I Was Right and Wrong

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In 2005 I wrote "Renaming a Highway" that came to Big Closet in 2007. I was right about the problems of race and sexuality when I wrote, "Same shit, different decade." I was wrong when I wrote, " There still some embers, but Mississippi is no longer burning," referring to the 1988 movie, Mississippi Burning The flame of hate is throughout the U. S. We are all to blame. In the end the Romeo and Juliet character Mercutio was right, "Don't ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."

shalimar

Comments

An ugly two-headed beast

Earlier today I read a piece by a black professor on NPR. In it she recounts how, at a memorial service for the nine lost, she was at first unable to take the hand of the white woman standing next to her. The speaker had instructed everbody to take the hand of the person next to them. For a moment, she was unable to see through her own beliefs (prejudices) and realize this woman was there for the same reason she was, to honor those that had their lives snatched away.

Now this was an intelligent woman, a university professor that presumably deals with students of all races on a daily basis. If, for all her educaion and experience, she even briefly saw a potentional adversary, what does this bode for the future?


I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.

it bodes well, in a way

dawnfyre's picture

since she was able to recognize the issue and deal with it, which shows that prejudice can be beaten, all that is needed is for EVERYONE to stop judging others for ANY reason.


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

I'm just concerned

This was a woman that has the advantage of a college education as well as continuing exposure to young people to keep her mind flexible. What about the people that don't have those advantages?


I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.

You still have "tolerance" lessons in...

...schools where kids are told that different colour, gay or trans kids are different enough, but you can't beat them if there is a probability that you will be caught...
:-(

Say what?

I don't have a clue what this is supposed to mean. Anyway, its pointless to take this any further, it will only turn into a flame war.


I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.

168

dawnfyre's picture

168 hours in a week, 40 at work with those students, 128 at home.

128 hours a week when she is getting exposed to the prejudice as normal vs 40 when that message gets reversed.

it figures she is going to have to fight the attitude.

sorry, but it is at home, at church and doing daily living away from the rarefied atmosphere of post secondary institution that is feeding the attitude, and that same feeding is happening everywhere. the truly worrisome part is those who are never exposed to the message that prejudice / discrimination is wrong, they are the current and future source of the problem


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

Huh?

This is a professor, not a student. I presume she practices at home the beliefs she claims to live by. If you are talking about students, you are dragging something else into the discussion.

Last I'm going to say.


I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.

It was in no way intended as a flame.

Just huge chunks of "education" are designed to rise hate levels between different "groups". I've seen as promotion of "tolerance" is acheving polar opposite. There was no "tolerance" in USSR. But there was no gay bashings and nobody was killed for being TG. To change documents to different gender you basically needed just to write an application and pay state fee for the new passport.
Now we have "tolerance" and we have hatemongers at the same time. And gay bashings while not widely spread but they are here... With "tolerance" was introduced new law that to change gender in documents you need to show letter from the surgeon confirming operation...

Android

Has not proven to be the stable OS I'd hoped.. Any kind of input such as comments seem to take a twist through the Twilight Zone on their way to being posted. In addition to the problem you mention I have problems with android switching letters for symbols. Other times it displays everything in a comment in reverse. Using FF isn't helping either, it seems to introduce another level of errors into things, most commonly when I'm trying to read Facebook but not limited to there.

I like to use my tablet to read in bed, but have pretty much quit trying to do anything else with it. And for the last five weeks I couldn't get my new ATT service to connect to my laptop so I had to use my tablet with my phone as a wifi hotspot. So my commenting dropped off to nothing.

Good luck with your android, I've about decided to get out my netbook that runs XP and start using it again. Bah!!!


I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.

the professor might do that

dawnfyre's picture

but it is her neighbors, the people round her outside of the workplace that are exposing her to the intolerance attitude.

we don't live in a vacuum, what we are exposed to by those around us, even just casually like on a bus, has an impact that colours our own outlook to some extent.
We can't forget, the attitudes of our families when we are younger also have a huge impact on forming our own attitudes. Te professor is working to change her unconscious [ from childhood exposure most likely ] reactions, not everyone does and she gets exposed to them when she is not at work, making the changes more difficult.


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

maybe, but then, maybe not

dawnfyre's picture

as an openly trans woman I expect to get a lot of discrimination out in the world, even from neighbors in the building.

oddly, it is only the teenaged kids that seem to do so. half my neighbors are Somali, including one of the lay pastors for the church they attend, none of my neighbors have any issue with my being me, the 20 somethings that live right above me have even introduced me to their parents when they were over to visit the kids. [ met one of their younger brother yesterday even. ]

The issues are still around, but it is getting a lot better.


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.