It seems President Obama shares something in common with the late President Ronald Reagan. He makes a lot of whites feel comfortable with their prejudices – albeit unintentionally. We are more than ever living in the world of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's "Isis Papers." If you want a better understanding of the development of white fear, hate and the Tea Party, I urge you to purchase that book ASAP.
Truth be told, this past midterm election was for the taking, so why didn't we take it. Let's start with the estimated 49 million left on base. Democrats – particularly Blacks – make up a huge chunk of that number. Of the 90 million who voted, 10 percent were Black, so roughly 9 million blacks voted this midterm which is only 34 percent of the 26.5 eligible black voters. Much of the remaining 66 percent of Blacks who didn't vote the midterm were on hand to vote in 2008 (16 million African Americans voted in 2008 with 96 percent voting for Obama), so it can only be assumed they felt put-out at the suggestion of urgency regarding the importance of this day. Between Super Tuesday in July '08 and the Presidential Election in October for example, there is plenty of time in between for blacks not to be confused about whether or not the primary was the actual general election. The word midterm however may have scared off as many Black voters as it did when they heard the word in high school. Or perhaps we were once again just done-in by apathy and/or fear.
I mention Welsing because her book is possibly the first intense study of White America other than that of Neely Fuller, on whom much of her work is based. This and my own study of whites in America gives me the impression that too many of them have a personal energy that is moving in the opposite direction of the universe. Watching the white right in the era of Obama is proving to be more revealing to me than they were during eight years of George W. Bush. As for the conservatives and Tea Party that have some kind of an appeal to Blacks, but these are mostly the Blacks who like to be contrary under the banner of critical thinking. White fear regarding Obama isn't necessarily against the President per se. I strongly feel the fear really is that Black U.S. Presidents will become a normal thing in America, especially Black Democratic Presidents. That is part of what Dr. Welsing sites as a fear of "White genetic annihilation."
Understand this doesn't put the so-called black conservatives in the clear either. As much as they hate Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder, they will never come to love GOP Party Chairman Michael Steele, the domestically-troubled Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or the enigmatic and disturbing Juan Williams. Stoked by disgusting and desolate projects like talk radio's Glenn Beck Al Jolsonizing the MLK "I Have a Dream" speech anniversary, to the numerous extreme behaviors of whites middle-class to underclass; the common thread among white right voting this election was Tea Party voters voted for someone just like them, normal voters voted for someone better than them.
Through strokes of common sense the guy who thinks blacks on welfare should be put in detention centers and the wicca woman were out-voted, yet we still have to contend with the guy who wants the handicapped to just stay on the first floor and the black conservative retired Army Col. from Florida with the ties to a motor-cycle gang with alleged connections to prostitutes and drug dealers now have statewide legislative powers. Understand that if McCain won in '08 we would never have known these luminaries at all, but we'd be in far worse shape financially. Am I worried? No. Aside from the expectation of a plethora of really dumb public opinions, don't expect these new lawmakers to have the great impact that they promised their brain-dead voters.
These people are nothing more than rookies. They may have won the House, but they need votes in the Senate, and convincing veteran Senators to role back some of Obama's healthcare reform and other laws will be the stuff of pure fantasy. Especially in light of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warning back in August, that for the Republicans to reduce the healthcare law would only increase the deficit by $455 billion. Not that these Tea Party candidates care in the first place (they didn't even give themselves time to legalize their party name on the ballot, can we take for granted they studied the 1,990-page bill?). Letting the bill take it's course would reduce the budget deficit by $30 billion in 2020. According to the CBO: "If they were to repeal the law, republicans would have to replace it with something that makes up for the deficit increases (assuming of course that they still care about the deficits) and help slow the growth rate in the medicare program." Hey, piece of cake for the republicans, conservatives and Tea Party right? Like I said, fantasy and foolishness.
Of course in a world not even remotely perfect this isn't even about race. I'm going to go out on a limb (again) and say that most whites are taught they are superior without their parents officially announcing it. Therefore a lot of latent latent racial feelings arose from white Americans over the last two years, seemingly almost uncontrollably. This gives rise to the question of whether they really know what they're doing?
