Obama's speech on Tuesday was bold, daring, but also quite risky. By daring to open up Pandora's Box with a frank discussion about one of the most divisive issues in American history, he turned conventional wisdom upside down and attempted to take control of the discussion on no one else's terms but his.
This is what true leaders do. This is how great politicians respond to such crisis: swiftly, promptly, decisively, and upping the ante for their opposition at the same time.
As for his comment about his white Grandmother being a typical white person. Let me just say that my own white Grandmother on both sides at times whispered racial epithets, though not a certain word beginning with N that I'm not going to say because I reject and denounce how loaded a word it is.
Instead, my Grandmother, a lady of her time, would refer under her breath to "the colored lady" who served us at restaurants or "that colored man" who we might have passed on the street. In that regard, she was a woman of her times. And I can no sooner disown her, than I can disown my own white skin.
My Grandmother, my mother's mother, was a social activist of her own kind, and established Sylacauga, Alabama's, first recycling center, YEARS before it was trendy. She recognized, being a member of a family well drilling business, how economically advantageous it was to recycle and reuse strictly from a cost-efficient standpoint. And she was also a child of the Depression who saw her chance at ever attending college slip away when banks failed, her father died at age 10, and her mother was committed to a lunatic asylum. She lived most of her remaining childhood and adolescence under the care of her four brothers.
My Grandfather, my father's Father, was very much of man of his time. I never heard him utter racial epithets of any hue or color, but I do remember him stating, privately, that he believed that interracial marriage made him uncomfortable. He believed that the races should not mix and that we should be with our own kind. He, too, was a child of the Depression. He had a sixth grade eduction and the economics of the times did not allow him to go any further. He spent forty years working in a textile mill, for low pay, six days a week, until it gave him white lung disease from the combined efforts of breathing in cotton dust. He remembers fondly that during the Depression, he received two precious gifts for Christmas: an apple and an orange. Fresh fruit was hard to find in the Depression and very expensive.
When I am frustrated with the limited number of choices I have, I realize that things could be so much worse. I recognize that my Christmas presents as a child were so much more than two pieces of fruit. How often we take for granted the struggles of those who came before us, while ripping apart their views, which are centered in old prejudices and old dreams still yet to be deferred.
I could sooner disown both sets of grandparents than I could disown a member of my own family. Wait, they ARE family. And they are both parts of me. So in that respect, they are typical white people. And I am a typical white person.
And as a spokesman for no one but myself, this typical white person was not offended by what Barack Obama said yesterday. Taken out of context, by itself, it could be construed as offensive. Put into the context of my story, I understood what it is he meant. All political statements are inherent risky, though some are more risky than others. And all truths are inherently risky in that those in the public eye will be held to a higher standard than any of us. Our representatives are expected to be more perfect than we are, and more perfect than this union we try to hold between ourselves, our family, and in the world around us.
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