It's not over as long as there's cash money to be made from portraying black folks as victims. That's the reason e-mails like you quoted get sent out. Someone's on the other end looking to make some money off of ignorance and fear.
I don't love black people for the same reason that I don't love white people, brown people or any other "people". I love my country, and blacks, white, browns and pinks make up my country.
Racism is a disease, but one that needs to be stamped out. It's clear that in some areas significant progress has been made, but in others much remains to be done.
Plus you're the only Northerners who still know what grits and and cornbread and collards are.
I take great exception to this, Dean. Y'all need to come over to my house. ;-) I always have cornmeal in my larder and always have fatback in my refrigerator.
Sure racism exists. There are also communists still around. Lousy ideas don't die merely because they've been discredited on the order of a bajillion times.
But the official policies that supported and encouraged it, that made government a participant and winked at private organizations condoning it, that is gone. So yes racism exists, but its now the personal disease of jerks and not a disorder spread throughout the society and nation.
I wrote about this voting issue back in March. Said my silly stuff and moved on.
As I said millions of times, racism is the power to limit, harm, and/or stunt the growth of another race. Based on the way our government is configured, it would be extremely difficult for true racists practicing true racism to run things. Plain and simple. But the average Joe and Jane can be bigoted. Ain't nothin' I can do 'bout that. If your going to get all weird with me because I'm a black dude (a ruggedly handsome one at that) then back to ya! Personally, class has trumped race in America. And in my opinion, classism can be just has devastating as racism. Possibly even more devastating.
Dave's right, there is still plenty of racism out there. The big problem now is that it's Black on White racism, and for the most part it's tolerated by society because it's not considered "real" racism. The bigger problem is the corrosive effect this is having on us as a society and the resentment and backlash that's building up among white folk like me.
I'm Dean's age, I come from a nice middle class white family, both parents were teachers and they raised me to be a strict constitutionalist and a conservative, but not a racist. I wasn't raised to see the color of a person's skin, I was taught early on that the value of a man was in the work he did, not what color he was. I've gone through life with many black friends, dated a few black women, I've even got a Godmother who is black and a lifetime member of the NAACP, but for some people I'm just another white devil, and I'm tired of it.
I'm tired of having to justify myself or my politics to acquaintances and co-workers who are black. I'm tired of being looked at like they enemy when I go into a predominantly black bar just so I can attend a friend's birthday party. I'm tired of there being a double standard, with a lower level of quality being acceptable based on the color of someone's skin. I'm tired of hearing bullshit excuses about why something didn't get done from people who work for me, and then being told not to take action because it could be construed as creating a hostile work environment. In short, I'm pretty fucking tired of it all.
The sad thing is there are a lot of really good people this doesn't apply to, and I try, every day, to remind myself of that. But every time I read about the Reverends Jackson or Sharpton, or I read about another Tawana Brawley-esque case of injustice, or I listen to someone spout crap like that email that Dean posted, I just feel its that much more futile.
I should also point out that there's still plenty of good ol' fashioned White on Black racism out there too, witness the travesty of justice that is the Corey Maye case going on in Mississippi. Here's a man who tried to defend his home against a home invasion that turned out to be a police raid, in the process he killed an officer. There's ample evidence that what he did was perfectly justifiable, but there are three problems: Corey May is black; the officer was White; the officer was the son of the Chief of Police of a small Mississippi town.
Ty: "And in my opinion, classism can be just has devastating as racism. Possibly even more devastating."
Dude, you're being too timid. Because you've really put your finger on the blunt truth of the matter. Contempt for po' white trash is every bit as virulent as contempt for po' black trash. We make fun of the suth'runs just as we make fun of the ebonics speakers. We treat people who grew up poor and hard like they're the bane of our existence rather than our brothers and sisters. We need to stop this.
We have to help them. And by "help them" I don't mean to put them in welfare dependency. I mean treat them with some respect while we give them a hand up.
