Racism and Society -- Literature Letter Senator

Racism and Society -- Literature Letter

Senator Mitch McConnell

317 Russell Senate Office Building

Dear Senator McConnell:

I am writing to express my reaction to your four-year effort to ensure the failure of the presidential administration of President Barak Obama. First, let me say that I have never been a politically-oriented person; I am not even a registered voter. However, I have been monitoring news reports about the current state of the nation and of the disgraceful abuses of power exhibited by you and the other high-ranking members of your Republican Caucus. The manner in which you and your colleagues have reduced the U.S. Congress into a dysfunctional and ineffective Legislative Branch of our government (Grunwald, 2012) is the reason I am writing, the inspiration for this letter comes from my recent exposure to several pieces of 20th Century literature with which you might not be familiar. Copies of them are enclosed for your reading pleasure and convenience. It is my sincerest hope that sharing these works with you might help you choose to reconsider your opposition to the incumbent U.S. President, especially since it appears likely that he will be re-elected.

The connection between this literature and your contribution to the national political discourse is that I believe in my heart that your expressed desire to ensure that President Obama is a one-term president is rooted in the same racist impulses within your constituency that has always opposed genuine racial equality. While I understand that political realities dictate the positions of elected public officials, I believe there is a line below which it is inappropriate to go in that regard. I would like you to consider the possibility that one reason that (not-so-coincidentally) so many of your Republican colleagues in Congress who have worked the hardest to undermine the President happen to represent former Confederate states and also those states that opposed racial desegregation and integration the longest (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009).

It is my sincerest belief that the historians looking back on the early 21st Century will regard this period as the "last stand" of institutionalized racism in the U.S. I expect that they will replay your highly-publicized statement of intention to ensure that the President of the United States of America is a failure in his first term and they will compare your role in the political climate of this period to the defiance of Alabama Governor George Wallace to the desegregation of schools fifty years ago (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger, & Argersinger, 2005). In my college class, I listened to my black classmates' reactions to Zora Neal Hurston's heartfelt essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928) and to Just Walk on By, by Brent Staples (1986). Hurston describes her recollections of growing up as a young African-American girl in the early 20th Century; Staples gives a similar account more than a half a century later. Both writers make very clear that white and black Americans do not have the same opportunities or, more generally, the same kinds of lives in the U.S.

I would categorically deny that the election of an African-American to the presidency necessarily means that we live in a "post-racial" America today. My black classmates all confirmed the degree to which many of the same fundamental experiences shared by Hurston and Staples still hold just as true for them today as they did for those writers almost a century ago and nearly three decades ago, respectively. Hurston (1928) describes how being black in America in her time meant that "… for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or twice as much blame." Eighty-five years later, my African-American classmates describe being subjected to assumptions that some of their achievements are typically devalued because of their race. One of my classmates recalled overhearing a reference to Affirmative Action in connection with his some of college acceptance letters. Another classmate indicated that he has witnessed the exact same phenomenon described by Staples in connection with the quickly-locked car doors as he walked by a motorist waiting for a traffic light to change. Both have been the targets of unprovoked racial epithets on several occasions in their lives.

I believe that when the history of America in the 21st Century is written, your continued opposition to President Obama throughout his second term in office will firmly establish you and the other like-minded members of your caucus to the wrong side of history, as the last obstacles to achieving a genuinely "post-racial" America. I would, therefore, like to urge you to take the time, notwithstanding your very busy Congressional schedule, of reading the enclosed literature. Please ask yourself whether you can honestly justify your stated position to purposely undermine a newly elected U.S. President for any justifiable reason, especially in early 2009 before he could possibly have done anything to earn your disdain, besides having been elected while black.