Dr. Andrew Manis: “When are we going to get over it?”

I tried, but plezWorld is unable to authenticate the origin (date or publication) of this editorial. I received it as an e-mail message that claimed it was written in the Macon Telegraph, but my research did not bear this out. I've also seen this article included in a blog written in December 2008, before Obama was inaugurated.

What follows is an open letter to white people from a white person about our Black president. I welcome your comments.

Dr. Andrew Manis: “When are we going to get over it?”

For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it?

Now I want to ask: “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that “Election Spurs Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.”

Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps.

But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be Black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying -that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?” How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can -once and for all- get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan:

First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.

Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice, “We HAVE overcome.”

It takes a Village to protect our President!!!

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About the author:

Dr. Andrew M. Manis
Assistant Professor of History, Macon State College
Author, historian, researcher, lecturer

Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon’s Center for Racial understanding.

The author of five books, Dr. Manis is a frequent lecturer and has become one of Central Georgia’s leading authorities on the history of race relations, especially in the South. His most recent book, Macon Black and White: An Unutterable Separation of the American Century, published in 2004 by Mercer University Press and the Tubman African American Museum, earned him the 2005 Georgia Author of the Year (History Division) award, and he was a semifinalist for the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Manis’ previous book, a biography of Birmingham civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth, won a number of prizes, including the 2000 Lillian Smith Book Award. In addition, he has written many magazine articles about religion and religions in the South.

He’s conducted more than 40 lectures, sermons or interviews on race relations in Macon, made presentations at colleges and universities throughout the South and has appeared on national radio broadcasts.

He is a member of the steering committee for the Center for Racial Understanding in Macon and Bibb County, is involved in the South Atlantic Humanities Center’s Thanksgiving Project to document people’s experiences of Thanksgiving Day, assists the Georgia Humanities Council in charitable giving programs and was named one of the 2006 recipients of the council’s Governor’s Awards in the Humanities. He also serves as the faculty advisor for the Macon State branch of Habitat for Humanity.

An ordained minister, Manis received his bachelor’s degree from Samford University, and his Master’s of Divinity and Ph.D. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been at Macon State College since 2000 and previously served as editor for religion and Southern Studies with Mercer University Press; was associate professor of religion at Averett College in Virginia; was a fellow in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania; and an assistant professor of theology at Xavier University of Louisiana.

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plez sez: excellent commentary. i'm sure there will be those white folk who will take exception to dr. manis's decision to paint all white people with the same brush. but he makes his point when he implies that everyone is complicit in the "crime" when they remain silent or do not call out their peers for their racist jibes.

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as you can see, plezWorld is still alive and kicking... and going strong! i must admit that business is good and i simply have not had the bandwidth to post on a daily basis like last year. i can promise that it will be a few months before i'll be able to consider going back to a daily posting on plezWorld.

~ ~ Citations ~ ~

Read the People's Voice Weekly article here .

Read the African American Planning Commission, Inc. article here .

Read the Clarksville (TN) Online article here .

Read the Take Political Action blog posting here .

Read the Jacksonville(FL).com article about here .

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Race Relations in plezWorld

Over the past six months, race relations and attitudes towards race in the US has been front and center with the candidacy of the presumptive Democratic Party nominee Sen. Barack H. Obama, the first Black American to head a major party's ticket in the country's 232 year history. From comfortable wins in states like Iowa, North Dakota, and Montana that have few Black voters; to close losses in states like Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California that have sizable Black numbers; to big wins in states that have large numbers of Blacks; to apparent race-based losses in states like Kentucky and West Virginia, this country has run the gamut in support (and lack in support) of Sen. Obama.

The Washington Post released the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll (published June 18, 2008) that shows the attitudes towards on race in the United States. The poll shows that 3 in 10 of all Americans admit to at least some racial bias. Overall, 51 percent call the current state of race relations "excellent" or "good." More than six in 10 African Americans now rate race relations as "not so good" or "poor," while 53 percent of whites hold more positive views. Opinions are also divided along racial lines, though less so, on whether blacks face discrimination. There is more similarity on feelings of personal racial prejudice: 30 percent of whites and 34 percent of blacks admit such sentiments.

