Hate Is the Real Minority in This Race

Michelle Mahon spent a long and sleepless night stewing over recent ugly events in her community.

Before sunrise, she'd made a decision: Silence was a luxury she no longer could afford.

At 5 a.m. on Oct. 9, the mother of five sat at her computer in Strongsville, Ohio, and wrote a letter to the editor that she knew might enrage fellow residents.

She began by recounting a recent conversation she'd had with her 7-year-old son:

"Mom," he said, "who are you voting for?"

"Sen. Obama," she said.

"Oh, no!" he said. "You can't have an evil president."

"I didn't know whether to laugh or cry," she wrote.

Hours earlier, Mahon had been driving home from the local mall with her 14-year-old daughter, when they spotted some people carrying homemade political signs after leaving a Strongsville rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The worst of the signs called Obama a terrorist.

Mahon was stunned. She used the signs as an opportunity to talk to her daughter about the politics of fear — and race.

"It was a good talk," Mahon said.

An hour later, her son was blurting out his alarm about Obama.

"That came from his friends," she told me, "and you know they had to be hearing it at home. I sat him down and explained that nobody who runs for president is evil and that you can't believe everything you hear."

After her children went to bed, Mahon clicked online and found a Cleveland blogger's videos of interviews with some people at the Strongsville rally.

The blogger, Tim Russo, clearly wanted to goad McCain supporters in the wake of Palin's recent inflammatory comments about Obama. Over and over, he asked people standing in line whether they thought Obama was a terrorist, and over and over, a handful of them rewarded him for his efforts. In one chilling exchange, a young child chirped, "You have to wear gloves to touch him."

Mahon stared at the images of her fellow Ohioans and felt ill.

"I sat there and thought, 'God, I didn't know I lived in this kind of community.'" The YouTube videos were spreading across the country.

She considered her options and came up with only one.

"Not speaking out is the same as acceptance," she said.

In her letter to the editor, Mahon denounced such acts of hatred in her community. She also described a recent experience canvassing for Obama with a U.S. citizen who had emigrated from the Middle East.

"She worried about knocking on neighbors' doors because others like her have been cursed and called terrorists," Mahon wrote. "I apologized for my fellow white middle-class neighbors."

Mahon ended her letter with a favorite quote: "Silence in the face of hatred is unfit to lead."

Then she hit "send."

Her letter ran in The Plain Dealer in Cleveland last Sunday. When Mahon saw it on the page, she took a deep breath and braced herself for the onslaught.

The attacks never came.

Instead, one resident after another in Strongsville thanked Mahon for expressing what is in their hearts, too.

"Support came from unexpected places," she said. "It was definitely bipartisan."

Her son's preschool teacher thanked her. So did friends and neighbors and some residents she barely knew.

"They were as appalled as I was," she said.

Mahon hopes to coax others to shed their shrouds of fear and speak up.

"It's not enough to think good things in our head," she said. "You can't be an activist at home."

Besides, Mahon said, you never will be lonely sticking your neck out.

"No matter what you think, there are others out there who agree with you. You're not alone, no matter where you live."

And that includes Strongsville, Ohio.

"I feel a lot better about my town," she said. "I'm still proud to call it home."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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