Parallels Between Obama's Racially Motivated Speech and My Experience

Barack Obama recently made an historical speech on race, and he euphemistically detailed the issues of race that still haunt America today, 143 years after the Civil War whose economic catalyst was the profitability of black slavery for the southern states. Even for me, someone who has a vivid imagination, it is difficult to imagine a time when we owned human beings to the point that we could buy and sell them, whip them, breed them and even kill them at will with impunity. I am fully cognizant of discrimination and oppression of minorities, but the actual dehumanization of a person escapes my grasp. Who was ever involved with such practices and still slept at night? Apparently too many, way too many.

Recently my son was arrested, not the first time, and he is fully white as I am. He is no angel, far from it. He is an adult, but he still lives a life of partying, drinking, and hanging out. He has many friends, black and white, who 'hang' with him. I never taught him to be racist, so he is an equal opportunist when it comes to friends. His favorite music is in fact hip hop and rap much to my chagrin because of the violent and sexist lyrics, but I am a non- judgmental mother. I love him no matter his lifestyle choices.

Back to the specifics, he and a bunch of friends were playing video games and drinking in his apartment. Someone called the police, of course. Young men making noise must mean trouble. The officer arrived and entered his apartment with no warrant and without knocking, brandishing a gun in my son's face while he scored a touchdown on a video game. The officer found marijuana on the table, not much, enough for a couple of joints. One thing I'm sure about, my son doesn't smoke pot. His aversion to marijuana began early on when he tried it and it made his heart race. He has anxiety attacks, so his drug of choice is alcohol. For sure there was marijuana on the table though, and for sure it wasn't my son's. But out of a room full of young men, the officer charged only two people, my son who leased the apartment and a black man.

Handcuffed and in the back seat of the patrol car, the black friend tried to explain to the officer that the 'pot' wasn't his, but belonged to the guy who took off running after the police arrived. The officer responded with, "Shut up nigger before I break your jaw." Yes, that's right the white police officer used the "N" word. This nugget of evidence may seem like biased embellishment from a bad boy and the mother that unconditionally loves him, but my son is brutally honest about his bad habits and I perhaps foolishly accept unconditionally who he is. I'm sure the officer said what I was told, third person.

Come court day, my son is offered by the public defender's office a lighter sentence than his black friend. And true to his nature, he refuses his plea and also tells his black friend who is ready to accept what the system offers him to refuse as well. My son is knows more about the racist biases of the justice system than the underpaid, overworked inexperienced Public Defenders (PD) My son asks his friend's public defender if there are any prison points to his friend's plea and the PD naively answers this isn't about points on his driver's license. My son, oh, so savvy about the legal system as he is, begins to educate the PD, who is not even out of law school yet and only serving an internship, on the function of prison points in relationship to prison time. The under experienced PD begins his real education.

And so in ending his quasi legal negotiation, my son makes it a point to tell the PD that his black friend's grandfather is white. Why? Not because my son is racist, but instead because my son knows about the power of race in the United States of America. The power of white race. Throwing in the white ancestry, just as Barack Obama has a white mother and white grandparents, adds to the power and influence a "black" person wields. No wonder Obama's minister Rev Wright is outraged America's failure to deliver on racial equality.

This is the shame of our country. Blacks are automatically guilty, uneducated, not qualified, etc. because they are Black. And, my story goes against Obama's optimistic view that our nation is ready to be color blind. For sure, the United States is the greatest when it comes to "promises" of race equality. As a nation we may profess the desire for unity and equality, but truly living by that edict still escapes us. Why should we not accept Obama's black minister's words that are critical of the United States' and its perfunctory racial equality premise since in reality people of his color are still discriminated against? Why not?

I give Obama his props for wanting to become president in a country where white people's racism is insidiously hidden below the radar, where the battle is against a very real but elusive ghost who roams under the power of privilege. More dangerous is the fact that most racists believe they are not racist. Any white person reading this, should ask himself or herself, how do I feel when I black person enters the room? Answer truthfully.