Do you Hate Obama?

I am a Southerner so I understand them.

Southerners have a deep seated fear of black people. This is a carry over from the slavery days and is imprinted on them.

Imagine sitting on the veranda sipping Mint Juleps on a warm summer night. The crickets are chirping, the air hot and still and the humidity high when you hear a noise in the bushes just outside the perimeter of your manicured lawn, near the magnolia tree.

You know that there are 35 black people out there and there is only you and the little family. You know that these people hate you for buying them like cattle. You know that it is only a matter of time until they revolt.

Today’s white Southerner still has still fear coursing in his veins, stamped on his DNA. He is afraid to go into black neighborhoods at night. He thinks they are going to hurt him. He imagines that they all have a knife or a straight razor. He knows that they know how he really regards them. He knows that they remember that his ancestors bought and sold his ancestors, chaining them to the floor of a slave ship, ripping babies out of mother’s arms. And the hair stands up on the back of his neck and he is afraid.

In states like South Carolina where slaves outnumbered the whites. there was constant fear on an uprising. Fear was everywhere for good reason and remains to this day.

Now. Barack Obama, a black man is the President. They know that Obama knows that their ancestors bought and sold his wife’s family, forcing them to work in their fields and their kitchens.
They are afraid. They lash out and call him names and make fun of his wife. They call him a Socialist. They try to say that he is not even an American like them.

They cannot understand that Barack Obama has no straight razor in his pocket and he is not going to hurt them. They can’t accept that a black man actually has their best interests in mind. They are intimidated that he is better educated and is more articulate than they, when only a few years ago they would not have let him eat in a restaurant with them or drink from the same water fountain.

They toss at night, listening for the noise outside that might be the slave coming for him and he is afraid, very afraid.

Of course, few here will have the courage or self honesty to admit this but it is true.