A Few Thoughts on the Election

There has been a lot of ruckus the last several days across the nation. Some of it good, some of it not so good. Many people are happy that Obama is our new president-elect. Others are not.

I’m not here to trumpet my political views in this blog (Can I hear a 'thank ya, Jesus!' LOL) I will say that no one seemed indifferent to this election. People were excited, nervous, happy, angry, uncertain, full of anticipation. I sifted through all kinds of emails, yahoo groups, and news articles about all of the involved candidates. Yes, I deleted at least a dozen of those "Obama is the anti-christ" urban legends. I saw all the Saturday Night Live skits (Amy Poehler was hilarious as Hillary Clinton and John McCain pretty doggone funny as himself). It wasn’t until the last few days before and since the election, though, that one very important issue came to the center of my focus.

Racism. It’s that icky word and that unpleasant subject that people don’t like to talk about. As mentioned above, I read all kinds of stuff about the election, but only in the last few days did I see a lot about how very much this election meant to the African American population. About how many were so full of anticipation that they wouldn’t let themselves get their hopes up too high. They spoke of how they had been disappointed in the past. Some of their leaders in the past century were killed. Other noteworthy African American icons were marginalized and mistreated for years. Would their canditate actually win, showing how much things have changed? John McCain remembered an incident over 100 years old during his concession speech. In 1901 , President Theodore Roosevelt invited educator Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. When news of this dinner spread, outrage ensued. Reading a couple of quotes from old newpaper articles about this dinner, I am shocked at what passed for acceptable journalism back then. Even by today’s "National Enquirer" standards.

No matter what one’s preferred candidate or party, I think all of us who are on the journey to love have to be happy that such ugly racism has been trumped this time, by the election of the first black President of the United States. A few decades ago, saying a dirty word in reference to blacks was done as casually as lighting up a cigarette in the doctor’s office. Now both of these actions cause gasps and immediate chastisement. As the old Virginia Slims ad used to say, we’ve come a long way, baby!

But we’re not there yet. Racism no longer has the same stronghold on our culture that it once did, but it is sadly still alive and well.