Some black friends were asking of each other why black people will vote for Hillary Clinton when she's such an obviously poor choice. The concensus was these are low-information people and that's going to be distant for these Facebookers because it's the reverse with them and they seek high information. Nevertheless, the conclusion looks to be logical as Clinton's support has been coming from Dixiecrats and no-one can trust those Deep South crackers. They sure did wonders for the GOP, didn't they.
Some of my best friends are not black as that list is deliberately short and, I suspect like many of you, much of it has stayed the same since my twenties when I met Cadillac Man and some people I have known all my life. We don't need cliches as I have some friends and some are black. I have no truck with dumb asses on Facebook whether they are white or black and I have learned important things.
There are many things I have learned on Facebook, other than some simpletons are terrified of cartoon nipples, as a black man I know and knew before Facebook has taken it as his responsibility to provide all manner of resources for black history. One of my favorites was a Mr Smalls (sorry I don't remember his first name) but this guy stole a Confederate warship, sneaked past the Confederate cannons by using their own codes against them, then rescued a bunch of other escaping slaves, and then ... and then, man ... Smalls ended up as a Representative in the U.S. Congress. This guy was a movie just standing there so, sure, the black history is fascinating to me and my friend has presented so much more. He really, really loves jazz.
In fact, here's a picture he presented recently, from somewhere in the 19th Century.
Sure he wants to show black history but he doesn't lecture. He presents and you can make of it what you will. Is that pic fallin' down adorable or what!
My situation isn't bleeding heart white liberalism but rather it's being a learnaholic and there's a pure fountain of knowledge here. Come, come, drink, he says. Well, thank you, and I sure will.
Some young 'uns were trying to school me on the Black Panthers the other day and it was a disappointing situation. Gentlemen, I know people who are or who knew well the Panthers and the vision you boys have of them is not at all the same as the reality of it. It's grossly-distorted to omit any aspect of the mission of the Panthers (i.e. self-protection) and how much of it was benign.
When black people tried to protect themselves, they were called radicals and terrorists but some of you know the history and they needed protection because they were not getting it anywhere else. Yes, this included the sixties and, if you don't believe it, then you seriously need to do some reading to understand.
When we came to America, I had no idea of racism and I had never even heard of it before. Australia has a deserved reputation for being highly racist at times but it wasn't anything I ever saw and that racism, as I know now, comes out strongly toward the aboriginal people of Australia who sciencers regard as driving the oldest culture on the planet.
Nevertheless, I did not know racism and had never thought of it, I had no reason.
We settled in Davis, California, and there were two black families which were long-term residents plus who knows how many on transient stays in Davis for academia. The families were the Turners and the Robinsons and my family knew them both quite well. One of the Robinson sons was about my age and once in a while we traded tropical fish. That was so gangsta, right? (larfs) The other family was the Turners and they lived across the street with their six kids so we saw them all the time and maybe part of what they liked in us was exactly as above, we had no idea what racism was.
In America with racism all over the place, the awareness started to grow but still there was no understanding because it was distant and I could not see it anywhere around me. Even in going out to pick tomatoes in the fields as a day laborer with the migrant braceros (i.e. Spanish for laborer), I did not perceive racism. Almost all of the workers were Mexican but I saw that as a sign of poverty rather than racism and they were doing what they could to fight it. It wasn't much but they were so damn tough. Sure, that's naive but I was a kid and that's what I saw. It wasn't until later I learned the highly-racist back story behind the bracero program in California. Maybe most significantly is Mexico did not want them to come up here because she wanted the workers for her own projects.
After going to Cincinnati, I was given some schooling as there is a much higher percentage of black people and the ancient tensions exist. One of the biggest episodes was when a bunch of black kids beat the living hell out of me on Calhoun Street after I went wandering around outside Crow's Bar one night.
The one who hit me first was a bit shorter than I but he threw a punch like Thor's hammer and he nailed me dead square over my mouth. It didn't knock me out but I was going down from the first hit, never even saw it coming.