Yes, there still is some of that good ol' fashioned racism flying around. But my bigger issue is the inherent white/black distrust. The fact that you went into a predominantly black bar and got the "why is that white boy in here" and vice versa is an example of the silliness that we hold on to. I've struggled with this most of my life. I can't just assume that that white guy or white gal is going to do me wrong. I can't live my life that way. I have to take the high road and deal with things on a case-by-case basis. Until you demostrate disrespect, I'm not going to disrespect. The reason why I call this "silliness" because everyday of our life we put our physical and mental health in the hands of people we may not like. We happily eat that bag of Doritos when a black, white, and Mexican person may have participated in its creation at the factory. We buy cars made by all sorts of people. We eat at restaurants staffed by all sorts of people. Yet we remain stupidly selective in our bigotry. I mean if you hate a race, you need to make sure that the offending race isn't making the clothes your wear, preparing your food, assembling your PC, etc. But we don't. We just remain "silly". Typical yet sad. That's why I work my ass off not practice inherent distrust.
Yeah Dean, I know some rich black folks that I couldn't imagine saying "brutha" or "sista" to even if your were torturing me. They think only in terms of financial status and disregard EVERYTHING that a person is. A sadly typical viewpoint of many rich.
Tyrone, I agree with you 100% I just wish more people, of all colors, thought the same way. The key is to, as you said, work your ass off not practice the inherent distrust. I'd add that you have to work to confront your personal bigotries, because they're self-defeating.
I think back to a party I went to at a friends house about three years ago. It was another birthday party, this time at her house. Her husband worked hard to put it together, and invited a bunch of us from work as well as a bunch of their long time friends. Joy and Joe are both black, as are most of their long time friends. Those of us from work who showed up were mostly white. I'd known them for a few years and had been over to their house a dozen times or more, so I helped Joe out much of the night, greeting guests, taking coats, directing folks to refreshments and such. When I finally joined the party there I was surprised to see that the people had largely segregated themselves into two groups, and in a short time most of the white people left until there was only me.
That didn't bother me at all, in fact once the "uncomfortable" white folks left the rest of us had one hell of a good time. It's funny (and sad) how people can let their inherent distrust and their personal bigotries keep them from having a good time.
Gotta disagree with you somewhat on this one, Dean. And it is based on what I have seen in my own (black), where members have married white people or social interactions that I have observed in my own life. And many whites (if not most) believe that black people are inferior and "lesser" Americans...even if they do not want to put black folks back on the plantations or the back of buses anymore.
P.S. The Voting Rights Act email that you got is regularly passed along in emails, but many black commentators have already noted how it is untrue.
I was listening to a friend tell a story at a party. After a 10 minutes, I figured out the point: She pulled off the highway into a black neighborhood at night and used the bathroom in a bar, and was not killed. I tried to explain to her that each morning, the bones of dead white folks who wandered into the neighborhood are not found on the sidewalks in black neighborhoods, but she didn't quite get it.
yes, there are still attitudes and other some stuff that people need to grow out of. But I believe that it'll all just go away with time, especially if we all just leave it alone. Calling attention to race causes more problems at this point than any attempt to "solve racism." Ignore the race hustlers Ignore the mau-mauers. All's gonna be fine. As fine as it needs to be.
Remember the part about no riots. If riots, all bets are off.
The fact that you went into a predominantly black bar and got the "why is that white boy in here" and vice versa is an example of the silliness that we hold on to.
That isn't just a racial thing. I frequent a biker bar. True, there are some clubbers there, but the greatest majority of the regulars are just folks...even some with SUV's and kids in soccer. But they love Harleys and the lifestyle that goes with it. Pretty often, though, we'll get some newbies in the bar that enter like they're walking into the 7th level of hell...like any second we'll all just turn savage and kill them. And on the flip side, the biker regulars look on the newbies with contempt for being scared and weak.
