Email from a 62 yo white from Virginia to Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting With Jesus, Dispatches from America’s Class War.
Here’s what I think. Senator Obama will win a lot of votes in Virginia, maybe not take the state but make it close. My kids range in age from 32 to 38. Among them there are two mixed marriages and one lesbian couple. Most of the kids in their age range will look at their kids and vote for the future.
Joe agrees, and replies
Racism may be a wedge issue in some places, such as West Virginia, and it sure as hell will be used. At any rate, I’ve seen as much racism in Los Angeles as in my hometown in the Blue Ridge mountains. And maybe one of the best kept secrets in America is just how many rednecks have mixed race children or nephews and nieces, etc. I have two myself. A couple of generations have come along since the Sixties. But pundits and media sanctioned authorities, no few of them black, still dine out on broad Sixties era generalizations.
Proof again, if it still be needed, that the American public is way ahead of its supposed leaders and the media, and certainly way ahead of a clueless chattering class that never actually talks to anyone but itself.
I am from Texas and I can tell you one thing althogh I would never vote for any democrat there is no way that American’s will vote for a negro president
“Negro”? Your racial prejudice is showing clearly.
And as millions of white Americans already have voted for Obama, you definitely need a reality check.
For those of whose (white) families have been here from the start, and before, inter-racial marriages are a part of our heritage. G’da used to joke about being as American as Heinz 57 sauce. In the four hundred or so years my name has been on this side of the pond we count in minority at least four Native unions as well as one “negro” augmenting the original Scot, then French, German and Russian (and in my children another two Natives with a predominantly Morman). These days the greater population of my name are African American, with Natives running about neck and neck with the white-eyes.
Would it be an insult to a mighty fine group of people (Mexicans) to suggest we give Texas back to Mexico? It, and its denizens, sure doesn’t act like any part of the “United” States that I grew up with.
It’s a documentable statistical probability that anyone living in Texas named LaFontaine lives with at least two out-of-wedlock children, the eldest a mere fourteen years younger, in a house that native Texan Jimmy Buffett accurately describes as looking a lot better as a beer can. Trailer Park Trash – used to troll for it, back in the day, may even be responsible for one or two of those out-of-wedlock children.
Yes, Texas is a separate country. I lived there for two years, worked the Midland oil fields, then lived in Austin selling rare records.
Your family sounds like how a friend from New Orleans described his family reunions – German, Cherokee, Black, Dutch, Anglo, Latino, French – all at the same table.
A guy I knew once who was half Anglo – half Native said, we’re all half-breeds, it’s just easier to tell with some of us.
If someone trolls, I generally reply with a light touch or humor.
Btw, Jimmy Buffett was born in Mississippi and grew up in Alabama (not Texas). I grew up on the Space Coast of Florida, where we loved Buffett’s music. Many areas claim him!
I’m told that about the rowdiest audiences in all of music are not punks, but Parrotheads (Jimmy Buffet fans)!