This has been a difficult post to start, but because it is so difficult I needed to put it out there and see what happens. The difficulty is asking questions without being insulting or being perceived as a bigot. These are questions based only on my own life experience and it has been a long one. I am 61 years old and I feel blocked from asking questions about a candidate that for all the signs will be our next President. This becomes a race card played in a game of solitaire. This is a self policing activity that should not be but is.
My early life began in a racially mixed neighborhood. My father was a welder and bought a house in a predominantly African-American area of Trenton, New Jersey. The children on our block were mostly white from Polish immigrants. We played together. I think each of us had best friends and other kids that we hung out with after school and weekends, but when the games began to expand like stick ball or war everyone was included. We had a community park with a swimming pool that did not exclude anyone. We had two movie theaters within walking distance with twenty-five cent Saturday matinees that you just went to depending on the availability of a quarter and the movie playing. The most prejudice I ever became aware of was during one of the serials they ran. It was a Batman and he was fighting the Japanese. You have to remember this was in the 1950’s not that far removed from World War II. My father, a wounded Navy veteran explained the references to “slant eyed devils”. I know alot of the younger people would say that I was viewing the past through rose colored glasses, but it was a time of prosperity in Trenton, New Jersey. Factory jobs and unskilled labor went begging for employees and no one sat home. We had US Steel, Roebling Wire Works, Van Camp, huge industrial plants throughout. It was pretty much a time that our parents all worked next to eachother and the only suspicion came from a new influx of Puerto Rican residents. They were more colorful and noisy. So racial prejudice did not exist in my world.
We moved from that neighborhood when my brother and I became school aged. Not because of the racial mix but we went to the school associated with our church. This neighborhood was mostly white lower middle class factory workers. In that sense it was our white ghetto. The residents surrounded their own little area of stores, churches, schools while still being close to work. It was more convenience and familiarity with like minded people that created the neighborhoods. Friends came from nearness more than anything. The prejudice came from which school you attended. There were four Catholic schools within blocks of eachother and there was always a friendly rivalry because of basketball, but we all shared the parks and fishing holes without fights. Looking back I could not tell you if there were African Americans nearby or not. It just was never a conscious thought one way or the other. After high school I enlisted in the Navy during Viet Nam. Our ship never seemed to have any problems although there were some grumblings that never amounted to anything. It is difficult being out at sea and having hates. There was no place to go and no where to hide if you carried those biggotted thoughts with you. Nearness, at the least, stifled any ill will. The first time I became even aware that there might be a problem is when the navy instituted rap session for the black crew members. i am not saying they did not need a place to vent about their feelings, but this was how unaware I was about racial issues. I looked at the officers and petty officers as white rich kids who could afford to go to college, unlike the rest of us from poor working class families.
When my tour of duty ended, I took advantage of the GI Bill. Everyone just assumes that this pays for everything, it does not. If you have a family, rents, payments, food to buy, we got a fixed amount of money up to a maximum of $175.00 per month if you attended full time. This just about paid for a community college and I had to work full time at unskilled jobs, stock boy, MacDonalds, a canning factory, just to make it through and pay for gas for the VW Beetle I drove. Oh and by the way, my mother was widowed in my Sophomore year of high school. So now that brings up the first question. How did Barak Obama go through four years of college, and Harvard law by working his way through? Too many reporters just print PR handouts without question. I have not heard that he had a scholarship, so how did he get this leg up on life? Something does not add up. It does not sound as if his Grandparents or mother were rich. I had high SATs, graduated with honors and no one would lend me any assistance. When I went to a bank for a school loan I would have had to have my mother put her house up for collateral.
My experience after graduation, I think, gives an answer. As I said, I graduated with honors in Electronics Technology. Between classes I offered to tutor anyone that wanted to go over the classes. Most of the inner city students could not keep up because of poor math skills. You need enough Algebra to find one unknown value for digital circuits and some Trigonometry to calculate alternating current circuitry like audio componenets. I worked with them on my free time between classes and believe that without me they would not have graduated. When I went out into the job market, I found a big disappointment. The first employer I went to was IBM. After an extensive interview I was turned down for a job in their computer division because of the color of my skin. Here were the same students I had tutored being hired for a prestigious job with a large corporation because of a QUOTA. The person interviewing me offered me a job running around the state fixing IBM selectric typewriters because they needed to fill a quota. He also said that if I took the job I would have the job in the computer division because within a year or two the minorities they hired would be gone because they would not be able to last. I was shocked. I actually believed in having to show quality and skill not skin color. So is this part of the reason that Senator Obama succeeded so well in life while I struggled.
I did eventually get into the computer field with two other companies, Storage Technology and Amdahl Corporation. They still followed the quota system to stay out of trouble but that was because they both hired Mexican Americans in their plants to do the manual labor, while the engineers were white.
After the years I spent with those two companies i took a civil sevice test and went to work in State government. I found more unofficial quotas. The best paying jobs went to political appointees, mosstly women and minorities. I spent twenty years successfully working on projects such as the integration of all the disparate email systems in the various Departments, automating an accident records system that had over 800,000 accidents per year and made the data available for analysis, automating an entire division, and the last project a voter registration database of 6,000,000 voters but the harder part was having twenty one separate fiefdoms give up control and use the statewide system. For these efforts I have never received a promotion or bonus, but instead watch people be appointed to be my boss because of race, gender and political connection.
Sour grapes, not really. I did make enough money and no one could say the projects were not interesting. I point this out because I wonder how much of Senator Obama’s life is a pass because of his race. I have seen a Governor be annointed by the press without question, until those voices in the wilderness actually started asking questions that refuted the entire fantasy that PR people created and the lazy press accept and propogate as the whole truth. I have seen a political scholarship expand to a genius’ Rhodes Scholar. How many Hillary Clinton gaffs get brushed aside as slip ups. I hear how Senator Obama, as brief as his career was, be annointed by the press as the savior that will unite the world. Well the question becomes does he unify the country by dragging everybody down or raising everyone up. So far it sounds as if he will surrender to our enemies, and tax us to the point of poverty to unify the world. These problems just cannot be talked about in nice terms but we need hard facts of his plans not just a Wonderland view of the state of the future world from the liberal press.
I hope this is not perceived as a racist diatribe but if it is too bad. I experienced this life. I have no regrets nor do I harbor ill will because of race or gender. I did get my degree, a loving wife, two sons that have made their own way in life, and a well deserved retirement so I can start all over again for the next twenty years. I just do not want to be fooled again. It is even scarier that if these questions do not get asked because of race. You can leave comments but unless you are part of the Obama staff I really do not want anyone to answer for him.