I'm colorblind, racially speaking.
A black man told me this.
Back in the day when my ex gambled, and my youngest was not yet two, I delivered The Boston Globe before I went to school. Why I was scrambling to compensate for money he threw to the dogs-- literally-- is a story for another time.
During this exhausting, but strangely empowering year, I met men and women, each with their own story. Victims of corporate downsizing, victims of divorce, victims of gambling husbands, we were all victims of something.
We talked and joked, squeezing past each other on the crowded loading dock and jammed parking lot during the pre-dawn half hour it took to load up our cars and check the manifest for changes.
After a year, when I was able to quit and survive economically, Al gave me a goodbye hug. His comment, not the exact words but the gist, sticks with me today. He thanked me for being a friend, said my smile made a difference in his life, and that I acted like he wasn't black, only it came out nicer than I've paraphrased.
I remember blinking at him until his skin color came into focus-- a nice shade of brown-- coffee, one cream. I guess I'd just been looking into his heart via his eyes and bypassed his skin, his gender even.
He was a person, a friend. No more, no less. But that's a lot.
I don't remember what I replied, but nearly two decades later I still wonder: how did I act toward him that was different from how others acted?
Now we have a black man and a white woman running for president of a country that espouses racial and gender equality. Demands equality. Legislates it.
Both Hillary and Barack use race and gender to divide. They make it a big deal, pulling it front and center, sticking it in our faces. It is to their advantage to do so politically, I suppose. All's fair in love and war, and a political race is a battlefield. But such warfare serves no purpose beyond their own. It hurts the country they claim they want to improve.
Give us the facts, your plans, even your hearts, but cut the childish bickering over who called who a what!
We see your race, your gender. Those who care about such things need no reminder. Those of us who don't, say, "Get on with the show. Let us look into your eyes and see what really matters."
Take the high road, the road less traveled. It leads somewhere better.
~~~~~
Sex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups . . ..~Gloria Steinem
Comments
elected? How naive! Is she pretty? Does he have a nice face? Would I like to sit and
have a beer with either of them? Are they really folks just like me?
That's what counts. Not whether they have a clue about economics--McCain just
announced that he doesn't, but why should we care about a little thing like that? Not
whether they had ever heard of Iraq when Bush said we really needed to attack the
place, or whether they think maybe we should stop getting our soldiers killed in a
futile effort to export what they call democracy to hordes of people who absolutely
do not want anything like it. Or whether they think we should immediately fire
every Arab-speaking gay man in the State Department. Or just how they might pay
off the biggest national debt in the history of the world. Or why corporate CEOs
should make a billion a year while some poor slob who lost his job when it was
outsourced to India is flipping burgers somewhere, if he can get a job at all. Or why
it is that illegal immigrants who came to the US for jobs should get punished, but the
people who employ them should go scot free. Or what they might do about the fact
that the library in Bridgewater can't stay open more than a few hours a week, and
most of the librarians had to be fired.
Nah. The thing that really counts is whether they have hearts of gold. Can't you tell
that just by looking?
It reminds me of years ago, when we had a black girl babysitter. Someone ask my 4 year son if she was black, his response was "No, she's Gloria."
Oh that all of us could be so colorblind.
Thanks for a wonderful way to start my day.
Wanda~ One of my kids made a comment like that a long time ago. The world through kids eyes is a lot different.
Pauline~ Thanks Pauline. They wouldn't waste their time here. I'm only one small vote with one small voice. :>)
Sarah~ I don't love it at all. The whole "messy, grand circus" alternately infuriates me and depresses me. Mostly infuriates! You'll find more of my feelings here than politics, I'm afraid. But there's plenty out there online if you need a real American politics fix.
Cheers! :)
Dawn
In the area where I work, I work with East Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian Aboriginals, and I have to stop and think for a minute, because I forget they're a different race. It really shouldn't matter, should it?