Really?

Are we really surprised? It amazes me that people are actually confused about the fact that President Elect Obama delivered his victory speech behind a 10 ft high, 2 in thick wall of bulletproof glass.

REALLY? You're surprised? In this country? We live in the country that killed MLK, JFK, RFK, Medgar Evers and countless others. We live in the country that allowed a predominantly black city to drown for seven days, (even though the Canadian mounties arrived in a single day's time) and then called them refugees. And we are surprised that the country is taking precautions to protect the first Black president?

Let's grow up, America.

Perhaps one of the most significant things about this election, is the conversations it will force people to have. The conversation that a lot of people have gone out of their way to avoid. Barack Obama's win does not eradicate racism; if anything it highlights the fact that it still exists--it took so long to get to this point in history.

Regina Brett, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote this in a recent article:

"I confessed that I never felt privileged being white. My dad was a sheet metal worker trying to raise 11 kids in a house by the railroad tracks between a furniture factory and a ball bearing plant.

After I shared my story, a black woman pointed out how much harder that same life would have been had my parents been black.
Her comment bothered me, but she was right.

Rarely am I conscious of my whiteness. I never claim my race as my identity. I see myself as a woman, not a white woman... I don't feel guilty being white. My ancestors had nothing to do with slavery. My poor Irish and Slovak grandparents hadn't yet arrived in this country.
But a four-week forum at the Cleveland Ecumenical Institute for Religious Studies opened my eyes to my own skin. Beth Robenalt, a diversity specialist and a friend of mine, ran the classes. If she had handed out grades, I would have flunked. ..I always mistook racism as those systems and practices that hurt and excluded blacks, not that advanced whites like me.

While I don't see myself as racist, I've benefited from racism by default -- through education, justice, political and health care systems that for decades have favored white people.

The class challenged me to challenge those systems, to walk the other way on the conveyor belt of life. Too often I let the conveyor carry me along. I've been oblivious to the black people struggling to get on or pointing out when we white folks are heading the wrong way.
To be honest, I want to live in a colorblind world. I want race to simply not matter any more.
But as one black woman in class pointed out, "If you don't see that I'm black, you don't see me."

I want to see her.
I want to see her as I see myself, as a woman.
But she sees me as a white person. Can I see myself that way? What would it mean if I did?
When it comes to race, I haven't a clue what it means to be black in America.
I'm still trying to figure out what it means to be white."

I thought the article was excellent. It illustrated to me what many of my white friends and colleagues must go through. Too often, I think whites are denied the ability to be proud of being simply "white"--that would instantly translate to observers as some type of white supremacist attitude. How could you be proud of being a part of the "opressive" culture? Its okay to be proud of being "Irish" or "Italian" or "Welsh." But they can't be proud of being simply "white"...though that is what the majority of black folks ask for on a daily basis. Arguably, we have different reasons; a lot of us cannot say we are Zulu, Ashanti, Khoi Khoi, Senegalese or Ghanaian. So we created a culture from the bits and pieces that we could.

Its not exactly the same thing. But while constantly asking for/demanding acceptance of who we are, how often do we also accept who they are?

Which brings me back to my original question--are we really surprised? Yes. Some of us are. Let the conversation begin.