Sure, it's a race thing. But it's a "clan" thing, too. People of like interests tend to group up, and when someone who's not in the group shows up, suspicions are raised.
I was born, borned or is it born-ded 30 years before you and still had to live in the crappy City of Detroit for nearly 30 years.
And, I ain't about to say:
"God damn it you guys, we love you. You're part of us, you're part of what makes us special. It's over, okay ? "
Yes, I lived during the 1943 race riots and some of the other good ones. We never had a clue to what they were about. But, I remember army tanks down on Hastings, Hancock and Beaubien and Forest back then when we went to visit Gramma. My father wouldn't tell us nothing, just to shut up.
May God bless Henry Ford. He definitely was the best thing to happen to Detroit.
One last thing. The movie, Eight Mile Road was stupidest to the max.
I was wrong. The best thing that happened to Detroit is the Detroit Red Wings.
From your friendly bigot that plans never to return to Detroit to live.
I wish with all my heart you and I could sit down and I could tell you how very wrong you have it about me and my Mom and Dad. I just chose the keeping quiet out of respect.
My Dad grew up with Mexicans and went to school with them and the same with my Mother. Dad went to a school on the south side of El Paso and he loved his Mexican friends. My Mother after having very serious hard times growing up with one family member and then another finally found a home in an al girls school that was half mexican. My parents met in a real hard time here in this country just after my Dad came home from the war. They both had pasts that would tear you up. Dad having no father and the one he did just up and left one day leaving my poor grandma to care for three children. She was so poor she had the state take away her first child. Dad did anything he could to help her put food on the table and one day when I finish my book you will find out just how much we Cruea's loved our mexican neighbors and why.
I see how you bring up leaving at fifteen and it still hits me personally real hard. There was a man in my life that I had to go off and have a child out of wedlock and say good-bye to this child when I was three months into being 14. I never brought his name up in the press out of respect for both my parents because I knew they hurt real bad for some of the things us kids had to endure living in El Paso and how they went through such bad times with illness that it ripped them apart. You see some things like that happen in families and they hurt so bad I chose to honor them just for the very fact they loved me.
I married young and when my daughter was born I took off to find a better life for my two children. My two children. You see, I know the first child was not meant to be mine and that is how I always saw it. So you were and always will be my first. I got youa and my daughter out of a horrible situation and then married a man that came home from the Viet-Nam war and was prejudice for many reasons that he will have to tell you about and then he joined the Border patrol where he saw some horrible things that would make people cringe. He was prejudice and he loved us.
Later as my father got on he took on some prejudice due to what he saw happening in his home town of El Paso and how the illegals had got out of control. There was and is a stark difference. I love the men that fought in Viet-Nam and WWII for this country and I love the men that are in the Border Patrol and some see things you will never see or understand. All those people that fought for this country may have some prejudice but it makes them no less that n anybody ever and period.
I knew knew prejudice until the man I spoke of above moved us out of a compassionate transfer. The first I ever saw prejudice was when I lived in Chicago back in the early 70's and it scared me. I had only kno9wn of prejudice when I lived on 83rd. St. with my children on the south side of Chicago. My husband then became an undercover agent and once again put his life on the line. He was prejudice in ways people that understand it back then until time began to show us we did not need to feel that way.
We are talking about era's before you were born and era's of me growing up. yep, we even had crackers and milk sometimes when I was a little girl but you know what? We loved our parents and even when my Mother took sick and could no longer care for us, We loved her and would never say of her that she had profound mental illness. It was the era and that is prejudice right there to call a parent mental. Depression is a beast and it can grow like a cancer just like misinformation.
What we heard when we were 14-, 15 and up until we matured we kept inside us. This era is all out there and things are not in the closet as they were. I liked that time when things were kept out of respect in families and especially no comparrisons made as to how this race or that race had it harder. We all have it hard.
I have be3en outspoken regarding Legal Immigration and that does not mean I am at all a racist. I believe the black people are good people too and they had it hard. I really can not think of many races that came to this great country that did not suffrer. They came her for a bettere way of life and they have found it.
