Folks, Barack Obama himself said it.
He said this would not be easy.
Amidst reports of another shouted epithet at a Palin rally, this time the n-word, and amidst reports that there may have been a radical skinhead plot to kill Senator Obama, we have to face some very cold hard facts about an Obama administration.
It's not going to be easy.
Obama knows this. Do we? And are we up to the challenge?
He will be called a n-word. He will be called a terrorist. People will continue to believe he is secretly a Muslim. He will be hated. Not disliked, not disagreed with, hated.
Why?
Because there are still quite a few stone-cold racists in this country.
We are seeing, I think, some at play in this election, and the reason Obama is going to win. It comes out in the difference between prejudice and racism.
Prejudice is a predisposition, based upon false assumptions, to dislike someone of a given race. The good thing about prejudice is that it can be defeated -- defeated with the truth, the facts, or a change in attitude.
Racism is another kettle of fish altogether. Racism is based upon the flawed notion of the superiority of a given race. Therein lies the difference, and therein lies the problem.
There are going to be certain segments of society, no matter what happens, that are not going to have the stomach for an Obama presidency. Because it will CHALLENGE, TO THEIR CORE, the notions of their own superiority based upon race.
It's sad, and it's true. There is going to be more hate, more threats, more lunacy.
Now, it's easy to blame McCain and Palin for stoking some of this stuff at their rallies. But that is not the end story. For most of these people, those who shout the nasty stuff out at rallies about Obama, those particularly stirred up by the rhetoric, they never needed a reason to justify their hate...just an excuse to shout it out.
But the fact remains that the racism was there long before McCain and Palin. The fact remains that it will be there after they are gone, too.
So, we need to be ready. We can overcome this stuff by working on those who are merely prejudiced, who can finally see that a President Obama is a president for all the people.
We can do it by getting a mandate.
We can do it by having President Obama's back for the next four years.
We can do it by confronting racism each and every time we hear it.
Now is the time to prove the world that WE can turn the page.
We need to be ready.
Because this never was going to be easy.