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By: Harold Michael Harvey
I’ve often wondered how the individuals behind the face of angry white America really look. I’ve wondered ever since I attended the 15 April 2009 Tax Day Protest in downtown Atlanta. I have written else where about that angry white mob I found myself in across from the steps of the state capitol (The Three Reasons I Hate Being In A Crowd of Angry White People, The Harvey Journal, 16 April 2009). I wasn’t sure, but I had a hunch it was similar to the faces in the two other crowds of angry white people I had encountered in my short existence on the planet.
When President Barack Obama called a joint session of Congress to discuss his health care reform legislation the other day, it became painfully and shamefully clear just what the angry face of white America looked like.
It is predominately male, southern and bigoted. Just like the group that trespassed on my grandfather’s farm in 1955 and the group that stood outside the Lanier Jr. High School for Boys shouting insults at me back in 1965. I’ve cited these two incidents several times but I’m not sure my readers get the point. The point is not so much that these events occurred. They occurred on a regular basis back then. The object lesson here is, both of these groups thought they were right in their actions.
The mob following a pack of bloodhounds out hunting for a black man in the mid 1950s felt justified in their search and in the swift lynching that was sure to follow had they found him.
The young boys standing outside a public high school yelling “two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate” were absolutely sure they held the moral responsibility to defeat the “communist inspired” move towards the elimination of segregation in the South. Their arrogance led them to defy school authority and menacingly intimidate any black person who dared to cross their protest line that September morning 44 years ago last week.
Time, however, has a way of avenging all. We now know, which is to say that any white person of reasonable intelligence now knows (black people knew all along), that both groups of angry white males were wrong. We also know that what they feared and what roused them to anger cannot stop the turning tide of time. For what angers southern bigots and what they fear is a social order of shared responsibility after centuries of unlimited power and authority.
Male, southern and bigoted, just like Joe Wilson the Columbia, South Carolina congressman who represents the Second District in the United States House of Representatives. He has power. He can debate the issue in committee and on the floor of the House. He has a vote. Yet he resorts to heckling!
What manner of American is this who would sit on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and interrupt an important speech by the president of the United States of America with shouts of “you lie?”
Male, southern and bigoted. Just like the three dozen or more people who gathered outside the congressman’s office in Columbia, South Carolina recently who praised Wilson’s rudeness as an act of heroism. Not only does he owe the president an apology, but he owes an apology to the American people who tuned in to listen to an important policy address on health care reform, only to be distracted by a heckler disguised as a congressman.
Male, southern and bigoted. Just like William Browning, the 55 year old South Carolina man quoted by the Associated Press as saying: “I hope he [Joe Wilson] sticks to his guns. If they reprimand him, so be it.”
Such arrogance displayed by Joe Wilson and William Browning is appalling. The utter disrespect for Barack Obama oozes out of their pores by the pound.
How does one come to hate a person whose policies are different? There is but one simple answer. It is time to stop playing games and call a spade a spade. It’s racism pure and simple. Southern bigoted males have a very low tolerance for Obama’s skin in the game. It doesn’t matter southern bigoted males have rolled out a few black faces at their rallies. The majority of black people see through this ruse and are not taken in by the slight of hand of a band who proclaim an interest in restoring the “American way,” like patriots of old who dodged the race question in their day by counting darker citizens as chattel and worth, according to the federalist of that day, a mere three-fifth of the measure of a white man.
Grow up southerners. You are pouting like little boys pout on the playground. Like those little boys pouted on the steps of Lanier Jr. High School for Boys in ‘65 .
Watching this band of anti-government protesters march in the District of Columbia on 12 September 2009, I saw the same agitated and snarling faces I saw in the mob back in ‘55 and the mob of ‘65. You could contrast these angry faces with the determined, yet peaceable expressions on the faces of the men and women who attempted to marched across the Edmund Pettits Bridge on Bloody Sunday. When one considers this dichotomy of history, one realizes that the arch of justice stills bends towards the metaphysical progeny of Selma.
Alas, we knew this day was coming. We have known since the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. We have known since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. We have known since Martin told the nation about a dream that he had had.
Get over it! America is big enough for all of us to live in peace, harmony and prosperity.
Let’s say for the sake of argument the cause of angry white Americans is right and Health Care Reform will place a huge burden on grandchildren of conservative fiscal minded Americans. The corollary is also true. To do nothing will continue to place a tremendous burden on the families of that other America who are also a part of the grand melting pot that makes us unique in the universal set of world democracies.
Thus the reasonable discourse should be: How do we provide adequate health care for all American citizens without providing future generations with a tax bill that is insurmountable?
Anything else makes great sound bites for the six o’clock news and fodder to increase the great divide between conservatives and progressives, between Christians and the ungodly, between whites, blacks, browns, reds, yellows and the many shades in the box of crayons, that did not exist when the mob hunted for a black man on my grandfather’s farm back in ‘55.
