I am back from my weekend hiatus, so nice to be back online. Anyway while relaxing with the family this weekend, we went on a drive in the country to visit a local farm. During that drive, we saw a house that had a rather large lawn jockey on the yard, of course the lawn jockey happened to be Black. Now as a Black woman, seeing that damn thing pissed me off, but what followed has left me pondering are we making progress or not as a society when it comes to race.
While I was ranting and raving over how I should go and smash the what to me was offensive lawn jockey, my 16 year old son who is biracial asked me why? Now this is a kid who has been fed a healthy dose of Black culture since day 1 (he also reads Mama’s blog), but as he explained to me he was not offended by the site of the lawn jockey because to him he viewed it much like how some Jewish folks view the Holocaust and strongly believe that they must never forget what happened. He feels that we as Black people must never forget the past and imagery like that offensive lawn jockey should keep us focused. I will admit for a moment Mama was like WTF? On the other hand many baby boy has a point, perhaps if some of these so-called ballers and rappers came upon these offensive images, they would be less likely to be creating their own offensive images. Since whenever elder boy is home, I inevitably end up watching some MTV or VH-1 and am absolutely dumbfounded over how we (we as in Black folks) now have no problem creating imagery on our own that makes us look like buffoons. Of course the reality is that coonery and buffoonery sells and the biggest buyers of this are not people of color… no its white folks. What the hell does that say about us as a society?
On another note speaking to racial progress, I woke up this morning as I always do listening to NPR and was listening to the Monday report on the election season and heard a rather interesting tidbit. Seems that there is still questions on whether or not Barack Obama can close the deal with working class whites and actually get them to vote for him. The report I heard this morning, mentioned that in states like Michigan and Ohio, two places I would not want to live since economically they are the pits, it seems the working class folks are not buying what Obama is selling. Now back when Hillary was still in the picture, this same issue was mentioned, why couldn’t Obama close the deal?
Come on now, you don’t need to be a Rhodes scholar to figure this out… race. Now I know some will say, why you gotta make this about race? Look who in their right mind votes against their own economic self interest? In America its lower income white folks who believe that people of color and them damn immigrants are stealing their jobs and whatnot, so rather than vote for change that might bring a few jobs back to them, they will vote for anyone else.
I am not saying Obama is perfect, personally since clinching the nomination he has pissed me off, that said, voting for McCain seems like economic suicide since in essence we will be getting a third Bush term as far as policies. Yet racism is deeply ingrained is the fabric of this nation, so economic well-being be damned, anything is better than a Negro in charge.
Guess the question for me is are we really making racial progress? Personally I am on the fence about this…
