My brother, Timothy, wise beyond his years, hipped me to an email conversation with our grandparents.  I consider it worth reading.

I can’t speak for him, but I’ve never been particularly close to them.  Dean is impossible to talk to, through no inherent fault of his own; he simply chooses not to engage in lengthy conversations.  I’ve only rarely spoken to Naomi.  As my relationship with them has been so limited, it would be prudent to disclose that I do not truly know them; I know of them, and I’ve heard some of their life stories as told by other family members; but I have no direct relationship with these stories.

That said, when you get an email with Obama Photoshopped onto the body of a man shining Sarah Palin’s shoes, with a personal note, “Best picture of Palin yet!”, it’s difficult not to think, “Racism?”.  Perhaps they didn’t intend the picture as a racist attack on an African American, but to submit an objectively racist picture of anyone to a group via email in ignorance of the context of the photo is as damning in my mind as having done it deliberately.

I’m emotionally agnostic towards them.  I’m not angry with their potential hatred of blacks or homosexuals or anyone else not like them; but I am angry with the population this belief pattern represents.  It’s a group dedicated to the proliferation of injustice, and I wish it weren’t a part of America–or perhaps, I wish this group weren’t so loudly perched on America’s shoulder.