And There is No Map…
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
One explanation that I hear given for Barack Obama’s success is that a lot of white people somehow hope that voting for him will, in effect, let them off the hook for the long and complicated history of race relations in this country. While I think that hypothesis is too simplistic by half, I think there may at least be a little something to it.
There’s a tendency, I think, to want some kind of skeleton key or Rosetta stone that will decipher what it is to experience life through someone else’s eyes, or in their skin. We look for that “Eureka!” moment, when it all makes sense and we attain a Zen-like clarity, as though you could say, “Well, now I’ve read Shadow and Act/seen Malcolm X/listened to What’s Going On and Songs in the Key of Life/eaten collard greens/watched Roots/observed Dr. King’s birthday/learned the principles of Kwanzaa. Now I understand!”
Uh, no. (more…)