Question #2: My question.
"Just what do some people find so frightening about electing a black man to the presidency?"
This is a puzzle to me. Yes, I understand that racists abound in the southern part of the United States, and here and there in other places, and I know prejudice is ingrained into people almost from birth, requiring a huge awakening on their part to overcome it.
But, sadly, I am seeing that there is a discomfort in this country - among people who are not overtly racist - with the idea of the president having dark skin.
So what is it about skin color that makes one more or less qualified to be president?
If skin tone was the issue, I would say John McCain is not qualified. People with translucent ghost-like skin are a little scary looking. But no one says anything about the color of John McCain's skin. And there is still the possibility that McCain could choose the dark skinned Bobby Jindal, whose parents emigrated from India, as his running mate. And that seems okay with Republicans who are infatuated with this thirty something governor. Of course, Jindal's background is Indian, not African, but most Americans who object to skin color couldn't point to either of those places on the map and don't have a clue as to the difference between dark Indians and dark Africans.
So if it's not skin color what is it? DNA?
Well, Barack Obama's DNA is no different from any other person's DNA except in those minor areas in which each of us differs from others. Barack Obama is as human as any white, red or brown person. He is one of us.
So if it's not DNA, what is it? What makes Barack Obama not good enough, to some people? Is he violent, crass, uneducated, lacking in values?
Again, no. Barack Obama has one of the calmest temperments I have ever seen in a presidential candidate. He is well-mannered, careful with his words, encouraging of others, highly educated, and a model husband and father.
So if it's not character, not education or a lack of values, what is it?
Is it possible that the reason some people find Barack Obama objectionable because there is something lacking in them, because they are the ones who are flawed?
I think so.
I believe some people will not accept a black man as president because they are inferior people who need to feel superior to someone. So they grab onto whomever they can paint as inferior. With their history of being held as slaves, and the struggles to survive in a nation that treated them reprehensibly - keeping some in poverty and leading a few to behave badly - an African American is an easy target for inferior people who need to see some group as beneath them, even when that African American rose from a lower middle class background, went to Harvard, got a law degree, and is a United States Senator.
I believe others suffer a type of unconscious guilt over what the white race has done to the black race in this country, and their guilt leads them to fear that a black president might find a way to get even with them. Never mind that Barack's ancestors were never slaves, his Kenyan father being a free man and his mother being white. Never mind that the kind of man - black or white - who is talented enough to rise to the level of presidential candidate would not be a man who would be wanting revenge against an entire race. It is the guilt of his critics that drives the prejudice against Barack.
In fact, I have seen far more resentment in the white candidates this year than in Barack Obama. The contempt and envy that both McCain and Hillary have for Obama oozes from their pores and is very unseemly. They attack him for being both inexperienced and too confident, for being stubborn as well as flexible, and lately for being too popular.
The answer, of course, is that there is nothing frightening about electing a black man to the presidency that exists outside of the paranoid, prejudiced minds of some Americans who need to feel superior to others.
Think about that, because that's what is truly frightening.
