I think politics are important, even though not everyone is comfortable hearing about it. I'm sorry if I make anyone uncomfortable, but I think there are deeply held attitudes that are invalid, and we have to get past our comfort zone to get at them and change them. Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away, and it does affect us every day.
For example, yesterday I was visiting with a school counselor. Lovely woman. A mother. A Christian, no doubt, judging by her jewelry. So sweet and kind and accommodating. But when I got into issues of ethnicity, I began to feel the bias ... a bias that I feel does nothing to help solve the cycle of poverty that is an enormous problem in Hill County.
We continued to talk and she invited me to have lunch with the kids in the cafeteria. That compelled me to joke about the school lunch photo that is floating around on the Internet. You know, the skimpy lunch with two pieces of cauliflower, a slice of lunch meat and a tiny portion of something else. She said, "Oh yes, I've seen that. That's what Mrs. Obama has done to us."
Folks, the moment she said that, this sweet, lovely woman's face turned to disgust. I could see the deep, black, hatred in her eyes. What is that? I get to it often when I poke around a little. And I see it blatantly in rightwing conversations on the Internet. Some people say it's racism. I think it's just plain hate. Deep-seated hatred, based on a core set of beliefs that the white Christian way is superior and everyone else threatens us.
Maybe it's primordial. Something in our DNA from a time when each group really did have to protect itself from being consumed by the others. And I think many people today still fear that, because there's still some validity to that concern. They fear that dark-skinned people will take over this country. It’s true, not by violence, but by growing their relative populations. They also fear Muslims will prevail globally. That has some validity, too, because Muslims and other groups would indeed like to assert their beliefs and way of life on others, just as we do. But, my concern is where it becomes irrational. Fear and hatred are two things that seem to drive a lot of people, even if only on a subliminal level.
Anyway, I asked the counselor, as innocently as I could, how the president's wife is able to dictate what food schools serve. She brushed that off saying she hadn't had time to research it, but "everyone" says it was Mrs. Obama. That's another thing I see often: People have these deeply held beliefs and make important life decisions based on them, yet there is no basis for those beliefs other than hearsay from other people who hold similar beliefs.
So, I did the research myself. You know what actually happened on school lunches? Michelle Obama didn’t force anyone to do anything. She suggested that kids should be eating healthier meals at school. She was concerned about childhood obesity, diabetes and other health issues. Some schools took advantage of that to cut costs. Then the lobby for junk foods got involved, seeing a threat to the millions they make off of selling garbage foods to schools. Then rightwing media and a lot of hate-filled people jumped on the bandwagon, seeing another opportunity to attack Obama, and slathered propaganda all over the Internet. And so it goes.
But the lunch I shared with students at the Hillsboro school that day was nothing like the photo on the Internet. It wasn’t Five-Star gourmet, but it was edible and filling, and I believe nutritious. I was given a reasonable portion of chicken nuggets and a biscuit, and then I was allowed to help myself to rice, pinto beans and greens. There were also apples and oranges, milk and water. It was decent and I didn’t eat again until dinner.
Another quick example happened a while back. Right after Clint Eastwood did his “empty chair” bit at the Republican National Convention, a photo started floating around the Internet of a flying helicopter with some servicemen sitting in the open doorway, dangling an empty chair by a rope. A woman I know reposted it, with a comment like, “This is what the military really thinks of Obama.” This was also shortly after Navy Seals went into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden.
Because she had a rightwing bent, this woman thought the photo was funny and worse, she thought it was real. Her prejudice blinded her to the fact that it was a bad Photoshop, and that the photo was more disrespectful to the military than it was to the president because these elite American troops would not publicly, and in uniform, ridicule the Commander-in-Chief, no matter how any of them might feel personally. You see, when people have hate in their hearts and desire to have their prejudices reinforced, they overlook the obvious. They choose not to see the truth.
People don’t realize how easy it is to discover the truth. That is, if they really want to know the truth. For me it was just as simple as going into the cafeteria and actually having lunch with the kids. But a lot of times, I think people want to believe the propaganda because it reinforces their uninvestigated core beliefs and validates their prejudices.
