The Disgrace of Slavery

The poignant picture of two little boys and the documentation of the sale of the child on the left, John, is heartbreaking.

The antebellum South might be celebrated by some, but as far as I'm concerned, it's THE most shameful era of our country.

Sure, slavery has been practiced all over the world, in darn near every culture, but the brutality and inhumanity of slavery as it was practiced in the South is completely opposite of the principles of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Violence, rape, the explotation of a whole race, all for the sake of money.

Yes, in the end, like all too many horrible events in history, it really was all about the money.

In my mind, there's no excuse. And the faces of John and the unknown child next to him, lost in the mists of history, forgotten by all except perhaps, hopefully, their descendents, remind us that we are responsible for the children.

All the children.

Slavery was a disgrace that our nation is still recovering from, all these years later.

There is no excuse for ignorant behavior or tolerating ignorant behavior in America. Yet we still hear and see it every day. Bigotry and racism is alive and well.

The faces of two little boys look at us with haunted eyes, reminding us of the result of racism, of slavery, of the most shameful times in our history...

Link:
artdaily.org: http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=38596
Associated Press: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Rare-photo-slave-children-found-NC-attic/ss/events/us/061010keyamorgan/im:/ydownload_ap/20100610/photos_net_ap_ts/1276210841/#photoViewer=/100610/480/urn_publicid_ap_org_edf9c9ebc02f4ab2a5bb79130057327a

Racism

Tami says it better than I ever could.

Check it out:
http://whattamisaid.blogspot.com/2009/09/ism-that-dare-not-speak-its-name.html

Please don't just gloss over and then discount what she's written.

If you do, you've joined the masses that trivialize and marginalize our Brothers and Sisters of Color, discounting their truths because you just don't want to see the pain that still exists in this country.

When you deny another person's truth, you deny their very being.

Think about it.

There's A Deep Wound Across Our Consciousness

Yes, there's a deep wound across our consciousness.

It's called racism.

Since I look "white", and was raised in a white society, it took me many years to comprehend some of the subtleties of racist behaviors. There are days I still don't "get it". I have to think and contemplate and pray on it, before it comes clear to me.

But you know, as a Woman, I experience similar behaviors every day. For example, if I go into Home Depot, men think nothing of stepping ahead of me when I'm trying to get an employee's attention. The same thing happens when I'm at the auto parts store, or buying tires. Unless I step right up to the customer service desk and get a manager, I'm likely to be ignored. And even then, while I'm being helped, guys will walk up and start talking to the manager, as if they're maneuvering around a tree or a post. It's like I'm not even there. I don't exist in their world.

Substitute racism for sexism, and the situation of my Brothers and Sisters of Color becomes clearer by the day.

Our society has a bleeding wound across it, and only if you actually experience it, do you even start to understand how deep, how ugly, how consuming it really is.

It's part of our society that the overt racists (and die-hard liberals, businesses, bosses, and individuals) don't WANT to understand. It's pervasive. It's an undercurrent in that deep river we call racism.

It's a crevasse that people fall into and can't get out of.

If you don't know it's there, you don't see it unless you really educate yourself with an OPEN mind and heart, and even then, you don't really understand it. You just may realize that it exists.

Unless you're POC or a woman who's experienced the situation.

We women, of every color, experience being ignored while all the men are being helped, and the men just step up right in front of us, like we have no business being in the hardware store. Or the auto parts store. Or the workplace.

We women, we're supposed to act, talk, be a certain way and if we don't, then we get pushed aside and/or ignored. And if we demand better treatment, we're pushy, bitchy, or [gasp] lesbians. Because nice girls don't act that way...

HUH!

POC receive that SAME treatment, and people act like it's OK.

There's a little box that we're supposed to fit into, and we're not supposed to step outside of it. Never. Except maybe Oprah, or Magic Johnson, or Obama. But then, they're "different", they're "not like the rest of them". Compartmentalized thinking. But as a poster on another forum pointed out, back in the day, Oprah, Magic, Obama would've been sitting in the back of the bus with all the other POC. And they would've been equally at risk of the noose. The same noose that hung in the "white tree" in Jena, Louisiana just this past year.

