RANDOM IGNORANCE: Hate Incidents On The Rise

The Chicago Tribune recently reported a rise in hate incidents in the weeks since Barack Obama's election as the first black president of the US. White supremacists have been whipped into a tizzy burning crosses, spray painting racist graffiti, starting assassination pools and creating effigies of Barack in dozens towns across the country.

More than 200 incidents have been reported over the past few weeks. Racist Web sites are boasting that their servers are crashing under the weight of increases in page views. Even the Ku Klux Klan is trying to make a come back. (source)

People's capacity for ignorance never ceases to amaze me. When will white extremists realize that their ideas are outdated? Don't they realize that they are outnumbered? Did they not have televisions in the militia bunkers to see this country coming together to give everyone a shot at something better? The Ku Klux Klan must know that they face a totally different America than they did in the past.

My fiance said over and over again during the election that it is a shame that some people would rather vote for a sponge than vote for Barack Obama just because he is black. They would rather watch our economy continue to crash and burn, watch jobs continue to dry up and companies continue to go under than to watch a black man move into the White House.

Well, as it turned out those misguided, misinformed people did not matter on Nov. 4. The rest of us who have some common sense won. Barack Obama won. Unity won. And the long sordid history of racism, hatred and intolerance in this country lost.

Michelle Obama caught flack for saying this some months ago but I share her sentiment. I have never been more proud of my country than I am right now. And these foolish people who will not let go of their ignorant, racist ideas can't take that from me.

They are outnumbered - not just in terms of a more diverse population but - by people of all races even of their own who realize that we are all more alike than we are different. They are outnumbered by people who refuse to live in the past. Those of us who believe in a country that is no longer divided, angry or ashamed collectively cancel out their combined ignorance.

The key is to not buckle under their hate. We must not give their hate the fuel it needs to survive - fear. We must join together and put these idiots on notice. Irrational hate will no longer be tolerated. We will not be intimidated, bullied or terrorized by stupidity. Tolerance wins and we are not afraid!

The Unspoken Fear Of Black America

Reuters photo

For months since Barack Obama all but sealed the Democratic nomination for President, African-Americans wouldn't even discuss the fear. Bring it up and they quickly changed the subject.

Yesterday, however, the fear that Barack Obama's journey toward the White House could be derailed by violence inescapably bubbled to the surface. As news reports broke about the three men suspected of concocting a sinister plan to assassinate our arbiter of hope, black people across America were forced to face the suppressed trepidation that had silently tempered their hope.

Thanks to Tharin Gartrell, Nathan Johnson and Shawn Adolf, we can no longer ignore it. Their faces resemble those that have haunted the nightmares of black men for decades. They represent the faces of prejudice, ignorance and irrational hate. They symbolize the type of hate that induces men to head toward Denver with a stockpile of stolen guns and drugs allegedly on a mission to kill. Their suspected link to a white-supremacist group and lengthy criminal records come as no surprise.

As black people we know for sure that if there are three, there are more who wish ill upon the man who would be our first African-American president. There are thousands who, because of deep-seated intolerance, would rather elect a Christmas goose than a black man calling for change; and there are countless lost souls willing to kill and/or die to keep Obama's victory from happening. Our fear – no longer deniable – is warranted and real.

I hesitated to even blog about it, because I would much prefer to keep banishing all bone-chilling thoughts that there might be attempts on the presidential candidate's life to the background of my daily mental chatter.

I take solace in being sure that the best security money can by surrounds Obama. Every possible threat - both publicized and unpublicized - is curtailed quickly, I tell myself. I'm certain all I's have been dotted and all T's crossed for his historic acceptance speech Thursday at the open-air stadium, Invesco Field at Mile High. (Whose decision was that again?)

I keep these assurances at the forefront of my mind because anything else for me is unthinkable. I was not old enough to mourn first hand the loss of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or witness the riots that followed his murder. I was not yet born when someone did or did not hide in a grassy knoll to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

Our nation recovered after those tragedies. If America lost Obama -its most tangible chance for hope and recovery- I question whether the resulting rupture the fabric of this country could ever be repaired. That may be our biggest fear of all.

Related stories:

Report: Suspect confessed to Obama plot - Denver Post

Armed men were no threat to Obama: U.S. attorney - Yahoo News - Reuters

No evidence of plot to kill Obama: justice official - AFP

Obama's Stolen Prayer Refreshingly Familiar

I, like most people, was outraged when I first saw this Associated Press story about Sen. Barack Obama's prayer being stolen from Jerusalem's Western Prayer Wall where he placed it during a visit last week. Following tradition, Obama wrote his prayer on a small piece of paper, fold it up and jam it into one of the cracks in the stone of the sacred wall. Before Obama could even make it back to his motorcade, a scavenger who obviously has no conscience plucked the presidential candidate's note to the Almighty from its resting place and took it to a newspaper.

