A 65-year-old "Flashback"
At my advanced age, I never expected the Internet to provide a "flashback", of 65 years, to a time and place that I had hoped had "changed" for the better. Apparently not! As a child, below the age of 10, I stood across from an entrance to the "Misery" Fair Grounds; tipping my hat to cars filled with the "grandparents" of the yahoos in the stands at that rodeo a few days ago. I was a human sign, paid 10 cents an hour for a 10 hour day; suffering the racial epithets of the passengers entering the grounds.
There was no Internet then, and few, if any, white Missourians would have thought anything was out of the "ordinary". One Missourian, these many years later, was incensed enough to post the "Obama Mask" event on Facebook. Perhaps that is some measure of "progress:
The link above also includes a YouTube video in which the crowd "went wild" with the taunts of the President; which included threats for his personal safety. Missouri politicians (both parties) took "cover" from the incident. A hundred miles or so North, in Iowa, Senator Ted Cruz, father in tow, were stirring up similar sentiments.
This Fall will be especially nasty; as the politically- cornered Hard Right and Republican Party continue to dig themselves deeper into their "anti-Obama hole". They started digging it, led by Mitch McConnell, more than five years ago. We now know, it's not about deficit spending ( deficits are at record lows and declining); it's not even about health care (although Missouri did not, by law, permit blacks to have health care before I left that State in 1959; if whites were providers). Today, it's all about what Obama represents; and it is personal! The wider message is intended for all non-whites in this country.
Don't assume social and racial "progress" is uni-directional in this country. There was more "integration" in the South during the decades between the end of the Civil War, and the beginning of Jim Crow. It took steady pressure from the KKK, to put Jim Crow laws in place. The Supreme Court did its part to enable those laws. Today, the cycle is beginning again?
Stay Vigilant! "First, they come for ..." VOTE in 2014!!--the Repoobs hope won't!
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