A Future in Black or White?

As I was driving home from the grocery last Sunday I was listening to one of my favorite radio shows “This American Life.” They were covering the final throws of the campaign focusing on the efforts of both candidates to capture Pennsylvania. James Carville once described Pennsylvania as “Philadelphia on one side, Pittsburgh on the other, and Alabama in the middle.” They were referring to the small working class towns in the middle that cover the state. You know the ones, where the work has dried up because the steel plants and coalmines have shut down. People are going hungry with no healthcare. The place Billy Joel sang about a while back, the “Allentowns.”

Well, one of the interviews they aired was with a man who talked about a discussion he was having with a friend about who he was voting for in the election. The man was for Obama and his friend was going to vote for McCain but not because he actually liked him. He was voting for the Republican Senator because Obama was black. It wasn’t because McCain’s policies were better or that he liked his choice in VP (although god knows how he could), black was the only reason he needed. When I hear things like that I’m both surprised and not surprised because I only need to look as far as my own family for the answer.

Even in the twenty-first century people like my cousin still exist. Her philosophy about African-Americans is she doesn’t discriminate against black people…she hates them all. Or her father (my uncle) who would not shake a long time family friend’s hand because he is gay because he probably thinks it rubs off or he’ll catch AIDS by touching him. The man NEVER speaks to me, for which I’m thankful. What are we going to talk about anyway? The six pointer he nailed while hunting or the seven incher I nailed at Muther’s. Even my Grandmother, who I adored, had a problem with black people while she was alive. For the most part she was fine with them, as long as they didn’t try to enter into our family either by dating or (God forbid) marrying one of us. My cousin made the mistake of bringing his black girlfriend to the family Christmas party one year and you would have though someone opened the seventh seal! When they entered, EVERYONE’S head turned in slow motion unison toward the door and they all stopped short of gasping out loud. Now, the younger member of the clan got over it pretty quick (like with the first five seconds) but the older members huddled in the corner and no doubt began formulate a plan to put a stop to this budding romance as quickly as possible. As a matter of fact my aunt emailed my mother wondering if they were going to get married. By the way, they were sixteen at the time. My grandmother didn’t come right out to say it was because she was black. It was because, how did she put it, ‘gangly.’

Yes, I grew up in a family where my grandfather would ask me to find that show on TV with the funny “coloreds” in it. He was referring to ‘Sanford & Son.’ And where my other uncle just out and out refused to watch the ‘Cosby Show’ because he was black. Even surrounded by all this at a very young age I was not tainted by it. Believe it or not television helped me form my own opinion about minorities.

I still remember sitting down and watching ‘Roots’ with my hippie aunt when I was no more ten years old. Even though I didn’t thoroughly understand what I was seeing (mainly because this part of history wasn’t covered in school) I knew it was wrong. On some level I identify with the slaves, being an oppressed minority myself in middle school. I was skinny and weak with glasses, pigeon toed and an egg shaped head. My mother might as well have made me wear a sweater with a target on the back when she sent me off to school in the morning. The middle school was the plantation where I was the slave. I had to go everyday and there was no escape. I was teased, punched, humiliated and chased every day by people who thought they were better or who refused to see people for people. For the most part, they were as scared as I was, afraid they would lose their power. They were afraid of change. This pretty much sums up those who won’t vote for Obama because he’s black.

Change can be frightening to people who’s way of life consists of wake up, work, eat, shit, go to Walmart, sleep and repeat for forty years. But as Sam Cook once sang, “A change is gonna come.” Whether we like it or not.