Well, you know what, I'm standing up and shouting, "IT'S NOT OK!"

Not until society STOPS and takes note of the chasm that divides our country, do we have a prayer of throwing a rope to our Brothers and Sisters, our young women, who may still be lost in the depths of its despair, then we can close the wound, let it heal.

Our children are being lost in this chaotic undercurrent that's condoned by society. People shake their heads and tisk-tisk, but do nothing to see or comprehend the the root causes. Nor do they choose to step up to help promote change.

Oh, yeah, they're willing enough to call for banning rap music, or complain about kids' clothes, but trust me, they didn't pay any attention until THEIR kids started "acting Black". Then all of a sudden, they noticed that our society promotes violence, sexism, racism. It becomes a huge issue.

Ironically, these are the same parents who paid to see "The Godfather" movies, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "Tombstone", "Colors". They never noticed that American society has ALWAYS glorified violence. Somehow, they think that the violence of our past is OK, but suddenly the violence of today isn't.

America has always been violent. Always. Right from the beginnings, when the Europeans came to colonize a land that already had people living there.

You can't fix something if you don't know (or deny) its existence. Only when you acknowledge the REAL problem, not just the symptoms, then you can start working on the healing. And God knows, we need a healing on the psyche of this nation.

Too many Americans float through this life, denying that there's even a problem, and then when it broadsides them in their perfect little fantasy world, they blame the victims who are trying to speak out on it.

Sigh...

Too many Americans don't even try to peer through the glass dimly...
...and the wound keeps bleeding.

Bill Cosby Is Right

Bill Cosby is old.

Rich.

Conservative.

He's kinda like the old rich uncle who tells you how to get rich, but you have NO access to any of the methods that he used. And what you do have access to is NOT the same opportunity that he had, the world has changed and he can't see that his method may not work for you.

Not everyone is a talented comic.

I love Bill, especially his old stuff. But in today's world, a young comic can't recycle Bill's old jokes.

Bill has valid points, but he comes across as being distant, out of touch, not really comprehending what's going on with young people today. He comes across as not understanding the way that the underbelly of American culture, the drugs, the violence, has affected our Brothers and Sisters of Color, especially those who are poor.

This is not all race or color based, American has glorified violence and hate for a LONG time. Look at the gangsters of the 30s, how we've romanticized them, glorified them. (And I don't have time today to get into the long history of violence against People of Color [POC].) It's a long, long road that's gotten us ALL to this point.

Now we are reaping what we've sown.

Unfortunately the poor are the first victims, and since POC are disproportionately poor, we as a society are blaming POC for the conditions that we have set into motion a long time ago. Yes, racism, bigotry, prejudice are all a part of our culture and the problem too, intensifying the effect on POC. But it's moving "upward", in the long run, we all face the same issues.

White suburbia isn't getting it. They just see that their kids are falling into the same glorifying of hate and violence, drugs and guns. So they blame the poor, specifically our Brothers and Sisters of Color, never seeing that they've perpetuated the problem by their actions and more importantly, their inaction.

Bill's words are a two-edged sword. If only our society could hear the good side, and get down into the trenches with the good people who are working to make a difference right now, today.

Instead, Americans hear what we want to hear -- that blame game, never seeing that there is a hopelessness that keeps our kids from realizing their full potential.

I'm so, so tired of the white conservative line, that patronizing attitude that racism doesn't exist anymore and thus POC should just work harder and get themselves out of the ghetto. Hello? So sorry but if you live in a poor area, with less than adequate schools, few job opportunities, no transportation, it's pretty darn hard to "move on up to the east side".

And bluntly, too many white liberals are just as bad. "Oh my goodness, those poor black people, we need to 'bring them up''. Patting themselves on the back about what great non-racist kind of people they are. But do they LIVE next to their Brothers and Sisters? Do they get down in the trenches, volunteer at schools, help build affordable housing, provide on-the-job training, mentor young people? Ummmm, well, probably not.

Yes, Bill is right. People need to take responsibility for their actions.

