FEBRUARY 27, 2008
Racism, Diversity in America, Difference as American Patriotism

It's pitiful how racists won't ever show their face. Why didn't they make a public stand, and go vote out Barack in Idaho, at least not let him get 80% of the vote? Why can't cowards show their face, get out from their safely locked radio stations, and quit hiding behind their avatars? If they're so righteous, then what are they afraid of?

Conservatives were saying to Iraq War protesters in 2003, "If you don't like it, then you can get out". Now radical conservatives will taste their own medicine, and swallow the cold hard right of free speech. They'll tout their right to protest Barack's ethnicity while they forget they just told free-speech left wing liberals to take a hike in 2003. If you're still uncomfortable with ethnic diversity after 200 years of the most ethnically diverse country in the history of this planet, it's time to follow your own advice. There are plenty more racist countries around the world right now where ethnic cleansing will surely be a better solution than affirmative action bashing. If you're at odds with the founding principle of immigration, how patriotic is that? Unless you're Native American, you're denouncing your own right to be an American. American patriotism is not only about military dominance. Defeating foreign enemies is a massive distraction from the real-world, everyday, and bottom-line economic realities facing Americans.

Barack is a classic American mutt. He freaks people out because most Americans haven't traveled outside the U.S., fear large U.S. cities, and don't understand non-European immigrants. Somehow immigrating from Europe, or being an older ethnic mutt, are the only ways to be a proud, patriotic American. We all congregated here from other parts of the world for a reason, and people continue to long for American citizenship for the same reasons. Racism undermines the constitution, if not the racist's own American citizenship itself. Patriotic sentiments, the constitution, and American citizenship are tied originally and endlessly to the rights of foreign immigrants.

Barack is half white and his black father left when he was 2. He was raised by his white family in an affluent, white environment. He went to Yale. I hate ivy league affluent elitists, but I still don't fault Barack for his environment. If you can fault his ethnicity or upbringing for anything, you can say he has no core identity. Which is the exact identity of all Americans. Nothing else unites every American more than the fact that we have no one ethnicity. None of us are from here. Even if you've been here longer, or your lineage is "purely" from the Northern Hemisphere, we are all immigrants in this country. That's the promise of this country, and no matter how disenchanted we all are about how it works, we are all connected directly at the hip by this core similarity. Despite the misconceptions and social pressures, we don't all share the same religion and moral values. The only thing we all share is that fact that we're all different. It's the patriotic core of an American to embody our individuality, whether it's a rebellious difference or mainstream conformity. Americans may be different from other people around the world, but the foreigners who immigrate here are not nearly as different from each other as racists like to think. Even the whitest Americans were well-hated immigrants at some point in the checkered past of America.