[PAA-Discuss] Fw: When are WE going to get over it?

[carolekeene at juno.com]

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Joanne Vacek <joanne_e_vacek at hotmail.com>
To: Undisclosed-recipients:;
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:36:55 -0600
Subject: When are WE going to get over it?

Worth the read. 


 jev

Andrew M. Manis is associate professor of history at Macon State College
in Georgia and wrote this for an editorial in the Macon Telegraph. 
 
When Are WE Going to Get Over It? 
Andrew M. Manis 
 
For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race
problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have
been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for
their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African
Americans finally going to get over it? Now I want to ask: "When are we
White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin
color? 
 
Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes"
should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in
"Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960's, I remember overhearing an avalanche
of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to
do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you
may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the
talk." Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we
are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my
boyhood. 
 
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies
and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative
whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight
Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and
pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any
headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of
presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. 
 
Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were
no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald
Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely
to impress Jody Foster. 

But elect a liberal who happens to be black and we're back in the sixties
again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven
what conservatives are always saying -- that in America anything is
possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear
that school children from Maine to California are talking about wanting
to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?" How long
before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the
whole world, look like us? 
 
How long until we white people can - once and for all - get over this
hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white
people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior?

 
How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about
being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites? 

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the
head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we
white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the
latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations? 

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making
racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How
long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise
personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough
to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President
of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do? 
 
How long before we start "living out the true meaning" of our creeds,
both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and
that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight? 
 
Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever
elect an African American to the presidency. I still don't believe I'll
live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But
here's my three-point plan: First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in
the White House that black slaves built, I'm going to pray that God (and
the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

 
Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear
saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about
President Obama. Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see
America surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit
and in truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."  
 
*************************************  
It takes a Village to protect our President!!!
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