Brainwrap's diary (and picture) inspired me tonight.
Perhaps it's just my age, or the time I came of age.
When I was in school, my first crush and "girlfriend" was a chicana (as were a couple of subsequent relationships). I thought nothing of the fact, and didn't even know at the time, that my best friend was a Jew. The black kids that I played intramural basketball with were just kids like me. In fact, as a short guy, and not terribly athletic, I was in the minority. And I missed that last second layup that would have won the game. But no one on the team hated on me - black or white. It was just one of those things, it didn't work out that day, obla dee obla dah life goes on.
It seems like things get so blown out of proportion today. Being a kid, growing up, and going through adolescence is not a cake walk, I don't care if it was 1965 or 2015.
But as a child of the '60s, it never once occurred to me that a black or brown or yellow or purple man (or woman) couldn't be president. I didn't see color. I saw people who either liked me or didn't, played with me or not.
I live in the deep south. I still see people that way. I work with people from very diverse ethnic and gender identity backgrounds; we're all professionals in our fields and do our very best every day to make our own personal worlds a little better, and our professional lives a little easier. We support each other.
The trailer trash that's the backbone of the "resistance" can't and won't last. Simple and inevitable demographic shifts won't allow it.
To the younger audience that reads this: there will come a day, I promise, when I won't have to apologize for the rednecks and haterz. They are on dino-time. There are at least two generations behind me who are even more (as a whole) in tune with my own experience than I am.
The Charleston whackjob and his ilk are a dying breed. I know and understand it doesn't feel like it right now.
But after watching Barack Obama's moving eulogy this afternoon, coupled with the surprising SCOTUS decisions this week, I believe it for the first time in a long time.
The progressive Rubicon has been crossed. This was a week that will be remembered for a long time.
