tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19766924.post5523149488083497793..comments2008-11-05T21:38:21.001-05:00Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14485477702193993859noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19766924.post-19678018572219422992008-11-05T21:38:00.000-05:002008-11-05T21:38:00.000-05:00I am always shaken out of a vague, passive stupor of assumptions about history when I hear about, say, a white, anti-KKK progressive politician in the old South, like the relative your father mentioned. The Obama victory (and such a decisive one!) has shaken me ever so much more. We are usually so comfortable understanding people's attitudes as an automatic by-product of their time and place--you were a white Southerner in 1900, ergo you were racist and favored subjugation of black people; you are working class, white, and live in a blue state, ergo you could not pull the lever for a black man with a funny Muslim name... And yet, the examples, atypical though they may be, of white Southern progressives living under Jim Crow is a reminder that racism did not simply follow from being born then and there. That there were arguments sounded against the status quo, and people chose to be open to them or to close themselves off. People are a product of culture, sure, but we are not strictly bound by a culture's implied or explicit limitations. Yesterday's election of Obama serves as a visceral, modern-day reminder that the white people of Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania ought not be treated by us smug, progressive New York liberals as a foregone conclusion of backwardness, racism, and close-mindedness. Barack MAJORITY election showed us that open-minded forward thinking might be a lot more normal in America than we give it credit for.k8noreply@blogger.com