2008 Woodie Awards
Intolerant history casts a long shadow
Not lost in the past, racism is a ghost that continues to haunt America.
By: M.K. Irwin
Issue date: 10/10/08 Section: Opinion
Friends, my heart catches and chokes like a heavy stone in my throat as I write this. I awoke today, I thought, in the year 2008.
America has finally nominated a black man for president and a woman for vice president. Regardless of one's political position(s), voters' choices this year seem to indicate that America continues to progress socially, culturally and politically. But as I sat breakfasting late this morning at a local dining haunt, I saw something that gave me sickening pause and caused me to rethink my notions of American progress.
A robust, barrel-chested man seemingly suffering from some kind of ambulatory disability shuffled incongruously on pencil legs up to the counter of the Texas Avenue Whataburger. He sported a weathered collection of various cheaply-drawn tattoos emblazoned up and down his arms. On his left forearm sneered a hideous, multicolored skull. On his right (I had to look thrice to verify) and situated prominently for maximum effect, stood a hooded Klansman brandishing a flaming torch in one hand, the severed head of a black person clutched by the hair in the other and white-robed arms outstretched before a burning cross in the foreground. This was an elaborate and disquietingly frightful scene on anyone's flesh, but somehow eerily at home on this dark-eyed, hobbling, unkempt fat man.
After finishing chewing and swallowing the bite of now sour-tasting biscuit of which the odd moment made me forget I had partaken, I wondered sadly (because you absolutely could not miss the tattoos) at the feelings and first impressions of the tired, young black woman at the cash register. She tried to muster a wan smile as she accepted the man's money thrust out from the end of that same hate-covered arm. I wondered, too, his massive, sleeveless, flannel-draped back to me almost eclipsing the girl, what he must think having to interact so closely with this anonymous black someone who some sick other someone once taught him to hate preemptively solely on the basis of her skin color. I didn't want to ponder such thoughts any further than this bizarre moment, but his ugly, angry, arm art compelled me to.
America has finally nominated a black man for president and a woman for vice president. Regardless of one's political position(s), voters' choices this year seem to indicate that America continues to progress socially, culturally and politically. But as I sat breakfasting late this morning at a local dining haunt, I saw something that gave me sickening pause and caused me to rethink my notions of American progress.
A robust, barrel-chested man seemingly suffering from some kind of ambulatory disability shuffled incongruously on pencil legs up to the counter of the Texas Avenue Whataburger. He sported a weathered collection of various cheaply-drawn tattoos emblazoned up and down his arms. On his left forearm sneered a hideous, multicolored skull. On his right (I had to look thrice to verify) and situated prominently for maximum effect, stood a hooded Klansman brandishing a flaming torch in one hand, the severed head of a black person clutched by the hair in the other and white-robed arms outstretched before a burning cross in the foreground. This was an elaborate and disquietingly frightful scene on anyone's flesh, but somehow eerily at home on this dark-eyed, hobbling, unkempt fat man.
After finishing chewing and swallowing the bite of now sour-tasting biscuit of which the odd moment made me forget I had partaken, I wondered sadly (because you absolutely could not miss the tattoos) at the feelings and first impressions of the tired, young black woman at the cash register. She tried to muster a wan smile as she accepted the man's money thrust out from the end of that same hate-covered arm. I wondered, too, his massive, sleeveless, flannel-draped back to me almost eclipsing the girl, what he must think having to interact so closely with this anonymous black someone who some sick other someone once taught him to hate preemptively solely on the basis of her skin color. I didn't want to ponder such thoughts any further than this bizarre moment, but his ugly, angry, arm art compelled me to.
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