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Tonight, Louise is hanging out at my end of the diner. She sits, Buddha-like, in the booth in the corner, with a cup of very light and sweet tea, gazing out at the vista before her. It's a sparse crowd. Rebecca Still sits three booths down, yammering over a cellphone and the remains of a spring lamb dinner.
Over by me, I have two men I don't recognize. They're dressed in suits, discussing the affairs of the world, while a quiet, subdued Dawn goes about her business. Eventually, the subject of Barack Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia comes to the fore. Within earshot of many people, one of the men says, quite pompously, that there are people in this country who clearly don't feel grateful about living here, under the blessings that American Liberty has bestowed upon all of us (if you pressed him further, of course, this would preclude Latino illegal aliens; that's another pompous, flatulent discussion for another day).
"Pardon me?" Louise asks.
The man looks up. "Yes?"
"Who's grateful, or ungrateful?"
Pause. "Uh, we're having a discussion-"
"I'm the manager of this diner. You can talk to me. I don't bite. Usually. Now, who's grateful or ungrateful?"
"I'm just saying, that..."
"Right. I'm grateful. I'm grateful that my ancestors were hunted down like animals, chained up, and thrown onto a ship, and sent to this continent." Louise's voice is rising. The two men look at each other.
"I'm grateful that Massa came into the cabins so they could fuck the women in my family tree, so he could put some of that pure white blood into my ancestors' monkey blood, so he could make more monkeys to pick his cotton, how grateful could I possibly be? He published millions of words telling the world that we're good for nothin' but slavery. He ground us down to dirt every day!"
"Yes," I interject, as Dawn pours me more coffee. "The ingratitude of it all!"
"And when we finally do get our freedom, he comes around with guns to shoot us and torches to burn us and rope to fucking HANG us, when he isn't having doctors experiment on us, only so that some happy-go-lucky motherfucker could tell us that we're ungrateful!"
The two men just stare at Louise, who's now a four hundred pound whirlwind of indignation. A voice in another part of the diner cries, "yeah!"
"You spend every day telling us with your attitudes and your body language that we're not Americans, no matter how many generations we got going back to chains and cotton. And then you get upset when we didn't rally around the flag on September 11th! We're not welcome in this country, no matter what we do. No matter what we do! Hundreds of years scheming to take away rights that should be ours because of our birth, I can't count how many times I hear some dumbshit bitching about sending the darkies back to Africa if we don't like it here. And now, the man speaks up about the problems of Race, and he's ungrateful!"
You could now hear a pin drop. Interestingly enough (and you can't possibly make this up), the late, extraordinarily great Sam Cooke's on the satellite feed, with 'A Change Is Gonna Come'. Barack had his speech. Let this be the anthem behind Louise's speech, if it needs one...
"I'm an American, Mistuh Ofay!" Louise slurred that out, obviously with a purpose. "I'm just as much of an American as either one of you, or him-" pointing to me- "or her (Dawn), or anyone else in this diner. I have just as much of a right to complain as either one of you!"
She got up, and got in the face of the man who made the original comment. "More so!"
Louise headed back to the cash register. One by one, the patrons of the establishment rose, and applauded.
"Wow," I say to Dawn. "Just like a movie."
"Yeah, ain't it?"
The two men have gotten up. One leaves Dawn a generous tip for the both of them. I'm watching as Iago rings up their sale. They leave. Neither have said a word.
"You know, in the old days," I say to Dawn, "a half hour would pass, and four or five cars with screaming rednecks would come up and burn this place to the ground."
"Yep."
"Not necessarily down south either. Would've happened right here in New Jersey."
"I know. Did Rochelle ever tell you about her grandfather?"
"What about him?"
"She told me that on a Saturday night, some of the White locals got rip roaring drunk, and they had nothing better to do, so they came around to her grandfather's house, pulled him out of bed, took him outside, poured gasoline on him, hung him from a tree, and set him on fire."
"No reason."
"Yep."
My reflexive reaction would've been to say that the man must've been ungrateful for living under the blessings of American Liberty. Instead, I ponder a more interesting tableau. "And, the next morning, these guys went to church and prostrated themselves before Sweet Jesus next to their wives and kids in church."
Dawn chuckles and smiles. "God Bless America."
I pour Sweet 'n Low in my coffee. The diner's quiet again. Sam Cooke has given way to the Sir Douglas Quintet. 'She's About A Mover'. A '60s zeitgeister if ever there was one. I sit and wonder if this presidential campaign will ever come to an end, and, if it does, will we be any the better for it?
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Posted by Knoxxie03 on 2008-03-19 08:03:01 | Rating: | Views: 79
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I listened to part of Barack Obama's speech and I was impressed by its honesty. Racism, stereotypes and misunderstanding are serious problems and it's an important discussion to have. Some political commentators said that he was sort of pushed into giving the speech to address the controversy and he wouldn't have done so otherwise but at least it's on the table now.
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Posted by hairytoad2005
on 2008-03-20 07:33:15
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Toad, back in 1999, My wife and I went to church on a Sunday with a dear friend who moved away. The service was very nice. The minister was a sniveling, smiling, sanctimonious type, but it didn't diminish the experience...until he took it upon himself to rain hatred on the Usual Suspects in the pantheon of ecclesiastical enemies- Gays, Liberals, free-thinkers, tree-huggers, etc. To this very day, I'm sorry I didn't get up during his spewing of sewage and ask back the $20 I put in his collection plate. Show me Christ's Love, Mr. Weasel, and not your failings. I'm not here for THAT.
Multiply this by so many pulpits in the US on so many Sundays...and you'd then wonder why people are getting so worked up about some extraordinarily wayward individual as Jeremiah Wright. Preaching hate from the pulpit's as American as a cheeseburger.
White America has yet to come to grips with the Jeremiah Wrights. They're out there, they're NOT going away, no matter what you do. They're going to remain there, doing what they do...and won't subside until we start making strides toward being a better society. Looking at the likes of what's out there now, this definitely won't happen in any of our lifetimes.
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Posted by Knoxxie03
on 2008-03-21 05:49:29
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I agree that there are hurtful things said by religious leaders on the other side of the political spectrum as well. And, while I don't approve of what Jeremiah Wright said, I can understand it to a certain degree (which I actually stated in the community forum on here). Anyways, I just wanted to say I was glad that there is a discussion about racial issues going on because I think it's important and I'll leave at that for now because I don't want to clutter up your story with my comments. :)
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Posted by hairytoad2005
on 2008-03-21 08:27:20
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I like hearin' from ya. Clutter away.
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Posted by Knoxxie03
on 2008-03-21 19:28:32
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I sit and wonder if this presidential campaign will ever come to an end, and, if it does, will we be any the better for it?
I wonder that everyday. The man scares me in more than one way and I'll leave it at that...
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Posted by crydun2004
on 2008-03-24 18:45:24
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