About Race

It's been a strange week. I am still plugging along, reading my Mencken biography. Yesterday he was really happy because Prohibition had been repealed. Today he is in hot water because he is appalled that some fine citizens of Maryland in 1932 decided to drag a man to a tree and lynch him. The man had shot his employer and was shot in his head in return. The shot shooter was dragged from his hospital bed and lynched. Knowing how brutal we were with criminals in that time, I imagine that these folks rushed to the inevitable conclusion of the preceeding events. The guy was guilty and would probably be hanged.

But, because he was black and had murdered a white man, he had to be dragged through town and lynched. Mencken was incensed and tried to get an anti-lynching law passed. He may have, if he had had Frankie D.'s support, but FDR could not alienate his Southern Democratic friends. The cartoonist at the Baltimore Sun, Edmund Duffy, drew this cartoon. You can bet that a lot of people did not like it.

Luckily things have changed completely by 2008. Politicians always do the right things for the right reason and a black man has no fear of not being treated fairly in the US. Oh, I forgot to mention that the lynchers waved American flags as they did their deed. God Bless that flag. 1932. That was a long time ago. 76 years. There are probably very few of us around who remember how things were then. NO, not me. Tsk. I bet my parents remembered that time. All the parents of people my age would remember that time. How many generations need to pass before that way of thinking really passes.

And does this hatred pass quicker for some people than for others? Hell, yes. Does it stay more firmly implanted in the psyche of those who were most deeply affected by that hatred? Hell, yes. I realized early in my marriage that I would never understand what it's like to grow up black in America. I'm not going to try tell anyone what I think that is like. And I'm not going to ask Barak Obama to explain it. Yes, Mrs. Obama might see that this is the first time she is proud of America, or whatever exactly she said. You live with hope that someday we will just get over it. But, unless you live with it, you shouldn't say how people who do should think. You really shouldn't.