never does). It's just there. It always has been. I don't know what I'd do about if if I were Obama himself.

All he can do is hope that these people sit out the election altogether, because they will never hold their noses and vote for Obama. They will vote for a doddering old warmongering rich-privileging senile man first, just because he is white. And to them, white = safe. "Half white" isn't enough.

[RevCheesehead]

1. That ain't just Ohio - it's all over the place.

Even here in good ol' Wisconsin. I just had this conversation with a friend of mine, and she said one of her friends has fallen into the racism of her husband, saying she can't vote for a black man. The reason? "They'll take over the country."

All I can add for thought or comment is this: This is exactly the same thing that happened to Kennedy, with the Catholic hatred. And that election was very close.

People are afraid of change, even if it can be a good change. I am a living example of that, because I am terrified of leaving my profession. Or, at least, my current job. Good things may be right around the corner, but I don't know that. I'd rather stay right here and fight the known factors, rather than face something that might be even worse. You see, in my mind, I don't look at the possibility that something really GOOD could happen. I am too afraid.

The question is, how do we conquer that fear?

Commence with the discussion.

[Berry Cool]

2. Well, I'm kind of relieved to know we're not alone, but I'm also scared by that knowledge.

Because I was born too late to know what the mood of the country was like during the Kennedy-Nixon election, I can only imagine what it must have been like by really trying to stretch my imagination. I try to think of a time before Vatican II, also, when the Catholic Church was even more rigid than it is today. And, yes, I can understand how "fear of America becoming a Catholic nation" was very real.

I know there are people who think to this day that Kennedy wouldn't have won if his dad hadn't bought him the election via machine politics.

And yes, I know people are afraid of change. It's natural. Yes, people do easily fear the devil they don't know vs. the devil they do. But how bad does the devil they know have to be before they take a chance on the devil they don't know? Can it get much worse?

Oh, yeah, I can relate to this, and to what you're saying about yourself, believe me.

I wish we knew how to fight that fear.

But when it comes to Obama, and African Americans in general, I can't help but think that it might open some people's minds if they would just try to talk to some people who aren't like them for a change. I think one of the problems with modern life is that it can be all too easy for us to not have anything to do with people unlike us. We can isolate ourselves with ease. White people can live in gated communities or small towns where no blacks have ever traditionally lived, that are segregated de facto. They can climb into their cars and drive from one suburb to another. They can work with people who are much like themselves. In many circumstances, they don't really have to get to know anyone unlike themselves. And when they do, it's easy to toss all black people in the box marked "uneducated," "inarticulate," "ghetto," "uppity," "loud," "intimidating," etc.

But it's so unnecessary for most of them that they will never do it.

[CC]

3. It doesn't help that the right/repukes are feeding into

that fear and pushing the whole "they will take over" thing. And they are. They may be doing it off camera and using code words but they are definitely doing it.


Those that feel that way are everywhere. I expected it in my little redneck corner of the corner of the world but was hit with it while in Maui by an LA person. They asked Ter what was wrong with me and K. since we saw blacks (they used another word) and other minorities (to put it nicely) as people.:wtf: Course Ter waited to tell me about it when there was a couple thousand miles between me and the person since he didn't want me visiting a jail in Maui. Poor man was so floored he said there was nothing wrong with us and then left before he visited that same jail for assault. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around that whole thing.




CC who is here for however long trying to catch up after two frigging days with no internet for who know why. They come to fix it tomorrow but it suddenly came back on today. Means they won't be able to find what is wrong tomorrow.