A coworker of mine, a contractor who works for the office moving department, happened by my cube a few minutes ago and spotted my clipping of the WaPo tax chart on the outside wall. He engaged me in conversation: "Is this true? Where did this come from?" I then discussed how people who make $20,000 a year immediately spend everything they earn back into the economy, while people who make $200,000 a year usually put some portion of it in a bank somewhere, or in investments, often overseas.
He looked at the chart some more, poking at the colored bars with his finger. Then he said, "I like Obama, but I'm concerned about the Muslim thing."
I chuckled out loud. I was not surprised, considering how much the Obama/Muslim meme has been batted around. I then proceeded to describe to him Obama's life history (as best I remember it), from how his mother married his Kenyan father (very revolutionary in 1961) to his "community activist days" in southern Chicago.
I described how, after her marriage to Barack's father didn't work out, his mother hooked up with the Indonesian fellow and they moved to that country. I mentioned that Obama was about 6 at the time. I also described how Indonesia has a "mellower kind of Islam", and women can drive their own cars, walk around with their faces uncovered, etc. My coworker was amazed to learn not only that Indonesia is a Muslim country, but that it is one of the largest ones in the world-- "a major hub of Islam outside of the Middle East," as I described it.
I told him the people in the madrassa Obama went to said that they don't explicitly teach Islam in the school, just the 3 R's. I likened it to the Muslim equivalent of a Catholic school, suggesting that if Obama's mother had met a Catholic, he might have been sent to a Catholic school instead.
I then mentioned that Obama wound up being raised by his grandparents in his teen years, and that was why he mentioned them in his Democratic convention speech. I described how he won a scholarship to Harvard university, and then came back to Chicago to use his law degree to help people, instead of "making a ton of money off it." (As you will note from Obama's Wikipedia entry, I got his history a little mixed up here, but presented the main theme.)
In Chicago, I said, Obama found that most of the people he was working with were Black, and that in order to have any 'cred' with the Black community, you had to engage with the Black churches. This, I said, was how Obama began going to Black churches, and wound up in contact with Reverend Wright.
"Was what Reverend Wright said really that bad?" he asked me.
I said that I had watched a couple of somewhat longer YouTube videos of Reverend Wright's notorious sermons ('On 9/11', 'Governments change, but God does not', and I had come to the conclusion that while some of what Wright said was kind of tinfoil-hat-off-the-deep-end, that based on what I know of Black history, in many ways Wright had a point. My coworker kind of nodded his head; I think he has heard some of what Black people go/have gone through as well.
Then he asked me if I was registered to vote, to which I replied that not only was I, but I also told him about permanent mail ballot voting, how they mail me my ballot a couple weeks ahead of time and I can fill it out at my leisure. He said, "did you do it yet?" I said, "I sent it in last Monday." He was quite impressed at that.
He said to me, "How do you know all this stuff? It looks like you've really done your research!" I jokingly said, "I'm a wonk. I admit it." But he was really impressed with all that I told him, and I think I gave him a ton of things to think about.
With this story I must emphasize, that while we Kossacks take for granted how much we know about what is going on, many of those around us know only a fraction of the things we do. So if the chance to share some of what you know comes up, by all means take it-- it could make a big difference.