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  Date / Time: 11/20/2008 9:11 PM UTC

  A MUST READ EMAIL BY MARK - WHEN ARE BLACK FOLKS GOING TO GET OVER IT - PLEASE POST YOUR RESPONSE
  

  <http://www.macon.com/209/story/529517.html>
  http://www.macon.com/209/story/529517.html
  
  
  When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
  
  
  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 1960s, 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
  schoolchildren 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 starting "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." 
  
  Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering
  committee of Macon's Center for Racial Understanding.
  
  --
  RLO ~ And Remember...
  
  
  "Never underestimate the power of
  stupid people in large numbers."
  (Homer Simpson)
  
  
  
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  • OPRRESSION
  • RACISM
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