We are in a War again and I chose to honor those that gave me this great country to raise my children the very damn best that I could given my prejudice of having, "depression", Yes that alone is a prejudice and so is being a beautiful woman as I am. Being beautiful has it hurts I can not begin to tell you about. I was on Joe Gandleman's site and the discussion was of the above things I am including. Having a child out of wed-lock is still a nasty prejudice so Imagine having that happen when you are just 14 and were raped but because you were beautiful and mature due to rasing a little sisiter so my Mom could be helped in a mental hospital. Do you know the prejudice I heard?
Prejudice is an ugly beast but we can do a lot better to recognize it is not just black, or mexican, or gay, or muslim.
People need to grow and mature when they look back on the era's of this country. For she is beautiful and she is flawed and I will not apologize for being ignorant in my era. I will not apologize that I want this country to grow up in all prejudices and realize that will take time. There is a right way to be a part of this country and I saw where Val wrote the words to our National Anthem in English with the Hispanic title. That brough tears to my eyes because Val surely has his woes and stories of his life and his struggles but he honored the Untied States.
When we knock down our past, we knock down what made each and every one of us a free nation, we knock down how hard it was to get here and we knock down our own darn parents with out looking into their eyes and the way their eyes cry and why they cry and where they were and how far they came. So my stuggle was damn hard and I got stares for the beauty that I was. Prejudice is ugly but open your hearts and eyes and stop making it just a color.
My grandmother, God Bless Her! She had a horrible life right here on this soil and carried the United States Flag into every Rebecca's meeting until the day she died. She never found her child that was taken because she was so poor. She told me from the time I was knee high to a grasshopper how to make a delicious stew. It had every color of the rainbow in it, the spices came from all around the world.
So wehn you see a beautiful white woman know that behind her she has tears. When you see a beautiful black woman, you will also see her tears.
This post just got my dander up more than ever before because I love mexicans and I love black people but I am old enough to remember why things happened and to try to uphold many, many prejudices.
Hold up and show many, many prejudices (above, sorry)and to just plain open our eyes and realize we do not have to apologize ANYMORE! It is a Beautiful, beautiful country and it will take more era's to get it right but in the mean time smile at a beauty, smile at somebody that suffers being heavy, smile at somebody that is not so pretty, smile at somebody because INSIDE THEY CARRY PAIN of their own.
Dear Dean, I'm not quite sure what brought all this on, but it hit me in the gut. I don't know of too many that can stand and say that they were born with the 'silver spoon' in their mouths. I myself was brought into this world as a Chippewa Indian, and what I heard all the time was, I quote, "there's no good Indian, is a dead one". I was brought to believe this was our country way before there was other people here. And how our people were put on fenced lands called 'reservations' depending on the white people to provide us with food and teach us a better way to live. How absurd!!! My mother did the best she knew how, she brought 3 children in this world, loosing one daugther, a husband, and her life to the bottle. We were given custody to my grandparents till she decided to take us back and show us another part of hell. A man that beat, burned and treated us worse then dogs. But, when my mom died at the age of 52, she was my best friend. Prejudism is nothing but ignorance and immoriality, it's big talk for little people. It just shows where the'smoke' is really coming from. I still rememeber the days coming home with bloody noses, or just dried tears on our faces. This isn't nothing about color, it's about how we should be proud of a country that allows us to sleep at night, because we have a piece of paper that gives us all freedom, and great men and women out there to make sure we stay that way. Why do you think all those immigrants want to come here? They want what we 'think' we have. A place to call home, parents that loved us, and families that we would lay our lives down for. Instead of worrying about what color the skin is, how about what color your heart is.
It's interesting for me because I grew up in a very integrated city and never thought about racism growing up. Then I moved to a "white-bread" city and a city still struggling with racism and it was brought to my attention that these things still existed.
