I know my reflection is late, but I wanted to write more about the election and besides the paper I had due I couldn’t concentrate on what I wanted to write about every time I thought about it. But I would still like to write one. After some days to reflect on the election, I have lost a lot of my anger. I am still disappointed, but I am not going to stay upset about something I can’t change. Besides, I will give Obama a chance like I would anyone before they give me a reason not to. However I would like to address something that is not exactly “politically correct”. The only thing that makes me still sad about the election is not that Obama won, it’s one of the reasons why I think he won. I do think a big reason why he won, and maybe even why he deserved to win, is because the Republican Party needs to change. The Republican Party has not been acting very republican; instead we made government bigger in the last 8 years and spent more money than we should have. This is something that I got to discuss with Senator Coburn tonight when he came to speak to the college republicans. Before I heard him speak I hadn’t really thought of the reasons behind why we lost. For the most part America is a conservative nation, but Bush wasn’t really a conservative. Looking back on the last 8 years I see that a lot of campaign promises weren’t kept. As a result, people wanted change. Obama was smart enough to realize this and to convince people that he will do that. I thought that he would win for a long time before the election. (of course when your in his campaign office and everyone is so hopeful, you start to believe too, which is what happened to me in Colorado) I was actually surprised that the popular vote wasn’t higher for him.
Obama was supposed to win, he is new, the media was/is in love with him, and people just didn’t want another republican in office. Those are legitimate reasons to vote for him (except for my dig at the media), especially if you share his views (which I don’t doubt most people do). However, what makes me question this election is the number of people I met who were simply voting for Obama because he is black. I understand and sympathize with blacks about the importance/significance of having a black president. I am also happy that this election proves that America is definitely not as racist as it used to be. However, when I hear people tell me that that’s the only reason they’re voting for him, it makes me sick. Especially when you hear from some of them that they don’t even know his views and don’t care. The Presidency is too important to be used by some people to prove a point. I can at least respect people who voted for him based on his policies (although I might question their intelligence;) ), but I have no respect for the ones who voted for him only because he is black. Because, honestly, I feel like we will never be able to get rid of racism until race doesn’t matter at all. If we are not racist, it shouldn’t matter the color of his skin. He will be a good president because of what he does, not because of what he looks like. I can’t help but think that this reveals deeper problems in our society.
For example, I was eating in tdr a few days after the election when they had the radio on. The station played mostly rap music, with a mostly African-American audience, but they had a morning show on that day. I listened as the announcer talked about how happy she was that Obama was elected because he is black. She went on to say that finally blacks will get the things they need, that John McCain wouldn’t have cared about black people and only Obama understands what they’re going through. While it may be true that Obama is able to understand other blacks better than McCain, because he is black, I am worried by the perception that whites don’t care, or wouldn’t be fair. I am worried that there may still be a significant racial divide in our country, and it’s not what everyone thinks of as racism. Instead, it is the distrust that blacks, at least the ones on the radio show I was listening to, have of white people. This makes me sad because I would hope that in today’s world we could move past any bad feelings toward people based on race. Like we heard from Kristin Tippert today in her Speaking on Faith book discussion, it’s not religion that does bad things, its bad people who happen to be religious, and whom wrongly do things in the name of their religion that do bad things. The same should be said about race. That individual people can be good or bad no matter what race they are, and they should be judged accordingly. I hope that one day we live in a world where people don’t trust or distrust others based on what they look like. I am not writing about this because I am bitter that Obama won or something, that is in no way my point at all! I am simply bringing up a topic of discussion that was brought to my attention unintentionally with the results of his victory. I do hope that the fact we have a black president helps to heal some of the wounds that racism has caused this country. I just think that if we are going to discuss issues of racism because of the election, that we discuss all of them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
4 comments:
" there may still be a significant racial divide in our country, and it’s not what everyone thinks of as racism. Instead, it is the distrust that blacks...have of white people."
