Political and disjointed

If you're not into politics, go ahead and skip over this one.
I've been thinking about this for a long time now and last night's primaries in WV kind of compelled me to put this out there.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room for a minute, shall we?

Race matters. It matters a lot and to a lot of people. This is not to say that we can't all get along or that we should segregate or whatever. We can have friends of different races and ethnicities and still be aware of those differences. We'd be lying if we said we weren't.

Mattering and discriminating are two different things, though, and I think both come into play in this long primary season. I think there's this deep fear in some parts of the country, in the hearts of many people of all races and ethnicities that a minority won't "make it" in the White House. Not necessarily that they won't make it IN, but that they won't do a fair job.

I keep hearing comments like this from coworkers here in liberal Northern VA, so I can only imagine what it's like in, say, Podunk, WV (not that I don't like WV - you know - it's wild and wonderful...) where people are a little more conservative.

But here's why I love me some Barack Obama:

I'm a brown woman. Bicultural, bilingual, not quite one thing and not quite the other. I have a sneaking suspicion he GETS that. You have to be black or brown or any shade of off-white to get what it's like to live that. Not that there aren't plenty of wonderful, compassionate, progressive Whites out there, just that they will never know what it's like to walk in another person's skin, in a different shade of skin. And that's okay.

That said, I think it's high time I had someone in government who could see things from a similar perspective. Someone who moves just as easily among mainstream White America as he/she does among minorities; someone who gets the nuances of representing an entire group of people; someone who can inspire us to be a more united and representative nation. There's a part of me, that idealistic part, that still believes in the democratic process and the beauty of representation, and I FEEL that from Barack Obama in a way that I don't feel it from Hilary Clinton.

This is a nation where if you are not White, you will always be an ethnic or racial label FIRST, hence this connection with the racial minority and not with the woman. Maybe I'm crazy, but this is what I'm feeling. I can get behind Obama's politics, I connect to what he's saying, and I know that he knows what life is like on the outside. That's important to me.
I can get behind Clinton's politics to an extent, but I don't connect to her the way I do with Obama. She doesn't get that outsider thing.

And it's the same way when it comes to Washington. Seriously, do I want a nineties flashback, a repeat of the GWB years, or something FRESH? I want a change. Someone who isn't dragging mid-nineties Washington baggage.

I think last night in WV proved that a lot of people aren't willing to look past what they know. Mejor es el diablo conocido - Better to deal with the evil we already know. At the same time, I believe there's a level of racial discrimination at play.... Ultimately, skin is skin. We all know this. But that skin is charged with so much meaning in this country and it's one of those status quo things that people just can't get past.

I pray that this country can come out of these racial and ethnic divides someday. I pray that we'll embrace our differences and forgive eachother for past mistakes. I pray that these elections and the shifting demographics don't serve to revive waves of supressed racial/ethnic issues.

I've been thinking a lot about racial reconciliation, lately, about how necessary it is, about how much I would like to be involved in that type of work.... I swear, I'm not militant. I just won't ignore this. I won't sit back and say that I don't see what I see or feel what I feel.

I've been out with men of other races and ethnic groups and been stared down. I've been called names and insulted. I've borne the burden of my people on my shoulders. I know that collective pain.

Ay, pero mi lindo Jesús, tú que tanto amas a tu pueblo, y a la nación que te ruega por guianza y ayuda, sana estas heridas. Trae una reconciliación, y recuérdanos que tú te manifiestas en la bella diversidad que has creado.