Now I'm back in the very integrated city, and I think about racism. However, it's mostly in the, "Gee, if I were racist, this would be driving me nuts..." It's a little obnoxious, actually, because I'm not getting tense, I'm not freaking out, but all the time there's a little voice saying that skin color matters in some places. Stupid self-reflection. Sometimes it gets a little recursive.
(One of the things about being in a very integrated city is the types of "races" you run across. As an example, I was recently in a play with a father and two daughters where the father was pale black— coffee with a LOT of cream— and his daughters were black-Filipino. Great voices on those three, and the younger girl is very into science fiction, so we had some great conversations...)
Racism is a disease, but one that needs to be stamped out. It's clear that in some areas significant progress has been made, but in others much remains to be done.
I take great exception to this, Dean. Y'all need to come over to my house. ;-) I always have cornmeal in my larder and always have fatback in my refrigerator.
God, I wish that were true, IB Bill. There's plenty of racism still around. Its power has been reduced is all.
But the official policies that supported and encouraged it, that made government a participant and winked at private organizations condoning it, that is gone. So yes racism exists, but its now the personal disease of jerks and not a disorder spread throughout the society and nation.
As I said millions of times, racism is the power to limit, harm, and/or stunt the growth of another race. Based on the way our government is configured, it would be extremely difficult for true racists practicing true racism to run things. Plain and simple. But the average Joe and Jane can be bigoted. Ain't nothin' I can do 'bout that. If your going to get all weird with me because I'm a black dude (a ruggedly handsome one at that) then back to ya! Personally, class has trumped race in America. And in my opinion, classism can be just has devastating as racism. Possibly even more devastating.
I'm Dean's age, I come from a nice middle class white family, both parents were teachers and they raised me to be a strict constitutionalist and a conservative, but not a racist. I wasn't raised to see the color of a person's skin, I was taught early on that the value of a man was in the work he did, not what color he was. I've gone through life with many black friends, dated a few black women, I've even got a Godmother who is black and a lifetime member of the NAACP, but for some people I'm just another white devil, and I'm tired of it.
I'm tired of having to justify myself or my politics to acquaintances and co-workers who are black. I'm tired of being looked at like they enemy when I go into a predominantly black bar just so I can attend a friend's birthday party. I'm tired of there being a double standard, with a lower level of quality being acceptable based on the color of someone's skin. I'm tired of hearing bullshit excuses about why something didn't get done from people who work for me, and then being told not to take action because it could be construed as creating a hostile work environment. In short, I'm pretty fucking tired of it all.
The sad thing is there are a lot of really good people this doesn't apply to, and I try, every day, to remind myself of that. But every time I read about the Reverends Jackson or Sharpton, or I read about another Tawana Brawley-esque case of injustice, or I listen to someone spout crap like that email that Dean posted, I just feel its that much more futile.
Ty: "And in my opinion, classism can be just has devastating as racism. Possibly even more devastating."
Dude, you're being too timid. Because you've really put your finger on the blunt truth of the matter. Contempt for po' white trash is every bit as virulent as contempt for po' black trash. We make fun of the suth'runs just as we make fun of the ebonics speakers. We treat people who grew up poor and hard like they're the bane of our existence rather than our brothers and sisters. We need to stop this.
We have to help them. And by "help them" I don't mean to put them in welfare dependency. I mean treat them with some respect while we give them a hand up.
I think back to a party I went to at a friends house about three years ago. It was another birthday party, this time at her house. Her husband worked hard to put it together, and invited a bunch of us from work as well as a bunch of their long time friends. Joy and Joe are both black, as are most of their long time friends. Those of us from work who showed up were mostly white. I'd known them for a few years and had been over to their house a dozen times or more, so I helped Joe out much of the night, greeting guests, taking coats, directing folks to refreshments and such. When I finally joined the party there I was surprised to see that the people had largely segregated themselves into two groups, and in a short time most of the white people left until there was only me.
