In America's new Obama-forward, post racial world bluebirds follow me around all day

Recently, I decided to take my frozen food on vacation. Ok, there was the little matter of an inland hurricane and my determination not to lose hundreds of dollars worth of steaks, vension, and chicken in my freezer, but regardless of the circumstances, I recently visited D-bro Don in suburban Chicago.

I'm just going to lay it on the line. D-bro is racist. In fact, both D-bros are racist. Why they are racist is a mystery to my sister, mother, and I. My parents did not raise us to hate. It wasn't like my brothers had negative interactions with black people. My grandfathers used to use ethnic slurs, but mostly while watching basketball games on television. I don't recall there being any sort of hateful indoctrination or even overt racism anywhere in my childhood. I mean, who knows, maybe my grandfathers were conducting a covert program of race-hate for my brothers while they spent time together in the garage.

Our community was extraordinarily white. The closest we came to a minority in our grade school was a dark-complected kid who may or may not have been Hispanic or Native American. One African American family attended our church (Episcopalian), and I actually had something of a crush on the boy in that family. I was in grade school and he was in high school. His name was Kevin. Oh, first love. Deep sigh. But I digress. We grew up in a world free of racial strife. Our first interaction with other black students was in junior high school, and by then the politics of adolescence dictated who you hung with (people from your hood), and interracial dating was still strictly taboo. The lunchroom was wicked crowded and I don't remember ever noticing who ate with whom. I ate with kids from my all-white grade school. But the summer between sixths and seventh grade, a black family moved in the house two doors down and all hell broke loose.

The Whiteheads were your standard black middle class family. They had moved from Cincinnati with the major employer in town. Their children were the first people of color to attend the neighborhood grade school. The first ones EVER. In fact, they may have been the first black people to step foot in that building. Even the janitors and lunchroom ladies were white. Neither of their kids was in my class, so I have no idea how they got on. I imagine it was pretty damn tough to be plunked down from Cincy into lily-white backweeds Kentucky and stay above water. And the parents in our neighborhood practically had a fucking coronary. The kids seemed far less distraught. I tried to make them feel welcome--like I would have done for any other new kid. To this day I don't know why, but Paula (the girl closest in age to me) refused to interact with us. For all I know, some parent may have threatened her to stay away from their kids. Her younger brother was like an overgrown puppy dog who just wanted to follow the action around, but as he entered junior high school I think the fact that some parents didn't want a black boy in their house probably limited how close he could get to kids in the neighborhood. Eventually, he gave up as well. Probably with some relief for Paula and Chucky, our junior high school included the "black neighborhood" and was integrated.

Then, when we were all in high school, a curious thing happened. I noticed that Paula had black girlfriends over to her house. They were always from out of town. Her old neighborhood chums? Cousins? I have no idea. But I remember sitting outside with the gang on the block and staring at the Whitehead's place and wondering what the hell Paula did in there all day. Staying inside all summer would have been like imprisonment to me. I wondered why she never wanted our friendship. I supposed that she didn't feel included and didn't want to try. And I remember feeling like a failure because she didn't. I always felt is was OUR neighborhood and that included Paula and Chucky.

But my brothers were a bit older than me and they were too old to hang on the block by the time the Whiteheads moved in. Boys their age were more concerned about getting drafted into Vietnam. I sure don't remember there being any racial issues in our high school in the 70s. My brothers never had a black friend that I knew of, but I never knew either of them to spout racist rhetoric either.

But when I went to visit D-bro last, he slung racial epithets as easily as saying "good morning". It is clear that this is a comfortable part of his vernacular. I started a conversation with, "You know what I don't understand...." and he interjected, "why there are so many niggers in Chicago?" It was clear to me that saying something like this among his friends is considered high humor. I was also clear to me that he realized he had fucked up before it even finished coming out of his mouth. I gave him one of those "you have to be fucking kidding me" looks and we moved on, this time with a little bit more of a check on his language. I can hardly lecture a man on how to think in his own home. But having kicked him out of my house (when we were both in the Chicago area) for using such language in MY house, he is very clear on where I stand on the issue.

I have written before about how my brother and I disagree on social programs and politics. I have also written recently about how he does seem to have an open mind. So this racial bias perplexes me. Granted, he hangs around with lesser educated, country music lovin', gun totin' bubbas, but I grew up surrounded by them, and I'm not racist. Neither is my sister. Or my mother. I am looking forward to the day when he turns to me and asks me that relevant question about race and I can finally answer him. And I have decided if and when he does, I'm going to ask a question back. I'm going to ask him why, what possible justification could he have for discriminating against someone based on skin color?

I desperately want to help my brother on the road to getting the hell over himself. But like all people with screwed up thinking, they have to be ready for the message. When he's ready, I will be, too.

