Wonder & Worry

With the Inauguration of Barrack Obama only a day away - someone I supported early on, by the way - my thoughts have been all over the board.

WONDER. My dad, had he lived, would be 98 years old. He and my mother lived through the great depression, and were life-long Democrats, and I don't believe either voted for a Republican at any time during their lives. My dad died in 1979 at the age of 69, my mom lived until the age of 89, passing in 2000.

My wondering has to do primarily with my dad. Though he was an unshakable Democrat (I'm sure he turned over in his grave on the many times I voted Republican), the thought of how he would have reacted to an African American being sworn in as President has been on my mind for some time now. I've been wondering if he would have voted for Obama in the General election last November, or would he have broken his self proclaimed committment to the Democrats and voted for McCain? I ask this rhetorical question because, as much as I love my dad, he was a racist.

He, of course, grew up in a different time - and although I don't condone racism - was a product of the environment. The mean streets of the south side of Chicago (ironically, where Obama chose to make his home in recent years) in 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's were divided by ethnic groups - mostly Irish, Italian, and Polish. My dad came from a 100% Irish family - both sides - and was proud of that heritage. With no more than a 6th grade education, he fought his way through a lot of things to bring up a family, eventually moving his wife and children to Southern California, after a stint in the Marines during World War 2.

However, his prejudices ran deep. He, as far as I remember, rarely used terms like Negro, or Black. Rather, his most often used terminology was the "N" word, or other demeaning epithets. He didn't just discriminate insofar as just African Americans either. Virtually anyone who wasn't white was referred to with similar negative names.

My dad wasn't a bad man. Just, like Archie Bunker, a product of the times he lived in.

WORRY. I do worry about our new President and whether or not he will survive. Perhaps the assassinations of MLK, and my two personal heroes, John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, still resonate within me. All of the aforementioned inspired me. And until Obama, that inspiration had disappeared from America's leaders. At least to me. Reagan was good, but not in the same league - again, this is to me - as the Kennedy's or MLK. Obama though, has struck a nerve within me that has been sorely missing since I was a 21 year old, living in California, and volunteering for Bobby Kennedy. His assassination wounded me so badly that I swore off all political activity until almost 40 years later.

Though things have improved greatly in civil rights during the past 40 to 50 years, there are still, unfortunately too many people who HATE. While this hate is not confined to just race, if you couple the color of soon-to-be President Obama's skin with his different ideology from that of the former President's most crazed supporters (each party has them), I fear the possibility of a powder keg waiting to explode.

Let us hope this is not the case.

I have added the Obama family to my daily prayers.

Old Fart Mike