That didn't bother me at all, in fact once the "uncomfortable" white folks left the rest of us had one hell of a good time. It's funny (and sad) how people can let their inherent distrust and their personal bigotries keep them from having a good time.
P.S. The Voting Rights Act email that you got is regularly passed along in emails, but many black commentators have already noted how it is untrue.
And we should be allowed to give an Atomic Wedgie (or equivalent) to the idiot who fails to heed that rule.
yes, there are still attitudes and other some stuff that people need to grow out of. But I believe that it'll all just go away with time, especially if we all just leave it alone. Calling attention to race causes more problems at this point than any attempt to "solve racism." Ignore the race hustlers Ignore the mau-mauers. All's gonna be fine. As fine as it needs to be.
Remember the part about no riots. If riots, all bets are off.
--Buster Kilrain
None of us are perfect. I sure ain't, but I deal in individuals.
That isn't just a racial thing. I frequent a biker bar. True, there are some clubbers there, but the greatest majority of the regulars are just folks...even some with SUV's and kids in soccer. But they love Harleys and the lifestyle that goes with it. Pretty often, though, we'll get some newbies in the bar that enter like they're walking into the 7th level of hell...like any second we'll all just turn savage and kill them. And on the flip side, the biker regulars look on the newbies with contempt for being scared and weak.
Sure, it's a race thing. But it's a "clan" thing, too. People of like interests tend to group up, and when someone who's not in the group shows up, suspicions are raised.
I was born, borned or is it born-ded 30 years before you and still had to live in the crappy City of Detroit for nearly 30 years.
And, I ain't about to say:
"God damn it you guys, we love you. You're part of us, you're part of what makes us special. It's over, okay ? "
Yes, I lived during the 1943 race riots and some of the other good ones. We never had a clue to what they were about. But, I remember army tanks down on Hastings, Hancock and Beaubien and Forest back then when we went to visit Gramma. My father wouldn't tell us nothing, just to shut up.
May God bless Henry Ford. He definitely was the best thing to happen to Detroit.
One last thing. The movie, Eight Mile Road was stupidest to the max.
I was wrong. The best thing that happened to Detroit is the Detroit Red Wings.
From your friendly bigot that plans never to return to Detroit to live.
My Dad grew up with Mexicans and went to school with them and the same with my Mother. Dad went to a school on the south side of El Paso and he loved his Mexican friends. My Mother after having very serious hard times growing up with one family member and then another finally found a home in an al girls school that was half mexican. My parents met in a real hard time here in this country just after my Dad came home from the war. They both had pasts that would tear you up. Dad having no father and the one he did just up and left one day leaving my poor grandma to care for three children. She was so poor she had the state take away her first child. Dad did anything he could to help her put food on the table and one day when I finish my book you will find out just how much we Cruea's loved our mexican neighbors and why.
I see how you bring up leaving at fifteen and it still hits me personally real hard. There was a man in my life that I had to go off and have a child out of wedlock and say good-bye to this child when I was three months into being 14. I never brought his name up in the press out of respect for both my parents because I knew they hurt real bad for some of the things us kids had to endure living in El Paso and how they went through such bad times with illness that it ripped them apart. You see some things like that happen in families and they hurt so bad I chose to honor them just for the very fact they loved me.
I married young and when my daughter was born I took off to find a better life for my two children. My two children. You see, I know the first child was not meant to be mine and that is how I always saw it. So you were and always will be my first. I got youa and my daughter out of a horrible situation and then married a man that came home from the Viet-Nam war and was prejudice for many reasons that he will have to tell you about and then he joined the Border patrol where he saw some horrible things that would make people cringe. He was prejudice and he loved us.
Later as my father got on he took on some prejudice due to what he saw happening in his home town of El Paso and how the illegals had got out of control. There was and is a stark difference. I love the men that fought in Viet-Nam and WWII for this country and I love the men that are in the Border Patrol and some see things you will never see or understand. All those people that fought for this country may have some prejudice but it makes them no less that n anybody ever and period.
