Monday, October 20, 2008

[racism] on the ground in OH.

bringing DOWN the tone of my [usually light-hearted] campaign coverage to a disturbing low, see the following news out of [my battleground state] Ohio shared from friends near and far.

first, from a[nother] Singaporean colleague (Arvind):


now you're probably saying, "that's a pretty biased report, it's from a backwoods town in eastern Ohio. plus, it's from Al Jazeera, isn't that an Islamic based news outlet?"

well, my friend Vikas brings it even closer to home. from his hometown of Fairfield, OH, in fact (which is a northwestern suburb of Cincinnati):


you can find the original posting here.

making it even more personally relevant, while canvassing yesterday in Madisonville, OH, at one house, when my buddy Karl + i identified us as volunteers w/ the Obama campaign, we were asked by one gentleman (in a less than inviting tone) to "get off [his] porch."

as i continue to tell many of my very optimistic friends on coast east and west, i remain "cautiously optimistic" about this election. don't underestimate the racial (racist?) undertones of middle (and southern) America, where i've spent most of my life.

"Country First," indeed.

5 comments:

  1. i knocked on maybe a 1000 doors in 04. i was told to "get off porches" hundreds of times. don't read into any racism from just that.

    i'm optimistic that any racism in this election is mitigated by the slew of other circumstances (economy, palin, war, etc)

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  2. fair point, that last one was just thrown in there.

    i'd be lying to say if i wasn't sensitive to the suspicion/negative tone provided at many of the houses we visited.

    but then, i'd imagine most people just don't like people knocking on their doors. in contrast. quite a few people moved from suspicion to excitement ("right on!", "thanks!") when they found out we were Obama volunteers.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Anonymous1:43 PM

    weird, the video you posted from teh fairfield story had NatGeo clips of a monkey swinging from trees split in there (vs. displaying the actual hanging Obama effigy)

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  5. Monkeys are pretty smart too
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AZn5nWIj_g

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