GeorgeWBush.com :: African Americans
Frankly, I get a weird feeling when I surf over to the African American page of George Bush's website. It is very strange to see the welcome mat rolled out someplace where you never expected to be welcome. Not just the door's opened, but opened with enthusiasm. Even so, on my first visit, which I made expressly for the purpose of signing up to volunteer to do something, I just couldn't do it. It was just too scary to give over my name and information so I could wait for a call from a campaign worker with an assignment. I wimped out. I had this vision that I'd get a call from the campaign to go hand out literature at a black community event in Detroit. Scary. But thats what it means to be a reluctant republican when you are black.
I wasn't always this way. A few years back, I was as liberal as they come. I believed everything about the republicans was wrong. Frankly, I'm not quite so sure where along the way I reached the tipping point and became a conservative. Its not clear to me when that happened, although its clear to me it did actually occur.
Being a reluctant republican is an interesting lot. Your friends and family assume you are either a sellout or just plain stupid. I'm not sure which is the worst to be regarded as. And its pretty wild to me the extent to which there is simply no perspective on the issues at all. If you are a republican, you can't possibly be anything good or for anything good. We (yes, the royal we) don't think about it all, its just knee jerk sign of the cross fight or flight response when it comes to being a republican.
I actually don't have as much turmoil about your experience, it for me signals that "something, something just ain't right." If identifying yourself as a republican was a solid fit, I think you'd do it without question. The discomfort comes about when you recognize that something simply doesn't fit.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I continue to gravitate to being an independent. I don't believe either political party effectively represents my opinion or has a wholistic understanding of the issues that matter most to me. While I am clearly conservative when it comes to some issues, I still find the political experience to be one of picking between the lesser of the evils.
The Democrats have historically taken the African American vote for granted. If we voted in larger numbers and actually made choices that weren't as cut and dry as 89% for Kerry - we'd be a dangerous voting block. I would challenge that you get the butterfly feeling in the pit of your stomach because even Colin, Condi and your distain for Democratic rhetoric isn't enough to sign on to what Bush represents.
I'll be prayerful when I go to the polls, and I bet you'll be thinking a lot more about it too. With 3 African-American children, 2 sons, I'm not sure the Republican line is the one that best serves our middle class family. In fact, I'm sure we don't quite make enough to make a difference to the party as a whole anyway....
4 degrees between us, we'd better start volunteering for one of the causes, they seem to both be heading in the wrong direction.
Aaron ... did you once operate out of Toledo OH?
ReplyDeletepeace, Villager