It was a long day in the office yesterday. The patients were flocking in, the phone messages would not stop, and the on-line news websites were freezing up on me: I would have to wait until late tonight to see the reruns of the Obama inauguration.
In the interim, I heard Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction. On the radio, as I drove home, I listened to the benediction, and I was a little disappointed. Not terribly disappointed, but there could have been a better ending to what has almost universally been declared a historic and joyous day. In fact, I developed a headache as I drove home. I understood suddenly the existential angst which can just as suddenly come crashing down upon the least suspecting among us.
A widely accepted factor that contributes to certain types of headaches is stress.
Was I suffering the effects of racism-related stress?
Racism-related stress has been defined in the literature by S.P. Harrell as "the race-related transactions between individuals or groups and their environment that emerge from the dynamics of racism, and that are perceived to tax or exceed existing individual and collective resources and threaten well-being".
Mr. Lowery asked for a day when, among other things, "yellow will be mellow" and "when white will embrace what is right".
The 110 freeway was stop-and-go, and the lane I was in had to merge. I needed to concentrate, but did the good Reverend know what he had said?
It is true; there have been a couple of high-profile cases locally, where our Korean-born brothers and sisters have been literally trigger-happy when an African-American teen has attempted to pilfer a Diet Pepsi from the local liquor store. But there are many Koreans and Korean-Americans who do not exhibit such behavior. So, just what did he mean by this statement, which intimates that Asian people are, well, unmellow?
Suddenly I was being tail-gated, but I could not go any faster. The pain behind my eyes was intensifying. But who are these white people who need be told to embrace what is right?
When my father, born of Italian parents, was a child, he would be called ethnic epithets by his teachers. The Anglo children of the next block were told by their parents to not play with my father and his fellow Italian-American friends, who in turn would refer to those relatively privileged children as "lily-whites".
Maybe Reverend Lowery was referring to those lily-whites.
Apparently, I was a little distracted; I found myself in back of a large truck with a ladder strapped to its side; my wife always reminds me that her sister was once hit by a flying ladder on the freeway. I needed to pass.
I never forget the story my father related regarding his attempt to land a job at Honeywell in the 1950s; he was told by the interviewer that "we just don't hire many Italians around here".
Maybe Reverend Lowery was referring to that interviewer of half a century ago.
Finally, the Pacific Coast Highway exit. I would be home soon. Maybe I would take a couple of aspirin. I should feel better by bedtime. Tomorrow's schedule looks a little lighter.
Obama is president. We are now in a post-racial world. I think I read that in the Sunday paper.
It's nice to be pain-free.
