We're not there yet - Oh metropolitan areas...

This is what I my heart bleeds for...

A few months ago while in the veterinarian's office one of the vets who around my age came in ranting about Oprah. I asked why he didn't like Oprah fully expecting it to be some of her liberal platforms ... But he quite frankly told me it was because she was black. Wisdom told me to keep my mouth shut but my astonishment must have shown on my face as he immediately started reflecting out loud about how he has thought he had out grown this way of KKK mind set but he guessed he hadn't. Now just for reference, here we have an educated man who was raised around West Plains, who has fought alongside of blacks while serving his country in Vietnam. What struck me at the time was NOT the fact that he was so prejudiced but his, what seemed to me, reckless and blatant honesty about such a subject.

I have lived above Missouri's Highway 70 all my life. Although Missouri was a mix of pro-slave and anti-slave up to the end of the civil war, to me Hwy 70 is the state's imaginary Mason-Dixon line dividing northern mentality with its way of life that includes everyting from dress to its cuisine and coloquialisms from the southern part of the state with its lifestyle. A northerner might feel the same prejudice toward blacks as this vet but in 2008 would never voice it publicly especially to a person they hardly knew. The people in the northern part of the state seem, for the most part, to have advanced to accept today's social more on the subject of race. While the incident left me thinking, it was an isolated incident and so I filed it under 'interesting social aspects of a vet in southern Missouri' in my brain.

Yesterday, that file was opened again. A contracted worker, another younger southern Missouri/Arkansas homegrown, was here. We got on the subject of McCain/Palin. He seemed to be able to articulate intelligently about the ticket's platform and so it was no time at all before my husband and I settled into a comfortable converstion with him on the subject. What ensued surprised me.

He at first began to compare the differences in the republican and democratic platforms but sublty it shifted and I found myself mentally taking a walk down a old road somewhere else in time. He summed up the pros and cons of the two parties by saying that if the Democrats concern is that Palin is just one step away from being President, the Republicans should really be concerned about Biden's preparedness to lead because he WILL be president in a short time if Obama is elected.

Not understanding the brashness behind his statement, I inquired, "Why is that?"

"Obama is going to be offed." , he replied. "You don't think they are having their meetings right now, planning?"

I asked who, thinking only that there is a big chasm on issues between liberals and conservatives in this country, non of which, in my mind was fueled by race...oh, how naive I am.

"Why the Klan" he said.

There is was again...'The Klan'. What seemed to be an obsolete and dated icon was brought to my attention again.

He told me of his childhood in Zinc, Arkansas...not too far from West Plains. If a black family tried to move into the area, they were burned out (a tactic I have come to understand is still used over and over down here for a variety of reasons not just racial). He said that if they didn't leave they were popped off...after all they were just ni_ _ers. Now we're talking the late 1970's and early 80's. His voice did not carry the tones of anger or contempt but rather a benign tone like one might speak of ridding their fields of some noxious weed. There seems to be an unstable element of votality where there is an absence of shame.

"No, Obama won't last long if he's elected." he repeated.

I know there is a awful chance any public figure can be assassinated. But in 2008, my mind was having a hard time making sense of what this man was saying so matter-of-factly and nonchalantly. It was like I had stepped into a time machine. It seemed so surreal that I didn't feel anything but confusion.

I told him the story of the veterinarian's office and my roots in northern Missouri. I shared with him that my astonishment was the openness about black prejudice that people have down here...and added, "Who knows who they are talking to...I mean, I could be black for all you know." Thinking that in these times the anyone's uppermost concern would be not to inadvertently run rough shod over somebody's ethnic background. What a sheltered ding-dong I am.

This man raised his eyebrows and his eyes got as round as saucers but what I read in them was not horror that he might have misspoken but rather a surprise, a seed of suspicion. My husband saw this too and only half kiddingly chastised me later, "Geez, why did you say that? We'll probably get burned out now..."

We live in a very different place...and there are things that are very real and alive I've never been exposed to... and that frightens me on a new level.

I fear for Obama and his family...in such a new way. This concerns me more than Palin's daughter's pregnacy or any other trivial scandal.