There's a scene in the Chris Rock movie 'Head of State' in which he's running for president and his character Alderman Mays Gilliam is poised to win the White House. It comes down in a tight race to California deciding it. The pundits say it, and a flood of screaming, panic-stricken suburban whites rush out of their cookie cutter homes and flood onto the streets heading as fast as they can to the nearest polling place in order to keep a Black man from occupying the highest office in the land.
That scene was playing in my mind as I watched the results from the West Virginia primary last night and heard the distressing news that 22% of the people in exit polling there openly admitted race was a factor in casting their ballots. The actual numbers were probably double that.
Yes, there is fear out there of Sen. Barack Obama and his family moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The lunatic fringe and the Freepers have been screaming for months online they need to do something to stop the n----r from winning this race. It manifested itself in the primary results in West Virginia last night. The same fears were stoked and exploited in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Indiana and various other states. The Republicans will be ready to race bait all the way to November 4 and test drove their message in North Carolina. The Faux News nattering negativity nabobs stoked the Rev. Wright controversy. When Hillary was about to be finished off she played the race card to the point where I wondered if she was running for KKK Grand Wizard instead of the presidency.As a hardworking, college educated African-American I'm pissed about how the positive campaign we had on the Democratic primary side degenerated. It was obvious Hillary couldn't beat him with a positive campaign, so her new campaign team started running plays from the GOP race-baiting side of the political playbook. We can only hope and pray that the 'kitchen sink' strategy they employed doesn't come back to haunt us in November.
So what are y'all 'scurred' of working class White America? Are you cowering in your centuries old fear that everything your ancestors have done to my people will be revisited upon you? Are you being fed the lies by right-wing talk radio and Faux News that Barack is 'too liberal', 'lacks experience', 'speaks well but no substance', 'he's an undercover Muslim' and all the other past, present and future bullshyt that will be thrown at him by GOP spinmeisters? Are you believing the fallacious bull that if this country elects an African-American, they'll have less respect for us? Hell, we've got rock bottom respect levels in the world thanks to the unqualified pseudo-Texan dumb ass y'all voted overwhelmingly for twice. The rest of the world thinks of Barack Obama as an improvement.
White working class America. fire up your braincells and stop falling for the okey-doke. This is probably the best candidate we've had in a generation and he happens to be a mixed race person. He came from nothing to the verge of being president. He is the American Dream that your right-wing pundits are always exhorting my people to believe in until it benefits us, then y'all have a problem with it.
Barack Obama has your economic interests at heart moreso than the parade of GOP idiots that have sold you out to the have-mores over the last 40 years, bamboozled you into voting for them and against your own economic interests because you fell for the 'Guns, God and Gays' 'family values' rhetoric.
I just want to ask one question. In that entire 40 years you've been voting for Republicans, has it put more money in your pocket?
Let's fast forward to the glorious day when a new chapter in American history will commence on January 20, 2009. Barack Obama will raise his right hand at 12:01 PM EST on that day, his lovely wife Michelle will hold the Bible (not the Koran) with his lovely daughters standing there watching their father take the oath of office as president of the United States.On that day the sky won't fall, no fire and brimstone will rain down upon Washington DC and the subsequent inaugural parade will be the bomb. Four years from now when it's time to reelect him for his second term, your pockets are fat with cash from the tax cut you'll get, your kids are healthier because they'll have health care, and you'll be safer because we ain't running around the planet pissing people off, you'll wonder in 2012 what you were so scared of.