I knew knew prejudice until the man I spoke of above moved us out of a compassionate transfer. The first I ever saw prejudice was when I lived in Chicago back in the early 70's and it scared me. I had only kno9wn of prejudice when I lived on 83rd. St. with my children on the south side of Chicago. My husband then became an undercover agent and once again put his life on the line. He was prejudice in ways people that understand it back then until time began to show us we did not need to feel that way.
We are talking about era's before you were born and era's of me growing up. yep, we even had crackers and milk sometimes when I was a little girl but you know what? We loved our parents and even when my Mother took sick and could no longer care for us, We loved her and would never say of her that she had profound mental illness. It was the era and that is prejudice right there to call a parent mental. Depression is a beast and it can grow like a cancer just like misinformation.
What we heard when we were 14-, 15 and up until we matured we kept inside us. This era is all out there and things are not in the closet as they were. I liked that time when things were kept out of respect in families and especially no comparrisons made as to how this race or that race had it harder. We all have it hard.
I have be3en outspoken regarding Legal Immigration and that does not mean I am at all a racist. I believe the black people are good people too and they had it hard. I really can not think of many races that came to this great country that did not suffrer. They came her for a bettere way of life and they have found it.
We are in a War again and I chose to honor those that gave me this great country to raise my children the very damn best that I could given my prejudice of having, "depression", Yes that alone is a prejudice and so is being a beautiful woman as I am. Being beautiful has it hurts I can not begin to tell you about. I was on Joe Gandleman's site and the discussion was of the above things I am including. Having a child out of wed-lock is still a nasty prejudice so Imagine having that happen when you are just 14 and were raped but because you were beautiful and mature due to rasing a little sisiter so my Mom could be helped in a mental hospital. Do you know the prejudice I heard?
Prejudice is an ugly beast but we can do a lot better to recognize it is not just black, or mexican, or gay, or muslim.
People need to grow and mature when they look back on the era's of this country. For she is beautiful and she is flawed and I will not apologize for being ignorant in my era. I will not apologize that I want this country to grow up in all prejudices and realize that will take time. There is a right way to be a part of this country and I saw where Val wrote the words to our National Anthem in English with the Hispanic title. That brough tears to my eyes because Val surely has his woes and stories of his life and his struggles but he honored the Untied States.
When we knock down our past, we knock down what made each and every one of us a free nation, we knock down how hard it was to get here and we knock down our own darn parents with out looking into their eyes and the way their eyes cry and why they cry and where they were and how far they came. So my stuggle was damn hard and I got stares for the beauty that I was. Prejudice is ugly but open your hearts and eyes and stop making it just a color.
My grandmother, God Bless Her! She had a horrible life right here on this soil and carried the United States Flag into every Rebecca's meeting until the day she died. She never found her child that was taken because she was so poor. She told me from the time I was knee high to a grasshopper how to make a delicious stew. It had every color of the rainbow in it, the spices came from all around the world.
So wehn you see a beautiful white woman know that behind her she has tears. When you see a beautiful black woman, you will also see her tears.
This post just got my dander up more than ever before because I love mexicans and I love black people but I am old enough to remember why things happened and to try to uphold many, many prejudices.
Now I'm back in the very integrated city, and I think about racism. However, it's mostly in the, "Gee, if I were racist, this would be driving me nuts..." It's a little obnoxious, actually, because I'm not getting tense, I'm not freaking out, but all the time there's a little voice saying that skin color matters in some places. Stupid self-reflection. Sometimes it gets a little recursive.
(One of the things about being in a very integrated city is the types of "races" you run across. As an example, I was recently in a play with a father and two daughters where the father was pale black— coffee with a LOT of cream— and his daughters were black-Filipino. Great voices on those three, and the younger girl is very into science fiction, so we had some great conversations...)