“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I enjoy reading the section of comments that follows most news stories found on the internet. Sometimes, there is a poignant comment posted before the conversation degrades into a name calling session between “big government liberals” and “bible thumping bigots”. I stay out of the fray, reserving my comments for my own blog, but I delight at the fighting the same way the Romans must have felt watching gladiators kill each other for sport.

This morning, I was drinking my coffee and enjoying the online bickering when I realized I had begun to see a term that was growing in popularity. People were referring to the president as “Obammy”. I’m smart enough to understand this play on words between “Obama” and “mammy”, but not smart enough to understand what is meant by the word. So, I started researching the word to determine what was meant. Strangely, though I found dozens of examples of this word being used, I couldn’t find any resource that explained the origination or the meaning of this term.

It was then that I came across a very interesting web site that explained the origin of the fictional character “mammy”. The page was one of a collection of pages that discussed racism – particularly images of racism. And the more I read, the more fascinated I became. You see, this web site was created by a black man who had been collecting racist images since his childhood. And what was fascinating is that he hated his own collection. But somehow, he knew it was important to create it.

By the time he had reached adulthood and began raising his own children, his basement was full of these racist images and he sometimes found his children playing with them. It was then that he realized he needed to remove this collection from his home and put them on display in a museum, where people could come to learn how these racist stereotypes came to exist. And so, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorobilia was created.

As I read, I began to wonder, if we could take a poll of all the people who freely used the term, “Obammy”, how many of them would say that they identified themselves closely with the Tea Party? Assuming that number is relatively high, why then, would anyone want to willingly associate themselves with a political party who would also welcome these people?

Read about the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorobilia