you can’t call me a racist.
from Xena, Charlotte Front and Center
I was the most naïve little girl in the world when I moved to NYC from Raleigh , NC . It was a huge revelation to me to realize how segregated most neighborhoods were in NYC. People worked together and commuted together, but they went home separate. However, for 20 years I owned a two-family house in a neighborhood that was about half African-American, some Latino, and recent immigrants from Poland, Kenya, Russia, Egypt, Nigeria, UK, St. Martin, Albania, you name it. I rented to people who were straight, gay, black, white, latino, male and female. My son went to elementary school in Chinatown . You get the idea.
The thing is, before this election, I didn’t go around consciously thinking about people in this way. That’s the real tragedy of Obama’s campaign: how they have used race to divide people.
The people most inclined to support Hillary Clinton are the people who’ve been bridging the gap for a long time. The ones who can remember Martin Luther King. He said (this may not be an exact quote) that someday “a man would be judged by the content of his character, and not by the color of his skin…..” So why am I called a racist when I look at Barack Obama like that? Some of us already “got it.” I’m looking at him like anybody running for President. What has he done? How can I trust him? Who does he take advice from? What’s his wife like? The answer always comes back the same. I just don’t trust him to be President.
