I will never forget opening to this story by James Baldwin. It was my primary introduction to racism...a most visceral and frightening story that haunted me and killed a part of my innocence in the best way possible. With every word unfolding before me a world I never really knew or understood, the shock was like a shredding of protection. I wept, I was chilled to the depths of my heart...
But it was this story that came to mind the other night when I saw the news... the first flash association I had when I saw the McCain crowds in their fear and rage.
I am a writer. I am a reader. And I remember that story's perspective of the young boy at the back of the crowd. From the cameras perspective at the rally, on the nightly news, it was too similar.
Where in the world is this trail taking us?
The hate...the joy of hating...the salacious devouring of unified fury against a person of color...it made me sick.
The only comfort sought after reading Baldwin's story was that it was set in the "safety" of the past. That's my naivety...another privilege of white. The immediate assumption of thinking that what happens in the past stays in the past...
Strange how the mind works...
I read the news, and it's disaffected storytelling. Incidences like those in Baldwin's story happen still, not just in the past...A movie, with it's safety of recognizable actors and distance, can tell a similar story. But the written word in the Baldwin story terrified me more...
Yes, it was the perspective in that particular story that haunted me. The perspective of the boy on his father's shoulders at a picnic, a Klan rally to torture and burn a living man because of his skin color. The perspective of the boy was from within the crowd, amongst the security of his family, to share in the communal killing of a man as animal...The easiness of this child being baptized into his first moment of hate. A moment of association that forever changes him into some secret, psychological monster...and it is presented so wholesomely in the guise of a picnic.
What about the guise of the campaign rally, or the home...what have those children attending the McCain/Palin rally, with their parents of ignorance, been serenely exposed to under the grand facade of patriotism?
Where do these lines of attack truly begin and end in this country, considering our history?
How does blaring hatred for the potential next president affect them?
What about the coziness of the veil that swaths itself around them in the power of their numbers...the collective...the mob...that makes them not recognize the tradition they are perpetuating. Then again maybe they do...
McCain speaks of being respectful. I say, we truly need to be mindful...
We need to go way beyond respect and be willing to aware of the damage inflicted on our national fabric. How can we be willing to give legitimacy or a platform to this line of covert racist campaigning? Who are the real terrorist in our American family history? I think a mirror is needed at the McCain/Palin rallies.
Clearly, we have so far to go still...It's incredibly disturbing. But the image is the same in my mind: The crowds roar for blood of and the lineage of their hate.
"That's right," his father said, "we're going on a picnic. You won't ever forget this picnic!"
He wanted to say something, he did not
know what, but nothing he said could have been heard, for
now the crowd roared again as a man stepped forward and put
more wood on the fire. The flames lept up.