Open Thank You Note to Leonard Pitts
Filed by: Marla R. Stevens
November 16, 2008 2:30 PM

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/11/open_thank_you_note_to_leonard_pitts.php

I wept when I read Leonard Pitts' column about black anti-marriage-equality voters.

As a white woman -- and a white woman with hundreds of beloved black family members -- the risk of being accused of racism when I point out the fact that black religious traditionalist bigots who were new or rare voters brought to the polls this time by the otherwise delicious Obama candidacy put Yes on 8 over the top.

The Obama campaign knew in advance that that would be the effect and that they would win without those voters, yet openly pandered to their bigotry again and again in the campaign. And they did nothing to help their new young voters, who stood with us, learn how to vote a ballot all the way through instead of just stopping at the elected offices. This leaves me with huge, conflicting feelings screaming inside to be heard but, with family and near-family African-American friends, too often left festering like an untreated leprous elephant in the living room.

I voted for Obama because of many things, not the least of which was that it would bring my African-American loved ones that Velveteen Rabbit sense of being finally real that we've all seen on so many faces this last week -- and I would do it again, pleased on the one hand that I can, after eight long horrid years, finally legitimately use the term, "President-Elect".

But that doesn't make his election less bittersweet for me.

I've always liked Leonard Pitts. He writes about race in a way that I can understand, and which allows me to see beneath the surface. So I'm not sirprised that i should enjoy any column he writes.

Mr Pitts is especially fit to write about this particular topic, because, obviously, he is a black man, but he has also written in his column that his brother is gay.