My formative middle and junior high school years were woven together against the backdrop of several USAF communities in the United Kingdom. Quite simply, I loved it there. I missed it after we left. And once, over ten years ago, I went back. I brought this girl with me, and I asked her to forgo all other men on this planet save me. England is special to me for many, many reasons.
But it wasn’t all moon pies and snickerdoodles.
On occasion the British youth would pass the time by shouting insults out of cars as they passed. Or spray painting “YANKS GO HOME!” on the sides of our houses. Or throwing pebbles at our windows at night and then calling us wankers as they ran off into the dark. I remember loving it there, but it was not my home. It was impossible not to notice a cultural us-versus-them undercurrent. I was young, but I still remember missing my country, my lady, my America.
She and I were reunited again in 1990, at the start of my sophomore year of high school. My Dad had his orders and our new home would be in Georgia. South Georgia. I didn’t realize it at the time but I had moved from one foreign country to another. I had constructed an America in my mind that the real America had no inclination of honoring. This new America, this real America, was ugly, unsophisticated, Christian, and racist.
My new town had two public schools. The inner city crowd went to one. The country folk went to the other. The school I attended was approximately 80% black. In this environment white kids did not verbally or physically assault black kids. It was the other way around. For the most part I stayed out of trouble, but it did give me a front row seat to some of America’s more pronounced blemishes.
Our school had a giant white dome over the gymnasium which was prevalent regardless of where you stood outside. One morning, as I approached the school, I realized that someone had vandalized this dome the preceding night. Someone with very poor orthography and/or a severe falling out with Nigerians. In large black letters I read, “F*CK ALL NIGERS.”
I remember stopping, staring, and then thinking, “This is not my America.”
The real America, it would seem, had its own us-versus-them undercurrent. My wife, who went to the country school, has told me similar stories. She recalls one incident where a white girl was harassed in the hallway by a couple of black guys. The next day her father was arrested for patrolling the same halls, during the same time, with his shotgun. Spewing and shouting that he was going to “Kill him some niggers.” She also recalls, as if perfectly scripted from a movie, a high school football game where a cross, which had been secretly positioned outside the stadium in a field past one of the goal posts, was set ablaze to the surprise of the students, faculty, and spectators.
I think most of us can agree that today’s presidential inauguration shouldn’t be a big deal. Our new president went to Columbia and Harvard. He was an attorney, a constitutional law professor and a U.S. senator. It shouldn’t be a big deal that this man was elected president.
But it is.
It is because he is black. Because of the sorts of things I know to have happened in the early 1990s, when President-elect Obama was 29 years old and graduating from Harvard. It doesn’t seem that far away to me, really. The teenagers who grew up with me in these environments are, naturally, my age, in their early thirties. These are voters. And maybe it is because of, or in spite of, these environments that today we swear in the first black president of our country.
I didn’t vote for President-elect Obama and neither did I vote against him. I fully intend on holding him accountable for the content of his character over the color of his skin. But as I think back now on the day of the inauguration, I can not help but appreciate my lady, America, for the woman she is becoming right before my eyes.
UPDATE 2/1/2010: I chose to censor my own post and remove the expletives.
got me to read the post
I do hope that we can at least have this day to celebrate. I am hopeful. I hope that real change is being made. My wife teaches mostly minority students and i work with an after school program that is all minority students, their level of excitement is huge. I hope for them that they will group up unable to imagine stories like yours.
me too man.
Like Adam said, you got me to come read the post…
Like you, Dewde, I didn't vote for or against him.
I agree with you about what should matter vs what does matter. The reality is that it does matter. And because it matters it is historic and a cause to celebrate.
But it needs to matter a whole lot less after the celebration. If we all continue to talk about how Obama is a great black man, we run the risk of not holding him accountable for being President. His job is not about being black or white, male or female, short or tall, or any other physical characteristic he cannot control. It is about being the leader of the United States of America.
So once the festivities are over and the celebrations have wound down, let's do what we as citizens of the USA are supposed to do: support AND hold accountable the person that has been elected President.
<flame retardent suit on>
Can we once, for a day, not look to tomorrow and celebrate today?
Tomorrow will come and his accountability shall surely follow, but I challenge you to stop for a day and celebrate a historical day in our country.
I did (and am) celebrating today. "And because it matters it is historic and a cause to celebrate." I am saying that we will need to go beyond the celebration at some point.
I don't think the two things (celebrating today and looking forward) are mutually exclusive.
Great post. I didn't realize that the Nigerians could elicit so much hate!
My parents were hippies, and very accepting of others and the only 'swear word' I never heard was one that started with an "N".
It's a good day to be an American indeed.
Jason
Thx Jason. I grew up the same way. Never heard the n-word in our home.
