anger

I was in the exercise room, doing the elliptical. There were a couple of guys in there, so the tv was tuned to a basketball game, which is fine. I like basketball. The Celtics were playing the Hawks, which is fine. I like green. I was also listening to Wilbur, the iPod that replaced the fallen Wallace. All was well.

I noticed on the screen that there was a shot of particularly beautiful city that was clearly somewhere not in the West. There were closely crowded, open-windowed, two- and three-story brick buildings surrounded by a ring of blue mountains. "Oooh." I thought, as the scene changed to an aerial shot of a crowded market street. "I need to travel again." The camera zoomed in on a man, maybe Indonesian or Filipino, riding his bike down the street. I was feeling all warm and fuzzy and travel-happy.

And then I heard the voice-over. I had Wilbur's ear buds in my ears, so I didn't catch it exactly, but it went something like this:

"When you need to find the enemy...
The best way is already to be watching them."

I almost threw Wilbur at the tv, but it would have hurt him.

Do you know what this was an advertisement for? THE AIR FORCE. The freaking US AIR FORCE is advertising themselves by portraying entire cities and perfectly normal people going about their perfectly normal business as THE ENEMY. Not only that, but they chose THE BROWN PEOPLE.

There is something very, very wrong, and I am going to rant. I have been holding off on the rant, but I can no longer do so when the US Government is advocating racism so utterly blatantly.

People have been way too nice to white people in this country. Barack Obama's speech on race? Way too nice. This is a country whose government thinks it is okay to label anyone non-white as the enemy ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. This is a country in which a white seminarian who I heard preach a few weeks ago said, "When I worked at Target, I was told that you can't use racial profiling, even though it's more likely that minorities will be stealing," and I was the only person in the (all-white) congregation who was irate. This is a country in which white people don't have to notice when things are racist, because they can live their lives in happy little oblivion and say, "But *I'm* not racist. I have black friends!" Guess what, people? I PROMISE you that you have said something racist to your black friends, and your Hispanic friends, and your Asian friends, and your multiracial friends. I know that I have, and I know that I have wanted to beat myself for those stupid things I've said - the ones I realized, anyway - every day since.

White people in this country are NOT innocent. Oh, sure, some of us can point out that our ancestors came here only 50 years ago, or 100. But you know what? My grandparents, when they came here in 1950, could start a business and make money from the consolidated wealth of white America, an America that would not have hired a black man, or a Latino man with an accent, the way they would hire my white, accented Pops. We are NOT INNOCENT.

I miss the days when the difference between Republicans and Democrats was fiscal policy. I almost even miss the days when the difference was abortion. I still voted Democrat then (in my eighth grade Christian school class, I was one of TWO students who voted Democrat in our mock election in 1992 and our teacher said, "Wow, George Bush wishes this were reality"), but I almost miss the days when abortion was the big issue and I could just tell people, "Fine, waste your vote on abortion." Now? Now I am angry. I am angry at a political system that thinks it is okay to claim that Barack Obama got where he was because of race (because no WHITE MAN has ever been elected president?). I am angry at a political system in which people think torture and war are okay, because of "the enemy." I am starting to believe that Republicans want to kill the rest of the world and I have to say, I like the rest of the world and the rest of the world is made up of real people living lives just as real as any of ours here, so this makes me furious.

When I used to fly back and forth to Rwanda, I ended up in a lot of random conversations in airports. One time when I was flying through Detroit, a woman sitting next to me on the floor, waiting for long-delayed flights in the middle of December said to me, "Africa? Aren't they all terrorists over there?"

So fine. Be angry with Obama for claiming that there is xenophobia in rural America. People? There is. There is xenophobia and racism all across this country. When are we going to grow up enough to admit it and do something to change it?