Racism and Society -- Literature Letter Senator Creative Writing

Racism and Society -- Literature Letter

Senator Mitch McConnell

317 Russell Senate Office Building

Dear Senator McConnell:

I am writing to express my reaction to your four-year effort to ensure the failure of the presidential administration of President Barak Obama. First, let me say that I have never been a politically-oriented person; I am not even a registered voter. However, I have been monitoring news reports about the current state of the nation and of the disgraceful abuses of power exhibited by you and the other high-ranking members of your Republican Caucus. The manner in which you and your colleagues have reduced the U.S. Congress into a dysfunctional and ineffective Legislative Branch of our government (Grunwald, 2012) is the reason I am writing, the inspiration for this letter comes from my recent exposure to several pieces of 20th Century literature with which you might not be familiar. Copies of them are enclosed for your reading pleasure and convenience. It is my sincerest hope that sharing these works with you might help you choose to reconsider your opposition to the incumbent U.S. President, especially since it appears likely that he will be re-elected.

The connection between this literature and your contribution to the national political discourse is that I believe in my heart that your expressed desire to ensure that President Obama is a one-term president is rooted in the same racist impulses within your constituency that has always opposed genuine racial equality. While I understand that political realities dictate the positions of elected public officials, I believe there is a line below which it is inappropriate to go in that regard.I would like you to consider the possibility that one reason that (not-so-coincidentally) so many of your Republican colleagues in Congress who have worked the hardest to undermine the President happen to represent former Confederate states and also those states that opposed racial desegregation and integration the longest (Edwards, Wattenberg, & Lineberry, 2009).

It is my sincerest belief that the historians looking back on the early 21st Century will regard this period as the "last stand" of institutionalized racism in the U.S. I expect that they will replay your highly-publicized statement of intention to ensure that the President of the United States of America is a failure in his first term and they will compare your role in the political climate of this period to the defiance of Alabama Governor George Wallace to the desegregation of schools fifty years ago (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger, & Argersinger, 2005). In my college class, I listened to my black classmates' reactions to Zora Neal Hurston's heartfelt essay How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928) and to Just Walk on By, by Brent Staples (1986). Hurston describes her recollections of growing up as a young African-American girl in the early 20th Century; Staples gives a similar account more than a half a century later. Both writers make very clear that white and black Americans do not have….....