Confession

[pasithea]

I cried last night.

When it was officially reported that Obama had won, I cried.


Not because the election had been particularly stressful to me. Compared to 4 years ago, when the choices were lousy and REALLY LOUSY, this was nothing. Palin was on par with W for stupid and unpleasant, but McCain, not so much. I don't like his policies or his associates, but he's not the same kind of scum that Bush, Cheney, and Palin are.

I cried for something else. Distant memories from my past. Piece of my childhood. My friends. I grew up in rural Oklahoma in the 70s. Legally, segregation had ended, but you'd never have known it where I lived. Racism was still rampant.

Last night, I was thinking about my childhood friends and the hurt I'd seen them suffer. Mark, because he was Polish, Kiffa because he was Jewish, Ron because he was black. Kerry, who was Cherokee, and Beth who was Vietnamese. I took a lot of shit too. "Why you hang out with that kike?", "I don't want that nigger in our house.", "You're dating a gook! They only want citizenship."

I put up with so much shit and I know that for all I put up with, each and every one of those friends I had suffered far far more.

So last night, I cried. Part joy, part bitter, part laughter because this was the first time in my whole LIFE that I've really felt good about my country. After all this time, I can finally look back on every last one of those hateful little jibs and say, "We beat you."

I know that this isn't the definitive end of racism, sexism, homophobia, and whatever else, but it's something. I have some kind of real proof that we're moving forward. Things are changing, and all the assholes I grew up around? Yeah. They're back there. By large degrees, they died last night. Their words will never have the same kind of power that they did before because now the nagging doubt is gone. I have real and solid proof that there are fewer of them than there are of us.

Comments

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

That's huge. I think there were vast numbers of little victories like that in Obama's win. That's the beauty in it.

Viva Obama!

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

This election showed I was wrong. My feelings were that while racism no longer had legal strength there was enough deep-seeded hate and racism to prevent anyone except a white Anglo-Saxon from attaining the presidency. It's one of the reasons I believed Russ Feingold (one of my favorite senators from Wisconsin) didn't attempt to run this year. "There's too much antisemitism in this country to elect a Jew" was what I thought. (not exactly a race issue, but deep-seeded hate exists here too -- and a lot of people (even Jews) are under the impression that Judism IS a race)

This election, however, did open up a lot of eyes. It showed that, to Americans, race just wasn't all that important anymore... well, at least to enough Americans to allow Obama to win.