Monday, January 15, 2018

Confession of a reluctant racist

.    Perhaps Martin Luther King Jr. day is a good one for this, especially when the American racist in chief is claiming he is the least racist of anybody we might meet.
     I have never felt I was a racist. Even though I grew up in a lilly white suburb and never interacted with a black person except for a couple of days in Florida, until I went into the Army, I made it a point at least in my head that we are all equal. I can say this at least: I didn't like all the racist jokes that went around in the 50s, I never laughed at one and I never told one and that was about the extent of my active social responsibility.
     I lived through the civil rights movement in the sixties very sympathetic to the cause, though I don't recall doing anything about it,except for sophomoric college discussions. Still I felt I was always on the right side of racism issue.
     So I Moved to Alaska which has its own racial issues. One summer day I was driving through a lake district on the Kenai Peninsula looking for a place to fish. I had had some luck on Hidden Lake the winter before so we pulled in there.
     There was one of those pickup trucks with a camper in the bed parked next to a picnic table where a family of black people sat enjoying a meal.
     The immediate reaction that came to my non-racist mind was I don't want to fish here. It wasn't specifically because of the African-American family, it was because if they were there, the only fish around were probably carp, not exactly a rational insight in Alaska waters.
But you see as I grew up, I used to see black women sitting on camp stools, their stockings rolled down to below their knees and fishing for carp in the Buffalo River. In my mind black people meant carp and I don't ever want a carp.
     At the same time I was totally embarrassed by that obvious racist thought even though no one until now knows I had it.
     Thinking about it I would bet there aren't many of us who haven't had some such thought about someone of another race at some time or other and to that extent we are all racists. The object then is to admit it and then fight it within ourselves, like alcoholics trying to remain sober. They will always be alcoholics but they can do something about it by staying sober. Perhaps we are all racists and knowing that and admitting it, we can live better lives understanding it and doing what we can to fight it within ourselves, and in the process treat our brothers and sisters on the planet with a measure of respect and an honest attempt at understanding.
 
Some folks on facebook relayed similar thoughts on the subject. They are worth reading. I am adding them as I receive permission from the writers.

Gretchen Small i have been having that same internal dialogue with myself for some time. i was raised by parents who were very non-racist by the standards of the day---- but as the years roll by i have dug deeper into my subconscious responses---and yes, racism is embedded in me due to the culture i grew up in. i have tried all my life to not let that be who i am, but cultural fabric is woven deep into the psyche of every member of that culture. Tim, our children were raised in a more racially open milieu than we, and they give me hope. the MLK Dream could never come in an easy blink of conscious rationale. deeply embedded subconscious responses are persistent weeds that are only rooted out with patient effort. the passing generations sometimes falter backwards, but human evolution marches forward. if there is a Homo sapien species surviving into the next century, the fruits of our internal moral stuggles will bear fruit.

Sharon Wright LA Unified School District started bringing black kids from East LA to our high school by bus in the 1960s. We had a diverse student body: white Christians & Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, but no blacks until they were brought to our neighborhood. I had no black friends in high school but worked with black adults from age 17 on. Dated a black surfer in college who took 3rd at Huntington Beach one year; my father would have gone apoplectic had he known. So considered myself non-racist. Then I moved to Juneau, Alaska which in 1971 had a substantial Native population. It was more brown than white. Hmmm, whole new concept to accommodate. Moved around the state a bit and one night, flying into Fairbanks from Outside, I discovered I'd locked my keys in our pickup. My little guy & I were locked out in the cold & dark. I thought & thought--had wire in the pickup bed--and here came two black guys about my age. Hey! I said, "I've locked my keys in my truck. Can you help me?" "Sure," they said. Surveyed the wire, said, Yep, we can do this! One wiggled the window down just a hair, bent that wire around into a loop on the end, slipped it in and bent it around to go down to the lock (remember when there were door locks you could pull up by the knob on top?) and pulled it up. Thank you, thank you! Off they went and off we went. Then the little guy said, "Mom, how did you know those guys would know how to get into our truck?" Hmmmm, was I being a racist? I just read this to Dave & he said, Nah. If they'd been white, they probably would've known too. I helped Nick (a Native friend) break into his truck when he locked his keys in it.


Jan Williams Simone Here is an incident I remember. From a very young age I had and still have strong beliefs about how to treat other people. One day I was at Low Library at Columbia University, pregnant with my second child, and working on my master's thesis. I was really tired, so tired that I desperately wanted to close my eyes and sleep for just a little while, even though my chair was sort of in the middle of a room. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a young black woman digging through her bag set on the floor next to me, very near my purse and pile of books. There was a lot of carpet around her; she didn't have to be there. I deliberately thought to myself, if I pick up my bag and put it on my chair with me, she will be offended. So I didn't. The next thing I knew I was still sitting there but had clearly dozed off. I didn't even look in my bag. It was only later, when I went to pull out my wallet, that I saw it was gone. All of my old photos, including a precious one of my parents when they were young, my driver's license, whatever money I had, etc., gone. I never thought of myself as having any more than the mildest prejudices. What lesson was there to learn? It was to be more wary. But I don't think my new wariness was racially tinged, because thieves have no color. It was sort of a reverse prejudice operating in my mind - don't hurt anyone even if they might hurt you. Is that some sort of insidious reverse racism? If it had been a white woman kneeling on the floor next to my purse in the middle of a room, I would have been just as vulnerable. But maybe I would have moved the bag.... Becoming street smart - that is a lesson you usually learn the hard way.Betty Sederquist Our generation carries a lot of these racist undertones whether we realize it or not. I try to do the right thing, but my socially attuned daughters call out my missteps on a regular basis. Interesting to examine all of this. I grew up in a lily-white, conservative part of the country. My sometimes liberal parents bent over backwards to accommodate the rare black folks who came our way but had some interesting opinions on Jews. My French mother hated people from Algeria. This nonsense goes on and on.A friend sent this link to me.. It's a magazine article dealing with this subject. I couldn't manage to get the link copied but if you search How to stop the racist in you | Greater Good Magazine   greatergood.berkley.edu. It's a good read and like a lot of things we worrry about in life, it's comforting to know others have the same anxieties.


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Best headlines ever

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Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

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Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

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Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel

Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”