1 post tagged “gender”
You know, now that I'm over the initial w00t, political geek aspect of Obama being called as our Dem nominee, I almost wanna cry over how historic this is.
Clearly I'm not black. I can't pretend to understand the race aspect. To look at me I'm about as white as they come. That's not to say race never touched my life personally. My dad had brown skin, not white. His last name was Chavez. My grandpa was basically Archie Bunker. I'm sure you can imagine how thrilled he was that my mom was dating my dad, let alone that she was going to have his baby. When my dad died, my mom became a single mommy and during my lifetime she dated, not a lot but she dated. I never found it weird that she dated a black man...
And then we moved to Coos Bay, Oregon. I quickly discovered that California norms and morals aren't representative of the rest of the country, not even representative of the west coast. I mean, Santa Maria is about as conservative as Cali gets and it is, by Cali standards, a relatively small town. And yet... WOAH Coos Bay opened my eyes some. I had no idea there were full towns, communities where white was the norm and anything NOT white, not pick up truck driving, not gun toting, not beer drinking, not church going = ridiculed, harassed, threatened. Somehow I didn't know the KKK still REALLY existed, until more than one resident there told me they had a large population of members locally *blinks* That was in 1990... I was 17 years old.
But even now, race conflicts still make the news. No matter what you think of the Jena 6 case -- a noose hanging on the "white tree" of a high school because black kids sat there is NOT acceptable. All of these years later, since I was 17 and figuring out that race really was an issue for people -- and those kids younger than I was when I first really saw it, have to deal with that? I never had to see THAT. To be afraid of THAT. To be bullied like that. I can't even imagine, I thought just discovering hicks at 17 was eye opening.
And well I've seen plenty of WTF? Democrats in hick'ish states (thank you YouTube) shocking me with their anti-Obama rants claiming to be TRUE die hard Democrats who will vote McCain if Obama is our nominee -- some brave(?) enough to admit that it's because of Obama's RACE... You can't say you're a TRUE die hard Dem and vote against what you believe in if you'll vote against what you believe in due to someone's race...
But yeah, I'm rambling now...
My point is this, despite the fact that race is still an issue, always has been, we now have a black candidate for president... It's history being made before my eyes and it's not only a black candidate, it's one who can win...
I realize Hillary's run was historic as well -- I am, after all, a woman... I don't think it would have been AS historic. I don't think she's the one to do it for us... But she did open that door for others now. And the women saying they too will vote against dems even though they're true die hard Dems, offend me... Voting against what you claim to believe in due to who the nominee is -- when THEY most represent what you do claim to believe in? You shouldn't be allowed to have a voter registration card.