Stealing someone's personal message to God is wrong on every imaginable level. I mean it's downright ignorant and disrespectful to the 2,000-year-old wall, considered Judaism's holiest place. With that said, I have to admit I couldn't wait to get to the part in the video where it revealed what he had written.

Sure, I felt conflicted about my nosiness. On the one hand, I thought it was ridiculously wrong for the news media to publish the information. The other part of me - the side that is as fascinated by the man as everyone else - wanted desperately to know what Barack Obama prays for.

From the outside looking in, it appears he has everything. He's reached rock star status in an historic election that has riveted a nation. He is a bestselling author with what appears to be an extremely loving relationship with a smart and successful wife. Let's not forget the two adorable children, who are equally charming and well-adjusted despite all of the madness that now surrounds them.

What would he say? I had to know. I'm not sure what I was expecting Obama's prayer to say. Perhaps: "Please God let me be president." Or "Thank you God for making me so freakin' AWESOME!" Or maybe even: "Please God keep me away from Rev. Jesse Jackson when he is holding a pair of scissors."

In the end, Barack's prayer was really not so different from mine or, I suspect, many people across this country and the world.

"Lord - Protect my family and me," reads the note, as reported by the Maariv daily. "Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

We all want our families and ourselves to be safe. Most of us want our mistakes, missteps and just plain blasphemous behavior eradicated from all public, private, cosmic and spiritual records. Most of us want to do what's right -most, if not all of the time.

And the older I get the more I realize that doing things according to my will is not always so good for me or anyone around me. I'm sure others feel the same way –even if our current president doesn’t.

Random Static: The New Yorker Cover Just Another Distraction

I’ve decided not to jump on the bandwagon and post about The New Yorker cover. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of blogs covered that fiasco. Yes, the cover was extremely ridiculous, bordering on ignorant. But we all know that. The editors who decided to put it on the cover knew it too. It seems everyone's selling their soul for publicity these days.

Nope, I’m not getting sucked into that vortex because here’s what I think - not about the cover itself - but about what the cover has accomplished. That cover, just like the explosive Jeremiah Wright rant, the goofy Jesse Jackson comments, the Obama daughter interview uproar, comedian Bernie Mac's off-color jokes and Fist Bump-Gate – have merely diverted attention from everything else that we need to be focusing on.

Go to any business or financial page today. They are littered with bad news that is being ignored because of that stupid cover. From the top to the bottom of the screen on any given news website, there is nothing but doom and gloom. The stock market, housing market and, hell, even the supermarket are in the toilet. Gas prices and unemployment rates are higher than giraffe genitals. People are losing jobs and homes sometimes in the same month.

Over in Washington, Bush and his crew are up to their same old political games lifting the oil drilling ban in an attempt to distract us once again with meaningless legislation. They know darn well, even if Congress voted to do the same, no effects would be felt in American pockets until the year 2026 and those effects would be minimal at best. They are counting on us being too distracted by foolishness – oh and the birth of the Brangelina twins -to realize that.

It’s bad out here people! Too bad, in fact, to waste a lot of ink and keystrokes on a bonehead, ill-conceived cartoon. We can’t keep getting caught up in these idiotic publicity stunts that force Obama and us to focus energy on denouncing ignorant behavior every other day. Barack Obama is facing the fight of his life in this election and so are we.

Random Rhetoric: Speaking Of Nuts...

Image courtesy of Library of Congress

"He's running the last lap of a 54-year marathon. I am a part of that race." -
Rev. Jesse Jackson (source -CNN)

Sigh. That was Rev. Jesse Jackson's response regarding whether his much-publicized Obama criticism is rooted in jealousy.

Jesse, seriously, just stop saying things! No disrespect, but we all know that anytime a man threatens another man's baby-sacks there is some hate in the game and it's not a good look. Sadly, we also realize that there is absolutely no way you are going to let go of the limelight you covet now that somebody is finally paying attention to you again.

No one denies that we stand on the backs of you and all those who served on the frontlines of the struggle. Just because there have been no cameras in your face of late, doesn't mean we have forgotten about you. That said, however, you have had more than anyone's share of shine and your contributions have been acknowledged - over and over again.

I implore you to let us all get back to the business of electing our first black president and leave this foolishness behind - for the sake of the legacy of your past accomplishments and for all of our futures.