Merlene Davis: Vote For A Reason, Not For Race.

Vote for a reason, not for race
By Merlene Davis

I have lived in Kentucky all my life except for the year I spent in Memphis, Tenn., before coming to work at the Herald-Leader.

I was raised in a house that sat a few yards inside the boundary that separated the city of Owensboro from the county in which I shared fenced farmland, rocky roads and paved streets with cousins, with the white grandchildren of neighbors who didn’t mind living in an integrated neighborhood, and with the occasional feisty goat that dared you to step on your own front porch.

All the youngsters donned the mandatory tattered clothing because all adults — regardless of color — believed play clothes need not be fashionable. All the youngsters shared what treats we might be given because all adults — again, regardless of color — believed sharing was a responsibility that should be taught early and displayed often. And all of us youngsters laughed together and explored together without any thoughts of inequality, modeling what we saw in the adults around us.

Then one day, my brother, who was about 6 years old, came into the kitchen where I was climbing on a stool as discretely as possible to snag some raw oats for a snack.

“Mama,” he said to the woman who then spotted me and ordered me to get down, “what’s a nigger?”

His best friend, the grandson of our neighbor across the street, had gotten mad about something and uttered that word. I guess because of the way it was uttered, my brother knew it wasn’t a good thing, but he just wasn’t sure.

Neither was I, so I listened.

“It’s a person who is ignorant and unclean and nasty,” she said. “That’s not you.”

I accepted her definition and her proclamation. It wasn’t us or anyone we knew.

But then came the times when my siblings and I had to run for our lives through the playground of the Robert E. Lee Elementary School on our way home from Western High School, the only school for blacks. And then came the afternoons I begged my mother through waves of tears not to send me back to Mary Lee Cravens Elementary School, which had been all-white until two other black children and I enrolled.

She would simply rub my nearly-immobile neck, stiffened by fear and tension, and say, “You can’t be as good as those people, Merlene. You have to be better than.”

So when folks ask me today why voters in Kentucky, a majority of whom are registered Democrats, are not voting for Sen. Barack Obama, I say race plays a role, as does his stance on abortion, and his belief that government will have to play a major role in fixing a very broken capitalistic system.

While I can understand the ideological differences, I am struggling to accept the racism.

It’s not the angry name-calling racism, although we all know Kentucky still breeds a lethal dose of that. Those people are shrinking in number, thank God.

The racism that may keep some people from casting their ballot for a black man is more insidious, more unconscious, more unintentional. It is racism only because it is based on race, not on any hurtful motives. It is the default mode whenever fear or anger overtakes reason.

All the words heard throughout our upbringing wiggle their way back up to our psyches.

Is Obama smart enough to go toe-to-toe with world leaders? Is he too laid-back to be president? Is he just another angry black man beneath that calm exterior? Will he foster black privilege, overturning the rights of white people?

Most people are surprised when those old thoughts emerge. We forget how much of a battle it is to maintain and actively promote a mutual respect of differences.

The white kids we grew up with knew we were black. We often compared skin color and hair texture. It didn’t matter. We were just different, that’s all.

But somehow hurtful racism entered our world. When the young boy became angry, words he had heard from others came from his tongue and pierced my brother’s heart.

The relationship, although friendly, was never the same again. Our differences were no longer respected and accepted. They had become tools for put downs.

I know white people who want me to push the fact Obama is bi-racial, as if pointing out how he’s half-white, reared by white people and Indonesians, makes the half that is black more palatable. They would never believe the push stems from a natural assumption that white is better, or that sharing similar traits eradicates the fear of difference.

It’s still racism. It’s aversive racism rather than the blatant racism I grew up with.

But unintentional racism is still not our best.

So, don’t vote for Obama if you have ideological differences. That’s fine. That’s our democratic system.

But don’t invent reasons, using code words or falling back on stereotypes that Obama himself has disproved time and time again.

Red roses are different from yellow roses, which are different from white roses, which are different from black ones. And yet we can put them all in the same vase and call it a bouquet.

Black people are different from white people, who are different from Asians, who are different from Latinos, who are different from Native Americans.

Christians are different from Jews, who are different from Muslims.

Why can’t we appreciate the difference in people as easily as we can the differences in flowers, placing ourselves within the borders of Kentucky and calling ourselves united?

We can’t be as good as “those” people, Kentucky? We truly must be better than.