I Always Knew There'd Eventually Be A Black President

...thing is I honestly always felt he or she would be a Republican. The reason I always believed that is because - even now - I know for a fact that no black candidate would ever get the support of the average white person if they were still under the sway of the Ethiopian Church of Victimology where the prevailing worldview is that the reason 70% of black homes are single parent, the reason black-on-black crime is at an all-time high, and the reason in some neighborhoods we say AX when we mean ASK is... wait for it... all because of white people. If you are a candidate who eternally uses white America as black America's excuse white America is not going to go in there and bust a chad by your name.

Which is exactly why, I think, voting for Obama was easy for a lot of people - he just isn't connected to the Sharpton/Jackson wing of the Democratic party.

In another way of looking at it, think about the black guy from Mississippi who was drafted, fought in Viet Nam, put his life on the line in the uniform of his country - then comes back home after an honorable discharge and has some fat redneck peckerwood tell him he "cain't vote hyar bwa." Yeah... I don't know one conservative who wouldn't want to deck that good old white boy. That kind of white not only doesn't represent me - it doesn't represent anybody I even know. And that's the difference here. The incoming President is for the USA, for what we can do in the future instead of all that bad old baggage of the past. That's all a lot of people were looking for; and though the historic nature of this can't be tossed to the side the only thing a candidate had to do to win is look like they belonged in the 21st century. And that's what Obama did. Do that, get out from under the old ways of thinking, and be for America and it wouldn't matter if you're green.

I came to this realization when I heard somebody interviewing some black woman on NPR who still can't get out of 1962 and isn't even remotely hopeful that race relations will ever change. I don't recall her name nor do I care to. That kind of intransigence - that kind of mindset - is what eventually becomes Gaza. We don't need it.

Yes Jim Crow existed, and the scenario of the returning black veteran denied the right to vote was a common (and despicable) thing back in the day. Yes there are bigots on the streets today. Yes there are white peckerwoods who think Obama is a Muslim operative from some al Qaida cell in Brooklyn or whatever the hell. There's no denying it. But I would venture to say that, percentage-wise, there's probably the same amount of per capita racist bigots amongst white, black, yellow, red and brown people. That this isn't the issue anymore is the effort to get to what is called the "post-racial era." I hear a lot of recidivists on all sides who decry the phrase or the idea of a "post-racial" America, unwilling or unable to move on and get busy with the future. Too comfortable with their cozy prejudices and mistrust. or maybe - in the cases of Sharpton, Jackson and Farrakhan - too worried their cottage industries of black victimology are going to take an income hit. Somehow I think the latter is more likely.

I don't think Barack Obama is the savior, or perfect, or the infallible image of Jesus Christ on roller skates. And when he does stuff I disagree with I'll say so. But at least he's intelligent enough to "get over it." He not busy being born is busy dieing. Where have I heard that before?