So funny I forgot to puke

Have you heard this one? Barack Obama dies and makes his way to heaven. When he reaches the pearly gates, he has this conversation with God:

God: Who are you?
Obama: I'm Barack Obama. I was the first black president of the United States.
God: You were?! I didn't know that had occurred! When was that?
Obama: Ten minutes ago.

I was stunned speechless when I heard this “joke.” There are many ways to characterize this snippet as offensive, and none to characterize it as funny. Joking about the assassination of a president is simply not something we do. Yet, people do it openly when the man who could be president is black. It’s almost as if people think they have permission based on the color of a person’s skin to act in ways they would find abhorrent if confronted with in their own lives.

I was reminded of this fact last week when Dallas was, yet again, embarrassed by John Wiley Price. The thing is, Price has been an embarrassment for Dallas for a long time. When I lived here before moving across the country he was posturing and making an ass out of himself then; he has never stopped and he continues to show a side of the south that is hateful and clownish. He is no less racist than any white supremacist and he is no less lacking in education and reason. Of course, this incident wouldn’t have passed without the racists from the other side of the fence jumping into the fray and dicto simpliciting this thing into a problem of an entire race, not just one bigoted fool. The comments on the stories posted online ran the familiar gamut of, “black people use any opportunity to make it about race,” to “these people are all this stupid.” It reminds us all that racism uglies up the place, no matter where it is smeared.

I’ve been thinking about race in the presidential campaign a fair bit lately. I’ve noticed that Obama leaves the ideology of race behind when answering questions or giving speeches. He gave one brilliant speech about race (that I know of) but he has left race out of it since then. Some people think this is a mistake. Some people think we should acknowledge and deal with the race issue because it is an issue we all still face. It is an issue that is an issue, in other words. I think they’re wrong.

Race is still an issue, of course. There isn’t a person on this earth who has not had racism directed at them, even in small ways. We must still fight the fight of tolerance and biological equality, but we must never forget that the fight itself is not the end result. We must never forget that the fight to end racism means race ceases to be an issue. The only way to make race a simple fact of existence and not a thing that categorizes value is to stop allowing the racists to bring it up in the first place. Those people do not inform my life, nor should they inform public debate or policy.

There is no way to properly express the horror and pain that flashed through me when I heard the Obama “joke;” I don’t associate with people who think that way, so the sudden assault of it was disproportionately jarring. But the appropriate response to such a thing would not be to joke about assassinating or harming president Bush. People who think that harming someone is the thing you do when that person is different have crossed the line of reason into a world where people are nothing more than the things that serve you, the things that only matter because of you. This isn’t new thinking, nor is it profound; I could smarmily bring up Godwin’s Law and refrain from the obvious, but sometimes the obvious is necessary. The times when people have taken the ideology of that “joke” and acted upon it millions of people have died in the name of someone else’s “better” value. People die in that way due to that thinking because people no longer have value beyond the slavish drive of principle; people simply frame themselves on the label that attaches itself to them and in the opposition that label holds against us. We are no longer the person who has a family, is a lawyer, is running for president; we become someone based on the color of our skin that is divorced entirely from the ideas, dreams and feelings of the thing itself. We become that other thing because that is the value of the label; or, that is the lack of value in the label. Is there anything of the father to the daughters in the above “joke?” No. Is there anything of the value attached to basic biological humanness in the “joke?” No.

As humans we are fundamentally present and monochromatic. We are unable to be anything other than human, which means we are unable to be anything other than the group of humans together. Our individuality ceases to be such a big deal when we know that we are the same as everyone else in our limitations; there is, simply, no difference between you, me, Barack Obama, and George Bush. We may believe different things and we may act in different ways, but none of that has anything to do with the fundamental biology and sameness that is a human being. So, focusing on race in any way allows for a false value to be placed on something that has only one value. In that way, race only becomes an issue when racists make it one. If you do not care about a person’s race, why would you even think of it? Why would it matter? But if you think it is an issue worth talking about in specific relation to a person then you are forcing race into the debate where it does not belong. Race doesn’t pay the bills, doesn’t fight the fight, doesn’t hold up the flag. People do those things.

Race is not the point. People are the point.

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