re: #25 Obdicut

When I was growing up, my parents were, well, passive racists. They didn’t have any black friends, and they hadn’t had a lot of exposure to other cultures. My dad was a Limbaugh fan, and before him other similar talk-radio dudes. He had said some mildly racist stuff around me.

So I grew up a little on the racist side myself. When I found myself trading baseball cards with my brother at age nine or so, he asked, “Why are you trading me Jim Rice and Roberto Clemente? They’re freaking awesome.”

I said, “I don’t like the chocolates”.

He slapped me. The one and only time my brother has hit me (outside of roughhousing.) I was totally shocked.

He said, “I know you don’t know any better and you get that from mom and dad but that’s wrong. Black people are just like you and me. There’s no damn difference.”

He took me to visit a friend of his who was black next weekend. And thus began the deconstruction of my childhood racism. I was lucky to have a brother like that. Without him, I probably would have arrived at college with my passive racism, hopefully there learning the lessons I needed to about race. Obama wasn’t so lucky. He got born into a much more screwed up situation, racially, and didn’t have as wise a guide as I had to help him through it.

My point? I was racist when I was a kid, too. A lot of people are. Sometimes shockingly so.

But that’s the past tense.

And Beck calls Obama racist in the present tense. And he doesn’t just do it once, either.

Funny it should be Clemente. No one did more to reduce Pittsburgh’s proud tradition of pan-bigotry. He was just a very hard man to hate.