© September 13, 2009
Showing posts with label health care reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health care reform. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Woodstock, Health Care and the New Silent Majority
By Harold Michael Harvey
“Son, I’m glad you are not here this summer, they’ve got these long haired, hippy type fellows all over the place, they are smoking a funny cigarette that smells like burnt rope, and the white girls are running around naked,” the voice of my mom said on the other end of the telephone. I’d just finished a shift at the old Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia where I had helped to accommodate the party of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, I think, or some such politico, as they were always dropping in for lunch or dinner .
It was Independence Day 1969. I was away from home earning money in the summertime for fall college expenses, as my mom had done when she was my age. The summer before, on the heels of the twin assassinations, I’d read at the family barbeque, Fredrick Douglass’ epic diatribe “What is the Fourth of July to the American Negro?.” My family was perplexed as I’m sure Douglass’ audience must have been.
Mom was not describing Woodstock. That “happening” would occur the following month. She was describing the crowd gathered at the behest of Phil Walden, an enterprising music promoter, who had produced what was billed as the Atlanta International Music Festival at the site of a motor speedway 120 miles south of Atlanta in Byron, Georgia. Byron is about 20 miles south of my hometown of Macon.
News of the concert and naked white girls spread in the region fast. “They got I-75 blocked off and you can’t get to Fort Valley,” my mom continued to lament the fact she could not visit her two sisters in Fort Valley.
Boy, did I wish I was home. That was all I could think about as mom brought me up to date on all I was missing. Not only did I miss the precursor of Woodstock, I also missed an opportunity to meet the afro-haired young woman I would later marry. She was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta and drove down to Byron with other Spelman sisters. What would have become of such a meeting had we stumbled upon each other in Byron? Would we be here together after 28 years? We were destined to meet ten years later. When we did meet she answered two important questions for me: What was “Byron” really like and what made Spelman College a “Packard” school?
But these are stories for another time. What is important about Byron is that it set the groundwork for Woodstock. It is the first venue where the famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix performed his rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” giving meaning to Douglass’ speech, which I had delivered in Macon a year before. Hendrix would perform the national anthem for the second time a month later at Woodstock, and receive such acclamation that he extended his time upon the stage and began to play in free style far longer than his gig was suppose to last.
What then was this “happening” called Woodstock. It was more than three days of peace, love and music. It was the birth of a nation. Young people who opposed a war their elders had gotten them into, came together and proved that a half million Americans could co-exist with limited resources by extending a helping hand to their fellow humankind. It was as if the people had returned for a second sermon on the Mount to learn they were expected to display the lessons learned from the first sermon.
Through the rain, mud, sun and heat, they cared for each other and created such a strong bond among themselves, that it extended to other like minded humans who were not present in a way “Byron” did not. This bond created a statement heard throughout the land which said this country belonged to the young as well as the old.
A year before, a rumbling of this energy that exploded in upstate New York, had check mated a sitting United States President, causing Lyndon Baines Johnson not to seek re-election.
Following Woodstock, this energy targeted the War in Viet Nam. It became a loud and vocal advocate for peace. There was unrest in the land, young people were demanding answers and none were forthcoming. The nation’s sagacious new president, Richard Milhous Nixon, before buckling to the drumbeat for peace summoned the “silent majority” of Americans to turn a deaf ear to the protest raging in the nation.
Did the “silent majority” exist? Surely they must have existed amongst the “anyone over 30" set who were members of our greatest generation. They had faced up to Hitler from the east and Japan from our west. The oldest baby boomers in 1969 were a mere 23 years of age. The greatest generation was less inclined to vocalize their support for governmental action. Yet they voted and fought with their baby boomer offspring. A generational divide appeared. Each side went off to do their own thing and no one watched government for nearly two generations, until a baby boomer born of the Woodstock nation decided he wanted to be president.
Health Care Reform was much discussed and debated in last summer’s presidential cycle. No one in opposition at that time seriously believed the forty-fourth president would be Barack Hussein Obama.
He is. And central to his platform for economic revival is lowering the cost of health care. How do you lower the cost of health care?
His idea is to create competition for the insurance companies in order to encourage them to lower their costs to protect their business interest. Obama’s health care plan provides that Americans can elect to be covered by private insurance or by an insurance plan funded by the federal government.
Not very much socialistic about that proposal. Competition is “as American as apple pie” as Huey Newton was fond of saying in the late 60's. Yet critics on the fringe, who themselves are baby boomers, are yelling their lungs out that the government is rapidly heading down the slippery slope of socialism, if not already there.
Where then are the people who support Obama on Health Care Reform? Do they exit? Is the entire nation afraid the United States is in bed with the Kremlin?
Support, perhaps comes from the new “silent majority,” Woodstock nation baby boomers who know what it is like to win a forty year non violent revolution, “live and in living color.”
