Security

During the Presidential Debate, I was assigned to be an intern for the NBC media team that traveled to Oxford for the debate. On the day the candidates arrived, we were assist the film crew by running tapes of the candidates’ arrivals at the Ford Center back to the media room; meaning, we too would get to watch the candidates make their first steps in our little town of Oxford, Mississippi. I was so excited to finally get to see the two men who are competing to be the next leaders of our country. While I had no idea what to expect, I was not at all prepared for the most intriguing part of my debate experience: the security surrounding Barack Obama. I have seen various celebrities with their bodyguards constantly surrounding them, but nothing at all compares to the amount of weapons I saw on the team guarding Barack Obama. While this should have been an obvious forethought for me considering he is the first African American Presidential candidate and he was arriving in one of the most historically racial states in the country, I was truly shocked. It honestly saddened me to think that just because of the past history of this state, and the color of this man’s skin, that it would be absolutely necessary for this amount of security. It was more of a wake up call than anything; a wake up call for me that the world is not as safe as Oxford would like to make us believe once you venture outside of this city, and the past is still very much a part of our present.