September 21, 2008
"If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong." -- Howell Cobb, southern politician at the end of the Civil War
Several pundits around the country, including the Detroit Free Press's Rochelle Reilly, have insinuated, implied, or stated bluntly that if Sen. Obama is not elected president of the United States, then nothing has changed in America. America is as racist as Klan barbecue. By implication, if I don't vote for the Illinois senator, then I am a racist without the possibility of redemption.
Over the years, as I've become more conservative, and I hope, more Christian, I have been called a racist, sexist and a homophobe. By insinuation, by implication, with the bluntness of the self righteous. I have learned that corporate and institutional America are no longer capable of making the distinctions or judgements required when outrageous and unfounded statements such as these are made. The default position is: someone called you a racist, well, you must be one. Or not. Just apologize for being slandered.
Toward the end of the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee counseled President Jefferson Davis to enlist slaves in the CSA army. Fight for the Confederacy and you will be given your freedom. Howell Cobb understood what that meant. Gen. Lee, whose personal history showed no enthusiasm for the "peculiar institution" understood as well. Even in the 21st century, he would be considered well educated. Not that 21st century standards approach the Nineteenth's. Critical personal decisions were made deliberately. He was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until the age of thirty- four. The decision to resign his commission in the Union Army was, as one house slave later remembered, an agonizing one.
But there was a reason why the Federal Army was able to recruit tens of thousands of former slaves and freedman. These men rallied around the real probability of universal emancipation. The decision was often made with dignity and passion. Southern slaves who fought for the Confederacy acted out of personal interest, yes, but also out of desperation. The South was desperate to win. The slaves were desperate to be free.
Desperation can be a powerful cattle prod to action. But how desperate would I have to be to vote for Sen. Obama because he is black? And that, make no mistake, is what I am being asked to do. Abandon reason, forget experience, betray faith, repudiate values. All in the cause of making history and "proving" that America is no longer racist.
I don't compare my life or my own corner of America to the realities of slavery and bigotry. Poor Southern whites were not slaves. They were too often, desperate, hungry, ignorant. And like hundreds of thousands of descendants of slaves, they too left the South by the hundreds of thousands for a better life.
The Black migration is memorialized in movies, plays, novels, histories. Justly. The white migration is now virtually invsible in popular culture and academic America. Dishonestly.
We are not talking high finance here. The bottom line really is the bottom line. Over the years as I've worked in New York publishing, studied law, and worked in corporate America the acceptable prejudice has been afforded the freest expression. It demands, ultimately, collaboration.
Gov. Palin's nomination is only the most recent stalking horse of leftist contempt.
Why would I support a campaign and a party who consider my late mother and father sub-human trash because they were poor, white, southern, and grew up in Appalachia during the Depression? The well-read and highly-educated have written slyly or thuggishly that Gov. Palin is "trailer trash." That prejudice can be bi-partisan. Michael Thomas in the New York Observer reported in the 1990s that upper class Manhattan considered Bill Clinton a "white trash" usurper. In publishing and in law school I have overheard what editors and professors and students think of poor whites when they thought "no one" was listening.
Only God gets to see me sweat. I am not so desperate for acceptance or public virtue. I know a bigot when I meet one. "God and guns" is only the half of it. I will continue to endure vilification by colleagues and acquaintances and strangers who know nothing and will never know better.
I will not vote for Barack Obama.
I will not humiliate myself by fighting for my Masters.
I will not be intimidated by public displays of virtue.
I will not capitulate to an establishment liberally contemptuous of me and my people.
With the left it is always about expletives undeleted. They can say what they want, when they want, where they want. There are no governors in the schools, churches or media. Personal responsibility is the "chump change" of the left. It's for suckers.
The Democratic candidate for the president of the United States is black. That is his qualification. It doesn't matter than no one, least of all Black Americans, can agree on what "black" means. The "black experience" can no longer be capitalized because it becomes less singular, less exceptional every day. And more individualistic. Rev. Wright rails against black "middle-classism" because it is on display throughout suburban and exurban America. He hates it at the peril of hating himself.
I will not be sucked down into that death spiral of the soul and intellect.
Sam Macomb
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