Twister
Melinda, I'm sorry your friend's son got tagged as a racist for supporting Hillary. But please: Let's not get it twisted.
My kids' school is almost a 50-50 split between black students (African-American, Haitians, Jamaicans, etc.) and white, with a smattering of Asians and Latinos, a good cultural diversity program and all the required social studies curriculum about "teaching tolerance" (a phrase I detest, by the way). Yet we've had incidents of name-calling and teasing and grief that involve race, perceived sexual orientation, body size, academic ability, religion (my friend's Muslim daughter was asked quite casually if she was carrying a bomb in her backpack), etc., etc. Is every other school in America such a bastion of maturity and civic-mindedness and tolerance (that word again!) and acceptance and understanding and full-throttle multiculturalism that these things do not occur? Wow! To pretend that this particular incident is a problem by and/or of Obama or his supporters and not instead another symptom of a far larger and far older American (and indeed human) problem is ridiculous on its face.
The problem is not this campaign. The problem is that we, all of us, remain essentially segregated in this society, not only by race but by class and religion and political views. We live in our own little enclaves, all of us, segregated and self-righteous and increasingly entrenched. The Age of Entrenchment, I call it, when for all the millions of people like me blathering on across the Internet, no one ever really changes her or his mind about anything, or indeed even hears any statement or argument or evidence or passionate plea except that which confirms what they already believe. Any surprise our children are picking up on this nastiness?
As for flirting with McCain, I have two things to say. One of them is this essay—and forgive me for always dragging Tim Wise (a man!) into this forum, but the dude speaks with such fearless clarity it makes no sense to try to replicate.
The second is this: Please, please, please, by all means, go ahead and vote for whomever you want, and let the chips fall where they may. Just stop threatening us already. In this heat it's tiresome.