My parents gave each of the kids a watch after we completed reading our first book, "Wind in the Willows," and maybe that's why I love Mister Toad's Wild Ride so much.
When I went down, people were hitting me and whatnot which obviously sucks but someone tried to steal my watch. My only thought, seriously, was you can beat me but you are NOT fucking stealing my watch.
He didn't (larfs). I did end up in the Emergency Room, tho, with my face looking like Mickey Rourke on a really, really bad day. (He went into boxing and it looks like he got beat up ... a lot)
That incident was obviously racial because there were black guys and I'm a white guy but would you make a big racial deal out of that? Ask anyone, I never did and this is why. I believe it's foolish to trust any group of high school kids when they're hopped up after a sporting event and the same is often true also for adults. If you need validation, check out the soccer hooligans. They're ostensibly adults but they sure as hell don't act like it. So, no, I don't see racism so much as I see sports mob mania and black people have no monopoly on it.
Something I have wondered sometimes is tribal as all people are tribal or were. Black people have tribes, Indians have tribes, and many of us come from Germanic tribes even if Donald Drumpf refuses to admit it. That group of kids had a leader and I didn't acknowledge anyone, I just saw a bunch of kids and with my history that's all I should have seen. However, every group has a leader even if only an informal one and I have wondered if I had recognized him and shown him some respect, even just a nod of the head, this would have gone in an altogether different way. Impossible to know that but I strongly suspect there may be truth to it.
Note: tribal is not a racial slur as in my definition it means human, it's what we do by our nature and all of us share it.
It's now fifty years and change since the 707 landed in San Francisco and, nope, I still don't understand racism but I sure have seen one hell of a lot of it. Most of all what I see is denial of it and that only sustains it. In all that time, the place I saw the least racism, other than Davis, was in the Army. We know it exists but I've never seen anywhere else which was so assiduous in stopping it.
Elsewhere corporate executives lecture on organizational diversity but I never saw any real evidence they meant it. The Army really did. That's not praise for the military but rather acknowledgement they at least try to do the right thing even when hardly anyone else does.
America will never make any progress with its racism so long as it keeps denying it exists.
Some of my best friends are not black as that list is deliberately short and, I suspect like many of you, much of it has stayed the same since my twenties when I met Cadillac Man and some people I have known all my life. We don't need cliches as I have some friends and some are black. I have no truck with dumb asses on Facebook whether they are white or black and I have learned important things.
There are many things I have learned on Facebook, other than some simpletons are terrified of cartoon nipples, as a black man I know and knew before Facebook has taken it as his responsibility to provide all manner of resources for black history. One of my favorites was a Mr Smalls (sorry I don't remember his first name) but this guy stole a Confederate warship, sneaked past the Confederate cannons by using their own codes against them, then rescued a bunch of other escaping slaves, and then ... and then, man ... Smalls ended up as a Representative in the U.S. Congress. This guy was a movie just standing there so, sure, the black history is fascinating to me and my friend has presented so much more. He really, really loves jazz.
In fact, here's a picture he presented recently, from somewhere in the 19th Century.
Sure he wants to show black history but he doesn't lecture. He presents and you can make of it what you will. Is that pic fallin' down adorable or what!
My situation isn't bleeding heart white liberalism but rather it's being a learnaholic and there's a pure fountain of knowledge here. Come, come, drink, he says. Well, thank you, and I sure will.
Some young 'uns were trying to school me on the Black Panthers the other day and it was a disappointing situation. Gentlemen, I know people who are or who knew well the Panthers and the vision you boys have of them is not at all the same as the reality of it. It's grossly-distorted to omit any aspect of the mission of the Panthers (i.e. self-protection) and how much of it was benign.
When black people tried to protect themselves, they were called radicals and terrorists but some of you know the history and they needed protection because they were not getting it anywhere else. Yes, this included the sixties and, if you don't believe it, then you seriously need to do some reading to understand.
