There were discouraging comments like this: “No, I don’t think that’s the case,” Getty responds. “She has more executive experience than he does. He was a community organizer. Nobody’s ever told me what a community organizer is.” and this: “I can’t recall any privilege that I got because I was white,” Getty says. “I mean, I went to city schools. But I don’t know of anything that I got because I was white that the black kids couldn’t have gotten the same thing.” Okay. No big deal. He’s not representative of everyone, right?

And then there were people like this:

Margie Orr recalls that hers was the first black family to move to their suburb. That was in 1963.

“We weren’t wanted there, of course, and the whites did everything they could to intimidate us to get us to move,” Orr says. “But my parents were staunch-hearted people. We weren’t going to budge. So, of course, we stayed there. We endured it all: the break-ins, the house being messed up, the whole nine yards, being called niggers.”

Orr dabs at her eyes when questioning why diversity has to be enforced.

“I mean, my parents taught me to love everybody. So I’m saying, ‘But you have to be taught to love me?’” she says. “That’s hard to understand.”

Okay, terrible. It hurts to even hear. But times are different now, right? Right?? We’re far past that as a society. Sure there are people who don’t believe in evolution and we’ve regressed a couple hundred years regarding our science education, but in terms of race relations, except for a few pockets in the South, we’re enlightened now.

Except…

Jeff Lobach, a white attorney, says he is surprised by the intolerance he sees in York today.

“White people are almost invariably shocked when they hear some of the things that African-Americans have to put up with,” Lobach says. “It cuts across economic groups, too. African-American professionals in this town are treated differently. These are highly paid folks who are part of the ‘haves’ right now. We have had incidents where white lawyers won’t shake the hand of a black lawyer.”

Is this the same York, PA that is just north of Baltimore? The one I went to for outlet shopping a few times in high school? Same one right? Quaint town? In the NORTH?

And here is where tears involuntarily rolled down my cheeks:

Leah Moreland, the woman who said she grew up sheltered from prejudice, plans to vote for McCain. Party loyalty is also part of her decision. But her cultural compass also comes into play. She says her gut tells her not to trust Obama.

“I look at Obama, and I have a question in my mind,” she says. “Years ago, was he taken into the Muslim faith? And my concern is the only way you are no longer a Muslim is if you are dead, killed. So in my mind, he’s still alive.”

Although Barack Obama has said repeatedly he is not a Muslim and has never been a Muslim, Moreland is still unconvinced.

“There is something about him I don’t trust,” she says. “I don’t care how good a speaker he is, I just can’t trust him.”

The truth just doesn’t matter. Any effort to convince people to pursue the truth is a waste of my time. They will just refuse to believe anything other than what they want to believe. I am continually amazed at the low standards people hold themselves to, how little effort they make to become a better person, a better member of society, to overcome their own prejudices, how little effort to become informed on a topic before making a decision, how little interest there is in the truth. The truth absolutely does not matter, especially when we are so good at denying any possibility that we could be wrong. How can we be so easily content with our own irrational and immoral behavior?

On the anniversary of September 11, an event that could have been a wonderful instrument to shake us out of complacency, to help us to grow, look outside of our own narrow world view, to become culturally self-aware, seven years later, we’re no better and in fact, quite worse, as a nation than before 2001. We’ve forsaken a rare opportunity for growth.

That, is one of the worst tragedies there is and really makes me feel hopeless.

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