Several weeks ago I posted a photo of Red v. Blue America. Our nation appeared to be awash in crimson. Yet it is not, as the results of the recent election demonstrated. A man on a 500 acre farm casts a single vote as does a woman in a 300 sq. ft. walk up in Brooklyn. Besides the obvious disconnect in the surrounding geography, these two, we are told, are disconnected in many of their values as well. Two completely distinct mindsets develop among our rural and urban citizens, not unlike the disconnect which the Founding Fathers observed and for which they wrote the voting regulations which first appeared in our Constitution.
Of course those voting restrictions were modified several times over the next 200 years to include non-landholding citizens, blacks, women and younger voters. Eighteen-year-old black women living in an apartment were denied the vote in the first draft of the U. S. Constitution and several amendments thereafter.
Naturally we all learned this in American history class, but I find it relevant today in that, once again, there appears to be a widening divide or chasm opening between two distinct views of governance in the minds of our citizens. Yes, we citizens have always divided into two polarizing groups, but in this era I see something synister that moves beyond traditional, historic divisions. It appears that race and all that this issue suggests may be the underlying divisor.
Who among the readers knows what I am suggesting? Where do you see that race divides Blue America from Red America?
Elbo's Room 