Stories of O

The Stories of O
William Parham
Sarah Palin: I dont have a clue Remembrance of things past. Before the Beatles, before Woodstock, in the 50s and 60s of an Elvis Presley era, I remember a hot Texas summer night -- no air conditioner, no TV, Hank Williams on the radio (the original, not the junior) with sporadic news of civil rights demonstrations in the South, interweaving with the chink-chink of the country music sounds. Lets say it was 1959, 1961, or some such year. I was just a kid as I recall my uncle saying something to the effect that he wished he could go to Alabama, Mississippi, or wherever disturbances were happening at that moment. He was a bit agitated about it. I knew something about those demonstrations, reading of them in Life magazine, that visual surrogate for those of us who didnt have a TV. It was the pictures I recall the most: The hate on the face of Sheriff Bull Connor, the rigid face of Governor George Wallace standing in the doorway confronting the Attorney General of the US at the University of Alabama. These searing images were matched in intensity only by the terror on the faces of a row of black children walking to their first day in a desegregated school in Mississippi. A tough job, but somebody had to do it and the children did it. I was very moved by those pictures and, because no one ever talked about it in my house, I assumed everyone else felt the same silent outrage. They didnt. My uncle didnt. I quickly realized that when he said he wanted to go South, this hot-tempered Cajun meant he wanted to kick some African-American ass (he used a more quaint
term). These sentiments were so commonplace they were totally unremarkable in my childhood neck of the woods. That was then, this is now. Nowwe have a candidate for the President of the United States saying that he vows to whip Obamas you know what. We have a Vice Presidential candidate saying I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America. Care to spell that out? At the rallies in which these sentiments were voiced, no one calmly questioned what exactly do you mean by that? The response instead was a raucous kill him, treason. Language matters. An article in last months New York Times reminds us that in the South of the past, certain words were commonly used and understood as codes for vilification and license to violence. Last month, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland from Georgia, described the Obamas as uppity. When challenged on this usage later, Westmoreland backpedaled by saying that the dictionary definition carried no racial meaning. Strictly speaking, true. But that word has a meaning and force that every person in the South knows. The dictionary meaning may be neutral, but the colloquial connotation has always been crystal clear. The term uppity was applied to black people who were confident and articulate in things that mattered. It was a potent word and handy incitement for lynchings, burnings, and other assorted southern amusements. The accumulated intensity of that word sparked a race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921, in which a white mob nearly eradicated the most affluent black community (Greenwood) in the US. It gets worse: In Sarah Palins convention speech, she used an unattributed quote from the late, fake-populist journalist, Westbrook Pegler. Since the 1930s, Pegler had been known as an unabashed anti-semite and racist. So much so that he was bounced from the Journal of the John Birch Society in 1964 for alleged anti-semitism. Thats so far out you cant even see it. In the 1960s, Pegler had a wish for then presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy: Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls. And it was so accomplished before the snow fell, in June 1968, although not by a white patriot of the Southern tier. Shouldnt someone have told Palin about Pegler? Would it have mattered to her if they had? And then there was the man in the audience last week at a Johnstown, Pennsylvania rally, grinning as he held up a stuffed monkey doll with an Obama bumper sticker wrapped around its forehead. CBS News caught this one on video. What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division.... This is the recent opinion of John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia. He should know something about verbal and physical abuse in that destructive period in American history. His skull was fractured by police while on the now infamous Selma, Alabama freedom march in 1965. Are these recent campaign antics trivial? David Gergen, the soul of moderate concerned journalism, remarked on all this anger out there. There is this free-floating
sort of whipping-around anger that could really lead to some violence. I think were not far from that. Foreseeing such, Americas Homeland Security Secretary, after consultation with Congress, gave Obama Secret Service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate in American history, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries. Remembrance of things past -- Americas 60s. Now, the story of O, the stories of all the Os. In order to get through this difficult period in American campaign history without incident, those in positions of leadership have to say enough to the language of threadbare disguised hatred and violence. Its appalling, dangerous and beneath us.

Stories of O

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The Stories of O

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