At the same time, there is an overwhelming public openness to the idea of electing an African American to the presidency. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, nearly nine in 10 whites said they would be comfortable with a black president. While fewer whites, about two-thirds, said they would be "entirely comfortable" with it, that was more than double the percentage of all adults who said they would be so at ease with someone entering office for the first time at age 72, which McCain (R-Ariz.) would do should he prevail in November.

Read the entire Washington Post article about race here.


plez sez: in this past, i recently wrote about what i saw as the unintended consequences of an Obama presidency in terms of its affect on affirmative action in america. another unintended consequence may be the eventual post-racialism in this country. John McWhorter writes eloquently of how little racism affects america on a day-to-day basis, could it be that a President Obama will finally throw that last shovels full of dirt on the casket of racism?

there will always be those who see black and brown skin as inferior - hell, there are those in the Black community who view darker skin as inferior - but this election may give america its first opportunity to see past race. the poll results show that 30 percent of all americans have some racial bias, but more than 50 percent are comfortable with a Black president. when this country doesn't slide into a moral abyss after Obama's inauguration and when he begins to actually accomplish something during his presidency, we may see these numbers improve dramatically. racism is a sickness of ignorance (demographically, Obama does better with better educated white folk). maybe even a sizable portion of whites who only know Black people from what they see on the evening news will come to see the folly of their racial bias.

on the flip side, i'm in Michelle Obama's camp on this one: this election cycle has for the first time in my adult life given me reason to be truly proud of this country! Barack Obama's candidacy has completely re-written my thoughts on race relations in this country. plezWorld has an Obama '08 bumper sticker on the SUV, i received it from two white Obama campaigners who were eating in a restaurant in my neighborhood; they were returning to Atlanta from the South Carolina primaries that weekend. when i went canvassing on Super Tuesday, my riding partner was an older white lady, Dreaming Bear, from the north georgia mountains who had made the two hour drive to South DeKalb to canvass for Obama!

Morehouse College's First White Valedictorian

Morehouse College is a Historically Black College (HBCU) in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded in 1867, just a few years after the end of the Civil War to educate the recently freed Black men in the South. Morehouse has the distinction of not only being an exceptional institution of higher education (with notable alumni like Martin Luther King, Jr and Spike Lee), but it is also the only all-male HBCU. Well, Morehouse can now add its first white valedictorian to the list of notable facts.

Joshua Packwood is graduating from Morehouse with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in economics. He is a Rhodes Scholar and has already landed a plum job with Goldman Sachs in New York City. Joshua is a native of Kansas City, MO and was highly recruited out of high school. He picked Morehouse because of its reputation as one of the top HBCUs in the United States. He will be the first white valedictorian in the school's 141-year history.

Read the AJC article about Joshua Packwood here.


plez sez: several of my good friends and fraternity brothers (my fraternity's oldest chapter (pi) in the deep south is located at morehouse) are graduates of morehouse college. if i would have gone to an hbcu out of high school, morehouse would have been at the top of the list. at times, i regret that i didn't get to enjoy the "black experience" at a school such as morehouse.

i have written a few posts about the state of education in the black community and have touched on my thoughts about hbcus in general. save a precious few (morehouse, spelman, hampton, howard, etc.), a good number have outlived their usefulness as institutions of higher learning for an exclusive Black population. last year there was a report about problems at clark atlanta university: read my response here (...and i admit that all of their professors are not overpaid!).

a shining example of what is right can be found on the campus of morehouse college... and this year's valedictorian is just that! by diversifying their enrollment and actively pursuing non-Black students to their campuses, the hbcu can find relevance and renewed prowess in the pantheon of all colleges and universities. joshua's presence can only help raise the awareness of what a top notch school morehouse has become, his presence may not have the same effect at a school that struggles to matriculate quality students. i have no worry that even with more non-Black students, morehouse will continue it rich tradition of being a flagship hbcu.

kudos to morehouse colllege and to joshua packwood.

