Posted by
Katherine Harms on Monday, June 23, 2008 1:38:04 PM
I take umbrage, extreme umbrage, at a statement by Barack Obama which included the phrase, “typical white person.” He was referring specifically to his white grandmother, but I took it as a slur against all white people, including me. He can apologize all he wants, and he can reword his statement as many times as he likes. The fact is that Barack Obama discriminates against white people. Barack Obama is a complete racist.
I don’t plan to sue him for hate speech. I won’t mount a petition drive for reparations due his vile racist speech. But I am warned. I will not stand still and let a bigoted racist candidate win without a fight.
Some people are explaining and accommodating the Obama statement so we will all understand it as a simple account of something that happened to his grandmother. Politicians who are running to the Obama campaign in droves want us to see this phrase as mere triviality.
If “typical white person” is a triviality, why is “gollywog runway model” a racial slur?
If you are still reading, thank you. My point is that it is easy to make anything into a racial slur if that is your agenda. We need to remove the whole notion of racism from our political process. How?
There is one way and one way only to end the power of racism in this election and in our life as a nation. Forgiveness. A person who has been harmed by something that is ended can end its harmful power by means of forgiveness. Racism as a political and social agenda no longer exists in the USA. It only lives in the reactions of people to words and deeds that have no hurtful power.
The people who were oppressed by slavery in this country and the people who inflicted slavery on them are all dead. The people who were oppressed by post-emancipation segregation and the people who oppressed them are mostly dead. The laws which created and enforced segregation have been removed. The people who stir up the most outrage over racism today are people whose very lives are a positive testimony to the end of racism in the USA. Whoopie Goldberg. Michelle Obama. Barack Obama. Charlie Rangel. Jesse Jackson. Every person in public life who makes a career out of stirring up sensitivity over racism is a person who would not be in public life if racism were still what they claim it is.
If I follow the example of these people, I will truly make a campaign out of Obama’s racial slur against white people. It doesn’t matter that he can’t hurt me by saying that. It doesn’t matter if he never says any such thing again. If I act like the Michelle Obamas of the world, I will stop being proud of this country and I will demand apologies and reparations and revenge for my personal outrage at the disrespect for white people expressed in Barack Obama’s slur.
It is time for us as a culture to forgive and ignore and move on. That is what I plan to do about Obama. The issue of racism is dead and over. All the noise is an attempt to resuscitate a political issue which is a non-issue. Our nation has real problems to solve – dependency on foreign oil, economic stability, and security against terrorism. We cannot really afford to waste our time trying to resurrect an issue we have solved. We have not eliminated selfish human nature, and we never will, but the legal framework of racism has been obliterated. We will just have to make do with human beings the way they are. If they say or do things which insult me or you or anyone because of our “race,” which is by the way a fictitious classification, then we simply need to ignore it and go on doing the things we need to do.
I will not vote for Obama, but his "race" has nothing to do with it. He is a socialist, and that is a real danger to our country. His "race" is irrelevant.
Let’s get racism out of the election. Let’s quit making up tales about an issue that is not an issue. Racism is over. Forgive. Ignore. Move on.