Ever since Palin linked Obama to terrorism, the media has
been reporting how McCain supporters, at Republican rallies, are calling Obama
an “Arab”, “terrorist”, “traitor”, etc, with some even screaming, “kill him”,
and “off with his head”.Now, readers, I
personally think all these rallying cries are racist.You may or may not agree.If you
do not, and think that the media is race-baiting, I can respect that.At the end of the day, the term “racist” is
just a term. Judge these actions in their merits if you will,
but when you do, consider that even McCain has had to go off-script and
defend Obama against these rallying cries, for which his supporters
actually booed him. When I read of these incidents, it jolts
memories of some random guy on the street calling me “Jackie Chan”, or some
drunk guy at a bar coming up to me and making mock kungfu noises.I would love to tell you those are only
hypothetical situations, but no, I have experienced both of these things, and
there are many more similar gems from my life experience.
A few days ago, photos showed up of signs that read, “Vote
Right, Vote White”, and “Vote McCain, Not Osama or Hussein”.Well, this is the last straw.I supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic
primary, though I did not vote because I am not registered with any party.And after Obama won, so far I’ve only
supported him because I see him as the lesser of two evils.There are certainly issues on which I agree
with McCain more than I do with Obama, but two main issues have so far
prevailed on me to support Not-McCain:foreign policy and Sarah Palin.But
as of now, as an Asian voter, my main and most important reason for supporting
Obama is precisely that he’s black.I
had only looked at the issues and to a lesser extent, the backgrounds, of the
candidates.But these openly racist
reactions have finally pushed me over the edge to support Obama because he’s
black. Ironically, this change is not even directly related to either Obama or McCain. It is because of these racist supporters of McCain, or I should say, because of these people that would prefer white people to always be the country's leaders. I think it's pretty safe to say that they support McCain only because his opponent is black.
Is it not similarly
racist to support Obama because he’s black?I will respect your own personal judgement on this.People
who support Obama because of his race, they do so because there’s never been a
black president, and they want to change that.People who are against Obama because of his race, they do so because
there’s never been a black president, and they want it to stay that way.To me there’s an ocean of difference.
Let me finish by answering the simple question, why does race matter?
