When was the last time I saw a Black, Hispanic or Asian in Tahosa Valley? I can’t remember.
If I had seen one of these were probably involved in building or renovating a cabin or house or a road. At the recent expensive Gala at The Gallery in Allenspark I saw nothing but Caucasians.
In some ways I suppose we’re fortunate. We don’t have to deal with the racial strife that permeates the flatlands. Do you really think we’re not a racist country? In every classroom in which I taught for almost 50 years the Blacks banded together, sitting as a group, right, left, front or back, most often two-thirds back. Why? Because Blacks understand that this is still a racist country and they need the society and protection of their likes. We live in a country where a Representative from South Carolina can talk back to President in a speech to a joint session of the Congress, not because he disagrees with the president, but because he has no respect for the President because he’s Black. And only half Black at that.
This representative, widely admired by racists, is a Colonel in the Army Reserves. Beginning in 1972 he served in the reserves until 2003 as a lawyer, never serving a day oversees or a moment in combat, but an officer nonetheless, who told his commander-in-chief “You lie.” Ordinarily, this would be a court-martial offense, but if you’re a Representative from South Carolina, a state that proudly flew the Confederate battle flag on top of the state capitol from 1962 to 1999, you have constituents who believe, seriously, that you should get the Medal of Honor. And like a proud racist, you apologize but, like a recalcitrant racist child, say that you only did so because you were forced to. After all, this President is Black, even if he’s only half Black.
If politicians’ lies warranted outbursts in the Congress, we would hear little else. Do “weapons of mass destruction” and “significant quantities of yellow-cake” ring a bell?
Now we have a justice of the peace in Louisiana who won’t marry an interracial couple. Mr. Bardwell says he not a racist but, “I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” and, “There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” and, “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.” He is apparently unaware that our President is the child of just such a marriage.
This racism is cloaked in many ways, in charges that the President is a Socialist, that he’s not a citizen, that he’s going to turn over the country to the Muslims because he’s secretly a Muslim. Garbage. They don’t respect him, and many distrust him or hate him simply because he’s Black, and only half black at that.
One of the oddest charges is that his health care for every American agenda is too costly. This comes from those who support two wars we cannot win and which will eventually cost the country many times more than the cost of health care for everyone for the next twenty years. We have almost half a million veterans who will require government health care for the rest of their lives; at least four trillion dollars in today’s dollars. We have many more badly injured in these wars still alive than in any other war we’ve ever fought. But war, even though it hasn’t been in a federal budget for the past eight years, gets a pass. That’s different. Well, money is still money, no matter how it’s spent or owed.
I spent 25 years of my life in the service of my country, the greatest country the world has ever known. I am ashamed of the racism that has existed here, from the days of slavery when Blacks were only property, to today, when racists feel threatened by a half Black President who wants only to serve his country; who has seen wrongs and wants to right them, who wants every American to be respected by the quality of their character and not the color of their skin, who wants every American to have the right to try to lead a healthy, productive life. What’s wrong with that, even if he is half Black?
David Steiner (davidesteiner@gmail.com) is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, a retired professor of theater and public speaking and a columnist for the Allenspark WIND.
