The election of an idea, not a color

On Tuesday a man was elected. A man with extraordinary ideas. Ideas that for decades have been thought contrary to American ideals, and greater than that, biblical ideals.

Not only did the man possess radical ideas about America's governance, but the man possessed some radical baggage by way of his friends and associates. These, too, were radical about America.

But on Tuesday, America elected that man.

In the aftermath of the election, I have begun to hear (at long last and too late) members of the media outside Fox wonder aloud about whether such a radical man can be centrist enough for our nation. They have pondered the true influence of bomb-throwers literal, oratorical, and financial like Ayers, Wright, Pfleger, and Rezko.

Do you know what the chief topic of conversation has been this week regarding the election of Barack Hussein Obama? His skin color.

As I sit in my house with its rose-colored windows on this chilled November morning in the heart of Mainstreet, USA, my brow furrows and my lips purse in frustration at the adoration and exultation because a man was elected, a man whose skin is a few shades darker than his opponents (only a few).

In the interest of full-disclosure, my pasty-white skin turns slightly past tan in the summer months. I've walked no miles in African-American skin. So what follows is opinion and observation.

• I've seen white racists. I remember a athletic general manager, I don't remember if it was football or baseball, open the sewer gates of his face and let out some comment like, "I don't know if they'll ever have what it takes to become a GM." The idiot was fired faster than you could say Jim Crow.
• I've seen black racists aplenty. Jeremiah Wright. Louis Farrakhan. Many in rap music. Really, anytime you say someone should get a job, position, college entrance, etc. because they have a bit more melanin than me, that's racist.
• I've seen folks of every skin tone succeed because of ability not because of their hue. Colin Powell as commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice. And so in my work place.
• I've seen folks fail who were hired because of skin color and not ability. Thomas Sowell, renowned economist of darker hue, lamented that his alma mater, Harvard, in taking quotas based upon color, was creating failure within the black community because it was admitting students who couldn't cut Harvard's mustard. I've seen it in the workplace, too, within an organization that prides itself on colorblindness.

You'd think we'd be past this in post-racial America, but what we've seen with the fawning over Obama is that we are planted firmly within racial America.

And race is an interesting thing. Despite the hue, you may not really be considered a person of color. Consider Clarence Thomas, the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court. He's a good bit darker than President-elect Obama, but many on the left don't seem to find him "black enough."

"In losing a woman, the court with Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America." The Milwaukee Sentinel

Where was the support from the NAACP or Jesse Jackson, where were Louis and Al when Clarence Thomas was nominated to the SCOTUS? Where the jubilation? Where were his defenders when he sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and had to respond to Anita Hill's fallacious accusations?

Where were the tears and adulation from the left and from communities of color for the appointments of Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell (not to mention women's groups with the former)?

Does color only matter when it's left color?

In America, any man can rise to any position. A few losers still skulk in the shadows and live with the defective belief that some folks are superior to others or that some folks need help because they look different than others. I had come to believe that my nation had gotten beyond such thinking.

The doting on President-elect Obama's race and the willful ignorance of his substance make me wonder if my windows need replacing.