Charles Blow of The New York Times has written an amazing column that we cats hope will, pun intended, blow a lot of readers away.
You can find it here. But let us just enlighten you by saying that Blow explains — to clueless if well-meaning white people — what American history means for folks who don't look like us. Its most important paragraph is this:
"America has a gauzy, romanticized version of its history that is largely fiction. According to that mythology, America rose to greatness by sheer ruggedness, ingenuity and hard work. It ignores or sidelines the tremendous human suffering of African slaves that fueled that financial growth, and the blood spilled and dubious treaties signed with Native Americans that fueled its geographic growth. It ignores that the prosperity of some Americans always hinged on the oppression of other Americans."
Wow. That really struck us, even though, unlike the troubled white voters who are flocking to Trump, we don't feel left behind by America in the twilight of the Obama Administration. On the contrary: We're encouraged by the progress the country has made in the last seven years, and we're looking forward to building on it. But between Charles Blow and, coincidentally, President Obama's speech at a Baltimore mosque yesterday, we now understand a whole lot more about America than we thought we did.
And it's striking that — as Blow points out — Bill Clinton seems to get it. For all his flaws, Clinton has not only an immense intellect but a keen ability to empathize that we cats are jealous of. He grew up in a poor community in the South. We cats grew up in a lily-white Chicago suburb a generation later. Our kittenhood would probably be judged more privileged, economically. But somehow we think that Bill Clinton's was the richer.
We're sorry that we haven't been smarter about this stuff than before we read Charles Blow today. But we're grateful that while we may have been blind, now we see — or, at least, see better. And we PURR.
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