Photo by M.T. Hernandez*
Yesterday my daughter and I were talking about a small collection of plates that I have on my kitchen wall. There is one from a flea market, two from Tuesday Morning - one of which has a big artichoke on the front. I also have one that has a checkered pattern with red apples. When I first saw the plate, at a convenience store on the freeway somewhere in Virginia, I thought it would be good to buy it - as a souvenir of the trip I took with a group of DREAMERS to D.C.
There were eight DREAMERS and myself in the store. They made money from us that day. We also ate at their adjoining cafe and bought gas.
As I was paying for the plate (over-priced at $10.00) the clerk said that they should get the riff raff out of the store. A woman standing next to him said to me, "Don't pay him any mind mam."
After I told my daughter the story she asked me a couple of questions, why did I still buy the plate? and why did I have it in my kitchen - she said that I should get it out of my house, it brings bad energy.
I bought the plate because I was sort of in shock - I wasn't thinking. This kind of thing hasn't happened to me since the 60's in southeast Texas. Of course I know that there are lots of people (especially these days) that don't like Latinos, especially Spanish speaking Latinos. The kids, all having been born in a Latin American country are fluently bilingual but prefer Spanish. Most of them are also brown-skinned making ethnic identification easy.
Today the plate is no longer have it in my kitchen. I have to admit, every time I looked at it I remembered the man at the convenience store so it was a good thing I took it down.
----
Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
By Kevin MeridaWashington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2008; Page A01
Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."
For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.
Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"
Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."
...through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.
On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.
No comments:
Post a Comment