Fear of a black president

Boston Globe ^ | January 13, 2008 | Joseph Williams

[forkinsocket]

IN 1980, THE year I ran for president, the country was mired in inflation, the malaise of the Carter administration was about to be overtaken by Ronald Reagan's Morning in America, and like a lot of the country, Ooltewah High School was swept up in disco fever.

Tucked next to White Oak Mountain, about 20 miles outside Chattanooga, my school had something else in common with America: a stark division between the white majority and the black minority. Alone among the three candidates for school president, I had a foot on both sides of that divide.

My father was in the Air Force, and my sisters and I were children of integration, among the handful of black kids tossed into overwhelmingly white schools on Air Force bases.

I watched "Soul Train" most Saturdays, pleaded with my sisters to perm my nappy hair into an Afro, and was a member in good standing at Ooltewah High's "black table," where the small group of African-American students ate lunch in the cafeteria. But I had much in common with Ooltewah's white kids, too - a suburban upbringing, a taste for Space Invaders, Monty Python, SCTV, and the Who. And when I talked, I sounded a lot like them.

Whenever pundits begin talking about Barack Obama's chances to win the presidency, and about race and politics, I think back to my run for office. It was years ago, and it was only high school, but even then it was clear that the question of whether a black man can be elected president was more complicated than just a vote count.

[tired1]

wow! she was such an idiot. scary, thanks.

[TigersEye]

It is an amazingly bad sign and to my thinking it underscores that our worst enemy is the MSM not Islamo-Nazis or leftists. We can’t beat the latter two unless we also beat the former.