When we came to America, I had no idea of racism and I had never even heard of it before. Australia has a deserved reputation for being highly racist at times but it wasn't anything I ever saw and that racism, as I know now, comes out strongly toward the aboriginal people of Australia who sciencers regard as driving the oldest culture on the planet.
Nevertheless, I did not know racism and had never thought of it, I had no reason.
We settled in Davis, California, and there were two black families which were long-term residents plus who knows how many on transient stays in Davis for academia. The families were the Turners and the Robinsons and my family knew them both quite well. One of the Robinson sons was about my age and once in a while we traded tropical fish. That was so gangsta, right? (larfs) The other family was the Turners and they lived across the street with their six kids so we saw them all the time and maybe part of what they liked in us was exactly as above, we had no idea what racism was.
In America with racism all over the place, the awareness started to grow but still there was no understanding because it was distant and I could not see it anywhere around me. Even in going out to pick tomatoes in the fields as a day laborer with the migrant braceros (i.e. Spanish for laborer), I did not perceive racism. Almost all of the workers were Mexican but I saw that as a sign of poverty rather than racism and they were doing what they could to fight it. It wasn't much but they were so damn tough. Sure, that's naive but I was a kid and that's what I saw. It wasn't until later I learned the highly-racist back story behind the bracero program in California. Maybe most significantly is Mexico did not want them to come up here because she wanted the workers for her own projects.
After going to Cincinnati, I was given some schooling as there is a much higher percentage of black people and the ancient tensions exist. One of the biggest episodes was when a bunch of black kids beat the living hell out of me on Calhoun Street after I went wandering around outside Crow's Bar one night.
The one who hit me first was a bit shorter than I but he threw a punch like Thor's hammer and he nailed me dead square over my mouth. It didn't knock me out but I was going down from the first hit, never even saw it coming.
My parents gave each of the kids a watch after we completed reading our first book, "Wind in the Willows," and maybe that's why I love Mister Toad's Wild Ride so much.
When I went down, people were hitting me and whatnot which obviously sucks but someone tried to steal my watch. My only thought, seriously, was you can beat me but you are NOT fucking stealing my watch.
He didn't (larfs). I did end up in the Emergency Room, tho, with my face looking like Mickey Rourke on a really, really bad day. (He went into boxing and it looks like he got beat up ... a lot)
That incident was obviously racial because there were black guys and I'm a white guy but would you make a big racial deal out of that? Ask anyone, I never did and this is why. I believe it's foolish to trust any group of high school kids when they're hopped up after a sporting event and the same is often true also for adults. If you need validation, check out the soccer hooligans. They're ostensibly adults but they sure as hell don't act like it. So, no, I don't see racism so much as I see sports mob mania and black people have no monopoly on it.
Something I have wondered sometimes is tribal as all people are tribal or were. Black people have tribes, Indians have tribes, and many of us come from Germanic tribes even if Donald Drumpf refuses to admit it. That group of kids had a leader and I didn't acknowledge anyone, I just saw a bunch of kids and with my history that's all I should have seen. However, every group has a leader even if only an informal one and I have wondered if I had recognized him and shown him some respect, even just a nod of the head, this would have gone in an altogether different way. Impossible to know that but I strongly suspect there may be truth to it.
Note: tribal is not a racial slur as in my definition it means human, it's what we do by our nature and all of us share it.
It's now fifty years and change since the 707 landed in San Francisco and, nope, I still don't understand racism but I sure have seen one hell of a lot of it. Most of all what I see is denial of it and that only sustains it. In all that time, the place I saw the least racism, other than Davis, was in the Army. We know it exists but I've never seen anywhere else which was so assiduous in stopping it.
Elsewhere corporate executives lecture on organizational diversity but I never saw any real evidence they meant it. The Army really did. That's not praise for the military but rather acknowledgement they at least try to do the right thing even when hardly anyone else does.
America will never make any progress with its racism so long as it keeps denying it exists.
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