Donkey Tales, part 1.

I thought I was going to save these ruminations until after November 6. But it keeps biting at me, so I’m going to try to articulate--for myself, if for no one else--why the general elections of 2008 and 2012 have mattered to me on a scale that is a pretty new thing for me.

The truth is, there are many themes and it’s hard to pick one, lest it seem to be THE theme. And I want to be clear--this decade of U.S. political jostling is, for me, a rope of many fibers, but I can only describe one at a time.

Here is one: It IS about race. The fact that I reject race as a legitimate concept notwithstanding (please see The Journey of Man, narrated by Spencer Wells, for more info,) the notion of it exists as a bugaboo in American culture.

I remember some stuff vividly. I’m in 1st grade. There is one black girl in my class. Her name is Barbara. One day Mrs. Randall has Barbara stand in front of the class so she (Mrs. Randall) can give a short speech on how we (the rest of us) need to be kind, open-minded, and realize we’re all people regardless of skintone. I am, during this speech, acutely, empathically, aware of how much Barbara wants to disappear into the floor. It is painful. Hop, skip, jump to 5th grade. I have a friend named Michelle. We don’t live in close neighborhoods, so we’ve just bonded as buddies in certain classes, like the one where we feed bits of paper into the air conditioning unit (which Michelle has dubbed “Rosie,”) instead of doing our self-paced math cards. One day, in our large, mod, 70s “open space” classroom, Michelle and I are seated at a table with a cute redhead named Charlotte. I do not know Charlotte, but I have admired her curly red hair. Then Charlotte opens her mouth. She says, while both Michelle and I are sitting there: “I don’t like n*****s. My father told me not to associate with n*****s.” (Did I mention that my friend Michelle is black?) Cue openable floor again. I can feel that Michelle wants to disappear into it. I am 10 years old. I am stunned. In years to come, I think of all manner of fitting or inappropriate comebacks, but I am 10. I sit there in stunned silence.

More memories. I am, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9, 10. I am at my grandmother’s house in rural Virginia. The black people come and clean. Before lunch, I go into the kitchen. The black man who works in the garden is eating lunch at a small worktable. We, the family, eat a fancy sit-down lunch in the dining room. If we ring the bell (and there are several pretty bells...hard to resist ringing them when you’re 8...a young black woman peeks around the swinging door from the kitchen to see what we need. But we didn’t need anything. I just wanted to ring the bell, and no one stopped me soon enough.

But I did not grow up in rural Virginia, I only visited. In suburban Maryland in the 60s and 70s, you were aware of civil rights struggles, and socioeconomic disparities. But you also knew that they were problems to be resolved, not conditions to passively accept. So these racial “norms,” in rural Virginia, jarred me as much as Charlotte the redhead’s odious speech. I had come into this world with a glaring awareness of my unexceptionality, and I finish childhood with a certain sense that--as much as I know I’m nothing special--I LOOK like the privileged class, and I assume people will hate me for it. It is a time and place crossed with my unfortunate social awkwardness, but I assume that boys will be indifferent because I’m boring and flat-chested, teachers will ignore me because I’m not as smart as my older siblings, and non-white people will dislike me because I’m white.

I have gotten rather away from presidential elections, haven’t I? Let me try to take a short-cut back. Can you truly not sense the insidious creep of racial bigotry in the GOPs strident march right-wards? I realize there are other things--partial ownership of the party by the religious Right, lingering Cold War era paranoia about “socialism"--but I knew the racial part was there, and so did you. The photo of an empty chair hanging from a tree that some yahoo displayed in his yard in Texas, following the RNC, simply illustrated an ugly sentiment that the ugliest of humans have decided it’s now ok to bring to the party.

What do you say about this? Well, you start by saying that you are well aware this sort of ickiness does not, by a longshot, apply to all who vote Republican. And then you say--"John Sununu, you’re a moron." Of course Colin Powell did not endorse Obama because they’re both black. Also, I will be voting for Obama once again, NOT because I’m trying to correct for my lifetime of white guilt. But...and this is a big but...I am overwhelmed by the sense that substantial portions of the GOP voting block consists of white people who liked their Dick & Jane world, like their Wonder bread, and are not ok with an expanded diet that includes Ethiopian injera. Just listen to Newt Gingrich equate black people and food stamps. Then Rick Santorum does it too.

Half the staff who care, daily, for my husband Jeff (in his dementia "neighborhood" at Sunrise) are black. They are the best caregivers (all of them...all ethnicities,) I’ve ever heard of, and I cannot even think of ways to express my appreciation of them. For prominent members of the GOP to imply, in discussing the socioeconomic issues the U.S. is constantly grappling with, that there is something inherently missing in the work ethic of people who weren’t born in homes where you ring a bell at lunch, crushes my feelings on behalf of the people taking care of Jeff. And it frankly makes me want to punch those rich suits who think all “real Americans” are on their side in the face.

There is much more than I can say about this. And I end this bit here mindful, as I said, that I don’t want to give the impression that my gratitude that the current President has finally diverged from the Dick & Jane story line is why he will again get my vote, but it adds extra sparkles to it. I'm afraid though, that many Americans are still feeling a little shaken by the inexorable shift in U.S demographics. Our first non-white president, and more and more folks speaking Spanish all around...how to quell the anxiety? No matter how many times Mitt shakes the Etch-a-Sketch on his "beliefs," no matter how much he won't tell us, and no matter how many economists say his "math" doesn't work, he looks and acts the most like Father from the Dick & Jane books, and that offers at least a little comfort.

Next, I will address other parts--women’s issues, economic parity. Maybe I will begin to make sense to my mother, but it's probably just one of those things where our lenses were just forged in different glassworks.