Bill is right -- and that includes white society taking the blame and responsibility for over 100 years of oppression, which affects POC right up to the present.

We have a long, sad, ugly history to overcome, and the advances made by the Civil Rights movement have only made a dent in the problem. We still have much to overcome, including the unconscious attitudes of the society that surrounds us all.

Bill Cosby is right.

But not in the way that he thinks he is....

James Watson Is A Racist

Let's get blunt here.

The man who basically ripped off the woman's work on DNA and got a Nobel Prize for it, is now blathering about intelligence?

Whoa Nelly! What kind of guy would steal another person's work then have the gall to accuse people of color, specifically Africans, of being less intelligent than whites?

I can tell you what kind. The unethical, conniving, demented kind. This is a man, who with his fellow researcher, got a copy of Franklin's DNA X-ray data (probably without her knowledge), and the manuscript by Pauling and Corey, which gave them the crucial insights into the DNA structure that they needed to write their own article. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin) They based their entire work on other people's research, and unashamedly took credit for it.

Now, honestly Rosalind could not have received the Nobel Prize, she died of ovarian cancer in 1958. The rules don't allow for posthumous awards. Despite this, I think that Watson's Nobel Prize should be revoked.

Anyway, Watson has gone on, year after year, peddling his racist, bigoted, homophobic beliefs to the world under his false credentials as "a Nobel Prize winner". Huh.

Yeah, I know he's back peddling now. Like I care at this point.

He'd better backpedal! His job has suspended him. He's being made to look like the ass he is. LOL, his pride must be suffering as the media is having a feeding frenzy at his expense.

Fellow scientists are busily refuting this preposterous theory of intelligence as fast as they can issue press releases (or be tracked down by reporters). For example, quote: "And further critical comment of Dr Watson's views has come from Dr Craig Venter, the scientist/businessman who led the private effort to decode the human genome, and who, by coincidence, is also visiting the UK to promote a book. 'Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one,' Dr Venter said. 'There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of intelligence.'"

Yay, Craig! Speak it!

I'd like to give Watson a break, just because I'm nice and he's old and could be slipping into dementia. But I'm afraid his past history of ugly remarks, racist and homophobic beliefs, don't allow me to be that kind to the old coot.

No matter how respected or old he might be, there's NO excuse for this kind of stupidity in today's world.

Yes, this is America. He has the benefit of freedom of speech. He's allowed to make himself look like an idiot. And I'm allowed to call him on it.

James Watson is a racist. And in his fading years, he's finally shown his true colors to the entire world.

Who says there's no justice in this life? Rosalind has been vindicated. And Watson reviled.

Huh.

A few interesting links:
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071019/lead/lead6.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7052416.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin

Musings On Racism - Part I

The argument of the day was about racism.

My Brother Pots believes that People of Color can't be racists. My Brother Neo believes anyone can be a racist and exhibit racist behavior.

My belief is that, unfortunately, we won't be able to agree on a definition of the term, nor find that precise dividing line between prejudice and racism. Why? Because we all have one unique view. Neo has one. Pots has another experience and perception. I have a third. Ku-ku has a fourth. SR has a fifth. Birdlady has a sixth. And so on.

We can all probably agree on the worst of racists, they pretty much define themselves. But then let's take a different angle. There was a time when many white people really believed that our Brothers and Sisters of Color were inferior beings. That the KKK was an acceptable organization. That all Blacks should go back to Africa, there was no place in our society. Etc, etc, etc. There is a whole history built upon those beliefs and behaviors.

On the flip side of the coin, most of the Black people I have known do not think that whites are inferior beings, nor do they support organizations dedicated to keeping whites "in their place" or a race war. They don't [generally] tell whites to go back to Europe. Some may not LIKE white people at all, but don't have the extreme viewpoint that tips into racism.

When we look at the underlying, historical basis, yes, I can completely understand Pots' and others' belief that POC can't be racist. Racism is a depth of hate that many of us really don't comprehend. BUT, since we've grown up in this white dominated society, we wear blinders that keep us from seeing the issues from the point of view of POC. We can't and probably won't ever agree on this point.

To be continued...