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I read an article today where a few of Clinton supporters are organizing a group across the country to work against Barack Obama in November if he is our candidate. This is their choice, even though I don't think they should do it. The organizer, a Mary Kay sales woman, said that (because a women was not the candidate) they (Hillary's supporter's) were being forced to the back of the bus. This is the thoughts that statement brought to me.
I am an older white women and speak of this as someone who remembers the days when we were all far from being equal. Men were king of their castles and white men ruled the world...or at least that is what we thought here in the good old U.S.A. As a young girl I was taught how to be lady-like and to know my place. I always resented not having the freedoms that the boys had and resented having to settle for a girl's life. I didn't want to be a boy, I just wanted to have a boy's life. So you might say I always rebeled against the role that was considered mine.
I grew up in the midwest in what was called a "white county". We had "sun down laws", but it was never spoken of in my house so I was unaware of it until I was in my teens. That was when I saw the police stop cars of people who were not "white" and escort them out of the county (supposedly for their safety). I saw those famous signs in the store windows, but they were never spoken of in my house so I often thought they were meant for me because the clerks in the area were none too friendly and sometimes refused to adknowledge my existence when I shopped. Again, I was in my teens when my mother finally explained to me exactly what those signs meant, and how she and my father so respected the one store owner that did not go along with this idealogy. But still these things were rarely spoken of in our house, so we grew up somewhat ignorant of what was happening in the world. We were not allowed to use racist language, but we heard it and it was burned into our consciousness.
I was in my mid-teens when I left my midwest area for the first time and traveled to the south to visit my sister and her military husband. It was in the early 60s and the time of equal but separate. I heard my sister say that "those people are never satisfied", and I wondered why they were not. Then I saw the drinking fountains marked "whites only" and "colored only", and I understood one thing, there was no equality. They both put out water but they were not equal, the one fountain was new and shiny and the other one was old and dull. Another thing struck me as odd, my sister's best friend was an African American woman, but my sister still saw them as "those people".
But to get to my topic, being put in the back of the bus. You see I went hone on a Greyhound bus, and it was a trip I will never forget for many reasons, but mainly for the following. When we began the trip everyone on the bus was white except for a few young soldiers. We traveled for several hours before we made a stop and an older couple got on the bus. The driver told them softly to go to the back of the bus, and I thought that was because there were more seats open back there. But then the couple stopped by my seat to look out the window. That same driver screamed at the old couple to get away from me and to the back of the bus. Their faces took on a strained look and I was afraid. I thought that surely these were criminals or child molesters that had to be watched carefully; there was no other explanation for the driver's reaction. How blessed (?) I was to have the privilege (?) to be so ignorant, but that was then and this is now.
Today with the mass media and the knowledge we have of how the people who do not look like some of us and our white leaders have been treated; there is no excuse for any of us to be ignorant of our histry and our own behaviors. To use this example of maltreatment of a people just because your candidate did not win is unforgivable to me. The African American man may have gotten the vote before women did, but they were not allowed to vote in much of the country until long after white women were voting. You know, those pesky Jim Crow laws that were used for so long. And I don't know about where the rest of you live, but here when the civil rights laws were passed, the rule the employers followed when it came to hiring was "better a white woman than a black man". I believe in equality for every one, and don't get me wrong I believe there should be a woman president and I believe there will be. I just don't feel this is the right woman or the right time, but I do believe this is the right man to make a change in Washington D.C. and the right message we should be sending the world. I have met Barack Obama, talked with him and I trust him to do what is right for all of us. I may be wrong, but I don't think so.
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