Shooters gone wild

A man in Alabama killed 10 people and then himself this morning. Just another segment in our ongoing series, Mass Murder in America, coming soon to a television news program near you. Over the coming days, I'm sure we will learn quite a bit about this man's life. (Out of curiosity, compare this to what we learn about the lives of the people he murdered.) Why do people do this? What sort of mental defect, meltdown, or deviant personality is responsible for this kind of unforeseen, unpredictable, and unstoppable behavior? Why? Why? Why? Why do so many people have to die?

I understand anger. I understand depression, too. I understand being so despondent that you contemplate ending it all. I have been there. But I have not been here. There is a trend, dare I say, of people becoming overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, and instead of riding it out or getting some help or even killing themselves, they kill everyone they hold near and dear. Oh, I get that the people closest to you can come (rightly or wrongly) to be seen as a the cause of all your difficulties and mental unrest. But I do not get the mental defect that embeds itself in an human brain telling a man that the only way to deal with a problem is to kill every individual he encounters in a single day--to kill people not remotely associated with his pain--to just kill, kill, kill, and kill again.

I believe, or at least I tend to believe that most people think things through. There are "crimes of passion" in which a blind flash of anger can end in total destruction. Instead of slapping someone, someone gets shot. Or stabbed. Or strangled. Usually a single occurrence and usually not likely to be repeated. But when we talk about Mass Murder in America, we aren't talking about crimes of passion. Mass murder demands a plan that, at a minimum, involves a hit list, a travel route, an armament list, a shopping list, a disguise, an escape plan, and a game-over plan. Even in a demented mind, these thought processes are undertaken, no matter how twisted and dark the road, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the action they are taking is right, smart, and justified. I don't think it is in human nature to kill indiscriminately. I think, even in the face of tremendous mental illness, the tendency to justify our actions remain. Uncovering that logic is the only hope we have to answer the eternal question, "Why?".

There is the camp that says you can't figure out why when you are dealing with madmen. I disagree. But when the mentally corrupt kill themselves when cornered, you lose the key bit of evidence in the scenario. You lose the logic. If psychologists and sociologists haven't already resolved why people do this and how to identify and treat them (and I'm assuming they haven't otherwise, the CDC would have issued a directive to the police, mental health workers, schools, and the American public), perhaps our approach to this epidemic (when one is one too many), is to take a different approach to capturing the shooters.

How does a person get from "I'm going to kill myself" to "I'm going to kill myself, my wife, my children, my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, my wife's family, several police officers and one or two random strangers on the street in an all-out, blaze o' glory, free-for-all"? It's like the Darwin Award, the Darwin-in-law Award, and the Darwin-Twice-Removed Award all rolled into one. You don't just wipe out your own genome; you wipe out every last individual on Earth that shares a significant portion of your genome as well as anyone who found that genome attractive. Why does this only seem to afflict white men of a certain age group? Why does this seem to be an American phenomenon?

I have no idea, but I will posit some theories.

On their being white. Whites have a culture of privilege. They think that they "deserve things by virtue of being". Oh, they may not explicitly finish that phrase with "being white", but they think they deserve them without having earned them. We label this white privilege because other racial groups don't suffer from this delusion and sense of entitlement. I don't know a single black man of any age who thinks the world is going to plop a home, a meal, a wife, top-notch health care, a safe place to raise his children, a college education, a stable job, and a stress-free marriage into his lap without having to bust his ass to earn it. Ditto for Asian men. This is a uniquely white cultural defect.

On their being American. Replace every instance of "white" with "American" in the preceding paragraph and then replace "race" with "country". There's my theory. Apparently, my theory needs rethinking.

On their being men. Men, particularly those in blue collar communities, are brought up in a culture that defines manliness by an ability to lead, provide, and protect. A man is expected to be the leader in his home, his place of work, and his community. He is expected to earn a living. He is expected to earn more than his wife. He is expected to be the deciding vote on matters of family, and to have veto power over all others in the home. And he expects everyone else to go along with his expectations. Oh, some of you educated and enlightened men claim to see your role as "partner" with your spouse, but when push comes to shove, there is something inside the head of most men that self-identifies as "submissive" or "dominant" depending on who makes the important decisions in their lives. In our culture, leadership and power are male traits and men have grown comfortable with this. They now have a sense of entitlement to it. Look at any corporate board, disparity in pay between men and women, numbers of female vs. male CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, yadda, yadda, yadda. Men will compare themselves to one another all day long by money. While they can see that women and minorities might not make as much money, they believe the answer is to simply pay them more. Men don't understand that it isn't a matter of saving money that causes women and minorities to make less for the same job. It is the maintenance of a power differential. White men don't compete with women and minorities. They are separate ball games. I would guess that few white men, when promoted to a supervisory position, have their subordinates decide, en masse, to quit rather than work for someone of their gender. Or color. Or nationality. I theorize that most men, haven't had to ease their colleagues into accepting their advancement, or to develop alternative methods for ensuring that others "accept" their leadership. I doubt few men get nicknames like "bitch" or "ball-buster" applied to them by virtue of doing their job. I believe men are used to standing up and proclaiming their leadership in a "if you don't like it, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out approach" and this attitude generally works for them. Women and men of color generally haven't enjoyed this unique brand of self-aggrandizement. And yet, white American men seem to think this is "normal". When normal is threatened, some men panic. Some men panic a whole lot.

