Two Americas, One Responsibility: Choosing Action Over Apathy

Commentary by Ron Washington, native Chicagoan living in Las Vegas, disabled Marine Corps combat veteran, business owner (Premiers Secours), and proud NU grad. Son of Bernadine C. Washington, former WVON GM, who inspired his love for writing.

Every human sees the world in their own slightly different and individual way. I think this is one of the beautiful gifts of life. Still we can be broken down into groups or cohorts. I think that there are two types of Americans. As a simple illustration the Barack Obama story tells it all. About one half of American people and voters admired Obama as a person, for his accomplishments, his capabilities and what he represented as a person. The fact that he was Black was not a factor in their vote and support for him and trust and belief in his ability to be president of and for us all and promote what America claims to stand for. This half of America represents people who think objectively. 

For the other half his Blackness was the only factor they considered in their dislike and disdain and lack of support and respect for him. Subjectivity drove and influenced their thinking and their performance. This half is dominated by people who are in my mind mentally sick and who carry a level of hate with a pathological abnormality. Tho they won’t admit to their sickness, those in the mental health community recognize this pathology and they know that simple logic, words nor reasoning cannot or will not help these people. To address their malady requires serious, professional mental health treatment and presently there’s none of this on the table. 

My point is that these individuals are not going to accept this diagnosis and consequently won’t allow themselves to be put into this category, and hence they will resist treatment so nothing is going to change within or among them and so accordingly we cannot waste valuable time even thinking about them. Time as we know it is too precious.

Instead our efforts will be more valuably placed by working at increasing the number of objective thinking people who simply did not vote last time. I recently asked a group of people that I was conversing with to honestly indicate with a show of hands who was not registered to vote and two out of five raised their hand. This is the group we must pay attention to. Now I don’t have an idea for an absolute answer or plan to address this at this moment but among and between all of us, the half of Americans who think objectively I believe that  we  we can and will come up with something, don’t you? 

Let’s aggressively use our time and labor to get folks registered. For instance If you attend Sunday go-to-meeting gatherings then maybe today is a good day to ask your pastor to start by checking on the flock. Have him or her to ask the many people sitting in your church, who among them are ready and motivated and planning to voter? Then we can move on and ask that question among whomever we encounter wherever we are on Tuesday, and so on and so forth. That’s an example of what is meant by being aggressive. Happy Sunday y’all!