Barack Obama: "A More Perfect Union"

March 18, 2008. Barack Obama speaks in Philadelphia, PA at Constitution Center, on matters not just of race and recent remarks about his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but of the fundamental path by which America can work together to pursue a better future.

plez sez: finally!

i know that he could never win the democratic nomination by running as the "black candidate," so he had to run as just another us senator, but the undertones of his blackness have followed Obama nonetheless.

i love the fact that it is BARACK OBAMA who has taken the lead on discussing the "racial divide" in america... and what can be done to heal this thing that divides this nation along racial lines. i appreciate the fact that he is no longer running from being Black and in this speech has turned to face the ugliness that is racism in america.

thank you, BARACK OBAMA ... i pray that this country exhibits the wisdom to make this man our next PRESIDENT!

Quote of the Day - November 28, 2007

“Forty-five million of [America's] young have been destroyed in the womb since Roe v. Wade, as Asian, African, and Latin American children come to inherit the estate the lost generation of American children never got to see."
- MSNBC political analyst and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan speaking to Sean Hannity on the November 26 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes while discussing his new book.

Media Matters reports that Pat Buchanan was in rare form while he hawked his new book, Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, And Greed Are Tearing America Apart (Thomas Dunne Books, November 2007), in which he writes that America is "on a path to national suicide."

Buchanan also predicts the days when rioting and looting returns to America's streets as the numbers of minorities (mainly Hispanics and poor Blacks) swell, a la the unrest of thousands of Blacks in the late 1960's:

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, from 2005 to 2006, our minority population rose 2.4 million to exceed 100 million. Hispanics, 1 percent of the U.S. population in 1950, are now 14.4 percent. Since 2000, their numbers have soured 25 percent to 45 million. The U.S. Asian population grew by 24 percent since 2000, as the number of white kids of school age fell 4 percent. Half the children five and younger today are minority children."

Buchanan also writes that "the greatest cohort of immigrants here today, legal and illegal, is from Mexico" and states that, "[b]y 2050, more than 100 million Hispanics will be in the United States, concentrated in a Southwest that borders on Mexico."

"Almost as many African-American males are in jail or prison as are in colleges or universities. Half of all African-American and Hispanic students drop out of high school. The other half graduates with the math and reading skills of seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. Yet by 2050 the number of African-Americans and Hispanics will have almost doubled from today's 85 million, to 160 million. The future seems more ominous than it did in the hopeful days of civil rights. For these burgeoning scores of millions will not long accept second-class accommodations in the affluent society, where they are the emerging majority. The long hot summers of yesterday may be returning."

Read the entire Media Matters article here.


plez sez: i've never liked pat buchanan; his rhetoric drips of xenophobia and racism. waxing poetic for that kinder, gentler time in the 50's and 60's when "those darkies" knew their place. he speaks lovingly of the old melting pot (of europeans), yet decries the new melting pot which threatens to tear us apart and send the country into ruin.

"But take a look at the unity we had, say, in the 1950s and early 1960s. What have we gone through? You had a culture war that's divided us completely on matters of morality. You've got a wholesale invasion, the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country. You've got the melting pot that once welded us all together, which has broken down. All of these things are happening, Sean, and, frankly, I don't think we got the kind of solid, firm, strong national leadership you need to deal with this crisis."

he continues to throw around future stats as if they are fact. of course, he can't resist the urge to throw some abortion and "right to life" foolishness to cater to his right-wingers while mixing the overreaction to what's happening in Jena, Louisiana and the use of the n-word by Imus to prove his point.

"...you're going to have 100 million Hispanics in the country, most of them new immigrants from Mexico, which believes that belongs to them. What's going to happen to us, Sean, in my judgment, is what is happening right now: We are Balkanizing. We are dividing and separating from one another politically, morally -- on issues like abortion or Terri Schiavo -- racially and ethnically, when you get Jena and then you get Don Imus, and all of these things ripping us apart. All the things that used to pull us together and hold us together no longer do."

what pat buchanan doesn't understand is that his brand of politics, his demonization of minorities and those who don't think like him are what is tearing this country apart. his lips snarled to spit this hate-filled invectives has roots in the jim crow south from which he obviously draws his inspiration.

how can a country of immigrants complain about immigrants?!? i've never ever understand this argument of exclusion, when everyone (except Native Americans) was an immigrant (even the ones who were brought here involuntarily as slaves) at some point in this country's history. everytime pat buchanan speaks, it scares me... because i know that there are millions more like him in this country. and a good portion of those millions have the power to adversely affect the lives and livelihood of people like me. SCARY!