How dangerous and tainted such an innocent, curious question has become. This inquiry was posed to my seven-year-old son two weeks ago by the older brother of a friend whose home he was visiting for the afternoon. True, my son carries features that could duplicate those of Middle Eastern descent, although they are the product of his father’s Mexican heritage. However, he can no better describe the difference between Islam and Christian than he can Jewish and Hindu. We are not active, church going people but our family is spiritual in our own comfortable way. Grace is offered before meals, we pray in the evening individually to reflect and we have many deep discussions about religion, myth and what is happening in the world with extremism and religious fervor. It is something I feel is vital to my children’s navigation, understanding and compassion.
Yet this question has itched at me, from the inside of my heart outward, because it is no longer a casual inference; it now carries a desire to know if one can be trusted or if one is ‘like the rest of us’. While my son may not grasp the intention, I did, and it hurt my being to think he was being judged by someone else’s fears.
Since September 11, 2001, this country has gone out of its way to make Muslims feel unwanted, uncomfortable and unwelcome. Americans suddenly had an excuse to exclude people different from their own culture and belief by guilt of religious association. It continues today, albeit more subtle, and I would lying if I did not say that I myself have looked at those riding the bus with me and had to fight the fear that welled in my throat at the thought that maybe their innocent transportation was anything but clean. But I recognize my own shortcomings, I go out of my way at times to correct them and I refuse to let a minority people of a religion harm and hurt the vision I carry of others who are innocent of their deeds and atrocities.
Which brings me to the present political climate and the dangers that McCain and Palin have entered into this election. By questioning Barack Obama’s heritage, by raising questions about associations and leaving lingering thoughts of his name Hussein, which for many wrenches a negative gut fear of all things bad about Islam, they are inciting a very dangerous and frightening emotional climate to sustain and grow. At this point, I would have expected John McCain to know and behave better, for the honor he claims and pretends to have for ALL Americans. It is to me, especially disgraceful, for him to raise questions about the muslim religion and its people, to suggest they are less than human, when his own adopted daughter comes from Bangladesh, a country that is 89.7% Islamic. As she grows, desires and wanders of her own roots, will she feel unclean and uncomfortable as a by product of her father’s own political maneuvering? Will she, when she becomes an independent adult and sees these actions for the gross negligence of information they are, be able to look in John McCain’s eyes and wander if there is real love? What if she grows and decides to become a muslim? What then McCain?
In 2000, I felt it was disgraceful, disparaging and in my eyes, unforgivable, that the Republican party insinuated through push polls that Bridget McCain was an “illegitimate black child” and through an email suggested he had “chosen to sire children without marriage”; that they hinted at an affair with a black prostitute as being her entry into the family. It was a disgusting display of politics at its worst, created and orchestrated by Karl Rove, that ended John McCain’s bid for nomination in North Carolina. How is it then, that a man who himself has been the target and bulls eye of such horrendous insinuations and falsehoods, could carry out the same tactics eight years later simple because he is behind in polling numbers? Where has the honorable man defending his daughter gone?
This past February, Bill Cunningham introduced John McCain at a rally inciting the crowd by speaking of his opponent as “Barack Hussein Obama”; McCain denounced the act, said it was inappropriate and that it would never happen again at one of his rallies. The past two weeks, it has happened again, twice, with the last time seeing a rehash of the campaign apologizing for the chair of Lehigh County intentionally using Obama’s name as a negative to infuse fear. Since no one else seems to want to call him on it, I will: John McCain, you need to stop, and you need to stop now.
When I say this to McCain, I also want it to be clear that I am including his campaign’s overt hints via Palin that Barack Obama is friendly with domestic terrorists and taking money from Palestinians. They are lies, they are despicable and at a time when people are genuinely hurting from the blow economics of the Republican party and their President, I think we all can do without the hatemongering and untruths at this point.
I have been walking around this week genuinely, frightfully angry with the boldfaced lies and I finally realized that it comes down to sense of righteous indignation, a sense of feeling so helpless as I watch two grown adults who know better and, I presume, teach their children better, create a circle of chaos and division in this country. My soul aches knowing that there are individuals in this world who are only looking for an excuse or a word that will confirm that the dread and fear they have for those that are ‘different’ is real and that they are condoned for any future actions against those they hate. Have we lost all sense of history and past horrors? Didn’t the holocaust begin because Jewish people were ‘different’ from Adolph Hitler’s version of a pure society? Didn’t the genocide in Rwanda happen because of tribal ‘differences’ that set one group ablaze with machetes on a killing spree? What about Bosnia? What about Darfur? What if, what if, what if…we continue to allow those we call and revere as ‘leaders’ continue to spew hate, suspicion and lies that only fuel the fire for those who exist who may have their own view of what our country should ‘look’ like and ‘talk’ like and what they should ‘worship’?
Somewhere, in all of this, John McCain has lost sight of one of the most important elements of this race. I can brush off that he will not look at Barack Obama during a debate or that he handles him with a sense of contempt as if Obama has not earned his place on the stage next to McCain. Almost crossing the line was his use of the term, “that one”, during the town hall debate that to me smacked and rang like, ‘hey boy’ through that tiny room. But what I will not stand for nor sit silent upon is anyone dehumanizing a human being for their own political gain and rise to power. Lest he forget, Obama was the child of two proud parents. Obama is the grandson of a military hero and a factory woman of WWII. Obama is the husband of Michelle and the son in law and brother in law of her family. Most importantly, he is a father to two young and impressionable young women who deserve more than to hear anyone questioning their father’s motivations and associations when he has done nothing but help those in need and champion the forgotten since graduating from college. He is living, breathing flesh that represents the hopes and dreams of millions of others around this globe who feel his skin color from the inside, whose name (which means ‘blessed good’) is a familiar wind chime to their ears and whose voice speaks for their pain, their heartache and the treatment they have suffered at the hands of those who see them as ‘different’.
In this country, instead of reveling in our differences, in the beauty of all our interwoven culture and the capacity we have for knowing and understanding so many people and having the gift of this insight and wisdom, we tear apart all that glory and make it seem so ugly. We divide our selves by titles, by religion, by color, by birth, by region, by politics, by fear…by and by and by. Our insecurities have become our biggest threat and the fear mongering that feeds those hungry, little monsters is creating, large, angry crowds that have no genuine perspective or interaction or respect for those who views vary from their own.
So when will it halt? Will take someone doing something drastic or attempting to harm Barack Obama for John McCain to act like the man he claims to be? Will it take someone being harassed or harmed simply because they are not what political leaders have told the inciters that person should be? Will it be Bridget McCain in three years as she attends college, doing nothing more than being herself? Will it be one the Obama girls’ classmates hurling an insult they do not understand or deserve, having their innocence shattered because of the hatred of a classmate’s parent? Is it going to be my son who is hurt or beaten one day because he is mistaken for a muslim, although he carries no hate in his heart and is not what others may ‘convict’ him of being?
The notion that anyone is less because of difference needs to end. Our children deserve better; we deserve better; this world is crying for better. I challenge John McCain to show genuine honor and courage and to be the man he proclaims by saying, “Enough,” and living up to his word. Any man vying for our vote to be President owes us at least that much civility and honesty. My children, your children and this world are worthy of such small consideration, deserving to demand, and vote, for so much more.
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