As I sit propped up in my bed, on an absolutely perfect Pacific Northwest day I am thinking about freedom. Through my window I can see snow-capped mountains. On my desk one of my orchids is in a second time this year bloom. There are twelve blooms and nine buds.
Blooms to be.
As a Blackwoman in America on the 5th of July, freedom for me, is still a bloom to be.
Some things have changed in my lifetime. Others not much at all. Last week my best friend was in a parking lot touch-up where no fenders were bent. The woman in the other car jumped out and called her a nigger, a crack head and threatened her with her father, the Chicago police officer. What this means to me is there is at the very least, one Chicago policeman who is a racist. With a gun and a badge.
There are laws in the books. Written by folk smart enough to know you couldn’t legislate hearts and idealistic enough to try. At least they tried. Seems to me that folk got tired of the trying. Or maybe just too cynical.
Theoretically if the folks who claim to, really did believe in democracy they would accept that all people being created equal and entitled to be treated as such is not just flowery rhetoric. It is the foundation of a true democracy. Otherwise we get some of version of kings and castles and serfdom and have it all and have nothing at all. You know, the way its always been.
On the books we are supposed to be post racial. I have come to suspect what this means in reality is that we are through discussing it. Racism is rampant in all political stripes. I do not believe we can claim that being a democrat or gay or liberal is a get out of the jail of racial bias pass. Folk who use the term ‘race card’ seem suspect to me if only because the idea of cards is game playing. Most black folk will tell you we do not believe that race is a game we want to play. Racism is serious business for those who lose any game where race is a factor.
Racial bias falls under the nature of feeling. Feelings are visceral . They have nothing to do with logic. Or reason. That is perhaps why it is so difficult to have these discussions.
Feelings erupt. On all sides.
Until we can address our own true feelings about race we are stuck. As individuals. As a nation.
Some things have indeed changed. We have an African American President. From his days as a candidate forward, racial feelings began to erupt. Feelings distort memory. Many of the people who did not like Candidate Obama do not like President Obama. They did not like the way he ran his campaign and expressed what they saw as weak and lacking in backbone. They dismissed his speeches and now bemoan his failure (in their eyes) to use the bully pulpit. Many of these people are not racist, just in my opinion, clueless. The different standard seen everywhere is racist. Calling a sitting President a dick on television is a different standard.
The idea of Barack the magic negro is not limited to Rush Limbaugh.
Strikes me as odd that folk say Obama does not exhibit leadership.There was a solid Democratic Congress from Roosevelt until after the first term of Clinton. Health care could have been passed many times over. President Obama led a Congress to pass historic legislation. It did not include everything any of us wanted. Smart folks,especially of a certain age, understand that you take what you get and begin the process of filling in the gaps. Later. After it becomes law.
We could easily have smaller government if laws were unnecessary in the effort to prevent some people from acting on fear of 'other'.Fear is the feeling that precedes any racist action. For over two hundred years this fear fueled slavery and the wealth of a young nation. It fuels homophobia and all those feelings than different equals less than.
Some things have changed. Banks cannot red-line black neighborhoods in the ways of yesteryear. Now they give sub-prime loans instead.
White folk can still find black folk to trot out to spew animus in the direction of President Obama. They did this to Dr. King as well.
The dog-whistles remain. The nomenclature is different. Elitist has replaced uppity. I guess we can be grateful for political correctness.
Until black folk can be judged on the character content scale and not by the color of our skin, freedom is yet a flower to be. Until and unless all people regardless of the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation, age or country of origin are treated as equal, the bloom of freedom will remain a flower to be. For all of us.
Now run and tell that.
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