Why is Joe Six-Pack afraid? Why am I?

I am around the same age as Obama. Like Obama, my parents were mixed race. My father was an Anthropologist, as was Obama’s mother; I lived in another country as a child. Like Obama, I grew up with a wider viewfinder than many Americans yet I’ve always thought that I was an American. Like America, I was the ultimate melting pot. I am descended from early white colonists and from slaves. I am descended from Europeans who immigrated to the United States in the 19th century. I am not Joe Six Pack.

I’ve spent the past week watching what has been going on at the Republican rallies. Barring the Bradley effect, I don’t think that McCain can win this race but something very ugly has reared its head in this country and it’s not going to go away.

What are we, those of us who are not Joe Six-Pack to make of the ugly racist and xenophobic events at McCain-Palin rallies over the last week? What is Joe so afraid of?

Joe is afraid that a Black man can succeed. Joe is afraid that not only can a Black man succeed, but that he can succeed far beyond any place that Joe can imagine succeeding himself. Joe will do anything to stop it.

This world is not uncharted territory for me. It is the Jim Crow south that my father grew up in, so I can tell you what I’m afraid of.

This is the place where people needed to point to the lack of black success as proof of black inferiority after prospering and successful black communities and businesses have been burned to the ground.

This is the place that only allows certain "acceptable" and unqualified African Americans or women like Sarah Palin to be appointed to positions of real power but where not much is expected from them. Conversely, this is the place that hires the most qualified woman or African American like Colin Powell, and then undermines them and sets them up for certain failure.

This is the place where my brother with his exotic Japanese middle name is not really American and where Hawaii is too exotic to be one of the 50 states. This is a place where my children, half English-Jewish, half mongrel are not real Americans. This is a place where a man can put up a sign in his yard calling Barack Obama "half breed muslin" and be proud of it. This is a place where black people are not supposed to be articulate and if they are, they are "elitists" and they are "uppity".

I'm not saying that we are on the edge of a holocaust or that we need to panic. I am saying that we can't afford to write off the rantings of Palin's followers or to dismiss these concerns as mere "hyperbole". I believe that we should to pay attention to history and be aware of the parallels to events in our own and in other countries. We need to remember the radio hate fueled catastrophe of Rwanda and the religious oppression of Afghanastan and understand what led up to these events. I hate to bring up the Nazi reference, I don't believe that my fellow Americans are "Nazi's" or that McCain is like Hitler but understanding the climate in Germany before the Holocaust is important. We should never forget the causes of these events. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I love this country, but I am afraid. I’m afraid that, as some have been known to tell me over the past 8 years, I am believed to be Un-American. I’m afraid that, because of (or in spite of) my education and any small success that I’ve achieved in my lifetime I will be forced into the metaphoric back of the bus, perhaps the way that women were in Afghanistan under the Taliban. I'm afraid that too many good people will close their eyes and pretend that it isn't happening. I'm afraid that Joe Six-Pack will sit in front of me thumping his bible, his sense of superiority will be restored and all will be right in his world again but that mine will be gone.