White Folk Don't Trust One Another (For Good Reaason), So Obama Scares 'Em

Obama's nomination will be cast by many whites as 'reparations' enough. People hereabouts (left-blogoville) mostly have more sense and sensibility than the 'herd,' and thus may properly excuse themselves from my characterizations, but there's this:

Nobody
ever lost an election by over-estimating the reluctance of Murkin "Whites" to put their collective fates in the hands of a black person. In view of the horrors Mary Scott recounted, (and which are surprisingly well known away from the places where they occurred--e.g., Tulsa, OK), this is, perhaps, in the meanest terms, "understandable." "We" have a LOT for which we are--or, at least, in a universal calculus, ought to be--accountable. The history of oppression, repression, and suppression by "White" Murkins of non-white people under their domain is one of unexampled, unexamined brutality. Most "White" folks, somewhere in their commerce-soaked consciences, know that it is true, and they tremble. "Slave Rebellion" is STILL the worst thing that can/could happen. If they were to be treated as they treated the victims of the regime that enabled their privilege???

Because:
There is not a person of color in the USofA who has not experienced the stinging scourge of racism--by which I do NOT intend the casual biases and bigotries. But I mean, rather, the system of abuses and excuses which was built and perpetually conspired to inflict 400 years of indignity, pain and suffering upon its victims; to which they were, for all intents an purposes, powerless to reply or seek redress. It is not the bias and bigotry that makes USer culture "racist." There is bias and bigotry everywhere cultures intersect. It is the culture which tolerates, amplifies, exploits, and reifies bias and bigotry, and which rewards it.

Conversely
--and this is the hard part--there is not a "White" person alive today in the USofA (me, e.g.), male or female--and there never has been one who EVER lived here--who has NOT benefited from racism (within the same caveat), whether they know and/or acknowledge it or not. You got a job, or didn't get a ticket, or didn't get hassled because--and only because--you are/were "white."

They don't call it 'privilege' for nothing...