And this is a one-way street? There weren't any blue-collar whites in the South and the Rust Belt who didn't vote for Obama because he's black? I'd agree that white distrust of blacks is usually less explicitly articulated than its converse, but that doesn't mean its any less potent. At least in my experience, white people tend to react with apprehension, suspicion, and even fear when they're approached or surrounded by black people; there's a very high degree of mistrust there.
I would also dispute that "Bush wasn't really a conservative". Ideological standards aren't static. There's an element in the Republican party that wants to return to the conservatism of twenty or thirty years ago, but that's no longer what constitutes conservatism. We can argue about what that ideology should be, but not what it actually is.
I was actually going to argue exactly what Ben has discussed. I would argue people had absolutely no problem with Bush's fiscal policy. The Republican intelligentsia loves to ramble on about how the Republican party turned its back on what it stood for, yet we see a 2004 election that was won by a president who partook in the largest expansion in government spending since FDR. And this was victory by mandate, according to those within Bush's administration. So clearly, it wasn't Democrats voting for Bush. The hatred on that side ran deep. They voted Bush for his social conservatism and economic liberalism, not vice-versa. The Republican ideology has shifted. There was a refocusing under the Bush administration, and though the national ideology has not shifted, as it supposedly did under Reagan and FDR, that of the party itself has.
And anyway, racism is a double-edged sword. Obama lost a lot of votes among the elderly and in the Southeast due to Obama's race and heritage. I have friends back home who I considered fairly educated who referred to Obama in a lot of ways I would never call a fellow human being.
Don't worry white people. Obama is also half-white. He understands you too.
I agree that it is sad that racism is still around. However, I don't get upset when people say they vote for/against Obama because he is black. We don't have rules for who can vote and why they vote the way they do. Not talking about it will not end racism or prejudice. I do not know what will end it. I do know that blaming certain races for being racist will not. Maybe if we stop blaming and complaining and start learning from each other, we can work together to fix this.
b. a. baracus: I didn't say it was a one way street, because obviously it's not. I'm sure there were many people who didn't vote for Obama because he is black. And those people are just as wrong as the people who just voted for him because he is black! I just wanted to bring up the other side because I feel like it is more often ignored, not because it is more important. They are both harmful.
As for your example of white people becoming suspicious and fearful around black people that is not true for everyone and while I'm sure that some whites do, it also depends upon who you are talking about. There are other factors that can contribute to that distrust. For example, as a girl I will always be more fearful around a group of strangers who are men then I will around another group of girls. And if I was alone at night and I was approached, I would be just as fearful if the group of guys were white than if they were black.
While I think you're right that conservatism has changed, I also think that certain things do constitute being a conservative and some of those were ignored by Bush. I actually happen to be one of the few people who like President Bush. I think history will be kinder toward him than current public opinion of him is. However, he did things in his Presidency that went against the principals of the Republican Party. This is something that doesn’t bother me as much because I disagree with certain things in the Republican platform. But I happen to think that the major belief of the Republican Party is that the best government is one that governs the least. If that's the case, then Bush has not acted as a "true" conservative would have in his 8 years. Bush has spent the most amount of public money since Lyndon B. Johnson, increasing general spending by 22 percent, not including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also signed a bill to regulate political speech with the campaign finance law, he issued taxes on imported steel and lumber, got the government involved with education with the No Child Left Behind Act, and endorsed massive new entitlements for mental health care and prescription drugs.
Tori: when you stated that “I do know that blaming certain races for being racist will not (solve racism)”. And that “Maybe if we stop blaming and complaining and start learning from each other, we can work together to fix this”. I hope you don’t think that’s what I was doing! Because it definitely was not! I was simply bringing up something that I saw in society that I think we should talk about, kind of how we are right now. You said that “Not talking about it will not end racism or prejudice”. Which is one of the biggest reasons why I think it’s important to talk about race and racism. Simply because we are afraid of whom we may offend or because the topic makes us uncomfortable, is not a good enough reason to not talk about racism.
Post a Comment