Sorry. I know people are tired already of the tea bagging diaries. But ever since yesterday, I’ve walked around with a heavy heart, and just needed to vent.
I first came to America in 1976 as a student exchange student. I lived with an American (white) family in Tucson, Arizona. I went to Amphitheater High School, where I graduated the following year.
It was a school with very few minorities. But one of the most popular black girls there dated a white boy -- and was pregnant with his child. I had grown up in Liberia, sheltered, and never knew about racism. In Liberia, our leaders were all black, although there was definitely prejudice (a whole different diary).
But as far as racism, it was something that was far, far from my mind. My father was a deputy minister, in the government and headed the Peace Corps program. He oversaw every Peace Corp volunteer that came to the country, and so, I got to meet so many people. Through it all, I never knew about the hate that people felt among the races.
Even in my one year stint at Amphitheater High, I never saw that. Two girls that befriended me were the nicest people I could have known.
After high school I returned to Liberia and then came back in 1980 shortly after a violent coup at home. I came to attend college at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
It was at this predominantly black university that I first learned about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and read books about James Baldwin, and poems by Langston Hughes.
It was there that I learned about the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and much more.
It was the first time that I came to know about race issues that permeated the country, and the more I read, the more I wanted to know.
Still, for all the years I have lived in this country, I never saw hatred on display as I did yesterday.
Thanks to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, I came to love politics. I wanted to read everything about the system -- how it worked and all that.
I was excited about the Clinton era. And yes, I saw hatred from the right, but not on the scale I have seen directed at President Barack Obama.
Over time, I have listened to the tone, how people refer to him, with disrespect, sometimes even dished out by some in the media.
But yesterday, I saw an America that I have never seen before. Now, this is just me. I have lived here for more than two decades; I have never, ever seen such vitriol -- even at the height of the right’s vicious attacks on the Clintons.
This hate I see against president Obama is personal. It is deep.
To my mind, the angst over taxes, deficits, etc., I saw yesterday, is cover for the rabid racism that many of these people feel for this president.
How many years have Americans had to pay taxes? Was it any better under any of president Obama’s predecessors? Many of the people I saw yesterday, I don’t believe, were people who voted for this president.
This was their chance yesterday to tell America exactly how much they hated president Obama.
And they did with help from some elected officials and people who are supposed to be gatekeepers of the dissemination of news.
And believe me, the images blasted across the world were not lost on so many people out there.
My baby brother who lives back home called me in disgust and horror. He used to live here too, before returning to run his business. He and his friends were shocked at what they saw.
He is afraid that someone "will try to kill that man," if "the American people don’t wake up and see what’s going on," he said to me.
Not only was president Obama referred to as a socialist and Hitler fascist, his citizenship was also questioned.
Which begs the question: Will the likes of Newt Gingrich and other prominent Republicans come out and tell us whether they agree with the people in their so-called grassroots movement?
Are the elected Republican leaders in concert with the protesters? Do they believe the president is not a United States Citizen, is he a fascist?
They need to answer these questions.
If nothing else, I think all of us need to force Republicans and their cohorts at Fox News to say on the record if they believe these things to be true about this president. Do they advocate the hanging of members of the Congress as some of the protestors called for?
There is nothing wrong with dissent in a Democracy, but what I saw yesterday was a group that lost an election -– but more importantly to a man of color -- and that is something that many have yet to come to grips with, and never will.
I hope that we would not sit by and wait until something disastrous happens to this president or his family.
Because I have no doubt, just as my brother and his friends who are miles away on another continent, are afraid that some of these people are capable of hurting this president.
The hate is real, it is deep, it is scary, and it is worrisome for me.