Old Habits, Old Fears

According to an article in today's LA Times, President Obama is losing support among a particular group of voters -- those who consider themselves "white." The reason for this drop, according to the article, is Obama's policy stands. Oh, really?

I beg to differ. To anyone who watches TV or reads the news, the dominant voices have not been policy wonks engaged in a rational discussion of specific proposals and likely alternatives. The voices I've heard have been loud, angry, pushed beyond reason. The words generally reflect the chatter coming from Fox and the radio rightocracy, and that chatter has been focused on the "otherness" of Obama. In other words, his blackness.

No matter what issue is raising the right's ire, the argument comes back to "it's bad because it's Obama. You just can't trust him." That's why the health plan must be called "Obamacare," even though the plan is being written in the House, or the current version of the bailout, first cobbled together by Bush apparatchiks, must be called "Obamanomics." It's the frame, and it's all the right seems to have.

It is also racist. And it's working, if the poll released today is accurate, and if you think raising suspicion among white folks about Obama's otherness can be called "working."

Just to be clear, let me provide a brief but workable definition of "racist."

• First of all, I use it to refer to actions and to speech, not to intention (because I really can't know anyone else's intentions, only their actions). 
• Second, a word or action is racist when it ignores the individuality of any person, and judges them as a member of a group, as if every member of the group can be assumed to share those characteristics. 
• The more negatively you view the group, and those characteristics, the more invidious the racist word or deed.

Racism is, then, the denial of human individuality. It does not belong to any one culture or skin color, and there is probably no one who does not sometimes at least use racist language or thoughts. To me, the only thing that matters is how we respond when a racist word or deed is pointed out. This is not about guilt (one of my recurring themes), it is about taking responsibility for being a human being on this planet trying to coexist with other, separate and only partly knowable human beings.

There have been times and places when humans protected their families or villages by shunning the "other," by seeing them as less human than us, easier to reject, to enslave, to eliminate. That is a perfect definition of ignorance. But we live in a world where the interconnectedness between families, villages, nations makes ignorance a liability. We have learned too much about plague, war, and global financial breakdown. It's time to leaves those old habits and fears behind.

Once again, we are talking I suppose about intelligence, and the ongoing responsibility to see the world as it is, to push ourselves beyond our preconceptions and prejudices. I'm trying to do my best, and to make it easier for others to do a little better and realize their best as we glimpse and appreciate the ways we are ALL connected.

Happy Labor Day.