Tag Archives: race relations

Sweet

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 2, 2022- A state legislator, censured for advocating executions of her political opponents, on a public gallows, fired back at those who voted for censure-saying they were picking on a “sweet grandma”.

To be sure, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, even for those who say people of different ethnicities have horns and a tail, or words to that effect. Yet, there are laws that forbid making specific threats against the safety and well-being of other human beings-or hurting most animals, for that matter.

I am sure the legislator is sweet to her grandchildren, if not her children. Loving people who are one’s bloodline is well nigh universal, save for those who are deranged. That tells me the woman has some semblance of heart. Her comments, at a recent gathering of white supremacists, tell me that she has spent precious little time listening to those who offer views different from her own. They also give readers and listeners who disagree with those comments a sense that she herself may be a bit unhinged.

We have had a long, hard road together, vis-à-vis race relations, especially between Blacks and Whites, but also between Whites and First Nations people as well as between First Nations people and Blacks. Much of the discord involves failure to listen, to observe, to accept others for who they are. It’s true that there are people in each group who have taken advantage of their own, and who have ingratiated themselves with the dominant group. It is also true that there are people within the dominant group who have suffered at the hands of “their own kind”. This, however, does not take away from the aggregate of the dominant group, in a good many countries, having the responsibility for erecting a system that perpetuates their dominance, at the expense of those outside their circle.

Real sweetness does not hate.

We, the People

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Posted by on in Community, Family, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

December 11, 2019-

In the film, “King of the Gypsies”,  the late Sterling Hayden plays the titular role, and remarks, upon encountering a different group of Roma:  “Whose Gypsies are these?”  It struck me as a curious thing for anyone to say-as I never have taken to the idea of one human being owning another-or others.  Indeed, it was a few years ago that I relinquished use of the possessive pronoun “my”, when referencing any person by name, saving its use solely for clarifying a specific relationship.

I guess this is part of a larger movement in my mind- to get past thoughts of “Us and Them”.  Growing up in a small town north of Boston, I was first aware of belonging to two large families, then to the Roman Catholic church, then to a town named Saugus, whose residents, for the most part, were of families whose forebears came from Europe.  My education, as to how to regard people who looked different from us, was simple:  We were to address them as “Sir”, “Ma’am”  or by honorific (Mr._____, Mrs._____).  Other kids were always called by their first names.  The pejorative for African-Americans (My folks called them coloured people, in the 1950’s) was forbidden in our house.  Needless to say, nobody with half a brain would ever have called Mrs. Robinson, who ran the junior high cafeteria,  anything other than ” Miss Matron, Ma’am”.  Mr. and Mrs. Woo, who had a laundry in Cliftondale Square, on the southeast side of town, were likewise accorded full respect, and the Chang family were pillars of the community.

So there was an early perception, in my head, that anyone who used racial or ethnic slurs was just plain ignorant.  To be sure, lots of people moved into Saugus from other places, and brought their less than enlightened ideas about race and ethnicity into the social fabric.  I never bought into any of it, and remember feeling sad when four little girls were blown to bits, in Birmingham, and when Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, were gunned down.  It was as hard for me, as losing the Kennedy brothers.

Nonetheless, there was work for me to do on myself, as so many “harmless” stereotypes and inflections had made their way into my consciousness.  My Black fellow soldiers, being as diverse a group as any similar collection of Whites, disabused me of a lot of preconceived notions that growing up in a mostly white community had imparted.  To be sure, I have never been physically assaulted by anyone of African ancestry.   I can’t  say the same about my fellow Euro-Americans.

Gradually,  I outgrew stereotypes about other  groups of people, all residual from what I had observed in others, over the period of my childhood and adolescence.  My inclusive views finally came full circle, when the humanity of those who spouted unfortunate views of exclusion and bigotry became apparent, without my having to adopt their way of thinking.  Some people just need more patience than others.

So, it is with a fair degree of incredulity, that I hear one group or another say:  “The People won’t stand for this!”   To paraphrase Mr. Hayden’s character, ” To which people do   you refer?”  All humans are people-and while appealing to their humanity is hard, sometimes exasperating, work, I feel I can do no less.

 

The Road to 65, Mile 281: Misogyny

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Posted by on in Personal goals

September 4, 2015- I grew up in a very hedonistic decade.  It became second nature for me to first notice the physical attributes of the opposite gender, from the time I was eight.  This was pretty much how it continued for me, until I was married, and noticing other women  struck me as extremely rude.

Even so, I also grew up with a sense of profound respect for those girls and women whose intellectual and spiritual attributes equaled or exceeded anything physical.  My mother, aunts and sister have always been well-spoken and mannerly, which added to the threshold of the type of woman to whom I was drawn, and Penny fit every category.  She assessed me in much the same way, and our marriage was one of equals.

I thought of these things, whilst reading more pages of “The Way of The Peaceful Warrior”.  Dan Millman puts forth a farcical tone, with regard to his attraction to women and, almost like the lead male characters in other ’60’s period pieces, he wanders from one pretty woman to another.  He thus faces one comeuppance after another, despite his spiritual progress.

Awhile back, a reader came on one of my posts and chortled, in a rather hostile manner, about what a misogynist I was, for over-using the term “beautiful”, with regard to women. Objectifying, among people of both genders, is a rather deep-rooted aspect of many people’s lives, but it hardly is akin to hatred.

Nonetheless, I have gone deep into my psyche, to look at this matter and to actively work at building more depth to my friendships, beyond what I was already practicing and to see each friend, regardless of gender, as a person who is far more than what she or he first presents.  This is, after all, what sustained my marriage, and what now must sustain all my relationships.

Misogyny and misandry are harsh words, as is racism.  The three terms, I’m afraid, are bandied about, almost too indiscriminately, both by hurt people and by those, such as my erstwhile critic, who would manipulate them and whip up a reactionary frenzy.  We all have work to do, in both gender relations and race relations. I am making progress, and am delighted by the friendships I have both made, and strengthened, over the past few years.  More than likely, my angel approves.