About thirty minutes ago, I went to check my email. I was pleased to see that it was from someone I knew when I was living in Pennsylvania. We hadn't talked in a while and last year we managed to meet for lunch once.
I think my heart stopped for a few seconds. If it was one of those other emails, one of the ones claiming Barack Hussein Obama will attend abortion party's and sip lattes with gay people and feminists then I would have just rolled my eyes, sipped on my latte, and hit delete. See, if it were a normal, run of the mill, half truth, debunked on Snopes.com email I could delete it and chalk it up to a conservative friend attempting loyalty to a failing party.
But it wasn't. It was one of those emails. Now, I'm not going to copy the whole thing here. I don't need to. At this point, you know the ones I'm talking about. It wasn't even one of the ones where the racism is thinly disguised as something else. It wasn't one of the ones linking Barack to 9/11, to terrorism, or any of those other make believe half ass messages the GOP has been trying to spam the ignorant with.
See, it was one of those other ones. And my heart is breaking.
I'm not naive, by any stretch of the imagination, but for all that's righteous and holy I would have never in a million years pegged someone like my former friend of being capable of sending something like that.
I will give you the subject line:
Guess what? Look who's coming to visit!
I guess that was someones attempt at being clever, maybe a reference to the movie Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. The email claimed that this is what future visitors to the white house would look like, and then called upon people to support the McCain/Palin ticket and thwart the "African Invasion".
There was a photo attached of a cart filled with black people, although I had to look at it a few times before I realized what it was. They were piled onto top of one another, evoking images of the holocaust or the slave trade.
This hurts beyond what I can describe. This election, for all the good that will come of it, is wearing me down. I'm in agony over some of the things I've seen. My father, who marched alongside of Dr. King in the 60's woke up two nights ago in a cold sweat. This race is taking it's toll on folks.
It's funny. See, I thought I was prepared. I had managed to be civil to the conservatives I call friends and still openly and fervently support my own candidate. I had navel grazedregarding what was motivating these violent and racist reactions.
Worse than getting the email? No one on that list of maybe thirty people expressed any dismay at what they were reading. The responses from a few others on her list were:
"LOL, that's too funny!" (Poor Africans piled on top of one another? Yeah, that's hysterical.)
"Maybe they'll paint the walls black!" (How original.)
"I'm scared he's actually going to win. He could be the end of us." (What is us?)
"It's like everyone forgot 9/11!"
It was clear I was included by accident, as some other commenter referenced another email she'd sent (one can only imagine.)
So I responded, none to kindly, to her entire list. And she immediately responded with apologies and how she was only joking around. Then I told her never to email me again. 11 year friendship, gone. I can never look her in the eyes after that. Ever. I don't think that's an overreaction. I can tolerate most things, but I can't tolerate that. I won't.
I know this is happening not just to me, but to others like me who have lived most of our lives integrated pretty happily with very little issue regarding our race. That's why I know it hurts more because of it. Our parents faced this stuff head on. It was in the open. The generation I'm in hasn't seen this sort of aggressive and open racism before, except in isolated incidents here and there.
I'll be honest. I'm in shock. I'm disappointed and bewildered.
I find myself looking at my neighbors cars for McCain/Palin stickers and wondering which ones are the standard GOP loyalist and which ones are calling me nigger behind my back. That isn't fair to them to paint all of McCain/Palin supporters with the same wide brush, but I have to say at this point if they are still standing behind a ticket that is doing very little to discourage hate of this kind - I'm starting to think less and less of them.
One person replied to the thread, "You need to clean out your email list, L --- It's a little muddy."
Indeed.