On their being, generally, younger than 50. With age comes wisdom. It's an adage for a reason. People who kill themselves, I think, don't believe that things will change. They don't believe they will ever feel better. They don't have the benefit of experience with failure. They don't know how to change their circumstances. They are hopeless. Whether their hopelessness has merit is questionable. With age comes experience, acceptance, and assurance. It is a genuine shame that we can't share so many lessons borne of experience. Some lessons must be learned the hard way. Like marriage. Like humility. Like failure. Like getting beyond depression. And when you are dealing with a weak mind, assurances that things will change/get better/pass are less likely to be believed.

But there is a missing piece here. We can posit that young, white, American men have the cards stacked against them. They have a sense of entitlement so grand that if the world fails to provide them according to their sense of entitlement, they crumble. But how that cookie crumbles into a bloody rampage is the question.

Why? Don't you think it's time we found out?

Why Racism and Sexism aren't Equal

Thanks to Samhita at Feministing for this one. Donna Brazile gives a moving discussion of the imapct of Obama's candidacy, her experiences growing up with racism in America, along with a vision of our collective future. I figure Donna Brazile and I are about the same age.

Trust me. I never had to move to the back of the bus. My mother never had to warn me to be careful of anything more than someone offering me candy. I never had to be careful not to look someone in the eye. Had I gotten into Harvard (sorry, had to stop laughing there for a minute), no one would have called me uppity or thought that I got in on a quota system.

Oh, I might have had to deal with my share of "sweeties" and "dears", and I'm sure I lost a job opportunity or two when I was studying architecture due to my gender. I couldn't play little league baseball. My grandfathers didn't really want to take me fishing with them. But I never had to fear for my personal safety at far too early an age because of my gender. Puberty brings on a whole world of new concerns for women at a time when men begin to look on you as a sexual object, but that reality isn't exclusive to white women. We all deal with that equally.

There is no way you can convince me that electing a woman president or vice president is nearly as cutting edge or will have nearly the social impact as electing a black president.

It's funny. I went to school with a kid just like Obama. Biracial. Very popular. Our class president, in fact. Dated one of the prettiest white girls in the school. He went to the naval academy on a scholarship and served for a number of years before getting out. Last I heard of him, he was selling insurance. I wonder sometimes if his experiences outside of our small high school were as accepting of him. I'll never know.

But I know where Donna Brazile stands, and I stand with her.

This is what you get when you learn about sex and race on the streets

Ok, I have been reading a lot lately on race and I've been meaning to weigh in. Most of this discussion has been prompted by the nearing of the Democratic convention and the media's sudden realization that they have no idea how to approch this election. First a few thoughts on that. A black man is really going to get the Democratic nomination and as a collective, the journalistic crowd seems to be tongue-tied on the subject of race. Up to now, the media has been able to beat the Billary horse lifeless, but what are they going to do when America literally and figuratively stands at the crossroads? It doesn't quite feel like black vs. white. It feels more like young vs. old. Is America ready to put the era of rule by old, rich white guys to rest? Clearly the media doesn't know.

Now the thing that really amazes me is that Obama's race is never accurately portrayed. According to the media, Obama is a black man. And I will give them some slack; he is self-identified. But clearly, a man of mixed-race, raised by a white mother, white grandparents, who lived in white neighborhoods and attended primarily white schools cannot be viewed as the average black man in America. It's probably more amazing that he is running for president instead of running for his therapy appointment. By his own admission, he lived his youth on the outside and when allowed the choice he chose to live on the inside.

Another thing. Obama is my age. Ok, a year and a half older, but let's not split hairs. I'm young. Ok, I tell myself I'm young, but things are starting to break down on me in defiance of my denial. My grandmother is 90 and she says she still feels twenty-something inside. But she is old, and Obama is old enough. He is all the things I demand of a potential leader. Blazing smart, quick on his feet, and an excellent communicator. He can out-think me. He has a talent for politics and a knack for connecting with people. He's ready. My generation is ready.