Those Nigerian 419 scams are totally out of control. I heard that the only reason Obama originally ran for president is because he thought he needed to do that in order to receive a large sum of money in strictest confidence by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and prosecuting a transaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maximum confidence.
lol now that's funny!
I saw your comment on Stuff christians like and I must say it peaked my interest, so I came to see where you were going with the title. Good post.
It's "piqued my interest" — not "peaked."
It is a great day for our lady!
Poetic, at least much more so than that silly "poem" I saw on TV.
I'm also pretty sick of Christians downplaying this because of an opposing political stance…
Glad history is not in the eye of the beholder.
Perhaps I'm the only one to notice the obvious misspelling?
and moon pies are disgusting
Thanks man. You are not the only one to notice the obvious misspelling. I too noticed it that morning. I spelled it here exactly like they spelled it back then
.
And by they, you mean… oh, I'll leave our poet laureate out of this.
snap.
One of the better election day posts I have read – ya didn't blow sunshine up Obama's hiney but you made a great case for the beautiful majesty of the event that took place yesterday.
I can dig it…
I attended high school in Georgia on the other side of the state during the same years and I don't ever recall there being that much tension. I guess the rednecks in North Georgia are higher-class than the ones in South Georgia.
I'm glad to hear that man. It was pretty thick where I was. And evenly balanced, too. I wouldn't say one side was any worse than the other.
I just read your post about labeling. Then I decided to read some of your blogs. I'm glad I did cause I was going to email my Aunt and Mom a link to your site. Now I can't cause they wouldn't understand the F*** or the N****. It's a shame cause I think they would have enjoyed the rest. It's also a shame that you had to use a title to of shock to lure people to read it.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
I knew that I would be alienating some people from my blog by choosing to use the uncensored words. I deliberated and about it for 2 months and as corny as it may sound to some people, I even prayed about the decision. I began drafting my inauguration day post once President Obama claimed victory.
I agree that it would be a shame if my motivation behind this was to shock and lure people in. But the truth is that the majority of my readers are fairly conservative evangelical Christians. It would have been wiser for me to not use expletives if I wanted to ensure continued readership. I genuinely expected to lose readers with this post, but I posted it anyway out of principle.
I write this blog so that my daughters will better understand us as parents, and me as a father. I make it public, not private, so that I can solicit feedback from a community along the way. One thing is for certain, I am going to screw this parenting thing up. I know it as sure as I know anything. Only people outside the situation will be able to see what I don't see, and speak truth into an area where I may be believing a lie.
This conversation is an excellent example.
As much as I want to protect my girls from the uglier parts of humanity, as much as I want to censor and soften that ugliness, I believe I need to be careful. Because ignorance is not bliss. Simple-mindedness and foolhardiness and naivety can be just as dangerous to them as being "worldly". I want my girls to develop antibodies to these ugly diseases, but you can not develop a healthy, antibody-filled immune system unless you are exposed to the sicknesses in small, controlled spurts.
In the end I asked myself, "What do I want Sydney and Savannah to know about what today means to me?" What kept coming back to me is, "The truth."
peace|dewde
Hey, you got me to click on it and I know your character and some of your background, so I knew it couldn't be all that bad. When I read your post, it all made sense. If someone saw the title and judged the content without reading it, I think that would be their problem honestly.
I AM A BLACK PERSON AND IF I EVER SEE ONE YOU U CRACKERS IN MY PART OF THE TOWN IM SHOOTING EVERYONE! SUCK ON THAT BITCHESSSS! KISS MY BLACK ASS! NIGGAS ARE AWESOME! GROW SOME BALLS AND STOP HATIN!
Obama is a great man? Are you fucking kidding me? What has he done other than play the race card and use bullshit “White guilt” to get his nigger ass elected? Ooooooooooooooh I used the oh so bad nigger word. We all know that 95% of you are probably crying because I said nigger and after you dry your liberal nigger loving tears you are all going to sit there and lecture your children on tolerance and all that bullshit even though you know if your little boy or girl brought home some savage fucking nigger you would flip the fuck out and disown your tofu eating offspring and you try to teach tolerance and preach all of your “knowledge and experience” with those fucking animals even though the closest thing you have to experience with a nigger is that you accidentally recorded an episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air once when you were trying to record Full House. To all of you who claim that “I didn’t vote for him but I didn’t vote against him” BULLSHIT. Either you are a criminal and no longer have the right to vote, you voted for him because he’s a nigger and you have the typical “White guilt” bullshit, or you are just ashamed to admit that you voted for anyone but the nigger…
I disagree with pretty much everything you just said, but I strongly believe in your right to say it.
That’s why I published your comment.
peace | dewde