When Are WE going to Get Over It?

By Dr. Andrew Manis

       For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed"
its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people
have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their
difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans
finally going to get over it? 
       
       Now I want to ask:  "When are we White Americans going to get over
our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
       
       Recent reports that "Election Spurs Hundreds' of Race Threats,
Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in
"Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an
avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted
to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may
recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the
talk."
       
       Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are
once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
       
       We white people have controlled political life in the disunited
colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative
whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton
years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to
the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that
anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or
either of the Bushes.   Criticize them, yes.  Call for their impeachment,
perhaps.
       
       But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did
try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who
wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
       
       But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we're back in the
sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've
proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is
possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that
schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to
"assassinate Obama."
       
       Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?"  
How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less
the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for
all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?  How long until
we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us
superior?  How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about
being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?
       
       How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the
head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white
people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist
jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?
       
       I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start
making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How
long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal
responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the
Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United
States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
       
       How long before we starting "living out the true meaning" of
our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal
and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in
God's sight?
       
       Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would
ever elect an African American to the presidency.   I still don't believe
I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.
But here's my three-point plan:
       
       First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black
Slaves Built I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will
protect him and his family from us white people.
       
       Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear
saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about
President Obama.
       
       Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America
surprise the world once again, when white people can "in spirit and in
truth" sing of our damnable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."

       Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the
steering committee of Macon's Center for Racial Understanding.
       
       It takes a Village to protect our President!!!