Race, in the American sense...

One thing I love about our American psyche, is that we usually give the benefit of the doubt. When confronted with evidence of something wrong, most people are called on the carpet and asked... "Can you explain this?". And it is generally meant as it appears. We're not the kind that presume that people are incompetent, bad, malevolent, or worse when we know little of the circumstances.

We tend to have this same kind of 'benefit of the doubt' when it comes to history.

We don't see Sitting Bull as a madman who tried endlessly to murder Americans. There were indians like that, but they stay in the recesses of our history folds. We tend not to like the white guys who wanted to massacre the indians, either.

Rosa Parks was just an ordinary person, who decided she'd just had enough, and refused to move to the back of the bus, thinking that arrest was less a concern than the brand of the color of her skin - and she refused to assent to that brand, leaving her place in history looming large.

In Oregon history, Doc Hay is famous, and yet, apparently was very poor businessman. But, we honor him anyway, for making a success despite the problems, in long-ago John Day. His chinese ancestry and cultural life was preserved by a quirk of fate, and we now study it in some detail, noting his contribution in a positive light, to the "chinese worker institution" that had permeated the era, a sad note in our history.

George Washington Carver is a name we all recognize, for his brilliance and his pioneering. In terms of race, the man's a credit to his race that, well, just plain brings credit to humanity.

Which brings us to our first "black" president. Except he's not really black, and, worse... He's not very good. He exemplifies many of the worst qualities of politicians. And worse still, he's repeatedly sought to exemplify the worst of racial stereotypes, like in the case of a certain professor and a certain policeman. That rush to be a race victim was a sight I have not yet been able to look at without turning away in disgust. It just turns my gut.

We could have elected a brilliant thinker, a man given to sober reflection and race-less leadership. Someone like Thomas Sowell, for instance.

History won't record the first black president as a brilliant person, a credit to humanity, and a leader to be admired by all - like Parks, King, Sowell, and many other names you could bring up. But it will record his race, attach it to everything, and it won't be a credit to humanity, either.

And in America, that's a tragedy, a racial tragedy that should never have happened.