Electing a black person

This title sounds a little strange. Perhaps you are wondering if it will turn out to be racist. I hope it grabs attention. But I am not deceiving you, this really is the theme of this latest post. I want to explore what it means for many people to vote for and ultimately elect Barack Hussein Obama and how it relates to Catholic thinking, specifically as far as racism and other issues go.

It was certainly a big change to elect Barack Obama to the White House. Never had a black man been president, but this is especially amazing given the history of racism in the US. Is the US more racist than other countries? I do not think so. Are there conflicts that tend to work along racial lines? Yes. But there are many countries in the world which are much more racist than America.

Barack Obama got into the White House. This alone proves racism can't be as bad as people say it is. White people make up the majority of the United States. Therefore, a large percentage of white people voted for him. Many suggest that the reason for this is that Obama is half black and half white, but this would not explain the white vote, since one of the most racist groups in the United States, the KKK, hate nothing more than the marriage of blacks to whites. They view this as the most serious of crimes. Just as a side note, the KKK also hated Catholics and people of Irish descent, which I'm actually not unhappy about.

The fact that a black man (or so he's called) was elected as president has, in and of itself, a lot of good effects, which I explored in a previous article. But in absolute terms, electing a black man is not necessarily better than electing a white man. This may seem obvious, but when you hear what many commentators and regular people have to say, you realize this is a prevalent attitude.

I believe expressing the opinion that a black man, any black man, being electing to the White House is a good thing represents a high level of racism. A good gauge of racism is to replace "black" with "white". Imagine if someone said, "I'm really glad we elected a white person and not a black person." This person would be labeled a bigot and racist. But if someone says they are happy a black man was elected because he's black, this is not seen in a negative way.

I am very unhappy that Barack Obama was elected. He is the most radically pro-abortion politician in American history and he is ushering in the culture of death with open arms. Everything he does seems to contradict good values. And what makes it all the more maddening is that he doesn't mind being self-contradictory. He doesn't mind saying one minute that he wants to protect all life and then turning around and unleashing the most violent attack on life in history.

People who vote based on the colour of someone's skin are racist, regardless of whether their skin is the same colour as someone else's or not. We should vote for someone who will be pleasing to the people, to the country, but especially to God. If Hitler was a black man, would the holocaust have been a good thing? If we truly claim to be tolerant and accepting of people of all colours, then we would never vote for someone simply because of the colour of their skin.

The side effect of all of this is that Obama gets away with a lot that other politicians wouldn't. If someone objects to him being in the White House, they are labeled a racist. Everything he does is seen as something done by someone who has always been oppressed, therefore it has to be good. It is all too common to think that white people oppress and black people are oppressed. Therefore, if Obama passes a law that violates the sanctity of life, we automatically think he has the right to do that because he has been put down for so long.

We cannot be easy on Obama. We must put him to the test and challenge him. It's hard to believe all the good things President Bush did while in the White House until you see all the things Obama has to reverse. Every day we hear that Bush protected life with various laws, but now Obama is bent on destroying all these laws. It's the equivalent of being in ancient Roman times and Obama reinstating the practice of bringing unwanted children to a hill to die of exposure.

Let us be truly rid of racism. That includes reverse racism and hatred of one's own race. Let's create a society where everyone is treated equally as a child of God.