Racism, Vanishing From the Earth...Someday

THE OLD FELLOW at the senior center, responding to a question, said that his birthday was Wed June 19, that he would be eighty five years old, and that his birthday was on "nigger day", the day they got their freedom, which was their independence day. Then he went on to assert that the sorriest president in American history was Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt as well. I immediately detected the pattern. He hated, and regarded as evil, any president who used his office to try to get the government to help people, particularly the poor, the week, and the downtrodden He hates Lincoln because Abe had the audacity to free the slaves. He hates Roosvelt because Roosevelt had the audacity to fight Hitler, a fellow racist. I live in a very small, conservative, southern U.S. town, the people of which I have often called "provincial", among other descriptors, sometimes evincing reactions of indignation. So great is my dismay at the frequency of comments revealing racism in this town, that I have thought about moving away, to a more progressive locale. I've been assured that I needn't bother; racism and other hatefulness will be waiting for me, wherever I go. I agree. To this nearly eighty five year old conservative redneck southerner, progressive reform was taboo. I wonder whether he wants to privatize or abolish social security? I actually don't know anything about an African-American freedom day, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one, and if it happens to be on June 19. Every holiday needs a date, and Emancipation Day, or whatever its called, is certainly a noble holiday. Lincoln, it memory serves, started issuing warnings about the need of the Confederacy to free its slaves, a particularly strong such warning occurring on Sept. 22, 1862. Free them, or I will, was the essential text. It further stipulated that if the slaves hadn't been freed by January first, 1863 , then they would be, on that date, officially freed from slavery, but only in the ten states currently in a state of rebellion against the country and its government in Washington. The Emancipation Proclamation accomplished nothing in real terms, of course, much like the Monroe doctrine or other high sounding rants. The slaves had to be freed by force; Lincoln's command had to be backed up by force, at it most certainly was beginning with Gettysburg in July, 1863. The old racist must thinks it very funny, his birthday falling on "Nigger Day", the irony of it, he being so racist and all. Let him laugh; he won't live much longer anyway, and maybe the stain of people like him will finally, once and for all, perish from the Earth.