Oh there are those of my generation...even among my friends....who think that it was time for a woman, not a black man. They are pissed at how easily Hillary was defeated and dismissed. Somewhere in this rigid sisterhood, one of our own was handed an opportunity and mismanaged it. The "NObama" crowd always seems to let that fact slip. They blame the media. They blame Obama. They blame Chris Matthews. They blame anyone standing within a hundred-mile radius, and trust me, they know how to hold a grudge.

I saw a picture of Obama as a toddler the other day. What struck me was how familiar it all seemed. You could have photoshopped Barack out of that picture and inserted me and no one would have been the wiser. And that got me to thinking....my experience growing up and entering the world can't be all that different from Obama's. We are the same age. We both grew in white America. Only major difference sees to be that my grandparents didn't have any black friends.

But which should take precedence now? Race or gender?

Ok, let's back up. When I was young, the women's lib movement and the civil right's movement emerged concurrently. Women's lib was laughed at by my grandparents, ignored by my parents, and seemed like the greatest thing on the planet to me. A generation of little girls were told by television (think the Mary Tyler Moore show) that we could be anything we wanted. We were told by our teachers. We were told, well some of us anyway, by our progressive parents. We believed. We got our educations. We worked hard. Sure we were disappointed when the Equal Rights Amendment failed, but convinced ourself that we didn't really need the protections that it provided. (We might want to rethink that one considering that women still only make 3/4 of what men make for the same jobs.) In any event, we began climbing the ladder. We did it without any road map. Collectively, we struggled along and only a few have really made it.

The glass ceiling is real.

That is to say that our failures are not entirely of our own making. Anyone on the outside knows that there is still an old boy's network, it's just weaker than in the old days. Women have made incredible progress in the 30-odd years that women's "liberation" experiment has been running, but equality eludes us.

Can we honestly say that blacks have made the same progress? I don't think so. It seems to me that we hear a lot, both within and outside of the black community that blacks themselves are to blame. But make no doubt, the same criticisms that are often made of the black community can also be made of women. As a group, we doubt our abilities. We wonder if we are ready. We think maybe there is a reason that men traditionally have been in charge. Some of us....enough of us to matter....have bought into the idea that we aren't as good. It is really difficult to completely eradicate a mindset of inferiority and discrimination. But women are different than blacks, and I'll tell you why.

When black people went home from work, they went to different neighborhoods. The old boys network never had to deal with black men in the grocery stores, at the golf club, or at the family picnic. When women went home, they went home to members of the old boys network. And they didn't let up. The campaign continued across the dinner table and probably entered the bedroom. I think real progress was made when white men began to realize that their daughters were going to enter the work force in numbers. Did they really want them to encounter the overt discrimination that was the status quo? Fathers really do have a soft spot in their hearts for their daughters and I think this sentiment drove a lot of the changes that benefited women of my generation. The black community wasn't quite the same as Daddy's little girl.

The acceptance of women into society, government, the workforce...just about everywhere...came at much lower a cost than it did for people of color, particularly blacks. That is why, to my mind and given my experiences, the greater social baggage is laid to rest by the political choice America made in the primaries. IMO, the greater good is served by electing a black president than a female president. It is time for the end of white rule in America.

And before you get all pissy with me, I don't think you should vote for a president based on race or gender. I think you should vote for a president based on policy, based on intelligence and temperament, and based on experience. Luckily, both the black and the female candidates were qualified.

Is it possible that I blame women more for our current condition than I should? Should I be as hard on the black community? Well, honestly, I don't know. I'll have to chew on that a while.

But I grew up in an environment where I was encouraged at every point in my development. I was given opportunities. Fantastic opportunities. And I grew up knowing, even in my rather progressive household, that black people were different. It wasn't overt. It wasn't even purposeful. My parents just had no idea what to tell us about race. My parents never used epithets to describe any group. Never once. Oh, their parents did. But in the end, race was easy to ignore in much the same way that parents can, as mine did, ignore sexism. Neither of my parents ever bothered to prepare me for sexism in the workplace. Did they think, in some fairy tale version of reality, that the world would miraculously change and we would have all those opportunities they claimed awaited us? Or did they just not know because women hadn't arrived in the workpace yet? In any event, what I learned about making my way in this world as a woman, I learned on-the-job.

In much the same way, I learned about racism when I began to befriend people who experienced racism. I didn't shy away from talking with my friends about our specific 'isms. I shared my experiences. They've shared their's. And I really began to listen and understand. Obama and I grew up in the same white America. He assumed he felt so uneasy because he was different. Women feel the same way. We didn't want it to be that way, we just didn't have any idea what to do. Somehow, we have struggled along individually. And now, just maybe, we are ready to move forward together.