So, that is why I like to talk about things, including politics, even though it makes some people uncomfortable.
For example, yesterday I was visiting with a school counselor. Lovely woman. A mother. A Christian, no doubt, judging by her jewelry. So sweet and kind and accommodating. But when I got into issues of ethnicity, I began to feel the bias ... a bias that I feel does nothing to help solve the cycle of poverty that is an enormous problem in Hill County.
We continued to talk and she invited me to have lunch with the kids in the cafeteria. That compelled me to joke about the school lunch photo that is floating around on the Internet. You know, the skimpy lunch with two pieces of cauliflower, a slice of lunch meat and a tiny portion of something else. She said, "Oh yes, I've seen that. That's what Mrs. Obama has done to us."
Folks, the moment she said that, this sweet, lovely woman's face turned to disgust. I could see the deep, black, hatred in her eyes. What is that? I get to it often when I poke around a little. And I see it blatantly in rightwing conversations on the Internet. Some people say it's racism. I think it's just plain hate. Deep-seated hatred, based on a core set of beliefs that the white Christian way is superior and everyone else threatens us.
Maybe it's primordial. Something in our DNA from a time when each group really did have to protect itself from being consumed by the others. And I think many people today still fear that, because there's still some validity to that concern. They fear that dark-skinned people will take over this country. It’s true, not by violence, but by growing their relative populations. They also fear Muslims will prevail globally. That has some validity, too, because Muslims and other groups would indeed like to assert their beliefs and way of life on others, just as we do. But, my concern is where it becomes irrational. Fear and hatred are two things that seem to drive a lot of people, even if only on a subliminal level.
Anyway, I asked the counselor, as innocently as I could, how the president's wife is able to dictate what food schools serve. She brushed that off saying she hadn't had time to research it, but "everyone" says it was Mrs. Obama. That's another thing I see often: People have these deeply held beliefs and make important life decisions based on them, yet there is no basis for those beliefs other than hearsay from other people who hold similar beliefs.
So, I did the research myself. You know what actually happened on school lunches? Michelle Obama didn’t force anyone to do anything. She suggested that kids should be eating healthier meals at school. She was concerned about childhood obesity, diabetes and other health issues. Some schools took advantage of that to cut costs. Then the lobby for junk foods got involved, seeing a threat to the millions they make off of selling garbage foods to schools. Then rightwing media and a lot of hate-filled people jumped on the bandwagon, seeing another opportunity to attack Obama, and slathered propaganda all over the Internet. And so it goes.
But the lunch I shared with students at the Hillsboro school that day was nothing like the photo on the Internet. It wasn’t Five-Star gourmet, but it was edible and filling, and I believe nutritious. I was given a reasonable portion of chicken nuggets and a biscuit, and then I was allowed to help myself to rice, pinto beans and greens. There were also apples and oranges, milk and water. It was decent and I didn’t eat again until dinner.
Another quick example happened a while back. Right after Clint Eastwood did his “empty chair” bit at the Republican National Convention, a photo started floating around the Internet of a flying helicopter with some servicemen sitting in the open doorway, dangling an empty chair by a rope. A woman I know reposted it, with a comment like, “This is what the military really thinks of Obama.” This was also shortly after Navy Seals went into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden.
Because she had a rightwing bent, this woman thought the photo was funny and worse, she thought it was real. Her prejudice blinded her to the fact that it was a bad Photoshop, and that the photo was more disrespectful to the military than it was to the president because these elite American troops would not publicly, and in uniform, ridicule the Commander-in-Chief, no matter how any of them might feel personally. You see, when people have hate in their hearts and desire to have their prejudices reinforced, they overlook the obvious. They choose not to see the truth.
People don’t realize how easy it is to discover the truth. That is, if they really want to know the truth. For me it was just as simple as going into the cafeteria and actually having lunch with the kids. But a lot of times, I think people want to believe the propaganda because it reinforces their uninvestigated core beliefs and validates their prejudices.
So, that is why I like to talk about things, including politics, even though it makes some people uncomfortable.