KICKING... AND... SCREAMING

If you read my blog post featuring Senator Obama’s acceptance speech last night, you will remember my comment that Obama’s candidacy was dragging racists kicking and screaming out of the closet.

Well, after I wrote that, I discovered that Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland, who was born in Georgia in 1950 and raised in the segregated south referred to Barack and Michelle Obama last Thursday as “uppity”. Not to be impolitic here, but what he meant was “uppity niggers”.

Trust me.

You ever heard of a white person called “uppity”? Me either. And I was also born into the south, although during desegregation in 1964, and I’ve NEVER heard the first word without the second. Ever. Unless the topic of conversation was already a black person, in which case, they would simply say that such and such was “uppity”, meaning “getting above their station in life.”

I heard it applied to black girls wearing pretty new “white girl” (so considered by my racist neighbors) clothes.

I heard it applied to black men applying for office jobs, or anything other than, basically, day labor.

I heard it whispered about any black person who dared to appear at social events that were not hosted by “their kind”.

Mr. Westmoreland (I will never again honor this “man” with the title of Congressman) insists that he didn’t know that the term had racist overtones. Well, if he grew up in Georgia and never figured out that “uppity” was only applied to black people, I have a term to describe him: “Ignorant Cracker”.

He also says that he used the dictionary definition of “haughty, snobbish or has inflated self-esteem”. Well, let’s see… the Free Online Dictionary includes the definition “Taking liberties or assuming airs beyond one's station”, and Merriam-Webster, one of my personal favorites says “putting on or marked by airs of superiority”. I believe that, according to that last definition, Mr. Westmoreland himself could be called “uppity”, except of course that that definition is NEVER APPLIED TO WHITE PEOPLE.

Personally, in listening to Senator Obama, I have never found any of these definitions to apply to him. Although all of them may apply to Mr. Bush and Senator McCain, the former of whom believes that he talks for God and both of whom believe that they are the only men who can SAVE AMERICA!

The democratic party wants an apology. I don’t. I want his resignation. This is the same ignorant cracker who said that there is no better place for the “ten” commandments (actually, there are 613 distinct commandments) than in the halls of our elected officials. When Stephen Colbert heard him say this and asked him to name them, he could name only three (don’t kill, don’t steal and don’t lie).

To my Georgian brothers and sisters… do not let this stand. As a fellow southerner, I understand that the war of northern aggression is still a fairly fresh wound to some of you, especially after the indignity that the yankees visited upon your proudest city, Atlanta. But you have come a long way. Those old wounds are being healed. Please, please, please do not let ignorant crackers like this drag you back into the 19th century with this kind of thinking. Demand that Mr. Westmoreland step down and make way for someone who realizes that the only direction for Georgia and America to go is forward, not backward into the darkest chapter of American history. Especially since nearly thirty per cent of Georgia’s population is black. Isn’t it nice to know that this man thinks that any one of that thirty per cent of his state’s population might be “uppity”?

Peace.

Randal