Published: May 14, 2008 11:02 am            

Racial insults are like spitting upwind

EDMOND — I must thank the ninny who offered the racial slur to my son the other day for giving me many chuckles about their stupidity. My college-age son is working in landscaping for the summer. He’s a strong, handsome young man and somebody pulled up nearby and yelled, “It’s nice to see a white boy working!”

When he told me about it, I naturally assumed that it was someone of a different race, but no. He was the “all hat and no cattle” type trying to insult whichever race he perceives to usually perform manual labor, other than white.

Now let’s look at this. If the dweeb had yelled “It’s nice to see a Stephenson working,” I would assume he meant to insult our family. If he had indeed been from a different race, then it would have been a rude comment suggesting that whites are lazy. If work is supposed to be degrading, then it was a personal insult to my son as well as other laborers. I must conclude that this poor man was too dumb to iterate an insult that didn’t blow back in his own face.

It amazes me that Americans have bloody wars for freedom and yet we still get throwbacks promoting gross prejudice. Until the last century, my Irish ancestors were enslaved, indentured and discriminated against, but once they became blended into society, prejudice faded away. Prejudice dies out as people become familiar with one another. It’s a natural process and a tribute to the human mind that can replace instinct with information.

Racial prejudice recently has been center stage in the Democratic war between the candidates, but it has taken a fascinating form. Obama is an intelligent man with a solid-gold education and absolutely no known opinions. His liquid voice seemed just right to melt the race barrier and he’s handsome enough to replace ol’ honest Abe’s picture on our money. When Obama said, “change,” it meant everything to everyone without his promising anything specific.

If he’d kept his mouth shut, Hillary wouldn’t have had a prayer. He seemed formed to be a politician until we learned that his spiritual adviser and friend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, promotes, preaches and endorses racial hatred.

Wright fans the flames that cause distrust and tension with those who are different from us. Earlier in the campaign, Obama claimed Wright as a friend, councilor and adviser. Now he says he attended Wright’s church for 20 years but “didn’t know” about Wright’s ideas. Obama is either really dumb or really dishonest, and I don’t think a man educated at Harvard is really dumb. Wright promotes a climate where one race is tattooing numbers on the other races’ forearms and shipping them to camps. American’s must not tolerate those sympathies in a potential leader.

So to the bright all-hat-no-cattle fellow who spit into the wind with his dumb comment to my son: When you spout off like that, it’s like wearing your dirty underwear on the outside of your blue jeans. We’re laughing at you, not with you.



BETH STEPHENSON is an Edmond resident.

        

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