Banning the race card from the "games we play" as Americans will leave many wonderful prizes impossible to win.
I regret that the racial discussions are taboo in polite American society. I am not thinking now of the fact that by not allowing the so-called "race card" the country is not drawn to address problems created by historic racial injustices. I am not in this instance regretting that because of the taboo the country is not called to work to correct present racial injustices.
I certainly do not regret that the taboo means we do not have versions of the guilty-are-you/wounded-are-us conversations that can so easily dominated race talk in America. Such conversations should be banned forever; but what also gets banned along with them is talk about the beauty that the darker races bring to the American mix.
We cannot talk about that beauty and so everything must be turned into white bread (no pun intended) before it can be talked about. The popular culture is rich with what W. E. B. Dubois, in the Souls of Black Folk" called the "the gift of spirit."
But outside the popular culture (say in politics and academic life) and too often within popular culture, that gift must become a metaphor for victimhood, on the one hand, or misshapen as criminality, on the other, before it is allowed to enter the mainstream of American life.
By not talking openly about it the full meaning of it we are not able to talk about the all too human power of spiritual freedom wherein lies the gift of joy. We are unable to have as many full discussion as we need about some of the positive forces that can shape our collective lives.
I take part in an online forum of very well-educated Americans who say, often regretfully, they will support Obama because there is no one else. "Obama's inability to assert himself and offer strong leadership has been a scary disappointment. I think the right wing's view of how to lead America is even more terrifying," says one.
Another speaks disparagingly of "hoping beyond facts" Another wrote: "most of all he (Obama) loses 'cause white men over 50 are not going to vote for him, and he has lost the enthusiasm of all those younger folks who loved him last time."
To little avail I say: hope is always beyond facts or it would not be hope. No where in America do you find more of it than in the souls of black folk. "The Star Spangled Banner" is the official National Anthem but we should also have public discussions of what "Lift Every Voice and Sing" The Negro National Anthem, brings to the nation's table.
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith
that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope
that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
And young folk might just vote for the candidate most aligned with the goals of OWS. And now quantum reality studies suggests, even if vaguely, that scientifically faith and hope can have probability waves that can collapse into reality.
The probability wave," says Wikipedia , "initially in a superposition of several different possible . . .states, appears to reduce to a single one of those states after interaction with an observer. In simplified terms, it is the reduction of the physical possibilities into a single possibility as seen by an observer." if the observer can "march on" or "walk together children, don't get weary" as Dr. King used to say.
