"Liar"

I have been trying to understand the kind of vicious emotional hatred being expressed by people opposing the Obama Health Care Reform Legislation. I am reminded of earlier experiences around 1943. In the Machinists’ Union I helped the first black machinist get a job at a brewery in Brooklyn. There was no issue regarding his competence to do the job. Everyone agreed that was not a problem. When I asked, “Why are you guys all up in arms over this?”, one of the old timers who had supported me for years as the Local Lodge President said, “Schrank, you’ve gone too far. It’s one thing for us to take Jews in this Local. Now you’re asking us to take in ‘nig---s.’ Next you’ll be wanting to bring in Chimpanzees. It’s over. The answer is no.”

As always, after the meeting I hung around, drank some beer with the guys, and listened to what they had to say. What I found fascinating was what laid underneath the talk. They said things like, “You know, if we keep giving these ‘nig---s’ the same rights as we have, the next thing you know they'll be wanting to marry our daughters. Isn’t that what happened with the Jews?” I began to understand that underneath what appears on the surface of our thoughts and beliefs is a whole basement of prejudice and hate that humans carry around with them as regards their true feelings. This is particularly true of how they view minority groups. Even in the world of German radicals, socialists, anarchists, and freethinkers that I grew up in, when Hitler came on the scene many of these same radicals exploded with vicious anti-Semitism. It lay there all the time just waiting for the opportune moment to let it loose.

I believe this is a result of the demonization of minority groups, who are being used to take responsibility for our personal failures. During the McCarthy years it was the communists who were responsible for whatever went wrong in our relations with the rest of the world. The Hiroshima bomb probably hurt our standing with the rest of the world more than all the communists on the continent. In Hitler's Germany it was the Jews who were to blame for the fiasco of WW1. In the lynch world of the US it was the “nig---s” who were the cause of all our troubles, including droughts, floods, and white women who “don’t love me anymore.” Yes, that is the nature of the stuff we humans carry down below. It’s what Winnie The Pooh referred to as “in an underneath sort of way.” Isaiah Berlin calls it “what we carry below.”

I now believe that this is precisely what is going on as regards our President. I thank Congressmen Wilson for calling it to my attention. Yes Mr. Congressman, I accept the explanation of your outburst as “spontaneity.” That fits exactly what I am talking about. It also explains the hatred and vitriol on the faces of those folks in the Town Hall Meetings who were overcome with their own bitterness towards this “Black” man, who happens to be the President of the most powerful nation in the world. It is driving them crazy.

It makes me sad, but it also reminds me that this is the nature of change. I watched it happen in the Labor Movement, the Civil Rights movement, and the Women’s Movement. Victorious for some, difficult for others. That’s what change around power relationships is about. The election of Barack Obama is one of the biggest shifts in my long life. No wonder Mr. Wilson can’t control himself. All the more reason for us to support the President’s efforts. Never forget William Kristol’s advice to the right wing. He said, “Just Kill It.” And that is exactly what the Congressman Wilsons’ out there are trying to do. It is their best hope of destroying the creditability of the man they hate.

Thanks Kate N.H.W.Y.