Disappointingly, Morgan Freeman made dippy remarks about racist opposition to Obama a little while ago. Now he's been
invited to a tea party by one of the movement's original organizers, Ali Akbar. Behold how he reveals the race question to be a sub-set of the Boomer question in an open letter:
I do believe that you are wrong in what you said about the tea party,
but I would rather prove it to you than castigate you for your
comments.
I also understand that your reflexive comments came from
experience. You grew up in a different America than the one that I was
blessed to be born into. We both grew up in the south, but I never saw
‘White Only’ signs. I’ve been called a name or two in my three decades,
but racism has always been the exception in my life, not the rule, as it
probably was in your youth. I understand your suspicion of conservative
political movements. It is rooted in pain and fear and memory, and
though I never saw the horrors of segregation that you did, we share
that cultural heritage.
Akbar has looked to Freeman as a father-figure:
I idolized you as a boy. Growing up without a father, you were one of
the strong black men in my life who gave me a model to follow. Each of
the characters you played had dignity and confidence. I tried to emulate
the strength you projected. While many of my friends headed down the
all-too-familiar path of drugs, unwed pregnancies and crime, I’ve
striven to live a life with dignity, be an example for my brothers and
make my mother proud.
And that makes the stupid comments painful:
Your comments about the tea party have caused me physical pain.
You’ve rekindled the old painful paradigm of Uncle Tom – that any black
man who votes Republican is some kind of sellout. It’s not true. I work
hard, pay my taxes, love Jesus, and I’m good to my family and community.
In effect, your comments have stereotyped an entire group of people.
And I know in my soul that you must regret that on some level.
He winds up with this:
Mr. Freeman, I’m not asking you to adopt my political views. You’re
in your seventies, and a political shift is not in your future. I’m
reaching out to you because I want you to think better of your fellow
countrymen. Barack Obama is in the White House, and Herman Cain just won
the Florida straw poll. America is the land of opportunity for black
Americans like never before.
I’m hoping that you’ll come
to a tea party in Tennessee — the place of your birth. Really anywhere
in the country that works for you; I’ll set it up with the one of the
thousands of activists I know around our great country. I’d be delighted
to introduce you to good people who will welcome you with open arms,
disagree with you, and then feed you some of the best barbeque you’ve
ever tasted.
Racism is an ugly thing, but I assure you that it is part of our past, not our present.
Good on 'im, and RTWT.
