Nobody is a racist

[randy_byers]

Obama rubs the Hortons the wrong way because they think he's arrogant. It's the same thing you hear from voters in a lot of the parts of the country where Obama's infamous remarks about bitterness would probably also apply. But that's not his only problem in rural West Virginia. "They won't go for a black man, that's just it," R.K. Horton, a retired heating and air conditioning business owner, said of his neighbors. "I don't think it's being racist necessarily, they just don't like black people that well." For that matter, it's not just his neighbors. "The arrogance and all that bothers me more than black, but black is a close second," he said. "Our generation was back when blacks were the back of the bus, and it's hard to change that outlook. I just feel like I couldn't vote for him."

-- from Can Barack Obama win in West Virginia? in Salon

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to step very carefully in this here minefield here: if you have any southern background at all, these remarks sound very different. My late grandmother (born in Alabama, raised in Georgia, lived in Florida for the rest of her life, from 17 to 87, except for about 45 years that hardly counted in Ohio) eplained to me once, near the end of her life, that when she was young, they were Negroes (and then she explained that in her family, they never used the vulgar term because it was vulgar). Then they became colored people, and they stayed colored people for many years. Toward the end of her life, they became blacks or Blacks or African Americans, and then toward the true end of her life, as she had more and more medical care, much of it provided by people of color, they really became people to her, people she liked, respected, and trusted with her life, and she understood as she never had before what had been so wrong about how she had seen them for the first 80 years of her life.

That's a long, long journey.

How I read Mr. Horton's remarks: he's come far enough on that journey that he sees blacks as people, even if he doesn't like, respect, or trust them with his life. He may not travel as far along that road as my grandmother did, but he's a lot further along it now than she was at his age, and that in turn gives me some hope for the South.

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

There is a great episode of Homicide: Life on the Street when Det. Stuart Gharty (Character) a seemingly insensitive middle-aged white guy takes his Latina partner Det. Laura Ballard (Character) into an area that probably is West Virgina (in the story) to a "community" of poor white trash. These white people are inbred, filthy, ignorant, and no one can take their racism seriously because they truly are on the bottom of the shit pile. The whole scene is defined by a single comment by him to her "You never thought you'd see white people living like this."

Horton sounds like he is living better than the people depicted in the TV show, but that scene in that episode is what comes to my mind when I read things like what you quoted. Who the F*** cares if Obama wins WV. He really has won the nomination.

The only reason that WV even has HVAC is due to Jay Rockefeller practically adopting the state. Speaking of which, I heard an interview several years ago with Jay Rockefeller talking about his move to WV, and as he talked about the beauty, poverty, and potential of the state I expected him to paraphrase Victor Kiam's slogan: "I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company" for his Remington firm, and say "I like the state so much I bought it." Jay Rockefeller is the best thing I know about WV, and perhaps that not saying much.

[jamesb.livejournal.com]

everyone is a racist

so I learned on Avenue Q.

J