Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.
By Alice Walker
http://www.theroot.com/id/45469
Some excerpts:
When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties
it
was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been
thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they
attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could
say
white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men
did,
but I cannot....
I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to
lead
the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country
and
the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me
that
many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see
what he
carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement
he
offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans -black,
white,
yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a
man,
and black, feels tragic to me....
[T]his does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for....
I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a
people
I love.... I want an end to the on-going war immediately.... I want
the
Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the
Palestinians.... But most of all I want someone with the
self-confidence to
talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can
do....
It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she
felt
self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman"
while
Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think
she is
just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She
carries
all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would
be a
miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How
dishonest it
is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance....
We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of
our
time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race,
ethnicity,
color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth.
Celebrate
our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over
its
outcome. Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin
it
may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he
is
elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of
the
planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more,
we
must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our
mothers
taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The
river
has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey
in
the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been
waiting
for.
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