Race

The Alabama 3rd Congressional District, where Josh Segall came up just a bit short yesterday against the incumbent Republican, Mike Rogers, is designed to swamp the votes of the third of it residents who are black with those of the two thirds of its residents who are white and very Republican. There aren’t many precincts in the district that vote with an open mind about party – almost every thing is deep blue or deep red, and for the most part, it splits on race.

I spent the day in Anniston yesterday, at the northern edge of the district, working to get out the vote in a couple of poor black precincts. At one point, we became aware that, at a couple of the polling places, people were handing out sample ballots showing how to vote for Obama and Rogers. To be clear: black men were handing them out. I drove over to Thankful Baptist Church and found a man sitting there with a handful of the offending ballots. I gave him a bottle of water:

Me: Have you voted today, sir?
Him: Yup.
Me: Did you vote the straight Democratic ticket?
Him: I sure did.
Me: But now you’re handing people this ballot asking them to vote for a Republican?
Him: Yeah.
Me: Do you think the folks who are voting here want to vote for a Republican?
Him: I see what you’re saying.
Me: Why are you doing it?
Him: I’m just gettin’ paid.
Me: Alright. We’re gonna get someone to stand right next to you and give everyone you give one of these to the right one, showing them how to vote straight Democrat, and make sure they know yours shows them how to vote for a Republican.
Him: Don’t matter to me.

I called the office and spoke to Edward, who delicately asked “What…sort of person do you want me to send over there?” to which I unhesitatingly responded, a little loudly “A black person! If that’s what you’re asking, you gotta send a black person!”

I went over to another poll and found another guy doing the same thing, and started in on him the same way, but before I got very far it became clear that this was another thing entirely: This guy was the guy paying the other guy, and he understandably took exception to the idea that a black man advocating for a Republican must not know what he was doing. He told me that he was a Vietnam vet, and for 15 years he wasn’t getting his health benefits, until Mike Rogers fixed the problem for him. I said that another congressman could do that, but Mike Rogers voted against the minimum wage increase, and against the GI Bill. But he didn’t want to hear it, which was fair – he’d been well served. I also gave him a bottle of water – the man, after all, was spending the day in service.

This Election Day – this week in Montgomery, Alabama, first capital of the confederacy, home of civil rights – like almost all Election Days I’ve been a part of, ended up being about race. The fact that a black man won the presidency is just the stage for this year’s version of our annual exercise, where all the tumult and trouble that brought us to race in America as it is today is exposed and explored under a microscope. Disenfranchisement, segregation, distrust, and poverty: we see it all on Election Day, which is the day, more than any other, when we’re all in it together.

We’re hearing a lot today about the dream realized. I don’t agree. We remain a deeply divided nation, a deeply hurt and scarred nation.

Lincoln, in his second inaugural, said “If God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” The terrible Civil War was not more terrible than American Slavery, and whatever debt we owe as a nation for that stain, it wasn’t over at Appomattox, it wasn’t over when the Civil Rights Act passed, and it isn’t over today.

Today is not a valedictory; it is a foothold. Today is not MLK’s dream; it is the dawn. Today is not the end of race in America; but it might be the beginning of the end.