Lies, Hate and Guilty Politics

The closer we come to the November election, the more I'm forced to realize I live an insulated life. I believed racism, the fear and hate that breeds racism, didn't exist among the educated and faith-filled people who largely populate my life.

I don't know if it was less apparent than now or I chose not to see it.

I have a friend, someone whose opinion I have often sought out, who tells me that Michelle Obama "hates little blonde white girls" and calls Senator Obama "boy." Another repeatedly maintains there's a white hating agenda being quietly put into place by the Democratic candidate. Our daughter's neighbor rants about having "one of those people" in the White House and wonders--in front of Joshua--what our daughter would do if Josh brought home "one of those girls" as a date or a wife. Someone else uses the word "nigger;" a word I had wrongly assumed would never enter into the landscape of my grandchildren's lives.

Today's email brought a forwarded link to a story about a McCain campaign worker being attacked--having a "B" carved into her cheek--by a black mugger. A supposed Obama supporter taking a break from his real job as a thief to teach her a lesson about supporting the other candidate. My emailing friend wanted me to see the horrible evidence of things to come if Senator Obama finds his way to the Oval Office. Black thugs cruising our streets, assaulting good white folks for sheer pleasure and getting away with it.

Initially I thought the whole thing, the entire story, had to be a hoax. There surely is no Ashley Todd working for the McCain ticket to be mugged, let alone branded by her attacker as a lesson to other McCain workers.

I was wrong on that front. The story exists. It's all over the news. Ashley Todd is a real person with a real backwards "B" scratched into her face.

I still think it's a hoax. The attack. The mugging, the ominous "B" carved into her face. My money is on it all being made up by Ms. Todd.

A mugger with a political agenda? Give me a break. Too convenient by far. A dyselxic mugger with the time on his hands to neatly carve a backwards "B" on his victim's face after he grabs her cash? He doesn't dash back into the shadows to count his booty or buy his daily dope; he looks over her car, observes the McCain sticker and decides to make a political statement on her face? He doesn't steal the car too? Or at least urinate on the offending McCain sticker?

For my emailer the story is true; real evidence that, after years of discrimination, all black people harbor violent resentment against white people. A black guy who steals isn't simply a thief. He's now a political machine out to balance the scales of oppression.

I think it's a lie. And not a good one at that. I haven't figured out why Ashley Todd would fabricate such an elaborate lie. Maybe she's just a liar.

What I've spent time trying to understand is why my emailing friend--or anyone--is willing to believe it. To embrace it. Without reservation.

Is it hate or fear of anything, anyone, appearing different from us that drives us to accept an outlandish story in an attempt to maintain the status quo? Is it guilt--our white response to years of an entire race being treated with inequality here in the one nation founded on equality--that lets us convince ourselves there's a violent "black agenda" in motion and we are the target?

Are we overwhelmingly driven by hate, fear or guilt?