(c) August 16, 2009
“Son, I’m glad you are not here this summer, they’ve got these long haired, hippy type fellows all over the place, they are smoking a funny cigarette that smells like burnt rope, and the white girls are running around naked,” the voice of my mom said on the other end of the telephone. I’d just finished a shift at the old Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia where I had helped to accommodate the party of former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, I think, or some such politico, as they were always dropping in for lunch or dinner .
It was Independence Day 1969. I was away from home earning money in the summertime for fall college expenses, as my mom had done when she was my age. The summer before, on the heels of the twin assassinations, I’d read at the family barbeque, Fredrick Douglass’ epic diatribe “What is the Fourth of July to the American Negro?.” My family was perplexed as I’m sure Douglass’ audience must have been.
Mom was not describing Woodstock. That “happening” would occur the following month. She was describing the crowd gathered at the behest of Phil Walden, an enterprising music promoter, who had produced what was billed as the Atlanta International Music Festival at the site of a motor speedway 120 miles south of Atlanta in Byron, Georgia. Byron is about 20 miles south of my hometown of Macon.
News of the concert and naked white girls spread in the region fast. “They got I-75 blocked off and you can’t get to Fort Valley,” my mom continued to lament the fact she could not visit her two sisters in Fort Valley.
Boy, did I wish I was home. That was all I could think about as mom brought me up to date on all I was missing. Not only did I miss the precursor of Woodstock, I also missed an opportunity to meet the afro-haired young woman I would later marry. She was a student at Spelman College in Atlanta and drove down to Byron with other Spelman sisters. What would have become of such a meeting had we stumbled upon each other in Byron? Would we be here together after 28 years? We were destined to meet ten years later. When we did meet she answered two important questions for me: What was “Byron” really like and what made Spelman College a “Packard” school?
But these are stories for another time. What is important about Byron is that it set the groundwork for Woodstock. It is the first venue where the famed guitarist Jimi Hendrix performed his rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” giving meaning to Douglass’ speech, which I had delivered in Macon a year before. Hendrix would perform the national anthem for the second time a month later at Woodstock, and receive such acclamation that he extended his time upon the stage and began to play in free style far longer than his gig was suppose to last.
What then was this “happening” called Woodstock. It was more than three days of peace, love and music. It was the birth of a nation. Young people who opposed a war their elders had gotten them into, came together and proved that a half million Americans could co-exist with limited resources by extending a helping hand to their fellow humankind. It was as if the people had returned for a second sermon on the Mount to learn they were expected to display the lessons learned from the first sermon.
Through the rain, mud, sun and heat, they cared for each other and created such a strong bond among themselves, that it extended to other like minded humans who were not present in a way “Byron” did not. This bond created a statement heard throughout the land which said this country belonged to the young as well as the old.
A year before, a rumbling of this energy that exploded in upstate New York, had check mated a sitting United States President, causing Lyndon Baines Johnson not to seek re-election.
Following Woodstock, this energy targeted the War in Viet Nam. It became a loud and vocal advocate for peace. There was unrest in the land, young people were demanding answers and none were forthcoming. The nation’s sagacious new president, Richard Milhous Nixon, before buckling to the drumbeat for peace summoned the “silent majority” of Americans to turn a deaf ear to the protest raging in the nation.
Did the “silent majority” exist? Surely they must have existed amongst the “anyone over 30" set who were members of our greatest generation. They had faced up to Hitler from the east and Japan from our west. The oldest baby boomers in 1969 were a mere 23 years of age. The greatest generation was less inclined to vocalize their support for governmental action. Yet they voted and fought with their baby boomer offspring. A generational divide appeared. Each side went off to do their own thing and no one watched government for nearly two generations, until a baby boomer born of the Woodstock nation decided he wanted to be president.
Health Care Reform was much discussed and debated in last summer’s presidential cycle. No one in opposition at that time seriously believed the forty-fourth president would be Barack Hussein Obama.
He is. And central to his platform for economic revival is lowering the cost of health care. How do you lower the cost of health care?
His idea is to create competition for the insurance companies in order to encourage them to lower their costs to protect their business interest. Obama’s health care plan provides that Americans can elect to be covered by private insurance or by an insurance plan funded by the federal government.
Not very much socialistic about that proposal. Competition is “as American as apple pie” as Huey Newton was fond of saying in the late 60's. Yet critics on the fringe, who themselves are baby boomers, are yelling their lungs out that the government is rapidly heading down the slippery slope of socialism, if not already there.
Where then are the people who support Obama on Health Care Reform? Do they exit? Is the entire nation afraid the United States is in bed with the Kremlin?
Support, perhaps comes from the new “silent majority,” Woodstock nation baby boomers who know what it is like to win a forty year non violent revolution, “live and in living color.”
(c) August 16, 2009
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