White America Has Lost Its Mind

Todd Harrison (iStockphoto)

By Steven Thrasher

About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.

It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.

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Commentary: The Black Candidate Has to Prove to White America That He’s Not an Elitist? How Ironic

By: Deborah Mathis, BlackAmericaWeb.com

I have no crystal ball and can’t read a tarot card any better than I can read a carrot cake, but this I know: The newly decisive presidential matchup -- Obama v. McCain -- is going to give us plenty to talk about. Shock, surprise, suspense, conflict, contrast.

And, yes, irony -- one of which has already presented itself, as in the irony of a black American man having to prove to poor, rural and working class American whites that he’s not an elitist.

According to the folks who get paid to think about such things, that is going to be one of the newly minted presumptive nominee’s first and most formidable challenges. He is going to have to build a connection with the Sams Clubbers; the Costcoites; the brownbaggers whose lunch today is made up of the remnants of last night’s dinner; the working woman who got her evening gown for the company gala on sale, marked down twice; the owner of the flatbed pickup with the gun rack; the guys who hunt squirrel and rabbit and fish for bass –- and eat, not mount, their kill.

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