I am so profoundly sick and tired of hearing people ‘remind’ me that Obama was only elected based on the color of his skin. To recognize how profoundly arrogant and dismissive that claim is, consider that the majority of voters across the planet vote along party lines. Yet, how often do you hear people say, ‘oh he only won because he’s a Republican’? You aren’t likely to see that comparison made, because as the Pew Research center put it, ‘Most fundamentally, it is an attitude, not a demographic.’ We are far more willing to challenge a demographic than we are to question our own attitudes. This begins to explain how quickly we are willing to dismiss voting along party lines as something that ought to be looked at and questioned.
This doesn’t stop at race. Google the term female president and there is a long debate between writers of the top American newspapers about wether or not it is a good idea. Yet, do we question if we should have an affluent white male president? Google that and no such debate will come up.
I say all this to think about the way I think and the way we think collectively as a nation. We are a nation of comfort and rarely are we quick to accept change–even when that change is obvious and relevant. We are a nation that fought against the cellphone, against wireless internet, and even challenged milk. We question everything new but hardly anything that has a longstanding history with us.
That is simply the American Way.
Some Thoughts:
- 1815 was the year dental floss was invented… And the year the cavity creeps began to hide in caves like afghani militants…