I guess I should be proud. I should even feel genetically superior due to my ancestors multi-generational struggle! For today I picked up my local newspaper, the Lexington Herald Leader here in Lexington, KY and read an editorial titled “Getting Bubba, A Full-blooded American” by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writers Group.
Imagine my surprise when Ms. Parker infers that Republican “get” America, and even Senator Clinton “gets” America, (to a lesser degree I’m sure, being a Godless Democrat herself); because they are full-blooded Americans. Of course this isn’t about race, certainly not! A “full-blooded” American is one whose “heritage” and “core-values” are “made-in-America
She evidently got this wonderful catch phrase from a West Virginia voter who said he would vote for McCain over Obama because he was a “full-blooded” American. Wow, I grew up in Appalachia, I had an ancestor scalped on his way into Kentucky with Daniel Boone, can’t get much more full-blooded than that! I should just identify with what she is saying like mad! But instead, I almost lost my breakfast. Is the “full-blooded” idea an effective new talking point for the Republicans, or is it a marginally veiled racist kitchen sink-tossing event from a party whose failures have put them in the political toilet?
To quote the article:
It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots……In a country that is rapidly changing demographically – and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century – there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity. We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants – and we are. But there’s a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.
http://www.kentucky.com/...
I take it to mean that since Senator Obama had a father who was born in another country, then the sacrifices of his mother’s ancestors count for nothing in her imaginary, once upon a time America. Nor does the desire of his father to come and be educated in our country, a beacon of light to so many young people throughout the world. To be honest, something smells a bit like the ancient, racist “one-drop of blood” sayings of the South. Now though, it appears to be one drop of immigrant blood rather than one drop of African-American blood that makes a person unworthy of being a true American. That is completely different of course! No racism there, certainly not! And we must try to appeal to people who think this way rather than educate them; they are the true Americans after all.
I didn’t even find what I quoted above to be the most ridiculous part of the article. In true conservative form, Ms. Parker goes on to say of “full-blooded Americans”:
What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative.
I doubt many decedents of slaves would believe that America has worked “well” for more than 200 years. I also know from my now deceased coal miner grandfathers that America didn’t work so well for white mining families in Appalachia prior to the unions, and it was still a struggle after that. I grew up with my grandfather telling me about “Hoover times” and that his family had been Republicans up until then, and he would never vote for a Republican again. He educated me in what the world was like for poor people in his father’s days in the mines working for company script. He also told me of his best friend who died in a slate fall, a Hungarian immigrant. This man was also my grandfather’s nearby neighbor in the little coal town they lived in. He remembered his friendship with this mere immigrant 50 years after his death.
It’s nice to know I am “full-blooded” something, I always had a chip on my shoulder coming from Appalachia. But the last time I donated blood there wasn’t a box to check for “full-blooded American”. My skin is so white it is almost translucent, but there wasn’t a box to check for that either. To me that means we are all in this together. We always have all been in this together. Writers of Kathleen Parker’s ilk seek only to create these imaginary divides that have never really been. We are all Americans, working toward what we want and need for our future to be. Her op-ed was just another attempt at veiled racism and applauding the fears that are always instilled in people when divide and conquer are the goal. My retired electrician father in the big city of Paintsville, KY put it well to me on the night of the NC primary when he said he never thought of himself as an elitist, but he supposed he must be, because the media keeps saying basically that you are an elitist if you don’t think in terms of “guns, God, and gays.
He had to then get off the phone with me because, as he put it, “I gotta go, Barack is about to speak”.